Information Dissemination

Friday, February 10, 2024

Question of the Week February 6 - February 10, 2024

Each week Information Dissemination will present a Question of the Week for professional consideration and discussion. The question will remain at the top of the blog from Monday at 12:00am until Friday 5:00pm. Please scroll down for new contributions. This weeks question:

The Navy awarded Newport News Shipbuilding $25.5 million to begin advanced fabrication of of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise CVN-80 this week. Should CVN-80, the third Ford-class aircraft carrier, be the last big deck aircraft carrier the US Navy builds?

Why? Why not?

Thursday, February 9, 2024

CSBA Fleet Architecture Talking Paper--Why the Current Force Structure Assessment Process is Flawed

During the work last summer on the CSBA Fleet Architecture Study, I would occasionally write short summaries of things we were thinking about for the team lead, Bryan Clark. The one below is a condnesed version of some thinking on why the way FSA's are done today is flawed.

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There is a fundamental weakness in the manner in which the Navy conducts fleet architecture and force structure inquiries. That weakness derives from the tension between the near-term nature of the “demand signal” as represented in the numbered war plans, the GFMAP, and security cooperation force requirements, and the far-term nature of the 30 year shipbuilding and aviation plans that are required of it by the Congress. These 30 year plans are a manifestation of the fleet architecture in place and planned, such as it is. Because the main inputs to it are 1) the near-term demand signal extrapolated forward into the future and 2) the perceived need to “replace” force structure that reaches the end of its service life, a classic “self-licking ice cream cone” situation is created. An explanation follows.

There is a force structure in place at any given time that reflects the extant fleet architecture. Combatant Commanders (COCOM) request forces (or sometimes capabilities) to service their requirements from the forces that are available. To the extent that there are either unavailable forces or capabilities to service these unmet needs, the COCOM generates need statements—urgent operational requirements or inputs to their integrated priority lists. Generally speaking, these needs are reflective of in-situ/near term needs. The Navy then—within its capability to do so—attempts to meet these needs with (again, generally speaking)—short term or nearly immediately available solutions.

Put another way, the COCOMs ask for what is available, and the Navy builds its fleet around what the COCOM’s ask for. What the COCOMs ask for is conditioned by a set of pre-existing expectations of what can and will be provided. Our fleet looks like it does because of an aggregated response over time to what is asked of it by the competing requirements of COCOMs obsessed (by design) with the near term.

In our approach to this assessment, we take as our main idea the conventional deterrence of great power war. We assess the current fleet architecture (to include its posture and basing) to be at best, sub-optimized to meet this mandate and at worst, a slow, methodical undercutting of such deterrence. This is due to the fact that our forces providing everyday peacetime presence are the same forces that would be relied upon for war-fighting—just a smaller subset thereof. The demands of great power warfighting create a requirement for a level of response that cannot be adequately prepared for given the needs of maintaining point-station deterrence day in and day out from among the same forces. This Alternate Fleet Architecture is based upon a radically altered “demand signal” that is closely aligned with the needs of a regionally aggregated approach to great power deterrence focused through the instrumentalities of a number of emerging naval operational concepts.

CSBA Alternative Fleet Architecture Study

In the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, DoD was directed to conduct a group of studies on Alternative Fleet Architectures. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) was selected to perform one of the studies, and its fearless leader Bryan Clark asked me to pitch in. The study has finally been released to the public, and it can be found here.

Tuesday, February 7, 2024

The Fleet in Being Strategy

PACIFIC OCEAN (Jan. 20, 2017) Aircraft from Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 17 conduct flight operations aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). The carrier is currently off the coast of Southern California conducting carrier qualifications. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Bill M. Sanders/Released)

The US Navy has dealt with the fiscal controls of sequestration put in place by Congress and the Obama Administration over the last few years by making a strategic choice that favored new shipbuilding activities over the maintenance of ships and aircraft - among other things. Budgets are zero sum, and Defense News is reporting the consequences of that strategic choice.

The U.S. Navy’s F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet strike fighters are the tip of the spear, embodying most of the fierce striking power of the aircraft carrier strike group. But nearly two-thirds of the fleet’s strike fighters can’t fly — grounded because they’re either undergoing maintenance or simply waiting for parts or their turn in line on the aviation depot backlog.

Overall, more than half the Navy’s aircraft are grounded, most because there isn’t enough money to fix them.

Additionally, there isn’t enough money to fix the fleet’s ships, and the backlog of ships needing work continues to grow. Overhauls — “availabilities” in Navy parlance — are being canceled or deferred, and when ships do come in they need longer to refit. Every carrier overall for at least three years has run long, and some submarines are out of service for prolonged periods, as much as four years or more. One submarine, the Boise, has lost its diving certification and can’t operate pending shipyard work.

Leaders claim that if more money doesn’t become available, five more submarines will be in the same state by the end of this year.

The article has plenty of details, but the eye popping quote comes after the article cites "$6-8 billion" in immediate needs. There is only one way to describe what this means.

The dire situation of naval aviation is sobering. According to the Navy, 53 percent of all Navy aircraft can’t fly — about 1,700 combat aircraft, patrol, and transport planes and helicopters. Not all are due to budget problems — at any given time, about one-fourth to one-third of aircraft are out of service for regular maintenance. But the 53 percent figure represents about twice the historic norm.

It doesn't matter how many ships are in the US Navy's shipbuilding plan, the unequivocal truth of the situation is - the US Navy today is a hollow force. When the fleet cannot leave port and has been degraded to the point it cannot maintain it's own resources, it is a fleet in being. It was an intentional choice, by both Navy leaders and Congress - they all own the situation as it is today. This has been the strategy of the last several years to insure new construction and new ships. No one, whether a civilian in either political party or an Admiral in the Navy today, can claim they are not accountable. Priorities get funded, and a lot of priorities that have nothing to do with the maintenance of naval power have been funded over the last many years.

Consider for a moment that it is very likely the training squadrons are probably among the squadrons actually getting maintenance funding, which means it is very likely the US Navy couldn't field more than 4, and probably not even 5 aircraft carriers with functioning combat aircraft today in response to a national emergency. I don't know what percent of the F-18s force is grounded, but I bet the percentage of helicopters grounded is much higher, because if there is one thing we can make a safe bet on - it is that naval aviation leaders will have prioritized the F-18s and done only the minimum everywhere else.

Last week the Question of the Week asked whether the US Navy was prepared for combat at sea. My answer to this question would be, "Yes the US Navy is prepared to fight, at least initially, and while the tip of the spear is very sharp - it's the shortest spear the US Navy has represented since the 19th century."

In 2010 I remember listening to fleet leaders who were very concerned that the US Navy was on the verge of being a hollow force, and today in 2017 the US Navy is absolutely hollow. There are entire squadrons of aircraft that cannot fly today, and ships that not only can't get underway - but it is unclear when they next could get underway. When I read articles discussing the size of the US Navy in 2017 I roll my eyes wondering if they have any idea how meaningless the numbers they use actually are. Numbers on paper have nothing in common with reality. The CNO telling any and all who will listen that the state of maintenance in the force has already passed critical levels - that's the reality.