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gonn defense planning. To do this, we can.review funda. :
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Through the mists can be seen the carrier which, with her battle group, we accept as the Navy’s reigning paradigm. But there is a second, equally important paradigm, the nuclear attack submarine, without which we can’t have a global Navy.
Military planning may be more difficult in peacetime than in war. War yields answers, feedback, imperatives from the real world, only one see- nario, and, in the end, no question of how it all turned out. j Peacetime planning is„an abstraction, made deadly important by the certainty that war’s outcome will yield directly from peacetime’s preparation. .. . . . . '
Whereas war’s reality drives the course of action* in peacetime no cleafcgui.de exists except as. comes from the . intellectual pursuit qf the issues. Peacetime's imperative is continual consideration of where we stand and wjiere we ~
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readiness in the future. We should start with the most fun- can move the goods and the soldiers. Only a navy can damental question. counter other navies. Only a nation demonstrably capable
Why a navy? It has all to do with transportation, geogra- of safe movement on the seas can sustain global alliances Phy, and the movement of heavy goods. The materials of for commerce and defense, and only such a nation can act commerce and war can be moved by land, sea, or air; but to dissuade adventurism by others, capacity limits airlift to highest-priority items, and geogra- Why do we need a navy? Because only a navy can pro- phy confines land transport. This leaves sea transport as tect sea transport and project national power worldwide, the basis on which the United States conducts commerce Diplomacy cannot. Land-based aircraft cannot. A soldier and exerts military influence globally. with a shovel and a gun cannot. These other instruments
Raw* materials and finished goods must move to and will not work unless we are assured of safe journey across j_r°m this continent to sustain the U. S. economy. Military - the sea. Loss of the ability to move safely, on the sea is loss force and its support must be deliverable in all seas and to of global power. This is an important fact to be kept in distant lands to protect vital national interests. Only ships mind when debating navy topics.-
How much navy? Let’s ignore the question. The answer is always “more than we have now” if you ask the Navy. And “no more than we now have, maybe less, maybe a lot less” if you ask the other services and most nonmilitary players. The chorus of answers results in an allocation of national resources to the Navy that is largely determined externally, with many nonmilitary factors bearing and relatively small opportunity for the Navy to drive the issue very far. Certainly, the Navy should continue to press for full funding, but “more money” is probably not the path to “better navy.”
The resource input stays relatively constant year-to- year, therefore the focus should shift from how much navy to what kind of navy. With spending holding at a steady level, the real issue is the wisest application of a fixed income.
What must the Navy be able to do? Admiral Stansfield Turner developed a model describing the missions of the Navy as strategic deterrence, sea control, power projection, and presence.1 This approach, brilliant for concentrating on output rather than input, permeates current U. S. Navy thinking, but ten years of use have revealed its awkward difficulties.
First, the strategic deterrence mission is free-standing and alone—a national mission, not the Navy’s. Total understanding of the strategic deterrence mission offers nothing to the consideration of traditional navy topics. The following discussion is sharpened by setting aside the strategic deterrence mission.
A second problem with Turner’s model is that everything left is sea control. Power projection is based in sea control; presence is the perception that sea control can be achieved. Sea control is not a navy mission. It is the navy mission. When all things considered to be sea control are collected, they force an ultimate definition of this role: “Sea control is anything involving the Navy and live ordnance in blue water.” This is too general to translate into the specific tasks the Navy must accomplish and always leaves the student to sort out which mode of sea control is under discussion.
Third, sea control ill-accommodates attrition warfare, nor does attrition fit elsewhere in the model. Although this shortcoming may not be crucial to the surface Navy mindset, it is a serious flaw to those attuned to the power and potential of the nuclear attack submarine.
Fourth, the Turner model is offense oriented and has in its operation produced both force structure and employment plans that either ignore or denigrate the defensive mode. This, in turn, ignores the need to provide safe ocean passage for cargo; it ignores as well that much of our surface Navy is defensive in nature, necessarily so to protect itself and the aircraft carriers.
A fifth problem is that the Turner model is not one a submariner would develop. The model and much of the mentality behind it tend to see submarines simply as another ship type, whereas in war, the submarine may well rule the ocean. Naval warfare changed forever on the day the Nautilus (SSN-571) put to sea on nuclear power. The modem submarine is a different form of naval force, so powerful that any model of a navy must weave submarine themes into itself as a primary component.
Overall, the model depends too much on assumptions about force types and scenarios, yet yields less than we need to guide a future course in force design. Let’s examine a new model, one that deals directly with the capabilities needed in a global navy.
► Fighting: the ability to sink enemy warships. The enemy must be at risk whenever he puts to sea. He will be if our Navy is capable of conducting offensive combat operations against his ships. Should the enemy choose to mass his fleet, we need the depth and strength to win the Mahanian battle. We need also the ability to conduct barrier operations, sea denial, and attrition warfare to find, fight, and kill any warship that comes out.
► Attacking: the ability to conduct offensive attacks from the sea against the enemy ashore. Naval force is a powerful base from which to launch attacks on the enemy on land. The speed, mobility, and self-sustainability of naval force coupled with the close access to most nations afforded from the open sea provide a means of striking quickly and deeply against an enemy. The global navy must be capable of sending both ordnance and amphibious forces against targets on the beach.
► Protecting: the ability to defend one’s warships and transport ships on the sea. The Navy must be able to conduct itself with safety on the sea, to go where it must without undue risk, and to extend protection to vital goods moving to the homeland and to the land warfare forces crossing the seas to the hot war.
► Persuading: the ability to convince friends and potential enemies that our Navy can successfully fight at sea, attack the land, and move with safety on the ocean. At all levels of threat, potential enemies must know they face naval defeat.
These four capabilities form a new model of Navy tasks. With an understanding of the forces opposing the Navy, this model leads to a definition of the kind of Navy we need. Comparison of this new model with Admiral Turner’s shows a common basis, but the distinctions are important.
Fighting and protecting relate to Turner’s sea control mission but offer improvements. Primarily, they separate offensive and defensive tasking, which call for very different forces. One can go so far as to suggest that, with the enormous fighting capability embodied in the nuclear attack submarine, the protecting task may be the primary reason for a surface navy in blue water combat and, in that surface navy, the justification for spending so much energy on self-protection, a need met in the submarine by stealth rather than massive protective forces. A distinction with such profound implications in force structure must be stated explicitly.
Attacking rewords the power projection mission, but with emphasis on delivering live ordnance and armed troops over the beach in combat. “Power projection” has tended to pick up parts of Turner’s presence mission and to fuzz into a peacetime task. Changing the label to attacking clarifies that this mission is distinct from the persuading mission, and that it is entirely a combat mission.
Persuading is more than just the presence mission relabeled. Presence implies visual, physical presence—a presentation of naval capability perceivable at the sensory level. It tends to ignore the need to influence players who react primarily to the potential capability defined by order of battle. It also omits any role for the nuclear attack submarine, whose presence potential is nil, but whose ability to persuade is quite large. The concept of persuading bettor describes the task’s full range. It supports the need for a strong peacetime Navy as a deterrent of wars, small or large. Presence is useful in threatening and comforting small nations but not in addressing the full range of the persuading mission.
What is the threat? Two threats. First, the Soviet Union. Soviet naval force resides in its nuclear attack submarines, its blue water navy, and its land-based aircraft capable of ever greater range at sea. Soviet missile submarines seriously threaten U. S. security. The second threat is the coastal defense forces adjacent to the shores of most nations. Modem weaponry carried on fast patrol craft and land aircraft make the littoral an especially hostile zone, even more so along the coasts of nations also having diesel submarines. Our Navy must prevail against both of these threats.
Our Navy must prevail in a nuclear environment. However simplifying and comforting the assumption of “no nukes,” the pose is bankrupt. Tactical nuclear weapons are grand ordnance against surface warships, submarines, and aircraft. The remoteness of naval conflict and the absence of collateral damage and civilian deaths may well make war at sea a unique environment in which the nuclear firebreak is weak or nonexistent, with the link to escalation ashore very thin. Future naval conflict could become very nuclear very fast.2 And, if one looks downstream very far, this could be against nations other than the Soviet Union.
What kind of Navy do we need? This question has been Put in terms of identifying the naval paradigm, a horrible word presenting the excellent idea that a central theme, an elegant solution exists purporting to best provide the answer.3 The carrier battle group is seen as our current Paradigm, an obvious truth but one requiring two additional statements.
* ^ have two naval paradigms. Carrier battle groups, yes, but also nuclear attack submarines.
* Both paradigms are sound.
What kind of Navy do we need? The kind we have, onsider the model. We seek the ability to fight enemy warships, to attack enemy lands, to protect our warships
an.d dipping, and to persuade all nations of our naval toight.
Our force of nuclear attack submarines provides the capabilities needed to fight the Soviet fleet. They also persuade and, given the modem submarine’s ability in attri- °n warfare, sea denial, and blockade operations, they Ptotect by reducing risk to surface forces and transport.
ith cruise missiles, submarines have the power to attack aud targets. This central theme, this elegant solution is an extraordinarily successful naval force that will be ours to exPl°it and to counter for a long time.
We need carrier battle groups also for the foreseeable future. We should emphasize most their contributions to the protecting, attacking, and persuading tasks, but we should acknowledge the fighting strength of the battle group as well.
Carrier battle groups are essential to sea transport protection. Here is where sea control has meaning—not as a mission to bottle up the enemy or sweep him from the sea but rather as total control of a moving space above, below, and around the battle group. In this safe space can fit the transports and tankers as well as the amphibious assault forces. Nothing else can provide the protection afforded by the carrier battle group, the synergistic grouping of surface warships, direct support submarines, and the carrier air wing.
Carrier battle groups protect themselves as well. They can deal with threats in blue water, and they are the most able of any surface force type to operate adjacent to a defended coastal region. Carrier battle groups can fight Soviet surface groups and the warships of other nations from a position of superiority. And they are the very embodiment of the attack capability; they are a powerful base from which to launch attacks of strike aircraft, cruise missiles, naval gunfire, and amphibious assault forces transported with safety to the objective area.
Finally, the carrier battle group is a primary instrument of peacetime national policy, called on repeatedly to persuade other nations in matters of U. S. national interest. No overflight rights or host-country agreements, no call for the reserves or attempts to pump life into the Rapid Deployment Force, no national debate by armchair experts are necessary for its employment. One order by the Commander in Chief and this powerful force is on its way to stand by offshore the trouble spot. Does this work? Read the newspapers—carrier battle groups keep the peace. Or ask someone in the Foreign Service; they have seen carriers’ effectiveness again and again in maintaining vital U. S. interests around the globe.
What kind of Navy do we need? We have gotten it right. The dual paradigms of the carrier battle group and the nuclear attack submarine best yield the capabilities we need to fight, attack, protect, and persuade with naval force. The threats posed by the Soviet Navy and the navies of small nations can be overcome by our Navy as now comprised, thus permitting the free passage of cargo ships and the delivery of military force worldwide—the two fundamental reasons we must have sea power.
‘Stansfield Turner, “Missions of the U. S. Navy,’’ Naval War College Review, March-April 1974, pp. 2-17.
2Elmo P. Zumwalt, Jr., “Naval Battles We Could Lose,’’ International Security Review, Summer 1981, pp. 139-156.
*Y. Wood Parker, Jr., “Paradigms, Conventional Wisdom, and Naval Warfare,” Proceedings, April 1983, pp. 29-35.
Commander John L. Byron is a line officer who writes on naval topics.
Editor’s Note: In Part 2 of this essay next month, the author takes up the subject of opportunities to enhance sea power.