How do we know how the next war will be fought, and why does it matter? As the centenary of World War I approaches, several commentators have argued that the emerging multipolar power structure of East Asia is coming to resemble that of Europe prior to 1914. Setting aside the wisdom of the political comparison for a moment, there is one way in which the comparison is apt. Just as real knowledge of modern, high intensity warfare was limited in 1914, the emerging great powers of Asia have little experience with the forms of warfare they are planning to use.
Although most of the European powers had experience with colonial wars, they did not have the space or time to work out the implications of the technologies that would eventually characterize World War I (the machine gun, the dreadnought, the submarine, and the airplane). The degree to which military commanders of 1914 were surprised by these technologies has been wildly overstated, but the armies and navies had not developed the tactic, hands-get-dirty experience of how to fight in a new technological environment.
The interwebs were aflutter yesterday with the indomitable Sam Lagrone's report that the White House had indicated its discomfort with OSD plans in the FY15 Budget Submission to cut a carrier from the Navy's Fleet, from 11 to 10. A brief Facebook exchange ensued, in which one discussant indicated that it was a sign of just how disconnected the White House and the Pentagon are, with me then countering that it could also be a reflection of the Pentagon's inability to get beyond Least Common Denominator/Budgeting by Consensus, as in "the Army has to shed people, so the Navy has to shed a carrier". Others chimed in saying that it could be both, which I can definitely see.
I do think that there is a disconnect between the White House and the Pentagon, but I don't think it peculiar to this White House. Put simply, the White House is not bound by the same Marquess of Queensbury Rules that dominate the way things get done in the Pentagon. I have railed against Jointness here enough for faithful readers to know my view that the requirement for consensus has dulled sharp edged-debates among the Services over strategy and capabilities. Consensus and collegiality are valued above all else with the result that the building has ceased to be able to make hard strategic choices in the allocation of scarce resources. Instead, it whittles down a generally unchanged proportional distribution of resources, resulting in a force that can do less, in fewer places, to a lesser extent.
The White House--specifically the National Security Staff--plays by different rules. Specifically, they play by the rules evoked in this exchange from The Hunt for Red October:
The President of the United States is ENTITLED to options when it comes to the use of military power. Surely $600B is enough to buy a sufficient range of options, right? Well, no, actually, because so much of it is mis-allocated to capabilities and capacities that serve the ends of the Pentagon well, but serve the ends of providing the President with options less well.
I have no insight into the current National Security Staff and its relationship with the President, and I may be guilty of preference bias and other incredibly noticeable analytical mistakes. But I think this President is TIRED of not having OPTIONS. Don't get me wrong--I don't believe necessarily that he'd have made different decisions in the early days of Libya, the fateful night at Benghazi, or the day the Syrians used chemical weapons. And don't get me wrong--I am NOT saying he made the wrong decisions in each of these cases. But what I am saying is that in EACH of these situations, there was a distinct lack of forward deployed credible combat power from the sea AT THE MOMENT OF DECISION. Sure, a week or so later we were able to rally appropriate forces--but that's not what the President expects out of the Navy. He wants it to be available to him when it counts. And the current 11 Carrier, 285 ship, two hub Navy is just not cutting the mustard.
We have seen this President balk at cutting carriers before, in the 2011 budget deal. That OSD might go back to that well indicates either an assessment that political calculations had changed or simply--as some on the Facebook exchange indicated--a disconnect from the views of the President and the White House (driven in my view by the bureaucratic weight of Jointness).
What's to be done? How about this. PRIOR to the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs promulgating their program guidance to the Services to start the POM process each year, the President should issue to the Secretary and the Chairman THE PRESIDENT'S GUIDANCE. In it, he would issue HIS priorities and provide top level guidance. This would be different from OMB's dicing up the budget pie and allocating resources to the departments. It would be "commander's intent" from the Commander in Chief designed to shape the way the Services prepare their budgets.
I realize that doing this for every Executive Department would be onerous (though worthwhile)....but doing so for the Defense Department just seems to make good sense.
Update: The more I think of this, the more I realize that the recommendation I make in this piece is not original thought. I am pretty sure it comes from a conversation I once had with Shawn Brimley of CNAS, who should be properly credited.
PACIFIC OCEAN (Jan. 22, 2014) Aviation Boatswain's Mate (Handling) 1st
Class Reynaldo Acuna directs an E-2C Hawkeye, assigned to the Sun Kings
of Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron (VAW) 116, on the flight deck
of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70). Carl Vinson is
underway conducting Tailored Ship's Training Availability off the coast
of Southern California. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication
Specialist 3rd Class Scott Fenaroli/Released)
The following contribution is written by Robert C. Rubel, Dean, Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College.
In a 21 January post on this blog, guest contributor Bryan McGrath extolled an article in the Winter 2013 Strategic Studies Quarterly by Jonathan Solomon entitled “Demystifying Conventional Deterrence: Great Power Conflict and East Asian Peace.” I too found the article worth extolling as it not only takes my favored challenge-response approach to analysis but produces conclusions generally consistent with the work we have done here at the Naval War College over the past decade. In the article, Solomon identifies four factors - or elements - which he considers central to conventional deterrence: capabilities, quantities, positioning and readiness. While I agree with this list of elements, I would like to offer one more to it that I believe is as important: operational concept.
The term operational concept will be interpreted in different ways if left undefined, so let me offer a temporary definition to be used only in the context of this post: it is the general approach to using military force to achieve strategic objectives. To make this clearer, let me nest it within a kind of strategic dialectic that Solomon uses: counter-force and counter-value. These are two different approaches to military strategy, the first being concerned with denial and disarming, and the second with coercion. Solomon correctly points out the dangers and imponderables associated with counter-value strategies and in the end advocates a deterrence posture based on a denial or counter-force approach. Within that general category of strategy there are a number of possible operational concepts. T. X. Hammes, in his treatises on offshore control, and Solomon seem to advocate a robust operational concept of control. Hammes envisions a more rigorous regime - control of waters inside the first island chain - than does Solomon, whose approach is at least implicitly more modest in advocating denial. However both of these “operational concepts” set the bar pretty high for what we say we must achieve. Given the number of land-based systems that compose the Chinese A2AD edifice, achieving control or denial seems to imply strikes on them or, in Hammes’ strategy, somehow dealing with them without strikes on the mainland. Alternatively, a concept I have been thinking about is “disruption.”
Solomon’s worst case scenario is if conventional deterrence is based on bluff and the antagonist calls it. In such a case all the nasty dynamics of uncontrolled escalation threaten to kick in unless we capitulate. Following this logic, if, with an operational concept of control, we set the performance bar so high (as a presumed necessity to achieve the desired results) that it can be “designed around” (to quote Solomon) or becomes otherwise not credible, are we essentially bluffing? This is my worry when we talk control and dominance, especially in waters closer to China. Even denial has the implication of persistence amounting to control. A quick examination of the map reveals that the distance from the Senkakus to the southern part of the South China Sea is the same as from Maine to Key West. That’s a heck of a lot of difficult geography to try and control. Solomon remarks that one mode of deterrence is to convince the potential attacker that a contemplated quick military checkmate will likely deteriorate into an extended war of attrition. But that can work both ways, especially if we appear to be unable or unwilling to engage in such a contest on the basis of seeking or maintaining control of waters inside the first island chain. In my view, it sets us up for a nasty dilemma.
A concept of disruption might be more operationally feasible and therefore more credible. The basic idea is to engage in a form of sniping, posturing our forces to sneak in and disrupt any instance of Chinese military aggression with an eye to taking a quick fait accompli off the table and establishing the basis for an extended war of attrition of a type we could actually afford. Disruption, as a military approach, would allow us to focus on what the Chinese do rather than try to patrol and defend a huge littoral area (the implication of Hammes’ proposal). The Chinese may be getting strategically over-confident, but my guess, following Solomon’s discussion, is that their leadership might lack confidence in their ability to deal with a crisis, especially one in which their plans go off the rails. The idea of a disruption concept is to play to that weakness at all levels from the unit up to the Central Committee, on the basis of an approach to fighting we can actually conduct in those waters and can sustain indefinitely - no bluff. This gets us on the correct side of the cost curve; it’s more expensive for them to counter our disruptive threats than it is for us to pose new ones. Additionally, also following Solomon’s good analysis, disruption is inherently defensive and less liable to be seen as a prelude to something intolerably offensive.
As Solomon suggests, a concept like this requires a lot of development. As with the nascent flotilla concept I and others have espoused elsewhere, the concept of disruption must be subjected to detailed and iterative gaming and research to determine its feasibility. However, if it proves to have merit, it then becomes the critical “Fifth Element” for a conventional deterrence posture in East Asia that has legs.
As a postscript to this post, let me offer that there is a heck of a lot more to the issue of conventional deterrence than either Solomon or I have covered here. One concern I have is with the notion of “tailored deterrence” which was popular in the Bush Administration. I believe that deterrence is a form of conflict management, and that is an approach that reflects a structurally weak position with respect to the underlying dispute. See my article in the Fall 2012 Orbis magazine.
What do unmanned systems have to do with the future of naval command, control, and culture? In an attempt to answer that question, I wrote this piece several months ago and it recently hit USNI's site.
For some more interesting discussion on drones, listen to my friend Matt Hipple over at his podcast (you'll have to sit through some Africa discussion to get to the piece about the drones, which is also fascinating).
The views in this post are those of the author's alone and not reflective of the U.S. Navy or any other organization.
