Small Combatants To Fight... China?

We will always give priority to the strategic thinkers, and Captain Wayne Hughes is one of our favorites. Everything he writes is solid gold in our opinion, because it forces readers to think critically about both strategy and tactics, and his words always encourage professional debate regarding the best ways to conduct the work of naval forces at sea. If you are looking for his credentials, the book on the right that will remain a constant on this blog is a great place to start, because it is the bible of modern naval warfare.

In a recent interview with Inside the Navy's Rebekah Gordon, Captain Hughes weighs in on the Littoral Combat Ship.

“I think we’ve got to get on with building an inshore Navy, a green-water Navy component, and LCS isn’t it,” said Hughes, the former dean of the school’s Graduate School of Operational & Information Sciences. “At $500 million plus module costs, it’s not going to hack it.”

"We can’t afford to lose billion-dollar DDGs, but we can afford to lose $50- or $100-million inshore combatants,” he said. “And instead of having a crew of 350 or 400, have a crew of 12. A combat crew of 12 people so that if the ship gets hit, you just save the survivors and leave the ship as a burning derelict as opposed to having to do damage control and create more casualties.”

Captain Hughes, unlike many who believe building small ships in the US Navy is specifically for fighting the "small wars" at sea, has a different vision for how these ships can contribute to the total naval power of the US Navy.

“The Chinese are getting so that they can give us trouble with our small number of big aircraft carriers and Aegis ships because they’re concentrating on confronting those ships specifically, and they’re developing really good sea-denial capabilities and anti-access capabilities,” Hughes said. “So we’ve got to beat them with something that upsets and gives them new problems to think about.”

The United States must influence China into thinking it never wants to go to war with the “big Navy” by having an effective presence and capability in the green waters, Hughes said.

If he had his way, offensive strike missiles would come off of destroyers and instead the Navy would build reasonably priced small missile ships “so the DDG can concentrate on blue-water operations again and we’d have these little guys to deploy wherever they were needed to provide the cheap firepower to support the land war.”

The idea of small, fast ships with credible offensive combat power is rarely discussed, instead defaulting to the position that small, fast ships in the littorals are for fighting pirates and other bandits of the sea. Captain Hughes is discussing the idea of bringing back small ships with kill weapons for combat at sea. Considering most anti-ship weapons have already been removed from the AEGIS battleships in the US Navy today, building the small ships to carry anti-ship weapons is not much of a reach. At the end of the day, the suggestion is interesting for discussion because it requires critical thought regarding how one believes naval warfare will be conducted in the future.

Captain Hughes goes on to explain why opening these important debates is important today.

Part of the Navy’s problem, Hughes said, is its feeling of being obligated to “be able to do anything it’s called upon to do,” which has created a culture of cramming as many capabilities onto ships as possible.

“There’s a spirit of the Navy which has said we’ve got to be able to go anywhere and do anything, and therefore I’ve always got to hedge my bet and add system X, Y, and Z, as well as its original mission which was to perform A, B and C,” Hughes said.

“Have a primary mission and don’t cost yourself out of business by then adding other capabilities. It has a primary mission and you count to 10 before you add another capability,” Hughes said. Capabilities “have to be carefully thought through and be complementary. And not try and have all the ships be able to go anywhere, anytime. That’s where it gets dangerous.”

We find it hard to disagree with Captain Hughes assessment of the Littoral Combat Ship, the latest press reports claim the FY09 conference has confirmed there will be 2 Littoral Combat Ships in FY09, and the cost cap of $460 million will not be enforced for those ships. The necessity to include language that allows the ship to cost more than $460 million implies a reality the ship cannot be purchased for that price, a development that insures the Littoral Combat Ship is far from the affordable "low end" of the shipbuilding plan it was promised to be.

We also find it hard to disagree with Captain Hughes assessment of the "requirement creep" culture in the Navy. Lets face it, the DDG-1000 has got to be one of the biggest oxymoron in the history of the defense industry. Lets review. The requirement for stealth has driven up the total displacement to around 14,500 tons, while also imposing a design that engineers have raised questions regarding its seaworthiness. This enormous ship, intended to be stealthy, is billed and sold as a littoral warship, operating in the worlds most densely populated areas of sea. Now, years after the Navy has pushed for this primarily land attack ship, the primary reasons the Navy wants to truncate the purchase is because of anti-ship missiles from land, while also claiming the ship cannot support the primary area anti-aircraft missile system of the US Navy. Whether the Navy's claims are true or not, it is clear that both the Navy and Congress agree the DDG-1000 is a complete disaster of a program, and yet both agree to fund a third ship before construction even begins on the first two.

If truck mounted missiles and lack of sufficient air defense explains the reasons why the DDG-1000 is the wrong platform, why doesn't this same argument apply to the Littoral Combat Ship given that platforms bare minimum capabilities in defenses against both threats?

Ultimately, the discussion we see is whether Captain Hughes is advocating the right vision for what future naval warfare will be like. How will small ships threaten blue water forces of the PLA Navy? If air superiority is contested, what prevents a peer competitor from sinking these small fast attack craft being advocated? How do numerous very small, very fast ships help against nuclear submarines? If the Littoral Combat Ship is to be replaced by smaller, dedicated purpose hulls intended to fight forces at sea, what becomes the platform for forward deploying unmanned systems that are critical scouts for the green water force being advocated?

Small ships can be successful against the PLA Navy if air superiority is maintained against the Chinese, and if ASW capabilities exist that can take on enemy submarine forces. Note the use of the word "if."

Finally, how does a logistical model work for very small, well armed combatants? The smaller size implies reduced endurance, so how is that issue addressed?

Clearly there are a lot of questions, but it doesn't mean the discussion isn't important. I don't disagree with the idea, I am just not sure I see how the small ships case is made against China. The DDG-1000/LCS combination of ships in the current plan is a complete disaster, a system of broken assumptions that is costing the Navy hulls and the taxpayers money during a time of limited resources. Why is a small, agile force of missile attack craft a more credible option?

As much as I like the idea of small ships, I still believe the Navy needs capabilities that can self deploy quickly to all points on the globe. To do that with very small, specialized combatants requires a system of systems approach, and after seeing the system of systems approach to Sea Basing, I can't say I believe the strategic thinkers in the acquisition office would come up with a cost effective solution for very small ships. I'm also worried that shifting towards small, manned platforms will ignore the necessity to build up the unmanned technology that will be critical in the next period of war.

That is why on this blog, we believe a small multi-mission frigate and large mothership is the better bet, but we don't dismiss one aspect of this idea that should be considered... In peacetime, the necessity for manpower cannot be overstated. This idea does present the capability to saturate the maritime domain with distributed, credibly armed manpower. That cannot be underestimated as a major capability for fighting the challenges of peacetime.