Posted on 03/29/2002 5:48:56 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
The True Needs Of The Navy . . .And the Deepening Crisis in Naval Shipbuilding
By Loren B. Thompson
Dr. Loren B. Thompson is chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, and teaches in Georgetown University's National Security Studies Program.
The U. S. Navy is wasting away. Behind all the brave talk about transformation and network-centric warfare, the Navy's arsenal of major weapons platforms and systems continues to shrink and age. Nowhere is the decay more apparent than in the most basic measure of naval power: the number of ships in the fleet.The discouraging trends in force structure and presence are well known. A fleet that peaked at nearly 600 warships in the final decade of the Cold War has declined to barely half that size, and is headed lower. Regions where the U.S. Navy's carrier battle groups (CVBGs) traditionally maintained a continuous presence, such as Northeast Asia and the Mediterranean Sea, are now periodically left unprotected. Because of the shortage of available boats, submarine commanders routinely decline taskings from the intelligence community. And the Navy's amphibious fleet is chronically unable to meet the Marine Corps' rapid-deployment requirements.
For over a decade, policymakers from both parties and an elite group of defense "intellectuals" have sought to minimize the significance of the erosion. They have argued at various times and in various contexts that the threat has diminished; that the new ships now in the fleet are more capable than their predecessors; that the very nature of naval warfare is changing; that the Navy is transforming itself; and, most plausibly, that readiness and people should come first. Meanwhile, the decay grew deeper.
Now the Bush administration and the new DOD (Department of Defense) leaders are proffering the same arguments. The administration has requested $6 billion in its fiscal year 2003 DOD budget plan--less than one half of one percent of the overall federal budget--to build a mere five warships. Wal-Mart generates that much in sales every nine days. Americans spend a similar amount on gambling every weekend.
Like the Clinton administration, though, the Bush administration contends that the consumption accounts (also referred to as the "current readiness" accounts)--military pay, training time, operating expenses--necessarily take priority over the investment or "future readiness" accounts: procurement and RDT&E (research, development, test, and evaluation). It says it will buy more ships in the "outyears" of the current future years defense plan (FYDP)--i.e., toward the end of the 2003-2007 time frame. The Clinton administration said that, too; according to its last FYDP, eight new-construction warships would be funded in FY 2003, and eight in 2004. Now the number proposed for each of those years is five ships, roughly half of what is required to sustain a 300-ship fleet.
The elusive future in which shipbuilding is finally fixed thus continues to recede like the horizon at sea. According to one congressional estimate, the number of ships in the active fleet will decline to 268 by mid-decade even if the Navy quadruples the rate at which it is building vessels. If the size of the Navy fleet falls that low, it will be mainly because of the Clinton administration's prolonged "procurement holiday" during the 1990s, when shipbuilding rates averaged only a third of the number funded in the previous decade. But the Bush administration wants to cut the rate even further in 2003 and 2004.
Adapting to Decline
Within the Navy, planners have begun adjusting to the prospect of a fleet even smaller than projected in the last years of the Clinton administration. Plans to double annual production of the Virginia-class
nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs)--the Navy's sole remaining submarine construction program--have been deferred indefinitely. The silent service will have to make do with one new boat per year rather than two, and will try to cover the difference through a mix of forward deployments, the swapping of crews, and unprecedented extensions in the service life of older boats to 33, 35, or even 40 years.
Similar plans are being developed for the surface fleet, with all of the Navy's 27 Ticonderoga-class Aegis guided-missile cruisers (CGs) now scheduled to receive modifications that will lengthen their service lives to 40 years. Some insiders doubt the modifications will ever be funded, though. In fact, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark warned the House Armed Services Committee on 13 February that, "Funds to complete this type of modernization have not historically competed successfully against other recapitalization requirements."
If the modifications are not funded, the Aegis cruisers will either have to retire before replacements are available--accelerating the overall decline in the size of the fleet--or they will be kept in service in a state of diminished operational effectiveness. The Navy has developed its own rather bleak internal projections of what might happen to the composition of the fleet if plans to extend the service lives of the cruisers (and of the frigates now in the fleet) fail and traditional patterns of decommissioning prevail. Those projections show the number of surface combatants being cut almost in half by the end of the decade--i.e., from 116 ships in the current fleet to about 60 by 2010.
DOD officials have a ready answer to such concerns. They point out that the average vessel in today's fleet is so "new"--about 16 years of age--that a major increase in shipbuilding can safely be postponed for years to come. In fact, Secretary of the Navy Gordon R. England told congressional authorizers in February that 16 years of age "is near optimum for ships with a service life of 30 years."
Unfortunately, such statements, although technically accurate, overlook a few key points. First of all, the current seemingly youthful age of warships has been achieved primarily by retiring a large number of older vessels and living off the shipbuilding legacy of the Reagan years. The only way to keep average warship age in the same "optimum" range in future years, therefore, would be: (a) continue to rapidly decrease the size of the fleet; or (b) begin rapid-ly increasing the building of new-construction ships.
Second, a shipbuilding profile that continues to build ships at a level far below what is required to sustain the fleet size needed, as the Bush profile would, inevitably would bequeath to future administrations the opposite of the Reagan military legacy: a vast hole that must be filled by a truly massive (and possibly unachievable) increase in new-construction rates. To make matters worse, those future administrations would have to surge production while also absorbing the rising costs of readiness that would be the inevitable result of a rapidly aging fleet.
Finally, any contemporary notion of what constitutes optimum warship age has to take into account more than the rate at which metal corrodes or fatigues. It also must consider the quickened pace of innovation associated with the information revolution, which makes the electronic systems on warships that are "only" 16 years old actually antiquated by 21st-century standards. (Clark also told Congress in February that, without major modifications, the Aegis cruisers entering mid-life could not remain "operationally viable.")
The Navy's Real Needs
Most of the still rather subdued congressional "debate" about the administration's shipbuilding plans centers on the question of whether enough vessels are being bought to sustain a 300-ship fleet.
But that is the wrong question. The goal of maintaining a 300-ship fleet was not based on validated naval/military requirements but was the product of budget-driven quadrennial defense reviews (QDRs) in 1997 and 2001 that did not take into account the full range of the nation's probable 21st-century global commitments.
Although conceived by Congress as a way of rigorously determining military needs at the beginning of each new administration, the QDRs never actually achieved that purpose. Instead, they became, at least in part, complex exercises for reconciling contending bureaucratic interests within what were considered to be politically acceptable funding limits. This was particularly true of the 1997 QDR. The end results were findings and recommendations that not only seemed somewhat contrived but also were based in large part on the predispositions of the QDR memberships.
The 1997 QDR, for example, postulated a Navy force structure that would include only 50 nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), far below the number determined by any Navy, JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff), congressional, or independent private-sector analysis--but conveniently within the Clinton administration's overall defense funding parameters. The submarine force never actually fell that low, but even with 56 submarines in the active fleet the Navy had to respectfully decline hundreds of mission days in intelligence taskings annually requested by various national agencies.
By most accounts, the 2001 QDR was not quite as budget-driven as its 1997 predecessor, but it also was not quite as well-organized--in part, of course, because the new administration was starting from a blank sheet of paper. As the review was approaching its conclusion in mid-summer, the Navy was reluctantly preparing plans--caused by the projected shortfall in shipbuilding funds--to cut the number of aircraft carriers in the fleet from 12 to only 10, or perhaps 11. Within two months the folly of imposing such reductions was underscored by the president's decision to use aircraft carriers to protect the U.S. East and West Coasts in the immediate wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Less than one month later, the key role played by aircraft carriers in the air strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda targets in Afghanistan during Phase One of the war against international terrorism confirmed yet again that the Navy's (and nation's) real need for the foreseeable future is not 10 or 11 carriers but at least 15--the number long postulated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their testimony before Congress--and probably more.
Last-minute budget adjustments enabled the Navy to preserve an active force of 12 carriers, but that is hardly the end of the story. The service's internal calculations of the force structure it needs to meet all of the warfighting and peacetime-presence requirements likely to be imposed on it by the president, the secretary of defense, and the regional naval/military CINCs (commanders in chief) have consistently validated the need for a fleet about 20 percent larger than the 300-ship fleet recommended by the QDRs.
The Navy's true needs were laid out in credible detail two years ago, when the Navy itself completed a congressionally mandated study of active-fleet requirements through 2030. The Navy study--completed more than a year before the start of the war against international terrorism, it is worth emphasizing--postulates a need for 360 ships, including 15 carriers, 134 surface combatants, and 68 SSNs--not including four Trident nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) being converted into an SSGN (nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine) configuration.
Sustaining a fleet of the size validated by the Navy study, and by subsequent JCS testimony, would require, on average, the annual construction of more than 10 combatant ships--a number the Bush administration's current FYDP does not contemplate reaching until fiscal year 2007.
Because the aforementioned study was, as noted earlier, completed before the start of the war against international terrorism, a new blank-sheet-of-paper analysis might now conclude that more than 360 warships are needed to meet all of the Navy's likely worldwide commitments. That would be true, though, even if the Navy were satisfied with its original estimates, because the operational reality is that the huge inventory of submarines and surface combatants funded during the Reagan defense buildup of the early 1980s will begin retiring at a very fast pace in the next decade. Unless the rate of new ship construction is raised almost immediately, it may never be possible to rebuild the active fleet to the size needed, and it would be extremely difficult to maintain even the much smaller fleet endorsed by the two quadrennial defense reviews.
What Went Wrong?
So, despite the considerable increases in defense spending this year, and projected for the outyears of the current FYDP, the outlook for naval shipbuilding is bleak. That is not what most defense analysts, both in and out of government, expected from a president who less than two years ago had pledged to "rebuild the military" after becoming commander in chief. What went wrong?
The most formidable obstacle to fixing the current shipbuilding problem is the accumulated fiscal challenges facing the Bush administration when it took office--challenges that were the inevitable product of the previous decade of depressed defense spending, particularly in procurement and RDT&E. The Bush administration inherited so many unpaid bills and urgent obligations that, even with the sizable increases in the military budget last year and projected for the next several years as well it is hard-pressed to find additional money for the investment accounts.
In fact, because the average age of the Navy's 4,000 aircraft is--for the first time in history--even older than the average age of the Navy's warships, the service's senior leadership felt it had to use what little new investment funding became available to fix the naval aviation problem first.
A second difficulty is that the war on terrorism has amplified the propensity of Pentagon policymakers to make readiness their top priority. About half of the administration's proposed 2003 increase in Navy funding is allocated to the service's readiness accounts. Unfortunately, one of the reasons why the cost of readiness is spiraling upward is that aging weapons systems are harder and more expensive to maintain--a point Secretary England emphasized in his February congressional testimony. By failing to invest adequately in new warships, though, the proposed budget will increase future readiness costs that much more and reduce the availability of the modernization money needed to fix the underlying problem--a budgetary dynamic that former Under Secretary of Defense Jacques Gansler aptly called "the death spiral."
A third problem, at least in the view of the Bush administration, is that every major category of warship in the Navy's current inventory is in transition to a next-generation system. England argued in his congressional testimony on the Navy's 2003 budget that the designs for the Virginia-class SSN and the LPD 17 amphibious transport dock are not yet sufficiently mature to justify a near-term boost in production rates. Development of the next-generation destroyer is lagging even more--in part, though, because of a last-minute restructuring of the DD 21 program by the new administration.
A fourth but more conjectural problem is that the current DOD leadership is perceived, correctly or incorrectly, to have a decided narrow-minded preference for "transformational" advanced-technology systems--e.g., long-range stealth aircraft carrying a heavy load of standoff precision-strike missiles, and space-based systems of all types--rather than such "antiquated" platforms as surface ships or even submarines. The 2003-2007 shipbuilding profile is consistent with that view.
It also is possible, of course, that the Navy may have undercut its own interests by focusing too heavily in investment plans and by making too many public pronouncements about the transformational dynamics of network-centric warfare. Many defense policymakers--in DOD, at the White House, and on Capitol Hill--are still only barely aware of how, and how much, the role of warships has changed because of the Navy's shift to littoral warfare and away from the "bluewater" open-ocean focus of the Cold War era. The growing importance of submarines in intelligence gathering, the longer reach of today's carrier air wings operating in international waters, and the impending migration of battle-group air defense to surface combatants all have received little attention outside the Navy itself. If policymakers do not fully understand how and why ships are relevant to the conduct of not only naval but also land warfare in the 21st century, then the fact that those ships are being synergistically "networked" may not be reason enough to create and sustain the support needed for bigger shipbuilding budgets.
What Should Be Done?
Navy leaders take the optimistic position, at least publicly, that the current shipbuilding plan is not as deficient as it seems because numerous other initiatives are being funded that also contribute to the fleet's overall warfighting capabilities--e.g., the Trident conversions, service-life extensions, carrier refuelings, the forward deployment of additional ships, and various networking innovations. If those arguments had not been preceded by the long procurement holiday of the previous decade, they would be more credible. Today, however, fairly or unfairly, the current rationale is difficult to distinguish from the earlier excuses offered by the Clinton administration. And the net effect is the same: a smaller, older fleet that is rapidly losing its ability to meet all of the global commitments already assigned, much less those of the more complex new world of the 21st century.
It seems abundantly clear at this point that, if Congress does not add significant new funding to the short- and long-term shipbuilding plan proposed by the Bush administration, the number of warships in the Navy's active fleet will continue to decline. There are--fortunately, from the viewpoint of Navy supporters--four reasonable and relatively straightforward steps the Congress can take to prevent a further erosion in ship numbers.
First, it can increase, to three new-construction ships annually through FY 2007, the number of DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyers in the current FYDP. Secretary England said in his congressional testimony that that option would be preferable to other add-ons that Congress might now be considering. Moreover, the Aegis destroyers are expected to assume more of the fleet air-defense burden in the future so that air wings can focus on strike warfare. Insisting on the annual building of three DDGs until the next-generation DD(X) is ready for series production would provide a hedge against further delays in that program while stabilizing combatant numbers and shipyard workloads.
Second, Congress could require the Navy (and the DOD leadership) to stick to the previously announced plans for modernizing the submarine fleet. Proposals to extend the service life of aging SSNs and/or to rotate crews overseas are tempting but potentially dangerous palliatives that would do little more than pass on to future administrations the cost of building and sustaining a submarine fleet adequate to meet future national (not Navy) needs. For that same reason, Congress also might well direct the administration to increase--to two ships per year after 2005, when design features are fully defined--the build rate of Virginia-class SSNs, and insist that funding of long-lead items to support that goal are included in the administration's FY 2004 and 2005 budget proposals.
Third, Congress could bring some stability to the recapitalization of the amphibious fleet by increasing the rate of production for the LPD 17s and/or authorizing a ninth LHD (amphibious assault ship). Some critics might contend that the Navy should begin developing a more "transformational" amphibious ship, rather than buying another LHD. But it seems clear that, insofar as the Navy's shipbuilding accounts are concerned, transformation has become more of an excuse for delay than a well-considered rationale for action--and the result has been endless turbulence in the nation's private-sector shipyards. With a next-generation carrier, submarine, destroyer, and amphibious transport already under way, the Navy has little if any need to initiate yet another new class of warships. What it does need is to build more ships.
Under its constitutional mandate "to provide for the common defense" Congress also should ask whether the reasoning behind the Bush administration's plan to delay construction of the next-generation aircraft carrier from 2006 to 2007 is really valid. The administration contends that the extra year would facilitate the introduction of new technologies into the carrier's design, but the same logic could be used to delay the ship by two, or three, or four years. By delaying even one year, the administration increases the danger that a new carrier will not be available to replace the retiring USS Enterprise in 2013. The whole point of the administration's own "spiral development" concept, though, is to avoid such delays. In that context, it seems clear that the administration's current shipbuilding plan is out of step with its own acquisition philosophy.
It is worth pointing out that all of the above changes could be accomplished while still keeping the Navy's shipbuilding account at less than one half of one percent of the federal budget. If DOD decision makers respond that one half of one percent is too much to preserve the current U.S. global maritime dominance, Congress might be well advised to take that as a signal that the time has come to begin "fencing off" money for future shipbuilding programs, if only to insulate them from a capricious political system.
The Navy, and the nation, cannot afford to go through another decade like the last one.
Go Navy!
The day after my ship (CG)returned from our "Westpac." I had the chance to talk to a contractor who's team had come aboard to make a "study." Turns out the "study" was no more than a fishing expedition to gather data for the already planned "crew reduction."
The Clinton administration did as much as possible to destroy the military as they could get away with! Does anyone here remember Cohen's "Quadrenial Review"? You know, that's where the DoD, led by Cohen, had the entire military jumping through hoops to prove a bunch of foregone unrealistic conclusions?
Another thing you all need to know is: Those "modifications" were basically being implemented to change the configuration of the Cruisers to allow women to be aboard...not to enhance warfighting capabilities!
And one final note: I was aboard an Carrier (CV-62) during it's SLEP (Sea Life Extension Program) in Philly Naval Shipyard... The program was designed to "extend the life of the carrier for another 30 years...CV-62 (USS Independence) was "retired" after only another 11 years. (Just another 800 million...so no big deal..right?)
ALL CRUISERS...ALL THE TIME!
Well, the sea-shore rotation rates will be better ...
Did you happen notice the air support in Afganistan coming from the carriers? As for subs, I believe they are still the absolute deterent for the MAD policy. Bombers can be shot down; missile silos can be taken out with first strike. But the bad guys know we have those silent nation killers out there, but never knowing where they are. And yes, MAD is still a viable and needed policy. Cold war over my rear, China and North Korea are re-fueling it, and Russia runs hot and cold, not to mention the breakaway Soviet states with nukes or the middle east.
Ever hear of UAVs--they are the plane of the future (if you'll remember, one was already successful in lighting off a hellfire missile to wack the Taliban)...as for the boats, let this former "Boomer" sailor assure you that there is scant need to keep 18 Ohio class SSBNs maintained and on station. I'll withhold judgement on the Seawolf SSNs until I know more about them, but I am having a hard time rectifying both it and the Virginia class when it would seem that either can serve the future.
Yes, and I agree they should be further developed and deployed. However, as an ex aviation sailor, I don't see them replacing the on scene agility of manned aircraft nor the payload any time soon.
As for subs, I don't know what the optimal number would be nor the better class, but I still believe in their deterence factor in general.
UAV--less avionic equipment needed, no pilot needed, no ejection system needed, no seat needed, no canopy--meaning more streamlined architecture, less weight, more fuel and more ordnance payload, and best of all--NO LOSS OF PILOT LIFE! The NAVAIR of the future is here...Top Gun school in the year 2020 is going to be on a desktop somewhere!
Crew was around 13, created a lot of headaches for the enemy, being a threat to subs and surface vessels.
Cheap to build, man, maintain. Not to mention the loss of a few crews would be miniscule compared to a CV, or the
damage these proposed boats could inflict.
They don't have the pizazz of the "deep water" vessels, but wouldn't have the navigation problems in geographically
restricted waters, either.
The birthplace of the US Navy is claimed by Whitehall, NY, on Lake Champlain. Benedict Arnold built gunships which
threatened the British re-enforcements from Montreal/Quebec, so they had to stop and build and battle (they won).
But then, since this was prior to global warming, a real winter set in and the attack on the fledging rebel army
was thwarted for the season.
I'm having difficulty visualizing a dogfight with a UAV. Walk me through it.
Today's (and future) threats (to the nation and Navy) are (listed in order):
(1) nuke-tipped ICBMS from rogue nations.
(2) terrorists and terror states.
(3) ability of quasi-first world nations gaining superpower status.
IMHO, these are the real threats. The third threat--say, China becoming a blue water navy with enough submarines and combat surface ships to affect commerce, would warrant what the author of this thread advocates; but the other two threats pose the most hazzard to us as a nation. We need a Navy that can sit off the coast of a Korea, Iraq, Iran, or even a Pakistan and can knock down an ICBM aimed at our shores. We need a Navy that can deliver small teams of special forces to knock out terror cells. We need a Navy to do spot checks on shipping in mid-ocean to ensure that cargo containers only contain cargo. But we do not need 14 anacronistic carriers or 18 SSBNs--IOW, we need the finest cruisers, destroyers and frigates the defense budget can obtain.
... "Trent Lott is the most recent example of someone who's tearing down the navy. He demanded (and got) a purely porkbarrel unwanted, un-needed, and unmanned (CVN-77) aircraft carrier to be built in his homestate--for Ingalls Shipbuilding."
I wasn't aware that any CVNs could currently be built anywhere but Newport News, Virginia??? I do think the SSBN conversion to SSGN of the four Trident hulls is a good idea, and cheap at just a billion dollars. I would like to see 15 full CBGs though, something tells me that Tomahawk cruise missles are not the cheapest way to put ordinance on target after enemy air defenses are suppressed. Ah, for the 600 ship Navy again...
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