As most readers doubtless know, the Naval Institute has numerous outlets for content in addition to Proceedings, whether it be our sister publication Naval History, the USNI News site, our robust blog, or the venerable Naval Institute Press. But the one that we share a unique relationship with is our conferences branch. Many a Proceedings article over the years has provided the inspiration for a panel session at a subsequent conference. Indeed, one can say that the pages of Proceedings “come to life” at these events. But sometimes it works the other way around, too, with comments made during a panel giving impetus to an article.
This past February’s USNI-AFCEA West conference in San Diego once again featured a Sea Service leaders town-hall discussion, with Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mark E. Ferguson III, Commandant of the Coast Guard Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr., and Marine Corps Commandant General James F. Amos participating, and moderated by Institute CEO Vice Admiral Pete Daly. General Amos remarked that day on the vital importance of surface connectors to the Corps, and we thought that sounded like a fine idea for an article.
General Amos agreed, and so he returns to our pages this month with a look at the challenges, and promising possibilities, of sea-based power projection for today’s and tomorrow’s Navy–Marine Corps team. After more than a decade of focus on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Sea Services now face a world of new strategic imperatives calling for an old and time-honored naval capability: amphibious operations. “Surface connectors that are self-deployable and capable of long open-water transits are essential,” the Commandant says, and proposes several options for use by the Corps. But he warns, “We need to change the paradigm here and not limit our thought to how we do business today.”
Naval Postgraduate School professor Captain Wayne P. Hughes Jr. has a different surface capability on his mind. He advocates the use of numerous affordable single-purpose warships in dangerous littoral waters and argues that they are superior to the expensive open-ocean multipurpose vessels typically used there. “Multipurpose warships made sense 25 years ago, and they will continue to be best in situations in which the threat of attack is small,” he acknowledges. But such safety is no longer a given. Using the concept of salvo equations, he demonstrates how unstable situations result when the staying power of a combat formation is small. “Ships for fighting in the littorals are a niche capability to fill a void,” he reasons. “They should be numerous, yet take only a small budget fraction.”
Meanwhile, the submarine community has its share of concerns as well, from safety to ensuring continued proficiency at critical tasks. Rear Admiral Michael E. Jabaley Jr., Deputy Commander for Undersea Warfare, traces the roots of the U.S. Submarine Force’s safety initiatives: the Quality Assurance Submarine Safety program, the Deep Submergence Systems Scope of Certification program, and the Fly-by-Wire Ship Control System program. The first two were developed in response to tragic accidents that occurred within the last 51 years, including the loss of the USS Thresher (SSN-593) in 1963. However, the need for submarine safety predates those 20th-century tragedies, as a close look at the events leading to the Confederate submersible H. L. Hunley sinking three times reveals. “Today’s challenge . . . is to maintain the standards established by submarine safety programs,” Admiral Jabaley explains. “The supreme sacrifice of those who went down with the Thresher and other submarines can best be honored by never letting it happen again.”
The demands of the Cold War honed the U.S. Navy’s antisubmarine-warfare capability to a heightened degree. It was an essential weapon in deterring the undersea shenanigans of the Soviet Union. But with the demise of the Soviet threat, ASW fell by the wayside, too. The attention paid to this warfare specialty ebbed and flowed in the ensuing years, and nobody knows that better than retired Navy Captain Bill Toti. He looks back to 2005, when he and a group of approximately 15 other officers came up with ten antisubmarine “threads.” The term used to describe them was “Full-Spectrum ASW.” As he details the threads here one by one, it becomes obvious that all of them still apply today.
Lieutenant Commander Ryan Lilley would agree, worrying that “the Navy’s ability to effectively search a large area of ocean for a submarine has eroded.” He notes that others have stepped in to fill the void left by the Soviets, and the submarines of today are far less acoustically obvious than the boats of yesteryear. The time to recapture America’s wide-area ASW search capability is now, he writes. While the U.S. Navy may still lead the world in undersea warfare, he cautions that “its ASW forces have not kept pace with the threat and are facing a potential warfighting gap just as the nation turns its attention to the challenging Asia-Pacific region.”