Virginia Beach, Va.—An array of daunting global security challenges, the steep costs of meeting such challenges, and the morphing role of the American Sailor were topics of lively debate at the 2006 Joint Warfare Atlantic Conference and Exposition October 4 and 5.
Hundreds of attendees gathered at the futuristic-looking Virginia Beach Convention Center for the annual conference, presented by the U.S. Naval Institute. The event featured panelists and keynote speakers from top levels of the U.S. Navy and the federal government as well as a host of renowned scholars.
The conference's official title concisely encapsulated its themes: "Tomorrow's Fleet: Projecting Power Across the Spectrum of Conflict." With his opening keynote address, Vice Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff, USN, Deputy Commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, Norfolk, ably set the stage for the discussions to come by describing the complex military balancing act necessary between needs and costs, between threat-challenges and available resources.
"Why Does This Keep Me up at Night?"
That the problems we face are of a multi-front nature was vividly illustrated in the conference's opening panel session, "China's Fleet Modernization, GWOT, and the QDR: Are We Prepared to Defend Against Emerging Challenges?" The session explored the difficulties in dealing with an economically/militarily ascendant China while simultaneously waging a worldwide unconventional war against terrorism.
Moderator Norman Polmar, prolific author and renowned expert on naval affairs, pointed out the presence of a sort of cognitive dissonance, an intriguing paradox that defines the China-U.S. relationship: cooperative partners with increasingly intertwined economies on one side, and cagey, facing-off world powers, with constant drumbeating about the "China threat" on the other side.
"We take the issue of China very seriously," said Lyle J. Goldstein, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Strategic Studies in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College. Goldstein announced that the war college has inaugurated a Chinese Maritime Studies Institute, with 10 Mandarin-speaking analysts at its core.
"China is building simultaneously four different classes of submarines," noted Goldstein. "They have an extremely dynamic mine-warfare program...they're now building and fielding an array of indigenous cruise missiles...they're beginning to innovate.... Why does this keep me up at night? Because the Taiwan situation as it stands causes both the U.S. and China to actively plan for war between each other." In any Taiwan-showdown scenario, China would have significant advantages over the United States: the obvious advantage of geography as well as the distinct advantage of focus, what with America's forces stretched thin by the Global War on Terror.
"If I had to characterize the ideal strategy for China," Goldstein said, evoking Theodore Roosevelt's famous foreign-policy mantra, "it would be to speak softly and carry a big stick.... I'm concerned that we are doing precisely the opposite."
But despite the Chinese military buildup and the volatile Taiwan issue, there is cause for hope as well, Goldstein pointed out. The United States and China are increasingly teaming up for bilateral disaster-training exercises and joint security-related efforts, collaborative initiatives that Goldstein said he finds "very encouraging."
And encouragement is the name of the game regarding China, stressed David F. Helvey, Country Director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs/Asian and Pacific Affairs. "U.S. policy toward China is based on this concept," said Helvey, "this notion that we want to encourage China to emerge" as a responsible leader on the international stage.
Helvey described how "there's a military component to our policy." China's top senior officers have been visiting and conferring with top U.S. leaders, getting together for joint training sessions such as a recent search-and-rescue exercise in Pearl Harbor.
While such nascent forays into teamwork are good, any attempt to get a handle on the China situation can't get away from the nagging fact that there's a serious military hardware upgrade going full-force in China, and as a result, for U.S. China-policy analysts, there's "a tremendous amount of uncertainty," said Helvey. His office is tasked with putting together the China reports for Congress, and he highlighted some of the Chinese issues that "give us pause and give us concern.... China's in the midst of a major change, an update, a strengthening of its nuclear deterrent...this in part is why we want to talk to them about their nuclear doctrine.... They're also looking to improve their precision-strike capabilities" and have a significant amount of firepower aimed, predictably, at Taiwan.
In addition to its multi-pronged submarine buildup, China also is investing heavily in both land- and sea-based air defense, and is developing significant cyberspace capabilities as well, observed Helvey. It's all part of a now 15-year-old military transformation, "the fruits of which are starting to be realized." In addition to hardware upgrades, China is concomitantly developing a new overall military doctrine.
In the short term—say, to 2010—there's not much the United States can do in terms of shipbuilding to respond to China's upgrade, said naval analyst Ronald O'Rourke of the Congressional Research Service. O'Rourke, who generated the report for Congress on Chinese naval modernization, said that 2020 to 2030 is a more viable time frame for a U.S. shipbuilding response. (But the overall "executability" of the Navy's shipbuilding aspirations is threatened anyway by a host of budgetary, political, and priority-juggling factors, O'Rourke noted.)
So how does the China issue factor in to the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR)? Thomas G. Mahnken, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning, explained that, along with the QDR's "headline-grabber" (i.e., the Global War on Terror), the QDR also offers guidelines for steering a country that happens to be "at a strategic crossroads," providing a positive influence on such a country and pointing it in a direction beneficial to the country itself and the larger global community. The QDR's "crossroads" list includes India, Russia—and China.
A China at the crossroads, a multi-front war against terror—it all comes together in the QDR, and solutions boil down to that reigning military buzzword of the age: jointness. What's needed, said Mahnken, is "an overall joint-force posture" with ground forces obviously coming into play more on some fronts, while naval and air capabilities come more into play on other fronts.
"There's Plenty of Work Here for All of Us"
This clarion call was echoed in the keynote address delivered by Vice Admiral Ann E. Rondeau, USN, who said, "The Global War on Terror...is not a war just for the Army, or just the Marine Corps, it's a war for us all." While the Navy will never lose its core mission, its role is evolving to meet the needs of the hour. With thousands of Sailors currently engaged on the ground in Iraq, the expansion of the Navy job description is obvious. The Navy remains relevant by rising to the occasion, by being adaptable for a spectrum of contingencies: big wars, small wars, humanitarian missions—as Admiral Rondeau put it, "many challenges, one fleet."
Stressing that "we must redefine sea power for this era," Admiral Rondeau described a current state of "new missions and new approaches.... I would submit that new thinking is required...new ways of deploying assets, new ways of training, new ways of operating."
"Not too long ago the Navy spoke of home games and away games," said Scott Truver, Ph.D., moderator of the second panel session, "Pushing Out U.S. Maritime Borders: How Do the Navy and the Coast Guard Defeat Transnational Threats?" In the old days, the basic idea was that the Navy handled the away games, while the home games were the main bailiwick of the Coast Guard. "The tragedies of 11 September," said Truver, "showed that this architecture was no longer valid nor appropriate."
Truver's panel—which included Rear Admiral David O. Anderson, USN, Deputy Commander of U.S. Second Fleet and incoming Vice Commander of Fleet Forces Command; and Rear Admiral Christopher C. Colvin, USCG, Chief of Staff Atlantic Area—detailed the growing Navy-Coast Guard combined effort to thwart unconventional threats to the homeland.
Cross-pollination of hardware, mission-specific crossover staffing between the two service branches, new training models emerging—the panel consensus was that much has been done, but it is a work in progress. In response to an audience question about whether there's a feeling afoot that the Navy is "encroaching" on the Coast Guard's domain, Admiral Anderson countered that the age of "turf wars" is on the way out ("I think we're getting past that at the highest levels of leadership"), and being replaced, by necessity, by an age of "interdependence."
The bottom line, noted the admiral, is that "there's plenty of work here for all of us."
"Not Necessarily Sea-Centric"
The themes of jointness and expanded roles carried into Day Two of the conference, as Fleet Command Master Chief Jackie DiRosa provided a forward-thinking keynote kickoff. "I think we're about to see some of the most dramatic changes in the years to come," she said. "...We have Sailors serving today in missions that are of a vast variety and are not necessarily sea-centric.... things are changing for Sailors." She gave examples of an emerging operational model: a flexible, cross-trained "new kind of Sailor, a hybrid Sailor" made more combat-versatile.
Master Chief DiRosa extolled the efforts of the thousands of Navy personnel (both regulars and reservists) now serving as ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. "The world and the Navy are changing," she said, "and that change is going to continue to occur at a lightning pace. But with change comes opportunity...."
So how are our Sailors being prepared for the ship-to-shore transition? Essentially, through a condensed version of good old basic training, explained Lieutenant Colonel Joe H. Huggins, USA. Colonel Huggins' presentation was part of "Emerging Naval Missions: What Are the New Forces Needed to Win the Long War?" Moderated by Proceedings Editor-in-Chief Robert Timberg, the panel also included Colonel Vincent A. Coglianese, USMC, Deputy Commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command; and Captain Robert McKenna, USN, Assistant Chief of Staff for Readiness (N7), Navy Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC).
"Most of you are probably wondering, 'What is an Army guy doing speaking at a Navy conference?'" said Colonel Huggins. As commander of Task Force Marshall at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, he is in charge of getting Sailors ready for in-country combat support missions. "We are training the Navy," Colonel Huggins said. "Basically the Navy folks come to us from ships, ports, wherever, they arrive on a Sunday, and two weeks later on Saturday we ship them to Kuwait. Pretty short time frame."
Working with such a remarkably brief turnaround schedule, Colonel Huggins has to carry out a three-part mission. "That mission is, first, to train the Sailors to survive on the battlefield, come back in one piece, and give them the basic combat skills so that if they get into a bad situation, they know what to do and they survive. And so far we've been very successful at that.
"Second is we get them acclimated to the gear they're going to wear and to the theaters they're going to." Third, perhaps the greatest challenge of all, Colonel Huggins said, involves the fact that the Sailors "are going to work in Army units," and he has "to get them used and accustomed to Army culture. It is a different culture than the Navy. If you've seen the two together you know that we do things a little different. Some are 'Hoo-ha,' some are 'Hoo-ya.' But we make it work. We tell them to 'secure the gear,' they go put it away—we meant 'pick it up and take it with you.' But we do figure that out and make it work as we go along."
The Sailors are issued helmets and guns on day one, and in just under a fortnight are off to the war. Colonel Huggins spoke highly of them.
"History's a Good Teacher"
A hundred years ago, the globally dominant navy (the Royal Navy) was facing the dawn of a new century fraught with new challenges and emerging threats. Britannia was fortunate at that time to have a visionary—Sir John "Jackie" Fisher—manning the helm. Can today's globally dominant navy (the U.S. Navy), facing the dawn of a new century fraught with new challenges and emerging threats, benefit from a study of Sir John's way?
"History's a good teacher," said Captain Gerry D. Roncolato, USN, paraphrasing Carl von Clausewitz: "You can't take it into battle with you but you can use it to hone judgment." Captain Roncolato, Special Assistant, Information, Plans, and Strategy Directorate, CNO Staff, and chair of the U.S. Naval Institute Editorial Board, moderated the conference's concluding discussion, "Back to the Future: Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution and the Future of the U.S. Fleet." Historians Nicholas Lambert, Andrew Gordon, and John Tetsuro Sumida, and Captain R. Mark Hagerott, USN, offered up a number of historical parallels at times eerily relevant to the current situation.
When John Fisher assumed the mantle of First Sea Lord in 1904, he was inheriting a Royal Navy entrenched in a way of doing things that was becoming increasingly antiquated. As he saw it, his navy had three salient missions: homeland security, force projection around the globe (imperial security), and protection of the international trade-transportation system. (Is any of this sounding familiar?) Fisher shook up the old delineations and pioneered the use of new technologies for force transformation.
As the U.S. Navy currently is in the midst of defining a new maritime strategy (the first such undertaking since the end of the Cold War), it is instructive to scrutinize the details of the Jackie Fisher era, to glean possible pathways in the parallels for as far as the parallels go—such was the consensus of the panel. As Fisher demonstrated, a superior navalist needs to have an eye to the future as well as a handle on more immediate problems.
Therein lies the challenge to the U.S. Navy of today. "We have competing missions," said Captain Roncolato. There are the immediate needs of supporting the War on Terror, of homeland security, of keeping safe the sea-lanes that are the life's blood of the global commerce system. And there are the threats of the future. What shape will they take?
"Inasmuch as navies take a long time to build," observed Captain Roncolato, "we have to be looking somewhere beyond the wolf nearest the sled and looking to the wolves that are on the ridge...."
Eric Mills, Acquisitions Editor for the Naval Institute Press, is the author of Chesapeake Bay in the Civil War, Chesapeake Rumrunners of the Roaring Twenties, and, forthcoming in 2007, The Spectral Tide: Great True Ghost Stories of the U.S. Navy.