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Friday, September 20, 2024
Project for the Common Defense (Navy) Weekly Link Dump
One of the things I do in my copious spare time is to lead the American Enterprise Institute/Heritage Foundation "Project for the Common Defense" Navy Team. A new service provided to Team Members is a weekly roundup of worthwhile reading on subjects near and dear to the heart of fellow navalists. I will endeavor to rebroadcast the roundup to the readers of this great blog. Below, please find this week's offering:
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Thursday, September 19, 2024
SSBN(X) as Great White Whale
Raymond's post below on the CNO's testimony brings us up to speed on Admiral Greenert's top three priorities, the first of which is the OHIO Class Ballistic Missile Submarine replacement. I have alluded in this space before to my soft support of this program and my eventual desire to lay out why that would be. That rationale was to have been explored in a "Great Debate" in which I was to participate with my friend Bridge Colby in a few weeks, but the program sponsor was not able to achieve the institutional support he needed to stage the event, and what would have been a lively and (hopefully) informative debate will have to wait.
Instead, I will use this space to make my argument. In order to manage your expectations, I would offer that a colleague recently referred to a less developed version of it as "fatuous" (adj. "silly and pointless") in a semi-public forum. So I've got that going for me.
First, some preliminaries.
1. Provision of nuclear deterrence is the critical foundation of our national security. I do not seek to suggest that we do not need nuclear deterrence. I question the manner in which it is provided and the logic upon which that provision is based.
2. I enter into this discussion under the impression that the making of strategy infers the making of choices, often tough ones. In that spirit, I assume that the fiscal condition of the country requires tough choices of the Navy, and that among those choices are the shedding or devaluation of missions. I make this assumption because I do not believe the money fairy is going to provide the resources the Navy needs to research, design, build, maintain and operate a recapitalized fleet of ballistic missile submarines--on top of its current budget projections. I have seen life cycle cost estimates (over 30 years) of as high as $347B for the OHIO replacement, and I believe all of those costs will be borne by the Navy.
3. One will most often hear of the SSBN leg of the triad as the most "survivable" leg, meaning that these nearly impossible to locate submarines deter nations capable of mounting a decapitating "first strike" on the United States because of the likelihood that such a strike would then be retaliated against by the awesome force of those (submarine based) missiles not subject to the first strike. Put another way, the deterrence resident in the SSBN force applies almost exclusively to the nations capable of mounting a debilitating first strike, which for our purposes I assume to be Russia and China. In my view, the weapons resident in our SSBN force add no unique level of deterrence (over and above that provided by the other two legs of the triad) for nations NOT capable of such a debilitating strike (i.e, North Korea and Iran are not especially deterred by SSBN's).
Now, the argument:
Nuclear war with Russia or China is extremely unlikely, but not nearly as unlikely as Russia or China mounting an unprovoked decapitating strike on the United States. To the extent that nuclear war with either of these "first-strike capable" countries could occur, it would almost certainly be the extension of conventional war. On the current trajectory, the recapitalization of the U.S. SSBN force threatens the capacity and capability of the rest of the Navy, the force most critical to the creation and sustainment of conventional great power war deterrence. Therefore, recapitalizing the SSBN force at the expense of the Navy's conventional deterrent makes nuclear conflict with the nations the SSBN is built specifically to deter--more likely.
Given the current level of resources afforded the U.S. Navy, it is in our long range national and strategic interests NOT to recapitalize the undersea leg of the triad; instead, all resources that would have been allocated to that task should be re-assigned to capabilities focused on conventional deterrence, with the nation's strategic deterrence borne solely by land and air-based platforms.
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The costs associated with the provision of undersea nuclear deterrence will threaten the nation's ability to deter conventional war, a task assigned primarily to American Seapower. One need only to look across the Atlantic at our British cousins to see this notion in action. The resources the UK will need in order to field its undersea deterrent (and to be fair, its aircraft carrier program) have driven the size of the surface fleet to nineteen vessels. Realizing that the capability of those vessels has increased over their forebears, we still arrive at the vexing physics problem of a ship being in more than one place at a time.
Given the mismatch between what the Navy budgets and what the Navy needs, the U.S. is currently on a trajectory to a 230 ship Navy, a figure which does not even take SSBN(X) into consideration. Should the SSBN(X) proceed as planned, its build profile will dominate the shipbuilding landscape for over ten years, and almost certainly shrink the fleet even further. This as China's fleet modernizes and its desire for influence in East Asia rises--neither of which trends is particularly welcomed by our friends and allies in the region or necessarily in our national interest. In order to continue with our post World War II role as East Asian security guarantor, the United States cannot afford to shrink from its responsibilities in the region or be seen to be shrinking from its responsibilities. In order to maintain the status quo, the United States will have to allocate additional warfighting capacity to East Asia, an effort in which the SSBN(X) plays virtually no role.
Obviously, there are strong counter-arguments. One can take issue with the weight I place on the importance of the Navy to conventional deterrence. One can take issue with my supposition that active conventional war is a required predicate for the "decapitating strike" attempt. One can take issue with my singling out of the undersea leg of the triad when others may appear more tempting and logical targets, but remember--I'm advocating a tough choice. Snuffing out another Service's capability doesn't exactly qualify as making a tough choice. One can take issue with the qualms I have with "survivability" as a discriminator--something I haven't fleshed out here but have elsewhere--but suffice it to say I find it to be a relic of the dying theology of nuclear deterrence theory. Here though, I haven't made it a centerpiece of my argument.
By way of a pre-emptive strike, those who would cite my years as a surface warfare officer as some kind of explanation for what appears to be a stance hostile to the submarine community will do well to review my writing here over the years and my steadfast assertion that our dominance of the undersea domain is the nation's number one military competitive advantage. Were every penny saved in not building the SSBN(X) invested only in SSN's, undersea weapons and UUV's, I'd be a very, very happy navalist.
Finally, I would very much like to see a world in which the Navy is funded sufficiently to build its conventional capability and capacity and its undersea strategic deterrent. This would be the best of all outcomes. I simply don't see this happening and wish to offer one possible way forward which maximizes the most important contributions the Navy makes to national security and offers a new logic to replace assertions worth questioning.
Unleash the hounds.
Bryan McGrath
Instead, I will use this space to make my argument. In order to manage your expectations, I would offer that a colleague recently referred to a less developed version of it as "fatuous" (adj. "silly and pointless") in a semi-public forum. So I've got that going for me.
First, some preliminaries.
1. Provision of nuclear deterrence is the critical foundation of our national security. I do not seek to suggest that we do not need nuclear deterrence. I question the manner in which it is provided and the logic upon which that provision is based.
2. I enter into this discussion under the impression that the making of strategy infers the making of choices, often tough ones. In that spirit, I assume that the fiscal condition of the country requires tough choices of the Navy, and that among those choices are the shedding or devaluation of missions. I make this assumption because I do not believe the money fairy is going to provide the resources the Navy needs to research, design, build, maintain and operate a recapitalized fleet of ballistic missile submarines--on top of its current budget projections. I have seen life cycle cost estimates (over 30 years) of as high as $347B for the OHIO replacement, and I believe all of those costs will be borne by the Navy.
3. One will most often hear of the SSBN leg of the triad as the most "survivable" leg, meaning that these nearly impossible to locate submarines deter nations capable of mounting a decapitating "first strike" on the United States because of the likelihood that such a strike would then be retaliated against by the awesome force of those (submarine based) missiles not subject to the first strike. Put another way, the deterrence resident in the SSBN force applies almost exclusively to the nations capable of mounting a debilitating first strike, which for our purposes I assume to be Russia and China. In my view, the weapons resident in our SSBN force add no unique level of deterrence (over and above that provided by the other two legs of the triad) for nations NOT capable of such a debilitating strike (i.e, North Korea and Iran are not especially deterred by SSBN's).
Now, the argument:
Nuclear war with Russia or China is extremely unlikely, but not nearly as unlikely as Russia or China mounting an unprovoked decapitating strike on the United States. To the extent that nuclear war with either of these "first-strike capable" countries could occur, it would almost certainly be the extension of conventional war. On the current trajectory, the recapitalization of the U.S. SSBN force threatens the capacity and capability of the rest of the Navy, the force most critical to the creation and sustainment of conventional great power war deterrence. Therefore, recapitalizing the SSBN force at the expense of the Navy's conventional deterrent makes nuclear conflict with the nations the SSBN is built specifically to deter--more likely.
Given the current level of resources afforded the U.S. Navy, it is in our long range national and strategic interests NOT to recapitalize the undersea leg of the triad; instead, all resources that would have been allocated to that task should be re-assigned to capabilities focused on conventional deterrence, with the nation's strategic deterrence borne solely by land and air-based platforms.
----------
The costs associated with the provision of undersea nuclear deterrence will threaten the nation's ability to deter conventional war, a task assigned primarily to American Seapower. One need only to look across the Atlantic at our British cousins to see this notion in action. The resources the UK will need in order to field its undersea deterrent (and to be fair, its aircraft carrier program) have driven the size of the surface fleet to nineteen vessels. Realizing that the capability of those vessels has increased over their forebears, we still arrive at the vexing physics problem of a ship being in more than one place at a time.
Given the mismatch between what the Navy budgets and what the Navy needs, the U.S. is currently on a trajectory to a 230 ship Navy, a figure which does not even take SSBN(X) into consideration. Should the SSBN(X) proceed as planned, its build profile will dominate the shipbuilding landscape for over ten years, and almost certainly shrink the fleet even further. This as China's fleet modernizes and its desire for influence in East Asia rises--neither of which trends is particularly welcomed by our friends and allies in the region or necessarily in our national interest. In order to continue with our post World War II role as East Asian security guarantor, the United States cannot afford to shrink from its responsibilities in the region or be seen to be shrinking from its responsibilities. In order to maintain the status quo, the United States will have to allocate additional warfighting capacity to East Asia, an effort in which the SSBN(X) plays virtually no role.
Obviously, there are strong counter-arguments. One can take issue with the weight I place on the importance of the Navy to conventional deterrence. One can take issue with my supposition that active conventional war is a required predicate for the "decapitating strike" attempt. One can take issue with my singling out of the undersea leg of the triad when others may appear more tempting and logical targets, but remember--I'm advocating a tough choice. Snuffing out another Service's capability doesn't exactly qualify as making a tough choice. One can take issue with the qualms I have with "survivability" as a discriminator--something I haven't fleshed out here but have elsewhere--but suffice it to say I find it to be a relic of the dying theology of nuclear deterrence theory. Here though, I haven't made it a centerpiece of my argument.
By way of a pre-emptive strike, those who would cite my years as a surface warfare officer as some kind of explanation for what appears to be a stance hostile to the submarine community will do well to review my writing here over the years and my steadfast assertion that our dominance of the undersea domain is the nation's number one military competitive advantage. Were every penny saved in not building the SSBN(X) invested only in SSN's, undersea weapons and UUV's, I'd be a very, very happy navalist.
Finally, I would very much like to see a world in which the Navy is funded sufficiently to build its conventional capability and capacity and its undersea strategic deterrent. This would be the best of all outcomes. I simply don't see this happening and wish to offer one possible way forward which maximizes the most important contributions the Navy makes to national security and offers a new logic to replace assertions worth questioning.
Unleash the hounds.
Bryan McGrath
Welcome to the Fray, Mr. Secretary
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| Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus meeting with the President of Gabon |
This post is written to extend my gratitude to the Secretary of the Navy for the remarks he made and the strong positions he took. These are rocky times for the country and the Navy, and his personal interest in and active advocacy of these issues is crucial. Furthermore, I would urge the Secretary to follow through on his newfound interest in Seapower and the strategic centrality of the Navy by becoming a strong and consistent voice for both in the remaining years of his term. Mr. Mabus should put aside collateral interests and occupy his bully-pulpit to relentlessly remind the influential circles in which he travels that no force on Earth is as critical to our national security and prosperity as American Seapower.
Bryan McGrath
The House Sequestration Hearing
The service chiefs testified in the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. The video is not yet available. Written statements are available. This is from Navy Times.
I thought the hearing went well except when the CNO listed his three top priorities as:
I have some problems with this list, and am confident that over the next week these topics will be discussed on the blog. If Cyber is a more important priority for the CNO when it comes to Navy funding than ships, subs, aircraft, sailors, and airmen... then I have spent the entire year reading the wrong books on seapower.
For the Navy, the budget cuts will affect the carrier fleet and its attendant strike group fleets and aircraft squadrons. The Navy will continue to maintain a single deployed carrier strike group presence in the Pacific and one in the Middle East region.One important point not mentioned in the Navy Times article is that it would appear the Navy is putting the mid-life refueling of the USS George Washington (CVN-73) on the table in FY15.
But sending out additional carriers — as the Navy has in recent weeks in response to the Syria crisis — is becoming difficult.
“What do we have to surge? It’s getting less and less, and I’m very concerned about it. Today one carrier strike group, one amphibious-ready group is ready to surge with their organized training equipment. Normally ... we have three,” said Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations.
Greenert did not specifically address Hagel’s suggestion in July that the Navy may have to shrink today’s fleet of 11 carriers to potentially eight, a move that would dramatically and permanently reduce the Navy’s operational tempo and eliminate the need for many of the destroyers, fighter squadrons and other support units typically attached to carrier strike groups.
He said the surface fleet likely will have to fall toward about 255 ships, about 30 less than today’s total fleet and far lower than the 306 that is the Navy’s official target for its shipbuilding program.
Greenert said one of his biggest concerns about the budget cuts is their impact on the Navy’s ability to develop a replacement for the Ohio-class ballistic submarines, a key component of the nation’s nuclear arsenal. That program to build new ones, the so-called SSBN(X), may be unaffordable under current budget levels, he said.
I thought the hearing went well except when the CNO listed his three top priorities as:
- SSBN(X) Ohio-class replacement
- Cyber
- Deploying naval forces
I have some problems with this list, and am confident that over the next week these topics will be discussed on the blog. If Cyber is a more important priority for the CNO when it comes to Navy funding than ships, subs, aircraft, sailors, and airmen... then I have spent the entire year reading the wrong books on seapower.
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
UCLASS Requirements - Is good enough enough?
In his post below, Raymond correctly points out the riskiness of the "spread the wealth" approach that the Seapower Subcommittee leaders are advocating for the Navy's UCLASS program. This strategy might work beautifully; however it should be noted that recent history demonstrates that keeping all the contractors happy in a no lose competition doesn't always produce the most capable, affordable platform for the navy. Constantly adjusting or just plain unrealistic key performance parameters - say stealth and ultra endurance - generally result in major cost creep and a design that does no one thing all that well (see for example, LCS).
Over the summer, USNI News leaked some of the details of the U.S. Navy's private UCLASS RFP requirements. USNI notes that the UCLASS requirements were altered to create a platform more suitable for counter-terrorism (CT) missions vice stealth or "day 1" operations in a major theater war. I have argued on this forum and elsewhere for a number of years that the future of CT is sea-based. I stand by this argument. Until we get serious about killing Salafist Jihadis in significant numbers wherever they appear fast enough to diminish their will and capability to fight (a subject for another blog), we will continue to play whack-a-mole generally following one step behind them as they transition from battlefield to battlefield. To wit, the US CT center of focus the past decade has shifted repeatedly (with some concurrent operations) between Afghanistan, Iraq, the FATA, Yemen, the Sahel, and Horn of Africa. And now Syria is the latest unaddressed foreign fighter sponge where jihadis freely train, build combat experience, and plot against western targets while the world focuses on the other side of the conflict. What all this means is simply that al Qaeda is still very alive and well, whether or not the average American understands it or even cares. Constant offensive CT pressure is required to keep larger terror safe havens from forming and another 9/11 type event from happening.
The flexibility ISR/CT orbits flown from the sea provide will be critical to sustaining this fight for the next two decades. An orbit is defined as the ability to indefinitely - that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - monitor a point on the ground (or water). Generally, orbits are used to refer to UAVs conducting ISR missions, but the term is also applicable to CAS, airborne interdiction, and other armed missions.
The unspoken issue driving the Congressmen's letter (I surmise) is that it appears unlikely that any of the existing publically known UCLASS designs except for perhaps the General Atomics Sea Avenger will be able to meet the stated range and endurance requirements. So possibly the Navy has already made up its mind and just issued the RFP thusly to meet government competitive requirements, or the competitors have designs capable of meeting the combat radius requirements that have not been-publically revealed. Or maybe it's still up for debate.
Press reports note that the UCLASS will be able to carry two 500 lb bombs, which likely means the GBU-38/54. These payloads are perfectly adequate against mobile targets such as SCUD or ASCM launchers or a terrorist leader in a pick-up. Regardless of the eventual aircraft's stealth, in a major war the UCLASS's ordnance will complement larger munitions dropped by strategic bombers or in the form of sea-launched TLAMs. The accuracy of these precision weapons, especially when delivered by a plane that has been monitoring the target area for hours (or days) makes up for sheer firepower. Therefore, I'd be suspect of anyone who tells you the platform needs to carry larger weapons.
Regardless of which direction the Navy sways on this RFP, UCLASS is going to be an amazing leap forward in CVN capability. Carriers haven't flown aircraft with a 2000 NM single sortie range since the A-6 Intruder retired in the 1990s. And flying between manned aircraft deck cycles (>12 hours endurance) will give CVNs the ability to have aircraft over the battlefield 24 hours a day for unlimited periods of time. Also, once all the infrastructure is in place to support them (much of it is already but needs to be adapted for shipboard use), the overall cost per flying hour and per pound of ordnance on target from ship-board UAVs will fall significantly below that of manned aviation.
Finally, even if the UCLASS competition turns into a winner take all and the initial design turns out not to be exactly what the navy needs for the long term, any CVN-based UAV is better than no CVN-based UAV and the testing and operational experienced gained will quickly identify shortcomings and allow for a continually improved future mix of unmanned (and still manned for the foreseeable future) air wing.
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 or the US Navy.
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| Proposed UCLASS ranges (USNI Graphic) |
The flexibility ISR/CT orbits flown from the sea provide will be critical to sustaining this fight for the next two decades. An orbit is defined as the ability to indefinitely - that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - monitor a point on the ground (or water). Generally, orbits are used to refer to UAVs conducting ISR missions, but the term is also applicable to CAS, airborne interdiction, and other armed missions.
The unspoken issue driving the Congressmen's letter (I surmise) is that it appears unlikely that any of the existing publically known UCLASS designs except for perhaps the General Atomics Sea Avenger will be able to meet the stated range and endurance requirements. So possibly the Navy has already made up its mind and just issued the RFP thusly to meet government competitive requirements, or the competitors have designs capable of meeting the combat radius requirements that have not been-publically revealed. Or maybe it's still up for debate.
Press reports note that the UCLASS will be able to carry two 500 lb bombs, which likely means the GBU-38/54. These payloads are perfectly adequate against mobile targets such as SCUD or ASCM launchers or a terrorist leader in a pick-up. Regardless of the eventual aircraft's stealth, in a major war the UCLASS's ordnance will complement larger munitions dropped by strategic bombers or in the form of sea-launched TLAMs. The accuracy of these precision weapons, especially when delivered by a plane that has been monitoring the target area for hours (or days) makes up for sheer firepower. Therefore, I'd be suspect of anyone who tells you the platform needs to carry larger weapons.
Regardless of which direction the Navy sways on this RFP, UCLASS is going to be an amazing leap forward in CVN capability. Carriers haven't flown aircraft with a 2000 NM single sortie range since the A-6 Intruder retired in the 1990s. And flying between manned aircraft deck cycles (>12 hours endurance) will give CVNs the ability to have aircraft over the battlefield 24 hours a day for unlimited periods of time. Also, once all the infrastructure is in place to support them (much of it is already but needs to be adapted for shipboard use), the overall cost per flying hour and per pound of ordnance on target from ship-board UAVs will fall significantly below that of manned aviation.
Finally, even if the UCLASS competition turns into a winner take all and the initial design turns out not to be exactly what the navy needs for the long term, any CVN-based UAV is better than no CVN-based UAV and the testing and operational experienced gained will quickly identify shortcomings and allow for a continually improved future mix of unmanned (and still manned for the foreseeable future) air wing.
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 or the US Navy.
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