This post originally appeared one year ago today, and it was posted then in no small measure to be timed to the arrival in office of the new Under Secretary of the Navy, Dr. Janine Davidson. Janine is someone I admire quite a bit, and she and I discussed these reforms in detail as she prepared to take office. A new Secretary of the Navy nominee was announced yesterday, and Mr. Bilden and his team will have a significant opportunity to move forward on necessary reforms. This is reposted to provide that team with a few things to consider.
Introduction
This post is a summary of ideas that have been germinating in my mind for a while. I have been arguing for a powerful vision of American Seapower for some time now, and closer Navy/Marine Corps integration has consistently been at the heart of it. I have come to conclude that the benefits of what I argue are worth pursuing, but that achieving them is unlikely as long as the two Services are not invested in a common understanding of American Seapower and led by an organization dedicated to discerning one.
In the Navy, I enjoyed four tours in Washington. Admittedly, none of them were on the Navy Secretariat, and so I do not write from a position of great authority on its inner workings. My observations are those of an interested observer who has worked around and in the vicinity of this staff. I welcome factual refutations of my opinions and observations.
Theory of the Case:
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America plays a critical and leading role in the world
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It is in America’s interest to continue to execute this role.
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America has interests that are thousands of miles from its own territory.
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America’s sovereign territory is relatively safe from military threat.
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The rise of China and a resurgent and belligerent Russia present a new era of Great Power competition.
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America is likely to encounter China and Russia as an adversary in areas contiguous to the world’s oceans, as this is where the majority of the world’s population lives.
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The Department of the Navy has within it two Armed Services that specialize in operating from the sea.
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These Armed Services provide the world’s most powerful naval force, the world’s most feared middleweight land force, and the world’s most mobile and lethal air force.
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These forces—if properly resourced—are capable of servicing the majority of U.S. presence, conventional deterrence, assurance, and crisis response requirements.
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In order to do so, these expeditionary capabilities must be more closely integrated into a cohesive and integral maritime fighting force, a new vision of American Seapower.
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In order to achieve a new vision of American Seapower, a closer alignment of all aspects of organizing, training, and equipping the Navy and Marine Corps must be considered. Planning, programming, and budgeting must also be included. Redundancy, overlap, and conflict must be minimized.
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The Department of the Navy Secretariat, under the Secretary of the Navy, is the organization that must bring about this closer integration and alignment.
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Process and administrative changes in the Secretariat and throughout the two Services will be required.
Explanation
America’s role in the world and its favorable geography create the conditions under which Seapower can and should play a central and distinct role in its security and prosperity. By combining the capabilities of the world’s most powerful Navy, the world’s most feared middleweight land force, and the world’s most mobile and lethal air force, the Department of the Navy plays a leading role in all of the missions of the Department of Defense:
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Counter terrorism and irregular warfare
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Deter and defeat aggression
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Project power despite anti-access/area denial challenges
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Counter weapons of mass destruction
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Operate effectively in cyberspace and space
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Maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent
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Defend the homeland and provide support to civil authorities
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Provide a stabilizing presence
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Conduct stability and counterinsurgency operations
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Conduct humanitarian, disaster relief, and other operations.
This is not to say that the Department of the Navy performs ALL of all of these missions. Its role varies from mission to mission. What should not be disputed however, is the fact that the primary operational formations derived of the forces organized, trained, and equipped within the Department perform these missions as a matter of routine on a global basis. The very nature of American Seapower offers the nation the ability to field and operate forces that can protect and sustain American interests thousands of miles from its own shores, at the point of impact where the overwhelming majority of the world population lives. And while the Seapower resident in the Department of the Navy cannot perform all of the missions above in their totality all of the time, it can perform them to a greater degree than any other aspect of American military power most of the time in most places most efficiently.
In not recognizing the unique and foundational contributions of American Seapower to the nation’s defense, duplication, and waste are promoted as precious resources are inefficiently allocated, rendering the nation somewhat less capable of defending its interests for a given investment.
It is therefore essential that the an integral and coherent vision of American Seapower be formulated and espoused, one that presents the case that the nation can and should lean more heavily on the Department of the Navy for its peacetime crisis response and security requirements, while the forces of the other military departments prioritize preparation for the conduct and winning of largescale conflict.
Such a vision is however, insufficient, as the current organization of the Department of the Navy and its subordinate Armed Services (the Navy and the Marine Corps) does not adequately support the integration of capabilities that would be required in order to bring it about. Simply put, a coherent vision of American Seapower at the operational level demands a greater degree of integration at the very top, in efforts including planning, programming, budgeting, organizing, training, and equipping. By thinking more expansively about the utility of American Seapower and how it can best serve the needs of the Republic, pressures arise on the Navy and Marine Corps to work more closely together bureaucratically and organizationally in order to bring about the operational results desired.
Such integration is unlikely to occur from the bottom up. Service cultures and comfortable roles and missions create a situation in which the promise of American Seapower is unlikely to be achieved if the Navy and Marine Corps are left to themselves to bring it about. A forcing function is required.
Therefore, a reorganization of the Department of the Navy, undertaken with support of the President, the Secretary of Defense, and appropriate Congressional Committees is necessary to take positive steps designed to ensure that within the Department of the Navy, a greater level of Service integration is achieved, while also working to obtain the resources necessary to field the capabilities and capacities necessary to more effectively service the nation’s peacetime security and presence needs. It is not enough to say that we need a larger Navy and or Marine Corps. We must ensure that the American people understand what will be done with such an increase, why it is in the nation’s interest to do so, and how doing so will make a given level of defense spending go further.
Pathologies
Strategic Thinking
There is no organization within the Department of the Navy dedicated to thinking about integrated American Seapower.
Both the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps maintain three star directorates with “strategy” within their mandate, in addition to small, highly influential strategic cells that report directly to the Service Chief. In none of these organizations is there a meaningful representation of officers from the other Service.
The Department of the Navy Secretariat has no such organization.
The lack of such an organization has not however, resulted in no strategic thinking in the Department. Quite the contrary, two maritime strategies have been produced in the past ten years (2007, 2015). These were however, ad hoc efforts that do not appear to have influenced fleet operations or force structure, and in at least the 2007 instance, was undertaken around and without the inclusion of the Service Secretary.
Strategic Communications
Under the Secretary of the Navy, there is a Chief of Information (CHINFO) and a Chief of Legislative Affairs (OLA). These officers report directly to the Secretary, with dotted line reporting responsibility to the Chief of Naval Operations. Neither organization is responsible for Marine Corps affairs, as the Commandant of the Marine Corps has his own legislative assistant and his own public affairs assistant.
In essence, the organizations charged with Department of the Navy strategic communications represent only one Service (the Navy), and to the extent that the other Service—the Marine Corps—requires these functions, they are creatures of the office of the Commandant, not the Secretary of the Navy.
In essence, any strategic communications efforts are derived of three disjointed and unaligned efforts—Department of the Navy, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Marine Corps.
Additionally, no one person in the Department of the Navy is charged with the creation and implementation of a coherent strategic communications plan including legislative affairs, public affairs, and international messaging. Put another way, even if there were a coherent strategic narrative promoting the benefits of American Seapower, there is no process, organization, task force, or group responsible for carrying it out.
Planning and Programming
The Navy and Marine Corps do not receive adequate planning and programming guidance from the Secretary of the Navy at the beginning of the annual budget cycle, guidance designed to achieve a coherent vision of American Seapower. Secretary priority items are included in current guidance, but the degree to which the Services respond to a coherent and integrated vision of Seapower is minimal at best. There is little evidence that the Services are instructed what to devalue or cut.
The Navy and Marine Corps maintain separate planning and programming functions designed to create inputs (known as a “program objective memorandum” or POM) to the annual defense budget. There is little or no coordination between the Services during the development of Service POM’s, and there is limited interaction between the Services and the Navy Secretariat.
The Navy Secretariat does not have an organization staffed to issue such guidance, monitor its implementation, and remedy shortfalls. To the extent that any changes are made to the Service POM’s, they come late in the process and are generally made within individual Service POMs.
Acquisition
Meaningful reform to the acquisition system is essential to achieving alignment within the Department of the Navy, as a vision of American Seapower would create derived requirements and the opportunity for capability trades between and among USN and USMC acquisition efforts.
This currently happens to some degree within the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition. This work is however, undermined by the disjointed strategic communications efforts described above.
Captain Mark Vandroff, USN and I
laid out a proposal for reforming Department of the Navy acquisition elsewhere, and rather than repeat it here, readers are urged to review it. Though not mentioned in that article, the need for an integrated strategic communications/legislative relations effort is essential to achieving some of the benefits of the recommended reforms.
Recommendations
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Revive the Office of Program Appraisal (OPA) on the Navy Secretariat at the two-star level. A staff made up of USN/USMC and civilian experts in strategic thinking and budgeting. Headed by a two-star with a one-star deputy who fleets up. Alternates between Navy and USMC. Billets would come from USN (N3/N5, N8) and USMC (P,P,&O/P&R). This organization would have the dual mission of aligning the American Seapower strategic narrative and providing oversight of Service POM development in order to achieve it.
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Empower the Under Secretary of the Navy to manage Navy Department Strategic Communications. VCNO, ACMC, CHINFO, OLA, N3/N5, and PP@O would all serve on a DON strategic communications Board of Directors. Public, legislative, and international messaging would be aligned within this BOD.
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Both CHINFO and OLA would become truly Departmental organizations. The Commandant would lose the Assistant for Legislative Matters and the Assistant for Public Affairs. The two-star heads of these organizations would have a one-star deputy who fleets up. The heads of these organizations would be filled by officers from the two services, with no more than 90 days at a time in which officers from one of the Services are in both positions.
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Empower the Secretary of the Navy as the single responsible party for Departmental capability definition and its acquisition, subject to overrule only by the President or the Secretary of Defense (within the Executive Department). This is described more fully in the previously linked to
USNI News piece.
Conclusion
The promise of powerful, integrated American Seapower tending to the nation’s peacetime presence and crisis response missions while it creates the conditions for garrison forces to fall in on for warfighting, will not occur organically. There are powerful interests aligned against it, and as this article may reveal, potentially good arguments against it.
I look forward to those arguments being made, and to those arguments in agreement with the central proposition of this proposal but with doubts about the offered solutions.
In the end, this nation’s geography, interests, and role in the world demand more of its naval services. Seapower advocates must not shy away from the benefits conferred to this nation by a powerful naval force, even if it means relative comparisons with other elements of military power.
