Advocating Naval Heresy
(See R. B. Watts, pp. 48–53, June 2015 Proceedings)
Lieutenant (junior grade) Carlos R. Rosende, U.S. Navy—Captain Watts is correct in proposing unconventional thinking and in offering a devil’s-advocate analysis of our Navy’s current strategic assumptions. The uncomfortable possibility that aircraft carriers in their current form and role might be growing irrelevant is worthy of serious discussion. However, I believe the author’s underlying assumption that the fundamental concept of naval power has changed in the short century since Alfred Thayer Mahan’s work is flawed. Furthermore, Captain Watts adopts a narrow interpretation of Mahan’s writings, focusing on his advocacy of capital ships. The sum of Mahan’s works, which cover a wide array of naval topics, advocates sea power for the same reasons that have prompted governments to possess powerful navies throughout history: power projection, sea control, strategic mobility, presence. These are components of maritime strategy today, and they were components of it 100 years ago in the time of Mahan.
Captain Watts suggests doing “what the rest of the world has been doing since World War II,” by which he appears to mean downsizing our fleet and relying on a sympathetic foreign naval power with similar values to uphold the global system of maritime commerce that permits our way of life. He fails to consider that since 1945, the United States has been that sympathetic naval power.
A future Jutland, the author writes, will never occur because the last fleet-vs.-fleet action was 70 years ago. Over a century passed between Trafalgar and Jutland—a century during which the Royal Navy fought no major fleet-on-fleet duels and yet maintained the largest sea force in the world to protect its national and global interests. The attributes that allow a navy to prevail in major fleet-scale battles are those capabilities that take the longest to cultivate, requiring decades of investment in the development of theory, doctrine, platforms, training, and supply chains. By contrast, those capabilities the author believes are more applicable today—essentially maritime counterinsurgency and policing—are relatively easy and inexpensive to develop. When resources are limited, the complex long-term need rather than the short-term ad hoc requirement should receive priority.
Finally, in dismissing the threat posed by China the author overlooks not only that country’s naval capabilities (which he ironically measures by the number of capital ships the Chinese navy possesses despite decrying capital ships as unnecessary earlier in the article), but also its strategic outlook. China’s maritime policy is at odds with that of the United States and nearly all of the nations of East Asia, and the Chinese military’s vast collection of antiship cruise missiles far outclasses the aging Harpoons carried on our CGs and Flight I DDGs, while new classes of quieter and more capable Chinese submarines push ever farther from the First Island Chain.
Challenging our own assumptions is healthy, but dismissing them outright simply because they are old is a mistake. We would benefit from a longer view of history and a closer reading of Mahan.
Submarines: Key to the Offset Strategy
(See W. J. Holland Jr., pp. 18–22, June 2015 Proceedings)
Captain George P. Sotos, U.S. Navy (Retired)—Rear Admiral Holland writes that the operational aim at the heart of offensive submarine strategy “is to position submarines in the coastal and near-ocean areas of a potential enemy as a crisis builds and, should war break out, to quickly sink all opposing surface warships and submarines.” The merits of this strategy questionably assume that a potential enemy would not be ready to simultaneously flood those same littorals with aircraft that would force the submarines off the surface. Submerged submarines, notwithstanding their acoustic capabilities, are virtually blind and merely pose a threat. True, a very deadly threat but also one that can be contained.
Had I not spent almost all of World War II in the Atlantic on a PC boat and later a destroyer escort screening the USS Bogue (CVE-9) hunter-killer group, I might agree with Rear Admiral Holland’s statement that “the surface ship cannot defend itself at all against a nuclear-powered submarine.” My experiences tell me differently.
During what amounted to hundreds of one-on-one encounters (training runs) against our own submarines at the Fleet Sonar School in Naval Station Key West from 27 April 1942 to 1 November 1943, the submarine almost always lost. But more telling were the results of a unique and very realistic post–World War II three-week “no holds barred” war-game training cruise in the Southwest Pacific. Seven of our Guam-based veteran World War II combat submarines were pitted against a small convoy protected by three recently arrived Atlantic Fleet destroyer escorts (DEs) of which I was the unit commander. During the cruise, the seven submarines initiated 254 attacks, including many with live-exercise torpedoes.
Only one attack was successful.
At the post-exercise critique, the submariners themselves concluded that the war in the Pacific would have been different had the Japanese exhibited the level of antisubmarine-warfare (ASW) effectiveness demonstrated by the three Atlantic Fleet DEs.
Would it have been different against nuclear-powered submarines? Again, my experiences tell me no. Nuclear power gives the submarine a higher speed and much longer legs. But the use of higher submerged speeds in close proximity to a surface ASW ship can be counterproductive since it simplifies the latter’s identification and tracking problems.
The nuclear submarine’s principal advantage over the surface ship is still the ability to remain submerged. This provides an advantage that makes him difficult to find in the first place—not more difficult to attack.
Also, it is worth recalling that the DE USS England (DE-635) sank 6 Japanese submarines in 12 days.
In any event, even as we assume one position or the other, let’s hope we never really have to find out the correct answer.
A Proactive Defense
(See W. J. Nemeth, pp. 28–33, May 2015 Proceedings)
Commander Charles Turner, U.S. Navy (Retired)—As America winds down its involvement in two long wars in the Middle East and revisits its strategy for engaging future dangers, I applaud Colonel Nemeth’s assertion and excellent solutions for the Marine Corps to “counter these threats with capable amphibious and expeditionary forces.” His proposals mean that we need to put deliberate thought into increasing the current footprint of forward-deployed forces to develop the “sustained partnerships” and “strengthened relationships” he so eloquently elucidated. Our long-term focus should be one where we are building and maintaining friendships and alliances while providing a credible—and very visible—deterrence against potential adversaries.
Colonel Nemeth’s proposed Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB)–U.S. European Command should be based ashore at a location that strikes a judicious balance between operational responsiveness and diplomatic concerns. A capable, centralized site will greatly enable the MEB’s ability to respond quickly to crises across Europe and Africa. However, geography and the diplomatic entanglements of basing land forces abroad narrow the selection of possible sites. Host-nation misgivings may lead to restrictions on the range of options available for the employment of American forces stationed on foreign soil.
The MEB should avoid the curse of being a heavily land-based entity, one to which critics would be justified in asking, “How is this MEB different from the Army’s forces in Europe?” Rapid access to amphibious shipping forward-deployed to the 6th Fleet’s area of responsibility (AOR) adheres to the Marine Corps’ mobile nature and maintains the MEB’s freedom of movement. Ideally, the amphibious ships and MEB would be based in relatively close proximity to each other with an eye on minimizing the embarkation and debarkation timelines. An afloat MEB—even on an LPD in the Black Sea—has significant flexibility by operating in international waters without local restrictions or land-based logistics.
Colonel Nemeth provided some well-reasoned force-structure recommendations for these forward-deployed naval forces. His list should be expanded to include vessels of the LHD-1 or LHA-6 class of amphibious assault ships to give the MEB broader afloat access to dedicated logistics, aviation, and command-and-control infrastructures.
We already have a robust forward-deployed amphibious presence in the 7th Fleet AOR with the nine ships in Sasebo, Japan, under Commander, Task Force 76 and the Marines of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. These forces have been invaluable in engaging our Western Pacific partners while providing a credible show of force in the region. Parallel force structures in the 6th Fleet AOR will achieve similar effects over time.
That being said, today’s grim fiscal environment means that forward-deploying any forces will most likely be a zero-sum game. Marine and Navy assets forward-deployed to the 6th Fleet AOR reduce the overall pool of assets available for use in the normal deployment cycle.
The Small-Craft Advantage
(See M. S. Proctor and R. E. Poling, pp. 46–52, May 2015 Proceedings)
Captain Evin Thompson, U.S. Navy (Retired) and Fernando Mejia—Lieutenant Proctor and Commander Poling are spot-on in their discussion of the small-craft advantage. While our Navy dominates the blue water and has no peer advantage, many of our allies have small craft and crews that match or exceed our conventional Navy’s small-craft capabilities. The strides over the last decade by the Navy Expeditionary Command and the Coastal Riverine Force have greatly enhanced the U.S. Navy’s ability to operate in the littoral and riverine environments. We must continue to hold our crews to the high standards that have been set. The Navy must also resource the Coastal Riverine Force with the right tools to be successful. Of special concern would be a cut in ammunition resources, which are vital to the training of a crew that will operate in this confined battle space. A sailor on a small craft in these environments is much more likely to employ his small arms and should be given the training resources to be effective and lethal. The aging Coastal Riverine Force (most craft exceed 10 years of service life with many over 15 years) must also be recapitalized at the earliest opportunity.
While the author makes mention of conducting small-craft operations around the world, his emphasis on the 4th Fleet should only be used as a reference point. The world has more than 900,000 rivers, 465,100 nautical miles of commercial inland waterways, 224 major river basins, and 50 major rivers over 1,000 nautical miles long. Of those 50 rivers it is interesting to note that 19 are in Asia, 7 in Africa, and 5 in South America. As our nation looks to rebalance to the Pacific and maintain our security partnerships with Africa, it would be wise to continue to invest in our Navy’s combatant-craft fleet. For a fraction of the craft cost and operating cost, as so eloquently stated in the article, our Navy can routinely and effectively engage with our allies. A well-trained and -resourced small-boat force will provide an effective combat multiplier for our nation when called upon in conflict in any theater of operations.
Silence on the Net
(See P. Molenda, pp. 34–39, May 2015 Proceedings)
Andrei Perumal, coauthor of Waging War on Complexity Costs (McGraw-Hill, 2009)—I thank Captain Molenda for his significant and timely article revisiting mission command, in which he asserts that “at the operational level, however, the Navy fails to effectively orchestrate decentralized execution and arguably subordinate trust” in part due to “an insatiable hunger for information pulled from the tactical level to feed layers of command all the way up to the strategic—because we can.”
Captain Molenda is right on target, and he raises one of the gravest threats to the long-term effectiveness of our naval forces. It has been the U.S. Navy’s ability to lead the way in decentralized execution, with a “culture steeped in subordinate trust and independence” that has set the U.S. Navy apart from all other organizations (both naval and non-naval). These traits were honed out of the challenges and needs of the day, but they are even more, not less, important in today’s increasingly complex world. While communications technology may render them no longer necessary for operations, they are today even more important for effective operations.
It is unfortunate that the Navy is allowing not just its rich legacy, but one of its greatest assets, to erode. Since my time serving in the Navy I have drawn from its lessons to help global companies improve multinational operations—organizations that are now realizing that large, central bureaucracies are too slow and unwieldy to compete in the age of instantaneous interconnectedness. It is doubly unfortunate, and a bit ironic, that while global corporations are now learning the importance of decentralized execution, which the Navy learned long ago, the Navy is now letting itself go the other way.
Captain Molenda’s article also speaks to a larger issue, not limited to just the Navy. The “insatiable hunger for information” and the corresponding tendency to micromanage increases staff sizes at all levels (and across the Department of Defense) as more people are collecting, reconciling, and passing information, and leaving relatively fewer people to actually make, and learn to make, decisions. The result is a bad fit for today’s fast-paced, complex environment. A recent USNI News article by Megan Eckstein cited that “20 percent of the Pentagon’s budget goes to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and associated defense agencies,” which Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus calls “pure overhead,” adding that “they’ve grown faster than the services, even in the time of the Iraq and the Afghan war.”
These two issues are linked. At a time of budget pressure, we are looking at cutting ships, aircraft, and perhaps sailors and Marines, while presumably leaving this massive overhead in place. Based on the experience of global corporations, this isn’t a recipe for success.
Given the significance of the issue he raises, I believe Captain Molenda’s article is one of the most important pieces I have seen in Proceedings in some time. I hope it gets it due.
Corrections
The second-column text on page 19 and caption on page 20 of the June issue stated the Japanese submarine I-19 sank the carrier USS Wasp and damaged two other ships during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, which was fought in August 1942; the attack actually occurred on 15 September 1942.
The caption on page 91 of the June issue incorrectly stated that General Mark A. Milley is replacing General Martin E. Dempsey as Chief of Staff of the Army; General Milley is replacing General Raymond T. Odierno.