The 1,000-ship navy concept must develop at the grassroots level. It risks being stillborn if the United States dominates its leadership.
What's the fastest way to kill a new idea introduced to a large organization? Just dismiss it by saying "we're already doing that," and cite a current activity that captures a glimmer of the idea, but in reality misses its full potential.
Today, a good idea is facing exactly this threat. In 2005, the CNO, Admiral Mike Mullen, unveiled his vision for the 1,000-ship navy to describe cooperation between the international navies of the world to ensure security of the global maritime commons.1 The concept immediately caught the imagination of navies and coast guards around the world as its strength was not the figurative number 1,000 or even the concept of a physical network, but rather the shared interests of maritime nations to maintain security of the vital sea lines forming the backbone of the modern global economy.2 The 1,000-ship navy appeals to all navies, regardless of size, because it illustrates that they all have a part in maintaining global maritime security. Ironically, it is within the biggest navy, that of the concept's author, where the 1,000-ship navy faces its greatest challenge.
Low Expectations
Many in the Fleet believe our plethora of international exercises is a perfect example of the 1,000-ship navy in action. Exercises are indeed important to maintaining our collective readiness, strengthening bilateral and multilateral relationships, and building trust and cooperation required for real-world contingency operations. Exercises such as theater security cooperation, however, are insidious when approached by both sides in a pro forma fashion, using unchallenging formats and honing very basic skills that do little to build a real combined capacity for maritime security. Often this may be all a host nation wants, but this is when the country team and the theater naval component must take the hard steps to implement the vision of the 1,000-ship navy.
One of the central principles of the concept is that the most capable navies bring along those less capable. To do this effectively, both sides must honestly evaluate an exercise for how it moves toward real maritime security operations. This may force participants beyond their comfort zones, but it is necessary to avoid a "check the block" mentality. If we expect less, then we will get less. As every teacher knows well, there is a damning effect of low expectations. It is often confounding for U.S. commanders to observe navies within their region operating or exercising together in far more challenging events than they will attempt with American counterparts. The reasons may be complex, but U.S. exercise planners can do much to resolve this condition by working with security assistance officers to track those regional navies' core competencies necessary for combined maritime security operations.
This corporate memory and understanding is crucial to guide rotational forces through effective exercises with their hosts and build effective regional maritime security teams. Likewise, the expertise of U.S. country and regional teams could encourage regional bilateral and multilateral exercises without U.S. forces, offering to assist in exercise planning, execution, and assessment. Effective exercises could also be expanded to include other U.S. agencies, such as Customs and law enforcement, to work with host nations and regional agencies beyond naval forces, including commercial, international trade, and security organizations. To achieve real and meaningful maritime security, we must train across the entire maritime realm.
Real Operations
Important as effective naval exercises are to combined maritime security capacity, they are only one step toward achieving the 1,000-ship navy. Although navies will form the cornerstones of the concept, the 1,000-ship navy is about much more. To provide a secure maritime domain, the world needs not just gray hulls flying the U.S. or any other single nation's flag, but a network of international navies, coast guards, port operators, commercial shippers, and local law enforcement all working together to increase security.3 How far have we really moved toward such a network?
Too often, using predictable rotational forces, we cycle through a preordained series of canned bilateral or multilateral exercises, port visits, and community relations projects and believe we are building effective maritime security. Our theater forces often possess little of the real expertise required or desired by our hosts. We lack sufficient numbers of port operations experts, advisers on fisheries enforcement, customs and border protection, salvage, harbor security, or Coast Guard assets and law enforcement detachments. Concurrently, our relationships with global and regional commercial shipping companies are inadequate, and we have yet to integrate them into our maritime awareness. The maritime security assets of most regions' nations are not integrated internally or externally with each other. How many nations with separate navies, coast guards, and harbor or port police effectively operate together? We know that this is difficult from our own maritime homeland security experience. However, to confront the real security challenges posed by maritime crime, international terrorism, and WMD proliferation, we must be realistic and candid not only with our global allies and our enduring and emerging regional partners, but more important, with ourselves. A group sail photo captures a hint of the 1,000-ship navy, but too often we believe such examples are the vision's successful culmination.
Avoid American Leadership
The quickest way to kill the 1,000-ship navy would be to codify it as a U.S.-led proposal and initiative in regional and international fora. The U.S. Navy and other agencies may participate in maintaining a region's maritime security, depending on our national interests within that region. However, although the United States would do well not to host or command regional security arrangements, as a global navy we will have forces available in most regions to assist in maritime awareness and security. Each region has its own competent leaders for security arrangements who can better represent the region's shared cultural ties and interests.
Whether we call it the 1,000-ship navy, or Global Maritime Partnership Initiative, naval component commanders and country teams should encourage regional maritime security arrangements to form at the grassroots level, without overt U.S. leadership. We can offer assistance from the outside, and participate as friendly visitors, but if we want successful and enduring arrangements, we must not bear a heavy hand or try to make every maritime force look like us.
Global Partners
If the guiding principle of the 1,000-ship navy is that those nations that can assist others do so, then the world's more capable navies provide security or security assistance to others that are less capable. Global navies provide forces to international coalitions to bring security to ungoverned or undergoverned regions of the world, like Combined Task Force 150 off the Horn of Africa, where global navies and occasional regional partners have operated together for almost six years. In the 1,000-ship navy concept, less capable navies are assisted to increase their capacity to provide maritime security in their own ports, harbors, territorial waters, and approaches. Where possible, special relationships between nations are leveraged, such as those intangible but nonetheless strong bonds based on cultural or historic ties.
While CTF-150 is an example of what may be possible, regional participation has been spotty, and the record of global navies cooperating to build capability in other regions of the world is far less compelling. Often even our closest allies pursue their own national interests as competitors for regional influence, especially when supporting their defense industries' marketing attempts. Achieving real maritime security will require not only our own interagency cooperation with nations of a region, but a truly coordinated regional approach to harmonize the capabilities of our global partners. Briefing slides that squeeze together as many flags as possible, regardless of their real input, only delude us further that we are achieving true global cooperation.
Security for Security's Sake?
The 1,000-ship navy will need to share information widely to achieve the awareness essential to maritime security. Ideally, this information should be unclassified to allow its effective use by all partners. When intelligence is involved, all nations are rightly concerned for their own security; however, needless classification c impedes the productive information-sharing crucial to the 1,000-ship navy. Often information held in our classified systems could greatly assist regional partners to gain critical awareness for their own and the region's security.
Our naval forces in Europe are realizing this principle by linking and opening maritime systems throughout the theater and greatly expanding maritime awareness and security.4 Linking existing national radar systems afloat and ashore to military and commercial automated information systems and commercial insurance databases allows U.S. and friendly forces unprecedented maritime awareness. Unfortunately, other regions have been too slow to link and share information because of concerns over sovereignty and security. Stovepiped national systems offer a vast potential of untapped information. We must move beyond limited approaches to' link a few secure common systems with software applications like CENTRIX, and get to a fully integrated regional picture from ports to harbors and into the commons.
What kind of C^sup 2^?
Command and control (C^sup 2^) within the 1,000-ship navy may differ markedly from region to region, and organizational models may take many forms. Some regions with strong existing security arrangements, such as NATO, may follow classic hierarchical command structures. Other regions, with histories of mistrust and competition between neighbors, may have a loose ad hoc collective relationship with only advisory control. Between these two extremes, other regions may adopt a community model of organization, in which C^sup 2^ means cooperation and coordination vice command and control? Even NATO uses C^sup 2^ in terms of command and coordination.
Within the 1,000-ship navy there may be no one universal organizational model. The strength of the concept is its collective approach, recognizing the unique character and special considerations in each region. True maritime security in a region may require us to operate with local forces whereby "no one is in charge." This may exceed the comfort limits of some U.S. commanders, and success will hinge on a common understanding of each nation's rules of engagement.
The 1,000-ship navy provokes many questions over how regional and global forces may operate together, especially under divergent national policies and political differences. International law and custom fully support regional and multilateral agreements for collective security under an overarching concept. With no organization or bureaucracy for the 1,000-ship navy, and all agreements regional and unique, participating nations can craft mutually beneficial relationships. Participating nations may want to grant some nations access to their Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ), or possibly their territorial waters. There is no single solution for every region or nation. Ultimately, each nation must follow its own national policy, and nothing in the 1,000-ship navy concept would take precedence.
Saving the Good Idea
If the U.S. Navy truly believes in the promise of a global network for maritime security, then our words and actions must be aligned with the underlying principles of the 1,000-ship navy. We cannot plod through the same stale set of theater security cooperation activities, dusting off last year's pre-ex and changing the date, and believe we are building real cooperation and regional maritime security. We must exercise with a purpose and move beyond training toward combined and integrated maritime security operations. This may move us beyond our comfort zones, beyond naval forces and naval exercises, toward working with joint, interagency, regional, and global partners in non-traditional ways.
Many may take offense and point to isolated examples where international maritime cooperation has worked or is working. Undoubtedly, innovative people are working hard to achieve security in their regions, believing our Navy is a force for global peace, stability, and cooperation. However, if we take a closer look and honestly attempt to view ourselves as our friends, allies, and emerging partners see us, we may find ourselves lacking. Arrogance, low expectations, complacency, and intellectual laziness could sink the 1,000-ship navy before it sails.
1. ADM Mike Mullen, Speech given to International Sea Power Symposium, 21 September 2005.
2. John Morgan and Charles Martoglio, "The Thousand Ship Navy: Global Maritime Network" U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, November 2005, p. 14.
3. Ibid., p. 15.
4. Harry Ulrich, "Southern Region Maritime Issues - A New Model for Our Mission," brief given 3-5 October 2005.
5. Nancy C. Roberts and Raymond Trevor Bradley, "Organizing for Peace Operations," Public Management Review, Vol. 7, Issue 1, 2005.
Captain Van Hook, a career surface warfare officer, commanded the USS O'Bannon (DD-987) and later Destroyer Squadron 23. He Is currently the executive director of the CNO Executive Panel.