The question of the proper form and composition of future surface naval forces has been an ongoing debate in the U. S. Navy. The prevailing view advocates maintaining the existing force structure, continuing and accelerating various incremental improvements, and pursuing the objective of 15 large-deck carriers.1 The dissenting view argues that large-deck carriers should be replaced with large numbers of smaller ships, incorporating developing technology such as vertical or short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) aircraft, ski-jump flight decks, and eventually different hull forms such as surface effect ships (SESs) or small waterplane area twin hull (SWATH) ships.2
The Falklands Conflict has provided support for both views. On one hand, it is generally accepted that a British response force that included a larger deck carrier with longer range aircraft (particularly a viable airborne early warning capability) would probably have fared better than the force actually employed. On the other hand, in this first combat test of a by-no-means-mature concept, modest-sized air-capable ships and V/STOL aircraft did comport themselves quite well, and the British did win.
Both sides would probably agree, however, that the timely arrival of an even less capable British naval presence in the South Atlantic might have been sufficient to deter the Argentine invasion. Further, had the Argentine Junta been compelled to mount the invasion anyway, it may have been foiled at the outset. At least, a prompt initial response by a British force operating as a naval
presence would probably have made the British counterinvasion easier and less costly in ships, aircraft, and lives. Confronted with such a British posture, the Argentine Government might not have miscalculated so badly.
In other words, a modest, forward deployed force backed by a resolute government and a capability to dispatch reinforcements from a “home fleet” would have been an adequate naval posture to deter any rational, inferior opponent, despite the great distance involved. Thus, the Argentine Junta may have been less inclined to miscalculate—i.e., the Argentines may have been deterred.3
The crux of the ongoing debate about the proper composition of future U. S. naval forces is ultimately found in a different set of scenarios. These scenarios address the question of the future ability of forward deployed U. S. naval forces to deter and/or defeat formidable and evergrowing Soviet threats. Again, however, each side finds support for its argument. This is possible because the two sides generally differ markedly in their assumptions about how future crises and conflicts that may confront our forward deployed naval forces might develop.
Advocates of large numbers of small ships support their view with the results of analyses and war games that assume future scenarios will involve massive Soviet surprise attacks and/or rapidly developing U. S. naval missions against concentrated Soviet threats. In such situations, one or two forward deployed U. S. carrier battle groups would probably become trapped in the confines of the Mediterranean, in the northern triangle of the Indian Ocean, or in Northeast Asian waters, unless they could beat a timely and hasty retreat and await reinforcement or a softening of Soviet threats by other means. The results tend to show that, against determined Soviet initiatives, if the forward deployed carriers were to remain in their positions, they would not be operational long enough to be effective. If, on the other hand, they extricated themselves, they could not be adequately reinforced and then able to return soon enough to be effective in the campaign. Thus, those in favor of building ships smaller than large-deck carriers argue that in the future, forward deployed naval forces should be restructured to include large numbers of small ships in order to achieve a more survivable force. Presumably, these ships would initially augment existing carriers and eventually replace them.
Proponents of maintaining the present and programmed force structure can probably cite an even larger body of evidence from analyses, war games, and exercises in which future scenarios are mpre optimistic. In these scenarios, the U. S. Navy would be able to muster an intact force of three or more carrier battle groups for a campaign. This force would survive sufficiently to reduce the threats and accomplish its mission. Postulated alternative force structures cannot muster such power. Thus, these proponents argue that we must build and deploy more large carriers while vigorously continuing the current programs designed to enhance their survivability, that is, both qualitatively and quantitatively, reinforce the carriers.
Conceivably, this debate could be resolved if we could decide which assumptions about future naval environments are most appropriate. However, we cannot be so clairvoyant. Since decisions today will be effective for the next several decades, it seems that naval leaders and planners have no choice but to continue to maintain the best possible forward deployed posture for any conceivable scenario. Right or wrong, pursuing this objective continues to provide grist for the debate. In addition, survivability is increasingly emphasized. Implementation of this objective translates into preoccupation with self-defense.
There is an alternative. We cannot predict the future, nor can we control it. What we can do is use the buildup of naval forces to develop the means to alter the day-to-day posture of our naval forces. The Navy could then exert some influence over the future conflict environments to which our forces might be exposed. It has already been decided that, at least for the next decade, we will reinforce our large carriers. When, if ever, we will replace them remains to be seen. Our other alternative is to redeploy the large carriers and their battle groups.
Given the appropriate attention to maintaining offensive power, a forward deployed battle group around a single large-deck carrier is a sufficient presence for all contingencies short of concerted Soviet threats. This should apply also to any other well-conceived and approximately equivalent future U. S. Navy battle group.
But, in the near future, a two-carrier presence will not be enough to sustain world confidence in our ability to deter concerted and rapidly concentrating Soviet threats. Caught in the wrong circumstances, such forward deployed forces could become more like hostages than deterrent forces. The wrong circumstances are now developing; there is a growing Soviet capability for concentration of “Backfire” bombers and missile-launching surface ships and submarines against any of our widely separated, forward deployed forces. In addition, the Soviets are confident that the United States will continue to adhere to a posture that limits its ability to promptly and substantially augment any of its forward deployed forces from uncommitted resources.
When and if the goal of 15 large carriers is achieved, the Navy will be sorely taxed in attempting to commit two carrier battle groups each in three widely separated areas. This will continue to limit the capability for the timely arrival of reinforcements to support a credible deterring or war-fighting posture. A particularly ominous gap could develop on the NATO northern flank or in the North Atlantic in general. In a future scenario in which two U. S. Sixth Fleet carriers were pinned down or otherwise neutralized in the Mediterranean, how and when could appropriate naval surface forces be assembled for the crucial initial campaigns in these areas?
Thus, two forward deployed carrier battle groups may be one too many for all other contingencies but, at least, one too few against well-orchestrated Soviet threats. Continuing maximum sustainable deployments may actually tempt the Soviets and their clients more than deter them. Meanwhile, we will continue to maintain what may be a serious maldeployment of the bulk of our ready naval power—whatever its future force composition may be. Since it is unrealistic to think about even larger forward deployments, the alternative is redeployment.
In his article “Requiem for the Sixth Fleet?” Commander P.T. Deutermann argues that the Sixth Fleet should be disestablished and replaced by European naval assets.4 Two of his points are particularly pertinent:
“That is what a fleet does best; one moment an empty ocean, the next a massive concentration of self-sustaining military power. There is not just one carrier, with her notional cruiser and escorts, but a whole fleet, poised to do a job and present a sufficient force to sustain the defense while conducting the offense.
“A fleet does not have to stay in one place to be effective; it only has to possess the capability to come in force when it is truly needed. Our present commitment to positioning a fleet on the southern flank of NATO robs us of the flexibility of allowing our most mobile, self-sufficient, and capable military forces to deal with genuine threats to our national security or to the security of our European partners.”
Some believe Commander Deutermann has presented an overly simplistic solution to the international political problems that might develop if the U. S. Sixth Fleet were withdrawn from the Mediterranean.5 However, this would in no way detract from the merits of the cited quotes. Deploying the bulk of our ready naval power in various widely dispersed areas might have made sense in the 1950s and 1960s. In that era, the U. S. Navy was the strongest naval power in the world. In the projected naval environments of the next two decades, however, such a posture could be folly.
As a matter of fact, in the 1950s and 1960s, our naval posture was different from our present and planned deployments. The forward deployed carrier battle groups we then maintained in the Sixth and Seventh fleets were probably enough to deter even concentrated Soviet threats. And they did not have to be. These four forward deployed carriers were not the bulk of our ready naval power. When necessary, they could have been promptly reinforced from the Atlantic and Pacific fleets, as they were for both the Korean and Vietnam wars. They were supported by a formidable home fleet posture.
This posture worked for the Royal Navy for centuries. Throughout the long heyday of “Britannia Rules the Waves” and through several transitions of ship types and naval force compositions, the British maintained the home fleet concept was the best posture. No combination of enemies, allies, threats, pleas, international crises, conflicts, or technological changes could induce them to scatter the bulk of their naval power in worldwide, day-to-day deployments in harm’s way. This posture worked. It failed only when Britain could no longer maintain the naval assets to support it (or any other global naval posture).
After World War II, the U. S. Navy, until recently, maintained a similar posture. However, as Soviet naval power has increased and the number of U. S. carriers has decreased, we have concentrated our efforts on numerically maintaining—and with the Southwest Asia commitment, increasing—forward deployed forces. As a result, our home fleets have shrunk to where they now comprise only those ships that we cannot keep so deployed, that is, ships in workup preparing to relieve the watch. Thus, the argument that the forward deployed posture has worked in the past and should be maintained is becoming a specious one. Our present and projected forward deployed posture lacks a key ingredient the past one had—a viable home fleet for support.
In the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese decimated what was in that time and context a forward deployed U. S. Pacific Fleet. Fortunately, none of our large-deck carriers, which proved to be the true bulk of our offensive naval power, was present. If that were not so, what would have happened at Midway? Once we seized the initiative in the Pacific, we did not keep our growing number of carriers in scattered groups and continuously deployed in harm’s way. For each naval campaign, we mustered overwhelming naval power. When not so engaged, our carriers were kept in relatively safe havens. After we achieved this posture, our losses of large carriers in the Pacific essentially ended.
Granted, the day-to-day posture of our deployed carrier battle groups today can hardly be compared with a Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor in 1941; but neither can the suddenness, speed, range, and lethality of Soviet threats be compared with the Japanese carrier aircraft threat of 1941. Further, we cannot hope to build and deploy quickly now the overwhelming replacement naval power that we could then.
Perhaps the current state of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, with only one large carrier, is not very representative. In fact, this, with a similarly reduced Seventh Fleet (both these reductions occasioned by the requirement to maintain two battle groups in the Indian Ocean), has provided one of the principal arguments supporting the need for 15 large-deck carriers. Perhaps we cannot hope that international politics will permit us to disentangle our fleets from their current and projected forward deployments. But, the reduced levels of the Sixth and Seventh fleets have not yet produced any political or military disasters in these areas.
We should therefore consider allowing these reduced deployments to become the norm. Then, as new large carrier assets materialize, we can add them to the Atlantic and Pacific home fleets. A similarly reduced Indian Ocean posture, combined with an inventory of 15 large carriers, would then permit a viable home fleet posture. In this way, we could partially control the future crisis/conflict environments to which our surface naval power might be exposed. We could also demonstrate periodically our capability to produce quick response forces of three or more carrier battle groups. This capability, which seems to work well in analyses and war games, has not been physically assembled, exercised, and demonstrated by the United States in at least a decade. The Soviet Okean exercises provided the world with some striking contrasts.
If allies and clients question the adequacy of a single carrier battle group as a naval presence in their areas of naval interest, we should convince them that this is the U. S. offering, and it is backed by a viable home fleet. They will have to shoulder some of the burden of providing a naval presence with their own forces in order to protect their vital interests.
Suppose vigorous development and deployment of current and developing technology could result in high levels of confidence that a two-carrier fleet could survive against concentrations of Soviet threats? This implies a high preoccupation with survivability and self-defense, not only for the carrier and her aircraft complement, but also in the missions and designs of escorts such as Aegis cruisers and direct support nuclear submarines. To what end? What could we expect the offensive mission contribution of such forces to be? What level of offensive counterthreat could we expect to pose to the Soviet Union? Given long-term continuation of this trend, we may soon need presence forces of two carrier battle groups to pose enough offensive power to deter lesser naval powers than the Soviet Union.
If two forward deployed carrier battle groups are a questionable posture, then a single carrier group is an inadequate posture, too. As were some of the distant squadrons and flotillas of the Royal Navy during its reign. As is the U. S. Army force in South Korea, given prompt Soviet involvement. As is the U. S. ground force in Europe. The point is, in all these cases, without a demonstrable capability for timely and substantial reinforcement, none of these forces would be an adequate deterrent.
In 1941, the Japanese had decided that war with the United States was inevitable. At Pearl Harbor, they hoped to catch the bulk of the U. S. Pacific Fleet in a surprise shoot-out. Had they been successful, they could have then, relatively unopposed, quickly expanded and consolidated their gains. Facing the forbidding task of counterattacking while heavily preoccupied with Europe and the Atlantic, the United States may have eventually settled for “acceptable” terms in the Pacific. Fortunately, the Japanese miscalculated. They missed the carriers, “wakened the sleeping giant,” lost at Midway, and failed. But had the Japanese not been so tempted, would they have tried? Or would they have been deterred?
In order to prevail in a future naval conflict against the Soviet Union, the burden would again be on the U. S. Navy; we would have to counterattack as we did against Japan. A Mexican standoff in the naval arena would constitute a Soviet naval victory in the context of a large war in Eurasia. What if the Soviet Union even thinks a war with the United States is inevitable? If the Soviets mounted concentrated shoot-outs against any of our forward deployed fleets, could they neutralize them? Pin them down? With half or more of our ready forces so preoccupied, how forbidding would our rapidly developing naval tasks become? The sleeping giant would again be awakened, but it might find it awoke with one hand tied behind its back. Although we hope that such an attack by the Soviets would also prove to be a grave miscalculation on their part, why tempt them?
Our present and apparently planned naval posture vis- a-vis the Soviet Union is becoming paradoxical. Since its inception as a modem naval force, the Soviet Navy has been constrained by geography to consist of widely separated forces that can be prevented from achieving timely and decisive combinations. Thus, it has been historically and it still could be dealt with piecemeal. The U. S. Navy, like our Royal Navy predecessors, is not constrained so, geographically. However, in recent years, the Navy has been diluting this natural advantage by overcommitting its forces to widely separated, forward deployed postures. This overcommitment also may eventually provide an enemy with the opportunity to exploit our self-imposed, artificial disadvantage.
The purpose of the U. S. Navy is to deter by demonstrating its ability to fight and win, not to politically pacify allies and clients by clinging to a posture that both tempts adversaries and increases the Navy’s risk of losing in a conflict. The U.S. Navy is no longer the only powerful naval force in the world. It must therefore be deployed and employed efficiently. However grudgingly, it has been accepted that U.S. ground forces are not all-powerful. We must now accept the fact that the same is true in the naval arena.
More important, we must get off the treadmill of maintaining unrealistic commitments. Those responsible for long-term strategic planning of how future surface ships and forces should be composed are much too busy keeping the assembly line full and running. They neither pause long to ponder the future nor permit diversion of resources or budgets to such purposes. Above all, these strategic planners cannot support any unproven long shots.
Whatever its ultimate form, the ongoing naval buildup program can be exploited in one of two ways. It can continue to struggle to satisfy commitments that are unrealistic and may prove very unwise. Or it can rebuild a viable home fleet posture, therefore creating a more effective deterrent because it could demonstrate its ability to quickly convert an “empty ocean” into “. . . a massive concentration of self-sustaining military power.”
In such an environment, perhaps the questions ot whether, when, and how we might begin to replace our large carriers can be objectively addressed and resolved. Whatever the composition of future surface forces of the U. S. Navy, their commitment and their destiny will no longer be the result of transient politics or the initiatives of rivals. Instead, they will be the result of a determination to develop viable forces and strategies for effective support of U. S. national objectives.
1Thomas B. Hayward, “The Future of U. S. Sea Power,” Proceedings, May 1979. pp. 66-71; Thomas B. Hayward, “Thank God for the Sitting Ducks!” Proceedings, June 1982, pp. 22-25; Thomas H. Moorer and Alvin J. Cottrell, “In the Wake of the Falklands Battle,” Strategic Review, Summer 1982, pp. 23-28. 2Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., “High-Low,” Proceedings, April 1976, pp. 46-55; Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., “Total Force,” Proceedings, May 1979, pp. 88-107; Leon P Brooks, Jr., “The Impact of Technology on Fleet Structure,” Proceedings, February 1981, pp. 46-52; Robert C. Powers, “The Offensive-Passive Ship,” Proceedings, January 1982, pp. 46-49; Gerald O’Rourke, “CVNs Forever! Forever?" Proceedings, July 1982, pp. 20-26.
3Sir James Cable, “The Falklands Conflict,” Proceedings, September 1982, pp- 70-76.
4P.T. Deutermann, “Requiem for the Sixth Fleet?” Proceedings, September 1982. pp. 46-49.
5Barry L. Brown, Comment on “Requiem for the Sixth Fleet?” Proceedings. November 1982, p. 14.
Commander Ortlieb graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in 1948 and received a master’s degree in economics/defense systems analysis from the University of Maryland in 1969. He served in various submarines, commanded the USS Sailfish (SS-572), and was executive officer of the USS Hunley (AS-31). His shore tours include instructor of ordnance and gunnery at the Naval Academy, enlisted personnel assignments officer in the Bureau of Personnel, and deputy director of the strategic offensive systems division in OpNav. Commander Ortlieb retired in 1969 and is currently a senior systems analyst with Science Applications, Inc., in McLean, Virginia.