Tuesday, November 24, 2024
China's first oversea base
I will keep this short. We have report that China has signed a ten year deal with Djibouti for its first oversea naval base. Andrew Erickson provided a good analysis of today's development in this article. The location makes a lot of sense since China has been making port calls there as part of its missions in Gulf of Aden. This 2010 Jamestown article did a good job of exploring what had been an expanding support network for PLAN up until that point. Certainly, as Chinese naval influence grows in this region with more port calls, patrols and joint exercises, I think there will be more arrangements where China establishes what looks like oversea base (even if they are not called that).
Tuesday, November 17, 2024
The F-35B, The Naval Services, and Modern American Seapower
Modern American Seapower, comprised largely of the forces
managed by the Secretary of the Navy, provides the United States with an
on-call, forward deployed, ready subset of the larger Joint Force. The land
power (projected from the sea) of the U.S. Marine Corps, the world’s most
lethal and mobile tactical air force (the carrier air wing), and the unmatched
power of the surface and submarine force of the U.S. Navy are well-suited to
protecting and sustaining the nation’s interests where they predominate, and
that is—generally speaking—near the coastlines of the world. This is not to say that the Navy and Marine
Corps can do it all; only that the day-to-day business of presence,
conventional deterrence, and support to diplomacy has a ready-made organizational
provider in the Department of the Navy. That this case has been poorly made is
largely a function of the rounding of sharp corners brought on by
Goldwater-Nichols and its elevation of consensus as the primary organizational
attribute of the Department of Defense. Jointness run amok is however, not the only
reason that American Seapower’s role in national defense has been
sub-optimized. Of equal status is the failure of the Department of the Navy to
organize, train, and equip as the single provider of the conventional
deterrence bound up in integrated maritime power. In order for the promise of
American Seapower to be achieved, the Navy and the Marine Corps must more
closely integrate—operationally and organizationally—with the provision of such
a force as its single organizing principle. The introduction of the USMC F-35B
provides an interesting catalyst for closer integration, and if the nation is wise,
it will seek additional ways to integrate the activities of these maritime
services.
The F-35 program has been justifiably maligned, in the
press, on Capitol Hill, and in the think-tank community. It has taken forever
to field, it is expensive, and it has had its technical challenges. Its Air
Force variant—the F-35A, has been criticized as not being up to the job
currently carried out by the A-10, and its Navy version—the F-35C—has been
criticized for not adequately addressing the most pressing issue of Navy power
projection, the reduction in striking range of the carrier air wing. Yet hidden
among these programs is the F-35B, the VSTOL variant built for the Marine Corps,
which will deploy from U.S. Navy amphibious assault ships of the LHD and LHA
classes. It replaces the AV-8B Harrier, and even the harshest critics of the
F-35 program have a hard time not acknowledging the significant performance
upgrades it brings to the Marine Air Wing, as it brings both considerably more
range and ordnance carrying capacity. Yet if these performance increases were
all the F-35B fielded, there would be little to support the argument for
increased integration. What drives it, and what offers the truly revolutionary
opportunity for closer integration, is its radar and electronic warfare system,
the APG-81 Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar system. This radar is capable of air-to air
operations, air to surface operations, and a wide range of mostly classified
electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
missions. Simply put, if this airplane
is—as was the case for the AV-8B’s—primarily reserved for the support of
Marines ashore—it will be represent a colossal lost opportunity to dramatically
increase the reach and effectiveness of modern American Seapower.
From the decks of eleven Navy amphibious assault ships, the
Marine Corps will operate fifth generation fighters nearly as capable as those
that will operate from (eventually) eleven Navy aircraft carriers (range is the
main deficit, as the VSTOL F-35B must “bring its runway with it”). And while
some suggest that this fact means the distinctions between amphibious assault
ships and aircraft carriers is blurring, the fact that the amphibious assault ships
cannot accommodate a long duration
airborne early warning capability and are dramatically less capable of
independent operations (fuel and ordnance storage being the primary culprits) limits
the utility of this view. Rather than focusing on the “how can the LHD replace
the CVN” question, planners should be considering how to more closely integrate
the operations of these platforms so that the highly capable aircraft on the amphibious
assault ships are used as weapons in the broader maritime fight, rather than simply
as expensive close air support. And here—as Hamlet would say—is the rub.
In order to capture the promise of the F-35B’s capabilities,
the Marine Corps is going to have to view its tactical air arm much differently
than it currently does. Simply put, the
afloat F-35B’s should belong to the Joint Force Maritime Component Commander (rather
than to the Marine Expeditionary Unit commander) to be employed in
accomplishing the JFMCC’s objectives. These will invariably include offensive
sea control and integrated air and missile defense, missions that have not been
featured prominently in the training syllabi of Marine Corps Harrier pilots,
but which MUST become part of the program for F-35B pilots. The capabilities of
the APG-81 AESA radar demand that this aircraft contribute to both the surface
battle and the outer air battle as part of integrated fire control networks.
This is essentially what the Navy’s F-35C pilots will be doing, and it seems
obvious that harnessing the power of an additional squadron of fifth generation
fighters from the amphibious group adds necessary combat power to the broader
force. In fact, the Navy should consider
organizing for combat in a return to the “Expeditionary Strike Force” concept
of its past, one built around a nucleus of a large, nuclear powered aircraft
carrier and an amphibious assault ship, each of which would be capable of
networked IAMD, SUW, Strike, and Close Air Support (CAS) missions enabled by
other elements of the Strike Force.
The concept of “losing” the Marine Air Wing to the JFMCC rubs
some Marines the wrong way, as the historical (and proven) concept of a
combined arms fighting force has served the Marine Corps well. There is a
reasonable argument to be made for depriving the JFMCC of this capability (or
at best, loaning it to the JFMCC on a “not to interfere basis” with planned or
ongoing ground force operations), but that argument is one of the primary
hindrances to closer integration of the Sea Services. What I am arguing for here
is a new way to look at the “payloads vs. platforms” approach taken by the
recently replaced CNO, ADM Jonathan Greenert.
In essence, the “platform” for maritime dominance becomes the sea
itself, and all elements of the Navy and Marine Corps become “payloads”;
payloads to be employed against the appropriate target, at the appropriate time.
In some cases it will be Marine infantry operating ashore. In others, it will
be a stealthy attack submarine. In still
others, it will be F-35B neutralizing adversary surface units.
More closely integrating Navy and Marine Corps operations
would have other applications. None of this is original thinking, and much of
it has come from within the Marine Corps itself. For instance, why not put a
squad of Marines on a maritime security variant of the LCS? Why not employ USMC
attack helos from Navy ships to counter the small boat swarm threat? Why not
equip the Marine Corps with an expeditionary anti-ship missile capability that
could create nightmares for an adversary attempting to operate in the
littorals?
For those Marines asking “Hey, what do we get out of this?”,
my answer is this: command of expeditionary strike forces and numbered fleets
would be available to Marine Corps officers in competition with Navy Aviators,
Submariners, and Surface Warriors, and those staffs would be truly naval in
nature. At the operational level of war, American Seapower would provide the
Expeditionary Strike Force as its unit of issue and it would be an integrated force of land, sea, and air power.
All of these (potentially) good ideas face bureaucratic and
cultural hurdles, chief among which would be two Services already jealous of
each other now being asked to turn over market share to the other. This reaction is predictable and human, but rather
than seeing this as a zero sum, the blending and blurring should be viewed as a
powerful contribution to an energized and revitalized American Seapower that
can be relied upon more heavily to protect and sustain America’s global
interests.
Bryan McGrath
Bryan McGrath
Thursday, November 5, 2024
SASC Roles and Missions Hearing
Attached is my statement submitted for the record. Here is the link to the video.
--------
Thank you Chairman McCain and Ranking Member Reed, and all the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee for the opportunity to testify and to submit this written statement for the record.
I am a defense consultant by trade, specializing in naval strategy. In early 2014, I joined with Seth Cropsey of the Hudson Institute to found a think tank devoted to Seapower, known as the Hudson Center for American Seapower. All of my adult life has been spent either in the Navy or working on matters of naval operations and strategy.
On active duty, I commanded a destroyer, and I was the team leader and primary author of the 2007 USN/USMC/USCG maritime strategy known as “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. Since leaving active duty in 2008, I have written and spoken widely about preponderant American Seapower as the element of our military power most that most effectively and efficiently promotes and sustains America’s prosperity, security, and role as a world leader.
It is an honor to appear before you and in the company of my esteemed colleagues. The nature of this hearing—an inquiry into the continuing relevance of the roles and missions compromise reached at Key West in the late 1940’s—provides the opportunity for a more generalized discussion of the relative merits of Seapower, land power, and air power in the national security strategy of the United States of America. And while the Key West Agreement went a long way toward containing the inter-service rivalry that characterized the immediate post-war defense bureaucracy, it took the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 to finish off the Services as effective advocates for their own particular brand of military power, while creating an atmosphere of “go along to get along” in which consensus is viewed as the highest bureaucratic attribute. In fact, the interaction of Key West and modern Jointness is primarily responsible for the strategic sclerosis that predestines this nation—in these austere times—to a military that is increasingly misaligned with our interests and the strategic environment.
The primary casualty of seventy years of Key West and Goldwater-Nichols has been the loss of forceful, uniformed advocacy for the particular operational and strategic benefits of generally Service-specific military modalities. The contributions of Seapower, land power, and air power in anything more than the tactical and theater operational sense has in no small measure been sacrificed on an altar of “Jointness” in which the contributions of all Services must blend harmoniously, and in which unseemly advocacy—and its likely threat to Jointness—is a guaranteed career shortener.
That is why this hearing and this Committee’s willingness to take hard look at where we are with Goldwater-Nichols—nearly thirty years after its passage—is so important.
Our fighting force has become the envy of the world, and Jointness has a lot to do with that. Our ability to synthesize and synchronize the fires and effects of the four armed services in the space and time of our choosing is unmatched. Additionally, Jointness has the potential to create efficiencies in acquisition, so long as requirements and performance specifications are not unduly compromised in order to attain the “one size fits all” (or most) approach.
Where Jointness has ill-served this country is at the level of strategy-making, both in terms of military strategy and the military’s contribution to the making of Grand Strategy.
Jointness, Strategy, and Resources
Eight years ago while on active duty, I was the team lead and primary author of a document called “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower”, which was a tri-service document (Navy, USMC, Coast Guard) that boldly proclaimed itself a “maritime strategy”, a term that had not been used to describe any one of a half-dozen Navy and Department of the Navy strategic documents in the previous two decades—since the seminal “Maritime Strategy” of the Reagan era.
In point of fact, Goldwater-Nichols and the rise of the Combatant Commanders created a sense among many in the national security field that strategy was no longer the purview of the Services, and that to the extent strategy was to be made, it would be done at the Combatant Commands and the Joint Staff. This view was summed up in a conversation I had in early autumn of 2007, just before the new maritime strategy was to debut. In it, my interlocutor, a friend who is now occupying a position of great responsibility in the Department of Defense, told me that “Services make budgets, not strategy. You guys (the Navy) have no business in writing strategy.” He was not alone in this assessment.
We forged ahead with the Maritime Strategy in spite of those who felt strongly that we had no mandate to do so, and the result was generally well-received. In dissent, one prominent navalist opined that it (the strategy) was not Joint enough, and that we ignored the important contributions of the other Services. Keep in mind, this was a Seapower strategy, designed in no small measure to explain modern American Seapower and its unique contributions to national security and prosperity.
The point of this discourse is to raise the issue that Jointness has risen to the level of attribute above all other attributes—not only in how the force fights, but in how it makes strategy. Military strategy and its contribution to grand strategy take as a starting position, a Joint force that is constituted from the pieces and parts and roles and missions largely enshrined at Key West. Key West essentially locked the contributions in place, with Goldwater-Nichols then enforcing the notion that while the individual service modalities were of course important, it was ONLY in their blending—in largely consistent shares—that goodness could be had.
We can see evidence of this in how base budgets have been allocated in the post-Vietnam era. We often hear of a “1/3, 1/3, 1/3” split, but this is not correct. In fact, the Services only actually split 80% of the budget, as 20% is consumed by DoD activities. That 80% however, has been relatively consistently allocated over the years, with the Department of the Navy generally receiving the largest share (it contains two armed services), the Department of the Air Force next, and the Department of the Army the least. What is interesting though, is that the proportions remain relatively equal irrespective of the national military strategy. Put another way, we have had numerous defense-wide reviews since Goldwater-Nichols, to include the Base Force, the Bottom-Up Review, several National Security Strategies, several Quadrennial Defense Reviews, and the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance. And although these reviews addressed markedly different security environments, the proportions allotted to the military departments remained generally stable. Supplemental funding is not included in this comparison.
How can this be? How can base budgets remain relatively stable across a number of dramatically different security environments, including America as “hyper-power”, the War on Terror, and the Rebalance to the Pacific? The answer is that Key West and Goldwater-Nichols have created an atmosphere in which comity and consensus are the coin of the realm, and that consensus is “purchased” with defense spending that ensures each of the Services generally get much of what they want and rarely get all of it.
Redundancy, Inefficiency, and Risk
The roles and missions division that emerged from Key West enshrined redundancy and inefficiency, but in the process, these overages helped buy down risk, especially as the Cold War progressed. While existential threats lurked, a certain amount of inefficiency and redundancy was worthwhile, and strategically unobjectionable. It is important to remember that the reason Secretary Forrestal convened the Chiefs at Key West was in order to gain efficiency, to economize. Although he was relatively unsuccessful in this regard, Key West created a roles and missions architecture that could be relatively easily enlarged and diminished in response to the perceived level of threat from the Soviet Union. And while Eisenhower eventually came to rely more heavily on nuclear weapons rather than conventional (with the USAF receiving nearly ½ the defense budget late in his second term), he did little to alter the roles and missions of the Services. Additionally, he had the luxury of spending nearly 10% of GDP on defense, nearly triple the proportion we allocate today.
It cannot be stressed enough that Key West was convened largely to reach efficiencies and to economize, and not as a means to achieve strategic coherence or wholeness. As we face what appears to be a new era of great power contention, I am concerned that as we look at roles and missions, we do so not as an exercise in efficiency, but in the quest for the allocation of resources and forces best suited to deter and if necessary, win great power war.
Put another way, the roles and missions debate is potentially less interesting than a debate about how those roles and missions are prioritized, and that prioritization discussion necessarily involves the concept of risk. That said, it seems strategically unwise to continue to spend a declining share of our national wealth on defense while maintaining the current departmental allocation consistency. We are creating a Joint force that is simply a smaller version of its predecessors, capable of doing fewer things, to a lesser extent, in fewer places, without any diminishing of the responsibilities assigned to it. We can go in one of three directions. We can continue to go in the direction that we are, which will ill-position us to protect and sustain our interests in an era of renewed great power contention. This is the most risky path but also the most likely. We can dramatically increase defense spending across the board, and increase the size and readiness of the Armed Services even as we modernize them, which is the least risky path, but in the absence of a triggering event or a political sea-change, highly unlikely. Or we can continue with the same general total outlay of defense spending but favor certain military roles over others. This is option is less risky than the path we are on, but it is potentially as politically unlikely as the broad based increase in defense spending.
I wish to be on record as supporting the second option, a broad increase in military spending across the board. I believe this nation is dangerously ill-prepared to move forward in an era of great power contention, and I believe that the trajectory we are on will only decrease our fitness for these challenges.
If We Prioritize, Prioritize Seapower
Given that the political conditions for a broad increase in defense spending are unlikely to be achieved, and given that simply shrinking the current force will only increase the mismatch between our force and its likely operating environment, we must then consider placing bets on certain aspects of our military power; relying on them to a greater extent while we de-weight other capabilities, not because they are unimportant, but because they are less important to the missions of conventional deterrence and/or because such capabilities can be more rapidly reconstituted than other more capital intensive aspects of the force.
In my view, if a well-conceived strategic approach were taken that 1) weighted deterring and winning great power war higher than any other military endeavor and 2) allowed no sacred cows, modern American Seapower would be prioritized over land power and aerospace power. This is not to say that America does not need land and aerospace power; we certainly do. But the Department of the Navy is essentially a microcosm of the Joint Force as presently constituted. It clearly has the overwhelming amount of Seapower, although the Army has a large number of watercraft. It has the world’s most mobile air component, though the Air Force clearly contains campaign level, war-winning air power. And it has the world’s most feared middleweight land force, delivered from the sea with mobility and flexibility, although the Army is clearly our most powerful land force. In other words, I am an advocate for land power and air power-and I believe they can most efficiently be delivered from the sea in order to protect and sustain our interests around the world. Additionally, if properly resourced, the land and air power contained within the units of issue of modern naval power—the Carrier Strike Group and the Amphibious Ready Group, would be sufficient for much of the day to day work of military diplomacy, assurance, presence and deterrence around the world, and would be the force upon which the war-winning power of the Army and the Air Force would marshal if a conflict outstripped available naval power.
However, the Navy and Marine Corps as presently constituted would be ill-suited to this work. We are sized for peacetime forward presence of credible combat power in two theaters at a time—currently the Far East and the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean region. Our 271 ship, 186K Marine force is insufficient to service these forward deployed combat hubs, and worse, our national interests demand a return in force to the Mediterranean—where turmoil and unrest throughout North Africa and the Levant, threats to our ally Israel, and a new Russian “keep out” zone developing in the Eastern Mediterranean require U.S. answers.
A Navy and Marine Corps capable of providing continuous and indefinite presence, assurance, and deterrence in three theaters simultaneously would necessarily be larger than the current force. It would be built around 15 Expeditionary Strike Forces each of which is comprised of a large, nuclear powered aircraft carrier, an amphibious assault ship, 8-10 surface combatants, two additional amphibious ships, two loosely attached attack submarines networked into an undersea constellation of unmanned, unattended, and or fixed surveillance, sensors, and weapons, shore-based maritime patrol aircraft and integrated maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance unmanned platforms. This force would take decades to achieve, and would likely be in the neighborhood of 450 ships and 220,000 Marines.
In fact, it is the time associated with achieving this force that argues strongly for moving quickly and investing steadily in peacetime. The framers of our Constitution faced a similar dilemma to what we face today. In relative terms, it was then—and remains today—less difficult (and expensive) to “…raise and support Armies…”, than it is to “…provide and maintain a Navy” (U.S. Constitution Article I Section 8). Recently, the Army Chief of Staff gave a speech in which he attempted to dispel a number of “myths” about warfare. One of these myths was that “armies are easy to regenerate”. This is of course, a straw man, as no thoughtful analyst considers it “easy” to regenerate an Army. The point though—one that the framers foresaw in the language of the Constitution—is not that it is easy to raise an army, but that it is EASIER than raising a Navy. In this regard, the Air Force is much more like the Navy than the Army. In simple terms, building ships takes a long time, and in our present industrial base—where there are few places that proper warships can be built—there is little or no surge capacity to “ramp up” in an emergency.
Geography is Not Destiny, but It Matters
Another reason to privilege the land power and air power resident in the sea power of the Department of the Navy is the great gift of geography that we enjoy. Our border nations are not military threats to our security. As the world’s most powerful economic nation, our interests are global, and protecting and sustaining them requires the projection of power and influence across thousands of miles. This extended quotation from Congressional Research Service analyst Ron O’Rourke article in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings (Jan 2012) says it best:
“Most of the world’s people, resources, and economic activity are not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia. Consequently, a key element of U.S. national strategy, going back many decades, has been to prevent the emergence of a regional hegemon in one part of Eurasia or another, because such a hegemon could deny the United States access to some of the Eastern Hemisphere’s resources and economic activity. Preventing this is a major reason why the U.S. military is structured with force elements-including significant naval forces, long-range bombers, and long range airlift-that enable it to cross broad expanses of ocean and air space and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations upon arrival. The United States is the only country with a military designed to do this. The other countries in the Western Hemisphere don’t attempt it because they can’t afford it, and because the United States is, in effect, doing it for them. Countries of the Eastern Hemisphere don’t do it for the very basic reason that they’re already in that hemisphere, where the action is. Consequently, they instead spend their defense money on forces for influencing events in their own neighborhood.”
Given our propitious geography and our friendly neighbors, there is a logical argument to be made to keep the land and airpower of the Department of the Navy in highest readiness with global capacity, while keeping the war-winning combat power of the U.S. Army’s land power and the U.S. Air Force’s air power largely—but not exclusively—garrisoned in the United States in smaller numbers than we have been used to. The nation would necessarily have to think through how most effectively to ramp up these two campaign level Services, and a more fluid mix of active, reserve and National Guard forces would likely result. Those elements of the Army and Air Force that support the day to day operations of the Navy and Marine Corps would also be kept in highest readiness, as would those portions of the Army that most resemble the capital intensive nature of the Navy and Air Force—specifically Army Aviation and Air and Missile Defense.
The greatest risk of this Seapower-centric approach is that we simply could not generate enough “war winning” combat power fast enough to prevent a “fait accompli”, especially one not proximate to the sea (for instance, Central Europe). Mitigating this threat would necessarily involve a greater reliance on the land forces of friends and allies. The risk could not however, be eliminated.
Conclusion
The most likely direction this nation will head (and the most dangerous) is to continue on the path it is on, a path to a smaller force that is increasingly inappropriate to the emerging security environment. This is because the forces of inertia are strong, both in the Pentagon and here on Capitol Hill. Additional money for defense seems unlikely, and just as unlikely would be a strategic re-prioritization.
The best option then would be to embark on a broad based defense increase, one that would grow the current force as allocated both in size and in capability. This I believe to be the soundest, most strategically wise course to take as China and Russia begin to assume larger roles in the world, and while spending more on defense would be a difficult political pull, it is probably more likely to happen than a strategic allocation of resources that challenges current paradigms and rice bowls.
Should the nation move in the direction of a dialogue that would be less risky than the current path and less expensive than the broad based defense build-up, then shifting resources and priorities to the Department of the Navy to enable it to provide the global, day-to-day management force while the other Military Departments concentrate on support to those routine and crisis response operations and most importantly, the provision of war-winning, heavy, campaign level land and air power, is advised.
--------
Thank you Chairman McCain and Ranking Member Reed, and all the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee for the opportunity to testify and to submit this written statement for the record.
I am a defense consultant by trade, specializing in naval strategy. In early 2014, I joined with Seth Cropsey of the Hudson Institute to found a think tank devoted to Seapower, known as the Hudson Center for American Seapower. All of my adult life has been spent either in the Navy or working on matters of naval operations and strategy.
On active duty, I commanded a destroyer, and I was the team leader and primary author of the 2007 USN/USMC/USCG maritime strategy known as “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. Since leaving active duty in 2008, I have written and spoken widely about preponderant American Seapower as the element of our military power most that most effectively and efficiently promotes and sustains America’s prosperity, security, and role as a world leader.
It is an honor to appear before you and in the company of my esteemed colleagues. The nature of this hearing—an inquiry into the continuing relevance of the roles and missions compromise reached at Key West in the late 1940’s—provides the opportunity for a more generalized discussion of the relative merits of Seapower, land power, and air power in the national security strategy of the United States of America. And while the Key West Agreement went a long way toward containing the inter-service rivalry that characterized the immediate post-war defense bureaucracy, it took the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 to finish off the Services as effective advocates for their own particular brand of military power, while creating an atmosphere of “go along to get along” in which consensus is viewed as the highest bureaucratic attribute. In fact, the interaction of Key West and modern Jointness is primarily responsible for the strategic sclerosis that predestines this nation—in these austere times—to a military that is increasingly misaligned with our interests and the strategic environment.
The primary casualty of seventy years of Key West and Goldwater-Nichols has been the loss of forceful, uniformed advocacy for the particular operational and strategic benefits of generally Service-specific military modalities. The contributions of Seapower, land power, and air power in anything more than the tactical and theater operational sense has in no small measure been sacrificed on an altar of “Jointness” in which the contributions of all Services must blend harmoniously, and in which unseemly advocacy—and its likely threat to Jointness—is a guaranteed career shortener.
That is why this hearing and this Committee’s willingness to take hard look at where we are with Goldwater-Nichols—nearly thirty years after its passage—is so important.
Our fighting force has become the envy of the world, and Jointness has a lot to do with that. Our ability to synthesize and synchronize the fires and effects of the four armed services in the space and time of our choosing is unmatched. Additionally, Jointness has the potential to create efficiencies in acquisition, so long as requirements and performance specifications are not unduly compromised in order to attain the “one size fits all” (or most) approach.
Where Jointness has ill-served this country is at the level of strategy-making, both in terms of military strategy and the military’s contribution to the making of Grand Strategy.
Jointness, Strategy, and Resources
Eight years ago while on active duty, I was the team lead and primary author of a document called “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower”, which was a tri-service document (Navy, USMC, Coast Guard) that boldly proclaimed itself a “maritime strategy”, a term that had not been used to describe any one of a half-dozen Navy and Department of the Navy strategic documents in the previous two decades—since the seminal “Maritime Strategy” of the Reagan era.
In point of fact, Goldwater-Nichols and the rise of the Combatant Commanders created a sense among many in the national security field that strategy was no longer the purview of the Services, and that to the extent strategy was to be made, it would be done at the Combatant Commands and the Joint Staff. This view was summed up in a conversation I had in early autumn of 2007, just before the new maritime strategy was to debut. In it, my interlocutor, a friend who is now occupying a position of great responsibility in the Department of Defense, told me that “Services make budgets, not strategy. You guys (the Navy) have no business in writing strategy.” He was not alone in this assessment.
We forged ahead with the Maritime Strategy in spite of those who felt strongly that we had no mandate to do so, and the result was generally well-received. In dissent, one prominent navalist opined that it (the strategy) was not Joint enough, and that we ignored the important contributions of the other Services. Keep in mind, this was a Seapower strategy, designed in no small measure to explain modern American Seapower and its unique contributions to national security and prosperity.
The point of this discourse is to raise the issue that Jointness has risen to the level of attribute above all other attributes—not only in how the force fights, but in how it makes strategy. Military strategy and its contribution to grand strategy take as a starting position, a Joint force that is constituted from the pieces and parts and roles and missions largely enshrined at Key West. Key West essentially locked the contributions in place, with Goldwater-Nichols then enforcing the notion that while the individual service modalities were of course important, it was ONLY in their blending—in largely consistent shares—that goodness could be had.
We can see evidence of this in how base budgets have been allocated in the post-Vietnam era. We often hear of a “1/3, 1/3, 1/3” split, but this is not correct. In fact, the Services only actually split 80% of the budget, as 20% is consumed by DoD activities. That 80% however, has been relatively consistently allocated over the years, with the Department of the Navy generally receiving the largest share (it contains two armed services), the Department of the Air Force next, and the Department of the Army the least. What is interesting though, is that the proportions remain relatively equal irrespective of the national military strategy. Put another way, we have had numerous defense-wide reviews since Goldwater-Nichols, to include the Base Force, the Bottom-Up Review, several National Security Strategies, several Quadrennial Defense Reviews, and the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance. And although these reviews addressed markedly different security environments, the proportions allotted to the military departments remained generally stable. Supplemental funding is not included in this comparison.
How can this be? How can base budgets remain relatively stable across a number of dramatically different security environments, including America as “hyper-power”, the War on Terror, and the Rebalance to the Pacific? The answer is that Key West and Goldwater-Nichols have created an atmosphere in which comity and consensus are the coin of the realm, and that consensus is “purchased” with defense spending that ensures each of the Services generally get much of what they want and rarely get all of it.
Redundancy, Inefficiency, and Risk
The roles and missions division that emerged from Key West enshrined redundancy and inefficiency, but in the process, these overages helped buy down risk, especially as the Cold War progressed. While existential threats lurked, a certain amount of inefficiency and redundancy was worthwhile, and strategically unobjectionable. It is important to remember that the reason Secretary Forrestal convened the Chiefs at Key West was in order to gain efficiency, to economize. Although he was relatively unsuccessful in this regard, Key West created a roles and missions architecture that could be relatively easily enlarged and diminished in response to the perceived level of threat from the Soviet Union. And while Eisenhower eventually came to rely more heavily on nuclear weapons rather than conventional (with the USAF receiving nearly ½ the defense budget late in his second term), he did little to alter the roles and missions of the Services. Additionally, he had the luxury of spending nearly 10% of GDP on defense, nearly triple the proportion we allocate today.
It cannot be stressed enough that Key West was convened largely to reach efficiencies and to economize, and not as a means to achieve strategic coherence or wholeness. As we face what appears to be a new era of great power contention, I am concerned that as we look at roles and missions, we do so not as an exercise in efficiency, but in the quest for the allocation of resources and forces best suited to deter and if necessary, win great power war.
Put another way, the roles and missions debate is potentially less interesting than a debate about how those roles and missions are prioritized, and that prioritization discussion necessarily involves the concept of risk. That said, it seems strategically unwise to continue to spend a declining share of our national wealth on defense while maintaining the current departmental allocation consistency. We are creating a Joint force that is simply a smaller version of its predecessors, capable of doing fewer things, to a lesser extent, in fewer places, without any diminishing of the responsibilities assigned to it. We can go in one of three directions. We can continue to go in the direction that we are, which will ill-position us to protect and sustain our interests in an era of renewed great power contention. This is the most risky path but also the most likely. We can dramatically increase defense spending across the board, and increase the size and readiness of the Armed Services even as we modernize them, which is the least risky path, but in the absence of a triggering event or a political sea-change, highly unlikely. Or we can continue with the same general total outlay of defense spending but favor certain military roles over others. This is option is less risky than the path we are on, but it is potentially as politically unlikely as the broad based increase in defense spending.
I wish to be on record as supporting the second option, a broad increase in military spending across the board. I believe this nation is dangerously ill-prepared to move forward in an era of great power contention, and I believe that the trajectory we are on will only decrease our fitness for these challenges.
If We Prioritize, Prioritize Seapower
Given that the political conditions for a broad increase in defense spending are unlikely to be achieved, and given that simply shrinking the current force will only increase the mismatch between our force and its likely operating environment, we must then consider placing bets on certain aspects of our military power; relying on them to a greater extent while we de-weight other capabilities, not because they are unimportant, but because they are less important to the missions of conventional deterrence and/or because such capabilities can be more rapidly reconstituted than other more capital intensive aspects of the force.
In my view, if a well-conceived strategic approach were taken that 1) weighted deterring and winning great power war higher than any other military endeavor and 2) allowed no sacred cows, modern American Seapower would be prioritized over land power and aerospace power. This is not to say that America does not need land and aerospace power; we certainly do. But the Department of the Navy is essentially a microcosm of the Joint Force as presently constituted. It clearly has the overwhelming amount of Seapower, although the Army has a large number of watercraft. It has the world’s most mobile air component, though the Air Force clearly contains campaign level, war-winning air power. And it has the world’s most feared middleweight land force, delivered from the sea with mobility and flexibility, although the Army is clearly our most powerful land force. In other words, I am an advocate for land power and air power-and I believe they can most efficiently be delivered from the sea in order to protect and sustain our interests around the world. Additionally, if properly resourced, the land and air power contained within the units of issue of modern naval power—the Carrier Strike Group and the Amphibious Ready Group, would be sufficient for much of the day to day work of military diplomacy, assurance, presence and deterrence around the world, and would be the force upon which the war-winning power of the Army and the Air Force would marshal if a conflict outstripped available naval power.
However, the Navy and Marine Corps as presently constituted would be ill-suited to this work. We are sized for peacetime forward presence of credible combat power in two theaters at a time—currently the Far East and the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean region. Our 271 ship, 186K Marine force is insufficient to service these forward deployed combat hubs, and worse, our national interests demand a return in force to the Mediterranean—where turmoil and unrest throughout North Africa and the Levant, threats to our ally Israel, and a new Russian “keep out” zone developing in the Eastern Mediterranean require U.S. answers.
A Navy and Marine Corps capable of providing continuous and indefinite presence, assurance, and deterrence in three theaters simultaneously would necessarily be larger than the current force. It would be built around 15 Expeditionary Strike Forces each of which is comprised of a large, nuclear powered aircraft carrier, an amphibious assault ship, 8-10 surface combatants, two additional amphibious ships, two loosely attached attack submarines networked into an undersea constellation of unmanned, unattended, and or fixed surveillance, sensors, and weapons, shore-based maritime patrol aircraft and integrated maritime intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance unmanned platforms. This force would take decades to achieve, and would likely be in the neighborhood of 450 ships and 220,000 Marines.
In fact, it is the time associated with achieving this force that argues strongly for moving quickly and investing steadily in peacetime. The framers of our Constitution faced a similar dilemma to what we face today. In relative terms, it was then—and remains today—less difficult (and expensive) to “…raise and support Armies…”, than it is to “…provide and maintain a Navy” (U.S. Constitution Article I Section 8). Recently, the Army Chief of Staff gave a speech in which he attempted to dispel a number of “myths” about warfare. One of these myths was that “armies are easy to regenerate”. This is of course, a straw man, as no thoughtful analyst considers it “easy” to regenerate an Army. The point though—one that the framers foresaw in the language of the Constitution—is not that it is easy to raise an army, but that it is EASIER than raising a Navy. In this regard, the Air Force is much more like the Navy than the Army. In simple terms, building ships takes a long time, and in our present industrial base—where there are few places that proper warships can be built—there is little or no surge capacity to “ramp up” in an emergency.
Geography is Not Destiny, but It Matters
Another reason to privilege the land power and air power resident in the sea power of the Department of the Navy is the great gift of geography that we enjoy. Our border nations are not military threats to our security. As the world’s most powerful economic nation, our interests are global, and protecting and sustaining them requires the projection of power and influence across thousands of miles. This extended quotation from Congressional Research Service analyst Ron O’Rourke article in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings (Jan 2012) says it best:
“Most of the world’s people, resources, and economic activity are not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia. Consequently, a key element of U.S. national strategy, going back many decades, has been to prevent the emergence of a regional hegemon in one part of Eurasia or another, because such a hegemon could deny the United States access to some of the Eastern Hemisphere’s resources and economic activity. Preventing this is a major reason why the U.S. military is structured with force elements-including significant naval forces, long-range bombers, and long range airlift-that enable it to cross broad expanses of ocean and air space and then conduct sustained, large-scale military operations upon arrival. The United States is the only country with a military designed to do this. The other countries in the Western Hemisphere don’t attempt it because they can’t afford it, and because the United States is, in effect, doing it for them. Countries of the Eastern Hemisphere don’t do it for the very basic reason that they’re already in that hemisphere, where the action is. Consequently, they instead spend their defense money on forces for influencing events in their own neighborhood.”
Given our propitious geography and our friendly neighbors, there is a logical argument to be made to keep the land and airpower of the Department of the Navy in highest readiness with global capacity, while keeping the war-winning combat power of the U.S. Army’s land power and the U.S. Air Force’s air power largely—but not exclusively—garrisoned in the United States in smaller numbers than we have been used to. The nation would necessarily have to think through how most effectively to ramp up these two campaign level Services, and a more fluid mix of active, reserve and National Guard forces would likely result. Those elements of the Army and Air Force that support the day to day operations of the Navy and Marine Corps would also be kept in highest readiness, as would those portions of the Army that most resemble the capital intensive nature of the Navy and Air Force—specifically Army Aviation and Air and Missile Defense.
The greatest risk of this Seapower-centric approach is that we simply could not generate enough “war winning” combat power fast enough to prevent a “fait accompli”, especially one not proximate to the sea (for instance, Central Europe). Mitigating this threat would necessarily involve a greater reliance on the land forces of friends and allies. The risk could not however, be eliminated.
Conclusion
The most likely direction this nation will head (and the most dangerous) is to continue on the path it is on, a path to a smaller force that is increasingly inappropriate to the emerging security environment. This is because the forces of inertia are strong, both in the Pentagon and here on Capitol Hill. Additional money for defense seems unlikely, and just as unlikely would be a strategic re-prioritization.
The best option then would be to embark on a broad based defense increase, one that would grow the current force as allocated both in size and in capability. This I believe to be the soundest, most strategically wise course to take as China and Russia begin to assume larger roles in the world, and while spending more on defense would be a difficult political pull, it is probably more likely to happen than a strategic allocation of resources that challenges current paradigms and rice bowls.
Should the nation move in the direction of a dialogue that would be less risky than the current path and less expensive than the broad based defense build-up, then shifting resources and priorities to the Department of the Navy to enable it to provide the global, day-to-day management force while the other Military Departments concentrate on support to those routine and crisis response operations and most importantly, the provision of war-winning, heavy, campaign level land and air power, is advised.
Wednesday, November 4, 2024
Hudson Center for American Seapower 2016 Stipend Announcement
The Hudson Center for American Seapower is proud to solicit nominations for its 2016 American Seapower Stipend.
The Hudson Center for American Seapower will award one $5000 stipend to a student enrolled (during calendar year 2016) in an accredited Ph.D program worldwide, whose primary area of study is directly related to the strategic contributions of American Seapower.
Interested scholars should provide a précis of between 250-500 words describing their area of study and its importance. The statement should identify where they are studying.
Each submission should be accompanied by a short (less than 150 words) statement of support from the scholar’s thesis adviser verifying the scholar’s work and the adviser’s support for it.
Submissions should be made by email to the Director of the Hudson Center for American Seapower, Dr. Seth Cropsey ([email protected]) . All submissions must be received no later than January 1, 2016. The awardee will be announced no later than January 31, 2016.
The Hudson Center for American Seapower will award one $5000 stipend to a student enrolled (during calendar year 2016) in an accredited Ph.D program worldwide, whose primary area of study is directly related to the strategic contributions of American Seapower.
Interested scholars should provide a précis of between 250-500 words describing their area of study and its importance. The statement should identify where they are studying.
Each submission should be accompanied by a short (less than 150 words) statement of support from the scholar’s thesis adviser verifying the scholar’s work and the adviser’s support for it.
Submissions should be made by email to the Director of the Hudson Center for American Seapower, Dr. Seth Cropsey ([email protected]) . All submissions must be received no later than January 1, 2016. The awardee will be announced no later than January 31, 2016.
Sunday, November 1, 2024
SASC Roles and Missions Hearing Thursday, 05 November
Revisiting the Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces
Agenda
To receive testimony on revisiting the roles and missions of the armed forces.
Witnesses
- Lieutenant General David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.)Dean, The Mitchell Institute For Aerospace Studies
- Mr. Robert C. MartinageSenior Fellow, The Center For Strategic And Budgetary Assessments
- Mr. Bryan McGrathDeputy Director, The Center For American Seapower The Hudson Institute
- Dr. Michael E. O’HanlonCo-Director, The Center For 21st Century Security And Intelligence The Brookings Institution
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)