Defending our interests this century will mean dealing with unresolved wars, the proliferation of cruise missile, ballistic missile, and submarine threats, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, cyberwarfare, rising nationalism, and failing states. We will be required to cover vast distances, operate in areas where U.S. access is limited, and then project our defense accurately and precisely.
The nation has relied on the naval service and its forward strategy to do this for centuries. I suspect it will be no different in the decades ahead.
That leads us to two questions: Are we ready to do this? Will we be ready in the future? The answers lie in an examination of the two essential elements of readiness: the capability we have now and what we will build for the future, and the capacity to do all we will be asked to do.
I am comfortable with our capability—today and for the immediate future. My crystal ball isn't absolutely clear on the programmatic path that lies ahead; much of that will come as a result of the strategy the new administration implements. The Navy has a legacy of innovation, adaptability, and capability on which to build. For example, the cooperative engagement concept will enable theater missile defense and could enable more robust national missile defense from the sea. Tomahawk will lead us to unmanned combat aerial vehicles. Submarines already are demonstrating the capability to employ unmanned undersea vehicles. And the list goes on.
Capacity is another story. Frankly, we are less ready than we need to be in terms of capacity—especially in terms of the depth and range we need to do our job. New York Yankees' Manager Joe Torre would put it this way: "We have a really short bench." Let me give you four examples of where we are lacking in capacity.
Sustainability: The ordnance inventory is too low. We have four to five times the strike aircraft capable of delivering precision-guided munitions (PGMs) than we had ten years ago, but we still have inadequate PGM stocks to arm them. Same thing with Tomahawks. We are trading the missiles themselves from battle group to battle group. There are other cross-decking issues as well. We are moving aviation support electronics benches from carrier to carrier, for example, just so we can have the equipment to test and fix our aircraft. There are too few LANTIRN pods, jammer pods, and LAMPS FLIR systems for pilots to train with during the interdeployment training cycle because we have most of them forward.
We have a similar situation with spare parts, operating funds, and maintenance accounts. We are keeping the readiness forward, but it's a painful cycle for those not deployed. Last year, we traded steaming days in the fourth quarter to fund spare parts and equipment for our surface forces. We've gone too far in trimming on-board allowances of spare parts.
Cannibalization and cross-decking equipment and ordnance double the work for our sailors, tax our non-deployed accounts, and bring into question our ability to surge the force at home for larger conflict. We need to attack these problems.
So there is a sustainability issue, but not because we cannot move or maintain equipment, weapons, and spares forward—we just do not have all that is needed from an end-to-end analysis to support our standing warfighting commitments.
Base Support: Obviously, we do not need any more bases, and we certainly are not looking for additional overhead. What we do need are hangars that don't leak and piers that allow sailors to get their jobs done. Our connectivity at the pier should be as good as it is at sea, and hooking up shore power in the rain should not be a breathtaking evolution. This is quality of service.
Every year we move money out of the real property maintenance account to pay for the basics—utilities, base operating support contracts, etc. The military construction account also has been a recent bill payer. This year, the force protection requirements I have laid on our regional commanders will place even more pressure on these accounts.
We can help ourselves a lot by learning to manage these outsourced contracts better and by accepting nothing less than a high-quality product in support of our people. But ultimately, we have to invest in the facilities that support our current and future force.
Training: There is insufficient ordnance to train with prior to deployment. Strike pilots are not dropping enough PGMs during the training cycle. Ships are husbanding 5-inch and small arms ammunition. An armed helicopter squadron of 42 pilots may shoot as few as three Hellfire missiles—total—in a year. There are not enough Vandal target presentations for our air defense ships to hone their skills against supersonic cruise missiles.
Suburban sprawl, commercial development, noise abatement, and environmental stewardship at or near our bases threaten our capacity to train as well. We need to recognize as a country that our ability to defend the nation is directly dependent on our opportunity to train. And our readiness and ability to train are directly dependent on our access to training and testing ranges.
Everyone has heard about Vieques. A complaint recently was filed by an activist group to stop us from using Farallon de Medinillas in the Marianas as a target bombing range. This is the only U.S.-controlled bombing range in the Western Pacific—and there is a readiness impact if our forward-deployed forces cannot use it. The answer? We are developing a comprehensive "sustainable readiness" approach to work with federal agencies and communities to reach mutually acceptable solutions that both protect the environment and allow us to train. California has passed legislation that recognizes this fundamental requirement—a very positive step.
Ships and Sensors: It takes numbers to accomplish what our strategy demands. We are really short from a national perspective in ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), and the Navy can help. It requires renewing our maritime patrol capability. The P-3, our venerable antisubmarine warfare (ASW) platform, and now, with AIP (antisurface surface warfare improvement program), an incredibly capable ISR system, is really a Lockheed Electra—a very old aircraft. Our future must include planning and funding for a follow-on maritime patrol aircraft with a roll-on/roll-off ASW and reconnaissance capability to "raise the density" of available and capable ISR aircraft for the future.
For nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), we are not meeting the theater commanders' stated requirements for ISR and operating plan force levels. SSNs' average deployed operations tempo is more than 75%—well in excess of the CNO's stated goal. Our investment rate for the future will not sustain the force structure needed to meet our strategy. The average age of our airplanes (18 years) surpassed the average age of our ships this year. But on the surface front, we are building ships at a rate of only six and a half per year—a path that will take us to a 225-ship Navy.
We will net ships and sensors. We will have more capability in our battle groups. But that will not change the fact that the range of concerns we will be asked to deal with and the multitude of places we will need to be, to protect our interests—under any plausible strategy—cannot be supported with a decreasing force structure.
We are working to address our capacity shortfall. The CNO has made future and current readiness the backbone on which we will lead the Navy. We already are taking steps to correct our capacity problem:
- Fully stating the requirement for operations, maintenance, and lifecycle costs.
- Balancing turn-around ratios between the fleet commanders.
- Home porting a squadron of submarines in Guam.
- Implementing an end-to-end analysis of our spare parts support.
- Implementing a comprehensive strategy to guarantee our training range and airspace capacity in the future.
That's our aim—but we are not there yet.
Admiral Fargo is Commander in Chief U.S. Pacific Fleet. This commentary was excerpted and adapted from his 24 January address at West 2001, the annual AFCEA-Naval Institute cosponsored symposium and exposition in San Diego.