Five Recommended Reforms for The U.S. Naval War College
Professor Elleman was a member of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies faculty when I was its dean. He is a noted expert on the Far East and author of an impressive array of books, including some on naval strategy matters. His recommendations for the College must therefore be taken seriously.
The reforms recommended strike at the heart of what the Naval War College ought to be. Over the course of its long history, the institution’s relationship to its parent service has changed as Navy personnel policies and geopolitical circumstances shifted. However, the College has always had two basic functions: to prepare officers for higher-level responsibilities and to help the Navy prepare for anticipated conditions. In its first 50 years, these functions were fused: Students played in the wargames that led to the development of strategy and doctrine that produced victory in World War II.
After the war, the two functions were gradually separated, the divorce becoming final in 1981 with the establishment of the Strategic Studies Group and the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. In my view, that separation has limited the utility of the College to the Navy and helped precipitate Secretary of Defense James Mattis’s assertion in the 2018 National Defense Strategy that professional military education in the United States had generally stagnated—“focused more on the accomplishment of mandatory credit at the expense of lethality and ingenuity.”
Professor Elleman’s recommended reforms, while certainly enhancing the academic character and standing of the College, would only exacerbate the effects of the split between teaching and research. Geopolitical and domestic conditions are challenging the Navy in numerous ways, and the service needs every source of ingenuity it can muster.
When the Naval War College was founded in 1884, the Navy did not know how to compose or operate a fleet of steam-powered steel warships. After World War I, the Navy did not know how to integrate aviation into naval operations. Both times, largely thanks to its students, the Naval War College helped the Navy learn. And the students, including future admirals Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, and Raymond Spruance, provided critical leadership in World War II.
Today, the Navy does not know exactly how to fight with antiship missiles and unmanned systems nor to conduct distributed maritime operations. Recombining Naval War College research, gaming, and education would go a long way toward restoring this formerly powerful engine of innovation.
This could in part be accomplished by converting the current command and staff course—in essence the same as the senior course, distinguished mainly by emphasis rather than intent—to a classified curriculum centered on repeated wargaming. The existing course confers mandatory credit and so must be retained, but it could be moved fully into the distance-learning arena (how most officers take it already).
The senior course would remain substantially as is, but Professor Elleman’s recommended reforms could be instituted there. This change would provide incentive for the Navy to send officers to both courses, thereby aligning its educational policy with those of the other services.
In 1972, College President Rear Admiral Stansfield Turner instituted a new, academically rigorous syllabus at the behest of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who felt the College’s program had stagnated. Note Turner’s words at the first convocation under the new curriculum:
Why are we changing our curriculum? First, because every academic institution must periodically review whether it is fulfilling its mission. The changes in the issues and problems which face the Navy today call for changes in what we teach here. The problems we face are increasingly complex. More is demanded of us as officers than ever before. This college, in turn, must demand more of its students.
The College must demand students today think through emerging tactical, operational, and strategic problems in a competitive environment. This can only be done by bringing together the two basic functions of the College.
—CAPT Robert C. (Barney) Rubel, USN (Ret.), Professor Emeritus, U.S. Naval War College
Naval Special Warfare Will Have to Fight Differently
Mr. Cropsey makes salient points and provides key insights addressing geopolitical, economic, organizational, and cultural factors affecting Naval Special Warfare (NSW) and its future employment.
Several of the recommendations invite reflection on the post-Vietnam period, when NSW fought for survival. SEALs were forced to scrap for service, joint, and interagency support; funding; and meaningful employment. While SEAL fortunes began to improve in the 1980s and skyrocketed in the past two-plus decades, one thing remained constant: the “Get ’er done—by any means possible!” mindset ingrained in the SEAL psyche since World War II.
The author’s proposed functions represent to no small degree a return to the SEALs’ roots—training indigenous forces globally, operating in nonpermissive environments with minimal or nonexistent combat support, treating external communication as a luxury, and relying on stealth—not direct engagement—to complete a mission.
Global military activity over the past 24 months provides critical insights regarding combat employment of unmanned platforms, artificial intelligence, over-the-horizon detection technology and targeting, and repurposed commercial assets (satellites, social media, off-the-shelf technology, etc.). In addition, operating environments have evolved into excruciatingly complex present-day threats: man-made islands, dense urban terrain, and tunnel warfare, to name just a few. All significantly compound the difficulty of conducting clandestine and covert operations, the bread and butter of special operations forces.
NSW has seldom strayed from the philosophy of maintaining one foot in the water and one on land. Or from cultivating enduring relationships with allies, contending with the most austere and hazardous operational environments, and constantly adapting. As a result, NSW evolved into a force that has repeatedly executed operations of strategic significance.
The author suggests mitigative action in support of and by NSW. Both are critically important but require simultaneous, well-informed, and objective multilens analysis blending national strategy priorities, realistic expectations of a high-demand, low-density force and tempering NSW’s predisposition to run to the sound of guns.
While classification concerns limit what can be written about special operations forces, targeting adversary logistics, countering adversary influence and intimidation, and empowering allies fall clearly in the NSW wheelhouse. Add to this NSW prepositioning, nonstop training and collaboration with allies, and adaptation of “find, fix, finish, exploit, analyze” expertise to strategic targeting and a panoply of direct and indirect options across the spectrum of military operations can be envisioned. As the author implies, NSW should prepare to play a strategic role in the global littorals. Global surgical deterrence, disruption, and—when necessary—destructive operations targeting “revision coalition” infrastructure employs NSW’s unique capabilities to maximum effect and encourages a return to the shadows.
Special operations are a team effort requiring congressional, interagency, private-sector, and interservice support. Communicating national will and capability is critical to deterring aggression. The kind of actions Mr. Cropsey advocates will ensure all these blocks are checked.
—CAPT Dan’l Steward, USN (Ret.)
The Danger of Excessive Regulations
Lieutenant Colonel Drake’s excellent article brought to mind a story a Naval Academy classmate recently told.
As a newly commissioned ensign on the gun-line off Vietnam, he was responsible for rearming his ship’s 5-inch guns. He carefully prepared the requisition specifying how many rounds of each type were needed. At the rendezvous with the ammunition ship, as he prepared to send the form over, a salty lieutenant on the other ship hailed him: “Ensign, what’s that in your hand?”
“It’s our form rumpty-farb, rumpty-farb, sir!”
“Take it in your right hand and extend your right arm out over the bridge wing.”
He did so.
“Now open your hand.”
He complied. The form was delivered to Davy Jones.
“If you’re like everybody else, you’ll need X rounds of A, Y rounds of B, and Z rounds of C.”
It was indeed what was needed and was delivered without further discussion.
—LCDR P. K. Parker, USNR (Ret.)
Fix the Helicopter Afloat Maintenance and Parts Supply Problem
Chief Warrant Officer Ayala’s piece captures the “maintenance death spiral” in thorough detail and highlights identical challenges across the joint H-60 community, including the Reserve and Guard components. Sourcing spare parts, increased maintenance requirements because of putting more flight hours on fewer aircraft, adding functional check flights, and the challenges of playing “aircraft Tetris” with limited space seem very familiar.
The supply and maintenance issues afloat are similarly found across the joint supply chain. Common limiting factors include budgetary constraints that restrict warehouse and kit inventory, excessive transit times for parts available within the system, and component unavailability. Facing these issues as Air National Guard aircraft maintainers, we looked beyond traditional means to try and remedy some of these supply and readiness challenges by working with ARCWERX, a U.S. Air Force Air Reserve Component innovation incubator. We teamed up with a sister unit and a private company to apply the promising potential of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and Theory of Constraints principles to find solutions.
AI and ML demonstrated three capabilities:
1. Warehouse inventory leveling, to right-size to meet consumption
2. Supply chain optimization, to enable the right part at the right place and time from the right location and carrier
3. Parts ordering recommendations generated by the system, based on historical precedent, to reduce human error
These capabilities are anticipated to provide a 10 percent increase in aircraft availability through more sophisticated parts management, a reduction in maintenance durations, and optimized warehouse storage that will free up physical space and financial capital to purchase new parts that have the highest effect on aircraft availability.
The optimizations began as local improvements, but given time, they could improve the entire logistical framework. The Air Force and Navy have many supply and readiness challenges in common. Applying innovative ideas with the capabilities made available through AI could present joint force solutions to both, as well as across the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
“Do more with less” is not a sufficient or acceptable answer to maintenance and parts shortfalls. The present culmination of rapidly changing technology, budget constraints, and limited resources is extraordinary, possibly contributing to retention challenges. Senior leaders need to recognize the dilemma and admit the need for change. Recommendations are provided; might the joint force listen? Because our peer competitors are.
—Lt Col Jesse Fritz, Col Andrew Wineberger, and Col Neil Theisen, NYANG, and CAPT David Cooper, USCG (Ret.)
Torpedoes: Get Smaller to Think Bigger
Ocean Drones: A Revolution in Marine Robotics
I agree with Lieutenant Commander Rawlinson that CRAW should be pursued to increase the flexibility and quantity of submarine weapon loadouts, but employment of the fast-attack (SSN) platform in the tactical environment envisioned would be a misapplication with unfortunate consequences.
SSNs are costly capital ships with long replacement lead times. They are large and ill-suited for employment in confined and shallow waters in the presence of alert antisubmarine warfare (ASW) forces. In the Taiwan Strait, such use would likely lead to hard-to-replace losses of boats and personnel without meaningful effect on the projected 5,000-plus vessel invasion fleet.
During the Cold War, the crew of my boat was painfully aware that launching a torpedo nearly ensured our subsequent destruction, especially in the presence of alert air or surface ASW forces. Number or types of torpedoes is not the issue. SSNs cannot destroy enough invasion vessels to prevent China from invading Taiwan, and risking them in the attempt would be irresponsible. Historically, submarines have never had any meaningful impact on an invasion force.
Despite the implication in the caption to the photo on page 36, the failure of German U-boats to interdict the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 (also 5,000 vessels plus) had nothing to do with insufficient torpedo reloads and everything to do with virtual saturation of the access routes to the English Channel and the invasion corridors with alert and experienced Allied air and surface ASW forces equipped with huff-duff and centimetric radar that could detect snorkels and sometimes even periscopes.
The ASW environment in the Taiwan Strait will be just as inhospitable. We underestimate Chinese ASW capabilities at our peril. In the event of an invasion of Taiwan, it would be better if our SSNs sweep the seas worldwide of Chinese warships and Chinese port facilities and maritime assets. Leave attrition of the Taiwan invasion fleet to more appropriate means, such as the “attritable, all-domain, autonomous systems” Rear Admiral Gallaudet discusses.
—William Newport
Command of the Sea: Why It Is Essential to U.S. Maritime Strategy
Mahan as Geoeconomic Strategist
I was pleased to see these excellent articles in the same issue. A. T. Mahan and Julian Corbett, and to a lesser extent Halford Mackinder, laid out the principles of global sea command around the turn of the 19th century. But their teachings soon became somewhat lost.
Our naval activities in both the Spanish-American War and World War I were tactical affairs centered on localized areas, not a general command of the seas. The 1920s featured technological advances led by the likes of William Sims, Billy Mitchell, and William Moffett. But attention soon turned to tonnage considerations linked to naval armaments treaties. Focus in the 1930s was on ship design (to conform to the treaties), fleet maneuvers, and War Plan Orange, none of which had anything to do with command of the seas.
Admirals King and Nimitz did establish command of the seas in World War II but never identified it as such, and it was quickly forgotten after the war. Korea, Vietnam, and several brush-fire wars were all localized tactical events.
The Cold War produced a naval rivalry, but trade and commerce were never threatened. Finally, more than a century after Mahan and Corbett we are appreciating their ideas and attempting to apply them. It is about time.
—David A. Laster, Life Member
Recruit Medical Standards Are Out of Touch
Commander Sattler’s premise that the medical standards for incoming recruits should be relaxed in the face of service-wide recruiting shortfalls is misguided.
The primary mission of the armed forces is warfighting, not supporting an active-duty population with chronic diseases. If the services relax rules for medical waivers, a significant percentage of service members will have medical conditions that would make them “nondeployable” because of their diseases, unavailable medications while deployed, or the possible treatment complications that require monitoring.
Just because certain chronic illnesses can be managed with medication in the civilian sector does not mean this is feasible in a hostile, combat environment. The injectable psoriasis medication the author mentions predisposes the patient to infection, which could be catastrophic in a hostile jungle environment. Medications used to treat hypertension can predispose patients to dehydration, which would obviously be hazardous in desert combat. The requirement for some medication to be refrigerated is not feasible for soldiers and Marines in the field.
Many disqualifying conditions mentioned are chronic and recurrent. A soldier or Marine with a prior history of heatstroke would be at great risk of recurrence with prolonged heat exposure. A service member with gout could be incapacitated and unfit for duty for up to a week with a gout flare.
Preexisting mental health issues such as anxiety and depression can clearly recur and be exacerbated with potentially fatal consequences in soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines subjected to combat stress.
Many preexisting conditions have a significant risk of disease progression. For example, 7 percent of patients with psoriasis will develop disabling psoriatic arthritis. Osteoarthritis typically progresses despite treatment and can affect up to 30 percent of U.S. service members. Many chronic, progressive diseases may prevent service members from completing a 20-year career.
Medical standards for enlistment and induction exist for good reason. Standards should not be waived to make up for recruiting shortfalls.
—COL Daniel F. Battafarano and LTC Raymond J. Enzenauer, Medical Corps, USA (Ret.)
Erratum
In the second photo on p. 22 on the March 2024 issue, the service member launching the loitering munition is identified as a Marine. The Navy’s original caption identifies him as a member of Naval Special Warfare.
Editor's note: This article was updated to correct the spelling of David Laster's name. We regret the error.