FY2013: The Year the Navy Sprinted in Circles

A better analogy in photography for 2013 in the US Navy would be hard to find!

It was only a matter of time before we saw some daylight creep in between the SECNAV and the CNO with the issue of sequestration. Sam Fellman saw it too, and this is outstanding reporting. We start with the speech from Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus from September 11th, as reported in Defense News.

“In another 12 to 18 months, we will have sailors and Marines deploy without all the training they need,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a Wednesday speech before students and faculty at the National Defense University in Washington. “Through no fault of their own, they will be less ready to face whatever comes over the horizon.”

“We are rapidly reaching the point where no amount of hard work or innovation or anything else will allow us to get this training back,” Mabus said, casting the service’s possible $14 billion shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year in the starkest possible terms.

Mabus also said that the scale and indiscriminate nature of the sequester cuts could slow the Navy’s response in a crisis, such as that unfolding after Syria’s reported use of chemical weapons. A force of destroyers, amphibious ships and two carrier strike groups were in the region, ready to respond immediately.

Because of the sequester cuts, a similar response “may be limited or unavailable in the future,” Mabus said, noting that it will also reduce steaming days, flying hours and other vital training that the fleet depends on to prepare for deployment.

Mabus is talking about operations and maintenance. The key point is that all year long the uniformed Navy has been telling Congress everything is fine with operations and maintenance, indeed the uniformed Navy is sticking to their story.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jon Greenert also spoke about the impacts last week with many new specifics on their possible impacts. But Greenert stopped short of casting them in as harsh a light, instead saying that his priority is “that those ships we put forward are ready to go, no matter what the number in the Navy are.”

The SECNAV is pushing a new issue, and as of September 11, 2024 the CNO apparently wasn't ready to push that issue. The problem is, the CNO has been wrong on the sequestration issue all year and basically lost a year where he could have been pressing this issue. It is unclear if the CNO is following orders from somewhere else or simply had a budget strategy that ignored the long term effects of sequestration, but all year long the uniformed Navy has been acting like sequestration is going away. It isn't.

As I have been watching the FY14 budget debate unfold, it is not clear at all to me what the objective of the CNO's script has been, but it is clear to me the approach has been ineffective and the objective has not been achieved. Lets review what we can safely call 'the wasted year' for a second.

First, the CNO made clear early on that the priority would be the next ships out for deployment, and budget resources are being expended to maintain a very high operational tempo at the expense of ships staying home. Nearly all deployment reductions have come at the low end, basically frigates for SOUTHCOM, and there has been nearly zero reduction of major force deployments to CENTCOM or PACOM. Even though the US has completely withdrawn from Iraq, and is in the process of winding down in Afghanistan, the US Navy today is operating two carrier strike groups and an amphibious ready group in the 5th fleet AOR.

For what purpose could the US Navy possibly need that much presence in the 5th fleet given the budget situation? It's something like 2 CVNs, 1 LHD, 1 LSD, 3 CGs, and 6-8 DDGs in the Middle East right now. For what? Yemen? Somalia? Iran? Surely that much firepower isn't needed for Afghanistan today, is it?

The answer is not Syria, because Syria is 6th fleet where the US Navy has another 4 DDGs and an unknown number of submarines loitering near Cyprus.

The US Navy is throwing everything in the budget to keep massive force levels in the Middle East when the threat to US interests at this point in time is marginal, at best. The worst part is that while the US is sending ships on schedule, none of the ships being deployed know when they are coming home - and the schedule for returning home from deployment is fubar. Leadership is pushing material, and more important manpower, to the brink for purposes of sustaining an operational strategy with no obvious alignment in support of threatened national interests.

What exactly is the strategic objective of the CNO's current operational tempo and operational posture in this budget environment? How can anyone objectively call the current Navy OPTEMPO wise given the lack of an apparent threat and the impacts of that OPTEMPO on man and material? All I see is the wear and tear on ships being deployed longer than intended, ships that will not have maintenance funded fully upon their return home. Even worse, I am seeing ships deploy and crews unable to make any plans at all because their return date is a moving target - always towards longer deployments. Always.

With all due respect to the CNO, his stated commitment to sailors in his own sailing directions lacks credibility in action. It is one thing to push the fleet during war, but the Navy today is being pushed for a political objective - to prove to 'no one who is listening' the value of the fleet by simply being forward deployed. Want someone in Washington to know what the value of a forward deployed Navy is? Bring the majority of the fleet home and let the President get told "no" a few times. President's don't like that answer.

Entire Air Wings are not flying today, already, and ships that return from extended, lengthy, and seemingly never ending deployments are not fully funded for maintenance. There is already a problem with operations and maintenance budgets before we even get to discussing the future of sequestration, because operations are being extended for each individual deployment and the maintenance money is not there already. The CNO is a submariner who has spent decades in a community that has always been fully funded to meticulous detail, so perhaps he assumes that is how it is for everyone in the Navy? I dunno, but I do know that the strategy all year to tell Congress that everything is just fine has been ineffective at best, and a failure as a budget strategy by any definition.

Which raises the question, was this post by CHINFO on sequestration a sign that the CNO is ready to pivot his position and start being honest about the impacts of sequestration?

Well, what about reprogramming authority? Wouldn’t that help? Sure it would. We’d love to be able to move some money around. But even with reprogramming authority under an FY14 Appropriations Bill - which, by the way, we don’t have yet - sequestration would cut our operations and maintenance account by $4.6 billion instead of $5.6 billion. That’s the account we use to keep those ships out there and those Sailors fully trained.

A cut of this size to that account - without reprogramming authority - will delay more than half our ship maintenance availabilities next year and reduce our training to “just in time,” meaning our Sailors won’t be ready until just before they leave.

In fact, we’ll have to shut down two airwings for three months each and limit four others to only the minimum level of flying, the “tactical hard deck.”

Not only will we have fewer ships, subs and aircraft ready to go if needed, we’ll also lose $4.5 billion next fiscal year from the accounts we use to buy new ones.

The million dollar question this week is whether CHINFO is off script because his argument supports SECNAV, or is he on script and the CNO is ready to get in line with SECNAV on this new approach to the sequestration issue? Time will tell.

The point is, the CNO's leadership on messaging has been a mess all year long, and credit the SECNAV, not the CNO, for carrying the conversation forward. In March VADM Copeman's memo got leaked and suddenly a real opportunity to discuss force structure changes that might be necessary under sequestration. Nope, CNO doesn't lead that conversation, indeed he works hard to insure that conversation goes no where. Then when Captain Hendrix releases that CNAS paper on aircraft carriers, again a perfect opportunity to discuss what sequestration means pops up. Nope. All I see is NAVAIR circle the wagons around both the CVN and the JSF, which is ironic because nothing makes the CVN look like a waste of money better than the JSF.

Then last week the Navy sends a two star to float an idea for the first time ever in public before Congress - a $4 billion annual supplemental package to fund the Ohio-class replacement. CNO has had all year to bring up this important issue publicly, but has instead waited until September 12, 2024 to have a two-star raise the issue in a Congressional hearing? This is a huge topic and is just as much part of the sequestration issue as anything else. Did a two star just go off script, or is this just another poor messaging decision in a year that is full of poor messaging decisions? It is ironic the best messaging the Navy had all year was when an active duty Captain was attacking the value of aircraft carriers, because despite Captain Hendrix's argument, the aircraft carrier not only won the argument, but the value of the aircraft carrier became a conversation topic to a much broader audience. Was that the CNO starting a conversation? Hard to believe considering CNO has spent all year trying to control all the conversations, and doing so without making a notable positive influence anyway.

It is shocking how much of a wasted year this has been for the Navy to make a case for seapower, and the only notable change in the Navy this year was the retirement of Bob Work. It is surprising, to say the least, that his replacement is Jo Ann Rooney, because the Navy is going from an Undersecretary of the Navy who is one of the most respected voices on seapower in the 21st century to someone who once worked a few months in the DoD and may or may not have ever actually been onboard an active Navy ship in her life, and almost certainly never before 2013.

The Department of the Navy has the biggest single budget in Department of Defense, and if you break up the DoD budget into individual departments, the Department of the Navy has the biggest budget in the federal government. Why would anyone in the Senate accept someone as unqualified as Jo Ann Rooney as the #2 in the Navy and claim with credibility to actually care? I'm sure Jo Ann Rooney is a very nice person, and everyone says she did a great job as Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, but she simply isn't qualified to be UnderSecNav.

This means SECNAV has no choice, Mabus has to step up and be the vocal advocate of seapower because no support at the UnderSecNav position is apparently coming his way, and CNO has been ineffective in this role all year long. CNO needs to step up too, because 2013 is memorable only for the opportunities lost with the budget, the plans that have not worked, and political moves at the fleet operational level that make very little sense strategically in context of sequestration of which nowhere exists political will to change. It is really weird that at the end of FY13 I have a better idea what the CNO doesn't want than I do regarding what the CNO wants. How many serious, consequential decisions were made this year that have significant long term impact for the Navy?

Zero.

Since day 1 the CNO stump speech has been about hard choices. Yet, the operational tempo has not fundamentally changed, and the force structure being procured has not fundamentally changed. Meanwhile the Navy has taken consistent budget cuts, and now is taking additional budget cuts in the form of sequestration. Is the CNO surrounded by yes men, because after years of discussing hard choices, no one has apparently pointed out to the CNO that he has yet to make any hard choices. The CNO's decisions have primarily involved low hanging fruit - also known as the easy, obvious decisions because there were no options. I think everyone accepts that there are nothing but bad choices, but it is better to transparently make bad choices when all choices are bad than to make no choices at all.

Sequestration will make everything much harder for the Navy, and the Navy did as little as possible this year to prepare itself for the pain in future years. All of the pain the Navy felt in the second half of FY2013 was basically pain incurred by failing to make any hard choices the first half of FY2013. Be sure to read this very important contribution on the issue of sequestration by Christine Fox that came out Tuesday. Bottom line, unless the process gets fixed by Congress, which is unlikely, and the DoD gets to decide how to spend money on defense, the arbitrary approach by Congress is going to hit the DoD like a sledgehammer.

What makes Christine Fox's argument so good? For starters, she never actually complains about the size of the cut to the defense budget, she is only truly ranting against the arbitrary way the cut must be implemented due to Congressional action and inaction. More to the point, Christine Fox articulates the issues of sequestration very well, and without directly saying it - makes it crystal clear that right now Congress is destroying the DoD in ways adversaries have been incapable of doing in the last 6 decades.

One final thought... the worst kept secret in Washington DC is that Bob Work's replacement would be a woman. Some have a problem with that, but I don't. How is it possible the President looked far and wide to find a woman to be UnderSecNav, and picks someone as unqualified as Jo Ann Rooney? Why would he pass up on the numerous qualified women options out there, particularly someone as eminently qualified as Christine Fox?

What I have a problem with is that no President should ever get political points for hiring a woman when that is the explicit and well known objective of an appointment (in this case, in response to legitimate criticism regarding the lack of women appointments) when in fact the woman hired isn't qualified for the job, and legitimately qualified women are being passed up for the job.

Sorry, but the President doesn't advance women's issues in the workplace when he appoints someone absent the resume that merits a position when also passing up on highly qualified women for the same job - in fact the exact opposite message is sent than the one he is seeking political credit for when the President does that. This isn't the first time the President has passed up on an eminently qualified female candidate for a defense appointment this year and selected someone with far less qualifications, and yes I'm speaking of Michelle Fourney who was qualified by any definition and Chuck Hagel, whose resume by comparison was thin - indeed paper thin.

Book Review: The Leadership, Direction, and Legitimacy of the RAF Bomber Offensive

Leadership, Direction and Legitimacy of the RAF Bomber Offensive from Inception to 1945, by Peter Gray, examines the role played by the senior leadership of the Royal Air Force during the interwar period and World War II. Gray, a retired RAF officer, focuses on strategic bombing and the activity of Bomber Command, which is appropriate given the importance of strategic bombing to the Trenchardist case for RAF independence. The book will appeal to those with a strong grounding in the subject, although it might be a bit tougher for a general readership.

Gray's review of the literature on leadership in the civilian and military sector is quite good. Indeed, the opening chapters feel very much like a dissertation; readers without much interest in leadership theory can probably skip the opening without missing too much.  In fact, I was both surprised and disappointed that the extended theoretical discussions of leadership in the opening chapter didn't lead to a more theoretical treatment of RAF history.  Granted that Gray's interest here isn't in theoretical generalization, but rather in applying the lessons of leadership theory to the early RAF, it still would have been helpful to return more consistently to the theoretical frameworks that open the book.  By the end, I felt that I knew more about the RAF and more about leadership theory, but not really much more about leadership theory as applied to the early RAF.

Leadership, Direction, and Legitimacy (couldn't he have come up with a pithy, one-word title?) is also an excellent resource on RAF historiography; Gray is obviously well-steeped in both the archival resources and in the secondary literature on the interwar and war periods. His account is far more concerned with organizational culture and strategic leadership than with technical aspects of the service; indeed, it probably would have helped to work through in more detail some of implications of RAF leadership decisions for procurement, training, and tactical employment.  Gray could also have gone into somewhat more detail regarding RAF professional military education (PME), although he does delve into some of these details in reference to the ethical concerns described below.

Gray gives a good account of how the RAF approached questions surrounding the ethics of strategic bombing. The issue was more complex than is often presented, as the capacity to destroy cities Hamburg or Dresden style did not exist until the RAF could field heavy bombers in sufficient numbers and quality. Beneath a surface commitment to strategic bombing, the RAF didn't think all that seriously about the ethical implications of area bombing during the interwar period, largely because it lacked the technical capacity to undertake such bombing.  Gray also frames RAF thought against the broader canvas of interwar thinking on the bombing of civilians, noting that most proposals for limiting area bombing failed to make substantial headway. Gray doesn't make much of the connection between "savage warfare" and the bombing of civilians in colonial areas, and civilian bombing in Europe, and apparently neither did the RAF.

Gray is less successful, I think, at developing the link between the thinking with the RAF and the Trenchardist project of retaining organizational autonomy and independence.  The RAF was organizationally prepared, as Gray notes, to bomb civilians in retaliation, or if the generally laws of war collapsed.  Moreover, it appears that the senior leadership expected that this would take place in context of a general war. And of course it's true that the German attacks on Warsaw, Rotterdam, and London furnished the RAF with all the excuse it would need for a general campaign.  The RAF anticipated that norms against strategic bombing would be breached, and prepared itself for that eventuality. I have to wonder, however, the extent to which the RAF believed that the gloves would come off because it needed to believe that the gloves would come off in order to maintain the Trenchardist justification for organizational independence. I suspect that an independent service dedicated to chemical warfare would also have assumed that norms against CW use would collapse in the face of actual war, especially if service survival depended on using such munitions.

Gray does cogently argue that Arthur Harris was not well-suited to helm Bomber Command, and that Harris displayed several problematic tendencies that would not necessarily have been shared by other senior officers.  The contours of the area bombing campaign were in place before Harris took command, and Harris always followed orders when instructed to divert Bomber Command resources to other tasks.  However, Harris never developed any appreciation for other facets of airpower, and effectively acted as Bomber Command's attorney during intra-service debates. There's some merit to this, but a senior commander should be expected to take a broader view of what's necessary for the service and for the war effort as a whole. John Slessor, for example, displayed far greater flexibility in his appreciation of the various contributions of airpower. Gray helpfully details the various conflicts between Harris and other senior commanders, as well as Churchill's growing frustration with the RAF's approach to intelligence and prediction. And in some sense, of course, Harris was correct to reject "panacea" targets, although a greater focus on oil surely would have aided Allied efforts late in the war. As Gray explains, RAF senior leadership had reasons for believing that Bomber Command would succeed where the Luftwaffe failed, even if those reasons strike the modern ear as steeped in motivated bias. Gray gives us some sense of how Harris was positioned within the RAF hierarchy, and of how Harris retained his position despite growing military and civilian frustration with his performance, but he doesn't really explain Harris, in the sense of describing how someone with Harris' views and traits could rise to an effectively unassailable position.

But... I knew that Harris' leadership was problematic, and that relations between Harris and the other senior commanders were troubled, and that Harris was dismissive of the use of strategic airpower in anything other than area bombing. And this is part of the problem, because, as implied above, there was very little connection between the discussions of theoretical work on leadership and the historiography of the RAF. I don't always need careful hypothesis testing, but there was little effort to set forth even "soft" evaluation of the various arguments on leadership. In terms of policy recommendations, it was hard to to sort out whether Gray had any particularly meaningful lessons to share.  It's surely an interesting book for specialists, but I think it's also a missed opportunity for a coherent, productive argument about senior leadership in functional and dysfunctional organizational contexts.

For a somewhat more positive take, see Ross Mahoney's review.

Cross-posted at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Let Russia Buy This Problem

My latest at the Diplomat:

Such support still has its costs. Russia now effectively owns Syrian chemical weapons, even if it never actually takes custody of them, as any further attacks will seriously embarrass Moscow. It’s fair to acknowledge, of course, that embarrassing Russia can be difficult, and that any use of CW by the Assad regime will be blamed on the rebels. Even in this context, however, we can expect that the regime will take steps to limit the extent of the attacks to the degree that claims of rebel responsibility are at least faintly plausible. 

This deal binds Assad’s fate to Russian policy. For the moment this may seem like a win for Russia, which can “lean in” in order to prevent the collapse of its client. As with all patron-client relationships in the international system, however, the Russian decision to take ownership of Syrian chemical weapons policy may prove less savvy in the medium and long run than in the short.

To expand a bit, my general thought is this; concerns about serious verification efforts are beside the point, because Russia is essentially putting its good word behind the declaration that the Syrian government will not use chemical weapons again during this conflict.  It's possible that Russia really, really doesn't care about the international embarrassment that would ensue following repeated additional attacks, but my guess is that Putin, Lavrov, and company will be deeply irritable if the Assad regime is uncooperative on this point. Russia surely defines prestige in different terms than the United States, but I very much doubt that it wants to be shown up by a client state.

In short, I would be happy if Kerry said "Verification?  Unnecessary.  We'll take the good word of President Putin as verification enough that the Assad regime will no longer use chemical weapons." Even if there's another attack, the U.S. isn't in any worse position that it is now, and Russia's position becomes steadily less tenable. See also here.

Can a Century-Old Concept Keep More U.S. Navy Ships in Commission?

HMS Exmouth, nucleus crew battleship

Admiral Sir John Fisher, RN

The U.S. Navy continues to grapple with the effects of sequestration and budget cuts. Its workload, however, appears to be increasing with demands that it “pivot to the Pacific”, maintain a robust presence in deterrence of Iran, and prepare for the prospect of sea-based cruise missile strikes against Syria. The Navy’s surface fleet force structure that is vital to all three missions is aging, its maintenance budget is underfunded, and each successive class of ship is inevitably less cost-effective than the last. One obvious solution is to reduce the size of the U.S. Navy surface fleet to a more economically-manageable cohort. That action however carries the risk of creating a hollow Navy that is unable to meet neither its current mission nor surge additional ships forward to meet an emergent crisis. In May of this year, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) ADM Jonathan Greenert stated the Navy had already lost two thirds of its ability to surge carrier and amphibious strike groups forward to meet emergency situations. This is not the first time a global superpower has faced a crisis in naval numbers. A century ago, Royal Navy firebrand Admiral Sir John Fisher created a novel solution in response to a similar demand for budget cuts with no reduction in capability. His “Nucleus Crew” system is one way the U.S. Navy can maintain a robust force structure without further increasing costs for new construction or for additional personnel.

USS Russell, an example of a Flight 1 Burke DDG that would
be a good candidate for nucleus crew designation

     British governments in the early 20^th century were determined to increase spending for domestic entitlement programs as more Britons became aware of the appalling poverty statistics in their country. British officials desired reductions in defense expenditures in the wake of the costly 2^nd Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902) in order to pay for those domestic programs. The Royal Navy, although the principal fighting arm of British Empire was not exempt from these measures. Fisher was brought in as First Sea Lord (roughly equivalent to the U.S. CNO) in 1904 to not only re-examine British strategic naval deployment as ordered by the First Lord of the Admiralty Lord Selborne, but also to cut costs as much as possible without reducing British naval supremacy. His innovative solution involved retiring over 150 outdated and ineffectual warships from the active rolls in order to reduce personnel costs and free sailors for new construction. Fisher’s scheme (as he called it) also introduced a system of reduced crew components for those ships worth preserving for combat operations, but too costly to maintain with full crews in peacetime. First introduced in January 1905, the ships selected were not new dreadnought battleships and battlecruisers.  Instead, middle-aged battleships, cruisers and destroyers that might be needed for secondary missions such as patrol, blockade and convoy escort were chosen. These ships were maintained at 3/5 of their full complement. Officers, engineering and weapons technical ratings were well manned, but the bulk of the unskilled labor (seaman, gunners, and stokers) would be minimally staffed. The ship could go to sea and operate some of its weapon systems, but it could not join the operational fleet. The system assumed some risks in that an activated nucleus crew ship with a large number of new and untrained crewmen would not be the equal of an active duty vessel at the outbreak of war. British naval officials and politicians were aware of and accepted these risks as the price of maintaining enough warships to both fight the British Empire’s battles at sea and secure its maritime lines of communication. Fisher was successful in that British naval estimates did not see a net increase in the period from 1905-1911.

     The system responded well when put to the test of war in August 1914. It successfully fielded dozens of warships for secondary missions. It was not without cost. The crews of some of the ships were very green. Some infamous nucleus crew alumni included the cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth who were sunk with all hands by the crack gunnery experts of German Admiral von Spee’s Pacific squadron and the three cruisers Aboukir, Houge, and Cressy sunk in the space of three hours by a single German submarine. The march of naval technology further outmoded members of the nucleus fleet. Most of the battleships from Winston Churchill’s attempt to force the Dardanelles were nucleus crew veterans. Five were sunk and three others seriously damaged. Overall however, the nucleus crew system delivered the additional warships needed for the Royal Navy to conduct World War 1 at sea.

    The U.S. Navy would benefit from adopting a similar system. Fisher was interested in preserving second-class warships for secondary duties. The U.S. Navy would use the system to preserve the strength of its overseas forces from budget cuts. Ships forward deployed to Combatant Commander control and those training to deploy would be fully manned. Those ships operating in and around the continental United States would be manned to 3/5 strength with perhaps a small number fully manned for surge operations. Fisher’s manning work was easy in that he could fill the deck and engineering departments of his ships with untrained ratings to make them ready for deployment. It would be more difficult to man a 21^st century warship at 3/5 its full complement, but U.S. Navy reserve frigates like the one this author served on in 1991 were crewed at a base level of 60% that of an active duty counterpart. Ships entering extended periods in the yards could be manned at even lower levels with the bulk of the maintenance and security work aboard performed by a specialized Military Sealift Command (MSC) team. MSC teams already operate active logistics ships with much lower crew sizes then equivalent naval vessels. The number of MSC teams would be limited and rotate amongst the ships in the yards. The United States Congress would need to be fully briefed on this change as the British Parliament of a century ago in order to understand and accept the risks involved.

     Adoption of a modified nucleus crew system is not an ideal situation for the U.S. Navy's current budgetary woes. A ship of war ought to be fully manned at all times and ready for instant deployment as required by national command authority. The U.S. ability to surge forward large numbers of ships during the Cold War and in the last twenty years has been the key to success in numerous war and peacetime operations. The loss of the capacity to quickly mobilize such formations due to the current budget impasse is a significant risk to national security. Naval leadership must take action to preserve the surface fleet from the inevitable force structure cuts that will follow in the wake of a budget agreement. A nucleus crew system would preserve useful force structure within the ranks of the more modern surface combatants. Numbers matter when a nation has global commitments. A nucleus crew system is one way to preserve enough U.S. Navy ships to meet those requirements. 

Apache's at Sea

Two AH-64D Apache helicopters from the 36th Combat Aviation Brigade and two riverine command boats from Coastal Riverine Squadron 4 conduct exercises in the Persian Gulf alongside the afloat forward staging base Ponce. (Sgt. Mark Scovell / Army)

Count me among those who see this as training that will be used in theater for action one day.

The Texas Army National Guard’s 36th Combat Aviation Brigade has been testing Army helicopters’ capabilities in a littoral combat environment, taking off from Navy ships, firing on targets and practicing deck landings, to see what Army aviation might be able to contribute to the future of maritime surface warfare.

From March through August, the soldiers spent time aboard the amphibious transport docks Ponce and Green Bay, dock landing ship Rushmore and aircraft carrier John C. Stennis.

Experts say Army aviation and the Navy have always worked together, but as current land wars draw down and the military turns focus to the Asia-Pacific region, while maintaining security in the Middle East, the services are looking at more ways to work together over water.

“What we are are trying to do now is continue that lineage of maritime operations,” said Maj. Scott Nicholas, the 36th CAB future operations chief.

“We’re trying to develop tactics, techniques and procedure for the littoral fight” — specifically, he said, TTP for countering fast-attack craft and fast-inshore-attack craft, or small boats that might approach a larger Navy ship along a coastline.

In the 1980s the US Army deployed small special forces helicopters on US vessels in dealing with Iran during the Tanker War. Those Army helicopters did very well against small boat combat, and it is worth the effort to put Apache's into that role today to see what Navy needs to do to support it.


Over the last decade there have been a number of sea base proposals that never panned out. One of the proposals I was always particularly found of was developing the capability to field the 101st Airborne division from a Sea Base. I'd like to think this activity helps the Army clarify what needs to be done in support of that eventual capability.