Keep Some Boomers

In the Diplomat last week I engaged with Bryan's argument about SSBNs, coming out in favor of retaining a (reduced) boomer fleet:

My own view is that the United States can accept a lower threshold for at sea nuclear deterrence, but this leg should still retain a rump deterrence capability.  Survivability concerns may not be what they were, but they are still relevant, and SSBNs have both survivability and flexibility advantages over ICBMs. It isn’t accidental that China, India, and Russia are all choosing to develop or upgrade their SSBN capabilities at the same time. Concerns about shipbuilding costs should be remedied by resource transfers between services; if the Air Force no longer operates an ICBM force, then funding can (at least theoretically) shift towards the Navy. Replacement of the Ohio boats will still be expensive, but circumstances may allow life extension beyond current expectations. The long term answer may not be an entirely new SSBN design, but rather a modified Virginia class boat that could carry ballistic missiles. The Navy has argued that this design would become more expensive than an Ohio replacement, but issues of number and vulnerability may prove more manageable if the option is no boomers at all.  No other state in the world can match such a capability, and yet the U.S. presumably feels deterred from launching pre-emptive nuclear attacks on China or Russia.  A reduced SSBN force is still the best option for providing a foundational level of nuclear security.

To expand a touch, I don't think that the force-stretching problem that typically occurs when the fleet is downsized applies to the SSBN force. You don't need to ask 8 SSBNs to do the work that 12 used to accomplish, because you can achieve deterrence against any plausible adversary or coalition of adversaries with 8 boats.  Moreover, it's unlikely that any foe that can't be deterred by 8 subs can be deterred by 12.

I'm also willing to grant that the chances that significant resources might shift from other services to make up for the cost of the SSBN replacement is slim, but it's still worth making the argument; if the Air Force gets out of the ballistic missile business, the USAF's share of the pie should drop. Here's some more on the aging ICBM force.

Talking Littoral Combat Ships With the Under

The following contribution is by Robert 'O Work, Undersecretary of the Navy. He has requested I post this response to my LCS blog post from last night. The response was directed at me, and he originally was going to publish these remarks in the comment thread of the other post, but my sense from Bob's request is that he is looking to talk LCS with everyone - not just me, so have fun but be respectful in the comments.

Galrahn: thanks for your candid assessment. As someone who has generally been supportive of the LCS, I was looking forward to your reaction, and to what promises to be a lively give and take over the next couple of posts.  Here are simply a few rejoinders for now:

I know we disagree on this point, but I think your first point is you are asking for the second of two reports, which is yet to be written.  The one that tells the potential future histories of the ship.  I think that report is premature. This ship is unlike any ship the Navy has ever built; it is a truly disruptive system, requiring different thinking.  I wouldn't write the second report until the ships have been in the fleet for some time so Sailors can really determine the absolute best way to operate and fight the ship

Second, you complain that the report is simply a rehash of history. But, like Ralph Peters, I like to take a GPS approach to things....first thing you have to know is where you are.  And it is a good thing to know how you got there.  And despite all the talking and blogging about LCS over the past three years, I have always been dissatisfied about complaints of this or that without putting into context what the ship was designed to do.  So, this report was written first to answer the question: why isn't the LCS a corvette? Why isn't it a frigate?  Why does it look the way it does? What it is designed to do? How did we get to this point?  After talking to literally hundreds of people, despite all the LCS's well documented programmatic history, there was little written on why leaders made the decisions they made. As a result, it seemed clear to me that few people really appreciated the thought process and decisions that went into the ship, the difficult tradeoffs made, and why the ship is the designed the way it is.  The purpose of this report is to catalog the history in as objective way as possible, in a different way than I've seen to this point.

I read your blog--and I know this is not what you meant (at least I think this to be true)--and it almost sounds as if you expect the development of a ship to be a simple engineering problem, with predictable, well-defined decision points. That the ship concept of ops needs to be stable, like the design drawings. If there is anything I've learned as Undersecretary, nothing could be further from the truth. Ships are conceived as part of a fleet design, with good ideas on how they will fit into it. But things change, especially for a system like LCS that doesn't fit into any neat box. And subsequent decisions are made for any number of reasons over the course of years--to account for programmatic, budget, threat, and program execution changes. The development is never a straight path.  After analyzing the LCS's developmental history, I conclude: okay, the Navy could have done three things much better: early program execution; staying on narrative; and prepping the surface warfare enterprise for the ship.  But in terms of concept, design tradeoffs, and capability and capacities, I think this program remained remarkably stable and true to the original intent.  I therefore conclude the Navy got the ship it wanted, with pretty much the capabilities it wanted, for pretty much the price it wanted. In my view, this hardly the management execution fiasco you describe.

Now it is certainly true than any honest and objective narrative about a ship's development history is going to be a hair-raising story of expectations, balancing requirements versus program costs, and making hard tradeoffs.  As I prepared the history, even as one more familiar with the LCS than most, I was surprised how the ship evolved through its development process.  But, like I said,  we pretty much got to where the people who conceived of the ship intended to go; now it's time to take it out and let Sailors really wring it out.  As I say in the report, I trust our Sailors to help us make the LCS even better.  In the meantime, however, it's looking to be a pretty capable small combatant--albeit different in kind than most.

I couldn't agree more with a segment of your closing paragraph:" the  Littoral Combat Ship - warts and all - is one of the great things the Navy is doing today and legitimately - besides ballistic missile defense - the only sign of innovation in surface warfare taking place on the entire planet..." But it is definitely a disruptive system.  It will evolve in fleet service, as we exploit its strengths and better understand its weaknesses.  What's wrong with that?

Finally, this report was not intended to be an analytical defense of 55 LCSs.  That comes with our Force Structure Assessments.  Our new one comes out soon.  We can talk about numbers when it does.

Looking forward to more give and take.

Best, Bob

LCS - A History Lesson in Failed Execution

(Lt. Jan Shultis / U.S. Navy)

The Naval War College has released a working paper titled The Littoral Combat Ship: How We Got Here, and Why, by Robert O. Work. I think it is a very interesting read and perhaps one of the most candid and insightful collections of history related to a Navy program that many of us have watched unfold in real time over the last decade. I have many thoughts, and have no intention of trying to capture all of them in a single post, so for the foreseeable future I intend to discuss this topic through several posts.

First, I note that John Lehman was the last political appointee to ever put anything this comprehensive together on paper as a professional contribution to the Navy community. Given the current political environment, this might also be the last time we see a political appointee make this kind of professional contribution for the next few decades.

I was originally given this paper in October to read for feedback when Bob Work submitted it to the NWC for publication. My opinion has not changed. I appreciate the effort and the detailed research poured into this article, and I understand what the Undersecretary is trying to do, but in my opinion I think the article does what everyone always does when discussing the Littoral Combat Ship - it focuses on the mistakes of the past. Because the history of the Littoral Combat Ship is a lesson in what not to do, I personally no longer find anything in the history of the Littoral Combat Ship of any value because I look towards the future of the program, not the past. In my opinion the history of the program, as laid out in detail by Bob Work's latest paper, offers no justification for the stated future of the LCS program at 55 ships.

If the Navy had any credibility left on the Littoral Combat Ship, and for the record I am not sure they do right now, it is my impression this paper erodes all remaining credibility of the Littoral Combat Ship into oblivion. While I know that is not what Bob Work was trying to do, I do believe the paper ultimately delivers the impression that the Navy has been lost at sea trying to execute the concept of this program from the beginning.

At the end of the paper on pages 45-46 (PDF pages 49-50) recent activities that have happened under the leadership of CNO Greenert are discussed. Those activities include the sustainment war game conducted in January of 2012 to assess the logistics, maintenance, and support plans to support the early deployment of USS Freedom (LCS 1) to Singapore, the "OPNAV Report" assembled and delivered by Rear Admiral Samuel Perez last spring, the review of LCS material condition by Rear Admiral Robert Wray, President of the Navy's Board of Inspection and Survey, in preparation for the upcoming deployment, and the second wargame early summer 2012 directed by Admiral John Harvey on LCS concepts of deployment and operations.

Those four activities were the major Littoral Combat Ship activities of 2012, and with the ship set to deploy in only a few weeks, perhaps it is time to review where the Navy is today as a result of all that history in the Work paper.

The first wargame on logistics, maintenance, and support plans was held in January 2012. Chris Cavas has an article about it here written in July of last year. The wargame was expected to help the Navy plan for the upcoming USS Freedom (LCS 1) deployment, and I am sure it will be very helpful in that regard, but the results of the wargame suggest the Littoral Combat Ship program is going to have serious problems as a forward operating vessel in ports where US Navy presence is limited, ports like the one USS Freedom (LCS 1) will be stationed at in Singapore.

The OPNAV Report put together by Rear Admiral Samuel Perez was completed early last year and is so brutally honest about the Littoral Combat Ship the Navy can't even release a declassified version for public consumption because it would, legitimately, be too embarrassing and likely damage the non-existent credibility of the LCS program. The OPNAV Report was exactly what the Navy asked for, an honest assessment of what is needed to fix the Littoral Combat Ship, and it turned out that honesty was also brutally ugly. God bless Rear Admiral Perez for doing a wonderful job that legitimately may actually save the Littoral Combat Ship program. Noteworthy, Rear Admiral Perez got promoted for his good work before he was sent off to the State Department where his career will likely end and no one will ever hear from him for the rest of his career. I'd love to be wrong on that last point, but historically when a Flag Officer gets sent to the State Department, it is like the Russians sending a General to command a remote barracks in Siberia.

Chris Cavas discusses the OPNAV Report here and here.

Rear Admiral Robert Wray is a really smart guy. USS Freedom (LCS 1) is something of a one-off version with lots of problems. None of the rest of Freedom class will be anything like LCS-1, in fact in that respect, the Navy really did get what they paid for when they purchased the ship with R&D money - although because the execution of the program was so bad the Navy paid too much for what amounts to the R&D lemon. I am inclined to believe that Rear Admiral Wray will have LCS-1 as ready as the ship could be for the deployment.

Finally, Fleet Forces command held the second wargame focused on LCS concepts of employment and operations in the early summer of last year. Bob Work mentions this on page 46 of his report, but what he doesn't mention is that the wargame ultimately found the LCS as is today to be a complete dumpster fire. It would be inaccurate to describe the second wargame as a waste of time, because the wargame revealed a great number of things the Littoral Combat Ship can't do. USS Freedom (LCS-1) is only a few weeks away from deployment, and yet in the January 2013 issue of Proceedings Rear Admiral Rowden discusses the LCS by noting:

We are also codifying the framework under which the LCS will be employed, known as the Concept of Employment (CONEMP). This document will evolve based on experience and will be a foundational reference, dictating how we will operate, man, train, maintain, modernize, and sustain these ships. The CONEMP will frame the critical program tenets and planning factors to build and refine the various mission-specific CONOPs and other implementation documents issued to support LCS Fleet introduction.

It goes on to say:

The Fleet’s forthcoming mission-specific CONOPs and refinements to the ship’s current warfighting and platform wholeness CONOPs will follow. LCS is a component of a balanced force, structured to defeat adversaries seeking to deny our access. The LCS CONEMP and various CONOPs will likely be very different documents from what we’re accustomed to, given the unique concepts of LCS and its emerging role in the Fleet.

In other words, the Navy is about to deploy the ship to the south Pacific for naval operations and they still don't have their concept for employment or concept of operations finalized because it will be informed through experience. Folks like Rear Admiral Rowden are basically running around saying something akin to 'the sailors will figure out this LCS thing for us!'

As a bit of snark, I'll just note the sailors have no choice but to figure it out now that Admirals have spent nearly a dozen years - as laid out in full detail by Bob Work no less - really screwing it up. In the context of the history of the Littoral Combat Ship, all signs both in word and deed suggest that Navy leaders are still improvising and making it up as they go with LCS, doing so with the hope the deployment is the completion of a Hail Mary pass. If it was as easy as a choice, I would bet on the sailors before I would bet on the Admirals, or Undersecretary - but we all know there is nothing simple about the task the crews of FREEDOM are facing.

The Navy has spent less than $12 billion on the LCS to date, which really isn't much when compared to the $50 billion the Navy has already spent on the vaporware of the Joint Strike Fighter. For perspective, building the 24th Littoral Combat Ship to completion will ultimately mean the Navy has invested just over 2% of their total budget over that time - from top to bottom - on training, maintenance, manpower, construction, everything LCS. All the criticism and anger and passion over LCS is really only about 2% of the budget. By comparison aircraft carriers are at least 13% that I can quickly account for in the budget, and just owning them has serious influence over a much greater percentage like type and number of escorts that are necessary.

At 24 ships I still believe the Navy can get the return on investment in lessons learned needed to develop a true battle network at sea mothership capability that advances US Navy seapower generations ahead of all competition. Yes, believe it or not, if the LCS worked as conceptualized it absolutely would advance US seapower generations ahead of the competition. To date, concept and execution have been far from equal, not even close actually.

At 55 ships, LCS can never return on the investment, indeed after the Bob Work paper anyone who suggests the Navy needs 55 Littoral Combat Ships needs to produce strong supporting data and make that case, because in my opinion the Naval War College just published strong supporting data that the data used to get to 55 ships never existed intellectually. Indeed 55 Littoral Combat Ships was, perhaps not even figuratively, just a dream.

More than anything else right now, what the Littoral Combat Ship needs is a public plan and vision of the future that inspires and is exciting with potential, because right now the future of LCS is a dark uncertain place that has sailors wondering if it is worth getting involved in. Bob Work's paper is the most informative paper on LCS published publicly in many years, and yet all it really does is reflect the past - just like virtually everyone else who talks about the LCS on the internet.


It shouldn't be this hard to execute a good concept. I still strongly believe the Littoral Combat Ship - warts and all - is one of the great things the Navy is doing today and legitimately - besides ballistic missile defense - the only sign of innovation in surface warfare taking place on the entire planet, but if the future is as poorly managed as the past has clearly been, the LCS will be noted in history as an expensive, wasted opportunity.

Was the Mistral a Bad Deal for Russia?

The short answer to the title for this post is apparently, yes. I spit coffee on my monitor today when I was sent this story and read it, because at first I misunderstood it and thought he was worried about an invasion of Siberia, then I couldn't believe it if the translation is accurate. Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin really doesn't like the Mistral class vessel.

Two amphibious assault ships bought for the Russian Navy from France in a 1.2 billion euro deal will not be able to operate in temperatures below seven degrees centigrade, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin admitted on Saturday, in critical comments about the contract.

"It's very odd that ships for offloading a landing force, floating in our latitudes won't work in temperatures below seven degrees," said Rogozin, who has special responsibilities for the defense industry, in a meeting of the Academy of Military Science on Saturday.

"Maybe they thought we’re going to undertake special operations in Africa but I doubt that’s going to happen," he added. He did not elaborate on why the ships would not work in cool temperatures. It was also unclear whether he meant plus seven degrees or minus seven, as Russian-speakers often leave out the word for minus when they assume it is clear which side of freezing they are talking about.

Can anyone confirm whether he meant 7 degrees or -7 degrees? The difference is pretty important, because 7 degrees centigrade would be about 44.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Is that for real?

That would have to be what he meant, because surely he is not suggesting the Mistral is a failure because China might invade Siberia in the middle of a harsh January winter sometime in the future. The first article I read about this implied he was talking about -7 degrees, but after reading the RIA Novosti article linked above, I think he means below 7 degrees centigrade, or below 44.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Military-Industrial Commission Deputy Head Ivan Kharchenko complained about the Mistral deal earlier this week claiming it was a bad deal for Russia and the Russian shipbuilding industry. He also said the cost of cancelling the ships at this point was too high, and Russia would complete the contract for both Mistral's under construction. With both Military-Industrial Commission Deputy Head Ivan Kharchenko and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin being very critical over the past week of the Mistral's being purchased for the Russian Navy, it does not look like the Russians are very happy about the final outcome of this deal.

There was a lot of criticism by politicians in the United States of the Mistral deal between France and Russia when it was first announced. In hindsight it makes me wonder if that criticism and initial political opposition resulted in a sabotage the deal with details like this one.

Ironically, it was 45 degrees Fahrenheit in Damascus, Syria on Wednesday, which if we are to believe these news reports, is just barely above the operational threshold temperature of the soon to be fielded Russian Mistral class. Hmm.

Operation Guardian

As you can see in the picture, the USS Guardian (MCM 5) has taken a pounding as she has been hard aground on the Tabbahata Reef. On the day this photograph was taken Rear Admiral Tom Carney told the media during a press conference the ship is approximately 20-30 meters from the edge with several hull penetrations, as you can see clearly in this photograph. Over the past several days I have been accumulating as much information as possible related to the USS Guardian (MCM 5) grounding, and unfortunately, there really isn't any good news to share except that no one has been hurt by the incident.

First, I think the Rear Admiral Tom Carney has done a great job. We often discuss the diplomatic role that naval power serves for the nation, and as the fleet disperses across the world naval officers often find themselves serving in the role of a diplomat. Given the overreaction by some in the Philippines it is clear that Rear Admiral Carney has executed his role as an American diplomat with nothing but class in the face of what is obviously a challenging situation. I also very much appreciate the assistance of several PAOs in helping me track down information related to the USS Guardian (MCM 5) situation - in particular LT Anthony Falvo and LCDR Christopher Servello.

As you might imagine when a wooden ship crashes into a coral reef at about 13 knots, the ship immediately got lodged into the coral and became unable to pull out. All indications are that the little wooden minesweeper simply didn't have the engine power to pull itself off the reef, but even if she would have had enough power, backing off the reef could have caused even more damage to the wooden hull and potentially ripped the ship apart further thus sinking her right there on the reef. From what i understand, the ship took on water almost immediately upon grounding. In many ways, this is a worse case scenario where a wooden ship meets coral and loses, where as a steel hulled vessel with more engine power likely would have suffered much less damage and would potentially have been able to dislodge itself.

USS Guardian (MCM 5) is flooded internally to the tide line, with the Auxiliary Machine Room and Pump Room completely flooded. There is coral underneath the hull in both the Auxiliary Machine Room and the Engine Room. The internal bulkhead between the Auxiliary Machine Room and the Engine Room is no longer water tight, and the several internal bulkheads are slowly losing integrity. There are also several cracks in the superstructure, and as you can see in the photo there are several holes in the hull along the length of the ship.

Because even US Navy ships made of wood are well built and engineered for survivability, and despite all the damage the ship has taken being stranded on the reef for over 10 days, no fuel apparently leaked from the fuel tanks, and the tug Vos Apollo has removed all of the fuel and replaced the fuel with seawater to keep the ship stable on the reef. All indications are that all hazardous materials have been removed from USS Guardian (MCM 5), and as of Saturday the ship was not in immediate danger of a catastrophic failure. The latest news today is that the Navy continues to remove everything possible from the ship that can be removed safely.

In a press conference on January 24, 2024 Rear Admiral Tom Carney told media the ship could not be towed off the reef or to port, indeed he specifically said the ship would likely sink if they tried. The ship must be lifted off the reef and carried via ship back to port. SMIT owns the NAVSEA 00C salvage contract for the Pacific region, and SMIT Borneo and SMIT Cyclone are reportedly en-route to USS Guardian (MCM 5) to salvage and recover the vessel. While the Navy is yet to publicly say so, the ship is almost certainly lost, and this will almost certainly be a salvage and recovery operation primarily designed to protect the Tabbahata Reefs National Park, and not recover the ship for future use.

On location is the guided missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG 89) with embarked helo det; the oceanographic survey ship USNS Bowditch (T-AGS 62); the rescue and salvage ship USNS Salvor (T-ARS 52); M/V Trabajador; and the Malaysian tug VOS Apollo in supporting operations. P-3s from Commander Task Force 72 are also supporting with daily overflights. SMIT Cyclone (1,000-ton crane), the SMIT Borneo (500-ton crane), and the SMIT Andaman (barge) are en route from Singapore and should arrive on Friday. As of last week the Navy was also investigating the availability of Jasper 25 (PDF) for salvage and recovery operations, but I have not heard a status on that. Regardless, none of these crane vessels will be capable of lifting Guardian intact, which again informs us where this is likely going.

For those interested in the digital map issue, several in this community have been contributing to this discussion over at Panbo. Not only is the post interesting, but the comments are very informative.