Observing a Pattern of Naval Partnership Off the East Coast

It should not be the case that when my time is consumed by business, this story gets no coverage at all by the media, and yet, it has been a week now since HMS Ark Royal (R07) visited Norfolk, and a google news search reveals exactly no news coverage at all. In fact, if it wasn't for the official announcement on the Royal Navy's official website we wouldn't know about it.

The Royal Navy’s Fleet Flagship, HMS Ark Royal, will embark members of the US Marine Corps and their aircraft as part of a joint training exercise called Exercise Constant Alliance. The series of exercises off the Eastern Seaboard of the US will allow the continued development of combined and joint capability with maritime and air assets from an allied nation. The aircraft carrier has just completed a period of amphibious training with the Royal Marines off the coast of Norway prior to deploying to the US.

HMS Ark Royal will embark US Marine Corps personnel and Navy Sea Knight and Sea Hawk helicopters in support of achieving the training objectives. The series of exercises are designed to increase the bi-lateral understanding of amphibious operations and will see joint planning, the rehearsal of landing troops ashore to preparing to undertake an evacuation operation of non-military personnel. During Exercise Constant Alliance, the warship will work in close co-operation with the USS Normandy and the USS Mitscher.

One would think when one of our nations top allies sends their flagship to visit our country we would consider it news, or at least give it a mention. The implication of no news coverage of this exercise is that the visit last year by the HMS Illustrious (R6) which involved the operation of MV-22s was news because of the MV-22. If that is what made that story news, then the point of the news this time is being missed. This is the second time in a year that the Royal Navy has sent an aircraft carrier to the US to have the USMC operate from Royal Navy aircraft carriers, both Marines and Marine aviation. How is that not a story? What are the implications of this pattern? Unquestionably it is a positive sign of cooperation, but there is a real perception here that the reason this is happening is due to cost cuts in the Royal Navy. That is news.

It reminds us of the upcoming exercises involving French aircraft on US carriers. With the lack of investment by NATO countries in building redundancy into their naval services, we observe that the US Navy isn't simply a partner anymore in NATO, rather is becoming a medium for maintaining proficiency of critical warfighter capabilities for the larger NATO partners, partners that would otherwise not require US aircraft carriers or USMC aviation platforms for exercises or operations if those countries were investing properly into their Navy. The American people don't want to be the worlds policemen, and Europeans often complain that the US is being imperialistic because we have assumed that role, but those Europeans make this claim absent analysis, if they invested more into their naval services we wouldn't have to the worlds policeman. There is a catch-22 here, one not soon to go away, empowered by the American peoples commitment to peace through investment and the Europeans lack of commitment to peace through investment. Harsh, yet true.

The Royal Navy could use a feel good news story right about now, because the downward spiral of the Royal Navy is flat out depressing. Richard Beedall gave his quarterly report card on Sunday and it isn't pretty.

Readers of this website are probably all too aware of the governments constant repetition of the mantra "We are in the middle of the biggest shipbuilding programme for the Royal Navy in decades" (e.g. Baroness Taylor, Minister of State for Defence Equipment and Support, 27 November 2024) - but the difference between the political rhetoric and the reality has now gone far beyond an acceptable stretching of the truth by politicians. Long planned orders have simply not been placed as expected, including:

The seventh to twelfth Daring-class Type 45 destroyers
The fifth and sixth Astute-class submarines (the fourth is now partially on order)
Two Joint Casualty Treatment Ships
The fifth Bay-class LSD(A)
Auxiliary ships for the RFA under the MARS programme

A more hidden problem - but with disastrous implications for the Royal Navy in the next decade - has been the lack of progress in replacing the remaining Type 22 Batch 3 frigates and the oldest Type 23 frigates. The last serious iteration of the Future Surface Combatant was put on ice three years ago, the Sustained Surface Combatant Capability team came up with some interesting ideas last year but there has been no major developments since. If the frigate HMS Cornwall was really to be replaced in 2014 in accordance with the last announced official plans, an order would be needed now. The depressing reality is a widespread dull acceptance that she and her three sisters (16% of the current frigate/destroyer escort force) won't be replaced, and that the Type 23's will have to run on far longer than they were originally designed for.

The British people are absolutely clueless if they fail to see how this effects their future. We have charted out the surface combatant issue in the past, and while we were given a healthy dose of criticism on forums that linked and discussed, those critics have somehow disappeared as our predictions have sunk in as truth.

Richard was kind actually, because he's talking about the current state of shipbuilding. That is only half the story, what do we say about the current state of the fleet? Consider this, the Royal Navy has two aircraft carriers at sea today, one in the Indian Ocean and one off the US East Coast, and between those two aircraft carriers, they only have four Harriers deployed. That means they have twice as many aircraft as aircraft carriers, which is not good! With that in mind, ask yourself what is their priority going forward? Building more aircraft carriers!

Good thing they have spending for social programs under control or it could get a lot worse. Oh wait, nevermind. I don't know what makes an island nation believe a Navy isn't its most important asset, but that mentality is a disease to the education system and counter to all intelligence and wisdom of governance. Makes you feel sad for the great generation that won the Battle of Britain in the mid 20th century, apparently their seed was too stupid to learn from the mistakes of only 2 generations prior. Those who fail to learn from their mistakes in history usually end up repeating those mistakes, and any one in Britain who thinks otherwise makes their claim absent historical context. God bless the Royal Navy, at least what is left of her.

Photos of the Day: Juan Carlos I (BPE)

Things are busy, and posting is obviously light. I did want to take a few minutes to highlight some pretty nice photo's of the launching of Spain's Juan Carlos I a few weeks ago. According to Joe Katzman (also blogs here), Australia is paying about $1.5 billion US a piece for 2 built by Spain. Pretty good deal, but I would remind those wishing for some for the US that they would cost at least $2.3 billion to be built here. Why? Because someone in Congress will want them be nuclear powered. Even without nuclear power they will be more than $1.5 billion in the US though, they would not meet US Navy NVR.




Those ski jumps are not going to contribute much for Australia. People still talk like Australia is buying F-35Bs, but there is still no official plan at all to do so, and they have only expressed government interest to date on the F-35A models. The assumption is that will change. Maybe, but I think they will wait for a V-UCAS in the 2025 time frame.

Tons and tons more photos from the launch of the Juan Carlos I here.

Navy Bloggers Focus on Maritime Strategy

As we continue the theme of maritime strategy this week, other bloggers are also weighing in on the topic.

Eagle1 ties together a flat world with a functioning core and non-integrated gap connected by the oceans to highlight the maritime challenges as we look to the future, and produces an excellent narrative of the Navy's, and what should be the nations vision in the modern world.

Steeljaw Scribe takes us back to the cold war in discussing escalation dominance in the context of modern maritime strategy. By examining the roles of the “disturber” and a “stabilizer,” SJS reminds us that in the 21st century the Navy's role is that of stabilizer in an interconnected world.

The Navy's Great Challenge of our Time

The second thing that proponents of the concept can argue represents real change is the elevation of maritime security and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to core maritime capabilities. Once again, however, critics could argue that maritime security has been a core capability of the Navy since the Continental and Oceanic Eras, when Navy ships combated pirates and slave traders. Maritime security was also important in the Transoceanic Era, as the Navy contributed ships to the war on drugs and anti-terrorist operations (e.g., the Achille Lauro operation). And, of course, maritime security has been a defining role for the Coast Guard since its inception. The same goes for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, which have long been important naval missions. Proponents of the strategy can argue that the concept’s call for more proactive humanitarian assistance and disaster relief activities is something new. However, critics could argue that the Navy is simply using its tools in a slightly different way. For example, the hospital ships Mercy and Comfort, in the fleet since the 1980s, were designed to support a major combat operation. Proactively dispatching them on “Missions of Peace” during peacetime is simply a smart return on their investment.

Once again, whether one sees the elevation of maritime security and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief as being old wine in old bottles or new wine in new bottles is really in the eye of the beholder. Unquestionably, however, the concept’s overall emphasis on the two, and its explanation why the two are so important in a globalized world prone to “system disruptions,” is something new in US maritime strategic documents.

- A Cooperative Strategy For 21st Century Seapower: An Assessment (PDF), CSBA, March 2008

We love this CSBA assessment. It assists with context for any maritime strategy discussion someone would want to have. When we discuss the 21st Century Seapower among ourselves in the office, almost all of our discussions now are related to the elevation of maritime security and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief as part of executing strategy. My chief and my SGT spent many years combined conducting these types of missions, and what is interesting is that while both agree these two capabilities don't represent new activities for the Navy or Marines, both talk of these capabilities as new ways to take the offensive in times absent war. Can you tell they both studied Clausewitz? In our opinion, the development of good peacemaking capabilities in the context of strategy will mean the development of methods for taking the offensive in peacetime.

When given the opportunity to discuss maritime strategy (PDF) with Vice Admiral Morgan last week, I knew almost instantly I would be asking about the elevation of "humanitarian assistance and disaster relief" as a method for executing strategy. The Navy has spent over 2 centuries developing ways to confront wartime challenges at sea, and in the last 6+ decades the United States Navy has proven to be superior to all challengers. It will be an ugly day for the enemy of the United States when our Navy takes the offensive in wartime. Our Navy has the leadership, has been honing its skills for decades, has the tools necessary for victory, and is thoroughly trained for that day. The US Navy has become the fortress Lord Nelson warned fools about fighting. Taking Command of the Sea when that command is contested is not the great challenge of the US Navy in our time.

The great challenge for the US Navy today is to develop our nations strategic capabilities to leverage the maritime domain in support of our nations interests during peacetime, and we think the authors of 21st Century Seapower have demonstrated incredible strategic wisdom by including the foundation for that discussion in the strategy of the joint services. What we call the mission statement of 21st Century Seapower speaks to the challenge.

Today, the United States and its partners find themselves competing for global influence in an era in which they are unlikely to be fully at war or fully at peace. Our challenge is to apply seapower in a manner that protects U.S. vital interests even as it promotes greater collective security, stability, and trust. While defending our homeland and defeating adversaries in war remain the indisputable ends of seapower, it must be applied more broadly if it is to serve the national interest.

We believe that preventing wars is as important as winning wars. There is a tension, however, between the requirements for continued peacetime engagement and maintaining proficiency in the critical skills necessary to fighting and winning in combat. Maritime forces must contribute to winning wars decisively while enhancing our ability to prevent war, win the long struggle against terrorist networks, positively influence events, and ease the impact of disasters.

The pursuit of two objects, preventing wars and winning wars, speaks directly to the duality of the joint services maritime strategy, and it takes critical thinking to apply the pursuit of both objects while avoiding the tension the strategy mentions. The broad application of strategy for a dual approach presents a new context for thinking about how to use seapower strategically, and in our view represents a circular theory of war for using seapower for both warfighting and peacemaking.

Julian Corbett believed 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." In that spirit we observe an antipodal point in this circular theory of warfare to be the processes that mitigate the disruption of command of the sea to promote peacetime commerce. As part of this circular theory, peacemaking responsibilities for the Navy exist both prior to warfare (cooperative partnerships) and after warfare (reconstitution of commerce and security), also described as the periods of time absent war. We observe that peacemaking relies upon the application of warfighting to regain command of the sea when command is lost.

In a globalized world prone to “System disruptions” that can come from a variety of state and non state threats, we acknowledge up front that as antipodal points warfighting and peacemaking are not diametrically opposite. Because the use of hard military power can promote peacemaking in pursuit of the object of warfighting (Command of the Sea), and the use of soft power can be leveraged successfully in warfighting in pursuit of the object of peacemaking (promoting conditions that prevent war), the tension is exposed in the grey areas within the broad strategic approach the Navy is taking. In that context we have taken the conceptual view for the Navys broad view of strategy to be best described as a yin yang, representing warfighting and peacemaking as two opposing and, at the same time, complementary (completing) applications of seapower in the pursuit of the interests of the United States.

21st Century Seapower takes the position that the Navy will apply the tactical ideas of our time in pursuit of the peacemaking strategy, some of these ideas include military operations other than war, cooperative relationships built on security and stability, cultural awareness, and Maritime Security Operations (MSO). We believe the success of these tactical approaches for "preventing wars" will ultimately be determined by the further development and wise application of peacemaking theories of war that compliment warfighter theories of war. We also observe that in many ways, the development of these theories presents major challenges to the sea services, in particular the Navy.

An easy example is highlighted in the examination of the Marines theories of peacemaking, specifically in regards to COIN. An early lesson of COIN is that properly trained manpower matters a lot. We observe one of the recently exposed principles of 21st century military strategy is that the United States military does not need significant manpower for warfighting, we can bring more military power to the fight with fewer people than any other nation. However, the United States does need significant manpower for peacemaking, and we haven't observed a single exception. With these principles of our nations military strategy in mind, it is easy to see where the duality nature of 21st Century Seapower will create tension in the Navy in the future.

For example, the Littoral Combat Ship was developed before these principles were evident, and by design replaced the primary metric for peacemaking (manpower) with unmanned systems. While in hindsight it is discouraging that the primary surface combatant intended to promote peacemaking in the future may be poorly suited for the job, the Littoral Combat Ship also represents the application of the strategical and tactical ideas of our time (motherships for unmanned systems). In this way, the LCS represents an excellent example of the tension the strategy discussed in regards to peacemaking and warfighting, because in wartime, all those unmanned systems will be a critical factor in scouting for the fleet to insure we fire effectively first. The LCS example demonstrates why we must think clearly about metrics for resources, and why requirements definitions are more important than ever if programs are to execute the desired functions in pursuit of both objects outlined in strategy.

This is but one example why the great challenge for the US Navy in our time is to develop our nations strategic capabilities to leverage the maritime domain in support of our nations interests during peacetime without eroding the nations wartime capabilities. The success or failure in meeting this challenge will, in our opinion, define the relevance of the Navy in the 21st century, not only during peacetime, but in future times of war as well.

Observing the Absence of a Strategic View For Surface Combatants

This quote in MarineLink by Rear Adm. Goddard is the most telling statement we have read yet on the DDG-1000 program, and in our opinion is an excellent example why many Americans have trouble understanding the Navy's surface combatant strategy in the context of maritime strategy:

The complementary and interoperable mission capabilities of DDG 1000 and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), along with the next-generation multi-mission CG(X) cruiser, will satisfy the full spectrum of operational requirements demanded of the surface combatant force well into the 21st century.

“DDG 1000 is the Dreadnought of our Navy,” says Rear Adm. Chuck Goddard, the Program Executive Officer for Ships (PEO Ships), who is responsible for acquisition of DDG 1000. “For those of you who are historians Dreadnought is the ship that changed the British navy. It was a tough decision for them, and when they did it, they made the rest of the ships obsolete. But it also brought all new technology in terns of hull, propulsion and combat systems. Dreadnought was the first of the true battleships.”

The phrase "operational requirements" is fairly broad, and doesn't offer many clues regarding the approach the Navy has taken regarding the strategy for surface combatant fleet constitution, but based on our observations of the evolution of SC-21 we remain wholly unimpressed. We see the "operational requirements" that have been utilized in the evolution of SC-21 to be very tactical, and in many ways limited in its strategic vision.

SC-21 evolved by applying the conceptual vision of Seapower 21, which is essentially a list of desired metrics. The Navy never had the time to build a strategic vision of the concepts the metrics in Seapower 21 represented. The Navy was in a rush to transition from wargame results at the turn of the century to a new shipbuilding plan mostly due to the time restraints and desire of keeping surface combatant numbers from slipping. The reality that the LCS went from concept to water in less than 5 years highlights this rapid evolution of SC-21.

The LCS, DDG-1000, and Sea Basing when it is described as a program have all become a set of packages with properties or individual platform "operational requirements" that reflect the desired metrics explained in Seapower 21 (stealth, speed, modularity, etc), but we do not see the individual platforms that have evolved from these "operational requirements" as part of a strategic vision based on desired capabilities for the surface combatant fleet, and it is not difficult to highlight why purely from a strategic point of view most observers outside the Navy also have trouble with the current fleet constitution plan.

The US Navy currently has 22 first rate battleships, 62 planned second rate battleships, and a flotilla of 44 unrated ships (Perry's and Avengers). In executing the Maritime Strategy, the Navy is supposed to be operating under the auspices that "every budget is a strategy", but has somehow determined that when executing the new maritime strategy over the next decade the plan should be to increase the fleet with 7 dreadnoughts and replace the current unrated flotilla with a new flotilla of 55 unrated mini-motherships. Is that really the strategic vision for fleet constitution the new maritime strategy is calling for? Based on the comments on this blog, other blogs, and Proceedings for the past several years, only those who fear instability in shipbuilding support the current plan, which implies to us the considerations of shipbuilding costs has trumped any strategic vision for fleet constitution.

If we are taking a historic view of ships and a strategic view of fleet constitution, one would think we should start by looking up the "cruiser role" in our review of seapower and maritime history. We will find the "cruiser role" well described in any story involving Lord Nelson, or evident in any of the last 3+ centuries of maritime power with the exception of only the last ~5 years, specifically the last ~5 years of the US Navy when economic considerations retired all DDs and left the nations guide missile frigates without guided missiles. At the same time, transformational theory replaced the historical view of maritime strategy regarding fleet constitution, and we are now building an all battleship navy supported by an unrated fleet of mini motherships. I want to believe it is unlikely an Annapolis graduate would be unaware of the historical strategic warnings regarding fleet constitutions of all battleships, and yet here we are.

We find it ironic that Julian Corbett warned maritime powers never to pursue fleets of only battleships, warning specifically that fleets that concentrate on battleships will become too expensive to operate enough ships to maintain Command of the Sea. Too expensive to operate enough ships... sound familiar? Corbett wrote this warning in a chapter called Theory of the Means-The Constitution of Fleets in a book called Some Principles of Maritime Strategy; so its not like one of histories greatest maritime strategists hid this lesson in obscurity.