Information Dissemination

Friday, February 7, 2024

No Cut To The Carrier Force?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting this morning that the White House has pressured DoD into dropping its plan to cut a carrier from the force--citing political pressure from the Congress as the reason, including the possibility of pressure from Democrats already spooked in an election year. A key paragraph in the story follows:

"Defense Department officials currently are negotiating final elements of the Pentagon budget with the White House Office of Management and Budget, ahead of next month's release of the administration's budget proposal for fiscal 2015. The offer of additional money to pay for the refueling in 2016 came as part of those discussions, though it wasn't clear where White House officials planned to get the extra funds. Caitlin Hayden, the National Security Council spokeswoman, declined to comment."

Interesting. My (admittedly limited) experience with this kind of thing is that no "new" money will come into the system; rather, OSD will turn to the Navy and say "find the money for the carrier in your own budget". No real strategic decision will be made balancing the requirements for forward presence and conventional deterrence against infrastructure, a too-large Army, or mounting personnel costs. Instead, we (navalists) become cannibals, figuring out what aspect of seapower needs to be cut to accommodate another element of seapower. I have been guilty of this recently on another debate, the cost of the SSBN(X) and its impact on the conventional force.

No more.

No more "negotiating with ourselves". No more "well, I can get three submarines if I cut this carrier out of the force". The debates should start with the proposition that the Navy is too small to accomplish its conventional and strategic missions, that what the Navy does for the country is simply more important that what other aspects of the military do (in a time of relative peace among great powers but tension on the horizon), and that we are making grave and irreversible mistakes as our maritime industrial base hangs in the balance. No one argued that the Army had to get bigger and more robust to fight the wars we were in...the Navy needs to make a principled argument that now is ITS time for sunlight and growth, that what IT does is uniquely suited to our security and prosperity, and that cutting it increases what are now manageable, but growing dangers.

It is time to go to the mattresses.

Bryan McGrath

Thursday, February 6, 2024

Corvettes Belong in the Surface Force Structure

MEDITERRANEAN SEA (May 28, 2024) An Italian Navy visit, board, search and seizure team returns to the Italian Navy offshore patrol vessel ITS Comandante Foscari (P-493) after completing inspections aboard the Military Sealift Command container and roll-on/roll-off ship USNS LCPL Roy H. Wheat (T-AK 3016) during the at sea portion of exercise Phoenix Express 2010 (PE 10). PE-10 is a two-week exercise designed to strengthen maritime partnership and enhance stability in the region through increased interoperability and cooperation among partners from Africa, Europe and United States. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jimmy C. Pan/Released)

The following contribution is by CDR Phillip E. Pournelle, USN. CDR Phillip E. Pournelle is a Surface Warfare Officer and an Operations Analysts. He currently serves as a military advisor to OSD’s Office of Net Assessment.

Lazarus’ reply to my 4 November continues an important ongoing debate within the Naval Strategy community but contains some contradictions, resurrects a straw-man to be knocked down, and takes significant confidence in capabilities which are not proven. Lazarus is correct in stating defensive systems have matured (but as we shall see there is considerable doubt about their equality with ASCMs) but does not acknowledge many of these defensive systems can now be placed on smaller ships. He argues larger ships “do not usually fight as single units” but does not give corvettes the same consideration, thus resurrecting a straw man. As I stated in my last essay, no one would argue for replacing the whole fleet with flotillas of corvettes and patrol vessels, only rebalancing in the face of advancing technologies.

Lazarus and other place a lot of confidence in Aegis systems and anchor the US Navy’s strategy in their effectiveness. Based on my own experience with the Aegis systems, I think it would be prudent to hedge our strategies, particularly in the confusing littoral environment.    Lazarus eschews Hughes New Navy Fighting Machine and derides its reliance on a “family of ships” concept, but fails to recognize we are reliant on a “family of ships” concept today made up of CVNs, DDGs, and soon LCS.

Evolution of Defense Systems

Cruise missile technology has come a long way and poses a significant threat to ships. Current ASCMs feature subsonic and supersonic capabilities, advanced seeker systems, and counter-measures today. Lazarus argues defensive systems are multiplying and keeping up with the offense. Lazarus cites the importance of Naval Tactical Data Systems (NTDS) to allow for the development of a shared tactical picture which bolsters the effectiveness of ship defensive systems, but later states such data systems are vulnerable, contradicting himself. In response to ASCMs, defensive weapons such as the SPY radar and associated Aegis weapons systems has been deployed. However, these systems have not been proven in combat. In fairness advanced cruise missiles (with the minor exception of an attack on INS Hanit) have not been proven recently either. All the more reason to be skeptical and not make strategies reliant on these assumptions. He further calls upon future systems such as directed energy weapons and advanced decoy systems. Hardkill lasers effective against ASCMs will not be in the fleet in the near future. Further due to cooling and power requirements such lasers will be restricted to larger ships such as an aircraft carrier. Even when deployed they are not a panacea, dwell time to burn through on targets will limit the number of weapons which can be engaged in a wave. While important to bolster other defenses they can be overwhelmed. Advanced decoys will be increasingly important for the survival of all surface ships, however there is no evidence of resources being placed against this problem. Further decoys are only as effective as their ability to emulate the platform they are tasked to defend. The larger or more unique the signature of the intended target, the harder this becomes.   Smaller ships offer smaller signatures, making such decoys more effective. Further constant active and unique signatures such as SPY-1 radars are impossible for small decoys to emulate.

Lazarus states the collective defenses of Arleigh Burke class DDGs and Perry class frigates are not accounted for in Captains Hughes and Klines’ work. If anything the defensive systems in Hughes’ Salvo Equations over credit defensive systems, particularly collective defenses, and do not account for leakers and other factors. But Hughes’ maxim “Fire Effectively First” remains valid, and illustrates the offensive dominant environment naval warfare continues to remain in.   Meanwhile, Lazarus ignores the illustration in the previous essay on the difficulty of an opponent to search for, identify, and keep track of a more dispersed force and the exorbitant level of effort to remove such a force without a response in a crisis. The lack of US surface forces offensive capabilities is a separate shortfall of its own which has been recently recognized.

The Schulte Thesis

Lazarus questions the value of the Schulte thesis in evaluating the argument regarding offense versus defense. He is correct in stating the thesis is over 20 years old and the collection of events covers manual missile launch systems and not the modern automated systems such as Aegis. He accurately cites ships in the study lacked of secondary hardkill systems such as close in weapons (CIWS). However, smaller ships, particularly corvettes cited in my essay (such as the Ambassador class today) increasingly have their own defensive SAM systems and CIWS.

Softkill systems have a history of wartime success. “Softkill measures employed against anti-ship missiles were extremely successful, seducing or decoying every missile they were used against. In every enegagment where a defender was alert and deployed softkill measures, every missile salvo was entirely defeated.” (Schulte) Lazarus is correct the Schulte’s examples did not include modern Aegis like systems, but then we have not had a wartime environment to test them against. But Schulte goes on to say the trend in missile development indicates more sophisticated ASCMs in the future and modern history confirms this. Prudence would then dictate the employment of a combined effort. Using unclassified data in work by Chris Carlson and Larry Bond in Harpoon 4, there appears to be a knee in the curve where a ship is large enough to carry hardkill defensive systems and yet not be too large to negate the effectiveness of sofkill defenses such as chaff, decoys, and modern obscurants (somewhere between 350 and 800 tons).

We should not anchor our strategies on the effectiveness of hardkill systems. We have reason to question the effectiveness of such systems. While modeling and simulation are important tools and must be employed to update analysis on the competition of ASCM and defenses, they are only as effective as the input data. The confidence we place in these numbers is derived entirely by the number of engagements conducted in complex electromagnetic environments. If a ship provides a unique signature (SPY-1) it provides a targeting solution, and thus becomes extremely reliant on hardkill systems. Should those hardkill systems not be effective (or more likely subject to leakers) we could face the loss of a lot of capabilities in one larger ship versus a proportional loss in the sinking of a ship in a flotilla of more distributed capabilities.

Deployment and Survivability

A force of more numerous smaller combatants is more survivable than one of fewer larger combatants. I provided the comparison of cost equivalent forces of one Arleigh Burke DDG or four Ambassador class missile boats in one illustration. (I’ll add here another comparison: For the cost of one Littoral Combat ship with two helicopters we could deploy 14 Sentinel class patrol craft with increased firepower within the displacement capabilities of the hull design.) But rather than address the resilience these forces bring to the fight he resurrects the straw-man argument. Again no one would argue for the replacement of all large ships for flotillas, just a balanced force where flotilla ships represent a small proportion of the budget but a large number of hulls. Further the flotilla ships would gain the same protections and support from an integrated fleet as each destroyer would. They would benefit from the same data links and Airborne Early Warning (AEW), should they be available. If such data links are vulnerable, the destroyers would be subject to the same degradation.

Flotillas of smaller ships would relieve destroyers to execute missions they are uniquely capable of doing. Lazarus cites the placement of four destroyers off the coast of Syria. DoD statements indicate they were placed there to conduct missile defense and strikes using tomahawk missiles if necessary. Flotilla ships would not be capable of doing these missions, though they would contribute to their effectiveness as surface and air picket ships. If the mission required the boarding of ships potentially carrying contraband, flotilla ships could conduct the boarding, enabling the destroyers to remain on their primary task. The larger number of ships would also enable the fleet to meet contingencies in the face of decreasing resources. Flotilla ships would meet the requirements for boarding operations and other tasks so a Destroyer would not have to be pulled from these high end missions.

Large ships do not take much more damage than smaller ships. Lazarus cites the recent sinking exercise (SINKEX) of ex-USS Buchanan (DDG14) to show modern warships are able to take more resilient to attack than I contend. This one example is contradicted by multiple studies employing larger data sets of much more armored ships in actual combat (See The Application of the Sochard Ship Damage Model to World War II Ship Damage by Brzozowsky and Memmesheimer, published by Naval Surface Warfare Center 17 June 2024 or Warship Damage Rules for Naval Wargaming by Richard L. Humphrey of the Naval Surface Warfare Center presented to TIMS/ORSA in May 1990.)     Further the SINKEX example may speak more to the lack of offensive punch on the US Navy’s part than the resilience of the specific ship. What clouds the issue further is when ships are prepared for a SINKEX all fuel, ordnance and other flammables are removed and machinery is not operating, effectively removing what makes a warship a warship. As weapons become more accurate and employ anti-radiation systems, they will nullify the effectiveness of armored systems. For a warships to be effective, it must perceive the outside world either directly or by third parties. The means to perceive the outside world is very soft in comparison to any armor. Accurate attacks on these soft parts would render a warships out of action. Therefore in this offensive dominant, numbers matter, and distributing capabilities becomes crucial to ensure the robustness of the entire force, not just a single element.

The sinking of a vessel is a bit of a red herring as the studies show a ship will take far more damage to sink than to be rendered out of commission.   The ratio of ordnance to sink a ship vs knocking it out of action, has a ball-park factor of about three to one, the bigger the ship the bigger the difference. But a damaged large ship poses a much greater challenge than a lost small ship. With all the monetary and emotional capital tied up in the larger ship, there will be significant impetus to rescue and recover the ship, tying up an enormous amount of resources to protect it, tow it, etc. The advantage of small ships with small crews is that they can be more readily abandoned after taking off the crew. That is why the smallest tactical formation should be a complementary pair of warships. The second ship not only fights synergistically (if practiced) but it is there to nourish the cripple. If the cripple is big, the consort protects the wounded beast, if small then the consort saves the crew and kills it.

The New Navy Fighting Machine

Captain Hughes’ The New Navy fighting Machine (NNFM) is a seminal work in the start of the discussion of the Flotilla concept. It starts with the impact of the offensive dominant environment naval warfare has been in since its inception with rare and short-lived reversals in the offense-defense competition. As more and more capabilities are concentrated into fewer and fewer ships, the loss of a single ship represents a loss of considerable capabilities. When a destroyer is lost to a torpedo launched by a submarine, the fleet loses its strike and missile defense capabilities along with its unsuccessful anti-submarine capability. With this in mind, Captain Hughes and his compatriots illustrate the need to distribute capabilities and remind fleet designers we do not have a limit in the number ships we may deploy, but a limitation in the amount of money for their total ownership. While larger ships are marginally more efficient than smaller ones, extremism in pursuit of that efficiency creates a brittle fleet.

Historically the fleet has quickly discovered the value of large numbers of small ships integrated into a family of ships in wartime. Among the ships built during World War II were 349 destroyers, 420 destroyer escorts and numerous sub chasers to provide the numbers required to meet the threat. If such ships were of little historical value, why did the US Navy build so many and divert such resources away from ships of the line? Because numbers mattered.

I have my own disagreements with Captain Hughes and company in NNFM, but agree with the general principle.   For example, I think there will be a need for amphibious operations, particularly because of the threat of shore based missile batteries hidden like the Hezbollah battery in 2006. The US Navy-Marine Corps Team must address how we will get forces ashore and root out such threats in littorals and chokepoints. Second, I think his cost figures are optimistic and rely too much on foreign built ships, which is why my own analyses are based on US built ships. But the general principle of distribution of capabilities is critical to the future survival of the fleet. Further we must be prepared to examine how we build ships as technology is quickly changing ships characteristics. I agree with Rear Adm. Thomas Rowden we must be prepared to quickly update our combat systems to keep abreast of the threat. However, additive manufacturing, nano-technology, and other trends will have as great of an effect on propulsion, ship forms, Hull, Mechanical and Electrical (HM&E) in the future as combat systems. Such effects may overtake current ships designs and we must be open to the possibility our hulls may have to be replaced just as quickly as our combat systems, possibly around twenty years, to be able to stay ahead of any competition.

We are on the precipice of radical changes in naval warfare and must be prepared to understand them and embrace them to stay ahead. Lazarus argues the concepts and principles of the NNFM are unlikely to survive professional, operational, and public review, that such broad concepts seldom emerge intact from the Planning, Programming and Budgetary system. If such things were always true, we would still be operating Battleships and never have adopted Aircraft Carriers, Nuclear Submarines, or Aegis Destroyers. Fortunately, the United States Navy has institutions such as the Naval War College and the Naval Post Graduate School to challenge the status quo and explore the possible futures. At one time we had a Cycle of Research to explore these possibilities through a series of wargames, analyses, and fleet exercises overseen by the General Board. (Nofi’s To Train the Fleet for War)   We need to return to these bold experiments now in peace time or we will forced to in time of conflict, with much more at stake. To dismiss even the exploration of such concepts due to perceived organizational barriers is intellectual malfeasants.

Hidden Costs and Limitation in Deployed Small Combatants

There are additional costs to flotillas but they are manageable and cost effective in light of potential threats. The need for assigning warships to counter Chinese aggression is not unique to the Flotilla concept but to any fleet we deploy. The difference is whether we are present to shape events or not. To borrow Captain Hendrix’s theme, we need to “be on base,” we need to be there if we wish to influence events. Sentinel class fast response cutters have an endurance on par with the LCS, but far more can be acquired for the same price. Further as stated in my last article, if we develop these platforms and associated doctrine, we can expect others who truly need them to follow suit and/or purchase such vessels from us. If enough vessels are in the area, we can drive the level of effort to remove such a force to a point where an opponent would have to mobilize considerable strength to execute such a mission. Such would provide considerable opportunity to gain indications and warnings to respond, thus reducing operational level surprise.

Such a force should be paired with an equally distributed logistics system. Lazarus cites the vulnerability of infrastructure to support flotilla operations and states such bases are vulnerable to air attack and blockade. However, such vulnerabilities are not unique to the flotilla. In fact our current reliance on large, deep draft combat logistics ships limits the number of ports they can operate from. If flotillas are combined with a mobile land logistics component and the use of offshore supply vessels, they can distribute the logistics nodes and remove the brittleness of overly centralized logistics enemy ballistic missiles are designed to take advantage of.

The littoral environment is dangerous for high profile ships such as destroyers and aircraft carrier to operate in. However, they can provide support to flotillas which do operate in the clutter of the littorals and prevent an opponent from gaining lodgment within them. If forced from the littorals due to the threat, even more effort will be required to fight our way back in. An opponent will have more time to hide ASCM batteries, mines, and other weapons while we are away. This is why we must “cede no water,” particularly littorals, to an opponent. A combined force can enable this objective. The flotillas operate in the littoral while the carrier and destroyers operate further back. They provide support such as AEW, helicopters, and long range missiles to prevent bombers and other aircraft from picking off the flotilla ships at their leisure.   Our own or allies’ shore batteries provide support with UAVs, ASCMs and other capabilities to the flotillas. Then as we shape the environment and can choose the timing, flotillas can conduct raids to prevent an opponent from being able to exercise sea control and consolidate their gains.

Strategy Before Force Structure

Lazarus and I are in violent agreement the US navy must determine what naval strategy it will employ, both in the pacific and throughout the world, before another keel is laid or operational concept is employed. But we must signal to potential opponents we will “cede no water.” They cannot push us out employing anti-access or area denial weapons and platforms.    Lazarus overstates the desired goal with the straw-man these flotillas will operate alone and unsupported. The truth is quite the opposite, flotillas must be integrated and we must explore the proper doctrine to enable a balanced combined arms fleet to overcome these arising threats.   Lazarus argues we cannot afford to divert even a small portion of our resources away from our diminishing number of high end warships such as DDGs and LCS. This reminds me of the rhyme of how a kingdom is lost for the want of a nail. If our fleet of small numbers of large ships is so fragile it cannot afford the loss of a single ship due to budgeting, how will it survive the inevitable losses of combat?

The flotillas operate to support a larger strategy. To influence events, the United States Navy must be present. In the offensive dominant environment of the sea, such presence particularly during a rising crisis, must be resilient enough to operate given the tight rules of engagement likely to arise in just these circumstances. To be an effective deterrence ships must be visible to the enemy and in the areas of dispute which are likely to be cluttered and cramped. Therefore, the time or space high end vessels require to be effectively defended will not be available. A flotilla as part of a combined arms force at sea can provide the on the scene presence backed up by higher end assets further out in the room they require. Such a flotilla requires relatively small expenditures, but return a remarkable number of hulls for just this kind of environment.

Much more work is needed to explore these concepts. We successfully employed a Cycle of Research between World War I and World War II. We must revive this cycle and examine many new concepts including flotillas. We must understand how such forces will be integrated into the larger fleet.   We must understand the concept of combined arms in the littorals. Technology is rapidly changing the world, especially naval warfare. We must be bold and thorough in our exploration of all the possibilities. We cannot be timid because these ideas do not neatly fit into current paradigms or budgeting processes.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official view, policy, or position of the Department of Defense or the United States Government.

Wednesday, February 5, 2024

The Think Tanks Have Spoken

The folks at some of the leading think tanks in Washington (The American Enterprise Institute, The Center for a New American Security, The Center for Strategic and International Studies, and The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments) got together today on Capitol Hill to outbrief an incredibly innovative exercise in which teams from each organization (using the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments' tool) put forward their strategies to rebalance DoD capabilities (and capacities, as we will see) as "alternatives" to QDR 15. Lots of information on the slides posted at the link above, and several thoughts arise:

There is real and lasting damage being done to the national security apparatus of the United States by the combination of insufficient resources, strategic paralysis, and the inability of our government to get entitlement spending under control. The teams were clear in their determination to make the "least bad" choices, as the dollar amounts they were given to work with ensured that the task would not be easy. Even in an atmosphere in which decision making was not hampered by the weight of Jointness or impact on Congressional delegations, the cuts suggested in this exercise are by any measure, significant.
The teams seem to come down on the side of funding high end warfighting capability over war preventing capability, as plus ups to the Air Force and the Navy SSN force (and the cuts to the carrier force) demonstrate.
The magnitude of these cuts bring into sharp relief the cowardice of Congress and the Administration in tackling serious defense reform, including base closures and pay and compensation reform. Because so much of the budget is off limits, we will continue to pare down the force across the board, although this effort suggests several ways to do so that are not "Service share" driven
There is a shared perception that the Air Force is in a hurt locker. All four teams plus-sed up the Air Force, and the adds reflect in part the cost of buying technology--space in particular, but also long range bombers, and recapitalization of two legs of the strategic triad.
The Army comes in for the largest cuts in the exercise, with all four teams cutting it significantly.

Of interest to me (of course) were what the teams did with the Navy--and the results weren't pretty. I suppose the good news is that they didn't cut the DoN as nearly as much as they did the Army. And truth be told, the game did force rational people to make rational decisions based on irrational circumstances (the current budgeting atmosphere). I know many of the people who participated, and they are some of the sharpest, least hyperbolic people in town.

The logic seems to go like this--the Air Force is in profoundly bad shape, and we need to fix that. In order to do so, we'll raid the Army's TOA. What you say? You can't get enough out of the Army fast enough to meet the gates you need for the budgeting madness? Oh--so now we have to go and get some money from the Navy. Aircraft carriers! There you go. One cut, big money. Under both budget conditions (the bad and the really bad), a minimum of 2 carriers get cut, with one team cutting four. Problem solved.

So if you think like I do--that the aircraft carrier is the most important component of forward deployed credible combat power--how could they possibly move to cut the carrier force from 11 to 9 (in the best case) or 7 (in the worst case)? Well, we did it to ourselves. We abandoned the Mediterranean in the 90's as a hub for naval forward presence and then enshrined it in the Maritime Strategy of 2007. When you have two employment hubs and a four to one ratio of carriers to hubs, all you need is 8. I realize some are going to read this as a "the carrier is obsolete" signal, but it isn't. It is math, pure and simple, math under the irrational pressure of budgeting malpractice (if the carrier were obsolete, the rational thing would be to zero them). And as long as the Navy does not articulate the need for the third hub and does not make the case for what we lose without it, we will are likely to put CVN's away with useful life in them rather than pay to refuel them.

On the positive side, the teams recognized the value of our SSN force with three out of four teams increasing their numbers under either scenario. I'm a huge fan of of what SSN's bring to the fight, and I believe we need more of them. But clearly, this decision is part of the preference for war-fighting power over war preventing power.

That's actually the message I take out of this entire exercise. We used to have a military that had the capacity to both prevent war and wage it. We are moving steadily toward one that can wage it, but which is less capable of preventing it. There is nothing wrong with this, if that is what we are choosing. But if that debate has occurred, I must have missed it. Rather, we are backing into this arrangement as the result of strategic blindness, bureaucratic malpractice, legislative gridlock and public disinterest. It doesn't have to be this way.

Bryan McGrath