A New Kind of Carrier Air Wing
(See D. Goure, pp. 24–28, September 2012 Proceedings)
Captain Wayne Tunick, U.S. Navy (Retired)—Dr. Goure’s article was factually incorrect. Specifically, there is no mention in the entire piece of MH-60R and MH-60S helicopters. The article states that current plans for the carrier air wing are “to deploy a mix of F/A-18 E/Fs, F-35Cs, EA-18 Growlers, and E-2D Hawkeye airborne-surveillance aircraft.” This is wrong by omission, because the carrier air wing currently and for the immediate future has two helicopter squadrons in it. There is absolutely no mention of helicopters in the entire article.
Dr. Goure does include unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that aren’t even part of the carrier air wing today. UAVs are included and helicopters are not? Unfortunately, this shows a lack of recognition for the role that helicopters play in today’s Navy and in the Navy of the future. This is especially troubling because the Helo CONOPs is adding another helicopter squadron to the carrier air wing with increased weapons and intelligence/surveillance/reconnaisance capabilities. The Littoral Combat Ship can’t do its mission without helicopters, and carrier and expeditionary strike groups require helos for antisurface warfare, antisubmarine warfare, mine warfare, special operations, logistics, and much more. Helicopters are very much part of the carrier air wing, and the pilots don’t wear green leprechaun top hats like Mickey Rooney in the movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri. At least not any more!
The Navy helicopter community has earned its recognition from the Vietnam War (HAL 3 and HAL 4) to tsunami relief to flying combat search-and-rescue in Iraq, counter-drug ops in the Caribbean, visit/board/search-and-seizure, and support to the carrier/expeditionary strike groups, especially the cruiser destroyer force. It is appropriate that we recognize the contributions of the pilots and air crew of the largest community in naval aviation.
James D. Perry—Dr. Goure’s article contains a major logical contradiction. His first argument is that manned aircraft “require significant off-board intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) to successfully employ their long-range payloads.” He imagines a future in which Navy and Air Force manned aircraft “can exchange data seamlessly and each and every platform can perform strike, command-and-control, sensing, and communications missions.” This will be feasible because a presumably secure, “seamless, integrated battle-management and C4ISR network is no longer merely the stuff of fantasy.”
His second argument is that unmanned air systems (UAS) cannot perform combat missions in the anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) environment. The Chinese, he says, recognize how much we rely on networks, and they plan to attack them. If networks are degraded, then UAS, lacking pilots or a connection to off-board controllers, will experience a “virtual lobotomy.”
These arguments are mutually exclusive. If manned aircraft are able to exchange data and employ off-board ISR in accordance with his first argument, then we can operate UAS over the same “seamless, integrated battle-management and C4ISR network,” and his second argument is invalid. On the other hand, if the network is degraded in accordance with his second argument, then manned aircraft will lack the off-board C4ISR that they need in order to operate effectively, and his first argument is invalid.
The first argument assumes that pilots require external commands and sensor data precisely because they cannot survive or succeed using only pilot judgment and the Mark I eyeball. The second argument assumes that pilots can somehow find their targets and avoid enemy threats without any external inputs at all. Can we really defeat a competent opponent if we can only use non-networked manned aircraft? I am highly skeptical, despite the undoubted excellence of our pilots and their eyeballs.
Of course, networks would likely not be “completely on” or “completely off” but at some level of intermediate disruption. Yet it is hard to imagine a level of disruption that would permit manned aircraft to operate effectively but not unmanned aircraft. The bandwidth required to control UAS is small relative to the bandwidth required to transmit sensor data. Therefore, even a severely degraded network would permit operators to control their UAS. Transmission of UAS sensor data would be difficult in this case—but manned aircraft would be equally affected.
Dr. Goure further pursues his contradictory line of thought with his example of manned and unmanned platforms “operating together” to create a “powerful synergistic capability.” If the networks are disrupted, then how will UAS pass data to F-35s as per his example? How, indeed, will F-35s cooperate with other manned aircraft in this case? Since manned and unmanned aircraft both require off-board data, they cannot together create “synergy” if the network is disrupted. On the other hand, if the networks are not disrupted, then UAS can operate, and why do the manned fighters even need to be there? In this case, the “person in the loop” of the UAS should be on board the carrier, not in a fighter cockpit, whose occupant has many other things to do.
Lieutenant Colonel Jay A. Stout, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)—I’m a prolific aviation writer and an unmanned-air-systems expert with a 20-year career as a fighter pilot under my belt. Nevertheless, I found Dr. Goure’s article contradictory and unclear. All the talk of pickup trucks and Humpty Dumpty aside, here’s the bottom line: If the United States wants to deter or defeat China, it needs to spend enough to do so. That includes investing significant resources to develop the right sort of carrier-based unmanned aircraft. If the nation doesn’t field the necessary combatant systems, it’s going to get beat. You get what you pay for.
Seasick: Our Acidic Ocean
(See D. Walsh, p. 86, September 2012 Proceedings)
Patrick C. Wider—Dr. Walsh paints a confusing and convoluted picture regarding the level of anthropogenic CO2 dissolved in the Earth’s ocean and its effect on the ocean’s biosphere. On one hand, he maintains that the level is increasing exponentially and, as a result, the ocean’s pH will be decreasing exponentially through the year 2100, as shown by his accompanying graph. With more dissolved CO2, some of the ocean’s marine life will be harmed. But on the other hand, he tells us that the amount of CO2 going into solution will be reduced. He explains that as the Earth’s oceans become warmer due to global warming (presumably due to anthropogenic causes), they become “a less effective carbon sink” since “warmer waters cannot retain as much CO2 as colder seas.” This additional “feedback loop” that directly determines how much CO2 is dissolved in the ocean will have a stabilizing negative gain rather than the unstable positive gain that would produce the exponential divergence in dissolved CO2 shown in his graph.
So, will the amount of CO2 in the ocean increase meaningfully or won’t it? Based on the article, one should presume that at some point, the ocean’s pH would stabilize at a level significantly higher (more alkaline) than that shown in his graph. Dr. Walsh’s statement that a fairly constant 50 percent (and no more) of anthropogenic CO2 has been absorbed by the ocean “over the past 250 years even as increasing amounts are injected into the Earth’s atmosphere” seems to support this conclusion.One could conclude that we will ultimately wind up with higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere (good for terrestrial plants, which the article conveniently fails to mention), a warmer atmosphere (assuming atmospheric anthropogenic CO2 actually does what some computer math models predict), a stabilized level of CO2 in the ocean not much higher than the current level (in obvious disagreement with the graph), and little or no effect on calcareous shell-forming ocean life other than that caused by warmer sea temperatures.
Get Serious about the Arctic
(See B. Moore, pp. 40–43, August 2012 Proceedings)
Lieutenant Commander A. Robert Thomas Jr., U.S. Coast Guard (Retired)—I certainly agree with Lieutenant Commander Moore regarding the Coast Guard’s need to get serious about the Arctic. The United States has fallen way behind many other countries (including some with no actual borders in the Arctic area) in our ability to project forces effectively in the Arctic, and it is imperative that we get moving forward on this front.
Equally important, and not addressed in the article, is the need for the Coast Guard to actively engage in the area of addressing training requirements for merchant mariners operating in ice waters and the attendant regulatory structures necessary for implementation. The United States is far behind Canada and Northern European nations in this respect. Our failure to get ahead of the curve on this will inevitably result in regulations regarding standards of training, certification, and watchkeeping that will not match the reality and needs of the U.S. Merchant Marine.
Veterans Have an Image Problem
(See M. Cancian, pp. 62–67, August 2012 Proceedings)
Captain William O. Harrison, U.S. Navy (Retired)—Colonel Cancian is accurate in his assessment of the damage that the media, in particular the film industry, has done to the overall image of the military veteran. Having recently researched the issue of justice-involved veterans (those who have been arrested or incarcerated), I have found that the following facts, in direct opposition to media claims, are clear.
A series of articles in The New York Times in 2008 (as cited by Colonel Cancian) suggested that combat veterans who served in either Afghanistan or Iraq were significantly more likely than non-veterans or veterans who had never been in combat to become violent offenders upon return to civilian life. In response to these media allegations, researchers writing for Justice Quarterly in 2011 conducted a systematic review of Bureau of Justice statistics from 1985 to 2004, in addition to relevant literature concerning justice-involved veterans. They looked specifically at era of service as well as whether veterans served in combat. They found that overall, veterans were less likely than their civilian peers to be incarcerated. Interestingly, however, men who served post-1973 in the all-volunteer force were slightly more likely to be incarcerated than men who served during wartime in the era of military conscription. Researchers for Psychiatric Quarterly in 2009 also noted that incarceration rates of veterans from the initial all-volunteer-force era was higher than that of earlier cohorts, but after 1982 the rates of incarceration more closely mirrored those of previous eras. They postulated that lower quality of military recruits during the 1972–83 period might have played a role in these changes.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ most recent survey of prison inmates revealed that the percentage of incarcerated veterans in state and federal facilities had declined to its lowest point in 18 years, from 20 percent in 1986 to 10 percent in 2004. Of those veteran inmates, 99 percent were male. In a 2003 Criminology review of two birth cohorts (Racine, Wisconsin, and Philadelphia), some of whose members served in the military during the Vietnam War, statistics showed that military service significantly reduced the likelihood of post-military criminal behavior compared with cohort members who did not serve.
It is clear from all these studies that the media is wrong in its depiction of military veterans. Colonel Cancian is correct in stating that a concerted effort needs to be made to correct this trend.
Colonel Todd R. Fredricks, U.S. Army—It was refreshing to read Colonel Cancian’s article. As an academic veteran involved in the education of civilian communities that serve veterans, I would add that in many cases, the “image problem” is really an “image ignorance.” The fact is that the percentage of Americans who actually know a veteran or anything about the culture of the military is at the lowest point in our history. When one considers that 16,000,000 Americans out of a population of 139,000,000 served in uniform during World War II, it is quite clear from proportions alone that today’s population of 311,000,000 could be very detached from the 2,000,000+ who have deployed during the war on terrorism.
This ignorance—of just what an American warrior is—is part of the problem compounded by the cultural elements (movies, overemphasis on post-traumatic stress disorder, etc.) that Colonel Cancian illustrates so well in his piece. Teaching the American people who their warriors are and how they think and see their service is key to changing the perception of the “veteran as a victim.” But movies such as The Hurt Locker are not the solution (in spite of Hollywood recognition and box-office receipts), because they also portray the hero as dysfunctional, choosing repeated tours over family and beating his fellow explosive-ordnance disposal techs senseless.
Finally, and with respect to senior military leadership, it may be counterproductive to imply that veterans (as distinct from actively serving members) who choose to speak about national policies, regardless of their position on any particular issue, are not helpful. Veterans are citizens who happen to have served, and their voices on issues allow the non-military public to see that members of the military are not merely mindless automatons who blindly follow orders, but fellow countrymen who are considerate of the same issues that concern the average American.
In the public forum, politically active veterans are key advocates for serving members, who are more strictly constrained (as they should be) from such speech. This is surely a very American notion and, when articulately delivered, one that further reduces the image ignorance of the private sector.
Needed: A Sub Change
(See N. Polmar, pp. 88–89, July 2012; R. Butrovich, p. 84, August 2012; N. Polmar, pp. 8–9, 82; and J. C. Harvey, pp. 82–83, September 2012 Proceedings)
Norman Polmar—I would not comment on the observations of Admiral Harvey, an officer I believe to be brilliant and whom I admire. However, the several commanders and captains and one flag officer who read a draft of my July column and suggested a few word changes all agreed with my thesis. Perhaps the rank-and-file have a different view?
And it would be beneficial to all parties if the Director, Naval Nuclear Propulsion Programs could explain how a seawater piping failure in the submarine USS Thresher (SSN-593) at a depth of some 1,000 feet could be described as a “minor” problem or difficulty.
Winning the Battle, Losing the War
(See S. Cohen, pp. 50–54, June 2012; J. J. O’Neill, p. 86, August 2012; and C. L. Kolakowski, pp. 83–84, September 2012 Proceedings)
Scott C. Truver—Mr. Kolakowski’s comments about what matters in successful strategic communications and military recruiting ring true. I note particularly his comparison between the Army’s externally produced “Be All You Can Be” and “Army Strong” messages and the Navy’s internally produced “A Global Force for Good” slogan, and the successful impact on Army recruiting.
Since 2004, my family has sponsored U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen, providing a home-away-from-home sanctuary from the pressure-cooker that is “the Yard.” On any weekend we can have a handful of “MidSheep” or close to a dozen in the house, from plebes to first class, even recent graduates now serving in the Marine Corps or Navy coming “home” to see my wife and daughters. While watching sporting events, they invariably groan and shake their heads whenever the “Global Force for Good” ad appears on the screen. “We understand the ‘global force,’ but what’s this ‘good’ all about, anyway?” they ask. “We didn’t come to the Naval Academy to be the Red Cross, we want to fight, kick some ass, and win!” And, in that they clearly must be listening to the Chief of Naval Operations: “Warfighting is first!” “Good” can come later.