Remembering a Time When CNO's Championed Maritime Strategy...

When I designed the logo for Information Dissemination, the graphic above was my inspiration. Many probably could have guessed that. Originally, I tried to write Sea Control, Naval Presence, and Projection of Power on the arrows in the Information Dissemination logo. It was ugly, and in the end I went a different direction. For those who don't know, this graphic was first produced (or at least the only place I have ever seen it) in Missions of the U.S. Navy written by Stansfield Turner in the Mar-Apr 1974 edition of the Naval War College Review (PDF). Missions of the U.S. Navy is my favorite article published by the Naval War College Review during the cold war, and if you have never read it I highly encourage you to do so.

It is so good in fact that you can download it in three different places on the Naval War College website. The link above is a copy of the original full Mar-Apr 1974 edition of the Naval War College Review. It was reprinted in full again in the Winter 1998 edition of the Naval War College Review (PDF). Finally, even though the link is broken in the Newport Papers section of their website, John Hattendor's brilliant assembly of 1970s publications in Newport Paper #30 related to the work of Peter Swartz can be downloaded by direct link: U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s, Selected Documents (PDF).

But before Stansfield Turner wrote Missions of the U.S. Navy in 1974, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt became CNO in 1970 and went right to work, and within three months he had personally been heavily involved in producing the first of 5 major documents we will look at: Project SIXTY.

Whenever I study naval history of a time period, as I did with this particular Capstone Strategies examination when putting together the content for this month, I always start with people first. The 1970s, to me, is about 5 very strong leaders who came from the greatest generation. All five had a unique style of leadership, were well spoken in public, were leaders both in thought and deed within their own communities in the Navy, and what makes them completely foreign to naval leaders today - they competed with each other publicly - respectful of one another in disagreement - to the benefit of the Navy. None of them were afraid to speak their mind, and that did bring controversy, but it was always personal controversy as opposed to the kind of controversy that was detrimental to the Navy as an organization.

I am speaking specifically about Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Vice Admiral Stansfield Turner, Admiral James Holloway, Admiral Thomas Hayward, and Admiral Hyman Rickover. The most remarkable thing to me though is that Zumwalt, Holloway, and Hayward were CNOs, leading from the front with the best ideas of the day.

These were hugely influential debates and discussions often framed in competition with one another in public even though they were complimentary capabilities of naval power. CNO Elmo Zumwalt is the champion of naval presence and sea control. His Vice CNO - who also became the next CNO - James Holloway is the champion of power projection. Hymen Rickover is the champion of strategic deterrence in his role as nuclear power czar. Stansfield Turner is President of the Naval War College and ties Sea Control, Naval Presence, Strategic Deterrence, and Power Projection together in a strategic concept that aligns policy with strategy with tactics.

At the end of the decade, at the end of CNO Holloway's time as CNO, the Navy has built up a collection of study groups engaged in the development of Sea Plan 2000 and various other force structure studies. These groups have people you may have heard of, Captain John McCain, a young Marine LT named Bing West, oh and there was this 32 year old Navy consultant, LCDR in the Navy Reserve, or Corporation President - however you'd like to describe him - named John Lehman designing the future force structure of the Navy. These activities were being developed with Admiral Hayward, who subsequently followed Holloway as CNO in July 1978.

CNO Hayward organized the concepts of CNO Zumwalt and CNO Holloway, the efforts of ADM Rickover, and the conceptual framework of VADM Turner, then rebranded those ideas with a new typology for the Navy a strategic document called The Future of U.S. Sea Power (1979), which was described at the time as the "Fundamental principles of naval strategy." That document formed the strategic foundation for the concept of maritime supremacy evolving the strategy of the US Navy towards the 1980s 600-ship force goal.

Three very smart, very stubborn CNOs publicly arguing and writing about strategy, plus Rickover which is a redundant way of saying smart and stubborn, plus Stansfield Turner - also a very smart and stubborn leader in his own right; all competing the best and brightest strategic concepts in their own words; all doing so publicly and privately; all competing the priority of Sea Control and Power Projection in defensive and offensive force postures against one another; all while linking policy to strategy to doctrine and tactics...

All three CNOs led the debates and discussion publicly and privately on the most important strategic issues of their era. The Navy benefited greatly from it.

Lets compare then and now. CNO Greenert is championing the issue of electronic warfare today, CNO Roughead championed what was new in the Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower - namely maritime security and humanitarian response/disaster recovery, while Admiral Mullen was the champion of Maritime Domain Awareness.

Hmm.

Insert facepalm

The Opportunties of Yesterday and Tomorrow

 The following slides come from The U.S. Navy in the World (1970-1980): Context for U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts Swartz, Peter M., with Karin Duggan, December 2011 pages 19-20.

This slide describing the 1970s might as well be describing today. Build up and rely more on alliances and partners? Check. Accept less than victory in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Check. Avoid "another Iraq" or "another Afghanistan?" Check. Deter and plan against North Korean attack on South Korea? Check. Maintain Arab-Israeli Middle East peace while balancing our support for Israel and key Arab states? Check. Ensure western access to oil? Check.

Noteworthy the US role regarding stability in the Gulf is different today. Stability at sea? Check. Stability in the Gulf states? Hmm. Constraining the influence of radical extremists in the Middle East and Africa? Lets be honest, we are not doing very well in that regard. Prevent spillover into Latin America? The convergence threat between radical extremist groups and narcotics traffickers is an issue SOUTHCOM is monitoring every day. The leaders of Greece and Turkey are dealing with so many internal problems today they don't really have time to worry too much about the other right now.

Equivalent shares among the services (“1/3-1/3-1/3”). Sad to say, but that's the only defense strategy the United States military has derived from evolving national security policy over the last 4 decades. The socialist model for redistribution of resources conquered the Pentagon long before the Communists fell in the cold war. When your national defense strategy is based on a fraction, of course you are going to accept less than victory in war. One might even observe that when defense strategy starts with a fraction, the result might end with a fraction - for example a nation might do strategically questionable things like fight a land war in Asia in pursuit of questionable strategic objectives for over 2/5s of the last half century.

And yet, in the 1970s, when the nation was struggling with economic issues related to energy costs and other factors, while the Soviet Navy was increasing in capability and strength, while the military was suffering a post-Vietnam decline in both force and resource allocation, and despite little interest in naval power at the higher levels of defense as the focus shifted towards the Red Army in Europe scenario of war planning...

The Navy developed a few new toys.

Nimitz class aircraft carriers, Ohio class ballistic missile submarines, AEGIS surface combatants, F-18s, H-60s, the Trident missile, the Tomahwak cruise missile, VLS, LCAC...

In other words, despite major funding cuts by Congress - a process of cutting defense that was done much smarter than today's Congress that leverages sequestration - the US Navy developed the capabilities that remain - 3 decades later - the foundation of American seapower.

Here is what is even more interesting. If the President can actually step up (very unclear) and get Congress to manage defense more responsibly (just as unclear), the list one might create based on current plans for the decade 2011-2020 will look something like this:

MLP, AFSB, LSD(X), SSBN(X), Virginia class SSN, UCLASS, EMALS, AMDR, Ford-class CVNs, DDG-1000s, LCS-1s, LCS-2s, DDG-51s, LPD-17s, LHA(X), LH(X), F-18E/F, F-35B, F-35C, EA-18G.

With a miracle... and by that I mean somehow government leaders fix the sequestration mess we are in, the Navy may also field Rail Guns, LDUUVs, and Lasers, but honestly none of that is not likely to happen this decade. I have hopes the LCS MIW mission module works out well enough it would get included on the list, but time will tell.

That's really not a bad decade if you think about it. Sequestration obviously makes the current plan the list above is based upon very uncertain. What is certain is that with 7 years of the decade remaining, things can still get better or worse, and my glass is half full.

First Four Thoughts

I recommend taking a look at all 33 slides in this document, but these four in particular stood out to me.

 The 1970 list above doesn't count China, and as such 8 of the top 10 nation defense spenders in 1970 were treaty allies of the United States. In 1980, only 4 of the top 10 defense spenders were treaty allies. In 1990 and 2000 six of the top 10 nations are treaty allies of the US, but by 2010 the number is back down to 5.

Noteworthy, 2010 is the only year listed above where 2 of the top 10 national defense spenders in the world aren't facing off against each other in a power struggle. In 1970, 1980, and 1990 above the US and Soviet Union could be suggested to be in such a struggle, and in 2000 China and Taiwan were. In 2010 the closest to anything like that is Japan and China, and it would be a stretch to call their relationship in 2010 or even 2013 a cold war.

 What will that chart look like in 2020? I wonder where the EU block will rank relative to rising nations. I also wonder if Japan will still pace China, because I won't be surprised if they do, even though nobody sees that possibility in June of 2013.

The US Navy hasn't claimed to need more than 375 ships since the end of the cold war, but never dipped below the stated requirement for total ships until until Admiral Clark revised the total force requirement up in 2002. Ironically, it was under CNO Admiral Clark's watch the Navy dipped below 300 ships, and to this day the Navy still lacks a credible plan to actually get back to 300 ships.

Worth noting, over the last 4 decades, the only time the Navy fleet has increased significantly, and by that I mean by more than 10 ships to the total force number, it involved a political partnership between DoD and Navy civilian leaders. Until the day the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy are speaking about increasing ship force totals together, there is no reason to believe the number of Navy ships will go up. That is basically what history tells us. Over the last four decades, it appears the CNO has very little influence on whether the fleet size increases, the CNO only decides how it increases, or more commonly... decreases.

I found this slide to be one of the most interesting in the entire series, because it demonstrates in decent detail why 2001-2010 is the worst decade in US naval history. How many times have you heard someone in the Navy decry the decade of the 1990s? Play with the numbers between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010, and explain to me how the post-cold war decline was managed worse than the first decade of the 21st century, at a time the nation was at war.

What is the most remarkable thing about this slide is that it notes how much efficiency was gained within the Navy's various communities, and yet how badly the Navy was also managed. The entire air wing was consolidated around the F-18 platform, Navy RW was consolidated around the H-60 platform. Every new submarine funded in the decade was a Virginia class. The Navy funded the second pair of Littoral Combat Ships and all 3 DDG-1000s with the SCN budget for decade 2001-2010, and the rest of the surface combatants built were the efficient cost DDG-51s. Noteworthy, the first two of each LCS design was not funded with the SCN, but is counted in the chart above anyway.

This slide reveals how even though the Navy was achieving remarkable efficiency within the various communities of the Navy, and even though the budget for the 2001-2010 decade was significantly higher than 1991-2000 decade, the Navy ultimately built fewer ships in the 2001-2010 decade than the 1991-2000 decade. To add insult to injury, factor in the Balisle report on surface force readiness that declined significantly over the decade.

The decade 2001-2010 featured six first in class designs: Ford class nuclear powered aircraft carriers, Zumwalt class destroyers, San Antonio class Landing Platform Dock, Freedom class Littoral Combat Ships, Independence class Littoral Combat Ships, and Lewis and Clark class dry cargo ship.

The Lewis and Clark class dry cargo ships were the only programs to stay on cost and schedule. The success stories of 2001-2010, like the Arleigh Burke class multi-year procurement and the Virginia class submarine program plan, were products of the previous decade.

ID's 6th Anniversary - CNA's U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies

June 20, 2024 -- The Abraham Lincoln Battle Group along with ships from Australia, Chile, Japan, Canada, and Korea steam alongside one another for a Battle Group Photo during RIMPAC 2000. (U.S. Navy photo by PH2 Gabriel Wilson.) Click image for 1280x818 resolution.

June is the anniversary month for Information Dissemination, with 2013 marking the sixth anniversary. Starting last year I decided I was going to commit the month of June every year to something I am interested in. Last year I was able to convince (without bribes) several individuals who have heavily influenced my thinking over the past several years to each answer a question for me. If you didn't read the responses provided by last years contributors, those essay's from some of the most influential leaders in the broad Navy community today are well worth reading.

This year I decided to do something a little different. On June 4, 2024 my good friend Peter Swartz sent me an email asking me to look at a series on U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies that he and Karin Duggan had produced for CNA. The series was originally released in December 2011, and while I had looked at several of the documents individually, I had not looked at the entire set as one collection until his email.

CNA's U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies publications analyze the three dozen or so Navy capstone documents published between 1970-2010 (with a short discussion of what came before and an even shorter post-script covering 2011). They do not include the actual texts of those documents, which can be found in the Naval War College Press’s Newport Papers series - the brainchildren of Carnes Lord and John Hattendorf. The U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies publications also outline the context within which Navy strategy documents were written.

I knew as soon as I read the first document of the series, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategy, Policy, Vision and Concept Documents: What to consider before you write one that I was going to write about this material. What I didn't realize at the time was how the series was going to impact me, change the way I think about naval strategy, and shape my time as it has over the last year and half. Many long time blog readers have undoubtedly noticed that over the past 18 months, I have written less on the blog even as I seem to talk just as much over email, Twitter, or other forums. Ironically, I do not feel less engaged from the Navy conversation, but I do feel less productive as a writer. In truth I still write a lot, just not on my own blog.

Where my time has really been focused is on reading, and listening. For someone like me who wants to fully understand the issues facing the US Navy today, loves reading about the history of naval affairs, and commits a lot of time to serious thought about naval strategy (as opposed to tactics or operations, which is what naval officers do) I personally found the CNA U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies series to be an excellent foundation by which to recommit myself in researching modern naval affairs and recent naval history. While the series does focus on the capstone documents specifically, the context of those documents, and the concepts that circulated within the Navy conversation at the time; for me what the U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies series did was inform me what I should be reading and why I should be reading it. In going through the series a decade at a time, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, I quickly realized I had never read some of the most influencial books that even to this day still apply significant influence on concepts, culture, and starting assumptions of the modern US Navy.

Over the next four weeks I intend to step through each of the four decades as outlined in the series and highlight a few of the topics that jumped out to me, and what I believe is relevant today. The centerpiece of the next four weeks is the work of Peter Swartz at CNA, and my thoughts along the way are far from comprehensive, but I do hope they inspire some conversations and debate.

UCLASS--Don't Get Your Hopes Up

UCAS, not UCLASS

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about the imagination capturing events pertaining to the launch of the UCAS X-47B off the deck of an aircraft carrier.  Like many others, I saw this as a watershed event, a serious moment in naval history.  I went as far in that piece to render honor unto the Secretary of the Navy for his steadfast stewardship of unmanned systems throughout his tenure in office.  Little did I know that only a few weeks later, I'd be urging him not to go "wobbly" on us when it comes to unmanned aviation.

The pictures of the UCAS showed us a "planform" clearly aiming at some level of stealth in order to eventually get us to what UCLASS is designed to do--remember, UCLASS means "Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike" System.  UCLASS is supposed to have two broad missions--and ISR mission AND strike.  But conversations I've had recently with knowledgeable people lead me to believe that 1) the strike (s) in UCLASS is being radically diminished in the emerging requirement and 2) we should expect to see UCLASS develop in a way that is nothing like the stealthy-er planform of the X-47B--rather, the requirement emerging will almost certainly drive toward a UAV that looks much more like the Predator, and act more like the Predator than a vehicle that would threaten adversary interests.  Put another way, UCLASS seems to be developing in a manner that would suggest that it would add little to the Carrier-Air Wing's ability to operate in CONTESTED airspace.  Rather, it seems optimized for scouting and ISR, something we seem to have a plethora of aircraft--manned and unmanned--to do already.

What are the possible explanations for this half-measure approach on UCLASS?  A couple suggest themselves.

1.  Money--A true unmanned surveillance and strike platform would surely be more expensive than a glorified carrier based Predator.  It would have to have some level of stealth.  It would have to be able to operate in contested environments.  In this fiscal downturn, there may be a sense that we need to take an appetite suppressant on what UCLASS can do.  I disagree--now is the time to put the hammer down on getting to a more capable system.

2.  JSF--could a more capable UCLASS threaten JSF to a degree some find troubling? 

3.  Culture--unmanned CV-based strike is a threat to the culture of Naval Aviation like nothing before it.  Could antibodies be developing in both the active duty and the retired Naval Aviator community to slow down progress?  Are capabilities that would move UCLASS away from the rear-facing prop UAV's we now see, the first to be trimmed away when money gets tight?  

I believe that unmanned strike aviation is the only thing standing between long-term aircraft carrier relevance and Jerry Hendrix's view of a world without a dominant American CVN force.  Going gently on UCLASS is a recipe for hastening that diminishment.  

A very simple question needs to be asked of Navy leaders:  Exactly how will UCLASS contribute to operations in the kinds of contested airspace that AirSea Battle assures us will exist?  If the answer is not "powerfully", then we are headed in the wrong direction.

Bryan McGrath