It’s Not So Easy Being Green
(See J. A. Corlett, pp. 56–61, November 2014 Proceedings)
Captain Jim Adams U.S. Navy (Retired)—Commander Corlett should be lauded for a hard-hitting exposé on Navy “go-green” efforts. It is too bad that senior Navy civilian and uniformed leadership have wasted and continue to waste millions of dollars on this effort. To have these leaders push “greenness” and fund it while at the same time complaining about how they do not have sufficient Fleet-readiness funding is laughable.
Congress and those officers brave enough (like Commander Corlett) need to say, “Show me the money,” and ask who (and whose Beltway connections) will profit from the “Green Effort” funding. Unfortunately, Congress has been asleep in this area.
Department of Defense costs continue to spiral upward with the financial burden shouldered by the American taxpayer. Now it looks like the DOD is mating with the green-biofuels industry, which is also paid for by the taxpayer. Efforts like this “greenness” push are taking away from funding the reason we have a Navy.
(See N. Friedman, pp. 90–91, November 2014 Proceedings)
Lieutenant Commander Carl Olson, U.S. Navy Reserve—The Islamic State has become a country about the size of New Jersey and has a fully functioning government. It is seeking recognition from other countries’ governments, including the establishment of embassies and consulates. This cannot be wished away.
However, Dr. Friedman writes, “The Islamic State is a direct threat to the United States.” Just what part of U. S. territory is the Islamic State threatening?
Dr. Friedman goes on to state, “And almost certainly only if there are U. S. troops on the ground.” This again assumes that there is Constitutional backing for a U.S. attack on the Islamic State—with the undoubted losses in combat and other troops in the thousands and the costs in the billions of dollars. The current U.S. troops in Iraq are devoted mostly to protecting the U.S. embassy (the largest in the world) plus some training of Iraqi forces. Al Qaeda doesn’t mind attacking U.S. embassies and consulates, with Libya/Benghazi as an example.
Let’s push the Obama administration to ask Congress for a declaration of war—or for the promised pullout.
We should note that there are dozens of other countries with repressive regimes that the United States could invade to set up a U.S.-approved regime. It would again cost huge combat losses and billions of dollars—without any apparent benefit to the American public.
(See J. A. Finlayson, J. M. Gustin, and T. M. Gibbons, pp. 62–66, November 2014 Proceedings)
A. J. Daverede—I am normally very pleased to see naval and military professionals using aspects of naval history in their writings for Proceedings. However, in this particular article, I think that history has been misused through a lack of understanding of its context. The three authors have taken the very modern concept of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) and retroactively applied it to a World War II military operation in which neither opponent would consciously admit following any of the precepts mentioned in the article. While using history to justify military strategies, doctrines, tactics, or even building programs have motivated many professional naval and military writers in the past (Alfred Thayer Mahan being among the foremost), any potential author must guard against shallow comparisons or forced analogies that do not naturally flow from the facts. A couple of the problems with this article are:
First, the jointness asserted by the authors simply did not exist during Operation Forager, at least in the form of joint operations as we know them today. While the ground forces used during the various invasions were a combination of U.S. Army and Marine Corps units, the chain of command was decidedly U.S. Navy. The air force involved during the campaign was almost exclusively provided by the Navy. In fact, the controversial relief of an Army division commander by Marine Lieutenant General Holland Smith during the invasion of Saipan nearly broke up what little “jointness” existed in the Pacific Ocean Area command. So retroactively applying the Joint Operational Access Concept to the Operation Forager campaign is simply wrong.
Second, Japanese operations in the Central Pacific were not even remotely based on the idea of area denial—they were based on the concept of the decisive battle. By early 1944, the Imperial Japanese General Staff had realized for quite some time that they needed to find a barrier to stop the momentum of American forces surging not only in the Central Pacific, but also the Southwest Pacific. The Japanese also needed to fight a battle that would inflict serious enough casualties on American forces to cause the war to end on Japanese terms The Marianas were an obvious target for such a battle, and Operation A-Go was the outcome of Japanese planning. Everyone fights according to their doctrine. Japanese ground forces prepared their garrison islands for defense according to their tactical-defense doctrine—and that doctrine was to kill as many American invaders as possible. Likewise, Japanese naval and air forces prepared to fight A-Go according to their naval-air tactical doctrine, which was to destroy as many American ships and shoot down as many American planes as possible.
The idea of A2/AD is a hot topic debated widely within professional Navy and defense circles both here and abroad. The A2/AD concept may exist in the form of actual doctrine, tactics, and military hardware beyond discussion in an unclassified forum such as this, which makes any comparison with a World War II campaign, where doctrine, tactics, and weapon capabilities are completely declassified, impossible to succeed. Regardless, it is a topic that is deserving of lively and controversial discussion in the pages of our forum. History should be used judiciously in these discussions.
(See J. Murphy, p. 14, November 2014 Proceedings)
Mark W. Maxwell III—I must agree with Senior Chief Murphy about how “Taps” should always be played on a bugle at military burials.
And “Taps” not tapes can save an honor guard embarrassment at the graveside: My father served with the U.S. Merchant Marine throughout World War II (perforated eardrums from boyhood scarlet fever got him the boot from induction lines). Upon his passing, our funeral director arranged for a U.S. Coast Guard funeral detail. When it came time for “Taps,” the “play” button was depressed, and as the flag was being raised from the casket, a nice rendition of “Reveille” was heard. The tape was rewound, and everything proceeded without any further problems or embarrassment.
The Chief spent about 30 minutes personally apologizing to family members at the wake.
(See H. Stephenson, pp. 58–63, October 2014, and T. N. Branch, p. 8, November 2014 Proceedings)
Rear Admiral T. A. Brooks, U.S. Navy (Retired), former Director of Naval Intelligence—Congratulations to Commander Stephenson on a well-reasoned and well-written article providing feedback from the deckplates of the information-dominance community. The concerns he raises have been expressed to me by a number of active-duty and retired officers.
Some relatively small portion of the Information Dominance Corps (IDC) will find itself involved in actual non-kinetic information warfare, offensive or defensive. But the preponderance will continue to be what Commander Stephenson terms “warfare-enablers,” not warfighters. As such, the expertise they have developed over decades as restricted-line communities will continue to be their primary value to the Navy. Care must be taken to ensure restructuring efforts do not impede the development and continuation of this expertise in favor of some goal of cross-discipline integration among IDC communities—some of which have obvious synergies, but some of which have synergies that are a great deal less obvious. Homogenizing these specialist communities into a single unrestricted-line–like community would, in my view, result in a disservice to the primary Navy warfighting communities that they have served so well.
The Navy’s effort to focus on information warfare and information dominance of the battlespace is to be applauded. But the Navy has a historic tendency toward “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” Commander Stephenson is correct when he suggests that the IDC should temper its “revolutionary zeal” to create a warfighter community. The IDC also needs to stand back to ensure that we do not diminish the primary value of the restricted-line communities to be warfare-enablers providing their traditional areas of expertise to tactical commanders at sea.
(See R. J. Hossfeld, pp. 34–39, October 2014 Proceedings)
Colonel Carl C. “Chip” Cumm, U.S. Air Force/Air National Guard (Retired), former National Guard Adviser to the Commander, U.S. Northern Command—The topic that Major Hossfeld’s article addresses—disaster management in a hypothetical multiple-state scenario—is as serious as any in the realm of the military profession, involving as it does decisions about life and death in a catastrophe. Therefore, it is important that certain errors and misunderstandings in the article be addressed. These include:
1. Misunderstanding of the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC). The author implies that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is involved in this process, yet EMAC is completely outside any federal control or administration.
2. Misunderstanding of resource allocation. The author implies that federal (Title 10) commanders will have a role in deciding how assets will be allocated in a disaster if there is a “struggle for resources.” FEMA has this responsibility, and in a multi-state disaster would set up a regional-coordination group or area command to adjudicate competing resource requests from states. Furthermore, these resource requirements are not validated by the state or the National Guard dual-status commander (DSC); they are validated and passed for tasking by the joint field office (JFO) through the federal coordinating officer.
3. The concept of the “supported commander” in a civilian sense. Ultimately, the state is the supported entity in a disaster. However, DOD senior leaders will always insist, correctly, that they support FEMA and not a sheriff or incident commander. Thus, federal DOD forces do not make support decisions; they are “provided” through the appropriate DOD process to the FEMA JFO (based on a request from the state), which in turn “provides” them (via mission assignment) to the incident commander as appropriate. But they are there at the request of FEMA through the JFO, not because a military commander (National Guard or Title 10) directs.
4. A Title 10 Lead Disaster DSC, a “Super DSC” is the answer for complex catastrophes. The author makes this suggestion but does not provide any strong arguments to support it beyond “it’s really hard to do.” All disasters are hard to do. The problem with a Super DSC is that there is no Constitutional, federal, or state legal basis for such an authority. A DSC must be a member of the state’s militia (National Guard), appointed by the governor (U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8) in order to act under the authority of the state constitution as well as the U.S. Constitution. How can a T-10 officer become a member of multiple state militias and be bound by oath to support multiple governors at the same time? This doesn’t decrease complexity—it complicates it by several orders of magnitude.
These serious distinctions relate to the key questions posed in any disaster: Who’s in charge, what are my authorities, and who’s paying the bill? When one understands how this process works in the JFO, the rationale for a “Super DSC” begins to collapse. There are ways to solve the multi-state problem without such contortions, all of which probably would involve a federal Title 10 regional joint task force (JTF) to “flow” T-10 forces to the DSC in the state but only after the resource request is adjudicated by FEMA at the front end. The regional JTF commander merely sends the DOD T-10 asset where FEMA tells him and they report to the DSC for employment.
(See M. Glynn, pp. 32–35 September 2014, and J. Cataldi, pp. 84–85, November 2014 Proceedings)
Lieutenant Commander Michael P. Donnelly, U.S. Navy—Lieutenant Glynn made an ambitious attempt to justify his proposal to forward-base and restructure the maritime patrol and reconnaissance (MPR) community, but his argument stemming from its vague monetary advantages suffers several flaws. The idea of moving crews between areas of responsibility (AORs) to shore up training sounds suspiciously like the existing MPR home cycle, only on a much larger and much more costly scale. Patrol squadrons (VPs) deploy as a ready force to provide combat capability. VPs do not deploy to hop between theaters chasing readiness. Forward basing may offer tempting returns, but it grossly understates the diplomacy needed to operate a permanent force in a host nation’s backyard. Every MPR warrior with deployment experience in the Middle East has sea stories ranging from aircrew deportation, limited airfield availability, or a complete lack of cooperation. The current MPR model faces enough difficulties with the temperamental support offered by our allies.
The allure of dollar signs also ignores the high operational tempo experienced by crews operating in the 5th Fleet AOR. In some cases, squadrons will execute more than twice the flight hours of their 7th Fleet counterparts. Looking through the lens of two Japan deployments, Lieutenant Glynn envisions a much more genteel deployment than his MPR brethren operating in Djibouti or Bahrain, but even a forward-based squadron operating in Japan will find its own difficulties, namely a shortage of hangar space and the endless shell game of lodging its sailors.
Lieutenant Glynn’s assertion that a squadron “will spend their first several months in theater adapting to the procedures, nuances, and mission sets typical in that location” identifies a training deficiency rather an argument for forward basing. Every deploying sailor regardless of occupation has a steep learning curve when arriving in theater. This may take a few days of adjustment, but no commanding officer or task-force commander will tolerate a months-long ramp-up period. Standardizing requirements and processes between the three forward-deployed MPR task forces offers greater opportunities to streamline this transition.
Precluding the fleet air-reconnaissance squadron (VQ) side of the house from this discussion ranks as Lieutenant Glynn’s most egregious error. This brand of thought runs counter to our MPR Family of Systems and all but relegates the VQ community to second-class citizenship. From the MPR perspective, retiring the EP-3E aircraft represents a loss of an unparalleled inelligence/surveillance/reconnaissance partner. For the Navy it means losing a unique and invaluable signals-intelligence platform. Additionally, to characterize our two reserve squadrons as not providing “time-critical combat capabilities” is not only false, but strikes at the heart of the author’s proposal to supplement forward-deployed squadrons with the same reservists.
Not to say that change is bad thing, but MPR’s attempts to reinvent the wheel in the past have repeatedly resulted in a return to our present force structure. In 2007 the community shifted to consolidated maintenance organizations (with the promise of increased savings) and failed, largely due to a lack of personal ownership by the squadrons and the maintainers. Lieutenant Glynn’s revolving door for manning permanently deployed squadrons will suffer the same fate.