Center for International Maritime Security

Many times I have noted there are few think tanks in the United States who are dedicated to maritime studies from a public consumption perspective. It would appear a few young Navy officers are doing something about that.

The Center for International Maritime Security is a non-profit, non-partisan think tank. It was formed in 2012 to bring together forward-thinkers from a variety of fields to examine the capabilities, threats, hotspots, and opportunities for security in the maritime domain. Check out the NextWar blog to join the discussion. We encourage a diversity of views.

The views expressed on this website are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the official viewpoints or policies of the contributor’s employers, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Interesting, I think. One to watch and added to the blogroll.

Foreign Entanglements: Potpourri

Charli Carpenter and I work through a bit of the logic of the Seapower in Culture series: We also talk a bit about the latest issue of Foreign Policy and this season of Game of Thrones, for anyone who'd be interested. I anticipate the release of Battleship with considerable dread, although I hope that it'll generate some good conversation here.

Forbes and Rigell Take on Sequestration

Representatives Randy Forbes and Scott Rigell are hosting a forum in Chesapeake VA on Tuesday evening, May 14 to discuss the dangers to national security associated with sequestration.  I've taken the liberty of cutting and pasting from the invitation website below:  RSVP at the link:

JOIN CONGRESSMAN RANDY FORBES and CONGRESSMAN SCOTT RIGELL

ON MONDAY
MAY 14
6:30 p.m. (doors open at 5:30 p.m.)

CHESAPEAKE CONFERENCE CENTER

This town hall-style forum will include brief information from a Congressional delegation. A moderated “open mic” will allow participants to
• SHARE YOUR STORIES
• VOICE YOUR OPINIONS
• ASK HOW DEFENSE CUTS WILL IMPACT YOU

Concerned citizens, military retirees, veterans, small business owners, defense contractors, and local Chambers of Commerce are invited to attend.

Download the invitation here. 

The Defending our Defenders LISTENING SESSION seeks to allow citizen input about the danger defense budget cuts present to national security, our men and women in uniform and local economies nationwide. More information is available at
www.forbes.house.gov

Directed Energy and Electric Weapons Systems (DEEWS Serial 2)

This is the second in my series of posts devoted to DEEWS.

Though often confused and intermingled in the press and literature, Directed Energy (DE) weapons and Electric Weapons are not one and the same.  As an example, there are electrically powered lasers and there are lasers which depend on the chemical combustion of liquid fuels for lasing.  Likewise, not all directed energy weapons are lasers.  High Power Microwave (HPM) and Millimeter Wave (MMW) devices (unlike lasers) operate in the non-optical portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.  And finally, not all electric weapons are directed energy weapons.  Electromagnetic Rail-guns (EMRG’s), Electromagnetic Coil Accelerators (ECA’s), and Linear Electric Motor Accelerators (LEMA’s), though all electrically driven are not in the true sense, directed energy weapons as they accelerate mass and utilize kinetic energy as their lethal mechanism.

With respect to lasers, there are three broad categories currently under development:  chemical, solid state, and free electron.

Chemical Lasers

Chemical lasers are capable of achieving continuous wave output in the multi-megawatt range. Examples of chemical lasers include chemical oxygen iodine lasers (COIL), hydrogen fluoride (HF) lasers, and deuterium fluoride (DF) lasers. The COIL laser used in the Air Force’s now-cancelled Airborne Laser (YAL-1A) was fed gaseous chlorine, molecular iodine, and a liquid mixture of hydrogen peroxide and potassium hydroxide. Even though the laser operates at relatively low gas pressures, the gas flow is near the speed of sound at the reaction time. The fast flow facilitates heat removal from the lasing medium in contrast with high-power solid-state lasers. The principal reaction products include potassium salt, water, and oxygen.

Solid State Slab Lasers

Diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) lasers operate by using a laser diode to “pump” a solid medium (for example, a ruby or a neodymium-doped crystal).  High-power lasers use many laser diodes, arranged in strips. This diode grid can be imaged onto the crystal by means of a lens. Higher brightness (leading to better beam profile and longer diode lifetime) is achieved by optically removing the dark areas between the diodes, which are needed for cooling and delivering the current.  Combining the outputs of multiple slabs is the primary means of achieving higher energy levels.

Solid State Fiber Lasers

The beams from multiple diodes can also be combined by coupling each diode into an optical fiber, which is placed precisely over the diode.  At the other end of the fiber bundle, the fibers are fused together to form a uniform beam.   Combining the outputs of many fiber lasers (100’s to 10,000’s) is one means of achieving high energy levels

Free-Electron Lasers

Free-electron lasers (FELs) are unique as they don’t use molecular or atomic states for the lasing medium. FELs employ a relativistic electron beam (e-beam) as the lasing medium.  The e-beam is generated in an electron accelerator and then injected into a periodic, transverse magnetic field (undulator). An amplified electromagnetic output wave is created by synchronizing the e-beam and electromagnetic field wavelengths.  The wavelength of the output is determined by the e-beam energy and the periodicity of the transverse magnetic field in the undulator.  FELs can thus be designed to a wider range of frequencies/wavelengths than other laser types.

Non-laser  RF based DEEWS include the following technologies:

Millimeter Wave

Unlike lasers that have yet to be fielded operationally as weapons, micro-wave (MW) based systems have achieved advanced prototype levels of maturity and have been deployed.  MW devices (of which millimeter-wave (MMW) are a subset) operate in the non-optical range of the electromagnetic spectrum just beyond the Far-IR.  Because of this, they are much less susceptible to attenuation due to aerosol and particulate matter in the atmosphere, which plague optical systems such as lasers.  Below a wavelength of one centimeter though there can be considerable absorption of their energy by water molecules (in particular at 0.1, 0.2, and 0.5 centimeters) and this can significantly affect their range when operating at these wavelengths.  Millimeter-wave technology has been developed by the Air Force for this very reason.  The Active Denial System (ADS) takes advantage of the transmission window between two and five millimeters and transmits high-frequency waves at 95 GHz (a wavelength of 3.2 mm). Much as a microwave oven heats food, the millimeter waves excite water and fat molecules in the body, instantly heating them and causing intense pain.  While higher frequency microwaves would penetrate human tissue and cause considerable tissue damage, the millimeter waves used in ADS are blocked by cell density and in general only penetrate the top layers of skin.  This system was made available for use in Iraq for personnel control at prisons but has not yet been employed due to public perception concerns over its use. Aside from the specific frequency of operation, an ADS system is very similar in physical design, construction, and operation to the wide range of radar systems currently employed on naval vessels.  Incorporation of ADS on surface vessels could provide significant capability in preventing adversaries from approaching within several hundred meters.  While the actual effective range of the current ADS is classified, basic physics allows us to determine that with sufficient power available and a properly designed aperture, the effective range could be considerably extended.

Microwave

Although the application of laser technology for lethal effects has steadily advanced, the employment of High Powered Microwaves (HPM) for soft or hard kill has developed less evenly. In general HPM refers to a specific range of radar frequencies that can be used to couple large amounts of electromagnetic energy to conductive objects at a distance.  Analogous to the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) effect caused by the high altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon, a HPM weapon generates and transmits a focused microwave beam of sufficient energy to couple electromagnetic energy to distant electrical and or electronic devices.  Depending on the range and energy level of the HPM weapon, the energy can be sufficient to temporarily disrupt or even destroy the target devices.  In 2005, the Navy fielded a HPM system specifically designed to counter Improvised Explosive Devises (IEDs). The system was named “Neutralizing IEDs with RF” (NIRF) and consisted of a HPM source, control system, and aperture mounted within and on a Buffalo Armored vehicle.  The system worked by sweeping a HPM beam along the path in front of the vehicle which could couple enough energy into the fuse of IEDs to cause them to detonate. HPM weapons can also be designed as single use devices consisting of an explosively driven electromagnetic flux compressor and an antenna (feed horn).  These can then be used in bombs or artillery shells for generating localized EMP effects.  Tactical issues facing HPM weapons arise from the difficulty in finding a frequency that can be adequately focused to retain sufficient energy flux density at range to cause damage while also being able to electromagnetically couple to the electronic devices being targeted.  Use of HPM devices aboard naval vessels to confuse or destroy the electronics in cruise missiles or the fusing devices of other weapons has several advantages.  Ships have large amounts of power available to generate the HPMs and sufficient space for the very large apertures necessary to focus their beams.  

The final category of DEEWS use electromagnetic forces to impart kinetic energy to a projectile:

  

Electromagnetic Launch

Though it received high levels of funding in the late 1980’s, research into weapons applications for the full spectrum of electromagnetic launchers dropped to a fairly low level following the demise of the Soviet Union.  The U.S. Navy decision to pursue hybrid and all electric ship topologies in the DDG-1000 and other classes of future combatants triggered the recent resurgence in work.  Though not technically a weapon, the progress made in the development of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), to be installed in CVN-78, has also benefited rail-gun development as much of the technology in the ancillary components is very similar.  After tests on a proof of concept system, the Office of Naval Research has begun testing to evaluate the barrel life and structural integrity of prototype systems separately designed by BAE Systems and General Atomics.  In the near term, the U.S. Navy aims to develop a 20-32 megajoule (MJ) weapon with a range of 80-160 km.  In contrast, conventional five-inch naval guns have a range of about 25 km.  On future all-electric combatants and or modified versions of existing cruisers and destroyers, these guns would eliminate the need for the powder magazines associated with conventional gun systems.  With an EM launcher there is no propellant charge required and the projectiles, though perhaps containing small fragment dispense charges, would be essentially inert.

That pretty much covers the main technologies in the DEEWS space.  As we go forward in this series, a number of questions will arise about technical maturity, operational use cases, cost/schedule and the like.  We will not cover everything, but we will cover a lot of ground.  As we linked in the first of the series, when ONR’s main guy on Directed Energy starts talking about fielding using numbers of years able to be counted on one hand, good things are happening. 

Bryan McGrath

Directed Energy and Electric Weapons Systems (Serial 1)

Nearly a year and a half ago, my colleague Tim Walton and I submitted a study proposal to DoD’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA) entitled “The Operational and Strategic Implications of Electric and Directed Energy Weapons for Naval Warfare”.  The study was not funded, but we put a lot of work into the proposal, and it occurred to me recently that 1) it would be a shame to do all that thinking and not have it reach a broader audience than the ONA evaluation committee and 2) that this blog would be a useful venue for raising and discussing some of the many important issues involved in the development and acquisition of Directed Energy and Electric Weapon Systems (DEEWS).  Additionally, since we submitted the study idea to ONA, we have seen the Navy’s Office of Naval Research release a “Solid State Laser Technical Maturation Program” RFI, CSBA has released a very informative report, and very recently, ONR’s Directed Energy lead predicted in the open press that laser weapons would be at sea in approximately four years.  The time is right for a discussion of the prospects and future of directed energy, and so over the course of the next year, I will post occasional (likely monthly) pieces related to the subject of DEEWS and naval warfare. 

The rapid advancement of DEEWS technology over the last few decades, both in the United States and abroad, hints at a shift in the calculus of warfare similar to that which occurred in the interwar period in the early part of the 20^th century.  Armored Warfare, Close Air Support, Carrier Strike Warfare, and Submarine Warfare were all enabled by technological advances, but in each case, the countries that made the greatest strides in these new types of warfare were not the originators of the technological advances on which they were based.

DEEWS such as lasers and rail-guns operate on different physical principals than their gunpowder and high explosive based predecessors.  With unprecedented speed of engagement and nearly surgical lethal effects, they offer potentially revolutionary methods of conducting warfare at sea.  However, military powers that have enjoyed extended periods of preeminence are often prone to forcing new warfighting capabilities into their existing ways of doing business and missing out on their true potential.  It is historically the less mature or less bureaucratic militaries that are the best able to maximize the impact of novel capabilities by forming new organizations and tactics around them.  With several other countries actively pursuing DEEWS technology, the U.S. military may be at risk of suffering technological surprise from the very technologies it originally developed. 

Put another way, I fear that sunk costs associated with current weapons and ways of thinking, bureaucratic inflexibility, and an inability to institutionally embrace disruptive change could stand in the way of the development and fielding of these highly promising technologies.  This series seeks to add to the ongoing discussion in the Pentagon and to raise awareness within the community of navalists as to the future promise and current reality of DEEWS.   

I invite your views and comments as this series matures.  I am not a DEEWS expert, so if I get something wrong or incomplete, call me on it.  I have asked a few friends of mine who are smarter on these systems than I am to look in on the dialogue and offer up illuminating thoughts and comments as their time permits. 

Bryan McGrath

Iran, China, and Cyber Posses

The asymmetric tit-for-tat with Iran continues. A virus may have been used to attack oil terminal controls on Kharg, a strategically important island in the North Arabian Gulf. Whether this was actually a cyber attack, who conducted it, and for what purpose are currently unknown. Regardless, we can expect to see more of these sorts of non-kinetic strikes on maritime infrastructure globally.  The barriers to entry for cyber-attack are fairly low. Malicious code and TTPs are available in the open source and it doesn't take a computer science degree from a prestigious university to employ them effectively. CSBA's article on the democratization of violence elaborates.

This concept should be nothing new to ID readers as we’ve discussed open source (as defined by John Robb) naval warfare here on several occasions. Mr. Krepinevich accurately articulates the issues facing the United States via the proliferation of high technology warfare, including PGMs, cyber, bio, etc. But he provides little in the way of recommendations to counter this trend except a continued stay ahead of the Jones’ approach: “… the Pentagon will need to prove better than its rivals at exploiting advances in artificial intelligence to enhance the performance of its unmanned systems. The U.S. military will also need to make its robot crafts stealthier, reduce their vulnerability to more sophisticated rivals than the Taliban, and make their data links more robust in order to fend off efforts to disable them.”

A more proactive recommendation would be to permit, or even encourage non-government entities to take an more active, even offensive, role in defending their interests. The expectation for companies and individuals' to maintain domestic readiness and business continuity in the face of natural disasters has already been established. Many Americans and companies learned a hard, but predictable lesson following Katrina and other hurricanes last decade: the federal government, as large and powerful as it may be, is not agile enough to come to the rescue of every American in need. Similarly, commercial shipping companies were slow to realize that the First World’s expensive navies would not always be in the right place, at the right time, with the right ROE in the vast Indian Ocean to protect them from pirates, so they took matters into their own hands with embarked armed security guards.

Lately, American companies have come under attack from a variety of state and non-state actors. These cyber attackers, some sponsored by states with malign intent, others just self-organizing sophomoric thugs, place an increasing toll on the cost of doing business and the global economy. It should come as no surprise to most Americans that the computer experts with the maddest cyber-skillz likely don’t work for Uncle Sam’s Cyber Command and other government agencies and that the commercial sector will always be more nimble and responsive than the federal government. So then why shouldn’t Google, Cisco, etc. take an active role in offensively attacking the actors - both state and non-state - who disrupt their operations? When future attacks against a US commercial network occur, the private sector should go after the perpetrators with a vengeance -- counter-attacking with cyber, legal, and any other conceivable means until the threat is disrupted or deterred. Some might consider this anarchy, unecessary escalation, or a failure to accept rule of law. But in the face of an increasingly broad and dynamic range of threats to civil order, do we really have a choice?  As to possible future cyber-vigilante targets, here are one analyst's thought provoking ideas...

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Defense or any of its agencies.

Recent acitivites around Chinese Shipyards

The last blog entry was deemed to be too negative toward Chinese social problems by some readers. So, I want to spend this entry to just catch up on the activities around the different Chinese shipyards. In many ways, this has been one of the most active years of naval shipbuilding in recent times. We are seeing heavy activity going on in most of the major shipyards around the country. Below are some of the recent photos we have seen of surface ships. There has been a continued submarine production, but I've somewhat lost track of the exact number of Yuan submarines that have been produced. I think they are still in the single digits. Work is also continuing on Varyag, but I don't have any news to report other than it is recently conducting another sea trial. First of all, the 056 project is really making some progress. They are building them in both HuDong and HuangPu shipyard alongside the 054A projects. I'm really curious of how the 056 will turn out in the end, but it's already turning out to be smaller than I had expected. If you get a full picture of 056 next to 054A at HP shipyard, you'd see how small 056 is. Interestingly enough, it does have an outsized looking bow mounted sonar. There are currently 2 056 in advanced stage of construction at HD shipyard. You can see them below with the first picture showing both of them and the second one just showing the one that's more advanced.


The pictures below shows the first 056 from HP shipyard that is building beside the 8th 054A from there. This appears to be the 056 that's the furthest along.


The pictures of 052C below are from a month ago. The first two pictures shows the third, fourth and fifth 052C from JN shipyard. The third one has since joined the East Sea Fleet as 150. The next 3 052C should be joining the same flotilla as 150. You can see that the fourth and fifth are both launched and in various stage of fitting out. I don't believe either has gone on sea trials yet.


The next two photos show the 6th and 7th 052C under construction and yet to be launched. It's still unknown at this point if these units will have any differences from the launched ones.


We have not seen much new action for 071 LPD. The third unit is still parked outside of HD shipyard.

The picture below shows the 2nd and 3rd Type 926 submarine tender that were getting fitted out at GuangZhou shipyard. I believe the second one may have gone on sea trials recently, because we have not seen any pictures coming out for it.
Of course, the 054A project is still ongoing. The picture below shows the 6th 054A from HD shipyard. The 5th one just joined service recently with North Sea Fleet. I haven't seen any recent photos of the 7th one, because HD shipyard has a lot of activity going around.

The next two are the 7th and 8th 054A from HP shipyard. I think the 6th one is close to joining service. The 8th one looks to not be that far away from launching.


And finally, we are seeing new AOR ships with PLAN. Unlike previous speculations, these look to have very few modifications from the existing Type 903 AORs (886, 887) currently in service with PLAN. One of them was launched a month ago in Guangzhou.

The other one is in advanced stage of construction of HD shipyard.

So, there is a lot of activities going on. I will I have more time to report on these things, but things are pretty busy, so I will try to report on them once in a while.

Seapower in Culture: Civilization IV

The Civilization series of games is in some sense ideal for depicting the influence of seapower on history.  Civilization connects geography, technology, and economic power to military capability, requiring a player to formulate a coherent grand strategy based on factor endowment and international constraints. The system favors (even demands) the construction of empire, often across a series of unconnected landmasses. Every Civ player has his or her favorite edition, and favorite set of stories from that version.  I haven't yet acquired Civilization V, and so this analysis will concentrate on Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, and will focus mainly on solitary play. Beyond the Sword is in many ways a deeply Mahanian game; building a proxy-governed extra-territorial empire is strongly supported, and in many cases even required for victory. Seapower is often key to acquiring (through conquest or colonization) and maintaining this empire.  The questions relevant to this series are as follows:

1. To what extent are the depictions of seapower accurate in tactical and operational terms?

2. How does seapower fit into broader national grand strategy in social, economic, and military terms?

3. What could we learn about seapower from playing a few dozen 47 hour games of Civ IV on "Epic" timeframe at  "Prince" difficulty?

On the accuracy question...

The game abstracts the bulk of the history of naval technology, with ships progressing along two lines until the modern era.  The troops ships run galleys to galleons to transports, while the warships run trireme to caravel (which does have some rump transport capacity) to frigate (and the mostly useless Ironclad and Ship of the Line units) to destroyer. In the earliest period ships are limited to coastal squares, leaving large portions of the map off limits, or at least difficult to find. Ships (like all other units) require no direct logisitical support. Although all military units produce a drain on national resources, individual units require no specific base of resupply.  This means, in the early and middle game, that a galley or caravel can leave its home port and not return for millenia, at which point it is promptly converted into a frigate or galleon. Early game units are unaffected by weather or sea conditions; there are no trade winds or similar phenomena to drive commerce and naval action into particular maritime "highways."

The naval aspects become more interesting as the game progresses. A good primer on late game naval tactics is available here. As that primer suggests, however, the principles that apply to naval combat in the real world (and to naval industrial policy) don't always apply in Civ.  Concentration, for example, has some value, but it's generally very easy for a fleet to avoid direct conflict with an enemy stack of doom.  Indeed, it might well be correct to suggest that Civ follows Mahan less than Corbett.

However, since Civilization II air and sea combat have not been well integrated with one another.  The most obvious problem is that air units (apart from cruise missiles) cannot destroy sea units at sea, and cannot damage them in port.  This can prove extremely frustrating when a fleet of transports show up near your coast, and can't be destroyed despite heavy air superiority.  Indeed, even having surface naval units available doesn't always help, given the limit on numbers of attacks per turn. These limits are designed to preserve game balance (otherwise air units dominate the game), but they do detract from late game verisimilitude.

In Civ IV naval units have fewer ways of influencing shore events than in some previous editions.  Shore bombardment doesn't destroy improvements, limiting the utility of wandering an enemy coast and laying waste.  Similarly, shore bombardment only destroys "cultural" fortification of cities, leaving the cities themselves (and their defending units) undamaged. Again, there are game balance reasons for this, but the decision limits the impact of naval superiority.

Nevertheless, in the late game stacks of amphibious doom can be truly devastating. Destroyers and battleships destroy the fortifications of coastal cities, cruise missiles and fighters wear down defending units, and marines destroy defending units.  It is extremely difficult to defend coastal cities against such stacks, and even the temporary loss of a major city can have dreadful economic effects.  Moreover, if the attacker doesn't expect to hold but simply prefers to punish, even critical, millenia old cities can be burned to the ground.

And then there are the quibbles.  Missile cruisers could (and should) have far greater air defense capabilities, and indeed air defense should be an allowable promotion.  Something along the lines of an amphibious warship, with limited capabilities for carrying both air and land units, would be quite nice. Damaged vessels could move more slowly (as they did in Civ II), and a variety of other small tweaks could be introduced that would make the naval campaign more interesting without fundamentally unbalancing the game.

And the grand strategy question...

Seapower is important to many games of Civ. As all players know, one of the most rewarding parts of the game is exploration of the full map.  Different maps produce radically different constellations of military necessity; seapower is critical to some, but not all of these. I find that the most interesting naval contests happen with mediumish continents rather than archipelagos, mostly because archipelago cities rarely achieve the degree of industrial capacity necessary to the construction of massive fleets.

Nevertheless, Civ IV lacks a coherent economic theory of seapower. The role of trade in particular is abstracted, except in the case of a few critical resources.  To be sure, the game does allow a certain degree of economic destruction from the sea; positioning a ship in a city's resource zone prevents the utilization of those and surrounding tiles, and raiders can cause a lot of damage to maritime resource infrastructure. Nevertheless, it's difficult to cause critical damage to an economy through maritime means because there's little underlying theory of how maritime trade undergirds the international economy.

It's also unclear how naval power affect reputation in Civ IV.  In many games, I've never quite figured out how AI empires assess military power, but my best guess is that they aggregate, rather than divide between land, air and seapower.  Similarly, it's not clear that the AI can assess its own vulnerability to different kinds of military power.  This may mean that you can build a world-beating fleet, yet not get taken seriously by the AI (or perhaps get taken too seriously) because of land power deficiencies.  This would operate much differently in a multiplayer game, of course. Still, Civ models the reputational and social effects of naval power poorly, if at all.  We know that a Chinese aircraft carrier (or, in an earlier era, a Brazilian dreadnought) has a social and symbolic import that goes beyond its strict military value; reputation is an important consideration for naval procurement.

Overall, the lack of a strong economic underpinning to the Civ maritime system remains problematic.  A submarine oriented sea denial campaign can surely have some success, but it can only very, very rarely "starve" a nation in the sense of the Battle of the Atlantic or the Royal Navy blockade of Germany in World War I.  Cutting off a critical resource such as iron or oil is sometimes possible, but requires a tremendous, long term effort.  Perhaps most importantly, there is no such thing as an anti-commerce strategy.  All ships, even transports, are state owned military assets; there are no tramp freighters to sink or whaling ships to seize.  This cuts out a crucial component of naval warfare since the Age of Sail, and incidentally makes a "sea denial" or raiding strategy by an overmatched opponent considerably less rewarding.

And the lessons...

What applicable lessons could be learned from Civ IV? Very little in tactical or operational terms, obviously.  That aircraft carriers do better when escorted by destroyers and missile cruisers doesn't tell us very much, although I suppose it might serve as introduction to the concept "carrier battle group" for someone new to seapower theory.  Similarly, the lack of basing or supply requirements completely abstracts most interesting operational concepts.  Civ IV has great difficulty explaining why base proximity could allow Japan to accept a 10:10:6 ratio, or why the Russian Baltic Fleet was so ragged when it finally arrived at Tsushima.

Of strategic lessons I can think of two.  The first is the reality of helplessness when, in fact, your empire faces a Turn Without Seapower.  Ships take a while to build, and when an enemy fleet shows up on your door either to raid or to land, it can cause immense (often decisive) damage before you get a chance to do anything about it. Fortunately wars can last centuries, so if you survive first contact there's often the opportunity to get revenge.  The second, related, is the broader connection between industrial capacity and seapower. Cities have to be built or seized with an eye to how they fit into a broader national strategy, which of necessity includes seapower considerations.  Decisions about improvements in particular coastal cities (whether to build a drydock, or how much to invest in finishing a factory) also work better when informed by a broad consideration of grand strategy.  

What sort of introduction does Civ provide to seapower novices? The lack of a clear connection between maritime commerce and seapower is problematic.  Ships exist primarily to destroy other ships, rather than to play a regulatory role.  The lack of a good theory of logistics also produces misleading conclusions.  While some navies can indeed operate effectively at extreme distance from their industrial bases, this is not true of all organizations.  That said, a complex system of logistics would probably detract from enjoyment of the game.  With regard to ship types, Civ isn't particularly instructive in terms of the roles and capabilities of the real life counterparts of game units.  All that said, the need for naval power on most maps (and the complexity of building and maintaining an advanced fleet) could serve as a foundation for an interest in naval affairs, or at least of an appreciation of the role that navies play in a grand strategic framework.

When You Add it All Up

When the Navy released their FY2013 budget earlier this year, the reason cited for not providing a shipbuilding plan with the budget was a Force Structure Analysis being conducted by the Department. The FSA is basically a classified review of the force structure, and it was expected at the time that the FSA and shipbuilding plan would be released together. By late March, Congress was getting restless and wanted to see a shipbuilding plan, but the FSA was not finished. March was hearing season on the Hill and a shipbuilding plan was needed. The shipbuilding plan was released in late March prior to the late March hearings with Congress.

As the Secretary noted in his written testimony, the"new FSA will consider the types of ships included in the final ship count based on changes in mission, requirements, deployment status, or capabilities. For example, classes of ships previously not part of the Battle Force such as AFSBs developed to support SOF/non-traditional missions, Patrol Combatant craft forward deployed to areas requiring that capability, and COMFORT Class Hospital Ships deployed to provide humanitarian assistance, an expanded core Navy mission, may be counted as primary mission platforms." Basically, the Navy is conducting a review of counting rules that will determine what ships are counted as Battle Force ships.

This is nothing new. Under Reagan, Secretary John Lehman counted every grey hull that floated in his attempt to build a 600 ship Navy, and if the Navy used Lehman's counting rules today, the ship types that counted towards the 568 Battle Force ships in 1987 would give the Navy well over 300 ships today if the same ship types were counted. Thirtyish years later, the Navy is conducting another review of the counting rules - reasonable.

After returning from Washington DC last week, I began breaking down the Navy's new 300-ship shipbuilding plan in detail. Leveraging the new shipbuilding plan, CRS reports on the Navy's new and old shipbuilding plan, and the Navy's FY13 budget I kept coming across what I would describe as anomalies when trying to add up the small surface combatant line. What I decided to do was go to the FY19 line, because in FY19 there will be only 1 FFG-51 left in the Battle Force, and using the Navy SCN budget book I was able to determine there were going to be 25 Littoral Combat Ships commissioned by that fiscal year.

Well, if there are 25 Littoral Combat Ships and only one Perry class left, and the new Navy 300 ship shipbuilding plan has 39 small surface combatants in FY19 - I started trying to figure out where the other 13 small surface combatants are. At first I thought maybe they were the MCMs, so I went to Ronald O'Rourke's report Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress dated March 30 which reflects the new Navy shipbuilding plan. As is historically custom, Ron lists Dedicated mine warfare ships as it's own ship type to be counted, but nowhere is there any mention of MCMs in the report - indeed the report lists the plan as having zero MCMs. Because mine ships have historically always been counted in their own category, and Ron didn't list them, I presumed the Navy wasn't counting them. Plus, there are 14 MCMs, not 13. The only small surface combatant class in the Navy that numbers 13 is the PCs.

It was about that point I realized the FSA and shipbuilding plan were supposed to be released together - but were not - and presumed that in the madness of getting the shipbuilding plan out the door the Navy added the PCs in the plan they released.

This is what Bob Work kindly forwarded to me on this subject before he got up on stage at SAS on Wednesday.

39 SSCS IN FY2019 INCLUDE 1 FF, 25 LCS, 13 MCM. WE USED TO COUNT MINE WARFARE VESSELS SEPARATELY. BUT SINCE LCS IS REPLACING FFS, PCS, AND MCMS, WE COUNT THEM IN THIS LINE.

33 SUPPORT SHIPS INCLUDE 2 LCC, 2 AS, 4 T-ARS, 4 T-ATF, 5 T-AGOS, 10 JHSV, 2 MLP, 2 AFSB, 2 TAKE IN MPSRON. WE COUNT ALL MLP, AFSB, AND TAKE IN MPSRON AS FLEET SUPPORT ASSETS, SINCE THAT IS HOW WE WILL EMPLOY THEM.

13 MCMs in FY19? Guess that means the Navy is retiring the MCMs immediately after Increment 3 of the LCS MIW module comes online. I also suppose my waterfall from FY13-FY20 regarding is off by one MCM decom somewhere...

Now, why would I suggest there is a shell game taking place with ship numbers? Well, here was the working theory, and I'll let you decide if I'm right or wrong on this - and we'll all know one way or the other as it plays out this year.

According to the 300 ship plan, in Fiscal Year 2013 the Navy expects to have 285 Battle Force Ships, but that number will fall from FY14-FY16 because the Perry's are going to retire faster than the Littoral Combat Ships come online, but by FY17 the Navy will be bounce back to 285 Battle Force ships.

So what happens if the FSA comes back and says add in the PCs and T-AHs? The Navy is also working hard to try to save some of their Cruisers being retired, and Congress is working hard to save the ships up for early retirement as well. What happens if just 2of the 4 Cruisers scheduled for FY13 decommissioning are saved?

Well, there are 282 Battle Force ships in the Navy today and when USS Mississippi is commissioned in June, the Navy will have 283 Battle Force ships. If in mid-June the Navy was to complete the FSA and announce changes like adding the 13 PCs, suddenly the Navy has 296 ships. If the Navy also added a pair of hospital ships, suddenly the Navy has 298 ships. If the Navy finds a way to save at least 2 cruisers from the FY13 budget axe, the Navy will suddenly have a 300 ship Navy by next year.

The PCs are rapidly approaching end of life though, so they may have only a decade or less of life left in them, meaning those 10 Battle Force PCs will only boost ship numbers for a limited time in the shipbuilding plan, if boosting ship numbers is the objective of the exercise.

But what if boosting ship numbers in the shipbuilding plan is not the objective of converting a PC with a limited life left in it to a Battle Force ship? Well, wouldn't that suggest this isn't about politics? If it isn't about politics, then why bother because the PCs are near end of life despite a bit of investment this year? When you start going down that road, one might wonder if there is some serious consideration regarding a replacement for the PC that isn't named LCS. Is a PC(X) program perhaps being legitimately considered by the Navy? Not on Admiral Roughead's watch... but he's gone. It couldn't be, could it... this has to be about the politics of ship numbers, right? There must be a reason, and I look forward to learning what it is.

The scenario of achieving a 300 ship Navy by next year, or some variation of it, is what I believe I am watching unfold, and it really is remarkably clever during an election year I might add. For the record, there are no PCs and T-AHs in the 300 ship shipbuilding plan, so I was wrong when I suggested otherwise.

But am I wrong for suspecting and/or suggesting there might be a shell game afoot? I'll let you decide.

Maritime Foundations of the Modern International System (Youtube Edition)

This is some ridiculously interesting stuff, using a database of maritime voyages between 1750 and 1850.
And here is a seasonal representation of the data:
If you pay close attention you can see the increasing prominence of Pacific and Indian Ocean trade, as well as the effects of the Napoleonic Wars and the American Revolution. The data is limited, of course, but it's nevertheless a fascinating visual depiction. Via Ezra Klein.

Driving the Discussion

Bob Work just walked into #SAS12 and decided to start a big discussion on LCS, among other topics. There was a lot of good information discussed - I have 6 pages of notes which will take forever to go through. Get ready for LCS news saturation, because I got the impression Bob intended on kick start a public debate by boiling water on a lot of issues - and specifically LCS. It was very refreshing to see the raw passion about the current direction of the Navy, it is unclear why we don't see that raw emotion from uniformed Navy leaders, but it does inspire.

CDR Salamander, call your office, pretty sure the UNDER decided to kick sand your direction on LCS when he all but shouted the LCS will "kick their ass" when discussing small boats and LCS "will escort logistics ships." There is so much more...

Worth noting, Robby Harris asked about the blog discussion regarding ship counting rules, and Bob Work made clear the PCs and AHs are not in the new 300 ship plan, then he discussed that a bit. I have been in discussion with folks on this topic offline and will discuss this topic in the very near future. Bob Work said "there is no subterfuge." That's the right word, but I'll let others decide if there is a shell game at work.

Those of you who enjoy flaming me for getting something wrong (like the PCs and AHs) will soon have a chance to gloat. I look forward to it.

Observing the Omissions, Additions, and Denials of Future Force Structure

So by now you might be starting to see what I'm talking about in regards to the questionable figures and statistics listed in the Navy's new 300 ship plan. If the hint on Monday wasn't enough, perhaps the visual aids from Tuesday were more effective in making the point.

You see, the issue here is specific to counting rules and how one creates a 300 ship fleet so as to not be the administration that let the Navy fade away quietly into the night. If you have been paying attention to the details of the new shipbuilding plan, you would note that the Secretary of the Navy himself is the one who brought the subject up regarding what ships count and what ships don't count in the plan. From the February 16, 2024 House Hearing on the Navy's FY13 Budget, written statement by Secretary Ray Mabus, page 11.

Future Force Structure Assessment and Re-designation of Primary Mission Platforms

Given the broad refocus of the DoD program objectives reflected in the new defense strategy, the Navy has undertaken analysis of the existing Force Structure Requirements and, in conjunction with ongoing internal DoD studies and planning efforts, is reworking an updated FSA against which future requirements will be measured. The new FSA will consider the types of ships included in the final ship count based on changes in mission, requirements, deployment status, or capabilities. For example, classes of ships previously not part of the Battle Force such as AFSBs developed to support SOF/non-traditional missions, Patrol Combatant craft forward deployed to areas requiring that capability, and COMFORT Class Hospital Ships deployed to provide humanitarian assistance, an expanded core Navy mission, may be counted as primary mission platforms. Any changes in ship counting rules will be reported and publicized. Any comments on total ship numbers in this statement are based on current counting rules.

I have a question. How exactly did the Navy's ~300 ship shipbuilding plan expect to ever get the fleet total to 300 ships as stated in this February testimony under "current counting rules" when the final plan released on March 28, 2024 before the Senate changed the counting rules - except they changed the counting rules without reporting or publicizing to the Senate those changes despite the SECNAV suggesting he would. The Navy quietly added the PCs and T-AHs into the final shipbuilding plan submitted to Congress to reach 300, then conveniently forgot to report and publicize that change. Oops.

The shipbuilding plan was released for the Senate hearing on March 28, 2012. Why didn't the Navy "report and publicize" the changes to counting rules at the hearing like the SECNAV said he would? Lets see, "Any comments on total ship numbers in this statement are based on current counting rules" was clearly an inaccurate statement, because without the changing the counting rules the plan would never be 300 ships. Saying "any changes in ship counting rules will be reported and publicized" also appears to have an accuracy problem, because the only person reporting and publicizing this counting rules change is me.

I don't know if these are SECNAV lies of omission or lies of commission, but the truth is hiding in the vast distance somewhere between CNO hope and SECNAV change.

I would like to hope Wednesday's 3:00pm House hearing on Navy Shipbuilding puts an end to the shell game the Navy is playing with shipbuilding - and has been playing for years. It is past time someone in the Navy just states outright the ugly truth about how the fleet numbers under tbe counting rules of the 313-ship plan are not going up under this new plan, and any cost growth in shipbuilding from this point going forward - like the future DDG-51 Flight III and it's AMDR gallium nitride (GaN) hail mary - means the fleet is likely to shrink even further. The new shipbuilding plan makes assumptions that carry a very high risk of failure, and the credibility of Navy leadership is on the line.

It's time to shake the "stay the course" addiction because that really is a rocky shoal ahead - the CNO can admit this but apparently does not want to admit what it really means for the future of the Navy. The new shipbuilding plan is as much a house of cards as the old plan, and the solution demands innovation in force structure sooner rather than later. The first step is admitting there is a legitimate force structure problem is to acknowledge that the evolution of existing warship platforms has become too expensive to meet operational requirements while sustaining pace on competitors, and the revolution in aircraft platforms has become an unaffordable money sink that draws resources from the innovations necessary to make NAVAIR relevant to the threats of the 21st century. No, even a perfect Joint Strike Fighter cannot make up for the loss of capabilities it's price tag prohibits from the modern carrier air wing, and JSF is destroying the value of big deck aircraft carriers to the total battle force with every extra dollar dumped into the program. If the Navy cannot admit these things, the Navy will never find suitable answers to the question the Navy has failed to answer since the cold war - what is the link between resources and strategy for the US Navy?

An entirely new force model is needed under current reduced resource investments, and both the SECNAV and OPNAV folks ignore this plainly obvious truth. Until the unaffordability reality can be admitted by the various communities inside the Navy, the shell game will continue with fewer platforms, fewer systems, and less capacity to meet the political and COCOM demand signal. The Navy doesn't have a plan, and the reason is simple:

The solution is big deck CVNs, constantly bigger surface combatants, and constantly big nuclear submarines - as many of all of them as possible - now Mr. President, what was your problem?

There is no such thing as a plan that links resources to strategy when the resources are predetermined regardless of resources available or political objectives stated in policy. The current Navy strategy is designed to inform towards a predetermined resource conclusion - the Navy will do everything, but only with these specific platforms.

The inflection point the CNO has discussed is here, now. The Navy raced past the Tipping Point months ago. It's time for folks to stop the political shell games with the future of the Navy and demonstrate some leadership. Will a leader step up to the enormous challenges of the moment?

Doubtful. Perpetuating a state of denial is easier.