DepSecDef Work Is Right - Partly

Followers of this blog know that ComNavOps has nothing but disdain for former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work.  Work is responsible for the zealous promotion of the horribly flawed LCS, the stifling of opposition, the promulgation of the idiotic Third Offset Strategy, and a litany of other misguided actions.  I consider Work to be a grave threat to the security of the United States.  That said, I’m now going to turn around and give Work credit where credit is due.  Breaking Defense website has an article with several quotes from Work that are perceptive and wise and with which I agree completely.

Here’s a series of quotes from the article (1).  They speak for themselves.  The emphasis is mine.

“[The United States military] can’t build up war-ready forces to deter Russia and China while engaging in non-stop operations around the world, the way we have since 1991.”

“As the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon struggle to restore the US military’s readiness for war, Work said, they must avoid two great traps. First, he said, we can’t let the insatiable demands of the theater combatant commanders (COCOMs) siphon off forces from the vital task of deterring rival nation-states, above all Russia and China. Second, he said, we can’t let well-intentioned enthusiasm to build a bigger force – as President Trump and House Republicans have promised – come at the expense of readiness and modernization for the military we already have.”

“During the Cold War, Work said, US policymakers had clarity about the military’s missions. Deterring the Soviet Union by standing ready to fight it – primarily with conventional forces in Europe, but with nukes if necessary – was unambiguously number one. Readiness to respond to lesser crises such as Vietnam came second. “Shaping” operations to advance peace, stability, and democracy around the world came a distant third. In the years of US unipolar dominance after the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, those priorities reversed, until shaping become the dominant mission

“In fact, the way the Defense Department works, COCOM commanders could make unlimited demands without paying any of the cost, …”

“Cut presence before cutting maintenance, for God’s sake!” fumed Work.”

Compare those quotes to ComNavOps’ statements in a recent post about the Combatant Commanders (see, “Combatant Commanders and OpTempo”).

“The entire Combatant Commander setup is geared towards inflated requests, reverse incentives, and leads to premature wear and tear on the military.  There is nothing wrong with having a CC as a regional subject matter expert but having them divorced from the budgetary, maintenance, and readiness ramifications of their asset requests is a flawed system.”

Work’s observation about shaping having taken precedence over readiness is particularly astute.  We have forgotten that the primary mission of the military is to fight wars, particularly peer wars.  Deterrence, shaping, presence, or whatever other term you want to use is fine as a lesser adjunct to readiness but not as a priority over it.  By losing sight of that main mission, we have allowed Russia and China to make significant progress towards military parity and eventual superiority.

The various military leaders, uniformed and civilian, make the right noises about readiness (remember CNO Greenert’s “Warfighting First” tenet?) but their actions belie the words.  We have yet to make more than minor, half-hearted attempts at restoring combat readiness.

We must return combat readiness to preeminence over all other concerns.

Work also correctly notes the debilitating effect of the unbridled requests from the CoComs.  The Combatant Commander model of force allocation is horribly broken and is devastating the Navy.  We need to abolish the power wielded by the Combatant Commanders, say no to most of their requests, and return readiness to a higher priority than deployment.

Unfortunately, Work being Work, he then proceeds to completely misunderstand the relationship between size of the military and the costs of modernization.

“The US can’t afford to modernize its military and increase its size at the same time, said the former deputy secretary of defense , Bob Work.”

He’s dead wrong.  Of course we can increase size while also modernizing.  We have more than enough money if we would spend it wisely.  The Ford class was a gazillion dollar cluster-spend that gives us no more capability than the Nimitz class.  The LCS was a complete and utter waste – a throwaway of an entire class of ship.  The Zumwalt is an absolute embarrassment with no ammo to fulfill its designed intent.  The F-35 is an aerial train wreck that is decimating the entire military.  The Marine Corps is off the reservation with its insatiable desire to become a third air force.  We’re on, what, our tenth set of uniforms for the Navy in the last five years?  I can go on almost endlessly but you get the idea.  Spend wisely and we can modernize and increase numbers.

Compounding the bad, Work then lists the things that we need to invest in.  I won’t bore you with the list but, predictably, it’s almost all technology, little of it increases our firepower, none of it improves readiness or numbers, and most of it is highly questionable.

Former DepSecDef Work had at least a few good ideas.  We need to restore combat readiness to our top priority, largely abandon “shaping” efforts, and neuter the CoComs.  In short, we need to our military’s focus to its primary mission which is to defeat peer opponents.

_______________________________________

(1)Breaking Defense website, “‘At War Next Week’: Bob Work On Readiness, Modernization, & COCOMs”, Sydney J. Freedberg, Jr., 7-Nov-2017,

https://breakingdefense.com/2017/11/at-war-next-week-bob-work-on-readiness-modernization-cocoms/

Reversing the Trend

A recent anonymous comment pointed out that while we have been focused on fighting third world terrorists for the last decade or so, our peer competitors have been developing advanced electronic warfare capabilities, new families of armored vehicles, new cluster munitions, and so on.  We lost focus on what our military is supposed to be doing which is preparing for high end combat.  ComNavOps has unceasingly criticized military leadership for allowing our readiness and combat capability to atrophy.  However, ComNavOps is nothing, if not fair and so it is time to note and acknowledge the first glimmer of the beginning of the reversal of that trend.

We’ve noted several instances of the Army recognizing high end combat shortcomings and beginning to take action to rectify the situation.  The Army is currently far ahead of the other services in correcting the situation. 

That said, the Navy is also beginning, just barely, to recognize and correct the deficiencies and I would be remiss not to take a moment to list a few of those efforts and acknowledge them as baby steps in the right direction. 

LCS/Frigate – The Navy finally terminated the LCS and has initiated a frigate program to take the place of the LCS as the small combatant.  Despite ComNavOps’ reservations about the usefulness of a frigate, it is still a step towards a more capable surface force.

LRASM – The Long Range Anti-Ship Missile is a long overdue replacement for the venerable and obsolete Harpoon.  This will greatly increase our anti-surface lethality.

Manning/Tempo/Training – The Navy identified insufficient manning as a contributor to the recent collisions and groundings and noted that excessive operational tempo and the concomitant lack of training were also factors.  Having identified these factors, the Navy is saying all the right things about correcting them but has yet to implement any significant corrective actions.  We’ll have to wait to see what, if anything, develops from this.

Tanker – The MQ-25 unmanned tanker program will alleviate the dependence on F-18 Hornets as tankers.

VPM – The Virginia class submarine Payload Module will add additional Tomahawk cruise missile capacity to the submarines.  This will help offset the pending loss of the SSGN cruise missile subs as they retire without replacement.  To be clear, this a poor solution but it is a recognition of the impact of the loss of 600+ Tomahawk launch cells and an attempt, if a suboptimal one, to mitigate that loss.

Hornet Upgrades – The Navy is adding IRST, conformal fuel tanks, and other upgrades to the F-18 Super Hornet.  These are welcome, if long overdue, additions that will allow us to get the maximum out of the Hornet that it has to give.

These are all peripheral items that will have no significant impact on the overarching problems (inept leadership, inappropriate fleet composition, huge maintenance issues,  runaway costs, quality issues, tactical atrophy, lack of warfighting focus, etc.) plaguing the Navy but they are, potentially, the first steps to reversing our decaying lethality, firepower, and readiness trends.

Force Multipliers

There is a growing consensus (heck, it’s an acknowledged fact!) that the U.S. military is overworked, poorly maintained, undertrained, and unready for combat – in other words, a hollow force.  People will debate the degree of that hollowness but rarely the reality of it.

The solution espoused by military leaders is, predictably, increased funding.  Lack of funding, they say, is at the root of maintenance issues and precludes modernization.  Of course, this flies in the face of all data and evidence.  Defense spending is at an all time high while readiness is at historic lows.  Thus, funding does not seem to be either the problem or the solution!

Civilian military leaders espouse networking as the solution.  In the broadest sense, this is the Third Offset Strategy which postulates battlefield superiority thanks to networking, data links, surveillance, and unmanned vehicles of all types.  Of course, the very foundation of this Strategy is suspect in the face of enemy electronic and cyber warfare activities as demonstrated in Ukraine and the pages of this blog.

Casual observers espouse bigger, longer range missiles as the solution.  Some see a large buy of frigates as the answer, at least for the Navy.

And so it goes.  The list of combat readiness solutions is long but they almost all share one common attribute: they’re all “things” that must be purchased which, again, leads back to funding as the solution.  However, as we just stated, funding is neither the problem nor the solution.

Okay, so if funding is not the solution, what is?

What can restore our combat readiness without requiring massive funding? 

The answer is simple:  fundamentals.  Fundamentals are not just a readiness solution, they’re actually force multipliers.

The Navy and, more generally, the military, talks about force multipliers such as the Third Offset Strategy which theorizes that vast networks of shared data will greatly enhance our military effectiveness over and above the mere capabilities of the individual ships, aircraft, and weapons.  You know what?  It would.  The Third Offset Strategy would be a force multiplier, and a potent one at that, IF it worked perfectly. 

Therein lies the rub.  It won’t work perfectly.  In fact, it will barely work at all.  It will fail for two broad reasons:

1. Inherent weaknesses
2. It can be taken away from us

The kind of vast networking that the Third Offset depends on is inherently unstable and unworkable.  We see this today in our day to day lives and we see this in the Navy’s day to day workings.  In our daily lives we see the inherent fragility of even simple networks.  We all experience network failures at home and at work.  Networks fail “spontaneously” on a regular basis.  In addition, they’re inherently too complex to maintain.  They require highly trained people to operate, maintain, and troubleshoot them.  These people are rare.  In war, networks will fail and we won’t have sufficient numbers of trained personnel to restore and maintain them.

Consider a microcosm example of the kind of network the Third Offset envisions, the ALIS software that is supposed to run the entire F-35 maintenance and operations.  You know that ALIS is supposed to monitor the aircraft, predict failures, and reduce maintenance but did you know that it is also supposed to manage the logistics for the entire F-35 fleet, manage spare parts inventory, and conduct mission planning, among other responsibilities?  How is that working out?  That’s right, it’s an abysmal failure and that’s just for one aircraft.  The Third Offset envisions scaling this up to the entire military.  How is that going to work if we can’t even get it to work for one aircraft?  The answer is obvious, it won’t work.

I can list example after example of current military mini-networks that are failing.  This simply proves that the kind of vast, all-encompassing network that the Third Offset Strategy depends on is inherently not viable.

Worse, the Third Offset Strategy can be taken away from us.  It can be taken away by the enemy and it can be taken away by ourselves.

The enemy can take away the Third Offset’s foundation – networks - via electronic countermeasures, jamming, signal disruption, cyber attacks, hacking, false signal generation, etc.  The Russians in Ukraine are giving us a field lesson in the power and impact of basic electronic warfare and it’s a lesson we should heed.  The susceptibility of a network to attack and disruption is fairly obvious and I won’t belabor it any further. 

The Third Offset can also be taken away from us by ourselves through our own incompetencies.  We see this every day.  We’ve lost our basic seamanship skills to the point that warships are colliding with other ships, basic anchoring evolutions are beyond us, and ships are running aground.  It does no good to have a Third Offset Strategy that produces an opportunity for military success if we don’t have the individual ship and personnel skills to execute the required actions.  Again, this is fairly obvious and I won’t belabor it.

More generally, it is folly to depend on a strategy that can be taken away from us.  What we need are capabilities and, even better, force multipliers that can’t be taken away no matter what the enemy does.

So, again, what are these magic force multipliers that enhance our capabilities and are immune to enemy actions?  Well, they’re easy, simple, and obvious.  They’re the fundamentals that a military and a Navy should have but that we have lost.  Here they are,

Training – We don’t’ know how to effectively use the equipment we already have and yet we think the solution is to acquire more advanced equipment.  It’s been reported that the officers entering the Navy’s new surface warfare “Top Gun” school are having to undergo remedial training on the basic capabilities of the very equipment they work with every day.  They are inadequately trained.  Our officers don’t even know how to get the maximum out of what we have.  We’ve lost the ability to even conduct basic seamanship exercises such as sailing, anchoring and determining our position. 

Aegis has become degraded fleet wide.  We no longer know how to maintain and operate Aegis to get the maximum out of it.

With sufficient training, we could instantly “double” our capabilities just by understanding the capabilities of what we have and fully utilizing them. 

The training issue goes back to focus (see below).  Our potential training time is being spent on non-warfighting activities. 

Tactics – Good tactics can make up for a lot of substandard equipment.  The F4F Wildcat of early WWII may be the classic example.  On paper, the Wildcat was badly outclassed by the Japanese Zero but the pilots developed tactics that allowed the Wildcat to succeed.  Similarly, we currently have ships, aircraft, sensors, and weapon systems that we don’t know how to use to their maximum effectiveness.  In large measure, this is because of our set-piece, scripted exercises that don’t allow the participants to exercise any creativity.  How can we find the best ways to use what we have if we can’t “play” with them?

We need to begin with an intensive historical study of tactics then move on to intensive study of our enemy’s equipment and tactics and, finally, create realistic, free form exercises to explore our current tactics.  Failure in exercises should be encouraged!  Failure defines the boundaries.  Does this sound a lot like the original Top Gun program?  It should!  They had the right idea. 

Hand in hand with this is the need to create standing opposing force training units (OpFor) whose only job is to study enemy technology and tactics and pass that information on to the fleet using the Top Gun model.  Further, we need a different OpFor for each potential opponent.  The Russians won’t fight like the Chinese so why would we have a single unit try to emulate both?  The cost of an OpFor is miniscule compared to the overall Navy budgt.  We can afford as many as we need.

The Top Gun Model Had The Right Idea

Effective tactics can enable us to get far more performance out of our equipment than is currently possible.

Focus – A world class athlete focuses 100% on his sport.  We need to focus on warfighting to the exclusion of all else.  We need to stop focusing on gender equality, sensitivity training, green energy, transgender assimilation, new uniforms every other year, zero-defect witchhunts, etc.  Every hour of the day must be spent on some aspect of warfighting.  To this end, we also need to stop treating the military as just another branch of the government, subject to the same social demands and laws/rights.  The military must be recognized as exempt from the usual social and legal requirements.  If women in combat is not efficient then women must be excluded from combat and the military must be excluded from gender equity laws and norms.  The military must be exempt from social and legal requirements.  A military governed by social requirements is a military that is sub-optimal.

Focus also includes running every decision Navy leadership makes through the filter of “will it enhance our combat effectiveness?”.  If it won’t, then we shouldn’t do it.  It really is that simple.

Pure, simple, warfighting focus can hugely increase our current effectiveness.

There you have it.  Training, tactics, and focus are the fundamentals that can act as huge force multipliers and at no cost, on a relative basis.  We need to return to these fundamentals.

CNO's Focus on Peace

CNO Greenert is a prolific writer and speaker.  Unfortunately, he is also a prolific purveyor of pacifistic policies (a little alliteration, there).

Greenert has authored another of his frequent Proceedings articles (1).  This one espouses the global networked navy, a variation of the 1000-ship Navy idea.  He describes a loose network of navies that form a global force for good (couldn’t resist that one) and whose individual members come and go as their individual national interests presumably come and go relative to specific issues.

Aside from the obvious problem of trying to count on network members who may or may not participate depending on what the issue of the moment is, the main problem is that this concept is dependent on a group of navies that are, frankly, not very capable.  While this may be fine for dealing with pirates or providing humanitarian assistance on a small scale, it fails utterly when it comes to actual combat against  even a moderately capable enemy. 

This focus by CNO Greenert illustrates his main failing.  He is a peacetime, peaceful activity oriented leader.  We've previously discussed his failure to follow his own tenets (see, "CNO's Tenets - Walking or Just Talking?").  His focus is on the very low end of the naval mission spectrum.  He wants the LCS because it’s a smaller ship that won’t intimidate the navies of other countries and can better engage with them and their small vessels (he has actually stated that).  The Pacific Pivot seems to consist of sending LCS’s to Singapore.  He wants generic platforms that can accept any payload (we’ve already debunked that idea - see, "Payloads Over Platforms?") which is an accounting approach to combat rather than a warfighting approach.  He’s sacrificing ship maintenance, flight hours, and readiness in favor of humanitarian assistance.  He’s focused on building JHSVs, MLPs, AFSBs, etc. – and counting them as warships! – rather than MCMs, combat capable frigates, strike cruisers, and whatnot.  If push comes to shove, he’s already indicated that he’ll retire a carrier rather than halt LCS production (or the LCS follow on).  I can go on but you get the idea and you know the litany as well as I do.



The Navy Uncaged?



While peacetime activities make up 98% of the Navy’s tasking, it’s the CNO’s job to feed and care for the gorilla that only gets let out of its cage 2% of the time.  Do that and the 98% will take care of itself.  Fail to do that and the 2% will not take care of itself.  Instead, the Navy will find itself lacking and in desperate trouble when we need the gorilla and find we have only a tiny, but cute and cuddly monkey.



The Navy desperately needs a warrior as CNO.

(1) US Naval Institute Proceedings, “Forging a Global Network of Navies”, Adm. Johathan Greenert, USN and RAdm. James Foggo III, USN, May 2014, p.22

War? What's That?

It’s been so long since the Navy engaged in combat that they’ve forgotten what war really is.  Now, before any of you jump on me for forgetting about the Viet Nam war aviation strikes or Operation Praying Mantis or whatever your favorite example is, recognize that I’m talking about two-sided war where the enemy gets a vote and fights back – not the one-sided bombing exercises that have occasionally cropped up. 

Carriers parked off the coast of Viet Nam or Korea or launching sorties during Desert Storm does not constitute naval combat.  Again, before anyone jumps on me, I’m not demeaning the efforts of the naval pilots who risked, and sometimes gave, their lives.  I have nothing but respect and admiration for their courage and skill.  Objectively, though, those missions were performed in relatively benign environments other than the presence of surface-to-air missiles and AAA directly over the targets. 

Combat involving ships has not occurred for quite some time.  We have not had to fight our way into launch position for carriers, fight off enemy air or missile attacks, deal with capable enemy surface ships, operate in submarine infested waters, or conduct an opposed landing since WWII. 

The Navy has forgotten what combat is and it shows in the current ship and aircraft designs.  We’ve discussed the shortcomings in ship design – how ships are no longer designed and built to take damage and continue fighting.  The lack of armor, redundancy, and separation as well as inadequate manning show that the Navy has forgotten the reality of combat. 

What will combat be like?  Supposedly, we train for it all the time so we must know what it will like, right?  Wrong.  We’ve already discussed the nearly useless, setpiece exercises that pass for training today. 

Combat is going to be chaotic with poorly performing weapons (on both sides) which will lead to much closer combat than anyone anticipates.  Our anti-ship missiles are not going to sink ships with flawless ease.  Our Aegis/Standard system is not going to blot aircraft and missiles from the sky with deadly precision.  We’re not going to detect and destroy submarines a hundred miles from our carrier and amphibious groups.  Instead, we’ll find that aircraft will penetrate our defenses with surprising regularity.  Missile attacks will result in many leakers, revealing our inadequate point defense weapons.  Missile exchanges with opposing ships will prove to be mainly a waste of missiles and we’ll find ourselves closing to gun range and regretting our single 5” guns.  Submarines will pop up way too close and, more often than not, our first detection will be a torpedo in the water, inbound.





USS Vincennes - Every Advantage, Total Chaos

 Combat is going to be far more like the naval battles around Guadalcanal than it will be like Star Wars.  Oh come on, now.  How can you say that?  We have AEW, long range radars, satellites, GPS, UAVs, and more.  We’re not going to find ourselves engaged in up close, fumbling in the dark type engagements.  Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we’re going to experience.  One of the major flaws in our training and thinking is the assumption that our communications, GPS, radar, and, for that matter, all of our electronics will remain magically unaffected during combat.  What we’re going to find is that we will fight in a heavy jamming environment, our GPS will be unreliable, radar detection ranges will be a fraction of what they are in peacetime, communications will be difficult, confused, and sporadic, and we’ll encounter lots of decoys and false targets.  All of this will leave us with no clear picture of our surroundings, the enemy positions, or even our own positions.  We’ll be unsure what targets are real, whether real targets are friendly or neutral forces, and where our own forces are and what they’re doing.  Because of the uncertainty, we’ll hold fire until we can get positive ID which will lead to engagements happening at far closer ranges than we now anticipate or even surprise engagements at very close range.

Don’t believe me?  Look at the few examples of combat or near-combat over the decades since WWII. 

Despite a vast network of AEW, scouting, air cover, and Aegis radar, the Vincennes incident showed a highly trained ship totally overtaken by chaos, confusion, and panic.  Enemy small boats penetrated to gun range and despite dozens or hundreds of 5” rounds fired, we hit none of the boats.  And, as you all know, we managed to shoot down a civilian airliner. 

The Stark was surprised despite the same advantages of unhindered peacetime detection and surveillance. 

The Port Royal and Guardian both grounded due to faulty navigation during peacetime.  It’s only going to be worse during combat when GPS is disrupted.

Our submarines seem to suffer from a tendency to collide with commercial ships.  And that’s without the confusion of combat!

The Gulf of Tonkin incident of 2, 4-Aug-1964 demonstrated a complete lack of situational awareness, especially on 4-Aug, with many false sightings and firings on non-existent targets.

There have been several incidents of Phalanx CIWS accidentally firing on friendly ships and aircraft.  Again, this is confusion and mistakes during peacetime.  Combat will only be far, far worse.

Desert Storm and the more recent Iraq war have had multiple examples of fatal friendly fire.  Will naval forces fare any better in combat?

The Air Force managed to shoot down two friendly helos while enforcing a no-fly zone despite the helos being fully authorized to be where they were.  Will we experience less confusion in combat?

Grenada was a debacle from start to finish.  Confusion was the main attribute of the operation.

There are some constants of naval combat (or combat in general) that transcend time and technology.  One of these is the absolute confusion and chaos of combat.  Another is the historically abysmal performance of weapons when first subjected to combat.  Linked to that is the historically poor performance of commanders when first exposed to combat.  We’ve talked about lessons learned and forgotten but the sad reality is that until the Navy receives a bloody nose, or worse, in combat, we’re not going to design, build, or train for combat.  We’re a peacetime Navy that has forgotten how to fight.

Pivot to the Pacific???  I’d like to see the Navy pivot to combat.

The Business of the Navy

An anonymous reader made a great comment and posed a question in the Naval Guns post that warrants a post of its own to answer.  The relevant portion of the comment was,

“Given that there will be very limited quantities of 155mm LRLAP ammunition actually procured, you have to wonder what advantage the full size AGS has over AGS Lite, other than a higher ROF [ed.: rate of fire].”

 

The comment correctly points out that the AGS has only a single, very limited use ammunition (for shore fire) and that the AGS Lite (AGS-L) is just a marketing proposal, at this point.  Nevertheless, the question as to what the advantage is of the AGS over the AGS-L has an illuminating answer.  It has nothing to do with ROF or tactical employment.  The answer is that the AGS has the overwhelming advantage, from the Navy’s perspective, of being fully automated from the strike down of ammo to operation of the mount.  The AGS-L would require a good deal more manning.

Reduced manning is the new Holy Grail of the Navy.  Why?  Because the Navy is no longer in the business of warfighting.  The Navy is now in the business of being a business that builds ships as its product and reason for existence.  The obsessive desire to build ships even to the detriment of warfighting capability, as we've previously discussed, means that construction budgets must be constantly increased and Navy leadership has identified manning, specifically reductions in manning, as one of the more obvious and easy sources of freeing up additional funds for construction.



AGS - Good Weapon or Good Business?



Over the last few decades we’ve seen a host of business-based initiatives and programs spew forth from the minds of Navy leadership.  These programs have been about efficiency, synergy, re-organization, cost effectiveness, six-sigma, diversity, etc.  You all know the litany.  The Navy bought into the flawed idea that a warfighting organization can be run like a commercial business.

I’m not going to further delve into the pitfalls of running a combat organization like a business because, frankly, I think the problems are obvious to everyone except Navy leadership.

The key point to take away from this post is that the Navy’s procurement, weapons programs, and planning is being driven by business concepts instead of warfighting considerations.  Which is better: the AGS or the AGS-L?  I don’t know but I do know that the decision should not be based on accounting.  Select one or the other because of combat effectiveness.

Before we turn this into strictly an AGS discussion, remember that this type of flawed business-based decision making is being applied to all aspects of the Navy.  The Navy exists to fight not to make a profit.  Warfighting decisions will often be incompatible with business practices.  So be it.  We’ve got close to 400 Admirals.  You’d think a few of them would realize this.

War Games

As regular readers know, ComNavOps loves history and the lessons that history offers to those who will take the time to heed them.  Along that line, the current issue of Proceedings (1) has an article advocating increased academic study of war by the Navy, as an institution.  There’s nothing surprising or controversial about that.  I’ve dealt with the Navy’s lack of warfighting focus in numerous posts.  There was, however, an interesting passage about the use and value of war gaming.  As the author points out,

“War gaming is another important way to educated and train, yet very few U.S. naval officers take part in such games.”

 

Here we see yet another example of the Navy’s current focus on peacetime activities at the expense of its core mission which is warfighting. 

Now here’s the historical fact and lesson.  The article offers a quote from Admiral Nimitz about the value of pre-WWII war games.

“War with Japan had been re-enacted in the game rooms at the Naval War College by so many people and in so many different ways, that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise … absolutely nothing except that kamikaze tactics toward the end of the war;  we had not visualized these.”

 

Adm. Nimitz - The Value of War Games



Think about that statement.  It’s an absolutely amazing statement that I had never heard before.  I had viewed many of the developments of the war in the Pacific as having come as a surprise (night naval battles, the devastating use of torpedos by Japanese ships, island defense tactics, occupation of so many islands, and so on) to our military leaders and yet it seems that was not the case.  I assume that Adm. Nimitz was speaking on a higher level regarding broader strategy because, clearly, there were surprises at a tactical and technological level.  Still, to make the statement that nothing surprised him is an incredible testament to the value of the pre-war war games.

We should heed the lesson.  Now, during peace, is the time for today’s Navy to prepare for war.  We should be running war games non-stop, examining every possible variation and scenario and then using the results and lessons to drive our acquisition and training programs.  Sadly, there is little evidence of this happening.  As we’ve repeatedly discussed, Navy training is sporadic and ineffective.  The acquisition process is completely broken and is driven not by any overarching strategy but by whatever the Navy thinks it can get past Congress.  As I said, we’ve covered much of this in previous posts so I won’t belabor it further.  The Navy must regain its warfighting focus.

(1) United States Naval Institute, Proceedings, “Study War Much More”, Milan Vego, Jan 2013, p. 58

CNO's Tenets - Walking or Just Talking?

CNO Greenert has proudly established his three tenets, as he calls them, for the Navy.  In order, they are:

Warfighting First

Operate Forward

Be Ready

Hmm … Not very catchy as slogans go but that’s okay.  If those principles actually guide the Navy, the Navy would be fairly well served.  So, the question becomes does CNO walk it or just talk it?



CNO - Walking or Talking?



Warfighting First.  This certainly seems like an incredibly obvious tenet for a military organization, doesn’t it?  I’ll give CNO full marks and credit for making it first on his list.  He got that part right.  Warfighting, in the absence of an active war, as now, means being fully prepared for war at all times.  Is the Navy fully prepared, right now?  Not even close!  INSURV failures are so frequent that the Navy has classified the reports in order to avoid embarrassment.  Conversations with serving techs reveal chronic spare parts shortages and not just for non-essential equipment.  Many Aegis parts are in short supply and Aegis is the backbone of the Navy.  If there was any system that ought to be well supplied, that’s it, and yet it’s not.  Ship maintenance has gotten so bad that the Navy commissioned special investigations.  The Aegis cruiser USS Port Royal pulled out of a drydock period and promptly ran aground due, in large part, to unfinished maintenance and parts shortages.  Manning is insufficient to properly maintain and operate equipment let alone engage in combat.  Aircraft are running through their arrested landing limits and flight hours at rates that are causing shortages in the squadrons.  Training quality has been steadily reduced.  New ships are being accepted in woefully incomplete states.  An entire class, the LPD-17, is deemed unsuitable for its designed purpose.  Another entire class, the LCS, has no purpose and less capability. 



Warfighting First also refers to priorities.  What should the Navy be spending its time and budget on?  According to this tenet, it should be all about warfighting.  The budget should be directed towards warfighting.  Personnel time should be devoted to preparing for war by high quality, realistic training.  Fleet activities should be focused on one thing only – warfighting.  In reality, the Navy is far more focused on monitoring drinking, conducting sensitivity training, investigating sexual harassment, promoting diversity, pursuing co-ed ships, and providing humanitarian assistance.  None of these activities promote warfighting.  One, in particular, should be totally dropped from the Navy’s mission list and that is humanitarian assistance.  While it sounds harsh, in a time of severely limited budgets and overworked ships, aircraft, and personnel, this is a mission that does not further the Navy’s warfighting readiness.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Budget funds that could go towards maintenance are being used to conduct humanitarian missions.  Entire carrier or amphibious groups are being devoted to it at enormous daily operating cost.  Precious airframe flight hours are being expended on food distribution.  Thousands of man-hours are being used to distribute supplies instead of training for war.  The Navy simply can’t afford to conduct humanitarian assistance at this time.  In a time of limited budgets and resources, warfighting has to be the priority, just as CNO says but fails to abide by. 

The litany of problems can go on but this illustrates the current state of readiness of the Navy.  The Navy is as unprepared for war as I’ve seen it in my lifetime.

Operate Forward.  This tenet is less obvious in intent.  I don’t know what CNO means by this but I’ll take it at face value.  He’s referring to forward presence, presumably.  Show the flag, gunboat diplomacy, policeman on the corner – that type of thing.  For a nation with a sense of global responsibility as well as global interests, this too seems obvious.  This tenet comes down to two things:  numbers and, to a somewhat lesser extent, quality.  Forward presence can only be achieved by having a sufficient number of ships forward deployed and that requires a critical number of ships.  To a lesser extent, the quality of the ships forward deployed matters.  For instance, a few forward deployed LCSs (Singapore) aren’t going to provide nearly the results that a carrier group would.  No foreign country, friend or enemy, respects or fears an LCS.  Honestly, not knowing what ships are deployed where, I can’t really evaluate CNO’s success in implementing this one.  All I can do is note the trend towards a smaller fleet and a less powerful and impressive one and be concerned that we’re not on a good path moving forward.



USS Port Royal - Ready for War?



Be Ready.  Again, this seems obvious and is strictly the readiness aspect of the fleet and to that extent it overlaps some of the factors and concerns listed above in the Warfighting First section.  Readiness is at a low point with systemic problems in manning, maintenance, parts, and training.  Training, in particular is suffering badly.  We’ve previously discussed various aspects of training and, in particular, realistic training.  Where are the exercises against actual swarms of small craft (Meggitt Hammerheads)?  Readiness also deals with doctrine and the Navy is badly lacking in this area.  Doctrine is a set of pre-determined behaviors and responses to tactical scenarios.  When a missile boat swarm attack is coming what will each ship do?  Every Captain should know what the other Captains will do without having to waste time communicating.  It’s analogous to a well trained athletic team where each player knows what the other players will do at a any given moment.  This point has been discussed on the USNI blog, among others, and the overwhelming consensus is that the Navy is badly lacking a coherent doctrine.  Of course, doctrine must be paired with realistic training to be effective and the Navy is deficient in both.  So, it would appear that the CNO’s Be Ready tenet is not being put into practice.



In summary, then, CNO Greenert is saying the right things but the Navy, under his leadership, is failing to act on those things.  CNO is talking it but not walking it.  This is a failure of leadership at a moment when the Navy desperately needs strong leaders.