The Quest for Consensus

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Its experience in the Gulf War and the major defense reductions that followed sounded a wake-up call for the Navy. To move forward, it had to reconcile internal differences over funding allocations, force size and shape, and planning priorities—and internalize a joint-force perspective.

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Over roughly 12 months, between the autumn of 1992 and the fall of 1993, the Navy changed the way it meets its force-planning responsibilities. Collectively, these changes were a major—some would argue revolutionary—alteration of the process that had been in effect for close to two decades. The new process, termed the joint mission area assessment process (JMA), was in some respects the product of a peculiar set of circumstances and personalities. Because it generally was perceived as successful, however, the new process is likely to remain the framework for Navy force structure planning and programming over the next several years, and perhaps longer.

The story of the JMA begins in 1990, in the context of a decidedly upbeat mood inside the Navy. The Cold War had been won, and U.S. naval forces had been a major contributor to the victory. By virtually all measures, the Navy was the best it had been in decades. Readiness indicators were high. Modernization was driving the average age of active ships downward. Morale and the quality of the people entering the Navy were up. Navy leaders looked forward to the future with optimism, for it was widely held that though the defense budget would go down, the Navy’s share of resources would increase. As the Army and Air Force withdrew from their forward deployments, the talk inside the Navy was that those services surely would bear the brunt of the defense resources draw down. Articles flowing through such journals as the Naval Institute Proceedings and discussions within the senior Navy leadership radiated the optimism.¹

Yet by early 1992, the triumphal tones of the spring of 1990 had been replaced by more somber assessments. Articles in Proceedings and elsewhere increasingly criticized the Navy’s capacity to deal with regional conflicts like Desert Storm, and the mood within the Navy leadership clearly was one of greater concern about the future size and character of U.S. naval forces.

Why had Navy perceptions shifted? In retrospect, two factors appear important. The first was the Navy’s expe

rience in Desert Storm. The second was the Preside!¹¹ acceptance of the “Base Force” concept proposed by tltf Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Co' Powell.

The Impact of the Gulf War

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Much remains to be written about the significance¹ Desert Storm to U.S. military thought, but one thing^J ready seems clear. Desert Storm confirmed the operatioi¹ doctrines that the Army and Air Force had developed o'' the previous two decades, but it also demonstrated tl* the Maritime Strategy—the basic operational concept $ ving Navy planning since the early 1970s—did not fit t^l post-Cold War era. The 100-hour ground campaign tl¹ expelled the Iraqi Army from Kuwait epitomized what¹' U.S. Army’s air-land battle doctrine had called for sit¹' the mid-1970s. The success of the strategic bombing cfl^c paign confirmed operational concepts the U.S. Air Fof¹ had nurtured since World War II.

Yet, little in Desert Storm supported the assumptio⁽ and implications of the Navy’s Maritime Strategy. No °l posing naval forces tried to challenge U.S. naval ford for control of the seas. Waves of enemy aircraft ne^yl attempted to attack the carriers. There was no submari¹ threat to the flow of men and materiel across the ocea¹¹ Desert Storm simply did not resemble the open-ocean N ties that the Navy had planned and prepared for over ^ previous 20 years.

Instead, Desert Storm was replete with the problems¹ the littoral. Mines, relatively close to shore, not submarii’¹ in the open ocean, were the primary threat. The Na' did not operate on its own, hundreds of miles away ft⁰' where the Army and Air Force were engaged, but inst^ shared the same operating areas. And the weapons, sf terns, and techniques that the Navy had honed for ope^f ocean engagements—the long-range Phoenix air defefl* missiles, the fire-and-forget Harpoon antiship missiles, ^ level-of-effort ordnance planning, the decentralized coi^J

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mand-and-control systems—all of these were either ruled out by the context of the battle or were ineffective in the confined littoral arena and the environmental complexities of the sea-land interface.

U.S. naval forces performed their missions well in Desert Storm. There was no failure of nerve on the part of the men and women who fought there.

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Desert Storm was a triumph of U.S. military power, and all the services contributed to that triumph. But in the U.S. Navy’s case, it was largely because of its ability to modify the operational doctrine with which it entered the conflict, not because that operational doctrine—and the weapons, systems, and training it had generated—were well suited to the kind of joint military operations the United States conducted in the Gulf War.

So, unlike the Army and Air Force, the Navy left the first of the post-Cold War conflicts without a sense that its entering doctrine had been vindicated.

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Quite the contrary. It left the Gulf War with a sense not only that the world had changed dramatically, but that changes in the Navy might also be necessary. For the Navy, more than the other military services. Desert Storm was the midwife of change.

The Impact of the Base Force

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In August 1990, as Iraq was preparing to invade Kuwait, President George Bush approved what General Powell had named the “Base Force.”² The base force marked a significant departure from the planning assumptions of the previous decades. It moved away from the notion of a global conflict with the Soviet Union as the basic planning context, arguing that the focus of force planning now would be regional wars, against less potent enemies.

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The overall implication of the base force was that the United States could afford to make major reductions in the forces it had built to deal with

a military superpower on a global basis. And, contrary to the earlier assumption within the Navy, defense budget reductions were to be spread evenly across the military services. Navy resources were to go down at the same rate as those of the Army and Air Force. In short, the notion that the Navy would be relatively immune from the pending cuts evaporated.

Thus, by early 1992, two of the pillars bolstering the sense of satisfaction within the Navy leadership were gone. The net effect of the Desert Storm experience had been a need for doctrinal introspection; the effect of the Base Force decision had been the realization that available resources would be going down much faster than had been anticipated.

The response to the need for doctrinal adjustment came in the form of a white paper, “. . . From the Sea,” drafted between March 1992 and the summer and published that September. The white paper recognized that, for the foreseeable future, the Navy’s control of the seas would not be challenged and argued that the primary role of U.S. naval forces would be to enable the application of joint military force in littoral areas. The new concept called for naval forces to be an integral part of the nation’s effort to directly control events ashore. It was no longer enough to think in terms of coordinating naval operations in one part of the world, with ground-force operations in another part, perhaps thousands of miles away. Now, the Navy had to think in terms of integrated operations with the other military services in the same region.

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By early summer 1992, these ideas dominated the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. But there was little consensus on what they meant for the future size and structure of the Navy and less agreement on how they should be translated from policy to the reality of programs and budgets. What was needed was a new consensus on what the new operational concept meant—a new consensus that could replace the one that had been forged during the Cold War. The Navy needed this to com-

plete the conceptual change it had begun and to help reconcile the honest, sincere, and deeply held internal differences of opinion over:

►    How billions of dollars were to be spent each year

►    How forces were to be sized and shaped

►    What the planning priorities should be

►    How the warfare specializations were to be blended and designed

That called for new organizations and new modes of staff interaction. By mid-year. Admiral Frank Kelso, then Chief of Naval Operations, had concluded that the staff as then structured could not generate the new consensus the times demanded. A major staff reorganization was announced in August and implemented by the following October.

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Chief of Staff for Navy Program Planning was respot. ble for translating the results of the appraisal process i⁽ q_] the Navy Program and Budget. Doing this was far fr _{st t|} a mechanical process. Indeed, the bureaucratic separate of the “appraisal process” from programming had b^£ consciously designed in the early 1970s, to stimulate c<f _voca petitive views on the Navy’s future between OP-07 J _t . OP-08.

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Staff Reorganization

Although the Navy staff had been reorganized from time to time since the 1970s, its basic structure had remained intact. For roughly two decades, decisions within the Navy about the allocation of resources had been worked out within a staff structure dominated by five major spokesmen. Three of these were vice admirals who advocated the perspectives and resource claims of the Navy’s three

1992, did several things. Among the most important" _uw the creation of a new office, the Deputy Chief of Staff¹ jj,i_s Resources, Warfare Requirements, and Assessment (N‘

As the title suggests, several of the functions that had be divided among separate staff offices were consolidated the new N8. Specifically, the new office maintained ¹ programming and budgeting responsibilities of its pre<f

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warfare communities. These were the so-called “staff barons,” a term meant to imply their relative independence and equal power status. Their “fiefdoms” were naval aviation, surface warfare, and submarines and included the research, development, and acquisition bureaucracies that worked for and within these platform categories.³

The other two powers were the Deputy Chief of Staff for Naval Warfare (OP-07) and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Navy Program Planning (OP-08). The former was charged with reconciling the resource claims of each of the warfare community advocates with a general vision for the Navy. The means through which this was attempted was called the “warfare appraisal process.” The Deputy

budget reality were combined.

The new N8 office also absorb what were once the independent powerful warfare community offi^c‘ beg (OP-02, OP-03, and OP-05). The ** organization downgraded the platfaf sponsors from three- to two-star rtf and shifted their subordination to away from direct access to the Cb>‘ of Naval Operations. There wd other changes, as well. A new off'¹ was created within N8 for the specif _acr( purpose of informing the Fleet coi¹ j_ng manders-in-chief of developments¹ the requirements and resourd process that the N8 now ran and¹ represent their views in that procd' Another office (N85), headed by a Marine Corps maj^c general, was established to help to forge a closer pld¹ ning link with the Marine Corps and to focus on the id plications of littoral warfare.

The new N8 office was, of course, a staff office. T': suggestions “the N8” made as he carried out his planni^ assessment, programming, and budgeting functions W effect only if they were approved by the Chief of Nad g_ra Operations, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretaf t_en of Defense. But few staff offices in any of the milita^ |_nv services have been accorded the kind of potential b¹¹ reaucratic power the Navy staff reorganization gave

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The Joint Mission Areas Assessment Process

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Organizational modification was necessary for the new strategy to become more than rhetoric, but it alone was not enough. It also was necessary to incorporate new standards or criteria for deciding program priorities; a new vocabulary to the debates over the way the budget was to be allocated; and a new style of decision making. Both structure and process had to change if the shifts in strategy called for by “. . . From the Sea” were to be matched by the size and shape of a new Navy.

The new assessment process sought to immerse the flag levels of the Navy staff in an ambitious effort to develop a broad new understanding of the future size and structure of the Navy, thereby drawing on the collective wisdom of the most experienced members of the Navy staff. This goal demanded that the flag and general officers play a much more direct and instrumental role than before.

The desire to draw upon the experience of the flag level, apart from the perspective required by their administrative position in the Navy bureaucracy, led to a two-track or two-level assessment process. One dimension of this process took place in the Requirements, Resources Review Board, or R3B. Ostensibly, the R3B was a flag officer group that reviewed the staff effort to meet the planning, programming, and budgeting demands. Formally, then, it was similar to other boards that the Navy—along with the Army and Air Force—had used to provide a collective review of the traditional work the service staffs undertake.

In reality, the R3B was quite dissimilar. It did not meet so much to review staff positions as to try to develop a collective flag officer sense of what the size, structure, and character of the Navy ought to be in the future, independent of the ideas of the lower-ranking staff. This notion required the members of the R3B—who informally began to call themselves “the band of brothers”—to spend an inordinate amount of time together and to become familiar not only with the details of the programs and requirements they were responsible for in their formal staff positions, but with the programs of their colleagues, as well. R3B meetings emphasized open discussion—official minutes were discouraged to help facilitate open, candid debate. The subjects discussed ranged broadly across the spectrum of problems and opportunities facing the nation and the nation’s naval forces in the years ahead. And the R3B spent a considerable effort critiquing and assessing its own interactions, sometimes with the help of outside observers.

Meanwhile, many of the non-flag Navy staff were similarly immersed in assessments of the joint mission and support areas around which the future Navy was to be formulated. The structure through which this was done essentially was a matrix in which virtually all program advocates were required to justify their programs in terms of their contribution to the listed mission areas. Discussions within each mission area sought to rank the programs that applied to that mission area and, through extensive discussion of each mission area within the Investment Balance Review, to achieve an overall ranking of the entire range of Navy programs, e.g., a Navy Program and Budget.

The structure was designed to build interaction and consensus. It forced staff members to talk with and compete with each other directly. Earlier, staff members had talked to their subordinates and superiors within whatever warfare or support office they represented. This pattern had been called a wonderful example of “stove pipe” dialogue, a term that aptly captured the vertical flow of information at the expense of flows across offices within the Navy staff.

The matrix structure forced a horizontal flow of information and rewarded awareness of competing programs. Advocates of a given program had to work with other advocates to arrive at priorities in each of the new mission areas. For example, for an advocate of submarine programs to ensure what he would define as adequate funding, he had to demonstrate to his competitors that his programs contributed more than theirs to joint littoral warfare, joint strike, and the rest of the mission areas. If he was successful in getting his programs ranked relatively high in each of the mission areas, the probability that they would be fully funded during the investment balance review increased. But to “win” in this contest, the advocate had to know enough about competing programs and the views of other advocates to demonstrate, objectively, why it was better to fund his programs over others.

The titles of the mission areas in which this competition was to take place came in here. The new categories were chosen to introduce a joint, broader, more national perspective to Navy programming. As those titles indicate, the standards against which the naval force programs were to be ranked went beyond a parochial Navy vocabulary and focus. They required advocates to demonstrate the importance of their programs in terms of their potential contributions to joint military operations.

This was new as far as force planning is concerned, not only because it represented an attempt by a single military service to internalize a joint-force perspective, but also because it drove the program advocates within the Navy to learn about how the other military services intended to fight. Program advocates were successful in getting funding to the extent that they could explain how their programs would assist another service to do what it should do in combat. Success in the competition for funding within the Navy depended, at least in part, on how a program contributed to the operational effectiveness of another military service, as well as to naval forces.

The new assessment process began in September 1992 and ran through the late summer of 1993. By the end of January 1993, it had defined the Navy’s recommendation to the Secretary of Defense on how to adjust the fiscal year 1994 budget request to conform with the new Clinton administration’s desires. By midsummer, it had become the engine for recommendations to the Chief of Naval Operations and Secretary of the Navy (SecNav), which defined the Navy’s views on priorities and adjustments for the fiscal year 1995 budget.

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The Secretary of Defense accepted almost all the SecNav recommendations that flowed from the process. I believe that he did so in part because the Navy was successful in bringing its program proposals in within the fiscal guidelines provided by the new administration. But the Navy’s program was accepted largely because it had

emerged from a process that was compelling in its logic, honesty, and comprehensiveness.

Will the process that emerged from that challenging period in 1992 and 1993 be maintained in the years ahead? Time and the next generation of officers who make up the Navy staff will provide the final answer. But there are at least two factors that work in favor of its maintenance. First, its product—a fairly explicit vision of the future Navy—is now shared broadly throughout the Navy’s leadership. There also now exists a conceptual belief that the techniques and procedures used in producing that vision can be used in refining it. Second, the Navy program that emerged from the process has been well received by the Secretary of Defense and the Congress. It seems to produce a program that survives and thrives in fiscally constrained times.

The conditions that created the assessment process, a need to consummate a conceptual change and meet fiscal constraints, will continue for at least several years. Perhaps the new assessment process will, as well. It is

perceived, inside and outside the Navy, as legitimate, 1 est, objective, and productive. And I believe its prodi are perceived that way, too.

'Characterizing a general mood in an institution as large and diverse as the Navy connotes sociological naivete. The generalization is based largely cussion with several of the Navy architects of the new assessment process, ticipation in and observation of a series of seminars sponsored by the Cente Naval Analyses involving senior members of the office of the Chief of h Operations staff in 1990, and a survey of articles published in Proceeding tween the fall of 1989 and the fall of 1990.

-'Lorna S. Jaffe, “The Development of the Base Force 1989-1992” (Office J Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Joint History Office, July 1993), p. 3* ■Each was an Assistant Chief of Naval Operations at the time of the 1992¹ ganization. They headed, respectively, OP-02 (Undersea Warfare), OP-031 face Warfare), and OP-05 (Air Warfare).

Admiral Owens is the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff previously has served as the first Deputy Chief of Naval Operations¹ sources. Warfare Requirements, and Assessments); Commander.¹ Sixth Fleet/Commander, Naval Striking and Support Forces, Soutf Europe; and Military Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.            ^