The Battleship Book!

Very long time readers may recollect that before I joined Information Dissemination, I wrote a series titled "Sunday Battleship Blogging" for my other blog, Lawyers Guns and Money. Over the last year I've been collecting, re-editing, and re-organizing those posts for a book that Wildside Press will release in September. The The Battleship Book is now available for pre-order, on discount.

The Battleship Book isn't a scholarly volume, although as the spread of the dreadnought-as-type falls into my academic interests, it naturally includes some reference to the broader literatures on naval theory and military diffusion. My editor describes it more as a "folklore of battleships," which sounds about right.  In any case, I'd be honored if any of the readers of ID, who are among the most knowledgeable folks on maritime affairs on the internet, take a read and let me know their thoughts.

Post-2015 LCS/Frigate Concepts of Operations

USS Freedom 57mm gun

            Most Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) critics remain fixated on the ships’ past incarnations and problems going back to its origin in 2003. The “gold standard” in the history of the program in that era is Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work’s Naval War College occasional paper on the subject.[1] Work readily acknowledges the faults associated with the program that nearly brought about its demise in 2007, but also remains convinced that the ship in its two forms (Freedom and Independence variants) represents the ideal small surface combatant for the U.S. Navy moving forward into the mid 21^st century. This author agrees and plots potential one possible evolution of the class’ concepts of operation moving forward into the next decade.

            LCS began life as a very low capability combatant designed to “mop up” any opposition remnants that survived the withering joint assault of aircraft and missiles from a variety of naval and non-naval sources. Nearly all operations in the early 2000’s were envisioned as repeats of the successful 1991 Desert Shield/Storm where Combined Joint forces would intervene from the sea to secure some failed or rouge state on the Eurasian littoral. That operational geography, however, has radically changed due to the emergence of major regional rivals with large scale economic, military, and technological capabilities. These powers have since deployed battle space denial systems to further those interests. The U.S. again contemplates high end combat on the high seas and every ship in the force architecture from carrier to patrol boat must play a part. Given the overall shortfall in U.S. surface forces, LCS will be employed within existing battle networks in support of this new strategic and operational construct.

           

Freedom Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) test (inert rounds)

It appears now that LCS will soon constitute four separate variants of the same warship type, if frigate (FF) versions of each type are produced. What can the LCS's contribute to present and future battle networks? How do they survive within a continuum of war that includes transition from peace to exercise readiness, to crisis, to open hostilities within an intact enemy maritime surveillance system, and finally to conflict with an enemy maritime surveillance system functioning at nuisance value? How does the Navy keep the dispersed LCS and other ships from being isolated from the network and destroyed piecemeal? These are the real questions LCS advocates and critics alike should be asking in 2015.

            The LCS will operate in a spectrum of conflict up to and including open warfare. The LCS squadron of four to six ships can conduct a variety of peacetime engagement operations in its baseline configuration. Its transition from peacetime to war footing, however, will require careful prepositioning of multiple mission modules, ammunition, fuel and other supplies for both LCS types and their frigate variants. Such items will need to be dispersed throughout potential regions of conflict in order to allow the ship to quickly assume its wartime tasks. All four variants will remain dependent on existing battle networks when operating in close proximity with other battle force units or when dispersed in order to make the most of its installed and modular capabilities. Neither the baseline LCS nor its frigate variant is expected to support a robust air and missile defense system. Ship and shore-based aviation assets can provide this, and the installation of AEGIS ashore facilities at key geographic points (if political and diplomatic conditions permit) can provide further defensive and offensive support.

Forward Mission Module Space (LCS 2 variant)

            LCS combat missions may include antisubmarine warfare (ASW) escort missions in littoral regions where the U.S. and allies have air superiority and general ASW escort of tactical groups.[2] An LCS squadron may secure key sea lines of communication (SLOCS’s) through important chokepoints in low to medium threat environments. LCS and/or frigate units armed with medium range surface to surface missiles also have the potential to contribute to the Distributed Lethality concept at some stage in a campaign by threatening enemy surface formations. The LCS’ size and rotary wing aviation facilities allow a greater degree of independent operations as opposed to single mission small combatants when battle network connectivity is degraded or lost. Manned helicopter and unmanned rotary wing vehicles can provide surveillance, be network connectivity nodes, and provide limited air strike against weak or damaged enemy units. LCS is not a destroyer or a high-end European frigate and is not a substitute for the more robust offensive and defensive capabilities inherent in those larger ships. It can, however, conduct presence operations, replace larger battle force units in low and medium threat environments, and provide additional offensive and defensive capability in support of conventional naval formations.[3]

LCS Mission Module space available for additional armament

            Sadly, most LCS critics to date are focused on the problems and issues of the past vice those of the present and future. There is a long list of past issues, and progress to ameliorate them is sometimes slow. The Navy grossly underestimated the sea frames' cost in the early 2000's, but recent purchases are well below the most recent Congressional cost cap of $538 million.[4] The ship took a long time to get into active, deployed service and has not met all of its Key Performance Parameters (KPP’s) as fast as many critics demand. The mission modules are still undergoing testing, and require a complete, additional re-test each time a piece of equipment, however minor, is added. Test and Evaluation assessors cannot seem to accept the fact that ships smaller than 4000 tons and less than 425 feet in length are just not as physically survivable as its larger cousins, if for no other reason than having a shower floodable length and less reserve buoyancy. This situation will not change regardless of how many additional systems or superfluous armor is crammed aboard. The speed requirements from 2001 cut into weight that might otherwise be given to fuel and additional installed systems, but redesign of propulsion plants is expensive, and high operational speeds may allow for rapid sprints toward targets and away from potential threats.[5] The ship relies on non-ship’s force personnel for significant amounts of its maintenance, but even this is not a new and haphazard concept that must be replaced by a “relearning” of the maintenance practices of larger ships as some critics suggest.[6] The patrol gunboats of Vietnam vintage; the patrol hydrofoils (PHM’s) of the Cold War[7] and the Post-Cold War Cyclone class patrol coastal ships were all supported by deployable maintenance teams during periods of their service lives.[8]

            Naval force structures change over time, and what worked well in the Cold War or in the last 20+ years of the immediate post-Cold War era is not sufficient in the middle of the 2^nd decade of the 21^st century. The world in which the LCS was created and where Joint and Combined operations against weak opponents along the Eurasian littoral were the most likely operation has changed. The cruise and ballistic missile threat has increased to the point where medium sized combatants like the retiring Oliver Hazard Perry class and large European frigates cannot mount enough defensive weapons to survive repeated salvos of such weapons. Such big frigates are also too expensive in comparison to the limited combat capability they provide in comparison with larger combatants such as the Arleigh Burke class destroyers. The new surface navy world is one of large, high end combatants capable of offensive and defensive warfare, and small combatants like LCS that provide support to larger units, and conduct operations in low and medium threat environments. The Littoral Combat Ship is being built in significant numbers. Its modular design allows for great flexibility in what payloads it carries to the battle. It is time for LCS critics to let go of problems associated with past concepts of LCS and focus their talents on the ships’ future employment in the networked battle force.

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[1] http://awin.aviationweek.com/Portals/AWeek/Ares/work%20white%20paper.PDF

[2] http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=2100&tid=412&ct=2

[3] http://breakingdefense.com/2015/01/the-case-for-lcs-searching-for-the-airasia-plane/

[4] Ronald O’Rourke, “Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS)/Frigate Program; Background and Issues for Congress”, Washington D.C., Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report, 12 June 2015, p. 8.

[5] http://awin.aviationweek.com/Portals/AWeek/Ares/work%20white%20paper.PDF, pp 14-15.

[6] http://nationalinterest.org/feature/littoral-combat-vessel-the-us-navys-great-relearning-13262

[7] http://www.hydrofoilworld.org/theater/PDF/GJPHMStory.pdf, pp 4, 8

[8] http://www.janes.com/article/42058/us-fifth-fleet-s-cyclone-inventory-reaches-full-force

Revisiting the First Salvo: The Importance of Getting the Narrative Out

The Defense Department did an excellent job embedding a CNN reporter and camera crew aboard the P-8 that challenged Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea back in May. By doing so, the U.S. established an independent and credible record of the flight’s events that could stand up against Chinese propaganda efforts. More importantly, it created a precedent that the U.S. might embed international media aboard any such flight over contested international waters in the region. The Chinese would have every reason to assume that the reactions of their on-scene forces to these flights might be broadcast to the world within hours, and as such might be encouraged to practice the utmost restraint in those reactions.

Not every claims-challenging U.S. Navy flight or warship transit will have embedded media aboard, though. It might be even harder (or perhaps entirely undesirable from an Operational Security standpoint) to embed media in frontline forces during a precipice-of-war crisis. And the issue is hardly isolated to the Far East; there have been applicable incidents within recent memory in Europe and the Mid-East.

Recall, then, what I wrote when I touched on this topic last October:

“…defeating a first salvo also means defeating the attacker’s inevitable diplomatic-propaganda campaign. Attackers within range of their homeland cellular networks, or otherwise using satellite uplinks, can quickly post audiovisual content recorded and edited on smartphones or similar devices to websites such as YouTube. From there, propaganda specialists can work to push the material via social networks to critical audiences; it may not take more than a few hours to become ‘viral’ and make the jump to traditional global media outlets. The side that gets seemingly-credible evidence of what happened out first seizes the initiative, perhaps decisively, in the diplomatically and politically-critical battle for the international and domestic public narratives regarding culpability and justification.

In a first salvo’s immediate aftermath, the defender must be able to quickly collect, process, and disseminate unimpeachable audiovisual evidence of its victimization without harming Operational Security. This would be no small feat, especially aboard a warship that is severely damaged or steeling itself for follow-on attacks. Even harder is developing continuously updated, interagency-coordinated, ‘stock’ narrative outlines in advance of any operation that might expose units to direct first salvo risk, not to mention the doctrine and training necessary to swiftly get an initial narrative out into the global media. Contrary to current public affairs practice, in some scenarios this might require evidence processing and public dissemination by lower echelons to be followed thereafter with amplification and context by executive Navy and national leadership. This will be a vitally important area for exploration through war gaming and fleet experiments.”

Jerry Hendrix makes the same point in his commentary on the Su-24 flyby of the USS Ross in the Black Sea on May 30th:

“We're a bit like lawyers," Hendrix said. “Before we make a response we are going to go back, gather the facts, look at the tape and then issue our response. But by the time we do, 24 to 48 hours later, Russia has already established the narrative: The ship was going to penetrate Russia's sovereign waters and the Russian military gloriously forced it to alter course.”

This dovetails with my ongoing crusade in favor of decentralized command and control doctrine, mission command, and command by negation. We have to start training and equipping our crews at the ‘tip of the spear’ so that they can engage in the narrative battle as an incident unfolds or immediately after it occurs. At bare minimum, we must give our crews what they need so that the U.S. and its allies do not lose the “first narrative salvo.”

Although this requires considerable delegation of “media messaging” authority and is accordingly not without risk, it is not fundamentally different than delegating tactical decision-making authority to the lowest practicable level in accordance with a higher-level commander’s intent. If we trust our trained ship, submarine, and aircraft squadron Commanding Officers and crews with the proper use of weapons systems in a tense situation, then we should also be able to train them so we can trust them with wielding smartphones and internet connections as an incident unfolds.

We could develop specially trained public affairs detachments for embarkation in our forces headed into contested waters; they could serve as Commanding Officers’ dedicated specialists much like any other division or workcenter. Or we could develop training regimes to prepare ship and aircraft crews, themselves, to fill these roles. Either way, if we’re serious about winning narrative battles—or at least not losing them when they matter most—we will have to empower our frontline forces. Our broader strategy in a given crisis or conflict may depend greatly on it.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

A Japanese View on Conventional Deterrence of China

Sugio Takahashi of the Japan Ministry of Defense’s National Institute for Defense Studies has published an excellent short monograph at the Project 2049 Institute on his government’s conventional deterrence policy evolution with respect to China over the past few years. His explanation of the subtle deterrence policy differences between the 2010 and 2013 National Defense Program Guidelines (Japan’s highest-level defense strategy document) is particularly interesting.

Takahashi notes that the 2010 document defined the Chinese threat as being the opportunistic use of primarily non-military tools of national power to gradually expand the maritime zones under Beijing’s de facto political control. This, he says, led Japan to develop a policy of “dynamic deterrence” that focused more on countering China’s use of low-end salami tactics as it deemed the risk of conventional aggression by the PLA was low. Under its dynamic deterrence policy, Japan sought to use persistent Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) coverage of contested waters such as those surrounding the Senkakus to cue intercepts of Chinese “civilian” platforms by maritime law enforcement assets. Tailored military demonstrations of capabilities and readiness also figured into the policy. As he puts it: 

“…dynamic deterrence is intended to sensitize a challenger to the notion that they are always being watched, and that there are no physical gaps of defense posture, or “windows of opportunity,” for fait accompli or probing.” (Pg. 2)

While the 2013 Guidelines recognized the continuing problem of Chinese salami tactics, according to Takahashi it also recognized China’s increasingly-frequent deployment of maritime law enforcement—and sometimes PLA—assets near the Senkakus following Tokyo’s September 2012 purchase of the islands. As such, the 2013 Guidelines identified the emergence of escalation risks inherent to potential direct contacts between PLA and Japan Self-Defense Force assets in the East China. Maritime ISR still figured in heavily under the new Guidelines, but now had the task of enabling rapid responses by the Self-Defense Force to “deliberate or accidental escalation.” Conventional military considerations also rose in prominence, namely demonstrations of the Self-Defense Force’s ability to quickly and decisively conduct a circumstances-tailored response to any Chinese escalation along the spectrum of conventional conflict. This entailed deployments of Self-Defense Force units to forward positions as deemed situationally appropriate, plus the ability to quickly surge forces forward as required.

Takahashi asserts that the most immediate threat to Japanese interests remains China’s use of coast guard and other “paramilitary forces to challenge the East Asian maritime status quo. With respect to the South China Sea challenge, he correctly observes that:

“…since very few Southeast Asian countries currently have significant coast guard forces, there is a possibility that Southeast Asian countries will mobilize military forces to counter China’s paramilitary force. If that occurs, China can blame those countries as “escalating the situation” and further justify their mobilization of military forces. (Pg. 4)

This is exactly what happened to the Philippines in the 2012 Scarsborough Shoal incident.

Even more interestingly, he implies a Japanese government concern that if the U.S. were to publicly declare that China’s improvements of its nuclear second strike capabilities had led to a state of mutual nuclear vulnerability, it might encourage the Chinese to act more boldly in the conventional sphere. He refers to the stability-instability paradox, or rather the idea that the nuclear equilibrium made possible by a secure second strike capability in turn encourages adventurism at the conventional level.

While I understand Takahashi’s concern, it’s important to note that Cold War deterrence theorists did not believe the paradox was deterministic. As I noted in my SSQ article on conventional deterrence:

Glenn Snyder, an early articulator of the paradox, points out that the interplays between context, specific circumstances, and chance are the keys to its real-world application. In his view, a Soviet conventional offensive against NATO or Japan would have had vastly greater ramifications to US interests and prestige, and therefore more risk of unleashing inadvertent escalatory processes, than one against countries in which U.S. interests were peripheral. Robert Jervis agreed, noting that Schelling’s ill-controlled escalatory process meant nuclear equilibrium hardly created any margin of safety for major conventional provocations or wars.[1] Nevertheless, it is the defender’s inability to confidently know whether the stability-instability paradox will work for or against deterrence efforts at a given point in time that drives the need for a conventional hedging force capable of denying the opponent’s potential fait accompli attempts. (Pg. 154)

And Takahashi does a spectacular job outlining the qualities of such a hedging force. He states that:

“From the perspective of countering the A2/AD threat, however, putting more forces on the frontline would not be wise because these frontline forces could be neutralized or destroyed by Chinese A2/AD capabilities. A light presence on the frontline and a heavier stand-off strike force outside of A2/AD ranges would be better-suited for this environment.”(Pg. 6)

His observation on the need for two forward “echelons,” a “light” one consisting of lower campaign-value assets to fight on the “frontline,” and a “heavy” one consisting of higher campaign-value assets that fight from locations “over-the-horizon,” mirrors my own thinking on this issue. So does his subsequent observation that forward forces must be designed to be resilient against a Chinese conventional first strike, and thereby lower any Chinese incentives to conduct one in a crisis or limited conflict, let alone pursue a major conflict.

Takahashi raises the question of whether the best approach for structuring the “frontline” forces within a peacetime-contested zone is to employ tactical dispersal of lower-campaign value conventional forces in order to counter primarily military threats, employ primarily coast guard assets in order to counter salami tactic threats, or a mix of the two. I frankly believe a mix is the right way to go, with the non-military forces in the “area of contact” and the military forces latently backing them from a distance determined by the specifics of the situation. Takahashi is absolutely right that U.S. and Japanese leaders will need to work together to sketch out the “right capability portfolio and institutional division of labor,” not only between non-military and military forces but also the Japanese and U.S. contingents. His monograph provides a terrific starting point for that exact discussion.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

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[1] See 1. Glenn Snyder. Deterrence and Defense. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 225-26; 2. Glenn Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in Balance of Power, ed. Paul Seabury (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., 1965), 199; and 3. Robert Jervis. The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 21-22, 105.