Recent efforts to "balance" current and future readiness in naval aviation have cut too far into current capabilities. Operational and flight-training budget reductions and aircraft retirements—including the S-3 Viking, whose aerial refueling missions must be assumed by the Super Hornet—could leave air wings unprepared and ill equipped for action against enemies stronger than those they recently have faced.
Naval aviation recently has suffered radical cutbacks. Operational and flight-training budgets have been reduced drastically, and workhorse aircraft have been sent to early retirements. Justified by the idea that "better business practices" and the money saved by such actions eventually will pay dividends in the form of future readiness, these decisions have undermined readiness during a dangerous time of global upheaval.
Among the chief proponents of the cutbacks, Vice Admiral M. D. Malone, recently retired Commander, Naval Air Force (CNAF); Vice Admiral J. M. Zortman, currently CNAF; and Vice Admiral C. W. Moore, recently retired Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Fleet Readiness and Logistics, all claim "naval aviation must balance current and future readiness."1 But rather than strike a productive balance, their decisions have eroded tactical training and readiness while transferring missions to aircraft incapable of performing them at the same level as the platforms being sidelined. The future readiness promised is at least a decade away, and it will be dearly bought if naval forces are unprepared for the many conflicts possible in the interim.
Many recent changes are meant to reflect the Navy's new commitment to better business practices, but they seem to have been made without regard for the Navy's "business," which is to train for and, when necessary, wage war. Reducing spending does not by itself create efficiency, and the bulk of the better-business ideas recently implemented simply reduce spending from one pot of money while costing the Navy as a whole more.
Many naval air stations, for example, refuel aircraft with engines running at centralized "hot pumps." This saves money for the bases, which otherwise would have to purchase and maintain fuel trucks. However, increased fuel usage and engine wear cost the units stationed there more than the bases save.2
This misplaced frugality is typified by programs such as the Naval Aviation Readiness Integrated Improvement Program (NAVRIIP), Aviation Financial Analysis Tool, and AIRSpeed. In a series of articles published in professional journals, Admiral Malone hailed these programs as panaceas but provided few details about what they actually do.3 The thrust of each is to reduce spending without a corresponding increase in efficiency. The result is to deprive squadrons of required funding.
Training and Maintenance Shortfalls
As an example, the AIRSpeed program, it is claimed, "will balance and align maintenance and supply activities to end-user demand."4 While Admiral Malone does not detail the program, his references to "reduced [parts] inventories" suggest cutbacks for their own sake.
Between the world wars, the Navy was plagued by similar cutbacks, as its fiscal woes provoked well-meant but shortsighted attempts to save money. In that hollow interwar fleet, "[s]o pervasive was the passion for economy . . . that 'in one ship a young officer suggested that the running lights be turned off at night, thus risking collision to save an amount of fuel so small the engineers could not even measure it.'"5 The young officer's enthusiasm parallels that exhibited at a recent AIRSpeed conference, where one commanding officer was chastised for ordering wheel chocks. One can only assume that Admiral Zortman, who chaired the conference, would prefer to pay the repair bill for a jet, which for lack of chocks had been left to roll about the flight line. AIRSpeed's efforts to "balance . . . supply activities to end-user demand" seem focused on stifling end-user demand.
The similar NAVRIIP is designed to "create fundamental process changes in the way the Navy provides . . . training to Stateside Naval Aviation commands between deployments."6 Among the first measures to support that program was Admiral Malone's 2002 revision of the training and readiness (T&R) matrix for the naval air force, which replaced a nearly identical instruction dated to 1999. The main difference between the two is that the new version reduced flight hour goals by approximately 13%.7 When that instruction debuted, fuel and spare parts had been inadequately funded for so long that squadrons' inability to meet their readiness goals approached crisis proportions. The all-too-familiar solution was to lower goals to make them easier to meet.
Recognizing that flight simulators are cheaper to procure and operate than are aircraft, the next proposal was to substitute simulator training for actual flight time. Admiral Moore announced, "We're going to fly more in the simulators and fly less in the aircraft. We'll deliver more combat readiness, and we'll have spent less money."8 For this to have any chance of success would require a quantum leap in simulator technology, so Admiral Moore let contracts to develop new simulators such as the Distributed Mission Trainer (DMT). This F/A-18 simulator, under development by L3/Link Simulations, also is intended to replace earlier systems with more limited capabilities.
In and of itself, the decision to replace earlier simulators makes fiscal sense. Designed decades ago and using obsolete computer technology, older systems, like the older aircraft they support, are beginning to suffer from age and a lack of spare parts. But the thought of eliminating expensive flight training proved a powerful stimulus to the Navy's head bean-counter. When its contract specified an abnormally short development time, the DMT fell victim to the Navy's impatience to acquire it. Results from the initial prototype inspection were disturbing: the officer in charge reported, four months before its scheduled delivery, that "the DMT suite evaluated was an immature system with several hundred Discrepancy Reports still outstanding" and detailed 218 new problems unearthed during the four-day inspection.9
To be fair, most of the shortcomings probably will be rectified. Even so, simulators are no substitute for flight training. Detailed graphics and accurately replicated aircraft malfunctions allow simulators to provide extremely realistic foul-weather flight training. But the slow, stable flight characteristics of an aircraft on an instrument approach to landing are a far cry from those of an agile strike fighter. The dynamic maneuvering demanded by the sort of training Admiral Moore wishes to relegate to the simulator is still far beyond the capability of the state of the art to simulate. Even were it not, the DMT would not fulfill official expectations. Its development has focused primarily on providing very high-resolution graphics, with accurate modeling of flight characteristics and cockpit functions a distant second priority; indeed, most of the discrepancies noted during its initial inspection were in the system's inability to replicate the F/A-18's actual behavior. Though, with all problems solved, the DMT could be a valuable tool for learning procedures, weapons, or tactics, no amount of simulator training will equal even one real-life dogfight or carrier landing.
The Navy, however, having put all its eggs in the simulator basket, has slashed flight training as part of the Fleet Response Program (FRP). Intended to ensure better preparedness for the short-notice deployments envisioned in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, FRP is, in reality, another "do more with less" policy:
- FRP reduces the number of aircraft per strike fighter squadron from 12 to 10.10
- FRP lengthens the time required for a complete cruise turnaround cycle from 24 to 27 months.
Though the lengthened turnaround supposedly provides more nondeployed time during which squadrons are fully prepared for short-notice war cruises, the readiness funded during those "surge" periods is abysmal:
- Squadrons can expect only enough parts to maintain seven or fewer jets any time they are not on cruise.
- Squadrons can expect five jets or fewer for eight months per turnaround.
- Following return from deployment, squadrons are expected to sustain combat readiness for five months while receiving funding for only 60% of required maintenance.11
As appalling as the lack of aircraft in which to train is FRP's neglect of flight time:
- Aircrews are never funded for more than 80% of T&R goals, even on cruise. For a Hornet pilot, that equates to only 15 sorties and 22 hours per month, at a time when he should be ready for war. A Super Hornet pilot receives the same allotment, but because some of that flight time must be dedicated to flying tanker missions, he receives proportionally less tactical practice.
- During turnaround, squadrons are funded for 50% or less for eight months.12
Prior to FRP, the Navy demonstrated surge capability when it rapidly deployed five carriers in response to the al Qaeda attacks. The disingenuous argument made by naval aviation's senior leadership is that FRP, which funds less training than prior to 11 September, somehow makes the Navy more surge capable.
Were the United States enjoying a Pax Americana, such penurious measures might make sense. Unfortunately, this is not a time of uncontested peace, and the Navy must maintain its ability to fight terrorist acts while remaining prepared for more traditional confrontations.
Aircraft Retirements
Well-meaning journalists have labeled operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as "wars." Without minimizing the dangers faced by servicemen in those theaters, this is overstating the case. Neither enemy was prepared to fight a conventional battle against mobile, well-equipped, networked forces, and in neither theater was ultimate military victory ever in doubt. To label as a war the toppling of the Ba'ath regime merely encourages false expectations, among them that naval aviation might profitably retire, without replacement, the aircraft that won that "war."
Justification for such a move depended partly on the accuracy of GPS-guided aerial bombs, first widely employed in Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Admiral Malone announced FRP's reduction of the F/A-18 fleet by two aircraft per squadron, confident that, in future conflicts, each strike fighter would be able to destroy four targets with four bombs. Rather than launching four-plane divisions armed with "dumb bombs" to destroy each target (four sorties per target) an air wing was to plan for multiple targets per sortie. The predicted 16-fold increase in targeting capacity was trumpeted by bean-counters as a revolutionary solution to the escalating costs of war, and the phrase "targets per sortie" quickly became a mantra in support of mothballing aircraft.
Unfortunately, the targets-per-sortie rationale is flawed:
- Even a 2,000-pound bomb (the largest available to carrier-based aircraft) can cause only limited damage. The idea of destroying a large building or hardened bunker with one conventional bomb and 100% reliability in wartime is laughable. Even in benign environments, strike planners expect only 70% effectiveness. In Afghanistan, where 93% of the ordnance employed was precision-guided, only 84% of all sorties (and fewer bombs) hit their targets.13 If the enemy had the ability to jam GPS signals, the weapons' reliability would be reduced significantly.
- The Hornet's ability to carry four 2,000-pound bombs is dependent on a short-range strike that does not require external fuel tanks to be carried on wing pylons. Virtually all current areas of concern require long-range drop tanks, however, and the Hornet's maximum bomb load is reduced accordingly. The two extra wing pylons on the Super Hornet, widely touted as improvements over the "baby" Hornet, will be occupied by fuel tanks to support other aircraft on all but the shortest strikes.
- During any major operation, the ability to sustain a high combat tempo is directly related to the ability of an air wing to keep jets airborne. Reducing complements by 16% may not appreciably affect the ability to conduct occasional low-intensity strikes, but it severely diminishes the number of sorties sustainable in wartime.
- Not even during OIF did naval air power achieve the effectiveness required by Admiral Malone's plan. Naval tactical aircraft flew 5,000 sorties but dropped only 5,300 bombs, an average of 1.06 bombs (to say nothing of targets) per sortie.14 GPS-guided weapons require intelligence services to deliver incredibly accurate target locations; if the coordinates provided do not match the location of the intended target precisely, the bomb will very accurately guide itself to a useless impact point. Deriving accurate coordinates takes time, and while the first few strikes might use preplanned information for fixed targets to advantage, the fast pace of maneuver warfare renders successful later GPS-guided strikes the exception rather than the rule.
The targets-per-sortie metric is a noble goal. However, it has not yet been shown to be feasible, let alone practical, in even the most permissive combat operations. To retire "unneeded" aircraft is recklessly premature, deprives the fleet of much-needed combat capability, and forces remaining aircraft to shoulder an unnecessary burden.
Other aircraft have been put to pasture for different reasons but with similar results. For example, the workhorse CH-46 Sea Knight and CH-53E Super Stallion cargo helicopters are slated for retirement. With maximum payloads of 9,500 and 36,000 pounds, respectively, neither will actually be "replaced" by its successor, the MH-60S Seahawk, with its payload of only 6,000 pounds.15 The Seahawk might be able to transfer similar quantities of bulk supplies by making more trips, but it cannot handle large loads such as jet engines or ships' machinery.
The S-3 Viking had been an air wing's primary aerial refueling tanker since the early 1990s. Despite the fact that the S-3 fleet remains serviceable and does not suffer from the fatigue problems common to older aircraft, Admiral Malone decided to send it into early retirement. The results were felt throughout the air wing:
- Short-range SH-60F squadrons were forced to pick up the long-range antisubmarine mission.
- The surface surveillance mission—more important in light of the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole (DDG-67) and increasingly hostile actions by dhows in the Persian Gulf—has been relegated to a motley assortment of Hornets and helicopters. The S-3 had a longer loiter time than either version of the F/A-18 and could search a larger area than the SH-60.
- The Super Hornet must assume the aerial-refueling mission. The Super Hornet suffers from a prodigious fuel burn rate, and though it is able to stagger aloft with 28,000 pounds of fuel on board, it is able, under favorable circumstances, to offload only some 12,000 pounds.16 Although this "give" is roughly twice that of the S-3, the Super Hornet pays for this by its inability (because of catapult restrictions) to carry any ordnance when so configured. When configured to both carry ordnance and give fuel, it cannot match the S-3.17 The Navy has, in effect, replaced an $11 million tanker with one that costs $71 million.
Alternatives
Senior leaders argue that, because of the declining purchasing power of defense budgets, these cutbacks are unavoidable. There must be better places to save money in a Navy that spends 70% of its budget on support and administrative functions. Ninety percent of the captains on active duty serve on staffs. Four years after Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Vern Clark designated Commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, head of all naval air forces and made Commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, his deputy, the two still maintain separate headquarters and staffs. Surely the Navy can tighten its belt somewhere other than on the front lines.
By the same token, the Navy has no business demanding its operational units pay for a spendthrift procurement process. Recent contracts seem rife with special interests that appear to add nothing but expense to the end product. Within the aviation community, examples abound.
- The T-45 jet trainer, at $32 million apiece, costs nearly as much as the F/A-18C whose pilots it trains.18
- The $6.7-million T-6 primary trainer is so loaded with unnecessary features (such as ejection seats and a 270-knot cruise speed) that it is unsuitable for primary training. The first plane flown by a student naval aviator is now a Cessna, rented at Navy expense.19 These aircraft, which retail for less than $200,000, would have been a wiser investment; 56% of all student pilots will fly helicopters less than half as fast as the T-6.
- Twenty years ago, the Navy began experimenting with tilt-rotor aircraft to replace aging helicopters. This year it will purchase eight OV-22s for nearly $130 million apiece.20 The Osprey, which has been flying for more than ten years, has yet to replace a single fleet aircraft.
The Navy as a whole is no better:
- Rather than maintain its own computer network, the Navy rents 310,000 personal computers from a contractor. Monthly average costs of $228 per unit mean it would be cheaper for the Navy to buy an equal number of computers from Circuit City each year. Under a seven-year contract worth approximately $2 billion per year to the contractor, the Navy pays more than $848 million annually just for computer rental.21
Recommendations
Naval aviation is, admittedly, in a tough position. Its most egregious expenses are protected by contracts that no admiral has the authority to terminate. Cancellation of the Army's Comanche helicopter, however, proves that nothing is impossible.
Existing T-45 and T-34 trainers can cover the training mission, and the MH-60S can serve as an interim helicopter, until all three aircraft are replaced by the cheapest, simplest aircraft that can be designed to do their jobs. Some would argue that new design contracts only would introduce further political pork while delaying the solutions to pressing problems. But business as usual clearly is bankrupting the fleet. As Admirals Malone, Zortman, and Moore point out, future readiness will never improve without drastic changes in the way the Navy spends money; the Navy should ask those gentlemen to set their budget-cutting sights on, for example, new contracts, instead of on forward-deployed units.
If, as Admiral Clark has directed, the Navy truly wishes to "improve [its] productivity and reduce [its] overhead costs," a new approach to budget management is in order.22 At the end of each fiscal year, commands throughout the Navy routinely splurge to spend excess money in certain accounts, despite being critically short of funds in other areas. The excess money, allocated at the congressional or CNO level to certain accounts, must be spent only on those programs, and it must be spent, lest the allottee lose funding in future budgets. The solution again requires the Navy to solicit congressional action: would it not make more sense to request a contingency budget line, unfunded at the beginning of each fiscal year, through which surpluses from overfunded programs could be channeled to alleviate shortfalls in others?
In contrast, the tanker problem is easily solved at the operational level. The S-3 is going but not yet gone, and Sea Control Squadron 41 (VS-41), the Fleet Replacement Squadron, is still in commission and training aircrews. More than 100 aircraft remain serviceable, which is more than enough to equip VS-41 as a single squadron with eight home-guard aircraft and a four-plane detachment for each air wing. Such an arrangement is nothing novel; C-2 cargo aircraft and helicopters operating from surface combatants use the same organization. Though Super Hornets probably still would have to refuel other aircraft, their requirement would be greatly reduced. With the support mission assigned to support aircraft, more strike fighters would be available to project offensive power.
The Navy's senior leaders proudly assert that "naval aviation allows us to take credible combat power across the globe without a permission slip."23 This may once have been true, but the all-Hornet air wing is sorely taxed to take its combat power further than 150 miles from the nearest blue water. Except for small strikes, this capability, once available to a carrier air wing with organic, dedicated tankers, now exists only when the Navy has Air Force tanker support, which requires permission from a host country. Even if organic tankers return to service, "credible combat power" comes only from a properly equipped, properly trained air wing—one equipped with warplanes, not simulators; one manned by pilots experienced in actual, not simulated, flight. Efforts to "balance current and future readiness" have been a bridge too far. Unless the balance is tilted back toward current readiness, the tactical expertise required to exploit future combatant aircraft will wither away before those aircraft enter fleet service. Most important, the United States will be caught in a very tenuous position if its Navy is unprepared and ill equipped for action against enemies stronger than those it has faced in the past three years.
Lieutenant Stone is an F/A-18 pilot on the staff of Carrier Air Wing 11. Embarked aboard the USS Nimitz (CVN-68), Air Wing 11 is, because of the retirement of the S-3 and "excess" Hornets, the smallest air wing in the U.S. Navy.
1. VAdm. M. D. Malone, VAdm. J. M. Zortman, and Capt. S. J. Paparo, USN, "Naval Aviation Must Balance Current and Future Readiness," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, July 2004, p. 66. back to article
2. NAS Lemoore, CA, for example, is home to more than 250 F/A-18 strike fighters. According to a recent study, $2.75 million could buy ten new fuel trucks and save $3.88 million in engine and fuel costs during fiscal year 2005 alone. No commander (such as the base commanding officer or Commander, Naval Installations) who possesses the legal authority to buy the trucks would realize any benefit to his bottom line by so doing. In contrast, operating units such as CNAF would be happy to buy trucks to save money and manpower, but they are prohibited from spending money on infrastructure. CNAF's only option for saving fuel money is simply to spend less of it, which dictates less flying and less training. For details of the costs of hot-refueling, see, e.g., Chris Hicks, Christopher Santos, Rian Cook, and Bret Lassen, "Naval Postgraduate School EMBA Project Report: NAS Lemoore Aviation Fuel Cost-Benefit Analysis." back to article
3. See, e.g., Malone et al., "Naval Aviation Must Balance Current and Future Readiness," or VAdm. M. D. Malone, USN, "From Readiness at Any Cost to Cost-Wise Readiness," The Hook: Journal of Carrier Aviation (Summer 2004), pp. 5-6. back to article
4. Malone, "From Readiness at Any Cost to Cost-Wise Readiness," p. 6. back to article
5. N. Miller, The U.S. Navy: A History (New York, William Morrow, 1990), p. 196. back to article
6. Malone, "From Readiness at Any Cost to Cost-Wise Readiness," pp. 5-6. back to article
7. Commander, Naval Air Force, Instruction 3500.00, Enclosure 5, "VF/VFA Training Matrix." back to article
8. David Brown and William H. McMichael, "Less Time in the Sky: Some Aviators See Trouble with More Time in Simulators," Navy Times, 8 March 2004, p. 8. back to article
9. Report of the senior officer of the Navy Preliminary Evaluation team for the DMT. back to article
10. These figures come directly from the "VFA Standard" promulgated by the NAVRIIP officer on the staff of Commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. The exception to the ten-jet standard applies to Super Hornet squadrons providing air-to-air refueling for an air wing that has lost its dedicated S-3 tankers. Depending on the air wing, this provides an additional two to four aircraft to replace eight S-3s. back to article
11. "VFA Standard." back to article
12. "VFA Standard." back to article
13. VAdm. J. B. Nathman, USN, "Naval Aviation on Top in Afghanistan," The Hook: Journal of Carrier Aviation (Spring 2002), p. 8. back to article
14. Adm. T. J. Keating, USN, "Naval Aviation Key to Iraqi Freedom Victory," The Hook: Journal of Carrier Aviation (Winter 2003), p. 4. back to article
15. http://jhms.janes.com. back to article
16. Computerized airflow models suggested that, with one particular combination of bombs loaded a certain way, one bomb might impact the aircraft during release. If the bomb pylons were canted nose-outward by 4°, however, the possibility disappeared. Subsequent flight tests showed the computer model to be wrong, but straightening the pylons was deemed too expensive, so the Super Hornet now wastes much of its power overcoming the excess drag created by the canted pylons. back to article
17. To remain within weight limits for a catapult launch, a Super Hornet may carry five external tanks and no ordnance and give away up to 12,000 pounds of fuel. To carry ordnance, it sacrifices two wings tanks and the 6,600 pounds of fuel therein. back to article
18. http://navweb.secnav.navy.mil/pubbud/05pres/db_u.htm. back to article
19. Vivienne Heines, "Navy Initiates Civilian Flight Training Program," The Hook: Journal of Carrier Aviation (Spring 2002), p. 64. back to article
20. http://navweb.secnav.navy.mil/pubbud/05pres/db_u.htm. back to article
21. https://nmci.spawar.navy.mil/Conformed%20Contract%20P00074.pdf.This is the Navy's contract for the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, which originally authorized only 160,000 computers. A later contract modification obligated the Navy to buy 150,000 more. See the EDS 2002 annual report to shareholders at www.eds.com/02annual/fin_nav03.shtml. back to article
22. http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/cno/clark-guidance2004.html. back to article
23. Malone, "From Readiness at Any Cost to Cost-Wise Readiness," p. 5. back to article