Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke today at the United States Navy League’s “Sea, Air and Space” Exposition. In a speech showcasing the master Mandarin’s now infamous tendency to telegraph positions to the military bureaucracy through major policy addresses, Gates fired what some are calling “a shot across the Navy’s (and Marine Corps’) bow”. This speech was not a shot across the bow—it was a hit below the waterline, and those concerned with the direction our Navy will take in the coming years can now firmly count Mr. Gates among those who simply don’t get Navies and what they do. More seriously though, if the
QDR’s dangerously short planning horizon did not already reveal Gates’ strategic shortcomings, this speech highlights his dramatic shortcomings as thinker. He is a master bureaucrat, but he is not a visionary.
I will take the same approach I took to a recent analysis of
CJCS Mullen’s speech at Kansas State, in which I highlighted portions of the speech and responded to them. For the purposes of this speech, I am considering the Marine Corps a “naval” force, not a “second land army” as some have come to see it, and as Mr. Gates discusses in his speech.
Let’s start with this:
“This is even more important considering that, with America’s ground forces dedicated to the campaigns in the Middle East and Central Asia, the weight of America’s deterrent and strategic military strength has shifted to our air and naval forces.”Response: When exactly does Mr. Gates believe this “shift” occurred? With the start of the
GWOT? I think not. America’s land forces have not acted as a serious deterrent force since the fall of the Soviet Union, and those forces large-scale return to continental garrisons in the 90’s removed any notion of our land power as a useful deterrent. His assertion here leads one to believe that air and naval forces are just sort of marking time until the real deterrent strength returns from its overseas adventures. This is nonsense. America’s land armies are should not be considered realistic deterrents to anyone or anything. They should be considered a force of choice when deterrence fails. Given the distaste among other countries for hosting an American army on their shores—a distaste that has only grown as our engagements in Asia enter their ninth year—our only realistic deterrence forces WILL be our air and naval forces. Any organization, training and equipping of our Army for this role is inappropriate.
Next there’s this: After recounting a discussion of several great naval leaders of the 20
th Century that he had with some Naval Academy midshipmen, Gates goes on to tell us that
“The reason I wanted to talk to the midshipmen about these leaders - and why I am citing them today - is not that they were always right. Nor that they should be emulated in every way - to put it mildly. What is compelling about each of these leaders is that they had the vision and the insight to see that the world and technology were changing, they understood the implications of these shifts, and then pressed ahead in the face of often fierce institutional resistance.”Response: What would be the source of institutional resistance most likely to face a budding naval leader today? I assert that it would be the crushing impact of
Jointness which seeks to impose least common denominator solutions and which constantly seeks not to show favor for the forces or capabilities of one service above another. This “
groupthink” is guaranteed to face an officer rising through today’s military, at least as likely as
aircraftcarrierism, and
boomerism.
Next there’s this—and it is a longish clip from the speech:
“It is important to remember that, as much as the U.S. battle fleet has shrunk since the end of the Cold War, the rest of the world’s navies have shrunk even more. So, in relative terms, the U.S. Navy is as strong as it has ever been. In assessing risks and requirements even in light of an expanding array of global missions and responsibilities - everything from shows of presence to humanitarian relief - some context is useful:• The U.S. operates 11 large carriers, all nuclear powered. In terms of size and striking power, no other country has even one comparable ship. • The U.S. Navy has 10 large-deck amphibious ships that can operate as sea bases for helicopters and vertical-takeoff jets. No other navy has more than three, and all of those navies belong to our allies or friends. Our Navy can carry twice as many aircraft at sea as all the rest of the world combined. • The U.S. has 57 nuclear-powered attack and cruise missile submarines - again, more than the rest of the world combined. • Seventy-nine Aegis-equipped combatants carry roughly 8,000 vertical-launch missile cells. In terms of total missile firepower, the U.S. arguably outmatches the next 20 largest navies. • All told, the displacement of the U.S. battle fleet - a proxy for overall fleet capabilities - exceeds, by one recent estimate, at least the next 13 navies combined, of which 11 are our allies or partners. • And, at 202,000 strong, the Marine Corps is the largest military force of its kind in the world and exceeds the size of most world armies.”Response: This is a reprise of an argument Gates has made publicly several times. It is a line of reasoning that simply astounds me. Like the annual media story trumpeting a “Drop In Crime Even As Prison Population Surges”, the cause and effect nature of Gates statistics seem simply to evade him. The plain truth of the matter is that we have a world full of free riders, content to spend meager portions of their defense budgets on navies BECAUSE we have such a dominant one. That Navy—our Navy—performs a critical function in the global system, one performed at different times by the leading maritime nation of the world. The English, the Portuguese and the Dutch all provided a “global good” by being as powerful as they were and ensuring that others could safely and reliably conduct commerce across wide expanses. What is most dangerous of all about Gates riff here is where it could lead—and that is to a naval arms race. Our spending on a dominant Navy discourages virtually every nation on earth from building bigger more powerful navies (more on that in a bit). Should we begin to show signs of walking away from that dominance—other nations will see themselves has having no other option than to build more ships. While we may short-
sightedly think that is just fine, in the long run, such a naval arms race would be destabilizing.
Next:
“Potential adversaries are well-aware of our overwhelming conventional advantage - which is why, despite significant naval modernization programs underway in some countries, no one intends to bankrupt themselves by challenging the us to a shipbuilding competition akin to the Dreadnought race before World War I.”Response: Again, this is simply sloppy thinking. Were we to be seen as diminishing our role, the shipbuilding competition
wouldn’t BE against US—it would pit China vs. Japan vs. South Korea vs. Russia vs. France vs. England…etc. Our dominant Navy is what keeps a lid on all this. That said, the lid is beginning to over-pressurize, and the source of that pressure is China—who Gates blithely and obliquely refers to as a countries with a “…significant naval modernization program underway.” Gates would have us believe that the Chinese are merely modernizing their fleet, and not operating it differently. He points to their anti-access challenges and trumpets Air Sea Battle—but the Chinese threat is more than just anti-access technologies. Numbers count, and they are on a building blitz. Here’s a peek from Ron O’Rourke at what the Chinese are doing in building submarines: “Between 1995 and 2007, China placed into service a total of 38 submarines of all kinds, or an average of about 2.9 submarines per year. This average commissioning rate, if sustained indefinitely, would eventually result in a steady-state submarine force of 58 to 88 boats of all kinds, assuming an average submarine life of 20 to 30 years”. Just modernizing? Chinese surface shipbuilding programs are even more aggressive. Finally, given China’s growing and dynamic economy, it
isn’t apparent that they WOULD bankrupt themselves in challenging us, at least as far as the terms of such a challenge are conducted today.
Now to this:
“In particular, the Navy will need numbers, speed, and the ability to operate in shallow water, especially as the nature of war in the 21st century pushes us toward smaller, more diffuse weapons and units that increasingly rely on a series of networks to wage war. As we learned last year, you don’t necessarily need a billion-dollar guided missile destroyer to chase down and deal with a bunch of teenage pirates wielding AK-47s and RPGs.”Response: No Mr. Secretary, you don’t necessarily need a billion dollar destroyer to chase down pirates—but if one happens to be in the neighborhood transiting home from its Theater Ballistic Missile station (as this one was), should its Captain simply “turn a blind eye” to pirates as being beneath the mighty economic weight of his ship? That is the value of such technologically advanced vessels---they can do the work on the high end and they can do the work on the low end.
And:
“These issues invariably bring up debates over so-called “gaps” between stated requirements and current platforms - be they ships, aircraft, or anything else. More often than not, the solution offered is either more of what we already have or modernized versions of preexisting capabilities. This approach ignores the fact that we face diverse adversaries with finite resources that consequently force them to come at the U.S. in unconventional and innovative ways. The more relevant gap we risk creating is one between capabilities we are pursuing and those that are actually needed in the real world of tomorrow.”Response: Those debates are so UNTIDY,
aren’t they Mr. Secretary—so UNSEEMLY, so PAROCHIAL. His citation of the “more relevant gap we risk creating is one between capabilities we are pursuing and those that are actually needed in the real world of tomorrow” strikes me as soothsaying at the highest level, a bit of an “I know better than you” approach.
Not content to skewer just the Navy, Gates moves onto the Marine Corps:
“But we have to take a hard look at where it would be necessary or sensible to launch another major amphibious landing again - especially as advances in anti-ship systems keep pushing the potential launch point further from shore. On a more basic level, in the 21st century, what kind of amphibious capability do we really need to deal with the most likely scenarios, and then how much?”Response: Don’t get me wrong—I’
ve never been much for major opposed amphibious landings in modern warfare. But Gates is sending some STRONG signals of hostility to forcible entry ops with these words, and I fear they run the risk of dealing crippling blows to the capability at exactly the time when such operations FROM THE SEA may become more important. Let’s face it, no one’s going to be all that thrilled about hosting 150-200K troops for six months anywhere in the near future. We may face a time in the near future that fighting our way in, establishing a
lodgment and then building out from there with seaborne heavy forces is our ONLY OPTION for introducing significant force into a region. We don’t swing the same lumber we once did, and nations
aren’t necessarily going to be rolling over and putting their paws in the air in order to accept five divisions of land army.
After taking on the Marines, he turns his gaze on aircraft carriers, once again turning to the feckless “massive over-match” argument.
“Our current plan is to have eleven carrier strike groups through 2040 and it's in the budget. And to be sure, the need to project power across the oceans will never go away. But, consider the massive over-match the U.S. already enjoys. Consider, too, the growing anti-ship capabilities of adversaries. Do we really need eleven carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one? Any future plans must address these realities.”Response: Again, our “massive
overmatch” is what keeps the lid on and keeps nations from re-arming themselves in some
pre-WWI orgy. Deal away the
overmatch and sow the seeds for future war.
This paragraph was a
doozie:
“Even so, it is important to remember that, as the wars recede, money will be required to reset the Army and Marine Corps, which have borne the brunt of the conflicts. And there will continue to be long-term - and inviolable - costs associated with taking care of our troops and their families. In other words, I do not foresee any significant increases in top-line of the shipbuilding budget beyond current assumptions. At the end of the day, we have to ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 to 6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines, and $11 billion carriers.”Response: This is the fastball down the middle of the plate I’
ve been waiting for. The burden here seems to be on the Navy, what with all those expensive toys and all. Where is the burden placed on the Secretary of Defense to state a logical, strategic case for “resetting” our land forces? What is it we’re going to do with them? Will we fight more Asian land wars? And the costs associated with our troops and their families? How will “resetting” the Army sustain and advance American leadership in an increasingly unbalanced multi-polar world? How about the extra 120K Soldiers and Marines we bought in what was a profoundly popular political move but a profoundly short-sighted strategic move? Why does he see no
topline increases in Navy shipbuilding? Why, because the Navy is getting its share of the pie! And when the cuts come, it will suffer its share of the cuts—no more, no less. That’s the Joint way.
To close, Mr. Gates continually accuses the defense establishment of “next war-
itis”, that they have paid insufficient attention to the wars we’re in whilst they pursue the toys and goodies for the next war. This has never struck me as a particularly bad thing, as you fight wars (at least in the Navy) with stuff designed and procured 25-30 years earlier. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Gates’ continuing criticism of “next war-
itis” will leave us less well prepared to fight the next war—when it comes.
Bryan McGrath
