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By Captain William F. Hickman, U.S. Navy
As the Navy charts its future, it needs to stop dead-reckoning from the carrier battle group and consider changes, such as using a Harpoon-equipped P-3 to back up Tomahawk-armed surface action groups.
For more than 40 years, the grand strategy of containing communism has determined the U.S. military force structure. The collapse of the Communist world appears to reflect the success of that strategy, but unfortunately this collapse has coincided with a severe fiscal crisis in the United States. As a result, many in the Congress believe the Soviet military threat has receded to the point that fiscal considerations alone should dictate a reduction in the size of the U.S. military. This is dangerously short sighted.
An appropriate military structure should be one sufficient to carry out a strategy designed to achieve national interests and objectives. Because fiscal considerations by themselves do not beget a military strategy, it follows that simply buying what seems affordable might not be sufficient to meet national needs. Thus, both the national goals and the strategy necessary to achieve them could be disregarded in the zeal to achieve fiscal savings.
For the Navy, this danger is especially acute. Over the past decade, the maritime strategy has articulated both goals and a strategy quite successfully. Whether one agrees or disagrees with its premise, the strategy has provided justification for a large, flexible, forward-deployed Navy centered around the aircraft carrier battle group (CVBG) as the basic fighting unit. The changing congressional perspective of both the Soviet and the fiscal threat, however, clearly indicates that some change in naval force structure is imminent.
M. MEYEfl
Where We Are—Naval Force Options
The options for structuring naval forces of the future are dependent upon one’s strategic viewpoint. The Navy would argue that the President’s broad strategic vision can be achieved in the near term with current forces. For the longer term, modernization programs already under way in shipbuilding, aircraft acquisition, and weapons deveF opment will allow the Navy to retain both its deterrence and forward deployed force projection capabilities.
With regard to the maritime strategy, the Navy would argue that though the force structure options derived from this strategy may appear to be scenario-dependent, the changing situation in the Soviet Union has only affected political will. Unless the Soviet Union reduces its military capability, the worst-case planning scenario must remain a conventional war with the Soviet Union. Even though the Soviet Navy has withdrawn to a defensive posture, it remains a fleet-in-being that we cannot ignore. Though the reduction of Soviet out-of-area deployments may reflect a less-offensive strategy, the fleet’s withdrawal to more defensible bastions also represents a strategic improvement. Because in any future conflict with the Soviets the U.S. Navy will likely be required to go into the bastions to carry out its projected mission, it needs to retain the highly capable forces necessary to carry out this task. Perhaps even more important, because the maritime strategy’s basic purpose is to deter war, the U.S. Navy needs to be located where deterrence can occur—not in U.S. ports.
Finally, because the most probable future scenario is a non-Soviet contingency in the Third World, and because the historic military tool of choice for the national command authority has been the CVBG, the U.S. Navy needs to keep its CVBGs forward-deployed in order to maintain this power projection capability. For these reasons, the Navy considers the current force structure, centered ar°und continuously deployed CVBGs, both appropriate and essential.
The view from Capitol Hill is somewhat different, facing primarily on economics rather than on Soviet capabilities. For example, Senator Sam Nunn(D-GA) proposes an alternative strategy with force options that bear little [^semblance to those the Navy advances. Despite the Navy’s revalidation of the maritime strategy, Senator Nunn questions both its basic assumptions and the forces derived from it. He argues for restructuring the force, as Wefl as for making significant changes in deployment patterns. He believes that to achieve the projected strategic °hjectives of the least probable scenario, the Navy simply does not need to retain all of its current forces. Because fhe reduced threat on the Central Front will increase waning time, he proposes substantially increasing the Naval Reserve component, which could be recalled to the active fleet if the Soviet contingency becomes more probable. He identifies the most likely candidates for transfer as ships ar|d aircraft involved in sealift, antisubmarine warfare, or Sea-lane protection. Although Senator Nunn recognizes s°me degree of forward deployment is desirable for flexibility in providing a military response to a crisis, he questions the necessity of back-to-back CVBG deployments to tbe traditional operating areas. Because he does not be- jieve that we need to continuously deploy the battle groups 'n order to provide that capability, he thinks the Navy needs fewer CVBGs than it currently maintains, somewhere between 10 and 12.
More fundamentally, Senator Nunn challenges the basic assumption that the traditional missions of naval forces can only be performed by naval forces. In order to reduce costs associated with perceived duplication of effort among the services, he has proposed engaging the services 'n a series of competitions to determine which service should have responsibility for traditional missions. He Proposes for example, that CVBGs compete with long- range Air Force bombers with tanker support for the mis- s'on of sea control.
Brookings Institution analyst William W. Kaufmann advocates even more radical change than that proposed by Senator Nunn. He rejects the necessity of forward deployment as a planning imperative, which would allow as much as a 50% cut in naval force structure.
Where Do We Go From Here?
In the current atmosphere—no matter how strongly the Navy feels that the current force of 549 ships centered on 14 CVBGs is the right force for the changing world—it must face the reality that some degree of change is bound to occur. Prudence therefore dictates that the Navy must realistically assess different force options from those it so earnestly desires. To do so successfully, the Navy needs to adjust its thinking.
► First and foremost, the Navy must not dismiss nontraditional solutions or the people who propose them. To do so impugns the Navy’s credibility, because those who propose fundamental changes are sincere and well-intentioned people.
- Second, the Navy must remember that the maritime strategy itself does not dictate naval force structure. Because the strategy has been around for nearly ten years the tendency is to ascribe more to it than it actually represents. As a means of articulating maritime planning imperatives or as a preferred method of employing existing naval forces in response to various contingencies, it is excellent. As an argument for a specific force structure, it is less so. Third World contingencies provide powerful arguments for CVBGs, but they are not the only option. Recent political trends clearly indicate mobile, flexible, joint power projection capabilities will be required in the future, but the Navy must recognize that those forces might not necessarily be CVBGs.
- Third, the Navy must be willing to thoroughly evaluate alternative force structures. Although CVBGs are a potent capability, other options that can provide an acceptable portion of that capability at a lower cost do not imperil their preeminence as the centerpiece of naval warfare. For example, a surface action group centered on Tomahawk- equipped surface ships and submarines, backed by Harpoon-equipped surface ships, submarines, and P-3s could perform just as well as Air Force bombers in a sea-control mission competition and could add to the Navy’s flexibility. Joint activity with the Air Force and Army could be expanded to allow for surface ship support of long-range bomber operations or short-notice contingency operations near coastal areas.
- Finally, the Navy must resist the temptation to view all proposals for change as an attack on the institution of the Navy. The Navy is often described as the most tradition- bound of the U.S. armed services, which is a nice way of saying that it is very resistant to change. Because it possesses its own air force, army, transportation, and artillery support, the Navy has for decades successfully maintained that it is a fighting force not fundamentally dependent upon any other to perform its mission. Although the 1986 Defense Department reorganization mandated by Congress reduced this perception somewhat by expanding the role of the theater Commanders-in-Chief, the Navy has been able to retain its essential character as a self- contained maritime fighting force. Although some of the force-reduction proposals question traditional Navy missions, it seems clear that the essential character of the Navy is not under attack. To deal with the proposals, the Navy must not be sidetracked by such a perception.
Where we go from here is a difficult question that defies simple answers. Risk and uncertainty can never be eliminated; but by being clear about its own perceptions, the Navy has a much better chance of keeping its sense of direction as it seeks to choose the appropriate force option from among the competing strategic alternatives.
Captain Hickman is a student at the Naval War College. A surface warfare officer whose most recent sea tour was as the commanding ollicer of the USS John A. Moore (FFG-19), he is also a Politico-Military Specialist with service in both the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He is a previous contributor to Proceedings.