The Navy Lacks a Culture of Purpose
I thoroughly enjoyed Commander Moses’ article. Toward the end, he focuses on building culture from the bottom up and mentions the Trident Scholars program, noting that only a vanishingly small portion of participants focus on Navy strategy and culture.
It is important to distinguish between scholarship and technical research. Technical research is linear. It picks the ball up somewhere and carries it down the court. As an engineer, I note its importance—every engineering and science student should engage in technical research as an undergraduate. But none of the 2020 projects give the impression that scholarship took place.
In scholarship, one takes the time to go down the rabbit hole, getting lost and searching a way back out, hopefully in an innovative fashion. Great scholarship comes from an unencumbered deep think, and this is the opportunity that should be afforded to these students, not the ability to do yet another model basin experiment or a coding project. Through the Trident program, Naval Academy students should have the opportunity to gain a thoroughly developed new point of view, with rigorous faculty vetting at the completion of the research.
I do provide one strong caution. The rabbit hole does not consist only of history and political science; Navy culture does not spring from those specialties alone. The scholars should engage every tool in the box: history, law, finance, economics, game theory, hard science, futurism, leadership theory, technology, and anything else that is part of finding solutions. If students rely only on their own toolboxes—history, engineering, English, or any other single thing—the resulting tunnel vision should be vigorously corrected by the project reviewers. But this raises another question: Who is qualified to perform those reviews?
—Rik van Hemmen
I just received my copy of the July Proceedings (a stellar issue, by the way) and discovered that I and my career are featured in Commander Jim Moses’ article, citing Commander Chris Nelson’s interview with me in May 2019. While I can only blush at being called “exceptional by any measure,” I feel compelled to point out that one sentence—“But it might be worth asking why the Naval Academy did not produce The Maritime Strategy’s principal author”—is, unfortunately, very misleading.
First, as Chris noted in his interview, I was a principal drafter—not the principal author—of The Maritime Strategy. Using the correct article and term is important: The strategy’s creation and implementation involved numerous personalities and organizations, including the Secretary of the Navy, a succession of Chiefs and Vice Chiefs of Naval Operations, their staffs, numbered fleet commanders, the Naval War College, the Strategic Studies Group, the Advanced Technology Panel, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Marine Corps headquarters, allied officers . . . and the Naval Institute. Neither I nor my numerous colleagues have ever claimed I was the principal author.
Further, among the most significant participants, several were products of the Naval Academy, including my two predecessors as drafters of the initial OPNAV Maritime Strategy briefings, then-Commander Spence Johnson and then-Lieutenant Commander Stan Weeks (as noted in my interview with Chris).
Had I not been preceded in this endeavor and surrounded during my own stint by Naval Academy (as well as Officer Candidate School and fellow NROTC) graduates, I would not have had the full knowledge and insight to allow me to contribute to the extent that I did.
—CAPT Peter Swartz, USN (Ret.)
If It Stops Floating, It Stops Fighting
I disagree slightly with Lieutenant Commander Dennis on both semantic and technical grounds in his important and timely discussion of armoring surface combatants. My career experience includes the design and testing of armor systems and antiarmor projectiles.
I certainly agree that the proliferation of capable all-aspect antiship missiles means that surface combatants in high-intensity conflict must expect to be hit hard. My semantic disagreement is that I would substitute the term “passive protection” for “armor.” Passive physical protection must include: reserve buoyancy, girder construction resistant to collapse, robust watertight subdivision, machinery dispersal, blast relief or attenuation, and key function dispersal, in addition to armor.
Effective passive protection can take many forms, and a seeming weakness (e.g., thin deck or bottom plating) can be an advantage in venting or redirecting blast effects, as long as the hull has sufficient resources to survive localized damage and flooding.
The principal threats to modern surface combatants are no longer ballistic projectiles, and so 20th-century concepts of armor protection no longer apply. With competent adversary missile warhead and fuzing designs, all-aspect hull envelope protection from penetration is unrealistic. It is probably possible to “armor” some modest-sized spaces in a surface combatant against some threats, but it is essential for ship designers to consider that the detonation of several hundred kilograms of high-energy explosive can occur virtually anywhere within the hull. The protection problem then becomes minimizing fragment and blast damage to other portions and functions in the hull, for which advanced materials and concepts may indeed play a key role. It is worth remembering that any type of structural passive protection is an exercise in energy management.
My relatively minor technical disagreements with the author are in the applicability of new concepts in vehicle armoring. Reactive armor, for example, has a fairly narrow focus on defeating long rod penetrators. Likewise, shear-thickening fluids have shown some enhanced utility against a narrow range of threats but are difficult to field. Ceramics offer superlative protection against energetic fragments, but not so much against blast. Fabric and related composite armors can provide extremely weight-efficient blast and fragment protection, but they depend on controlled deformation, which requires some “expendable” volume behind the protecting surface.
None of these minor disagreements vitiates the author’s basic argument, however. Surface combatants must employ robust passive-protection strategies in addition to the active self-defense systems currently fielded.
—James J. Gorman, advanced materials and structures engineer
The Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano had plenty of armor, and her sinking during the Falklands War illustrates the limited value of traditional armor belts compared with effective damage control. Two of the three torpedoes HMS Conqueror fired hit her. The first blew off the bow; the second struck aft of the armor belt. The General Belgrano had many unsecured watertight doors, and her aft mess decks were crowded with sailors when the torpedo’s explosion tore through this area, causing grievous casualties and knocking out the ship’s electrical system. This made damage control impossible and doomed the ship. Even so, the ship sank slowly, and the crew abandoned ship in good order 20 minutes after the attack.
Modern cruise missiles will penetrate any feasible armor belt, so survivability measures will need to focus on internal integrity, redundancy, crew survival, and fleet salvage and repair capabilities. Absent catastrophic magazine explosions or hull collapse after a broken keel, survivability has always come down to damage control, salvage, and repair.
Generally, that means ships large enough to accommodate effective watertight compartmentalization, a large enough crew and protected battle stations to survive the attack, and redundant ship’s systems to fight the damage and continue to fight the enemy. In addition to designing warships for resiliency, fleet units need organic rescue tugs and repair ships to move damaged ships clear of the fight and begin immediate repairs.
—LCDR J. Eric Beaty, USNR
In the opening photo, the ship is displaying day shapes that report “restricted in ability to maneuver.” I guess they know a missile is about to hit.
—LCDR Paul E. Cornelius, USN (Ret.)
Mahan’s Illusory Command of the Seas
I am quite surprised that my comments have attracted such negative reactions, and I have asked myself why. As I wrote, few have really read Mahan, and, perhaps, many superimpose on him their views of the importance of sea power.
But opinions should be informed by history and fact. Mahan was a historian, not a strategist. And wars—certainly since Napoleon—are not won or lost by single services. Mahan was wrong in predicting “major sea battles” would be decisive. Yes, as at Midway, they can turn the tide and establish necessary conditions, but that does not make them fully sufficient for victory.
The piece also proposed the foundations for a 21st-century Navy with an appropriate and affordable strategy, based on my perceptions of the nature and extent of threats posed by potential adversaries. Currently, at fixed budgets (and, indeed, the prospect of cuts), the total force is not affordable even at $715 billion per year, especially given 5 to 7 percent uncontrolled annual real-cost growth. The armed forces all face a return to some equivalent of the dread post-Vietnam hollow force.
I can only hope my critics take that on board. The nation needs a Navy ready to sail in harm’s way. But despite his huge influence more than a century ago, Mahan is not the proper guide.
—Harlan Ullman
Rules for Safe Electronic Navigation
Commander Mahon and I are on the same wavelength, but we disagree slightly in the matter of emphasis. He writes, “The visual picture not only provides supplementary information to the watchstander, but also confirms or differs from electronic situational awareness.” In my view, the words “supplementary information” should read “primary information.”
When I was standing officer-of-the-deck watches 50 years ago, the ship’s radar was satisfactory, if rudimentary. When on watch, I made it a habit to regularly go out on the bridge wings and observe bearings to contacts, relative motion, bow wakes, etc. I considered my sightings the primary source of information and compared them with the radar indications.
I have a related personal axiom: “Never trust a weatherman who does not have a window in his office.”
—Winn B. Frank, Golden Life Member
The Little Carriers That Could
Lieutenant Commander Rucker’s article inspired several thoughts.
To the nine Independence-class CVLs may be added the two somewhat larger Saipan-class CVLs laid down before the end of the war but not completed until after Japan’s surrender. Unlike the Independence, the Saipans were designed from the keel up as aircraft carriers, but, like the Independence class, they had short service careers.
There have been fixed-wing big-deck amphib operational cruises before. The USS Nassau (LHA-4) deployed to the Mediterranean in 1981 with 20 AV-8A Harriers. Nine years later, she conducted combat operations during the First Gulf War with 20 AV-8Bs on board. The USS Bataan (LHD-5) and USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) both saw combat during the Second Gulf War in 2003, with 26 and 24 AV-8Bs embarked, respectively.
It should be noted that when the last CVL retired in 1957, the Navy had 19 attack carriers (CVAs) and 9 antisubmarine carriers (CVSs) in commission, rendering negligible the CVLs’ value to the fleet. Today, with only 11 aircraft carriers in service, the benefit of several large-deck amphibs with deckloads of strike fighters could be as significant to the fleet as the arrival of the first CVLs was in early 1943.
—LCDR William S. Hart, USN (Ret.)
“Hit Hard, Hit Fast, Hit Often!”
Commander Abell makes an excellent case for awarding Admiral Raymond A. Spruance posthumous promotion to Fleet Admiral. Admiral Spruance’s clear understanding of the tactical situation at Midway, the victory that ensued, and the shift in the balance of power in the Pacific that resulted is well documented.
Despite a U.S./U.K. policy of “Germany first,” U.S. soldiers would not face the German Army until the November 1942 invasion of North Africa. By that time, the Army Air Corps had flown B-25 bombers from the USS Enterprise (CV-6) and struck Tokyo (April 1942), the Navy had stopped Japan’s movement south to Australia at the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942), won at Midway (June 1942), and landed Marines at Guadalcanal (August 1942).
Congress should move to make this well-deserved promotion happen for a clear hero of the U.S. Navy.
—CAPT David L. Teska, USCGR (Ret.)
Raymond Spruance was wronged on several levels:
The Navy had only three operational five-stars in the war. Admiral William Leahy had retired—and served as governor of Puerto Rico and U.S. ambassador to France—before the United States entered the war. He was recalled to active duty—but to be the President’s chief of staff, an important but non-naval strategic function.
Admiral Spruance’s uniformed peers have quietly rendered their own collective judgment. Not far from the White House, the Army-Navy Club contains many busts and other figures of American military immortals. But only one figure graces the foyer—the “Quiet Admiral,” Raymond Ames Spruance.
To borrow from a well-known leadership theory, known as the “Peter Principle,” on the other hand, Admiral William “Bull” Halsey was “promoted to his level of incompetence.” Consider some of the “five key lessons all naval leaders should heed”:
Failure no. 1: A “blunder” by “spoiling for a fight” at Leyte Gulf—chasing a “small [enemy] decoy force sent to bait him off station.”
Failure no. 2: Avoiding “the prudent move” in the face of a “developing typhoon” and failure to “cancel routine activities until it was too late.” As a result, “Halsey’s Typhoon” resulted in the loss of several ships and around 800 souls.
Failure no. 3: Six months later, “Halsey sailed his fleet through a typhoon a second time.” The result was “six men washed overboard, and the storm destroyed 76 planes, but all the ships made it through, despite heavy damage.”
How many “failures” must be “endured” before a leader is replaced?
—Terence R. Murphy, former LT USN/USNR
Color-Blind Promotion Boards Devalue Diversity
Professional sport teams all over the world focus on metrics that measure two broad criteria: a player’s performance and that player’s ability to contribute to the team’s mission (which always is winning). Great players are not enough; it takes unification of effort and great teamwork to win. Diversity and/or multiculturalism are not a consideration for professional sports teams because those do not contribute to performance or mission accomplishment.
Similarly, the U.S. military should always be focused on just two things: performance and mission accomplishment. Nothing else should matter, ever. Because decision-making is a zero-sum function (adding additional decision criteria necessarily devalues existing decision criteria), adding diversity and/or multiculturalism to promotion board decision criteria will necessarily devalue performance and mission accomplishment.
Unlike professional sports teams, the military grows its leaders from within. This means that part of each military leader’s performance measurement must include that leader’s ability to grow his/her people both professionally and personally. The U.S. military should be doing everything it can to recruit, retain, and promote the best performers who can contribute the most to fulfilling its mission, without regard to anything else.
—CDR Christopher W. Urban, USN (Ret.), Life Member
Why Call it the South China Sea?
The U.S. Board on Geographic Names recently designated the body of water extending from the coast of Antarctica to the line of latitude at 60 degrees South as the Southern Ocean, making five named oceans. I propose that the board rename the “seas” in east Asia to be more descriptive of their relationship to the continent rather than the nearby nations.
For instance, the South China Sea would become the Southeast Asia Sea. The East China Sea would become the East Asia Sea; the Sea of Japan, the North Asia Sea; the Philippine Sea, the West Pacific Sea. The Yellow Sea can remain unchanged, given that its name reflects a geographic phenomenon.
Why should we do this? To dampen the emotional aspect of what countries think they own of the world’s oceans. Scientists did not name COVID-19 the Wuhan Flu. That disease’s Delta variant has not been named the Indian variant, despite its origination in that country. These names were not chosen, which eliminated an emotional aspect of the names, so people can talk about them earnestly.
The Southeast Asia Sea (formerly South China Sea) does not belong to China, and the Philippine Sea does not belong to the Philippines. Future maps and charts should be adjusted accordingly.
—CAPT Jack Laufer, USCGR (Ret.)
Preparedness
In 1940, there were eight military installations in the state of Florida. By 1943, that number had grown to 172, in addition to a large number of war-related industries. Among the many notable of these were:
• Eglin Field, where Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle’s bomber crews trained prior to their raid on Japan in 1942
• Dale Mabry Field in Tallahassee, where the famous, all black 99th Fighter Squadron trained in 1942
• Shipyards at Tampa, Panama City, Pensacola, and Jacksonville that turned out hundreds of Liberty Ships
• Alligator amphibious vehicle plants in Dunedin
Among the largest of the hastily constructed facilities was Camp Gordon Johnston in Carrabelle. Camp Johnston covered some 100,000 acres along a 20-mile stretch of the Gulf Coast that included St. George and Dog Islands. Construction began in July 1942.
The first unit to pass through the Army’s grueling Amphibious Training Center was the 28th Infantry Division. Paratroopers from Fort Benning also made drops into the treacherous, swampy terrain. In September 1943, training shifted to harbor craft and amphibious truck (DUKW) companies. Camp Johnston also housed thousands of German and Italian prisoners of war.
The majority of the World War II–era shipyards, naval bases, and airfields closed long ago and are now forgotten by all but those few remaining veterans who served there during the war.
Little has changed today. As training pipelines lengthen and the period from keel-laying to commissioning increases, bases close, and viable shipyards dwindle. For budget reasons, effective multimission ships are decommissioned and replaced with littoral combat ships of dubious reliability and capability.
Obviously, leaders in Washington do not—or choose not—to foresee another major conflict. Those of us with longer memories, those who have studied history, are not so certain. If we are correct, who will build the ships, planes, and tanks needed for the next major war? Where will the hastily raised levies train? As in 1916 and 1941, how many lives will be sacrificed on the altar of economy to buy time to prepare a response to aggression?
—LCDR Larry Parker USN (Ret.)
