Collaboration with other navies has long been a centerpiece of U.S. naval strategy, policy, and operations. Indeed, the 2007 maritime strategy that the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard signed underscores the need for maritime forces to build confidence and trust among nations through collective security efforts that focus on common threats and mutual interests in an open, multi-polar world. To do so will require an unprecedented level of integration among our maritime forces and enhanced cooperation with the other instruments of national power, as well as the capabilities of our international partners.
The little-known Navy International Programs Office (Navy IPO) is a key enabler that can make that strategy work. The IPO arranges sales of U.S. naval technology, systems, and platforms to foreign navies and coast guards. But its mission is much broader: it facilitates naval collaboration, cooperation, and partnering at strategic, operational, and tactical levels. The IPO develops long-term relationships that give friendly navies and coast guards increased capability as well as an understanding of how the U.S. Navy operates and thinks. Without that true collaboration is impossible, whatever political agreements we may reach with other governments.
We rarely realize it, but the Navy and its close maritime partners operate in distinctive ways, very different from those of, for example, navies raised in the old Soviet tradition or even in the pre-Cold War British tradition. It matters enormously that our friends, particularly new ones, should gain insight when they buy our equipment and services. It also matters that when we sell hardware and, increasingly, software, we stand behind our products over the long haul.
Internationally Responsible Relationships
This kind of support helps the United States as well as others. Naval collaboration is not just a way to convince foreign governments to support us. With no more than about 300 ships, our Navy can project enormous power to only a few selected places—but we cannot cover the entire world. The new cooperative strategy argues that many countries have mutual interests, at least at sea. Alfred Thayer Mahan was right: The sea is the key to the commerce that keeps the world prosperous.
It takes numbers to deal with threats such as those from pirates and maritime terrorists who may try to block trade routes. If commerce at sea can be protected, this will bring and maintain prosperity, which in turn will erode the passions that bolster terrorism and similar dangers. Peacekeeping at sea clearly cannot guarantee world prosperity—but without it, the world economic system likely cannot be sustained.
At one level, collaboration is a political issue: To what extent does a particular government decide that it is in its own interest to work with us to help keep the peace and order in the maritime domain
Collaboration is also technical and operational, and this is where the Navy IPO becomes so important.It is hardly new. From the beginning of the Cold War, we placed missions in our embassies. After consulting local naval authorities, they recommended assistance or sales programs. In the 1950s, the most prominent of these were transfers of surplus warships. The rationale was simple: The U.S. Navy did not operate the ships, but friendly navies could do so. Thus they contributed to the common defense—just as those involved in naval collaboration do right now.
But ship transfers were always only the visible parts of larger programs. Foreign crews were trained to operate the ships, and U.S. yards often refitted them during their careers in foreign service. The U.S. Navy stood behind its equipment and weapons, providing training, spare parts, and replacement munitions.
Mutual Advantage
This kind of help was combined with collaborative NATO programs, making it possible for foreign navies to work with ours. We are so accustomed to naval integration within NATO that we probably forget how unusual such collaboration was historically. In 1942 the Japanese defeated the small American-British-Dutch-Australian force; today we have frequent successful multi-national exercises such as Rim of the Pacific, and NATO's Standing Naval Force Atlantic.
At one time common doctrinal publications made integration possible, through the use of the same signal book and placing communicators on board foreign ships. When the U.S. Navy adopted computer combat systems (the forerunners of network-centric systems) and a digital data link (Link 11), it was vital that allied navies understand what was happening. Many found the new U.S. practices attractive enough to embrace, and this was the prerequisite for operational integration. Much of the hardware needed for that integration came from U.S. manufacturers, via the Navy Office of Technology Transfer and Security Assistance, the predecessor of today's Navy IPO.
The relationships that we forge in international programs encourage navies to seek our help when they encounter technological challenges. When the Royal Australian Navy decided to upgrade its Collins-class submarines, Navy IPO-facilitated agreements fostered technological cooperation between our navies that benefited both. By the time the Collins class was being built, the Australians had a strong relationship with the U.S. Navy and our industrial base, having bought two generations of U.S. surface combatants (versions of the C. F. Adams [DDG 2]-class missile destroyer and the Oliver Hazard Perry [FFG 7]-class frigates).
The Collins was not a U.S. design, but it had a U.S. (commercial) fire-control system. That program did encounter systems-integrations problems, such as the challenge of integrating sonar and fire-control systems that had never been conceived to work together. So the U.S. Navy's Submarine Program Executive Office worked with Australia to install the same type of fire-control and combat systems that the newest U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarines were then using.
This partnership had an unexpected advantage for the United States. The U.S. submarine community became aware of innovations in areas such as underwater communication, which small Australian companies were developing. The Australians already operated the U.S. Mk 48 torpedo. Given their ever-closer relationship with our submarine community, we invited them to participate in the development of a new version of that torpedo, the Mk 48 Mod 7.
Aside from the new ideas they brought to the program, they are creating support facilities for the weapon, and U.S. submarines operating in the Western Pacific can share these. Thus, in this case security-assistance programs move in both directions.
Two-Way Benefits
Expanding cooperative relationships does not always involve foreign countries adopting U.S. Navy hardware. Another Australian example is a case in point. Like many navies around the world, Australian participation in the earlier surface-combatant programs had already given its navy access to and insight into the ways in which the U.S. Navy uses data links and other forms of communication. Although a third Australian surface-combatant program, the Anzac frigate, was not of U.S. origin and did not use a U.S. combat system, the Australian Navy made sure it could share in U.S.-type networks. U.S. naval combat system experts worked through Navy IPO to make the two countries' systems interoperable.
That may seem rather technical and obscure, but it is neither. Without the data links and their direct connections to ships' combat systems, a foreign navy cannot operate as an integral part of a U.S. Navy strike force or surface action group. It is impossible for this type of collaboration to work without the technical support—which increasingly includes software support—provided through a continuing two-way relationship.
Many foreign navies understand how important such connections are. When they turn to U.S. Navy representatives abroad, IPO is the portal through which our expertise comes into play. This includes training that turns hardware into a real cooperative capability. Importantly, IPO does not do this alone. It is simply the lead agent providing select foreign partners access to a vast community of technology, material, and training activities.
Following Up
Obviously, most of what the U.S. Navy security—cooperation community provides to foreign partners is more visible than data links or computer software and training. Usually it is ships, airplanes, and weapons. When you see a report that a country has just bought 50 Standard missiles from the United States, you know the sale is the tangible part of a growing relationship based on trust and common maritime interests. It carries a commitment for future support and training—as well as a wider relationship.
The U.S. approach to security cooperation is quite unusual in the world. Many countries sell warships and naval weapons, but typically sales are one-time transactions. The ship is turned over, her initial crew having been trained, and away she steams. Any post-sale support is separate. Further training is also a separate proposition. The selling government may have some hope that the sale will bring influence, but there is little or no expectation that a global net of valued collaboration is being forged or reinforced. Nor, generally, does the navy of the selling government stand behind the ship or the equipment involved over the long term, as does the U.S. Navy. Typically, the foreign manufacturer's hope is simply that buying its equipment will encourage other navies to follow suit.
The U.S. "total package approach" is more expensive, but many foreign navies understand that they are buying much more than the equipment itself. They have been willing to pay the difference for a sale that is not a purely commercial proposition and that includes a lasting relationship. Our Navy security-community mission, focused and directed on expanded cooperative relationships, operates in an environment in which any sale helps to build and sustain partnerships in a global maritime coalition. If it is the coalition that matters, the investment is well worthwhile.