CSBA Fleet Architecture Talking Paper--Why the Current Force Structure Assessment Process is Flawed

During the work last summer on the CSBA Fleet Architecture Study, I would occasionally write short summaries of things we were thinking about for the team lead, Bryan Clark. The one below is a condnesed version of some thinking on why the way FSA's are done today is flawed.

--------------------

There is a fundamental weakness in the manner in which the Navy conducts fleet architecture and force structure inquiries. That weakness derives from the tension between the near-term nature of the “demand signal” as represented in the numbered war plans, the GFMAP, and security cooperation force requirements, and the far-term nature of the 30 year shipbuilding and aviation plans that are required of it by the Congress. These 30 year plans are a manifestation of the fleet architecture in place and planned, such as it is. Because the main inputs to it are 1) the near-term demand signal extrapolated forward into the future and 2) the perceived need to “replace” force structure that reaches the end of its service life, a classic “self-licking ice cream cone” situation is created. An explanation follows.

There is a force structure in place at any given time that reflects the extant fleet architecture. Combatant Commanders (COCOM) request forces (or sometimes capabilities) to service their requirements from the forces that are available. To the extent that there are either unavailable forces or capabilities to service these unmet needs, the COCOM generates need statements—urgent operational requirements or inputs to their integrated priority lists. Generally speaking, these needs are reflective of in-situ/near term needs. The Navy then—within its capability to do so—attempts to meet these needs with (again, generally speaking)—short term or nearly immediately available solutions.

Put another way, the COCOMs ask for what is available, and the Navy builds its fleet around what the COCOM’s ask for. What the COCOMs ask for is conditioned by a set of pre-existing expectations of what can and will be provided. Our fleet looks like it does because of an aggregated response over time to what is asked of it by the competing requirements of COCOMs obsessed (by design) with the near term.

In our approach to this assessment, we take as our main idea the conventional deterrence of great power war. We assess the current fleet architecture (to include its posture and basing) to be at best, sub-optimized to meet this mandate and at worst, a slow, methodical undercutting of such deterrence. This is due to the fact that our forces providing everyday peacetime presence are the same forces that would be relied upon for war-fighting—just a smaller subset thereof. The demands of great power warfighting create a requirement for a level of response that cannot be adequately prepared for given the needs of maintaining point-station deterrence day in and day out from among the same forces. This Alternate Fleet Architecture is based upon a radically altered “demand signal” that is closely aligned with the needs of a regionally aggregated approach to great power deterrence focused through the instrumentalities of a number of emerging naval operational concepts.