Heavy Heart

One way or the other, for at least one more day I shall share my morning coffee with the man I have shared it with for the past many years.

RAND Maritime IW Monograph

The RAND Corp. recently published a study on Maritime Irregular Warfare commissioned by Naval Special Warfare Command. For those handful of USN folks outside the NSW community who follow maritime IW, it's worth a quick look.

The study treads little new water, but does offer some good lessons “relearned.” For example, the paper’s suggestion that “…when building partner capacity, either in MIW or land-based IW, the United States should make efforts to provide equipment and technology that the partner will be able to maintain and operate without difficulty,” sounds a lot like: “NUW should avoid the trap of buying new capabilities for a partner maritime force that are unsustainable without ongoing U.S. financial and logistics support.” But digging a little deeper, the observation that we need to know the basics before teaching the basics is spot on: “One problem associated with BPC and the allocation of rudimentary equipment is that U.S. sailors may never have been trained or may have forgotten how to use such equipment themselves. For example, U.S. sailors accustomed to Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation and forward-looking infrared systems on their RIBs may not be able to teach small-boat tactical night navigation with a compass and nautical charts. Sailors tasked with BPC may need refresher training in basic skills and tactics.” The fact that the USN has gutted initial enlisted training pipelines and technical schools and that our own maintenance house is not in order doesn't bode well for future naval SFA efforts.

The piece also provides what is probably the most extensive review of OEF-P maritime activities I’ve seen in open source, so that section alone is worthy of a read. The case study on unconventional warfare activities by the CIA in Nicaragua during the 1980s is also fairly interesting. But piracy isn’t handled very well (some dated and/or inaccurate information).

For those who are still interested in maritime IW but don't have time to go through the whole study, here is a TLDR version.

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.

Seapower in Culture: In Which We Serve

This is the story of a ship. That's a great line; in its own way, it's as memorable as "I believe in America." In Which We Serve is surely the story of a ship, but it's also the story of seapower. The film begins with the construction of HMS Torrin, a ship based on the K-class destroyer HMS Kelly (HMS Kashmir apparently filled in for several external scenes). This is an inspired decision; it connects modern war to the industrial base, which lays the foundation for how the rest of the film will explore the relationship between the sailor and the homefront. The action begins with scenes of HMS Torrin destroying (defenseless) German transports during the invasion of Crete, a powerful sequence reminiscent not just of Crete but of a number of similar operations, including the ROCN response to the invasion of Hainan Island. The next morning, German air attacks cripple and sink HMS Torrin, leaving her crew attached helplessly to a few life rafts. Most of the rest of the film is told in flashback; HMS Torrin has participated in convoy escort, in the defense of Norway, and in the evacuation at Dunkirk. The German return several times to strafe the survivors, but most of the crew is eventually picked up by another destroyer.

Noel Coward wrote the screenplay, stars as Captain Kinross, and co-directed with David Lean. In Which We Serve was the latter's first directing credit. I think it could be plausibly argued that seapower hovers at the edges of most of Lean's work; the connection between desert warfare and seapower is made explicit in Lawrence of Arabia, for example, and much of Dr. Zhivago feels like island hopping through the Russian steppe. Many of his other works evoke, often implicitly, an empire held together by command of the sea. In any case, an extraordinary level of talent is on display.

Although In Which We Serve is surely a film about seapower, with perhaps an ideal subject for an investigation of seapower in the 20th century, it nevertheless lacks the conversation about seapower that happens in many films about airpower. You find this conversation in Twelve O'Clock High, for example, when General Savage explains the importance of daylight precision bombing to his senior officers, and you get it several times in The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell. I'm not sure why this is; it may be that seapower is less deeply theorized than airpower (perhaps because of the need for a theory of airpower in order to justify service independence), or that the maritime forces are simply more secure in their existence and necessity than the air forces, or that seapower is less theoretically settled than airpower.

We certainly see seapower, though; Torrin interferes with German landings in Crete and Norway, protects British commerce, saves British troops in Dunkirk, and in general does the variety of Mahanian jobs that you would expect of a World War II British destroyer. A destroyer is the ideal choice for demonstrating the variety and value of seapower; it's a ship sufficiently small to be "missed" and thus avoid awkward historical questions ("But there was no heavy cruiser at the Second Battle of Narvik! That would have changed the whole complexion of the fight etc. etc."), but large enough to have an impact of consequence on battle action. The film evokes the history of the Royal Navy in plausible ways, with Kinross placing the purpose of HMS Torrin squarely within RN tradition, while other characters mutter such lines as "Remember Nelson!" "Yeah, look what happened to him!"

 While In Which We Serve celebrates the RN, we see the other services in action. The RAF fights the Battle of Britain as Captain Kinross (literally) takes a pleasant nap below; a sailor from Torrin finds himself in a friendly argument with a Royal Marine ("You're a Marine; you don't know nothing about destroyers"); and the officers and men of HMS Torrin mix with British Army soldiers rescued from Dunkirk. The last includes one of the most poignant scenes of the film, when battered, demoralized soldiers form up and march away after disembarking, just as Torrin prepares another jaunt across the Channel.

Unlike some other films produced with substantial military support, In Which We Serve is mostly dialogue, much of it away from the fighting. Lean and Coward show the connections between the battlefront and the homefront as well as any war film that I've ever seen, creating well rounded female characters placed within plausible domestic settings. The film doesn't skimp on the action; we get to see Heinkels dropping bombs on HMS Torrin, German destroyers torpedoing HMS Torrin, HMS Torrin blasting away at same German destroyers and German transports, etc. But we also see relationships on board both catalyzed and reflected in relationships at home, and we get a very good sense of why the sailors are fighting. Whereas most American war films demonstrate national solidarity by including characters from a variety of regional and ethnic backgrounds, British war films tend to concentrate on class distinctions, which allows a plausibly dense network of interactions across ship and home communities.

This is a genuinely fantastic film, probably the best I've ever seen on the subject of seapower. Fortunately, it's available on Netflix streaming, and is well worth two hours of your time. The next subject of this series will be Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands.

Improved living conditions on PLAN ships

For the past number of years, China has always made the announcement that it is using the increased defense budget to not only pay for purchases and training, but also to raise the wages and living standard of the armed forces. The latter point often gets ignored by the China threat crowd, but I think it's something important to look at.

Kanwa defence has often talked about the much more significant improvements in the PLA living quarters compared to that of India's armed forces. It really is a stark contrast when one considers the amount of investment both countries spend on procuring new weapons.

The improved wages and living condition of PLA service members is a general reflection on the changing dynamics of the Chinese society. As a result of the vastly improved quality of lives in China, PLA also has to improve its living conditions to attract new recruits. When one considers that PLAN is shifting toward a blue water style navy, PLAN sailors will have to spend longer time away from home than ever before. As with the other three services, PLAN is looking to recruit higher educated and more technologically proficient personnel in order to operate the newer ships that it has been building. The recruitment process cannot be easy for PLAN. Not only does it have to compete with all of the companies around the country, but it also has to compete with the other three services of PLA. There is already a growing population crisis in China due to the extremely tilted male to female ratio of the current generation of youth. The increasingly blue water demand for PLAN will result in longer trips away from home for the sailors. The life style of having to spend long period away from home naval base is not appealing to most young men, who have to think about finding wives. As a result of this, PLAN has moved away from Soviet style of treating sailors like robots to actually allowing sailors to have more enjoyment on ships. If they do not do this, PLAN would have a really hard time to retain the NCOs that it recruited. Chinese news websites have documented the improvements in sleeping areas, seating and food for submarines and other ships that are making long deployments. We have seen pictures of larger basketball courts and improved cafeteria on Type 071 LPDs. The most interesting part of this movement is the commissioning of the No. 88 Life Style ship as shown below.


Since China does not have any official overseas naval base, No. 88 was launched to address crew fatigue. It should also be able to give sailors medical attention. While this is not as luxurious as a cruise ship, it is still quite an interesting ship.

First we have special female cabin with more spaces and head board that can be lowered to become a desk.

Other cabins come in the form of high quality single person cabin, single person cabin, 2 people cabin, 4 people cabin and 6 people cabin. Some cabins apparently also hold retractable hammocks (for additional personnel I guess).

They have the first ever super market on a PLAN ship. Aside from this, they also having automated vending machines.

I think I may have seen work out room like this on Type 071, but this is probably the largest one on any PLAN ships.

It has a full size basketball court on the deck with a 300 meter track around it.

We have a modern conference room that can hold 200 people. With advanced audio visual equipment equipment, this can achieve multiple purposes: to organize cultural and sports party, serve as a maritime cinema. You can also unicom via video transmission system to the main compartment of the ship with a remote network information sharing.

It has a large multipurpose cafeteria.

And finally, it even has a cafe on board.


So, the living conditions on PLAN is definitely improving. While this "life style" ship is an anomaly, we should see more living style improvements and food quality improvements on PLAN war ships in the future. That not only increases the morale of sailors, but also will help PLAN recruit and retain college grads.

FDL Book Salon: The Short American Century

Tomorrow evening from 5pm-7pm (Eastern) I'll be moderating a Firedoglake book salon for The Short American Century, a volume edited by Andrew Bacevich on the subject of American exceptionalism and the "American Century." Dr. Bacevich will be on hand to answer questions and further discussion. Should be fun; check in if you get a chance.