America’s most significant strategic challenges are restoring its economic strength, fostering its international relationships, and protecting the United States from terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction.[i] A “two-hub” Navy focused on the Middle East and Western Pacific is the best deployment model to support these diverse and difficult goals. The critical elements in executing this model are the need to station more forces forward and increase our reliance on allies and partners in the areas outside the two hubs.
The first hub is the Middle East and Indian Ocean, and it supports our traditional geostrategic goals in the region and new emerging partners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Gulf states. Our relationship with these partners will remain a critical national-security interest, despite the fact that it will likely be supported by a shrinking U.S. land footprint in the region after 2015. Naval presence supports the continued drawdown forces in Iraq and the eventual reduction of troops in Afghanistan by supplying quick-reaction forces and air support from the sea. As many international-relations experts have argued, naval forces can reduce the U.S. footprint while retaining credible combat power to reassure American partners and deter regional aggressors such as Iran.[ii] Compared with those of a continental power, naval forces do not generate significant concerns in other nations regarding territorial aspirations, whether they are rotated or stationed in a foreign country.[iii]
This will be essential to making the two-hub model sustainable, which requires increased forward stationing of U.S. ships where appropriate to reduce their operational tempo and accommodate future Fleet reductions. In the Middle East, this would translate to patrol coastal and mine countermeasures ships in Bahrain, as they are today, replaced with littoral combat ships (LCSs) as they take on these missions in the next decade. The stationing of large surface combatants in the Middle East hub is not realistic, but to support this hub forces should be forward stationed in adjacent areas, such as the Mediterranean. Those forces can conduct strike operations into the Middle East within days and be on station within as little time as a week.
To augment and enhance this permanently stationed force, the two-hub model would also require the Navy to maintain at least 1.0 rotational carrier strike group (CSG) presence in the Middle East / Indian Ocean, including one or two nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) and five guided-missile cruisers (CGs) or destroyers (DDGs). This CSG would be complemented with a deployed guided missile submarine (SSGN) and a 1.0 Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) presence with an Amphibious Ready Group (ARG). Together, these forces provide U.S. and partner troops in Iraq and Afghanistan a support-and-response capability while conducting continuous maritime-security operations throughout the region.
The two-hub model’s second focus area is the Pacific, a region of paramount economic, security, and alliance importance to America. With the Pacific being home to a five U.S. treaty allies, two of America’s top four trading partners, and its most significant strategic competitor, the United States has maintained a long-standing naval presence in the region and is seen by East Asian countries as a critical security and economic partner. The United States balances the influence of China, which is flexing its muscles in the South China Sea and Sea of Japan and especially threatens those countries with competing maritime or territorial claims. In particular, the nations of Southeast Asia appreciate U.S. naval presence, with some in Australia and Singapore expressing a desire for U.S. ships to be based in their countries.[iv]
As in the Middle East, forward stationing will be essential in the Pacific to sustain a two-hub forward presence in the face of financial and readiness pressures. Forward stationing will also foster relationships with host nations, as U.S. forces in Japan and South Korea have for more than six decades. In Singapore, an LCS squadron would be a natural fit, providing forward presence and rapid response for maritime security throughout Southeast Asia. To support a continuous 1.0 CSG presence under way in the Pacific, the forward-stationed CSG in Japan could be bolstered by a carrier (CVN) and some CG and DDG escorts supported from a more southerly location such as Australia. This will ensure a CSG is always available at sea when the other CVN is in a maintenance period, while the CVN is in a maintenance period, while the CVN and escorts in and around Australia can respond faster to the Indian Ocean or Middle East than a continental U.S.-based task force.
Today’s forward-stationed four-ship ARG/MEU in Japan will remain a crucial asset. This will allow at least three ships and the MEU to be under way for ongoing counterpiracy and counterterrorism operations, and ready to react in the event of aggression by North Korea. Similarly, today’s three SSNs in Guam will remain invaluable for CSG support and additional missions, although they could regularly be augmented by additional SSNs or a maintenance facility if conditions require.
Except for the ongoing commitment to provide Aegis ballistic-missile defense at sea or ashore in the European Command area of responsibility, operations outside the two hubs will be only as needed for exercise or crisis response. In those areas, the lack of significant state threats allows episodic U.S. naval deployments to be a catalyst for allies and partners to provide day-to-day maritime security and building partner maritime capacity.
The United States will need to coordinate with its key naval allies and partners – select NATO countries, Japan, Korea, India, Australia, and Singapore at a minimum – to concentrate their efforts on maintaining and building long-range deployable units to both cover the areas outside the hubs and aggregate with U.S. naval forces when necessary to conduct deterrence operations in the hubs. In addition, these partners will need to maintain their ability to conduct maritime-security patrols.
While models such as the “surge” or “cruising” Navy could be less expensive and reduce budget deficits, they will not support our national-security objectives and won’t support our alliances and partnerships, which hinge on the dependable presence of credible American combat power. These relationships are also essential to strengthening the U.S. economy, which depends as much on export growth as deficit reduction.
The ”status quo” Navy maintains forward presence for allies and partners by continuing today’s high operational tempo of about 100-105 ships deployed. This pace not only takes years of service life off ships and aircraft, it also costs more than $23 billion a year, of which about $5 billion will need to be supplemental funding. With a looming maintenance backlog in today’s surface fleet and the need to make do without supplemental money, the status quo is not an option, financially or logistically.
In this two-hub model, sacrifices will have to be made. The U.S. Navy will need to concentrate its efforts on building strike capability (CSGs, ARGs, SSGNs) and not build or replace lower-end systems. And we will need to invest in stationing forces forward in the vicinity of the two hubs. This long-term strategy will allow us to execute the nation’s national-security objectives both in 2015, as we reset from Iraq and Afghanistan, and in 2025, when our ability to recapitalize our existing Fleet will be limited.
The two-hub deployment model is the best option for a U.S. Navy and government facing severe budget pressures, an aging Fleet, and national imperatives to strengthen the economy and America’s relationships abroad and to guard against terrorist threats. It will require a strong commitment to maintaining our strike assets, forward-stationing units, working with our naval allies and partners, and a resistance to being drawn into ancillary conflicts.
[i] Barack Obama, National Security Strategy (Washington, DC: 2010), p. 52.
[ii] S. Walt, “Keeping the World Off Balance: Self Restraint and U.S. Foreign Policy,” SSRN Working Paper Series (Dec. 2000), http://ezproxy6.ndu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1450831981&Fmt=7&clientid=3921&RQT=309&VName=PQD,; C. Layne, “America’s Middle East Grand Strategy After Iraq: The Moment for Offshore Balancing has Arrived,” Review of International Studies 35, no. 1 (Jan. 2009), p. 5, http://ezproxy6.ndu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1706790641&Fmt=7&clientid=3921&RQT=309&VName=PQD,; John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, Company, 2001).
[iii] Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, “Balancing on Land and at Sea,” International Security 34, no. 5 (Summer 2010), pp. 7-43, http://ezproxy6.ndu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mth&AN=51999022&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
[iv] Greg Sheridan, “Best Place for a Larger US Base,” The Australian, sec. Commentary, 19 August 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/best-place-for-a-larger-us-base/story-e6frgd0x-1225907038866.