If they insist on pushing strategic strike in spite of its demonstrated marginal return, the means employed should, at the very least, incur minimum risk at least cost. It is the most expensive of all aviation missions, and downed aircraft provide enemies with valuable political hostages.
Mission and cost analyses support two conclusions:
► Air crews are least essential for attacking prominent, fixed structures.
► The life-cycle cost for unmanned delivery is less that that required to maintain a manned-delivery capability.
Strategic strike is a dying mission for piloted aircraft. Nevertheless, undaunted by history and analyses, Defense Department leaders and the Congress encourage huge manned-aircraft investments in this dry hole.
Unfortunately, strategic strike has become the mission used to justify Navy carriers—although their real military value is as forward fighter bases to establish air superiority over an objective area. Absent capable land-based friendly air forces, carrier aviation is an essential element for joint littoral military operations. Carriers also provide bases from which to fly direct air support for ground forces, assuming the Navy exploits that mission.
Justifiable levels of strategic strike capability can be provided by ships and submarines equipped with cruise-missile derivatives, Navy tactical missile systems, and futuristic advanced ballistic attack missiles. Combining these capabilities in a strike-dedicated ship is not difficult. The challenge is to provide fire support for troops engaged ashore—a challenge that also applies to carrier pilots. They should consider becoming an essential part of the maneuver warfare combined arms team.
The Arsenal Ship Concept of Operations and Ship Capabilities documents impart the impression that fire support for ground combat—which demands persistent fire on enemy positions—was included as an afterthought. Weapons for this mission must be capable of razing buildings, suppressing movement of enemy forces, excavating deeply dug-in troops, and illuminating battle areas for extended periods. They must be cheap—to afford the practice required to build confidence with the primary customers: Marine and Army infantry. The delivery system must demonstrate high reliability and repeatable impact patterns with near-zero probability for wild shots. Considering that the Arsenal Ship may be positioned 50-100 miles offshore for survival, the weapons with the range to destroy the desired targets seem to lack the characteristics often cited by ground-combat veterans.
Clearly, there is still a need for brown-water, floating artillery to perform the function of the World War II LSMRs—rocket and gun ships that last saw service in Vietnam. A proposed fire-support craft would be smaller and more agile; shallow draft would permit working close to shore; armor and a low silhouette would minimize its vulnerability to enemy fire. It would be protected by tactical aviation—and in turn would suppress enemy air defenses. Its weapons would include a 155-mm or 8-inch gun and appropriate rockets such as the multiple launch rocket system. Perhaps the Arsenal Ship could serve as the host for a squadron of these brown water artillery craft (BWAC) shuttling back and forth to the operating area. Helicopter or V-22 resupply could extend cycle time to support a prolonged fight.
So much for the eventual solution. What about the period between now and the time the Navy has two or three proven and completely supportable Arsenal Ship sets deployed—optimistically by 2007? Based on current plans, the combat forces of the United States and possible coalitions must endure today’s fire-support shortfall, hoping that any significant military challenge will be avoided for the next decade. This is not the first time our forces have been so exposed because of fiscal or political expediency—and not without a severe penalty in lives.
During the Vietnam War, pilots repeatedly attacked the seemingly invulnerable Than Hoa bridge, a target that should have been taken out with major- caliber naval gunfire. The aviators did it—but we lost more than 60 aircraft and many pilots in the process. Considering that 80% of the targets attacked by our air forces in North Vietnam lay within range of major-caliber naval gunfire—which could have been made available but was not—one can only speculate about the number of aircraft and lives that could have been saved had such fire been used to suppress air defenses during the air campaigns.
The classic example occurred during the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive, a major part of which was conducted within a 25-mile wide strip of coastline in April 1972. Here was a successful attack, mounted during poor weather, that never could have succeeded had the U.S. deployed its available heavy naval gunfire assets. Then, as now, sitting dockside in varying states of preservation were the 16-inch gun equipped Iowa (BB-61)-class battleships—the most potent and survivable all-weather fire-support systems ever produced. As they did during Desert Storm, the battleships could cover both the strategic strike and fire support mission areas until futuristic systems arrive.
We are left to ponder a number of questions:
- Is there a defendable logic for enduring a severe fire support gap until a new system can be operationally ready?
- Do not the Navy’s littoral warfare and . . Forward, From the Sea” themes ring hollow to foes aware of its impotent fire support capability?
- Is there any evidence that today’s carrier-based tactical aviation can fill the fire-support gap—in bad weather?
- Is the fire support shortfall an invitation for international military-political mischief in the littorals?
- Does it not make sense to reactivate two Iowas, one manned with a regular crew, composed of Navy, Marine, and possibly Army personnel and another perhaps with reservists?
- While pouring billions of dollars into the development of new strategic strike aircraft and ships, can Defense Department leadership and Congress legitimately claim we cannot afford the relatively modest cost to maintain a credible fire-support capability until the replacement system is on line?
- Should families of soldiers and Marines who may have to fight in the littorals be forced to accept a decade of risk that our troops will not need fire support in its traditional form?
- What is a reasonable price to pay for risk reduction?
Could it be that such questions have become less relevant in our new procurement-driven Defense community?
Mr. Myers is the President of Aerocounsel. He flew ground-support mission with the Army Air Forces in World War II and the Navy in Korea.