Sinking an Entire Navy

David Axe has an interesting blog post up entitled How to Sink an Entire Navy on the War is Boring Blog.  It is a short read but full of information, and from it, a few things stand out to me:

Professor Jim Holmes at the Naval War College likes to say that Seapower is a conscious political choice.  Great Britain has chosen to devote an increasingly smaller share of its wealth to its Navy while devoting an increasing share of its wealth to domestic programs.  A similar situation exists in the United States.  While we begin from a position of great Naval strength, the trajectory is clear.  The U.K. has been able to make the defense decisions that it does because it enjoys a close relationship with a powerful nation sharing its language, its culture, a democratic tradition, and a similar view of law.  There is no analogous power for the United States as we begin our naval decline.  We are on our own.

Artist's rendering from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137418/HMS-Queen-Elizabeth-Stern-Royal-Navys-new-3bn-aircraft-carrier-leaves-Portsmouth.html

Next, Axe lays out for us what the present Royal Navy looks like, including   "...two helicopter carriers, five other amphibious assault ships, six destroyers, 13 frigates, seven attack submarines and four ballistic-missile submarines."  Later he informs us that "...British officials are fast to highlight the new and improved ships planned for coming years, especially the two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers and their F-35B stealth fighters, slated to enter service starting in 2018 to replace the current helicopter carriers."  What Axe does for us here is to succinctly lay out the RN's "Fleet Design", and low and behold, what does it look like?  Why a mini-U.S. Navy!  That's right; the RN has high end carrier based aircraft (or will), aircraft carriers, nuclear attack submarines, ballistic missile submarines, amphibious shipping, and surface combatants; or as some navalists like to say, they have a "balanced fleet" .  Like much of Europe (and now the United States), the "choose capability over capacity" mantra has been swallowed hook, line and sinker in the UK.  I think deeply engrained in the minds of defense planners in the UK (particularly naval force planners) is the sense that if  they just keep the basic architecture of a great fleet together, someday fortunes will change and they can simply add capacity to a vital, balanced fleet architecture.  In the meantime, considerable national treasure is spent on capabilities of dubious strategic value, and the fleet shrinks dramatically, reducing the UK's ability to actually BE a global navy capable of tending to its vast, far-flung interests.  I realize that it may sound odd coming from an unabashed supporter of US aircraft carriers, but it is difficult to reconcile the UK building two 60,000 ton aircraft carriers with Joint Strike Fighters while its escort fleet consists of 19 ships.  Adding insult to injury is the strategically questionable decision to replace its aging ballistic missile submarine force.  The UK is wasting billions of pounds clinging to notions of prestige and tradition, notions that may be out of synch with true strategic needs.

Finally, the resource driven decline of both the RN and the USN demonstrate need to align strategy and force structure.  If the United States wishes to remain a global superpower and prevent the rise of a regional hegemon elsewhere, it must allocate sufficient resources to the goal or change the goal and the force structure.  And if the RN wishes to be globally influential, it must cease to choose strategic options that limit its ability to do so. 

Bryan McGrath