Write—with Your Eyes Wide Open
(See W. J. Toti, pp. 16-20, December 2008 Proceedings)
Chief Yeoman Bernard Michael Burawski, U.S. Navy (Retired)—Captain Toti's article is an indictment of the way senior leadership in the Navy treats those who speak out if they do not conform to the established party line. Fortunately, not all our leaders think this way. One of these was the late Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski. I had the pleasure of serving under him when he was Captain Cebrowski of the USS Midway (CV-41). Our leaders should emulate him and welcome the dissenting opinion and critical thought which ultimately opens the door to an improved organization. Sadly, the stifling of any ideas that might put a situation in a bad light is not confined to just the Navy; the rest of the military services operate under the same mindset. My hope is that this culture of condoning such actions will change, otherwise more of the problems that the services are currently experiencing will continue well into the 21st century.
C. Henry Depew—Captain Toti's article highlights an important factor in both military and civilian organizations. One is supposed to be a "team player" while also being a "professional." These two definitions are not always compatible. Most organizations promote and encourage the team member because they evoke the inner "peace and tranquility" of the organization and make the unit's supervisors look good. Those who ask questions or raise points counter to the group position are viewed with latent or active hostility by some of their colleagues. One reason outside consultants are hired to review activities and operations is that they can raise the questions that might be fatal to the career of those in the unit/agency. Of course, that consulting group will probably not be hired again by the unit/agency.
One such question is the role aircraft and aircraft carriers will be able to perform given the current piracy actions off Somalia or any other region of the globe. A rigid-hull inflatable boat with a 100hp outboard motor (or the like) is a less than reasonable target for a high-speed jet aircraft. What good is a missile cruiser against a dhow or sailing junk when what is needed is a well-aimed 5-inch gun
In fact, could many of our warships actually repel boarders if they were attacked by five or six high-speed boats with armed attackers spraying small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades as they came alongsideStill Adrift
(See N. Polmar, p. 88, November 2008 Proceedings)
Captain Robert H. Smith, U.S. Navy (Retired)
This article spotlights again the bleak reality underlying the Navy's major shipbuilding programs. The plain truth, given the Navy's stunning lack of intellectual grasp of its true needs, is that Congress has moved in to fill that vacuum. Shipbuilding dollars have now descended to the mere coin of horse trades, irrespective of merit or logic. Any wonder, with now $9 billion
no folks, that's not a misprint-now forecast for the lead ship of the large follow-on cruiser class (CGX), that our Navy is heading flank speed into collision with a brick wall of fiscal impossibilitySoothing words have been put out by the President-elect that there will be no immediate cuts in defense. Yet, given the horrendous financial crisis enveloping the country, can anyone seriously believe that the defense budget will be sacrosanct
And, guess what No arm of DOD will be more vulnerable than the U.S. Navy and its hodge-podge of overpriced and ill-conceived shipbuilding programs. Whichever axes do the cutting, whether DOD leadership or the Congress, it will be the right and imperative decision. Because unless the Navy gets smarter, it will continue its relentless decline into ever-shrinking relevance and usefulness, hostage to a diminishing order of battle, distinguished by decreasing numbers of preposterously overpriced warships whose gold-plated pretensions are at the cost of the much larger numbers of the versatile and worthy warships needed to meet the nation's future needs across the wide seas of a disordered world.A Poster Child for Next-War-Itis
(See C. Hooper, pp. 22-26, November 2008; E. Ratzlaff, p. 8, December 2008 Proceedings)
Marvin O. Miller—Craig Hooper's article on the endangered Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) described many of the difficulties faced by the Marines in developing a fast, heavy boat that on hitting the beach transforms into an effective tracked assault vehicle. To better understand why the Marines need this complex vehicle, it helps to read the November Marine Corps Gazette essay "Taking the High Road to Hell: The Current State of the Navy-Marine Team" by retired Marine Corps Colonel Gary Anderson. This blunt piece discusses some of the reasons for the Navy-Marine Corps team's difficulties that resulted in the EFV.
The requirement to rapidly move amphibious assault vehicles a significant distance from amphib ships over the horizon to the beach can be met in at least two ways. The complex way is to make the EFV capable of at least 25 knots and swim it from the amphib to the beach. A second way is to make existing types of landing craft go 25 knots to carry slow-in-the-water type EFVs, then launch the EFVs from the landing craft near the beach.
The second way of using high-speed landing craft would certainly make the EFV much simpler and cheaper. Why wasn't this approach taken
Colonel Anderson's essay points to the Marines' lack of trust in the Navy having high-speed landing craft available when and where needed. This is not a new Navy-Marine issue and goes back at least to Guadalcanal.Colonel Anderson's essay discussed several other amphibious warfare issues between the Navy and Marines that suggest the possibility of a somewhat drastic-sounding but straightforward solution: Turn the amphibious force over to the Marine Corps. The Navy has already done something similar in turning the 30-ship Combat Logistics Force over to the Military Sealift Command. All of these ships are commanded and operated by civil servants, not Navy Sailors, and perform underway replenishment.
With the Marines commanding and operating all the amphib ships, LCACs, and landing craft, the issue of trust would be removed. With regard to naval skill, many Marine officers are Naval Academy graduates, and even the Army is capable of operating a small navy to meet their amphibious mission.
Remo Salta—A small section of Craig Hooper's article touched on a subject that doesn't seem to get enough attention in Congress, let alone at the Pentagon. It seems strange that after roughly 20 years in development and at a current unit cost of $22.7 million, it should come as a surprise that the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program is in danger of being canceled. With cost overruns and delays like that, coupled with the fact that there doesn't even seem to be a clear mission for the vehicle anymore, it's a wonder this program hasn't already been terminated.
But an important point touched on in the article was that there are off-the-shelf alternatives out there that can be used by the Marine Corps instead of this overpriced, overweight, and overrated vehicle. South Korea's K-21 amphibious infantry fighting vehicle is mentioned as a possible alternative for the Marine Corps, and Russia's BMP-3 is being purchased by Greece and Indonesia for their amphibious forces. This is a sad state of affairs because at one time, American military hardware was the gold standard by which other nations measured their inventories. Today, with so many other countries building good quality equipment at much cheaper prices, it is no wonder that fewer and fewer countries are buying American products.
There are two major problems facing the Pentagon. First, almost all of its major weapon systems seem to incur astronomical cost overruns; second, the end-users of these systems (i.e., our armed forces) are also getting a lot less for their money. For example, in 2000 the Air Force was going to buy 341 F-22 fighters at a cost of $61.9 billion (or $181.5 million per aircraft). Now it is estimated that only 184 aircraft will cost $64.5 billion, or an amazing $350.5 million per plane.
In 2000, the Navy wanted to buy 12 LPD-17 amphibious assault ships for $10.7 billion, or $891.7 million each. Today the Navy wishes to purchase only nine LPD-17s for roughly $14 billion, costing $1.6 billion per ship. In 2000, the Pentagon wanted to buy 458 V-22s for the Marine Corps for $38.1 billion (with a cost of $83.2 million per aircraft). By 2007, those same 458 aircraft cost $54.2 billion, or $118.3 million each.
Through our own mismanagement, ineptness, and corruption, we are pricing our weapon systems right out of the world market. Why would any country want to buy an F-22 at $350.5 million per plane when it could purchase the Saab Gripen, one of the best fighters on the market today, at a fraction of the cost
In fact, you could probably buy three Gripens for the cost of a single F-22. That alone makes the Gripen much more attractive to air forces around the world, and it also should make our Air Force question whether it really needs an aircraft as expensive and as complex as the F-22. Why should a country buy an LPD-17 at $1.6 billion per ship, when it could buy an excellent amphibious assault ship from either South Korea or Spain for roughly half that priceEventually, few countries other than the United States will be able to afford our ships and aircraft. And, with the shrinking defense budgets that are all but certain in the next Democratic administration, it is not certain that we will be able to afford them either. Added to that are the embarrassing lead times associated with all of these new weapon systems. In all fairness, it seems impossible to estimate what any weapon is going to cost if it takes an average of 10 to 20 years to develop it before the first unit is actually built. In addition, anything that takes up to 20 years to build will either be obsolete by the time it is actually built, or it will be prohibitively expensive when it is finally produced.
This must stop. It is a danger to our national security if we cannot build a weapon in a reasonable amount of time within a reasonable budget. Furthermore, when it comes to the old "quantity versus quality" argument, we can have the best equipment in the world but it will do us no good if we can only afford to field a handful of those weapons. Superior numbers can overwhelm even the best weapons.
Defeating the Unknown Terrorist
(See J. Howe, pp. 38-42, October 2008 Proceedings)
William Thayer—If terrorists do not wear uniforms in Iraq or when they are in the United States, then it is pretty obvious that our number one priority has to be to identify them by other means. Captain Howe's article on how to do this with fingerprints was excellent. Finding latent fingerprints on unexploded IEDs, safehouses, etc., just illustrates the value of this particular biometric ID method.
For the first time a military person has mentioned that the US-VISIT Program exists. There seems to have been a wall between the Homeland Security effort (which used fingerprints) and the military (which did not for so many years). The military is finally using biometric ID (including IRIS ID) with its excellent BAT teams. However, they could have capitalized on the photo/fingerprint technology that the US VISIT Program had developed in 2003, instead of waiting an additional four years.
While Captain Howe notes that the FBI's IAFIS fingerprint library is 55 million (twice the population of Iraq), he fails to note that the US-VISIT Program fingerprint library is probably 150 million (last time I talked to Mr. Mocny, who heads that program, it was 100 million
and this was two years ago). The U.S. military probably has about 1 million biometric IDs in Iraq. It should really have 25 million. It should also be 25 million in Afghanistan. The absolute easiest way to ID a Taliban fighter from Pakistan is if he wasn't in the Afghan national fingerprint/IRIS database. Comprehensive biometric ID is a key weapon in defeating non-uniformed terrorists worldwide.While we use photo/fingerprints to ID visitors to the United States, we have no plan to photo/fingerprint all U.S. citizens. This is because many in the Congress think it is a privacy issue. It isn't. It is an identification issue. It should be noted that "privacy" and "identification" are spelled differently because they mean different things. If TSA had a comprehensive photo/fingerprint database of U.S. citizens, they could use this to identify every person boarding an aircraft. This is not an invasion of anyone's privacy. It is an ID check (and a check against known terrorists in the database). It would be more effective and less invasive than a physical patdown.
First, A Role Model
(See T. J. Cutler, p. 93, September 2008 Proceedings)
Commander Milton Gussow, U.S. Navy (Retired)—I too have followed the career of Vice Admiral Samuel Gravely from ensign to flag rank. It began in August 1944 when we were midshipmen as members of the 22nd Company of the 21st class at the U.S. Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School at Columbia University, New York, the Navy's largest source of new reserve officers. We both came to Columbia after completing the Navy V-12 program, which was designed to provide additional college experience as an academic prerequisite to becoming commissioned officers. Without the existence of this program, it is doubtful whether Vice Admiral Gravely would have had the opportunity to become a naval officer.
Though he was conspicuous as the only black midshipman in the class and though the military services at that time were not yet integrated, I observed no racial bias directed at him. He was accepted as a very qualified officer candidate by being appointed Chief Petty Officer on our company staff. It was an exhilarating and unforgettable experience on graduation day, 14 November 1944, for this class of 20-year-olds to take the oath of office as ensigns in the magnificent edifice of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Our active naval careers never crossed. Samuel Gravely set records as being the first black officer to reach each succeeding rank from ensign to vice admiral. This accomplishment was no accident. He was a superb Sailor and leader.
The next time I saw Admiral Gravely was in the early 1970s. I was retired, and he was the Director of Defense Communications. We reminisced about the events of 1944: double-timing up and down the ladder to the 11th deck in our dormitory
use of elevators was not permitted; anxiously awaiting each Friday afternoon the names to be announced over the loudspeaker of who failed the program and then sighing with relief on not hearing our names called; sea-training with YPs in the wintry, rough waters of the Long Island Sound making us wonder if we were suitable for the naval service; and marching in company formation on the streets of New York and singing as loudly as we could "Anchors Aweigh," while civilians on the sidewalks cheered us on with applause.