The Navy has been attacked and vilified over the past several years by many who claim special insight into the service’s workings and culture. The flood of revisionist criticism over the effort to build a 600-ship Navy, however, actually is an attempt to discredit the military in general and the Navy in particular, to diminish their stature in American society. It is a commentary on form and personality—not on substance and function. Its paradigm is the politically correct credo, whose purpose is to dismantle the traditions, ethics, and esprit of the Navy because of its imputed failure to meet arbitrary standards of the unisex and egalitarian crusade with little concern for combat operations or prolonged life at sea.
Overlooked is the other side of the story, one of a Navy struggling to rebuild and rearm in the 1980s at the height of the Cold War. Some history is needed to put things in perspective.
The establishment of national defense priorities is akin to an investment decision in the private sector, in which the annual defense budget is a request for funding to the national bank, under the directorship of Congress, for the investment strategy considered by the President’s managers to best meet the nation’s military needs. The process depends on the integrity, experience, and common sense of the decision makers and on external, responsible review by critics of all persuasions. While far from perfect, it has given us the world’s preeminent military establishment and Navy.
In the 1970s, under the aegis of the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS), the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) established the combat requirements, which became the starting point for sizing the total force. In the annual Joint Forces Memorandum, the JCS presented an affordable force structure that could carry out the military strategy at a prudent level of risk. Developing the memorandum was a cumbersome process, but one that allowed the theater commanders-in-chief (CinCs), the individual services, and the independent agencies to challenge each other. It was not perfect, but it was reasonable.
The carriers—then as now—were the centerpiece of the Navy’s force. Their number determined the Navy’s usefulness—and its size. The major job facing the PPBS staffers was to determine the number of decks with the required sea-based airplane inventory that would accomplish the several missions of the campaign strategies developed by the CinCs.
The guidance to the JCS planning staff, along with Navy and sister-service planners, was to balance sea-based and land-based forces to meet the nation’s needs. The result was a prudent-risk force of 15 CVs, a level that could generate reasonable peacetime operating tempos and a significant crisis-response capability. The 15-carrier force level remained the national objective for the rest of the Cold War. It was not a conjured-up number related to political expediency, flamboyant strategy, or false images of the threat. It was the best estimate of the naval forces required to prevail in a conflict with the Soviet Union.
The Navy’s challenge was to generate support from defense managers and congressional directors for an acquisition strategy to replace the aging World War II carriers and increase the number of decks from 12 to 15. In 1979, after President Jimmy Carter’s veto of the congressional initiative to fund the nuclear- powered CVN-71, the Navy faced major problems in providing decks for the fleet. As the best option, planners elected to:
- Extend the service life of the USS Forrestal (CV-59) and subsequent conventionally powered CVs
- Explore options under the Sea-Based Air Master Study Plan
- Examine the utility of sea control ships
- Design a small (60,000 ton) conventionally powered CV
- Evaluate the feasibility of reactivating World War II Essex (CV-9)-class carriers to operate modern tactical airplanes
All of this was just to maintain an inadequate carrier force of 12 decks. These were second-best solutions.
The Pentagon, in the PPBS era, was managed by systems analysts and comptrollers who aligned themselves with their counterparts on the congressional staffs to make most of the significant budgetary decisions and deals. They came to be an insiders’ bureaucratic loop with enormous power—and no responsibility. Warfighting requirements often proved secondary to other priorities. They allowed the Navy only 12 carriers—and were reluctant to build nuclear carriers.
Complicating matters, the nuclear carrier construction program existed in isolation from this mainstream process and basically was dependent on Admiral Hyman Rickover’s congressional clout. His interest in carriers was secondary to submarines, but Rickover appreciated the benefits of the carrier construction program in reducing overhead for the overall nuclear power program. He was successful in getting the Nimitz (CVN-68), the Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69), the Carl Vinson (CVN-70), and the Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) funded individually, on a congressionally directed basis.
Then along came the Reagan administration. It rejuvenated the service secretaries’ role by providing a decentralized decision-making process, a more competitive approach to defense acquisition, a significant increase in defense dollars—and John Lehman. The carrier procurement paradigm now focused on the acquisition of Nimitz-class carriers as the best solution.
Now it became the Navy’s task to create an integrated procurement strategy that linked the business plan and concomitant contractual instruments, the Pentagon’s PPBS documents, and the due-diligence presentations to Congress in an understandable way. The objective was, in author Robert Timberg’s analogy, to create a single sheet of music for the nightingale’s song relating to the funding of CVN-72 and -73 in the fiscal year 1983 budget.
The Navy developed a single-source briefing document. The lyrics were simple:
- The national strategy required 15 carriers, the most used and useful assets in our defense arsenal.
- The Nimitz class offered the best value in terms of operational efficiency and safety.
- Establishment of a series-production profile by funding two carriers in the fiscal year 1983 budget would save billions of dollars.
The tune was catchy. Interested staff and congressional principals joined the chorus, and John Lehman—the choirmaster—kept the nightingales in tune.
The results were astounding. Congress provided full funding for CVN-72 and -73 and laid the foundation for the 600-ship Navy. Contractual disputes were unsnarled, and the Carl Vinson was delivered in 1983; the Theodore Roosevelt was delivered in 1986—ahead of schedule; and the Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and the George Washington (CVN-73) were delivered on time, under budget in 1989 and 1991, respectively.
During the final years of the Reagan defense buildup, several major legislative initiatives affecting Navy programs came into play, including:
- Strategic home porting
- Reorganization of the Department of Defense under the Gold- water-Nichols legislation
- The "black” program to get a stealthy strike platform on the carriers under the Advanced Tactical Aircraft program
- Continuation of Nimitz-c\ass series production, focused on funding CVN-74 and -75 in the fiscal year 1988 budget
Strategic home porting was common sense. Dispersal would limit the exposure of the fleet to a preemptive nuclear attack. Additional benefits would be a more competitive, less costly support base for the expanding fleet, less strain on existing facilities, and an improvement in quality of life for sailors.
In addition, it shared costs between the Navy and the local communities, to the benefit of both. The Tidewater Virginia and San Diego, California, delegations—traditional allies of the Navy in congressional debates—mounted major opposition in an effort to maintain the density and associated support dollars in the two megaports. The debate was fierce, but the due-diligence review was overwhelmingly in favor of dispersal. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent reduction in the size of the fleet made the initiative less compelling, but the approach remains valid
The Defense Reorganization Act, a congressional initiative, provided a more joint and centralized approach to managing the Department of Defense and gave the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense more authority— and the individual services less. The congressional directors, in effect, wanted a more coherent and focused set of requirements and priorities from the defense managers; they were tired of having to arbitrate priorities between competitive programs.
In part, the legislation was motivated by the Navy’s success, under John Lehman, in arguing independently for its programs. The bill attempted to establish the concept of doing “what is right for America," rather than what is in the parochial interest of the services. The debate was more on form than substance; but the focus on value at the top line made sense and let the Navy show that mobile and flexible sea-based forces were a sensible investment to deal with the future’s uncertainties.
The Navy’s Advanced Tactical Aircraft (ATA) program was then in its concept definition stages in preparation for a competition to select a prime contractor. Overall, the Navy planned to capitalize on the substantial U.S. Air Force investments in the Have Blue prototype, the F-l 17, and the B-2, to develop a carrier-based, stealthy, long-range strike airplane to replace the A-6. Under the terms of a fixed-price contract, it also planned to place the development risk on the private sector contractors— common sense goals that went unfulfilled.
McDonnell Douglas and General Dynamics won the ATA competition in 1988, and the venture went public as the A-12 Avenger program. The winning team carried the day by a very large margin in price, but with almost no synergism related to the Air Force investments. Its eventual inability to build the A-12 under the terms of the contract is one of the great failures of our free enterprise system and of the aerospace industry.
The blame was placed solely on Navy management—the premise being that the fixed-price contract was an ill-conceived notion that guaranteed failure—with little attaching to the technical and production competence of the prime contractors. What the whole affair signaled was the death of common sense and the absolute domination of the legalistic, bureaucratic contract manipulation process over free enterprise.
The final episode in the efforts to rebuild the Navy came in Congress’s due-diligence review of a coherent shipbuilding program that included the Seawolf (SSN-21) nuclear-powered attack submarine, Arleigh Burke (DDG-51)-class Aegis destroyers, Wasp (LHD-l)-class amphibious assault ships, and the continued series production of Nimitz-class carriers.
The carrier program’s affordability dominated the debate. Using the lessons learned from earlier efforts, a single set of facts and supporting arguments affirmed the need for the sea- based forces, as defined in the Navy’s budget proposal, in balance with land-based components. The arguments were based on common sense and support of the national strategy. The crucial vote in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives was two to one to continue series production, which established a foundation for a strong, tough 21st century Navy.
The recent attacks on the admirals are mostly hyperbole and made to discredit the institution. In fact, the vast majority of flag officers have the best interests of the nation as their first priority; one might disagree with their judgments, but rarely with their loyalty.
Similarly, the ad hominem assaults on John Lehman are illusionary, the product of frustration by some over his enormous success as Secretary of the Navy. There’s irony for you—he was too successful. There is no question that the Navy of the 21st century will owe much to John Lehman and his team.
The Navy is a great institution with the highest standards of civility and decorum. The failures have been individual—not institutional. At its core, the Navy has a marvelous loyalty up and down, a fine concept of fairness and accountability, and a mariner’s common sense. These principles will prevail.
The 1980’s investments gave us the military strength that won the Cold War and contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union. Could we have done it cheaper? Who knows? Did the Navy benefit from these budget deliberations? Absolutely. Did the taxpayers get good value? Yes, we are a free, prosperous nation with no major threat to our security, although we face uncertainty and instability worldwide. A strong, tough Navy is a real insurance policy in such times.
Sailors of all ranks and ratings—and their families—are exceptional citizens and deserve better than they have gotten from their revisionist critics. During World War II, radio commentator Walter Winchell closed every program with, "God bless America and all our ships at sea.” Winchell had it right.
Admiral Hogan is the former head of the Navy’s Office of Legislative Affairs.