It was a full-ROMO—as in full “range of military operations”—year for the U.S. Navy. As Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Jonathan Greenert noted in his Fiscal Year 2013 Posture Statement:
Our Navy today remains global, operating forward from U.S. bases and international “places” around the world. From these “places” we continue to support and operate with allies and partners who face a range of challenges, from piracy and terrorism to aggressive neighbors and natural disasters. “Places,” from Guantanamo Bay to Singapore, enable us to remain present or have access to the world’s strategic maritime crossroads—areas where shipping lanes, energy resources, information networks and security interests intersect. On any given day over the last year, more than 50,000 sailors were underway or deployed on 145 of the Navy’s 285 ships and submarines, 100 of them deployed overseas. They were joined by more than 125 land-based patrol aircraft and helicopters, 1,000 information dominance personnel, and over 4,000 Naval Expeditionary Combat Command Sailors on the ground and in the littorals, building the ability of partners to protect their people, resources and territory.
The Navy’s posture last year did have some annoying “chinks,” however. Instead of the traditional six-month deployments, a constrained force structure and growing commitments saw deployments run to seven, eight, even ten months. For example, in February 2012 the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan (LHD-5), amphibious transport dock Mesa Verde (LPD-19), and dock landing ship Whidbey Island (LSD-41) returned from a deployment that reached almost 11 months—a record not seen in more than 30 years. According to Navy projections, eight months will now be the norm, something that is sure to negatively affect future personnel retention and material readiness.
“Our ships and their crews are being driven hard,” naval analyst and historian Norman Polmar said. “And it’s only going to get worse as Navy force structure will continue to hover around 285 ships in the near term.” Somehow, amid routine operations and lengthening deployments during the past year, the Navy demonstrated its ability to respond to crisis and conflict, anywhere, anytime.
Friendship in Dire Straits
Within hours of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on 11 March 2011, the U.S. 7th Fleet repositioned ships and aircraft to support the Japanese Self-Defense Force (JSDF) in a massive humanitarian-assistance/disaster-relief (HA/DR) operation. More than 3,600 sailors and Marines served as the lead elements of the joint force, delivering humanitarian aid––500 tons of food and supplies, 2.15 million gallons of water, and 51,000 gallons of fuel—rescuing those in danger and facilitating the evacuation of almost 8,000 American citizens. The United States ultimately deployed 24 ships, 132 Navy and Marine Corps aircraft, and more than 15,000 sailors and Marines to carry out vital Operation Tomodachi, “friendship,” tasks.
Forces from the 7th Fleet systematically mapped and cleared obstructions to navigation in harbors and coastal waterways, provided fuel and supplies to Japanese ships and aircraft, and searched more than 2,000 square miles of ocean to find the remains of victims. Navy ships also served as important staging bases for JSDF personnel and aircraft. A “steel bridge” of Military Sealift Command (MSC) ships––including the USNS Carl Brashear (T-AKE-7), Pecos (T-AO-197), Rappahannock (T-AO-204), Matthew Perry (T-AKE-9), and Bridge (T-AOE-10)—transferred supplies and fuel that kept other ships on station and crews doing their jobs.
Operation Tomodachi also included measures to deal with the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 plant. Among other critical U.S. government support, the Navy provided two barges with half a million gallons of fresh water that was used to cool the power station’s damaged reactors. And the Marine Corps Chemical Biological Incident Response Force provided training to JSDF personnel operating nearby the stricken facility.
Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus on 20 April 2011 thanked more than 1,000 7th Fleet sailors and Marines in Yokosuka for their commitment to disaster-relief operations off the coast of Japan. “To be as flexible as you were,” he underscored, “to go from one mission to suddenly turn and do humanitarian assistance and disaster relief without costs, without changing any equipment, any people, changing any training and going from your normal day-to-day jobs without any hesitation and doing it so well, no other country can do that, and no other service can do that like the people here.”
A few examples provide testimony of the Navy’s contributions at the low––but still vital—end of the full ROMO. The Essex Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) concluded its support to Tomodachi on 7 April, after nearly three weeks of constant HA/DR operations alongside JSDF assets. As the full extent of the human and material tragedy was becoming clear, sailors assigned to the amphibious assault ship USS Essex (LHD-2) were recalled from liberty in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. In less than 24 hours, the Essex got under way and made full speed for Japan, rendezvousing with the USS Germantown (LSD-42) and Harpers Ferry (LSD-49), which had been operating off the coast of Indonesia. Because of concerns over radiation and navigational hazards on the eastern coast of Honshu, Navy commanders directed the three ships to take position on the west coast of Honshu. They arrived off Sakata on 17 March and immediately began flying coastal surveillance flights with embarked helicopters.
When the earthquake and tsunami struck, the USS Tortuga (LSD-46) was in port in Sasebo and immediately embarked landing craft and got under way. The 7th Fleet directed the ship to proceed to Tomakomai, Hokkaido, where the crew embarked 273 Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) troops, 93 vehicles, and other equipment. Directed to reposition to the northeast coast of Honshu on 20 March, the Essex, Germantown, and Harpers Ferry arrived off Hachinohe two days later and immediately began flying supplies ashore. Helicopters with Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 262 also flew aerial surveys of some 200 miles of affected coastline between Miyako and Ofunato.The Essex ARG also included elements from Commander, Amphibious Squadron 11, the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), Beach Master Unit 1 (BMU-1) and Assault Craft Unit 1 (ACU-1), which performed numerous operations in the Hachinohe region.
Equipped with more than 150 amphibious vehicles and 20 aircraft, the 31st MEU managed a near-constant ship-to-shore movement of critical supplies and equipment. ACU-1 and BMU-1 supported the operation with amphibious landing craft that they used to transport vehicles, cargo, supplies, and personnel to affected areas. In all, the Essex ARG launched and recovered 218 aircraft and landing craft, delivering more than 83 tons of supplies ashore.
While not as massive a contribution as made by the Essex ARG, Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 133 provided support for Joint Support Forces Japan in the reconstruction of a Japanese high school that had been damaged significantly. It was was small-scale, to be sure, but it was no less important to those in need.Seven NMCB 133 Seabees operating out of Camp Sendai in the Miyagi Prefecture were part of a 50-person joint-forces team tasked with supporting cleanup and rebuilding efforts at the Ishinomaki Technical High School. After the earthquake and tsunami struck, more than 800 students, school staff, and local residents were isolated on the second floor of the school for two days without running water, the first floor flooded with mud and debris by the rush of the tsunami. This was the first of more than 40 schools identified by the JGSDF and slated for assistance of U.S. forces in cleanup and rebuilding operations.
Clearing obstacles to navigation was critical to expanding relief efforts. The MSC’s USNS Safeguard (T-ARS-50), along with personnel and assets from Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Mobile Unit 5 and Underwater Construction Team (UCT) 2 arrived at Hachinohe on 25 March to assist the Japanese coast guard as recovery efforts continued in the city. Homeported in Sasebo, the Safeguard is the Navy’s only forward-deployed rescue and salvage ship.
On 4 April, Japan’s minister of defense, Toshimi Kitazawa, accompanied U.S. Ambassador John Roos to thank the crew of the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) for its tomodachi, noting, “I have never been more encouraged by and proud of the fact that the United States is our ally.”
Supporting the Arab Spring
The past year witnessed the Navy’s full return to crisis response in March 2011 in the Mediterranean Sea supporting an international effort to protect the popular uprising to overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The Libyan engagement was characterized by two distinct operations—Unified Protector and Odyssey Dawn—the first under UN auspices and the latter the subsequent NATO-led operation.
U.S. naval forces played an outsized role in the operation, both in the initial directly U.S.-led combat phase and follow-on NATO-directed portion of it. U.S. aircraft, submarines, and surface and amphibious ships all played important roles during the campaign—and fully demonstrated the strategic value of forward deployments. While a limited crisis-response combat operation, the Libyan campaign nonetheless brought together a sizable international naval and air coalition, including the presence of the Chinese frigate Xuzhou, which carried out China’s first noncombatant evacuation of that country’s nationals in a combat zone.
A total of 50 ships from 12 nations participated in the Libyan operation—including Italy’s significant deployment of the carrier Giuseppe de Garibaldi and eight additional ships, while Turkey dispatched five ships and a submarine. NATO members and other nations hailed 3,000 ships, conducted 300 boardings, and cleared mines while enforcing a naval blockade of Libyan ports. Meanwhile, alliance aircraft, many of which were on board the three small carriers (USS Kearsarge [LHD-3] the Garibaldi, and the French Charles de Gaulle), totaled 27,000 sorties, including 3,100 reconnaissance flights, 500 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) missions, and 1,800 electronic warfare/suppression of enemy air defense system operations.
The campaign also boasted a number of significant firsts. Those include:
• The first combat engagement in memory without a large-deck aircraft carrier committed (although the USS Enterprise [CVN-65] transited the operational zone)
• The first combat employment of a guided-missile/special-operations submarine, with the USS Florida (SSGN-728) accounting for the bulk of the 221 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired by U.S. forces during the campaign
• The innovative use of the Firescout UAV to detect hidden artillery batteries for destruction by allied aircraft during the siege of Benghazi
• The first combat search-and-rescue mission for the MV-22 tiltrotor aircraft—an Osprey operating from the Kearsarge successfully rescued the pilot of an F-15 that went down in Libyan airspace.
All told there were many improvisations and mission changes among U.S. naval assets in this campaign, as political and operational demands quickly evolved. The Kearsarge was actually on her way home after a seven-month deployment when she quickly diverted to Corfu to bring aboard additional Marine aircraft. The Aegis destroyer USS Stout (DDG-55) was assigned to a ballistic-missile-defense (BMD) mission in the Mediterranean, when her orders changed to support regime-change operations off Libya. As Admiral Samuel Locklear, who led the operation, told the Surface Navy Association in January this year, the lesson here is that “ships and crews must be ready. We must invest in what we have today, to be able to fight and carry on in a complex world.”
Speaking of BMD in the Mediterranean, in November the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey (CG-61) returned to her Norfolk homeport after an eight-month deployment there as the initial platform for the ballistic-missile defense of Europe under President Barack Obama’s European Phased Adaptive Approach. While deployed to the U.S. 6th Fleet, the Monterey’s principal duties included performing an evaluation and assessment of the operating environment for sustained BMD. The ship was also instrumental in creating and validating the SPY Readiness Program, designed to maximize the potential of ships equipped with the A/N SPY-1B air- and missile-defense radar. Her commanding officer, Captain James Kilby, noted: “Such programs as this do not, of course, represent the whole answer to the ongoing problem of combat readiness. But I am certain they provide one of the most critical keys.”
‘Good Job!’
They might have been among the most important words President Obama spoke during the evening of 24 January this year. Working his way through a noisy House of Representatives chamber to deliver his State of the Union Address, the President leaned over to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and––barely audible––thanked him for a “Good job tonight. Good job!”
Unknown to all but a few, an elite joint special-operations team only a few hours earlier had rescued an American and a Dane who had been held by Somali pirates for three months. During his address, the President did allude to the relentless shadow-war to bring terrorists to justice since 9/11, noting “One of my proudest possessions is the flag that the SEAL team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden.” So his compliment to Panetta was a spec-ops culmination of the previous 12 months or so, which saw triumph punctuated by tragedy.
The killing of Osama bin Laden in the early morning of 2 May 2011 was the climax of a risky special-operations mission that had been planned, refined, and rehearsed for almost two years. In June 2009, the President directed then-CIA Director Panetta to expend every effort to capture or kill bin Laden. After intelligence assessed that the al Qaeda leader was probably hiding in an Abbottabad neighborhood about a mile from the Pakistani army military academy, Panetta contacted Vice Admiral William McRaven, a Navy SEAL and commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, to begin operational planning in earnest. That ultimately identified several options, including an airstrike by B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. On 29 March 2011, President Obama decided on a nighttime helicopter raid dubbed Operation Neptune’s Spear.
Shortly after 2300 on 1 May, two MH-60 “Ghost” Hawk stealth helicopters—“Razor One” and “Razor Two”—from the Army’s “Night Stalkers” 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment took off from Jalalabad air base in eastern Afghanistan with 20 SEALs from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, a.k.a. SEAL Team Six. They entered Pakistani air space undetected, and by midnight another four MH-47 Chinook helicopters had departed Jalalabad. Two Chinooks with another 25 SEALs embarked flew to the border with Pakistan to serve as a strategic reserve if anything went wrong. The other two Chinooks continued to the target to serve as a command platform and gunship.
SEALs from “Razor One” fast-roped onto the building where bin Laden was thought to be living, and “Razor Two” SEALs attacked a guesthouse where his brother lived. Just minutes into the operation, the SEAL commander radioed “Geronimo Echo KIA,” indicating bin Laden was dead: one shot to his chest, a second to his head. They took samples of his DNA, and his body was bagged and loaded, along with bags of materials and disks, into one of the CH-47s. As the SEALs departed, Razor Two went into a spin, crashing into the compound. Unhurt, crew members and SEALs removed sensitive equipment and destroyed the aircraft, then scrambled to one of the Chinooks. Back at Jalalabad, bin Laden’s body was transferred to a Marine MV-22 for transport to the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) in the North Arabian Sea. The entire operation took less than an hour.
Although various conspiracy theories had Osama bin Laden’s body somewhere in the United States, officials confirmed he received a Muslim ceremony and was buried at sea, within 24 hours of his death. On 25 February, the Pakistani government destroyed the compound, concerned that it would become a bin Laden shrine or serve as a reminder of the “reach” of U.S. SpecOps teams and the humiliation of a massive Pakistani intelligence failure.
Sadly, on 6 August 2011, tragedy struck the SEALs and joint special-operations community. Thirty International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) service members, a civilian interpreter, and seven Afghan commandos were killed when their CH-47 Chinook crashed during a nighttime raid about 100 miles southwest of Kabul. All of the ISAF service members on board were from the United States and numbered three Air Force air controllers, 22 Navy SEALs from Team Six (none was part of Operation Neptune’s Spear), and a military-dog handler and his sidekick. The incident represented the highest number of U.S. forces killed during a single event in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and was also the single largest loss of life in the history of Team Six. The helicopter went down as it was arriving to reinforce Army Rangers engaged in fierce fighting with Taliban insurgents.
With the past 12 months as prelude, it is little wonder that Act of Valor played to blockbuster audiences in the late winter 2012—if also fueling the ire of retired Army special-operations Lieutenant General James B. Vought, who chastised Admiral McRaven to “get the hell out of the media!”
Making Ends Meet Means
The past year also witnessed the significant strategic enhancement of the nation’s maritime focus and commitment to the Asia-Pacific theater of operations, with the U.S. Navy expected to play an increasing role in this vitally important region—where the natural flexibility and offshore footprint of naval forces are capabilities valued by U.S. combatant commanders. In reality, the service never actually left the Pacific region, despite ten years of land warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Admiral Greenert told Congress in March, fully 60 percent of the 100-odd ships the Navy has deployed on any given day are already based in this region, and those totals will change only marginally in the coming years.
The Obama administration announced its “strategic pivot” to this region in a carefully orchestrated series of policy announcements, documents, and agreements beginning last fall. “The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay,” President Obama told the Australian Parliament last November, as the United States and Australia signed an agreement to initially allow several thousand Marines per year to rotationally deploy to Darwin for training and exercises. As this review went to press, the first 200 Marines had arrived in Darwin. Driving this policy pivot is China’s rapid naval modernization––it tested its first aircraft carrier at sea last August––and the need to reassure U.S. allies and other nations across this vast region that America has no intention of relinquishing its longstanding role as a neutral force for stability and open access to the maritime commons.
In late March, the United States and Australia were deepening this commitment, with discussions focusing on basing long-distance unmanned systems on the Cocos Islands and perhaps permitting U.S. submarines to use Australian ports on the Indian Ocean as forward bases. Other pieces of this regional realigning of U.S. forces include Singapore agreeing to host four littoral combat ships in coming years, and the Philippines’ new willingness to expand military training ties with Navy and Marine units. U.S. Navy ships officially visited Vietnam over the past year, and the annual U.S.-Indian MALABAR naval exercises included carrier operations for the first time. Even more important, the President vowed that ongoing Pentagon budget cuts “will not—I repeat, will not––come at the expense of the Asia Pacific.”
These strategic pronouncements were reinforced in January with the release of the Defense Department’s strategy Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense and the President’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget submission the following month. Together, they underscored the types of naval capabilities to be emphasized in support of the pivot to Asia. The Navy will sustain 11 large-deck aircraft carriers and ten air wings. There will be new investments in a variety of anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities—boosting the cruise-missile capacity of Virginia-class attack submarines—and continued development and production of the short-takeoff/vertical-landing aircraft and carrier-based versions of the F-35 joint strike fighter. The Navy will also make key investments in the full range of electronic-warfare capabilities and bolster its cyberspace force, which are considered important to the nation’s counter-A2/AD weapon portfolio.
Despite the removal of six older Ticonderoga-class cruisers and pushing several additional amphibious ships beyond the current five-year defense-planning horizon, the Navy will still maintain a total battle force of 285 ships. This force will increase to 298 beyond the current five-year plan, with 37 ships under construction in early 2012. “We have a very large backlog,” Navy budget Director Rear Admiral Joseph Malloy told reporters in February. “There is just an extensive amount of work.” The Navy will contract for another nine ships in 2012.
‘A Different Fleet’
“This is a different Fleet,” Under Secretary of the Navy Robert Work told the Surface Navy Association earlier this year. “It is not about 500 or 600 ships. You can’t just count the ships. . . . There is all sorts of capability in this Navy.”
The looming operational challenge the Navy faces, which is directly tied to the Asian pivot, is the growing complexity of A2/AD capabilities proliferating in the arsenals of many nations—most important, China. Beijing has made investing in these capabilities, which include a diverse set of technologies like precision-guided ballistic and cruise missiles, advanced submarines and fighter aircraft, electronic-warfare systems, sea mines, and cyberspace capabilities. Pentagon officials are concerned the development, proliferation and most critically, the networking of these capabilities together into a coherent system could dramatically complicate U.S. military abilities to project power uncontested into important regions of the globe. While China is widely considered to possess the most dominant A2/AD challenge, others like Iran and even North Korea can also present difficult challenges in some narrow A2/AD scenarios.
To offset these trends and to provide new options for combatant commanders, the Navy and Air Force during the last year advanced the AirSea Battle (ASB) concept. The two services are intent on surmounting longstanding institutional rivalries to more closely integrate and align their long-term research and development efforts, training and exercises, and doctrine to keenly focus on defeating A2/AD threats. An ASB program office was established last year, including elements from all four uniformed services, and a host of new initiatives are being assessed and evaluated for their contribution to ASB. As General Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff, and CNO Greenert explained in a 20 February 2012 article published online at The American Interest, which remains the most detailed public discussion of the concept, ASB will be organized around a three-phrase rubric—Networked, Integrated, and Attack-in-Depth.
Technology aside, the real value of the Navy/Air Force teaming will emerge when the two services can develop new tactics, techniques and methods of operating honed during rigorous experimentation and exercises. Importantly, Admiral Greenert told Congress that the Navy and Air Force will expand their ASB integration with the Army in the areas of doctrine, systems, training and exercises. Oddly, the same should be said of the U.S. Marine Corps . . . and maybe even the U.S. Coast Guard in its national defense and military roles.
Déjà Vu?
Routine ops, response to human tragedy and disaster, chasing down pirates, covert and clandestine missions, and crisis-conflict missions––the full ROMO––underscored the fact that Navy had been there, before.
Secretary of the Navy Mabus in March announced that a force structure/force-mix analysis articulating the way ahead for the service would be released in the late fall. The CNO and the Air Force Chief of Staff embraced an ASB plan that would provide “the concepts, capabilities, and investments needed to overcome the challenges posed by emerging threats to access like ballistic and cruise missiles, advanced submarines and fighters, electronic warfare and mines.” And Admiral Greenert ordered a “tech-fresh” of the tri-service Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. The service’s new 30-year shipbuilding plan showed what might actually occur. The Navy in May 2012 clearly contemplated numerous forks in its road ahead.
With a presidential election looming large on the horizon, a strategic framework yet to be fully fleshed out, and draconian budget cuts in the offing, this will prove to be a watershed year for America’s Navy. But in the end, past will indeed be prologue.
Mr. Holzer is a senior national security manager for TeamBlue. The authors relied on numerous Department of Defense, Navy, and published sources for this annual review.