The flexible and scalable nature of U.S. naval power as an instrument of national security policy was shown by the operations conducted during 1999," Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig emphasized in his Department of the Navy 2000 Posture Statement. "Five Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups (CVBGs) and five Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) embarked in Amphibious Ready Groups (ARGs) deployed during the year, manned by more than 55,000 Sailors and Marines." The Navy and Marine Corps contributed significantly to operations in Kosovo, carried out high-intensity tasks in support of Operation Southern Watch in the Arabian Gulf, and participated in numerous humanitarian missions—from the Eastern United States, buffeted by Hurricane Floyd, to earthquake-devastated Turkey to East Timor, ravaged by political instability and violence. "Significantly, despite heavy operational commitments, naval assets were drawn mostly from normally deployed rotational forces rather than surge deployments," Secretary Danzig underscored.
Yet strains in the fabric of the Navy were increasingly evident as the year wore on, and bode ill for the Navy in 2000 and beyond. Operational commitments were indeed met, but only by cannibalization of parts for numerous systems and cross-decking of critical ordnance types and people with key technical skills. While recruiting during 1999 rebounded from the 7,000-recruit shortfall in 1998, the Navy remained hamstrung by a gap of some 9,000 at-sea billets that still are unfilled. Navy first-term enlisted retention remained about 8% below the service's steady-state retention target, and Navy officer retention challenges continued to be felt in critical warfare areas: naval aviation, surface warfare, submarine warfare, and naval special warfare (SEALs). With readiness a growing concern, Secretary Danzig admitted that "projections of future funding levels do not fully support all that we know should be done."
Kosovo Quagmire?
Operation Allied Force air strikes on Serbia began on 24 March, following months of warnings from the United States and other NATO countries. As NATO aircraft and cruise missiles were poised to penetrate Yugoslav air space, President Bill Clinton announced the goal of the operation: "To deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo." Subtext hinted at a broader objective: to remove Yugoslav strongman President Slobodan Milosevic from power.
The initial strikes, however, far from deterring the Serbs from bloodier attacks, seemed to spur on atrocities against ethnic Albanians. This resulted in President Clinton redefining the operation's goal on 30 March: "To degrade Serbian capability to conduct repressive actions against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo." The next day, however, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon explained that NATO's strategy was to "chip away" at Serbian military capabilities, which "eventually will lead to an end to the murderous ways in Kosovo."
In what should have been regarded as a "Smaller-Scale Contingency" under U.S. strategic concepts, Operation Allied Force in reality created a great strain on the U.S. military in general, and the Navy in particular at critical times. In addition, it called into dramatic doubt the Defense Department's "two MRC"—major regional contingency—strategy. "We're a one-MRC-plus force," Lieutenant General John Rhodes, Commander of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, told a congressional panel following the end of the 78-day operation. "There was not an MRC of capability left" in the Air Force at the height of the air campaign, Air Force Lieutenant General Marvin Esmond, Deputy Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, underscored.
Likewise, the Navy's capability to carry out the "two MRC" strategy was increasingly uncertain. The absence of a carrier battle group in the Mediterranean at the onset of the strikes showed the challenges of a Navy forced to meet budget-driven force structure targets and still provide important war-fighting presence in critical world regions. "We're running them into the ground right now, for God's sake," retired Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith remarked about the Navy's 12carrier force structure.
The carrier problem arose with the decision to move the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) out of the Mediterranean on 17 March, a week before the air campaign began, and redeploy her to the Arabian Gulf to support U.N. sanctions against Iraq. While some of the Enterprise battle group's Tomahawk "shooters" (later joined by the USS Theodore Roosevelt [CVN-71] battle group) were held back to launch more than 200 cruise missiles at Serb targets, "We can only speculate as to the difference naval air would have made in the first two weeks," Vice Admiral Daniel Murphy, Commander, U.S. Sixth Fleet, noted later. "I believe it would have been substantial."
Meanwhile, the Pacific Fleet "lost" the carrier Kitty Hawk (CV-63) to compensate for the decision to keep the Theodore Roosevelt in the Mediterranean. From early April through July, the Navy had no carrier presence in the Western Pacific, during a period of increased tensions and armed conflict between South and North Korea that flared over a fisheries dispute. One North Korean gunboat was sunk, five others damaged, and as many as 30 North Koreans were killed by South Korean naval gunfire in June. In the aftermath of the Korean fisheries crisis, two U.S. Navy Aegis guided-missile cruisers—the USS Vincennes (CG-49) and Mobile Bay (CG-53)—were ordered to the Yellow Sea to help stabilize the situation. Only later did a carrier, the USS Constellation (CV-64), arrive in the region.
The Navy's EA-6B Prowlers were called upon to escort practically every strike package on attack runs—including with F-1 17A Nighthawk fighters and B-2 Spirit bombers. The Air Force lost an F-1 17A on 27 March to a Serb surface-to-air missile, the first time a stealth fighter had been lost in combat. With the number of Prowlers diminished because of downsizing, and the fact that the Air Force's EF-1 11 Raven aircraft had been deactivated in 1997, the Navy had to develop special personnel tempo rules for EA-6B aircrews. The existing rule had sailors and airmen spending two days at their home base for every day they are forward deployed, but the rule was to go into effect only after a deployment exceeds 60 days. For the EA-6Bs, the Navy sent aircrews home after 56 days for a one-month break, after which they could have been deployed again. As it turned out, 10 of the Navy's and Marine Corps' 19 Prowler squadrons supported Allied Force strikes.
Other U.S. naval forces that supported Allied Force operations included: the Aegis cruisers USS Velia Gulf (CG-72) and Leyte Gulf (CG-55); the Aegis destroyers USS Gonzales (DDG-66) and Ross (DDG-71); the Spruance (DD-963)-class destroyer Peterson (DD-969); the frigate Halyburton (FFG-40); the attack submarines USS Albuquerque (SSN-706) and Boise (SSN-764); and the three-ship Kearsarge amphibious ready group, comprised of the USS Kearsarge (LHD-4), Ponce (LPD-15), and Gunston Hall (LSD-44).
One of the principal lessons that the Navy has been drawing from the crisis was that naval aviation is in a good position to assume a much larger role against time-critical targets, such as mobile missiles and deployable radar systems. In addition, with upgrades planned for the Tactical Tomahawk and follow-on Advanced Land- Attack Missiles, cruise-missile strikes from the sea will be sufficiently flexible, precise, and accurate to play major roles. Navy officials, for example, noted that the 74 aircraft in the Theodore Roosevelt air wing accounted for a significantly greater percentage of the targets struck than their small numbers otherwise would have indicated. The 74 aircraft, 30% of the naval aircraft deployed to the Adriatic region, accounted for just 4,270 out of a total of 38,000 air combat sorties flown by all NATO aircraft during Operation Allied Force. Still, they were responsible for the destruction or damage of 447 tactical targets and 88 fixed targets. "We had only 74 aircraft," Admiral Murphy commented, "and when something had to be struck the same day there were only two systems that could do it—the carrier air wing and Tomahawk. Nothing else could do this," he underscored, "and that is just a fact."
In addition to Navy strike aircraft generating successful time-critical sorties and the Navy EA-6B Prowlers' important contribution to Allied Force electronic warfare SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) support, naval command-and-control capabilities proved to be so valuable that their contributions were singled out by Secretary of Defense William Cohen and General Henry Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during "lessons-learned" testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
That said, Navy planners acknowledged privately that perhaps Kosovo was not the "quintessential example" of the value of naval forces to deploy rapidly and stay on station almost indefinitely in future crises and conflicts. The availability of land bases, particularly across the Adriatic in Italy, provided virtually all the support land-based Air Force (as well as Marine Corps and other NATO air force) assets needed. Given uncertain political dynamics, however—in this case reinforced by what some see as competing end-game objectives within the NATO alliance and the revelation of possible intelligence leaks to Milosevic's forces from within the Allied Force coalition—it would be unwise to place too much emphasis on the continued availability of in-country resources and infrastructure. As Secretary Danzig noted in his Posture Statement: "Inherently versatile naval forces can execute a broad range of missions and are relatively unconstrained by regional infrastructure requirements and restrictions by other nations."
Despite increasingly strident claims by air enthusiasts, the efficacy of air power—whether flying from aircraft carriers or land bases—in achieving the overall objective of removing Milosevic from power is not clear. It was not until NATO political leaders finally decided that the commitment of ground forces to actual combat would be needed and Russia pulled back its political support to Belgrade that Serb forces stood down, 78 days after the air strikes began. Perhaps even more telling was the fact that at the end of the year President Milosevic was still in power, and the U.N. peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) was increasingly hard pressed to preserve whatever truly had been won.
Quo Vadis Vieques?
At the close of 1999 the Navy was optimistic that "near" live-fire training would resume on and nearby the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. Exercises at the Navy's billion-dollar training facilities there were suspended in April after a Marine Corps pilot accidentally dropped two bombs that went off-target, killing a civilian security guard on 19 April. Massive protests followed and the Navy was directed to suspend live-fire operations.
Following a review of the naval services' live-fire training needs, President Clinton wrote to Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Rossello, proposing to restart the exercises for no more than five years, reduce by half the number of exercise days per year, limit bombing to inert weapons, and upgrade the island's civilian infrastructure with a $40-million infusion of cash. When Rossello rebuffed the President's entreaty, the talks bogged down, frustrating Navy leaders. The Navy postponed sending Rear Admiral Kevin Green to be the head of the Navy Vieques Consultation Group, even as the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) battle group and the Wasp (LHD-1) amphibious ready group were challenged in an attempt to accomplish "patchwork" combined-arms workups in anticipation of their planned February 2000 deployment.
In a December 1999 interview, the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jay Johnson mused, "People say, 'You've solved the Vieques problem.' Au contraire" Earlier, Secretary of Defense William Cohen had told reporters that the Navy was partly to blame for the crisis. "The Navy has not really done a very good job in their relations with the people of Vieques and Puerto Rico," he remarked in an early November interview. "We hope to do better in that regard."
Navy Secretary Danzig offered up another economic-impact consideration when he noted that the Navy might have to reduce sharply operations at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, if access to the Vieques range were curtailed. "If we cannot use Vieques in a vibrantly useful way," Danzig remarked, "that will force us to reevaluate basing in Puerto Rico." Roosevelt Roads primarily supports training at Vieques, and, should the Navy's presence be downsized, many millions of dollars that help support the Puerto Rican economy each year will be foregone.
Like San Clemente Island off the California coast, Vieques is the only range in the Atlantic that supports live-fire, combined sea, air, land, and underwater operations. "We're committed to rolling up our sleeves and working with the good people of Vieques to ensure that we can continue to use that range," Admiral Johnson underscored. "It's the crown jewel training experience for us. We don't want to lose it, and we're willing to work to keep it."
It ultimately took an offer of $90 million in aid, $40 million of it up front, before Puerto Rican officials agreed to let the Navy conduct exercises and training in 2000, using "dummy" bombs. But in September 2000, the people of Vieques will vote on a referendum on whether to permit the Navy to resuming using live ordnance. If the answer is yes, the island will get another $50 million in aid. If they answer negative, the Navy must clean up the ranges and halt all training by 1 May 2003.
Readiness in Doubt
Admiral Archie Clemins, Commander, Pacific Fleet, was blunt in his assessment to the Senate Subcommittee on Readiness in April 1999, as Operation Allied Force took its toll on his assets: "An outside observer, viewing this episode in a vacuum, might conclude that things are OK. But things are not OK . . . . Ships are going into maintenance periods as scheduled, but they are not receiving all of the maintenance required to keep them in optimal condition . . . ." Among other indicators of a strained readiness posture, Admiral Clemins noted:
- Navy optempo was at an all-time high, with Fifth Fleet ships steaming an average of 78 days per quarter, compared to the targeted 51 days—creating a $15-million shortfall in operating funds.
- The operating forces were so short of Tomahawk cruise missiles, with more than 500 launched in the eight months preceding his April testimony, that crews spend an inordinate amount of time transferring weapons from ship to ship. The extra work is "interfering with more productive activities and diminishing their quality of life both when deployed and when in homeport."
- Cannibalization has increased, particularly in high-demand aircraft. The F/A-18 Hornets at Lemoore Naval Air Station in mid-year had a 43% "not flyable" rate, with critical shortages in engines and electronics spares.
- The unplanned deployment of the Kitty Hawk to the Arabian Gulf to compensate for the redeployment of the Theodore Roosevelt battle group to support Kosovo operations exacerbated the critical-people shortfall.
"Sailors don't mind working hard at the front lines," Admiral Clemins told the subcommittee, "but when they see us continually robbing the rest of the force they wonder where the health of their Navy is heading."
Firsts . . . Lasts . . . Comings . . . Goings . . .
The deadly scourge of anthrax raised concerns early in 1999. The year before, Secretary of Defense Cohen approved a six-shot series intended to inoculate service members against weapons that may contain the bacterium that causes the disease. Nearly 220,000 people had received the shots through early 1999, when word came that 23 sailors on the Theodore Roosevelt had refused to comply with the order. They went to captain's mast, were demoted one paygrade, and were ordered to forfeit half their pay for two months, serve 45 days' restriction, and 45 days' extra duty. A few weeks earlier, a sailor attached to the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) was discharged for refusing to be inoculated. The shots, which have been in military and civilian use since receiving Food and Drug Administration approval in 1970, are considered safe. Only about 1% of the service members who had received the shots experienced any problems—mostly minor ill effects—since the program had been initiated. And yet the controversy would not die.
The Navy's official presence in Antarctica came to an end on 17 February when aircraft XD-04, an LC-130 Hercules attached to Antarctic Development Squadron Six (VXE-6), took off from Williams Field. VXE-6 had logged more than 200,000 flight hours during its 43-year existence, and was disbanded last year at Point Mugu, California. Since the Navy renewed its post- World War II Antarctic operations in 1955, 24 sailors and Marines had died supporting "Operation Deep Freeze," the mission to supply U.S. and New Zealand bases on the Ross Sea coast.
The USS Hawkbill (SSN-666) surfaced at the North Pole on 3 May in the last of the joint Navy-National Science Foundation "SCICEX"—Science Ice Expedition—research trips. (See "Braking the Ice," April 2000 Proceedings, pp. 34-38.) The Permit (SSN-594)-class attack subs have been used for this mission because of their ability to break through Arctic ice and surface. The Hawkbill was deactivated following the expedition, which began on 18 March. The sub transited the Arctic, where she collected thousands of water samples and conducted geophysical mapping surveys of the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, moved into the Norwegian Sea and then to England. From there, she steamed to the equator and through the Panama Canal before returning to Pearl Harbor on 1 July. This was the fifth of the SCICEX expeditions conducted in concert with the National Science Foundation; the program has come to an end for the foreseeable future simply because of the lack of submarines. "We've gone from as many as 96 submarines in 1990 to a projected 50 submarines by 2003," Rear Admiral Al Konetzni, Jr., Commander, Submarine Force Pacific Fleet, remarked. "Planners are already being asked which valid missions the remaining submarines can fulfill and which missions will go unfulfilled." Clearly, Arctic research will go wanting.
At the request of Secretary of Defense William Cohen, the Spruance-class destroyer USS Briscoe (DD-997) was made available for the at-sea, civilian burial of the cremated remains of John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, on 22 July. The three had died in a private plane crash on 16 July, sparking a massive search-and-rescue/recovery mission by Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, and regional search teams. The decision to divert the Briscoe from training off the Virginia Capes, which resulted in returning to home port a day later than planned, kindled some controversy in the press. But President Clinton, Defense Secretary Cohen, and CNO Johnson all agreed that it met the needs of the Kennedy and Bessette families, "and the needs of the nation, as well."
Called back from liberty in Palma de Majorca, Spain, to their ships early on 18 August, sailors and Marines of the Kearsarge amphibious ready group made ready for a quick transit across the Mediterranean to bring assistance to the earthquake-devastated areas of northwestern Turkey. Some 10,000 people had been killed and another 35,000 people were still missing, buried under tons of rubble from the quake—which was one of the most powerful of the 20th century. With 2,100 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit on board the Kearsarge, the amphibious transport ship Ponce, and the dock landing ship Gunston Hall, the force was ready to provide medical facilities and manpower to provide disaster relief. In addition, the amphibious ready group's sailors and Marines helped distribute more than 6,000 tents, set up basic medical care stations at three locations, and prepare ten tent sites. Having arrived in the Mediterranean in April to support Operation Allied Force, and the follow-on Operation Joint Guardian in June, the Kearsarge amphibious ready group departed Turkey on 10 September to return to the United States.
On 24 September, the Aegis guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh (CG-67) off Kauai, Hawaii, launched the first of the new SM-3 Standard Missile. The Aegis Light Exo-Atmospheric Projectile Intercept test was a key milestone in the Navy's "Theater- Wide" ballistic missile defense program. According to Pentagon materials, the launch "achieved all test objectives, demonstrating airframe stability and control through the second and third-stage separation event." It was a critically important event, as it underscored the Navy's growing ability to contribute to national missile defense, in addition to its theater missions.
In the wake of several months of violence following the 30 August independence referendum in East Timor, on 2 October the amphibious assault ship USS Belleau Wood (LHA-3) and Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) took up station to help keep the peace. The ammunition ship USNS Kilauea (T-AE-26) and the Yokosuka-based Aegis cruiser USS Mobile Bay (CG-53) already were nearby, in Darwin, Australia, standing by to assist the U.N. International Force in East Timor. Air cushion landing craft (LCAC) operators from the Belleau Wood helped to offload an Australian supply ship; Marine helicopters flew supplies to shore units; electricians mates, hull technicians, and machinist mates fixed lighting and facilities at military compounds; and the ship's crew offered some "R&R" for the Australian ground forces that bore the brunt of the peace-keeping operations.
Blue Angels pilots Lieutenant Commander Kieron O'Connor and Lieutenant Kevin Collier were killed during a pre-airshow training flight near Moody Air Force Base, Valdosta, Georgia, on 28 October. Commander O'Conner had been with the flight demonstration team since September 1998 and flew the No. 3 jet. Lieutenant Collier had joined the team a month before his death and was in training to fly with the team in 2000. The fatal accident—the first in 14 years of Blue Angels operations—underscored the danger of military flight even in a year of outstanding safety for the Navy. Despite high-tempo operations around the world, the Navy had completed fiscal year 1999 operations on 30 September with just six fatalities in nine major accidents in 1.6 million flying hours. The aviation accident rate of 0.77 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours was the best year in naval aviation's history. (Overall, the Navy completed fiscal year 1999 with 103 fatalities and just 33 serious on-the-job accidents, its best safety year ever.)
In a reminder that Russian espionage continues well after the Cold War ended, on 28 October the Navy arrested 18-year veteran Cryptologie Technician First Class Daniel King for allegedly passing classified data to the Russian embassy in Washington. Assigned to the Naval Security Group at the National Security Agency in 1994, King mailed a disk full of data that included information on the use of submarines to eavesdrop on Russian undersea cables. According to Navy sources, the incident appeared to be a "one-time deal," possibly the result of ill feelings that his Navy career had been stalled and that he was distraught over a pending divorce.
On 18 November, the National Transportation Safety Board dissolved the Navy's EgyptAir Flight 900 recovery task force, turning over responsibility to the Navy's supervisor of salvage and diving for any additional recovery efforts. The Boeing 767 airliner crashed in the early morning of 31 October, scattering debris some 60 miles east of Nantucket Island. Several Navy ships, including the salvage ship Grapple (ARS-53), the amphibious transport dock Austin (LPD-4), the ocean-going tug Mohawk (T-ATF-170), and the coastal minehunter Oriole (MHC -55), supported the recovery efforts, in a grim reprise of the TWA Flight 800, Air France 111, and J.F.K., Jr., search-and-recovery tragedies. The first ship on the scene was the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy's training ship Kings Pointer. The Austin served as the command-and-control ship, and also deployed three MH-53E Sea Dragon mine countermeasures helicopters, which towed advanced mine-detection equipment to aid in the search for wreckage. Within a day of coming on scene in early November, the Grapple's crew had located and recovered the aircraft's flight data and cockpit voice recorders, which—once analyzed—fueled speculation that a reserve pilot had taken command of the aircraft and inexplicably dove it into the sea.
The USS Arthur W. Radford (DD968) joined the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) battle group in December less than a year after suffering $24 million in damage from a collision with a Saudi Arabian cargo vessel near midnight on 4 February. The destroyer, which had to miss an intended Mediterranean deployment with the Theodore Roosevelt battle group, had a significant gash in her starboard hull and damage to her 5-inch gun mount. The Saudi-flagged vessel rammed the Radford off the coast of Virginia, resulting in the ship's commanding officer, Commander Daniel Chang, being relieved of command and receiving a punitive letter of reprimand. Although Commander Chang was held responsible for the collision, the Justice Department alleged that the Saudi vessel's master also was culpable, and filed a lawsuit against the owners. The Radford is serving as the test ship for the Advanced Enclosed Mast system, which seeks to enhance the ship's stealth features and radar/ communications systems performance while at the same time reducing maintenance requirements. The ship was calibrating instruments while turning tight circles around an electronic buoy at the time of the accident—in calm seas and under clear skies.
Denouement
"We stand at the dawn of a new century that will be shaped by dramatic technological advances and far-reaching global challenges," Admiral Johnson wrote in the foreword to his 2000 Program Guide. "These dynamics, in turn, harbor the potential great adjustments in the character and operations of U.S. naval forces in the years to come."
The year 1999, which brought the bloodiest century of the world's history to a close, hinted that the past will indeed be prologue. With the Navy 40% "leaner" than at the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, and more than half of its ships under way and one-third deployed to forward operating areas throughout the year, the "vigilant global presence" of the Navy placed greater strains on its people, platforms, and equipment. Nonetheless, good things were accomplished, and, for the most part, the carriers and Tomahawk "shooters" were available when the President needed them. How much longer that will be the case is anyone's guess.
Dr. Truver is Executive Director, Center for Security Strategies and Operations, Systems Engineering Group, Anteon Corporation. Ms. Tonya Tanks of the Center’s staff supported the research for this article.