Along with several others, we believe the nation needs to emphasize a maritime strategy at a time when budgetary limitations threaten to severely curtail our national-defense posture.1 Former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead has argued that naval-force numbers must be sustained even if ground-force numbers are reduced.2 We agree, but we also assert that even if the Navy budget is not reduced, our planned force levels will very likely decrease. The American people must anticipate that even under favorable budget conditions, the Navy will shrink in numbers of ships and aircraft if we continue to procure only the designs now in current and planned programs. We believe the Navy must reflect on its long-established set of presumed responsibilities and the need to reorder or reduce them, doing so with full cognizance of all relevant stakeholders in the process.
To illustrate what is involved in sustaining American international maritime influence, the implications of the announced focus shift to the Pacific must first be examined. Here, we emphasize influence and take as our theme: keeping the peace by being prepared for wartime actions where our strength lies while communicating our advantages at sea to China, our allies, and other friends in East Asia. Elsewhere authors Kline and Hughes have shown, through papers and campaign analyses, that to a great extent a U.S. Fleet that can keep the peace in the western Pacific is also well-suited to respond to conflicts in Southwest Asia and other parts of the world, but not in all places at once.3 Our viewpoint is intended to inform strategists and assist in the alignment of the 21st-century Fleet in the western Pacific by focusing on operations (the ways) and force compositions (the means).
The world has awakened to the expanding activities of China, especially at sea. This is all to the good, but opinions being published about the significance of current events in the present environment—notably People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) claims that exceed international law and conventions in the East and South China Seas—have limited value in shaping a U.S. Navy designed to serve the nation through much of this century. Our Navy builds ships and aircraft with intended lifetimes of 30 and even 40 years, and so the Fleet cannot be designed wholly around current policies and world events.
Some long-lived “two-stage systems”—such as nuclear carriers (CVNs), ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs), and guided-missile destroyers (DDGs)—attenuate the problem because they have the ability to change their “second stage:” the aircraft in our CVNs and the missile types and mix in our SSBNs and DDGs. To the same end, the littoral combat ship (LCS) has been designed to carry modules intended to be quickly and affordably replaced. In this discussion, we will illustrate the ability to retain American influence in changing circumstances by demonstrating the flexible characteristics of a flotilla of small missile corvettes. The fact that such a flotilla has a mission focused on littoral waters does not mean it is deficient in adaptability. These missile combatants—and other kinds of smaller vessels, too—must necessarily be important future contributors to sustained American influence. Not only are flotilla ships able to change their roles in different geopolitical environments but, because they are inexpensive, they can be replaced with more up-to-date designs every 10 to 15 years. First- and second-generation designs need not be scrapped but will be useful in less demanding theaters for constabulary operations, or they can be transferred to partners trained to employ them. Flotillas will be flexible across the range of naval operations as evidenced by their ability to accept different roles in alternative U.S.-China relationships.
Four Circumstances with China
• In times of cooperation: China can display good will by inviting U.S. Navy warships to visit mainland ports and Hainan. Port calls by small ships in suitable numbers, accompanied by an LCS or two, will particularly foster warm relations by performing most of the usual activities associated with friendly state-to-state “engagement” when a CVN or a nuclear attack submarine (SSN) might be neither as welcome nor as suitable.
• In times of competition: The flotilla ships can be exploited in joint exercises with allies such as Japan, Australia, Singapore, and South Korea, and also other East or South Asian countries whose friendship we value, to include India, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. Many of these states may offer us operating bases when it is in their interest to have an American naval presence. Small ships can more easily be accommodated and carry less political risk to the host nation’s leadership than basing our large combatants.
• Should a confrontation arise: Divisions or squadrons of 4, 8, or even 16 flotilla combatants, enhanced by aerial surveillance and often by Asian partners’ ships and aircraft, can demonstrate our firm but peace-seeking commitment to enforce international law. Flotilla ships are the best ones to risk when a surprise attack is possible and our forces are constrained to operate under stringent rules of engagement when international relations or national policy inhibits our ability to attack effectively first.
• Flotilla employment in times of conflict: Such a scenario would be radically different. Small missile corvettes in suitable numbers can be sent in harm’s way to make swift surprise attacks on large enemy ships using medium- or long-range surface-to-surface missiles at times and places of our choosing, aided by a variety of detection and tracking systems. Flotilla vessels can, more easily than big ships, employ various forms of concealment in water cluttered with islands, shoals, fishing boats, commercial traffic, and oil rigs. In addition, local tactical offensive operations conducted by the flotilla are less dependent on nonorganic information systems and therefore are more resilient to loss of satellites and other communication systems.
Worldwide Advantages
A similar appraisal of the advantages of small combatants applies in other regions of the world. Inexpensive missile ships are suitable for joint operations with South Korea in the Yellow Sea where our large, multipurpose warships have not ventured. In the Persian Gulf’s very constrained battle space amidst a proliferation of precision weapons a squadron or two of missile corvettes—8 or 16 of them—would be as advantageous tactically as a CVN, or SSNs, or DDGs.
Should another situation arise in Georgia that we wish to constrain, a squadron of small missile combatants based in a Balkan state or Turkey and operating cooperatively with Black Sea navies would probably be the most effective way to confront Russia in those restricted waters. The Baltic is another confined sea in which U.S. flotilla ships, along with LCSs and joint high-speed vessels (JHSVs) could train with Sweden, Germany, or other Baltic states to familiarize us with coastal operations in the region. Similar advantages were recognized during the Cold War by NATO’s CINCSOUTH in 1969, who stated a requirement for fast patrol boats to meet an aggressive Soviet presence in his restricted Mediterranean waters.4
Two decades ago a Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) study conducted for the late Vice Admiral Art Cebrowski, then president of the Naval War College, designed a “streetfighter.” The detailed naval architectural work resulted in the design of a 600-ton, high-speed “Sea Lance” missile ship for littoral operations.5 At the time two types of support were envisioned: When a large-scale Fleet operation is involved, then the streetfighters are covered and sustained by the big blue-water ships while they operate on point. When they operated independently in coastal waters, then tender support was conjectured.6 Exploratory tender support for a large flotilla of 100 missile ships located in many places was disturbingly expensive in manpower and construction costs.
However, we believe our previously outlined worldwide survey—as well as the clearly attractive current Navy plans to base the LCS overseas in Singapore—demonstrates that in real-world circumstances we will usually be collaborating with a state where the ships can be supported ashore. Tender services might be desirable for out-of-the-way places, and so the personnel costs of two or three interim alternatives—to include auxiliary ships or amphibious-assault ships such as the USS Ponce (LPD-15)—should be included in the cost of deploying flotilla squadrons.
A Campaign Test
Co-author Schwartz has compared a U.S. submarine campaign’s effectiveness with that of a flotilla of missile combatants. In his tests the purpose is to deny China the use of the waters within the South and East China Seas by attacking Chinese shipping and PLAN warships. Since the size of the contested region and submarine sweep rates in the China seas are uncertain, he adapted a campaign model developed by operations analyst Henry Young, whose goal in the 1980s was to explore U.S. Navy SSN attack rates and results against the considerably more numerous but qualitatively inferior Soviet submarine force.7
In his unclassified thesis, Schwartz updated the numbers of ships, used a consensus of best estimates for his search and attack rates, and postulated combat outcomes for a variety of input conditions. He extended Young’s work by including attacks on commercial traffic, surface warships, and PLAN submarines in proportion to the density of the three kinds of targets. And he compared the results with the historical record in World War II and in Young’s study.8 We found nothing jarring in the results; to wit, losses inflicted were substantial, while our submarine losses were tolerable but not insignificant.
After completing his thesis Schwartz used the same campaign methodology to compare his estimated SSN performance with a surface flotilla’s performance. None of us put enough faith in the inputs to publish the outputs, but we believe he has accurately demonstrated predictably contrasting outcomes. As was true in the record of actual campaigns, the submarines are slow-acting because their search and engagement rates are limited. The number of submarines is capped realistically—Schwartz employed between 10 and 30 SSNs—and so the attrition proceeds slowly. By contrast, flotilla ships are faster acting because the detection, targeting, and attack rates are greater. Schwartz “deployed” only 24 missile corvettes that operated in 12 two-ship task elements to seek and attack Chinese commerce and surface warships. (If one ship was put out of action, she was abandoned, and her 12-man crew was rescued by the second vessel, which then withdrew from further attacks.) A major finding was that the flotilla ships, each carrying eight surface-to-surface missiles, quickly expended all their weapons in this target-rich sea environment. Because they fought many engagements rapidly, the flotilla ships also suffered attrition faster.
Perhaps the most significant point of comparison is the radical difference in the pace of the campaigns. If one wants many attacks in a short time, he should employ surface missile ships. If he wants slow-acting but sustainable attacks to give time for China to reflect on our advantage, back off, and negotiate an end to the shooting, then submarines are preferred. If maximum hitting rates are desired, then a combination of surface and subsurface attacks gives us that option. Most important, we believe Schwartz adequately demonstrates that, by adding flotilla ships and offering our commanders a significant mix of additional operational choices, we will have a formidable and flexible capability that neither China nor any other prospective opponent can ignore—or match. One reviewer of the work points out an option we did not explore. In principle, the surface flotilla need not operate full-out, but can stretch its attacks over a longer time to let China consider a negotiated end to its illegal activities at sea.
A Littoral Missile Ship Design
Knowing how flotilla ships are expected to complement a shrinking number of major blue-water warships and aircraft is the best way to arrive at their design specifications. It is easy to see that our ships ought to look very much like those in other navies that have more experience in littoral operations than we do. Partly to draw from the experience of foreign navies, the NPS established a Littoral Operations Center in collaboration with the Swedish and Singaporean governments, domestic and foreign defense industries, and select research establishments.
By surveying several designs such as the Singaporean Victory class (600 tons), the Swedish Visby class (650 tons), and the planned Taiwanese Hsun Hai (Swift Sea) class (about 800 tons), we see the common characteristics among these and other littoral fighters. Our missile corvettes are envisioned to share well- proven, tactically tested technologies that make them an affordable and effective symmetric response to near-shore mischief by any adversary.
Common characteristics include a low radar cross-section monohull ship of 500–700 tons displacement, top speed of 30–35 knots, eight 60- to 80-nautical-mile surface-to-surface missiles, a 57- or 76-mm gun, active soft-kill and short-range hard-kill defense systems, short-range dual-purpose surface- and air-search radar, small tactical unmanned aircraft, and a modest communications suite. The ship’s minimum peacetime range at 18 knots cruising speed should be 3,000 nautical miles.
We envision 15-day periods at sea, either for conducting peacetime training or for confrontational patrols in contested waters. This will take a crew of about 30. In sharp contrast, unrestrained combat operations should take only two or three days to conduct stealthy strike operations, so we envision removing all but the best-trained cadre of about 15 in a crew to fight the ship and if necessary suffer its loss with minimum personnel casualties.
An initial target fleet of 64 missile corvettes composed of 8 squadrons of 8 ships each would cost less than 4 percent of the SCN (shipbuilding and conversion, Navy) budget, even if their first-line lifetime is only 16 years and they are replaced at a rate of 4 new ships per year.
Elsewhere, Professor Robert C. “Barney” Rubel of the Naval War College (see “Cede No Water,” beginning on page 40) has summarized the desired flotilla attributes as well as can be done:
Forces on scene in peacetime and during a crisis must have the ability to disrupt enemy aggression or inflict operationally or strategically significant harm, and they must be able to do this after riding out a first strike. This suggests the distribution of offensive power—missiles most easily—among numerous platforms and making those platforms hard to target . . . [with] new kinds of forward forces that are less strategically mobile but more tactically suitable for the operational conditions that are emerging in the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, and elsewhere.
How to Implement It
The Navy and the nation should accept that the short-term budget challenge and its effects on the Fleet are likely to be a long-term constraint. The expanding littoral battle space and shrinking budget together demand the realignment of U.S. Navy forces. The current cost per unit for CVNs, SSNs, amphibious ships, naval aircraft, and investments in systems to support cyber operations within a shrinking Navy budget top-line will inescapably result in fewer such large warships.
A smaller Fleet in terms of tonnage can be sustained or even expanded in numbers by building a variety of more affordable, distributable ships, exemplified by a flotilla of small, lethal combatants costing only a small percentage of the Navy budget to build, man, and operate. Such a flotilla will go far toward sustaining worldwide American maritime influence and the ability to distribute our forces in many places.
With the added flexibility of offensively potent missile corvettes, a rich mix of combined operations with key allies and partners around the world will sustain a collaborative forward U.S. Navy presence. Accomplishing the strategy for peace, crisis, and war will take some original thinking in regard to ends, ways, and means. The strategy will impose fewer deployments and operations on the inevitably smaller number of the big, expensive ships comprising the current Fleet by maintaining, in part, a more sustainable overseas presence with LCS and flotilla ships, and also perhaps by adding other affordable patrol vessels.
As simple and obvious as these conclusions seem to be, to achieve them entails a demanding set of simultaneous, interlocking actions by Congress, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Navy leadership, and our allies and partners. One action is to make the case with all vested interests for an affordable, long-term national maritime strategy. The second is to quickly design, fund, and build the first generation of flotilla ships. The third is to adopt and pursue a policy of greater collaboration with select allies and partners. And the fourth is to arrive at a realistic mix of ships and aircraft in a severely budget-constrained Fleet.
1. For example, see Michael J. Mazarr and The NDU Strategy Study Group, “Discriminate Power: A Strategy for a Sustainable National Security Posture,” May 2013; and T. X. Hammes, “Offshore Control—A Possible Strategy for Asia-Pacific Defense,” Institute for National Strategic Studies, NDU, September 2011.
2. Gary Roughhead and Kori Schake, National Defense in a Time of Change, Hamilton Project Discussion Paper, February 2013. This is a comprehensive expression of ways to sustain an affordable national defense.
3. For example, see Kline and Hughes, “Between Peace and Air-Sea Battle: A War at Sea Strategy,” Naval War College Review, Autumn 2012; and Hughes, “A Bimodal Force for the National Maritime Strategy,” Naval War College Review, Spring 2007.
4. Jeffrey Sands, On His Watch: Admiral Zumwalt’s Efforts to Institutionalize Strategic Change, Center for Naval Analyses, July 1993, 106.
5. For a summary of the Sea Lance Study and information for the complete documentation, go to www.nps.edu/Academics/GSEAS/TSSE/subPages/2000Project.html.
6. See Hughes, “22 Questions for Streetfighter,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, February 2000, 46–49.
7. Henry Young, “Setting Goals for a Submarine Campaign,” The Submarine Review, October 1985.
8. LT Zachary Schwartz, “Using Undersea Assets to Establish a Maritime Exclusion Zone in the South and East China Seas,” MS thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, March 2013.
Professor Hughes is a member of the NPS Littoral Operations Center. He is a distinguished author of the U.S. Naval Institute, having written two editions of Fleet Tactics and numerous articles and comments for Proceedings, as well as many articles for other journals and research papers for the NPS. He served 30 years on active duty and another 31 as a civilian on the NPS faculty, where he is Dean Emeritus.
Professor Kline teaches joint campaign analysis in the Department of Operations research, exploring with his students Navy and Department of Defense postures and readiness. He was the founding director of CRUSER (the Consortium for Robotic and Unmanned Systems Education and Research) initiated at the behest of the Under Secretary of the Navy. He delivers tailored education in an NPS course for flag officers and senior international students around the world.
Lieutenant Schwartz serves in submarines and has a master’s degree in operations research.