Where is the 10% in the Navy's fleet constitution strategy?

Claude Berube was clearly not looking for any friends when he wrote this piece published by the Small Wars Journal. If anyone was wondering why he was on my short list of folks John Kerry should put on a panel discussing piracy, I think this piece pretty much makes my case. This is American history at sea made relevant to the problems today that expresses an alternative view of the future clearly not getting much air time inside the defense industry.

Lets start by noting this article is not intended to completely restructure the United States Navy, rather forward intellectual thought regarding why a balanced force structure approach is in the best interest of the United States Navy.

Proponents of a primarily large-craft Navy might do well to remember the Barbary War when one of the largest U.S. Navy ships at the time, the frigate USS Philadelphia, attempted to chaits smaller opponents into shallow waters. The ignominious result was the Philadelphia ran aground, her crew was captured, and she eventually had to be destroyed by U.S. raiding forces. It took the small supporting ships of the squadron as well as additional gunboats to eventually deal directly with the threat of the Barbary forces. The question, however, will be if the country and its leaders will accept any risk to smaller craft. Congressman Gene Taylor (D-MS), during the HASC Subcommittee hearing, interrupted a key moment of testimony by interpreting that dispensable ships translated into dispensable people - something he would not tolerate as a fatheror member of congress. If the concept of taking the fight directly to a potential enemy becomes so intolerant that the U.S. shifts from “Into Harm’s Way” to “Out of Harm’s Way” then the Navy will be relegated to a toothless tiger and, therefore, ever more vulnerable to the attacks from those non-state actors or belligerent states wishing to make their mark.

There should be no question that the U.S. needs carriers, cruisers, and advanced aircraft andestroyers, but there are coming realities unless there are unexpected shifts in policy and funding. Without an investment in modern smaller craft en masse, the federal budget will continue to constrict the Navy’s size, limit its abilities in the littorals, and allow non-state actors to rise, hone and possibly share their skills with other actors. A well-balanced force structure is necessary for the U.S. to respond to a variety of threats, but there must be that balance.

The HASC Subcommittee hearing Claude Berube is discussing was the same one The Custodian and I attended last March. The comment by Rep Taylor (D-MS) in discussion was mentioned in The Custodians observations of the hearing. I don't know if it was an attempt to slam Dr. Thomas Barnett or a genuine moment that represented a risk averse culture on Capitol Hill in regards to naval vessels, but either way, the position taken by Rep. Taylor (D-MS) was quite revealing.

I think there is plenty of evidence the Navy is risk averse regarding smaller vessels, but it isn't the only factor. The problem with building small vessels is that they really do not represent the best warfighting capability for naval forces in the littoral. With a record of 43-0 since 1986, the helicopter is the ultimate littoral fighter. Why then would the necessity for small vessels exist if not for warfighting?

I believe military power must take a balanced approach addressing the requirements for winning war and managing peace. If the Navy is to balance itself, this means there must be a commitment to maritime peacemaking operations. A commitment will necessarily mean the Navy should build flexible forces for leveraging the sea as base as a way to execute maritime security operations in ungoverned maritime spaces, including the complex populated littorals. The Navy's new maritime strategy places emphasis on the phrase "preventing war is as important as winning war" suggesting the balance between peacemaking and warfighting is driven by strategy. I do not believe a balanced approach requires equal budget share, because I believe we can afford to spend less on lower end threats just like we must be prepared to spend a lot of money countering the highest threat challenges, ballistic missile submarines and ballistic missile defense being a few examples. What cannot be accepted is a debate that sacrifices one for the other, even in a period of tight budgets, because it is the range of capabilities that gives the maritime services the best tools and options for preventing or winning war.

In his article, Claude Berube goes on to discuss this necessary challenge of peacemaking, and describes this challenge as an emerging "Shadow Zone" in the maritime security environment.

The Post-Oceanic Era could focus in part on maritime security gaps or “shadow zones.” The term “shadow zone” traditionally has been used to describe a set of environmental conditions in underwater acoustics in which sound cannot - or can only minimally - penetrate and area thereby providing a safe operating area for submarines. The term could also apply these modern maritime security gaps - littorals near a failed, failing, or belligerent state that no navy has the strength, experience, or authority to patrol.

William Lind states in “America’s Defense Meltdown” that in fourth-generation warfare applied to the maritime environment, ambiguity is a constant in coastal and inland waters. For example, the same types of commercially available boats used for legitimate purposes such as fishing can also be used for drug smuggling, human smuggling, illegal arms smuggling, piracy, terrorism and support to special forces operations. Such was the case when a skiff was used to attack the USS COLE in Aden. CTF 150 and 151 anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden demonstrate the difficulty in distinguishing between pirates and legitimate fishermen. Commonly clad fishermen have become pirates, their skiffs morphed into attack boats and their larger fishing vessels mutated into motherships in a largely lawless sea. Another example is the use of small commercial craft used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Navy (IRGCN) used to harass and threaten capital ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

This ambiguity in an era of near-zero public and governmental tolerance for targeting error and the endangerment of civilian casualties means that identifying and acting against non-state actors presents one of the greatest challenges to the United States. If belligerent states, criminals, and terrorists perceived that this ambiguity and intolerance of targeting error will allow them to operate in relative safety - especially in the shadow zones - they may adopt the low-cost method of using platforms indistinguishable from legitimate civilian inshore and river-going vessels to conduct their activities and operations. Operationally, this method appeared to have been used by the terrorists of the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, when their primary method of seaborne transports was reportedly a fishing boat and cargo ship.

There are many complaints regarding the policy driving piracy, but the Navy does not have the option to change policy, rather must develop strategy from policy and execute policy at the operational level. The emerging policy rule sets of western society in regards to complex security challenges, often from non-state actors, will shift back and forth from military to law enforcement as policy makers struggle to find the balance. As conditions of policy exist today, the Obama administration has begun moving forward against piracy with a law enforcement centric policy. This will almost certainly evolve, as this policy restricts the capabilities of the military services to be effective against this challenge. Under the law enforcement policy, for example, the Obama administration is essentially promoting the use of private security organizations acting in a security role similar to a "mall cop" rather than the use of Marines for securing US ships, a military capability with no role in law enforcement actions. These inconsistencies in the Obama administration policy will eventually be worked out, given the current policy is clearly not very effective, and the absence of any prosecutions suggests the policy is a long term failure.

However, even with a policy change the tactical and operational level challenges do not disappear. The tactical role of scouting with unmanned systems does not suddenly become more effective, identification of adversaries prior to their engagement against neutral shipping does not suddenly improve, nor will the tactical and operational options available to US Naval forces suddenly be empowered to prevent the enemy from striking first without adding additional naval forces to command the sea. It is here I am reminded of Corbett:

The object of naval warfare must always be directly or indirectly either to secure the command of the sea or to prevent the enemy from securing it.

The second part of the proposition should be noted with special care in order to exclude a habit of thought, which is one of the commonest sources of error in naval speculation. That error is the very general assumption that if one belligerent loses the command of the sea it passes at once to the other belligerent. The most cursory study of naval history is enough to reveal the falseness of such an assumption. It tells us that the most common situation in naval war is that neither side has the command; that the normal position is not a commanded sea, but an uncommanded sea. The mere assertion, which no one denies, that the object of naval warfare is to get command of the sea actually connotes the proposition that the command is normally in dispute. It is this state of dispute with which naval strategy is most nearly concerned, for when the command is lost or won pure naval strategy comes to an end.

This truth is so obvious that it would scarcely be worth mentioning were it not for the constant recurrence of such phrases as: "If England were to lose command of the sea, it would be all over with her." The fallacy of the idea is that it ignores the power of the strategical defensive. It assumes that if in the face of some extraordinary hostile coalition or through some extraordinary mischance we found ourselves without sufficient strength to keep the command, we should therefore be too weak to prevent the enemy getting it--a negation of the whole theory of war, which at least requires further support than it ever receives.

-Some Principles of Maritime Strategy by Julian S. Corbett

The prevailing argument in the United States is that if we lose command of the sea to a rising China, or some emerging coalition of combined belligerent states, that it is somehow all over for the US. The logical progression of this argument suggests that should we reduce the number of aircraft carriers, or not continuously build the most capable warships, that we will find ourselves without the sufficient strength to maintain command of the sea, which is turned into an immediate concession of the maritime domain to other rising powers. These arguments, intended to suggest any relative decline in capability is something to fear, are made absent the strategic view of naval power, indeed as Corbett suggests, these arguments disregard "the whole theory of war."

The necessity to balance the US Navy, add capabilities towards peacemaking, and operationalize the strategic theory to prevent war suggests that with a balanced force structure the US Navy will be able to execute its own strategic concept which states:

Maritime forces will work with others to ensure an adequate level of security and awareness in the maritime domain. In doing so, transnational threats—terrorists and extremists; proliferators of weapons of mass destruction; pirates; traffickers in persons, drugs, and conventional weapons; and other criminals—will be constrained.

By being there, forward deployed and engaged in mutually beneficial relationships with regional and global partners, maritime forces will promote frameworks that enhance security. When natural or man made disasters strike, our maritime forces can provide humanitarian assistance and relief, joining with inter agency and non-governmental partners. By participating routinely and predictably in cooperative activities, maritime forces will be postured to support other joint or combined forces to mitigate and localize disruptions.

When we use a cruiser or destroyer to work with any nation in Africa, are we engaged in mutually beneficial relationships? Are we effectively operating in the forward deployed maritime security space to interdict terrorists, pirates, traffickers, and criminals? The US Navy puts considerable intellectual energy into how to deal with future theoretical adversaries at the high end of warfare, but how much of our intellectual energy is being spent towards these lower spectrum challenges? When even the SECDEF suggests that a single piece of technology, the Littoral Combat Ship, is the sole capability on the sea being developed to manage such a complex set of challenges, I think there are legitimate questions. At the end of the day, aircraft carriers, submarines, and major surface combatants represent the 50% of conventional warfare acquisition. Amphibious ships and motherships (LCS) represents the 40% dual purpose capabilities.

Where is the 10% focus on irregular maritime challenges in the Navy's fleet constitution strategy?