In October 2002 Admiral Vern Clark introduced the
Sea Power 21 concept in Proceedings Magazine. It was billed as a vision statement for the 21st century, and in general it was a combination of lessons learned since the last maritime strategy (1986), but also it carried with it buzz from the "transformation" idea that was just beginning to come from the Pentagon. The Sea Power 21 vision statement was the first official naval document that included the word "transformation."
The point of this and future posts dedicated to Sea Power 21 version 2.0 is not to highlight what is wrong with Sea Power 21, rather highlight what is right, and why. I have said in the past that when I read Sea Power 21 the first time, I somehow felt smarter, and recently I have been trying to figure out why I felt that way. There is good stuff in Sea Power 21 I think is worth building on.
Strategies are enduring, and effective strategies are almost timeless, and while they account in many cases for the environment of the time, politically, technically, and professionally to an extent, they don't require much revision to be relevant to other time periods. The last Maritime Strategy for the US Navy dates to 1986, 5 years before the fall of the Soviet Union. In September of 2007, that strategy remains the foundation for the US Navy today, for at least another month anyway, and for its 21 years the outcome is unquestionably the most powerful naval force in the history of mankind in today's US Navy.
Concepts of Operations (or visions), like Sea Power 21, are not as enduring. They should be constantly evaluated to determine what is working, and what isn't. Being that we are approaching 5 years of Sea Power 21, I suggest it is time to evaluate what has worked and what hasn't, why, and what needs to be 'tweaked.' I don't see the need for major changes, rather I would encourage evolution, and where the path is unclear consulting history to guide. This process of reevaluation would lead to Sea Power 21 v2.0. In part 1, I will focus on the following areas of Sea Power 21.
- Sea Strike—Projecting Precise and Persistent Offensive Power
- Sea Shield—Projecting Global Defensive Assurance
- Sea Basing—Projecting Joint Operational Independence
- ForceNet--Enabling 21st Century Warfare
Sea StrikeIn 1990, the US Navy deployed an unprecedented amount of Naval power in response to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq on August 2nd. By
August 7th, the Independence Battle Group was in the Gulf of Oman, the Eisenhower Battle Group transited the Suez, while the Saratoga & Wisconsin Battle Groups departed the East Coast. The quick response was part of a number of factors that led to a massive buildup for the 1991 Gulf War that ultimately involved 100 US naval ships, 80 of which were combatants, and 50 coalition ships
on January 16th, 1991.
Ultimately though, Carrier aviation didn't play a major role in the Gulf War, rather the naval weapon that grabbed the headlines was the Tomahawk cruise missile. One of the lesser known details of the Gulf War was the deployment of the USS San Jacinto (CG 56), which was given a special designation "special weapons platform." The USS San Jacinto (CG 56) was deployed with 122 Tomahawks, 10x the typical load for a deployment at that time, in effect representing a test in practice of an evolving theory known as the Strike Cruiser (later reintroduced as the arsenal ship). Ultimately the USS San Jacinto (CG 56) only fired 14 Tomahawks, with the USS Fife (DD 991) being the ship to fire the most cruise missiles,
58 total successful launches (2 failed to launch, or would have been 60).
While that was an early test of the Sea Strike concept, the best example came in December of 1998 with Operation Desert Fox. While at the time, and for some time afterward, Operation Desert Fox was considered a political move to distract the public from the impeachment hearings of President Clinton, given what we have learned since 2003, Operation Desert Fox ranks as perhaps the best example of Sea Strike as described in Sea Power 21 the Navy could hope for. With somewhere around
325 Tomahawks fired combined with naval air power supplied by the USS Enterprise the Navy achieved joint, time critical contributions that effectively destroyed what was left of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
These lessons combined with the operations supporting the Kosovo campaign validate the Navy vision for Sea Strike as prescribed in Sea Power 21 by highlighting what is and is not possible with offensive sea power. Sea Strike evolved from a number of actions, both large and small, into a pillar of Sea Power 21. Ultimately, the basis for capabilities outlined regarding Sea Strike in Sea Power 21 was the result of a slow and steady evolution of capabilities from the beginning of the cold war that incorporated new technologies into existing systems; an evolution that had nothing to do with transformation.
Sea ShieldIn 1987-1988, the US Navy deployed several dozen ships and dedicated 2 battle groups over the period to the defense of American flagged tankers to and from Kuwait. Operation Earnest Will is a classic case study in a modern naval convoy system, and highlights the role of naval forces in protecting shipping during wartime. These operations in the Persian Gulf involved mine warfare, littoral warfare, air defense, and surface defense in providing a 'sea shield' for commercial traffic. Starting in 1990, both leading up to and after the Gulf War the US Navy began inspecting commercial traffic in enforcing an embargo on Iraq. From August 1990 until January 16th, 1991 the US Navy and coalition naval forces had conducted 6,960 intercepts and 832 boardings in support of that embargo. In that same conflict, the USS Independence and USS Eisenhower provided combat air power in defense of Saudi Arabia only a week after Iraq invaded Kuwait.
AEGIS ballistic missile defense funding began in 1994, and remains a slow and steady approach of both evolving software and hardware in an effort to produce a cost effective AEGIS solution in the near term to support Ballistic Missile Defense. For the most part, this effort has been very successful, it has not been a sink for money for the Navy, although the Missile Defense Agency itself appears to be exactly that given what they have produced. The Navy for its part has paid for most operational systems it currently deploys, highlighting both the Navy's focus on evolving into the Ballistic Missile Defense role and the Missile Defense Agency's failure to properly allocate money to the Navy for a working system as the MDA tries to produce expensive, yet to be operational systems.
Strategic deterrence of nuclear war was a hallmark of US Navy operations during the cold war. Facing the large submarine force of the Soviet Union, the United States Navy deployed submarines on a regular basis in defense of the GIUK gap and to track the movements of Soviet Naval forces. The Oliver Hazard Perry class was originally designed as a convoy escort platform to insure protection of merchant vessels that might one day need to cross the Atlantic to reinforce Europe during wartime. The ship directly reflecting lessons learned the hard way regarding the protection of merchantmen in two world wars.
Strategic defense in theaters from the sea comes in a number of forms, from Maritime Security Operations to Ballistic Missile Defense to Strategic Nuclear Deterrence, and includes traditional defense in mine warfare, anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare, and air defense. In Sea Power 21 Sea Shield does a bit too much platform justification for my taste, but its focus on capabilities and objectives is generally on target. Sea Power 21 v2.0 should move away from specific platform justification and focus on concepts, and by doing so it will validate the Sea Shield concept. It is noteworthy that with the sole exception of Ballistic Missile Defense, all of the other aspects of Sea Shield are historical roles for the US Navy, and none of the transformational platforms cited (like Littoral Combat Ship) has ever been deployed to support these roles.
In other words, Sea Shield in Sea Power 21 isn't transformation, there is nothing new here. The concept is a slow and steady evolution of existing naval roles for the US Navy, and that evolution didn't require transformation to a future platform to validate the concept and vision, nor to enable the capabilities. Adding specific platforms to the concept might please the transformation police, but the truth is, Sea Shield roles haven't changed much, they have simply adapted existing technology to confront new threats. Additionally, the concepts described in the Sea Shield vision aren't platform specific, which happens to be why Sea Shield is ultimately successful as a vision.
Sea BasingOne of the lesser known aspects of Operation Earnest Will, the operation to escort tankers in 1987-1988 was the deployment of the Wimbrown VII and the Hercules. Both were barges converted into Sea Bases in the Northern Persian Gulf designed to give the US Navy a static presence to monitor the operations of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that were harassing commercial shipping with small boats. Consisting of SOF, sailors trained in mine warfare, Marines, and Army aviators these "sea bases" were towed by tugs to various locations in the Northern Persian Gulf, and represented a joint services solution to a problem evident in a time of conflict.
While most people probably remember
Black Monday, few people remember the events that took place in the Gulf at the same time. Lost in the US headlines behind "Baby Jessica" and stock market woes was a battle involving Iran against the Hercules which consisted of army aviators, SOF forces in small boats, and a single US frigate at a place called "
middle shoals buoy." While it wasn't much of an action, the fallout of the battle validated the idea of 'sea bases' as a way to provide static presence to sea operations to confront irregular forces, a concept that is again validated today with Ocean 6 in the Persian Gulf around the Iraqi Oil Terminals KAAOT and ABOT.
Sea Basing isn't a new idea, it is born from operations in Vietnam and in Operation Earnest Will, times of conflict when ideas came into being due to necessity. The inclusion of Sea Basing in Sea Power 21 validates that lessons of war have not been lessons lost, rather lessons that need emphasis particularly as the Navy adapts to sustaining presence while fighting low tech enemies in troubled places where it simply isn't cost effective to support high tech naval equipment over long periods of time. Global Fleet Stations, stated as an aspect of Sea Basing, is a very interesting adaptation of the concept. While described as transformational, Sea Basing itself is hardly new. The US Navy has made the sea its base for decades and has validated the concept in a variety of forms many times over. In Sea Power 21, Sea Basing is the evolution of a time tested concept in using the Sea as Base in a number of ways, and is another example where the transformation label is applied to give the impression of new, when in fact there is nothing new here.
ForceNetOn August 2nd, 1990 I was on the Rhein-Main Air Base when things went into lockdown. I was 14 and really didn't understand what was happening at the time. The summer of 1990 is one I'll never forget, I spent the first part of the summer as an intern in the computer lab of a local university learning about a technology on the way out (Mainframes) and new technologies on the way in (PCs). I then spent 7 weeks in Germany visiting a friends family with only one other friend who was my age. The parents of our friend owned the airline company that flew around all the top officers in the US Military in Europe, both were pilots, and on August 2nd they both had to go to work leaving three 14 year old boys to do little on one of the busiest US Air Force Bases in Europe.
Somehow we ended up with a Captain who had direct orders from some general to 'babysit' us, a job he made apparent that he considered bullshit, for obvious reasons. After watching planes take off and land for a few hours, he found us a computer to sit down and play with. We took full advantage.
While all 3 of us were athletic, I actually started my first 2 a days in football the day after arriving home from Germany, we were what you could call skater geeks who loved computers. We found a pc with a modem and 'borrowed' a phone line we probably weren't allowed to use, and jumped onto the FidoNet BBS system out of Britain. We found ourselves using what was known at the time as a "talker" (a MUD without graphics) by 9pm that evening, and in this setting we were talking directly to students in Kuwait City listening to the invasion of Kuwait unfold. That Captain was no fool, and he soon had a number of people from all over base watching the conversation unfold. We ended up staying up all night on the talker, no doubt at a major expense to the US Air Force, watching first hand recounts from students inside Kuwait City during an invasion. The next morning, I forget what time, the FidoNet shut down the MUDs and we lost our connection, but I think everyone in the room agreed, communications had just changed the way all of us viewed the world, and the world had just become smaller.
In 2001, the
USS Carl Vinson utilized chat, Kweb, and email during Operation Enduring Freedom to organize everything from task orders to logistics in the Indian Ocean among all the naval forces building up for operations against Afghanistan following 9/11. Over the previous 10 years, the world and the Navy had come a long way, and under the label of ForceNET communication improvement has become something altogether different to anything imagined in 1990.
I have long felt that in my profession I have been at the bleeding edge of networks and communication potential as technology has evolved. Bandwidth is increasing while the requirement of bandwidth is being reduced by better code and better network models, and the Navy is at the tip of that spear. Understanding that technology is nothing more than part of the environment, simply an enabler that like the rest of technology, is evolving, is what makes the ForceNET approach in Sea Power 21 smart to me. We all witness how the speed of information influences daily life with the 24/7 news cycle, applied well, the speed of information in wartime becomes a key enabler for success in Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing. It is noteworthy the single largest advancement in the US Navy since the cold war is not a weapons system, rather CEC, and yet CEC is nothing more than the steady evolution of networking technologies in the internet era, empowered by improved bandwidth and slowly improving software.
Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing enabled by ForceNET highlight the evolution, not transformation, of naval concepts and vision based on historical lessons learned during times of war while applying new technology (that is also evolving) over time. Only where a specific platform is prescribed does the Navy attempt to validate Sea Power 21 as transformation in Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing. In these three concepts there is no evidence of rapid change, no evidence that anything new being done, and no evidence that any single concept has fundamentally changed much at all. There is nothing quick about the evolution of these concepts, as all of them can be dated back to naval efforts from 1987-1988, 1-2 years after the last naval strategy. I didn't even discuss Operation Nimble Archer or Operation Preying Mantis, but both are examples of Sea Strike that points out Sea Power 21 existed in action going back 'at least' 19 years, and I'm really only focused on the time period since the last Maritime Strategy (1986).
Sea Power 21 is successful where history is applied, but as I intend to show in part 2, is a failure where history is ignored under the banner of transformation.
If we are following history as the guide, it appears the US is going to sell India the USS Nashville (LPD 13).
