Whither the Flexible Force

From here.

The Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), along with the embarked 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), departed San Diego Sept. 29 to begin a MEU certification exercise (CERTEX) in preparation for an upcoming deployment.

Led by Commander, Amphibious Squadron (PHIBRON) 5, the Makin Island ARG consists of the Navy's newest amphibious assault ship USS Makin Island (LHD 8), the amphibious-transport dock ship USS New Orleans (LPD 18), and the dock-landing ship USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52).

"The success of this final stage of pre-deployment training will prove that we are now deployable worldwide in support of a wide-range of missions," said Capt. Humberto Quintanilla, PHIBRON 5 commander.

"It will take extensive Blue-Green team efforts, from all the Navy and Marine Corps ranks, to make this event a success," said Quintanilla. "I am confident that our combat skills honed during previous ARG-MEU integrated training events will deliver the levels of expertise and operational art required to master the unforeseen and blind missions that will be thrown at us during CERTEX. It's time to line up and snap the ball."

Quintanilla said the CERTEX is expected to include the evaluation of multiple evolutions, including small boat raids; visit, board, search, and seizure training; helicopter and mechanized amphibious raids; mass casualty responses; and a non-combatant evacuation operation.

"The certification exercise is a validation of ARG-MEU capabilities by observers who will evaluate both our ability to conduct missions under real time conditions and variables beyond our control. The end product will be a finely tuned combat force ready to deploy," said Col. Michael R. Hudson, 11th MEU's commanding officer.

Hudson said the outcome of the exercise will be captured in a report and presented to the commanding general of the First Marine Expeditionary Force. If the 11th MEU's performance meets the standard, it will be certified to deploy.

"This exercise solidifies best practices and is the capstone event for the MEU before we deploy," said Hudson. "The certification process ensures that the 11th MEU will have the most up-to-date training to support the commanders we will work for overseas."

The Makin Island ARG is scheduled for a routine deployment later this year.

Commissioned in 2009, Makin Island is the Navy's newest amphibious assault ship capable of utilizing surface and air assets to move Marine forces ashore. The ship is named in honor of the daring World War II raid carried out by Marine Raider Companies A and B, Second Raider Battalion, on Japanese held Makin Island Aug. 17-18, 1942. LHD 8 is the second ship to bear the name "USS Makin Island."

I continue to watch the USS Makin Island (LHD 8) as it prepares for deployment, and I hope others are paying attention too. What looks on paper to be a normal deployment for another MEU/ARG team is, in fact, one of the troubling signs of the times for both the Navy and Marines and needs to be observed carefully for what it actually is.

On March 23, 2024 the USS Bataan (LHD 5), USS Mesa Verde (LPD 19), and USS Whidbey Island (LSD 41) deployed early in support of operations off Libya. Arriving in the Mediterranean Sea the ARG relieved the Kearsarge ARG off Libya on April 27th. It has already been 6 months and it is unclear when the Makin Island ARG will be deploying, but clearly they are not ready yet. It is starting to look like the Bataan ARG will be deployed at least 9 months, potentially longer.

The Kearsarge ARG, which was relieved by Bataan ARG, consisted of the USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), USS Ponce (LPD 15), and USS Carter Hall (LSD 50) had been deployed 9 months from August 27, 2024 - May 16, 2011.

Bataan ARG will almost certainly be second 9-month ARG deployment in a row.

Other than the picture in the top right, you might otherwise be unaware that on September 30, 2024 USS Cleveland (LPD 7) was decommissioned, leaving the Navy with only 28 amphibious ships. The agreement between the Navy and Marine Corps is a floor of 33 amphibious ships, with the requirement actually set at 38 - meaning we are now 10 amphibious ships below requirement and already seeing the results.

A few points.

When the Navy talks about 'strategy' in the context of force structure planning, at what point do naval officers note the high demand for amphibious ships and what are they doing about the current shortage? Is it time to start asking better questions, for example, whether the LSD(X) program should be about replacing existing LSDs or if the LSD(X) program should be about adding additional hulls to the nations amphibious force to compliment existing amphibious ships rather than replacing them?

Is it time to look at the LCS program for what it is - a short run of a couple dozen ships intended to kickstart a lessons learning process in unmanned technology networks and instead of building more, the Navy should be moving money towards building capacity in larger, much more flexible amphibious ships which have greater space and significantly more options for providing mothership capacity to the US Navy force?

There is a maintenance bill for two east coast LHDs at the end of these 9+ month deployments. Are those maintenance bills properly funded? Is the professional development of sailors and officers, including promotions, aligned properly to account for the extraordinary efforts made by the people who have done more here than others have been expected to do in similar circumstances?

USS Mesa Verde (LPD 19) was commissioned on December 15, 2007. The ship and crew participated in UNITAS Gold in April 2009 and PANAMAX 2009 in September 2009. The ship and crew was on deployment from January 18, 2024 - August 15, 2024 in support of operations from the Haiti earthquake to anti-piracy operations off Somalia. The ship and crew departed again on March 23, 2024 and is unlikely to return home until December of 2011. In the ships first 48 months since commissioning, the ship will have been on at least 20 months of deployments and major international exercises. It is hard to imagine the ship is going to be in good condition after being pushed this hard, and any sailors who have been on that ship since the ship was commissioned almost certainly have a stressed family situation to prove it. No other ship in the US Navy has even close to as much time on deployment or deployment training than USS Mesa Verde (LPD 19), it's not even close - even for forward deployed ships.

In case you were wondering, the experts of the San Antonio class LPDs are all on one ship - USS Mesa Verde (LPD 19), because it is the ship of that class that has done the most in the least amount of time, and done so at the operational tempo of deployment vs the shoreline.

The amphibious fleet of the US is in high demand because they are the most flexible ships in the US arsenal, but is seen as and is given a low priority by leaders in the US Navy with the total amphibious force now 15% below clearly articulated bare minimum size and 25% below stated requirement size. For whatever reason, both Congress and the DoD are watching the Avondale shipyard that builds amphibious ships go out of business due to lack of work.

What is the plan to address these problems, because all indications are there is no plan.

The US Navy's Combat Ineffective Mine Warfare Force

The article by Sam Lagrone in Janes Navy International this week on the MCM fleet is insanely informative. Titled New Avengers: USN's MCM fleet in need of vital upgrades, it is unfortunately behind the Janes firewall, but I have included a few very important quotes.

Despite the threat, the navy's 14 Avenger-class mine countermeasures (MCM) vessels have one of the worst readiness and obsolescence records in the fleet. At the start of a recent year-long review of the Avenger class, NAVSEA found that only a tiny proportion of the vessels were able to execute their mission, Captain Robin Rusell, representing NAVSEA's Deputy Commander for Surface Warfare (SEA 21), told Jane's.

The SEA 21 study was prompted by a report in February 2010 from the Fleet Review Panel of Surface Forces Readiness, led by retired Vice Admiral Philip M Balisle. The Balisle report concluded that nearly two decades of neglect had resulted in acute readiness problems across the surface fleet. "What we had was a naval sea systems organization that was ... not as responsive as it could have been," Capt Rusell said.

Historically, MCM has been given less of a priority by the USN than other warfare areas and has often been relegated to the sidelines of procurement struggles. "There's roughly a USD500 million bill to fix the ships we have and keep them operational," Scott Truver, a director of national security at Gryphon Technologies, who helped the USN formulate its mine warfare doctrine from 1992 to 2004, told Jane's . That bill has yet to be paid in full.

It's actually worse than you think.

In April 2010, the SEA 21 MCM Task Force began an evaluation of the Avenger class to assess its health and readiness. The initial findings were bleak. "What we found out on going onboard all 14 mine countermeasure ships was that only one of them was able to go under way and [fully] execute her mission," Capt Rusell said. "One out of 14 is not too good." Of the remaining 13 ships, some could get underway and perform some of the MCM missions.

Only one in fourteen? That's less than 8% of the total force! Ouch! This quote by Scott Truver is clever, but brutal.

Truver characterizes the six ships in San Diego as "one training ship and five spares".

The article notes that funding for mine warfare is expected to increase in FY13. We'll see, this stuff tends to get high profile right up until it's time to pay the bill, then somehow gets shoved in a desk until there is a real problem.

A news report like this highlights that when it comes to the least expensive, most effective asymmetrical threat virtually any nation can employ, the US Navy is woefully unprepared with funding priorities largely focused on the most expensive, extreme, and unlikely threats.

One good thing about the Littoral Combat Ship program that isn't noted enough - for once, at least MIW is getting high visibility and priority with a budget thanks to LCS. With that said, IOC for the LCS MIW module is scheduled for 2017, so the next 6 years we will be dependent upon the MCMs to meet the needs for MIW.

The Avenger class and it's associated capability is treated like a red headed step child when it comes to budget priority. Hopefully FY13 budget will fund requirements for MIW, because MIW is both art and skill - and that art and skill requires dedication to proper resourcing to do well.

New America Foundation and Command of the Commons

While Raymond contemplates the reality of children at both ends of the developmental spectrum, I take once again to the ramparts of this blog to carry the banner of Seapower against the dread tyrant--neo-isolationist, academic offshore balancing--this time packaged as the New America Foundation thinkpiece "Whither Command of the Commons? Choosing Security Over Control" and the two blogposts Raymond links to here, and here. 

I initially responded to this piece privately, by attaching a series of e-stickys to the pdf version of the report and sharing it with several hundred of my closest friends.  This post attempts to weave those short snippets into a coherent narrative.

First, let there be no mistake--there really isn't anything new in what Messers Lalwani and Shifrinson have put forward in their NAF work.  Not that it isn't 1) well written 2) well argued or 3) interesting.  It just isn't new.  Take a look at anything Chris Preble from Cato has written over the years, and you'll find similar arguments.  So the breathless praise heaped on the work by the blogger Raymond cites seems a bit much, considering the well-worn nature of the arguments.  Again--the age of the arguments doesn't matter--I'll make ancient ones in this post.  I'm specifically addressing the hype in the blogs cited above.

Second--this piece is a serious one, and should be responded to in a lenghty, point by point refutation.  I unfortunately, don't have the bandwidth for that right now, so I'll do my bidding in choppy little point/counterpoints.

Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): This work is an attempt to put forward an offshore balancing inspired military component of grand strategy, one that would address both the "free rider" problem and the problem of "insecurity" caused by the presence of US combat maritime forces in varous places in the world. 

Point 1:  The authors cite "cyber" as a modern "commons"--like sea, air, and space.  I'm not sure this one holds up to scrutiny.  Much if not most of what passes for a "cyber commons" is owned by corporations or nations, or is heavily controlled by nations. 

Point 2:  A good bit of their argument rests on the perception of "insecurity" or "backlash" arising from the forward posturing of US naval forces.  Here's a bit from the paper:  "Equally important, this approach has the potential to trigger counter-productive reactions--insecurity, counter-balancing, and backlash--that may themselves come to pose challenges....Indeed control carries in it the seeds of its own eventual unraveling."  My question is when will this potential manifest itself?  We've deployed in various hubs/fashions considerable combat power globally since the end of WWII--where has the counterbalancing behavior been?  Ok, let's just take since the fall of the Wall--where is it? 

Point 3:  The authors raise the "free rider" bogeyman, as any reputable offshore balancing work must, writing:  "...that by doing less, the United States can encourage other regional powers to do more in protecting the commons, thereby discouraging free-riding."  "Doing more" has the potential to play out as "naval arms race", something we've seen the disastrous results of in the past.  Like most other OB papers of this nature, there is a sense of security in the notion that a pullback of US forces will be at least as stable--if not more stable--than the security balance that currently exists.   I truly believe the burden of proof is with the OB community on this one, as they uniformly paint a picture in which something known as "sufficient" military force would be maintained "over the horizon" to intervene--presumably JUST IN TIME to tip security balances back in our favor.  Putting aside the incredible discernment required of poltical authority to intervene in a timely manner (such that blood and treasure are not wasted), the notion that naval forces--built and maintained for war but operated far from where our interests actually are--would survive future budget knives is difficult to consider.  One of the PRIMARY benefits we derive of capitally intensive naval forces is the peacetime ROI we enjoy in assuring allies and deterring potential enemies--neither of which would be the case were the force operated--as the authors suggest, in places such as "beyond the second island chain". 

Point 4:  There is a signficant factual error here--when the authors state: "In effect, the control strategy encompasses three related ideas: 1) the US should exercise control of the commons at all times.....  This is however, not supported by the Navy's 2007 Maritime Strategy, which states:  "We will be able to impose local sea control wherever necessary, ideally in concert with friends and allies, but by ourselves if we must."   They have quite simply over-stated the strategic aim of the US Navy--command/control of the sea WHERE WE NEED IT, which conveys with it an economy of force, strategic decision making and prioritization of effort. 

Point 5:  The authors grant that our current approach appears to be working, at least in the short term, but that it "...it is a particularly costly strategy because it conflates efforts by other states to preserve their sovereignty and protect their interests with outright challenges to the commons."  With respect to excessive and unrecognized claims--this is EXACTLY the case, and conflation is appropriate.

Point 6:  Cost.  The authors state:  "The current American strategy of control of the commons therefore, is prone not just to the spiral of insecurity (which they do not prove) but also to spirals of cost escalation."  Well yes, of course, if we believe we should practice control of the commons AND fight two land wars AND fight a worldwide counterinsurgency.  This is one of the main complaints I have about the paper---that by pulling the maritime domain out of a larger context, they've lost the larger context.  The blogger Raymond cites almost jokes about this lack of context or linkage, when he says "Check. It is fiscally unsustainable to continue performing this mission.  Well, unless the Army and Air Force are prepared to take one for the team and give budgetary priority to the Navy". Well, yes, now that you mention it, that's exactly what ought to happen.  Instead of throwing our arms up and curtailing that element of military power MOST LIKELY to deter the next major power war, why not resource those capabilities at the expense of those more likely to dissipate our national power in the long run?

Point 7:  The most breathtaking statement in the entire report:  "The model for the United States here ought to be the United Kingdom, which successfully utilized the Japanese Empire to preserve Britain's Far East Interests over 1902-1920, and improve relations with the United States and Russia."  Let me get this straight:  The model for the US should be the 18 years in which the UK set the stage for the growth and ambition of a maritime power who would ultimately complete its ejection from the Far East and kill several tens of thousands of US and UK forces?  History did not stop in 1920. 

Point 8:  Lots of idealistic optimism, like this:  "In effect, Chinese naval expansion will either be checked by China's own acknowledgement of its limitations or by actual capability gaps relative to the United States.  As a result, American command of the commons can survive growth of Chinese maritime capabilties."  Maybe, but they WON'T survive if they become a surge force from Hawaii and San Diego!  They will be rolled up and put away as an expensive anachronism, leaving no real way to "tip" balances back in our favor, undercutting the entire premise of OB.

Point 9:  The authors come down pretty hard on efforts to more closely align with India, stating once again the horror of "insecurity".  They put forward the notion that moving closer with India could cause China to feel "encircled".  Putting aside for a moment whether the Indians actually want to become more closely aligned, the authors quite rightly assert that India's own growing maritime power will serve as a self-generated check on the Chinese--without getting us involved.  It occurs to me then, by their logic, shouldn't we be discouraging India from its maritime buildup, as China will feel encircled anyway, no?

Point 10:  Surrendering our Competitive Advantage:   "Conversely, advanced fighter aircraft, aircraft carriers, multi-mission guided missile destroyers and littoral combat ships would be reduced or withdrawn to the United States--or eliminated outright--to clearly mitigate the threat posed by US assets intended to defend the commons".  I ask again--how long could such a fleet last?  Why would the American public support it?  We would find ourselves in short order on the receiving end of fait accompli to which we would not have the means to respond--rather than--as our authors would suggest, we would summon up the might to re-estabilish our preferred conditions.

So--to summarize, this report is yet another example of a neo-isolationist strand of offshore balancing which combines loathing of "free-riders" with conjured-up "insecurity" posed by our own powerful naval force presence--without seeing the obvious potential for real (rather than conjured) insecurity flowing from abandoned "free-riders" arming themselves with new vigor.  They make nice noises about the maintenance of "sufficient" combat power to protect our interests, without any real proposal on how to maintain such a force against further budget axes---sure to fall when the American people and their representatives wake up to the expensive luxury that is ships operating off San Diego, Guam and Diego Garcia--not deterring anyone nor reassuring anyone.

Read their entire paper, as you need to understand their arguments better than my snippets can portray.  If you'd like my "marked up" version of their .pdf (using comment stickys), write me an email.

Bryan McGrath

Good Morning Monday

The last few weekends I have been busy preparing the house for soon-to-be child #3 (a boy) while also prepping oldest #1 for college. Yeah, I may end up the dude carrying one child in the sling while looking at colleges with another. Just another American family, and all...

That leaves the cupboard for my own blog content contributions fairly empty on Monday, so this week I thought I'd highlight another group blog that I think has been putting out great content lately - Gunpowder and Lead. Run by Diane Wueger (who is too smart for me to adequately quantify it in a paragraph), the sites content now features an interesting mix of authors that hit on subjects both timely and relevant to national security interests of this audience. A few recent posts worth a look provide a few examples.

Useful Idiots by Skylar Gerrond looks at the details in the affidavit not really being discussed by news organizations for the model airplane bomber. Clever and intelligent work, that.

Next we have a pair of articles by Jonathan Rue on the New America Foundation report Whither Command of the Commons? Choosing Security Over Control (PDF). I know many of you are already discussing this report in private, and yep - we are discussing this report among the bloggers here as well. Lots worth discussing.

The person who highlighted this report to me on when it was released was Jonathan Rue, another author at Gunpowder and Lead, who has two articles Strategy, Math. Whatever. and Strategy, Geometry. Whatever. looking at this report. Good stuff, and a good starting place for discussion of this latest attempt to frame a strategic argument in the context of DoD budgets.

Other All-Star authors at Gunpowder and Lead include Caitlin Fitzgerald, who many of us know from her ridiculously intelligent Clausewitz for Kids series that is basically On War illustrated for children; and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross who used to write for the once widely read Counterterrorism blog, and recently published his book Bin Laden's Legacy: Why We're Still Losing the War on Terror (see his recent interview with Abu Muqawama at CNAS here).

While not a maritime centric blog by any measurement, certainly a blog with quality content I have found myself reading almost daily lately (and a newest addition to this blogs blogroll).

The Week Ahead

Lots of topics likely to be discussed this week including the recent announcement that Russia intends to send an aircraft carrier battlegroup to the eastern Mediterranean Sea as tensions there between Turkey, Israel, and Cyprus heat up, a few HASC hearings that may get very interesting, and as Secretary Panetta travels to Europe I look forward to how he addresses the Europeans since last time a Secretary of Defense gave a speech in Europe - Secretary Gates blasted them with criticism.

Simple Problems, Straightforward Solutions

Too often these days in the national security realm, we find ourselves over-analyzing problems consequently resulting in decision paralysis or unworkable, overly complex courses of action. Some problems truly are multifaceted and complex, such as the current situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This complexity is evidenced by a stew of insurgents, transnational terrorists, conflicting strategic interests, malign interlopers, and nuclear weapons stored amid violent Islamic extremists. It is little wonder that progress has been agonizingly slow in the wars in Southwest Asia.

But other problems are quite straightforward. Piracy is one of these problems, consisting primarily of desperate ex-fishermen with nothing to lose and everything to gain, who are led and financed by criminal thugs eager to blow their next insurance-funded ransom payment on prostitutes, khat, and luxury real estate in Kenya. Yes, Somalia's problems overall are quite complex. But they do not need to be solved in order to eradicate piracy, or at least to tamp it down to a manageable problem restricted to local waters.

Instead of rapidly implemented, simple solutions we've muddled through growing Somali piracy with unwieldy C2 architectures, extended discussion and planning, but very little decisive action. Sometimes the simplest, most elegant solution - such as when someone shoots at you, shoot them back - is also the most effective. Embarked armed security teams, which most segments of the shipping industry and flag states have begrudgingly embraced, have been 100% effective to date in stopping ship hijackings off Somalia. Even against swarm attacks, well trained, armed guards have the upper hand against pirates with small arms in open skiffs. To defeat such defenses would require a step up in equipment and tactics which probably exceed even the most competent pirates. Unlike purely defensive measures including razor wire, fire hoses, and citadels, armed response changes the risk/reward equation of the pirates. The success of simple solutions with embarked security and increased propensity to use lethal (not legal) action against pirates by CMF navies is evident in 2011's piracy statistics. “Where a year ago the Somali pirates were seeing a 55 percent success rate, in the first several months of 2011 they have seen only a 17 percent success rate…”

Yet these proactive measures are not enough. Needless to say, as long as pirate facilitation and logistical networks ashore operate with impunity, the incentive to push additional young men with weapons out to sea in search of more prey will remain. Several ways to defeat these networks are available: unilateral US or allied lethal action, international policing similar to the current AMISOM mission, or discrete deployments of allied special forces ashore in Puntland to link up with anti-piracy clan elements. Executing any of these options requires leadership on the part of the United States or one of her capable allies.

Piracy should be ended sooner, rather than later. Eventually, simple problems grow to become more complex and harder to defeat. For example, pirates and al Shabaab might see additional reasons to cooperate, such as in the recent kidnappings of European vacationers from resorts in Kenya into al Shabaab-held territory. Similarly, kidnap for ransom was a frequent crime in post-invasion Iraq and grew out of control when al Qaeda in Iraq began buying prisoners (primarily non-Iraqis) from the criminal kidnappers to raise funds for their terrorist activities and for exploitation in violent jihadi execution propaganda videos. That is, until the kidnapping networks began to be targeted with direct action by coalition forces. Moreover, the dozens of naval vessels currently tied up in countering sea criminals in the Indian Ocean can be put to much better use in the same region.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency.