The world has changed quite a bit since the cold war when the DDG-51 was conceived, and quite a bit since the Gulf War
when the DDG-1000 was conceived. When the Maritime Strategy was being produced, Mullen made it clear the Maritime Strategy would
begin with Seapower 21 (PDF) and use the rapidly changing world resulting from globalization as context. In many ways, many not obvious until mentioned, the Navy has already evolved in the 21st century, but these things aren't self evident until discussed.
The Navy is currently putting bombs on target in support of the Army and Marines, successfully fielding an Army of IAs and others to plug holes in Army force structure, gaining and assimilating experience in unconventional but non-SOF warfare through an aggressive NECC, recruiting sufficient recruits, retaining sufficient experienced officers (although there is work to be done here in regards to experienced Captains), supplying Admirals to top joint and other national leadership positions (CJCS, DNI, Combatant Commanders, etc.), and not unduly embarrassing the country with horrific scandals or with unseemly inter-service turf brawls. These are great reasons why the Nation has a lot to be proud of in regards to the Navy, but these positive trends are often lost in any discussion of the Navy.
The one aspect of evolution in the 21st century not visible is the shipbuilding plan, which carries with it visibility with the American people on a higher plane than those other items. In speaking to the American people about shipbuilding and Navies, we think it is important to keep it simple, make it easy to understand, and insure the explanation is as self evident as possible. Meeting all three goals in Washington DC requires brilliant PPT skills, but it doesn't have to for communicating to a broader audience.
On this blog, we intentionally keep things simple. I have an outstanding artist who works for me, and I could easily instruct him to make this fairly plain looking blog hip and stylish, but to what end? The simplicity in layout insures fast loading of content, and the only stunning visuals we highlight here is the excellent photography we associate with blog posts. In other words, readers aren't distracted by the imagery of the blog, rather the imagery of the blog content. This is intentional. In communicating our message to readers, our strategy is to focus the reader on substance, not style, thus why we keep it simple.
We discuss maritime strategy using the
simple visual analogy of a Yin Yang. The Yin Yang represents warfighting and peacemaking as two opposing and, at the same time, complementary (completing) applications of naval power.
We believe the Navy must take a balanced approach addressing the requirements for winning war and managing peace as instructed by the maritime strategy. If the Navy is to balance itself, this means there must be a commitment to building flexible forces for
leveraging the sea as base to connect with the non-integrated gaps, and in this way position itself to better manage the maritime challenges of peacetime. Using the Yin Yang analogy, if black is war and white is peace, this analogy is used to recognize the white dot as peacemaking forces as a requirement for winning war, just as the black dot represents warfighter capabilities as a requirement for managing peace. We believe this analogy is self evident to anyone with a clear understanding of modern conventional and asymmetrical warfare.
The current Navy is built to fight major wars against peer opponents. The Navy of today consists of 11 aircraft carriers, 109 surface combatants (22 CGs, 52 DDGs, 30 FFGs, and 5 PCs), 2 Littoral Combat Ships, 53 attack submarines, 4 cruise missile submarines, 14 ballistic missile submarines, 31 amphibious warfare ships (3 LHAs 7 LHDs, 9 LPDs, and 12 LSDs), and 14 minesweepers. This list does not include the 31 combat logistics ships and 17 support ships.
Of the 167 total surface vessels in the fleet, only 51 are less than 4200 tons. That ratio represents 30% of the total surface force, and all 51 are
unrated surface combatants. Of just the surface combatant force, 33% are less than 4200 tons, again all of them unrated. The naval force today is completely unbalanced in favor of the wartime requirement for fighting the Soviet Union of 1989 or the Iraqi Army of 1991. 66% of the total surface combatant fleet is designed to do two things very well, destroy targets on land with cruise missiles and shoot down many varieties of cruise missile and aircraft threats in the air. When talking about the threat environment of the 21st century, be it submarines, ballistic missiles, small boat swarms, mines, and a variety of asymmetric threats, the Navy is not well designed for meeting those challenges.
In keeping things simple, we liken the current resource strategy to an upside down triangle. Looking at the upside down triangle, if you were to write war at the top and peace at the bottom, then inside the triangle divide it into three parts with two horizontal lines, write Sea Strike in the large top portion, Sea Shield in the middle portion, and Sea Basing in the bottom small portion (
Seapower 21). you just created a PPT slide of the fleet constitution of the US Navy today. We do not believe
that type of fleet constitution matches the
Navy's own maritime strategy. This is why we find the
debate on Capitol Hill regarding the DDG-1000 to be so extraordinarily stupid, because the debate is ultimately about which type of battleship the Navy should fill in the top large "Sea Strike" portion of the upside down triangle, a political debate to ultimately decide if the nation should build the battleship for fighting the 1989 Soviet Union, or the battleship for fighting against the 1991 Iraq Army.
Only because of the ignorance and apathy of the average American regarding the Navy would such a silly debate ever be allowed to occur.
Now take a triangle sitting on a long base with a point at the top. Write war above the tip and peace along the bottom. Inside the triangle divide it into three parts with two horizontal lines, write Sea Strike in the small top portion, Sea Shield in the middle portion, and Sea Basing in the bottom large portion. We believe this triangle would better illustrate the fleet constitution strategy better aligned with the requirements of the Navy's maritime strategy. Allow us to elaborate.
In major power war, the Navy should be very aware by now that Command of the Sea in the 21st century is determined by aircraft and submarines. Between the CVN force, the SSBN force, the SSGN force, and the SSN force all forms of sea control and power projection are achieved. Even today, whether it is with carrier aviation in the current wars or submarines
picking off targets with cruise missiles in failed states like Somalia, these are the major combat platforms at sea. This is also self evident in the way the Navy develops its surface combatant force, which is designed to protect high value vessels from air and submarine attack. The surface combatant fleet doesn't even bother putting anti-ship missiles on its most advanced battleships, because the Navy knows that aircraft will sink enemy ships long before the surface fleet is in range to attack.
However, for peacetime roles today the Navy only has a limited number of ships to draw from. The ships pushing the peacetime activities required to achieve the goals of the maritime strategy include the
amphibious force, the
small combatants under 4200 tons, and the
ships operated by the Military Sealift Command. Indeed if you look at activities like that of the
Coast Guard cutter Dallas (WHEC 716), the Navy is basically outsourcing its peacetime engagement responsibilities in major maritime theaters to the already stretched thin Coast Guard. The Navy really should be embarrassed that it is incapable of doing the mission the
Coast Guard does today in the Persian Gulf, it is a tragedy of leadership the Navy doesn't see its inability to do that mission as a problem, because that is part of the global mission set the maritime domain demands in today's maritime era.
The Navy, indeed Congress and the American people in general, are under the misguided perception that the AEGIS battleship is the dreadnought of our era. This is absolutely false, and would only be true if the Navy was facing a peer competitor.
The Dreadnought of the modern maritime era is the Amphibious Ship, and
what we call the mothership; essentially the weapon system and logistical enabler capable of saturating the maritime domain with
manned and unmanned systems to USE command of the sea, and influence that domain throughout the littorals and into land. Without the ability to saturate the maritime domain with naval power and establish what the Navy calls Maritime Domain Awareness, the
Navy is unable to maintain command of the sea, thus unable to exploit its use to promote the conditions necessary for building a stable, peaceful maritime environment that promotes economic growth in struggling states.
By using
submarines to alleviate the surface combatant force from having to carry the burden of major war, the surface fleet should reconstitute itself with fewer battleships and more smaller surface combatants to operate within these theater Sea Bases. In other words, using the triangle analogy described above for peacetime, the resource strategy would list submarines and aircraft carriers in the small area labeled sea strike, the battleships in the middle portion labeled sea shield, and a large number of motherships, amphibious ships, small combatants, logistics ships, and support ships filling the large portion at the bottom of the triangle to support the peacetime, or
SysAdmin, requirements as established in the Navy's maritime strategy. This force ultimately represents the viable solution for the asymmetrical threats to the maritime domain, because it becomes the forward deployed persistent naval force present to deal with these threats.
It is time to align resources to maritime strategy by recognizing that in the maritime environment of today the Navy is currently in a position to fight its wars with a small number of powerful platforms at the high end, but the Navy requires a saturation force made up of a lot of large flexible amphibious type ships and a large number of smaller surface combatants if the Navy is serious about using command of the sea in peacetime.
There are three items a bit off the usual beat we want to highlight.
