Remember the Great Green Fleet?

There is a long and not so glorious tradition of the US Military being used - both their people and their money - by politicians to pursue non-military agenda items either due to ideology or in order to take advantage of one of the military's unusual characteristics: we follow orders.

Leverage that feature/bug with the deep well of institutional good will those in uniform have ... and you can see why all sorts of pet projects/agenda items/supporter payoffs are spot-welded on to DOD.

The neo-pagan religion of "climate change" (no different than moon worship as it is always there, always will be there, cannot be stopped or encouraged to any significant degree by mortals) is no different.

How is the Army doing?

...preparing installations to use less energy and stand up to extreme weather will cost the Army a total of $5.2 billion through fiscal year 2027. The strategy’s acquisition and logistics line of effort is estimated to cost $1.6 billion. Training comes to a budget-friendly $1 million.  

What the implementation plan lacks, however, is the technology to carry it out—because that technology does not exist. 

“Many of the objectives in the strategy reach out into the 2030s, 2040s, some even all the way up to 2050. Because the long-term goals we have to accomplish…we don’t know how we’re going to accomplish them yet. The technology is going to continue to evolve,” Farnan said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event. 

The climate implementation plan includes some familiar ideas, like microgrids and electric vehicles. But exactly how the Army will electrify all its vehicles, especially the heavy-duty ones, is unknown. 

“The honest answer is: I don’t know,” Farnan said. “And that’s why the goal is up to 2050. Because we don’t know how we’re going to get there yet. The technology is not there to give us full electrification of tactical vehicles.” 

“I don’t know how we’re going to do battlefield charging yet. Nobody knows that,” Farnan said. 

Not to be outdone, how about the USAF?

The Air Force’s Climate Action Plan touts itself as “instilling a culture in which Airmen and Guardians understand the implications of climate change.” But reading the 20-page guide reveals a plan for the Air Force so much more ambitious than that.

The plan aims to spend $100 million of the Air Force’s annual budget by 2027 on “base resilience” to climate change.

Critics necessarily retort that this amounts to $100 million taken from the Air Force’s mission to make the world safe for all pronouns.

What that actually represents is $100 million for projects to protect from extreme weather - something our species has done since we built our first lean-to - but that isn't as sexy. 

Does any of this help us with China's rising challenge west of Wake?

No, of course it doesn't. 

Follow the money.

DDG(X) Becoming a CG(X) Flashback?

Navalists should be forgiven if they have, on occasion, the mindset and habits of an abused partner. 

Slightly flenching with memory, but always hoping that this time - this time - things will be different.

There is good reason for scepticism and concern. Firstly, we know the mindset and process that begat LCS and DDG-1000. We know that there wasn't really any accountability to "the system" for this. A system that has remained unchanged. 

The only thing that was considered satisfactory from that era was LPD-17 - a program that had enough money thrown at it so this Tiffany amphib could be a functional class of warships. FORD is, well, you know that drill.

So, we lost a generation of warships due to smart people in hard jobs who couldn't stop getting high off their own .... arrogance in thinking that they knew better than generations of successful warship development that came before them.

On the smaller warship side of the equation, when even its greatest advocates had to admit the comical failure of LCS, we decided to go down a path originally suggested here 14-years ago: stop building them and build an existing EuroFrigate until we can design one ourselves.

That's the patch for LCS. Like you, I have heard rumors of rumors of issues that we are messing with a successful design attempting to make it an unsuccessful design under a cloud of Good Idea Fairies, but hull-1 is under construction and we shall see. Putting a 57mm on a warship designed for 127mm or at a minimum 76mm was a bad enough tell of the corruption in our system (got to give LCS mod a chance for FFG(X) dontchaknow), but you have to work with the system you have.

Of course, on the larger surface ship part of the fleet, we just plain blew ourselves up. In spite of the clear lessons even early on about LCS and DDG-1000, our leadership sailed CG(X) in to unbuildablestan. That book is still unwritten, but when it is, it will reinforce your worst assumptions.

People, programs, and systems failed again with no accountability. 

See a pattern?

Without a cruiser program displacing water and ZUMWALT being a white elephant, what is a navy to do? Well, we ran our TICO until they coughed across the decommissioning line and decided to restart a Cold War era Arleigh Burke in to a Flight III because we had no choice.

We still don't have a replacement for the TICO CGs, but we do have a program to replace the Arleigh Burke DDGs (which the green eyeshade efficiency cult that created the mess we are in writ large want to be a replacement for DDG and the rapidly disappearing CG).

Yes, that should set off alarm bells. 

As a closet optimist, I was hoping that - and yes hope is not a plan but no one will let me fire people and Congress won't change the rules - the last two decades would humble our Navy in to not letting requirements get out of control, would keep the Good Idea Fairies from every underemployed office hovering around her, and blowtorch anyone who still has a transformationalist mindset. Alas, there are concerns.

It is very simple what the US Navy needs; hulls displacing water. As smarter generations did before with the SPRUANCE DD etc; you can design white space to grow in to as expected systems mature...but you let them mature. Don't believe the hype and the promises of happy-talking defense industry types - it is hard enough to build a new hull and engineering plant in itself - you must minimized overall risk by at least starting with know systems, weapons, and manning concepts that will ride in that hull.

We are already late and the lack of urgency is almost criminal. This isn't 1998-2002 anymore.

It is with that background that this report starts out sounding promising;

The first design contracts were awarded this summer to General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works in Maine and Huntington Ingalls Industries in Mississippi for a large surface warship that would eventually follow production of the ubiquitous Burke destroyers.

All of that warfighting gear won't come cheap. The average cost of each new vessel, dubbed DDG(X), is projected to be a third more expensive than Burkes, the latest of which cost of about $2.2 billion apiece, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The Navy has vowed that it won’t repeat recent shipbuilding debacles when it rushed production and crammed too much new tech into ships, leading to delays and added expense with littoral combat ships, stealthy Zumwalt-class destroyers, and the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier.

“Rather than tying the success of DDG(X) to developmental technology, we’re using known, mature technologies on a flexible platform that can be upgraded for decades to come, as the technology of tomorrow is matured and demonstrated,” said Jamie Koehler, a Navy spokesperson.

...but there is a shadow;

Matt Caris, an analyst with Avascent, said the Navy is going to great lengths to prevent spending from getting out of control, from its view on mature technology and overall acquisition process to timetable. The first in the class of ship wouldn’t be commissioned until the mid-2030s.

“The Navy is trying to thread the needle with some potentially revolutionary capabilities in as low risk and evolutionary process as possible,” he said.

Others worry that the cost will become a drain on the rest of the fleet.

It’s possible that the Navy could afford only one of the ships per year, compared to current destroyer build rates of two to three per year, shrinking the size of the fleet over time, Clark said.

“They want to pile every mission on the the DDG(X) to make it sort of death star. They’re putting all their eggs in one basket financially,” he said.

The new destroyer represents the high end of the Navy’s aspirations.

To be frank, if anyone is using the word "revolutionary" in 2022 about such a critical warship, they should be reassigned to, oh I don't know, Thule.

This is the big danger though. I'll repeat it in case it didn't jump out at you the first time;

“They want to pile every mission on the the DDG(X) to make it sort of death star. They’re putting all their eggs in one basket financially,” he said.

The "they" there are the Good Idea Fairies, the agenda pimps, the transformationalists - the arrogant.

There is a battle right now with those who are correct in not rushing "revolutionary" and those who are convinced of their own perfection.

The time to fight and win that battle is right now before it is too late. 

This is what happens when you lack accountability for LCS and DDG-1000.

If like me you lack access to a lever of power, pray or support those who do. If you are someone who has access to a lever of power, now is the time to act. I have sat over adult beverages with those who regret their role in CG(X) enough - in a few years I want to raise glasses in support of a great new class of warships ... not have a somber table of regret.

PS: we still need a cruiser. Maybe we can build what the Japanese are pondering.

On D+0 on the Opening of the Next Pacific War - we Will Regret not Having This

With the expected losses due to enemy action and mechanical failure, how do we plan to rescue aviators out of the water in the western Pacific?

What few subs we have will be fully employed elsewhere and really shouldn’t show themselves in a lot of those waters. We don’t have a lot of surface ships with helos either to spare.

As the USMC desires to make every island possible a fighting position, how do you supply them when their airfields – such that the are – are cratered by the PLARF conventional S//M/IRBM at D+1?

If your major airfields are unusable due to enemy military action or host nation political uncertainty ... how do you conduct long range ASW and reconnaissance as the Chinese fleet goes to sea and our satellites are blinded? What about tankers who use the same fields that our CVW are reliant on now that the same green-eyeshade pod-people got rid of organic tanking too (again, no - buddy tanking does not count).  

How limited is your ability to fully use your special forces if you cannot deliver and extract them in a theater dominated by shallow seas and countless islands, bays, coves, and rivers?

Why is your tool box limited to a flathead screwdriver and a hammer?

My entire adult life I have lamented the lack of seaplanes/flying boats in the toolkit of the US military. 

We had that capability in the past, but politics, green eye shade efficiency-cultists, and leaders of limited imagination but unlimited ambition stripped it away decades ago for the worst reasons possible. Some of our friends, like Japan, never did. Some opponents, like China, are rediscovering the logic of having such a versatile asset.

It is time again to discuss a huge gap in the US Navy’s toolbox; the seaplane.

Peter Ong at Naval News has a good update at a good – though not optimal – hope;

 “In terms of amphibious MC-130 demonstration, USSOCOM is actually going through some market research, currently, to see if we can identify any potential amphibious capacities to meet some of the SOF Requirements that are existing.  And currently AFSOC is also doing an experimental demonstration where they are planning on putting some float assemblies on a C-130 platform.  They use digital engineering as a major factor of reducing some of that risk and making some of those changes, and they have gone through some hydrotesting and some aero testing on a subscale factor.”

Good.

Better.

Best.

Yes, we should give a nod to the C-130 option, but should just buy what works NOW and works exceptionally well, the Japanese ShinMaywa US-2. 

If Japan can buy US built F-35s whole and in part, we can buy a few dozen US-2.

…and give them a great livery while we are at it.

SECNAV Promotes an Official Religion

Under the prior Democratic administration, we saw seabags full of personal and institutional capital - not to mention a lot of actual capital - expended on the farcical "Great Green Fleet."

As it is with all non-value added political vanity projects (remember "Lean-In Circles"), the Navy doesn't keep them across administrations because they are just foolish and wasteful in addition to being just domestic policy objectives and personal positioning on the Navy's dime. With the Biden Administration, the Gaia cult has returned and sadly the present SECNAV feels that he needs to make another run with the same talking points supporting a neo-pagan doomsday cult that has been warning of impending doom for decades that is always right over the horizon but never arrives.

This unserious hobby is the real "existential threat." It is a distraction in time, money, focus, and institutional credibility. We have very real threats over the horizon and in our desire to pay homage to the cult, we are in the process of empowering our enemies with our foolishness.

Let's look at the maritime challenges facing our nation; an inadequate industrial base; an almost extinct merchant marine; an inability to design and build effective and affordable warships on a regular basis; Africa and Asia facing famine and instability do the the inability to get grain out of the Black Sea at market prices; a Chinese navy's steady rise to primacy in the Pacific. We could go on, yet in the summer of 2022, what is our SECNAV expending time on?

The climate crisis is a threat we know well at the U.S. Department of the Navy: It impacts our mission, our people, our platforms and our installations. As secretary of the Navy, I have three enduring priorities: strengthen our maritime dominance, empower our people and strengthen our strategic partnerships. These priorities serve a driving purpose in my comprehensive strategy “Climate Action 2030,” which I signed earlier this year.

The approach builds on the department’s history of leadership and partnership on climate and energy. It commits us to ambitious action across the entire enterprise to combat what both President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have identified as an “existential threat.” It is against this backdrop that I will visit the South Pacific and Oceania region this week.

As we sat fat, dumb, and distracted in DC, China island hopped through the Pacific making friends and bases in what was once our backyard. Were any of their gains made through climate change histrionics - even though China is the #1 producer of what Gaia's priests call "greenhouse gasses?"

No. Of course not. They are a serious nation with serious goals made by serious people with serious plan to secure them.

Us?

Additionally, the United States Naval Construction Battalions, better known as Seabees, are working with partners to adapt and build resilience throughout the region to buttress themselves against the climate crisis, helping to build renewable energy microgrids as well as shoreline and wetlands improvements. The Marine Corps, the nation’s crisis response force, trains all year to be prepared to respond to any disaster or threat anywhere around the world. 

This is all fine and well, but let us talk plainly with each other - even if Al Gore has always been right and speaks revealed truth through is chosen prophet John Kerry - will that counter the gains of China in any meaningful way?

No. No it won't. Just like the "Great Green Fleet" did nothing for the combat power of the US Navy and "Lean in Circles" did nothing to support women in the service, that isn't the goal. What is being done is using DON money, manpower, time, and reputation to provide fan service to domestic political constituencies for - in the end - civilian gain and profit.

Nothing else. 

If you care for the environment - as I do - then wouldn't you rather see this time and effort spent on ensuring when Sailors and Marines are deployed, their families have clean water, superfund sites on bases that are rapidly being cleaned up, base housing clear of mold and lead, health and child care best positioned to help those in need? Then, in those nations we help, help what they need; access to clean water, markets, waste management, and good governance. Much of that should come through the State Department, but ... well ... of course.

Nothing DON does will effect what the planet's ever changing climate does - but it can effect what the people in other nations think of us ... and what facilities we may or may not have access too when we need to sustain the fight west of Wake in the not-too-distant future.

Serious ideas and people are needed for a serious time.

Moskva's Last PHOTOEX

Sunday evening, the first pics came out of the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Slava Class cruiser Moskva.

As we know this Monday AM ... this is her. No photoshop or spoof.

If you need to brush up on your RECCE:

Good news here is that as you can see in the green rectangle above, the life rafts have been deployed. As there were almost 500 Sailors assigned to her, that may be a secondary indication, along with the good weather, that those not killed on impact or in the following fire and secondaries were most likely able to get off the ship and as such, loss of life less. More to follow on that I hope.

I'm sorry, I don't care what nation's flag they fly under; once defeated they are simply Sailors in need of rescue. If you don't get that, we should all pray for you.

When  you consider how dark that smoke is, the fire must be intense. The large SS-N-12 Sandbox missiles stacked like so many sticks of dynamite had to be on the mind of the ship's leadership. If one of those things cooks off, they must go like so many firecrackers on a string. We also don't know the extent of her internal damage ... but it appears when this picture was taken she was probably already abandoned.

The reported weapon used to attack the Moskva were the Ukrainian built Neptune ASCM, which is itself evolved from the Soviet Era SS-N-25 Switchblade (Kh-35), AKA "Harpoonski."

To use round numbers, a high subsonic ASCM will cover the ground at about 9nm a minute.

If you are 50nm from the beach, that means you have about five and a half minutes once the missile goes feet wet to engage ... but really, if you don't have I&W of a launch and from what direction ... on a standard issue day with a standard issue watch after weeks and weeks at sea ... even assuming your radars and electronic gear aren't CASREP's or down for maintenance ... when will you detect that?

20nm or 10nm from the ship? Maybe 5nm? That gives you, what, a minute +/- to detect to engage?

Are your watch sections ready? Are your close in weapons systems ready? Who has to give permission to fire? How fast are they from being able to give that order? 

That math is just hard ... especially for a crew on station 24/7 for weeks on end. The math is even harder with supersonics.

Look at the pics above, I appears, ironically, she was struck on her port side where her close defense AK-630 are located.

That is about where you'd expect the seeker head from a "Harpoonski" to want to attack. Just about the center of the ship's profile.

One day, perhaps, we may get an unvarnished report of the damage control efforts, along with the story of the Ukrainian coastal defense battery's performance in location, tracking, and ultimate attack on Moskva.

Will we get that? Unknown ... but there are a lot of lessons here. A lot.

Second photo credit to Andy Hall.

When (Bad) Strategy Drives Resources

Still wondering exactly what "Integrated Deterrence" means? Do you feel comfortable understanding the different deterrence schools of punishment vs. denial? 

If strategy and resources are aligned, does that necessarily make the results themselves "good?"

You're going to know all the above better than most of the people you'll see trying to discuss them after reading today's guest post by our friend Bryan McGrath, returning here to ring the school bell.

Simply superb and worth reading twice.

Bryan, over to you.

---

There are few more pitiful creatures than seapower/maritime strategists (I will use these phrases interchangeably, pedants be damned), a group of thinkers and advocates who are quite sure that the nation under-resources the most essential element of its national power. They toil in their think-tanks, their man caves (or the ungendered equivalent), and their university eyries, utterly convinced that evil green-eye-shaded functionaries in the Pentagon are deaf to the righteous tenets they espouse, spending the nation’s treasure unwisely and failing to allocate resources from coherent strategy. The proof, they aver, is in how resources are presently allocated, with all manner of wasteful spending on things like land armies, while the essential tools of seapower go wanting. Get more than two maritime strategists together in a room, and one of them will utter wistfully, “if only resources followed strategy.” All others will cluck in approval.

Well, my friends in the maritime strategy world, guess what? Our prayers and lamentations are answered. As I continue to digest the fallout from the FY23 Defense Budget (especially the shipbuilding goals and ship decommissioning plan) , the publicly released statements on the classified National Defense Strategy, and the broad outlines of the Biden Administration’s grand strategy/National Security Strategy, it becomes clear that to an extent rarely seen, the Biden team has created a tight and coherent coupling of strategy to resources.

The problem is that the strategy is bad.

What is The Strategy?

This essay is not a dissertation on the making of strategy or a detailed analysis of the Biden grand strategy of renewal (my term). To the extent that strategy is treated, it is in those areas of uniqueness or change from previous approaches and those aspects that directly impact the way seapower is resourced. 

The primacy of the domestic agenda. Foreign and defense policy was unimportant in the 2020 election. Some of that was the nature of the contest, some of it was the focus on COVID, and some of it was part of a grand strategic approach. Namely, that there were basic needs and services that the administration believed were not sufficiently resourced, that there were infrastructure requirements that needed addressing, and that there were important long-term changes in energy production and consumption to be made to address climate change. These “investments” were considered essential to shoring up America’s ability to compete with a rising China, who was recognized to be a security threat in myriad ways, but none so important as economic. These investments would be funded out of discretionary funding, the largest single claimant upon which is the defense budget. Given the difficulty in raising revenue (taxes) to address these priorities, minimizing real growth in the defense budget would provide a generous portion of the money needed to fund the domestic agenda. Clearly, over $700B annually in defense spending should be sufficient, so DoD will simply have to make do. To balance any risk (real or perceived), we will:

Re-invigorate Alliances. The Biden Team believes that its predecessors did reputational damage to the United States among key allies, and to manage security risk that could accrue from flat defense spending, it must rely more heavily on friends and allies. This approach would not spring from the well of “pay their fair share” or criticizing free riders, but from friendly exhortation, sophisticated diplomacy, and a re-commitment to multilateralism. 

So, let us recap. Domestic rehabilitation and renewal is necessary to compete against 21st century threats and would be funded by flat defense spending (and a growing economy), the risk of which would be diminished by recommitting to internationalism and multilateralism. The final piece of the puzzle would be to further reduce the security risk of flat defense spending by providing that defense more efficiently. Hence, 

Integrated Deterrence. The Biden grand strategy of domestic renewal is heavily dependent on controlling the growth of defense spending, which even without inflation had grown in the previous administration. This growth was fueled by a major and often overlooked intellectual shift made by the Trump Administration in its National Security Strategy, when it committed the United States to a policy of conventional deterrence by denial, rather than by punishment. 

Let us start with conventional deterrence by punishment, as it is a straightforward concept. If a power seeks to deter another’s aggression, and it possesses both the will and the capability to do so, it can choose to address the potential aggressor’s decision cycle by inserting the notion that if aggression is chosen, serious and costly consequences will follow. The Trump Administration saw this approach as problematic in the emerging security environment, given that both China and Russia had in their geographic near abroad(s), limited military objectives that could be attained quickly. Once attained, the likelihood that punishing military force would be applied to reverse the facts on the ground did not strike Trump planners as high. Thus, “fait accompli” aggression was seen as growing in likelihood, as there was doubt that there would be the political will available to address it ex post facto. 

This led to Trump’s shift to conventional deterrence by denial (or delay, as it has evolved). Under this approach, sufficient military force would be postured to create doubt in the minds of enemy/aggressor planners that their aggression would succeed even in its limited aims. Rather than relying on the threat of future, overwhelming punishment to dislodge and reverse gains, denial seeks to confront an adversary with military dilemmas that raise the cost of the aggression even as they raise uncertainty as to its success.

In practice, conventional deterrence by denial is more expensive than conventional deterrence by punishment, at least in terms of budgeting and planning. Capable forces must be maintained forward, postured to create the dilemmas suggested above. To maintain this forward architecture from a rotational force, sufficient force structure must be maintained to account for training, maintenance, movement, and rest. Defense budget plus-ups in the Trump years were targeted at bringing about a higher level of current readiness in the force to ensure sufficient force was available for the forward based architecture. A good deal of effort was wasted in addressing one of the other means to ensure sufficient forces are available, and that is by growing them. More on this later.

Given a need to rein in defense spending, the Biden Team rejects conventional deterrence by denial. They have not publicly re-embraced conventional deterrence by punishment, choosing instead to create an original approach termed “integrated deterrence”. I leave it to attentive readers to seek out definitions of integrated deterrence but warn of the frustration that will follow. Put bluntly, the Biden Team seeks to convince observers that its deterrence posture will not consist solely of military power but will bring the full weight of the United States government to bear by integrating the activities of the State Department, Commerce, Treasury, and Defense. Putting aside for a moment the implication that such integration was not previously occurring, the elevation of “integrated” deterrence provides the rhetorical basis for walking away from conventional deterrence by denial, in that whatever risk accrues in doing so would be mitigated by this new, whole of government approach. Putting aside the question of strategic nuclear weapons and deterrence, the extent to which the Department of Defense has a role in integrated deterrence remains its approach to conventional deterrence, which shifts back to punishment from denial.

To summarize the relevant parts of the strategy that lead to the Navy’s FY 23 Budget: a grand strategy of renewal harvests resources generated by controlling defense spending to apply to domestic investment. The risks associated with flat defense spending are mitigated by re-embracing multilateralism and altering the approach to conventional deterrence and force posture. 

What is Wrong with the Strategy?

The strategy makes the United States less secure rather than more secure. By seeking to harvest money from the defense budget to pursue other domestic priorities (irrespective of their popularity), the Administration has chosen a riskier (and less credible) approach to conventional deterrence at a moment when great power dynamics are at their most unstable in decades. 

Implications of the Biden Strategy

There are important implications for seapower that flow directly from choices made in the Biden strategy of renewal. Those implications then further decompose into budget priorities (or lack thereof). 

Integrated Deterrence Devalues Forward Presence

If one wishes to conventionally deter by denial, sufficient and capable force must be maintained forward in strategically relevant locations 24/7/365. This is a function of the requirement to create dilemmas for the aggressor that inject doubt as to the success of his planned aggression. All things being equal, moving from denial to integrated deterrence and conventional deterrence by punishment reduces the value of forward deployed naval forces and increases the value of surge forces that are of higher value after the shooting starts (to punish the aggression). 

We saw our first inkling of this shift in thinking from former Deputy Secretary of Defense (and Under Secretary of the Navy) Robert O. Work in his essay late last year “A Slavish Devotion to Forward Presence Has Nearly Broken the U.S. Navy” (to which I responded here.)  It is unclear how well-connected Work is with major figures in the Biden Administration, but when I read his piece, my first thought was that it was a trial balloon for the upcoming release of the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. Through a number of false choices and unsupported assertions (see my response), Work lays out the case that 1) the Navy is not big enough to be as forward deployed as it is (i.e. to support conventional deterrence by denial), and therefore 2) the Navy must shift to a model that calls for less forward presence in order to preserve warfighting readiness by husbanding surge forces (for proper warfighting and deterrence by punishment).  

One need look no further than the DoD Unclassified Fact Sheet that serves as the public face of the new National Defense Strategy to see evidence of the shift in thinking that drive Navy budgets and force structure. Under a section laying out how the “…Department will advance our goals…,” three ways are cited: integrated deterrence, campaigning, and building enduring advantages. The very nature of the term—one that conveys a sense of action or activity—appears chosen solely to undercut the concept of forward presence. 

Those who criticize naval forward presence often assert that the Navy postures forces forward for the sake of doing so. The more pernicious among them accuse the Navy of creating the concept simply to justify force structure. And since the term forward presence conveys something more static than “campaigning”, the paranoia of a maritime strategist leads to the conclusion that whatever force structure is desired forward will have to be associated with temporally defined, noun-named campaigns, as the concept of forward presence being the parent virtue of all other naval activity (including conventional deterrence) is disregarded. 

A deterrence strategy that prioritizes combat power husbanded for warfighting (especially the warfighting that punishment requires) and which de-emphasizes forward presence, levies fewer requirements for forward deployed naval power, and therefore can be accomplished with a smaller fleet. The FY23 budget delivers on this, reducing fleet size from 297 ships to 280 ships over five years through a combination of ship decommissionings and limited new construction. In other words, the shrinking fleet is connected to the grand strategy of the Biden Administration, as its choice of approach to deterrence and posture requires a smaller fleet than the previous approach, and the savings anticipated therefrom can be applied to other strategic priorities supporting renewal.

Integrated Deterrence Privileges Warfighting Over War Prevention

A related but distinct aspect of integrated deterrence, the flight from forward presence, and the return to conventional deterrence by punishment is the decline in importance of force structure that is useful in conventional deterrence (both by denial and punishment) but less useful or more vulnerable once the shooting starts. If something is useful once the shooting starts, it is useful in deterrence, especially if one’s deterrence posture is by punishment. The opposite is not true, in that there are platforms, capabilities, and programs that are especially useful in creating a denial posture that become less useful—or even liabilities—in combat. By directing the Navy to concentrate on those programs that are most aligned with high-end combat operations against the pacing threat, a considerable portion of naval force structure that is optimized for what the Navy spends most of its time doing—deterring and assuring—becomes financially expendable. 

A strategy that privileges warfighting over war prevention is a strategy that drives the early decommissioning of ships judged to be less valuable in combat with a great power (LCS). A strategy that privileges warfighting over war prevention is a strategy that drives painful decisions to retire cruisers to procure attack submarines and hypersonic missiles. A strategy that privileges warfighting over war prevention is a strategy that looks at amphibious shipping as legacy, even as their desirability to the COCOMS continues unabated. A strategy that privileges warfighting over war prevention is a strategy that fails to resource a peacetime ISRT architecture consisting of numerous, expendable sensors in favor of fewer space based and expensive stealthy platforms. 

Conclusion

No less an authority that the current Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro believes that the “Navy Budget Should be Driven by Strategy, Not the Reverse” , and in his remarks at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space Symposium on April 5 he said as much. As I survey the disappointing direction in which the Navy is headed, I cannot fall back on the reliable complaint that our investments do not reflect strategy. They clearly do, and that is most unfortunate. This should not be a surprise to anyone, given that the most influential person in the Department of Defense (Deputy Secretary Kath Hicks) spent a good deal of time and effort in her previous job leading a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) effort entitled “Getting to Less: The Truth About Defense Spending”.  A key paragraph from the Foreign Affairs piece states: 

“The closer one looks at the details of military spending, the clearer it becomes that although radical defense cuts would require dangerous shifts in strategy, there are savings to be had. Getting them, however, would require making politically tough choices, embracing innovative thinking, and asking the armed forces to do less than they have in the past. The end result would be a less militarized yet more globally competitive United States.”

One can see in the Navy’s budget the impact of this thinking, in that not only does it appear that the Biden Administration will ask the Navy to do less (cut back on forward presence, deter by threatening punishment from over the horizon), it will reduce the size of the Navy, if only marginally. Given the worsening security environment and the nature of the great power threats we face, the effectiveness of the Biden strategy in driving resources will not leave us “…less militarized yet more globally competitive…” Rather, it will leave us less militarily capable and less globally influential. 

It will be interesting to see how things progress in the coming year, given Congressional frustration with the Biden FY22 and FY23 budget submissions, and the fact that the Navy is conducting another force structure assessment and developing a new 30 Year Shipbuilding Plan. The CNO recently spoke publicly of a 500 ship Navy, with roughly 350 manned ships and 150 unmanned. The expense associated with planning, designing, building, fielding, manning, training, equipping, and operating a force of that size does not appear consistent with the broad strokes of the Biden grand strategy, although it is more consistent with the requirements the strategy should be responsive to. 

Bryan McGrath is the Managing Director of the FerryBridge Group LLC. The opinions expressed are his alone, and they do not represent the views of his clients. 

Germany's Coming Cold, Expensive, and Dangerous Experiment

Desire and will are powerful things. With luck, hard work, and good timing ... really wanting something enough can be the key to making things you desire come to pass.

Little warning though ... wanting something by itself is not enough. It has to match with reality.

Few things are more real than being cold, being able to produce products at market prices, and to be in control of the energy you need to be a modern nation.

Germany is about to see if desire - to be a "green superpower" fully dedicated to the carbon-neutral pagan god - is enough.

Germany is set to close almost half of its nuclear power capacity before the end of the year, putting further strain on European grids already coping with one of the worst energy crunches in the region’s history.

The shutdowns of Grohnde, Gundremmingen C and Brokdorf -- part of the country’s nuclear phaseout -- will leave just three atomic plants, which will be taken offline by the end of 2022. Beyond the squeeze on supply, the closures remove a key source of low-carbon power in a nation where emissions are on the rise.

Don't laugh, this is a serious matter. This is our largest NATO partner in Continental Europe. What happens to her economy ... and her strategic vulnerabilities ... impacts the USA directly.

Energy vulnerability for ourselves and our cornerstone allies is a national security problem.

“From a pure emissions perspective, it was always a questionable idea to shut down German nuclear before the plants have reached the end of their lifetime,” said Hanns Koenig, head of commissioned projects at Aurora Energy Research. “It was always clear that the nuclear phaseout would need coal and gas plants to run more and therefore cause substantial extra emissions.”

They let their least critical thinkers make their policy ... and everyone in the West is in greater danger because of it. Transnational green-leftism is a pox on us all.

...and that gas will be coming from where? Russia? 

Atomic plants are designed to generate power around the clock, providing valuable backup when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. While the shutdowns have been known about for years and are unlikely to cause a spike in prices, the removal of 4 gigawatts of baseload output highlights a dwindling reserve of buffer capacity in Germany. It’s one reason why prices are higher next year: electricity for delivery in 2022 has jumped more than fivefold this year.

This is one hell of a graph.

It is helpful to note that the whole project to get Germany hooked on Russian gas - in its final form as Nord Stream 2 - was led by the previous SPD Chancellor of Germany and this friend the former East German Stasi spy. If you don't know that, look it up.

Germany intends to take all coal-fired generation offline by 2038, with the lignite power-plant fleet reduced almost 16% by 2024. By that year, high carbon prices and an expansion of renewable power will have cut Germany’s coal production “strongly,” according to the International Energy Agency.

"Renewables." Anyone who has been to Germany knows they will never be a solar powerhouse and wind is iffy. Without nuclear & coal to fill in on quiet, cloudy days - absent a technological breakthrough unknown today - the only option is natural gas.

Russian gas.

Almost by design? Anyone familiar with the Cold War history of the Greens and large segments of the SDP can connect the dots from there. 

Feel good fools ... but the gods of the copybook headings will work their magic when Germany can no longer get by on the excess capital accrued by prior, more responsible German leadership.

There is still time for the German people to do something else, but elections have consequences - and they just voted for this.

They are going to get it good and hard. 

Bundle up my German friends ... and save your Euros.

Drydocks Matter

We've spent a long time here and on Midrats discussing the almost criminal neglect of the "unsexy but important" parts of our maritime national security infrastructure by our uniformed and civilian leadership over the last three decades.

It goes beyond the wholesale destruction of our base, shipyard, and repair facilities. Over and above our under-resourced auxiliaries from ice breakers to command ships. We have a moribund merchant marine, almost non-existent war reserve, and our repair facilities are so incredibly delicate they cannot meet the well planned peace time repairs, much less any realistic wartime requirements.

And yet ... we continue to mindless drift in history's currents - making  no effort to look for shoals, obstructions, or even what direction we are going in - though we fully know we have a place to go and the path there is full of hazards. 

Over at Forbes, Craig Hooper has an incredibly important peace about the story the USS Connecticut (SSN-22) is about to lay out over the coming weeks.

We may not get many more clear warnings than what CONNECTICUT is giving us. We should listen.

Perhaps this will be a clear call to those who still refuse to hear all the warnings about the fragility of our support infrastructure.

Perhaps;

 In 1995, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, reflecting Department of Defense disinterest in basing ships in the Marianas Islands, ripped the heart out of the U.S. Navy’s shoreside establishment at Guam. Along with closure of Guam’s Ship Repair Facility, the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center and Naval Activities were shuttered in 1997—and in an ironic sense of timing, the repair yard the USS Connecticut desperately needs was closed 24 years ago, the very same month the powerful sub was launched. 

The Navy’s shore establishment on Guam has failed to keep pace with America’s focus on the Pacific. Naval ships are back. The Marinas Islands are now home to an Expeditionary Sea Base, two sub tenders, four nuclear submarines and a host of ten or so Military Sealift Command Vessels associated primarily with U.S. Marine Corps or Army prepositioning programs. 

Even as new ships arrived, the shore maintenance support has dwindled.

Once Guam’s Ship Repair Operations Facility was privatized, the Military Sealift Command—the yard’s primary customer back then—shifted a good amount of refit work to more cost-effective foreign yards. 

The green eye-shade cult of efficiency is, more than any other movement, damning our navy's ability to operate and setting the nation up for strategic failure.

From domestic supply chains, to selling finite STEM research positions to foreign nationals, to having a repair infrastructure needed to fight and win wars - the MBAs and CPAs - and the leaders who listen to them, are a greater threat than any foreign power.

Guam’s two aged dry docks are gone. The World War II-era floating dry dock Richland (YFD-64) was sold off in 2016 to a Philippine maritime service provider. The Machinist (AFDB-8), a large auxiliary floating dry dock known locally as the “Big Blue,” was a relatively young platform, delivered to the United States in 1980. Damaged after a 2011 hurricane, the dry dock was sent to China for modernization in 2016, and is, apparently, still there. 

Workers have drifted away, too. The original pool of 800 workers that supported the shipyard in the early 1990’s has shrunk down to a few hundred at most. 

In 2018, with naval activity at Guam at a post-Cold War high, the Navy inexplicably mothballed the repair facility, with no apparent plan to recapitalize it. 

Yes, let's pull that out again;

 ...the dry dock was sent to China for modernization in 2016, and is, apparently, still there. 

We can't fire everyone - but I understand the emotion to do so.

If the damage to the sub is severe, it will be a real struggle to patch up the USS Connecticut enough so it can make a safe transit to the Navy shipyards in either Hawaii or Puget Sound—over 6,500 miles away. 

It is almost criminal what has been done to what was at one time the world's greatest maritime power.

Read it all. Get angry. Ask hard questions. Demand action.

We can start by building some new floating dry docks. 

Biden and Mahan: National Strength and Maritime Power Are Still Linked

The last year has seen a growing bi-partisan consensus that the United States and the People's Republic of China are in competition to set the global order for the next century. After a year to firmly set in the minds of national security leaders on both sides of the aisle, we find ourselves at a moment when Congress and the Executive branch of government are both in the mood to strengthen our nation and expand job opportunities by opening the door for more spending. Why haven't we seen the logical connection between the two? 

To explain the importance of this moment in time is returning guest poster, Bryan McGrath.

Bryan, over to you.

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In a speech in Pittsburgh Wednesday, President Biden announced what the Washington Post termed a “…$2 trillion jobs, infrastructure, and green energy proposal…”. With the simple title of the “American Jobs Plan,” Biden’s proposal is under fire from those concerned with its cost and from those who believe it does not spend enough on their priorities. It is not the purpose of this essay to take a position on the merits of the plan or its likelihood of passage but to point out that despite its significant cost and claims of working to provide for good jobs, not a penny is devoted to the good jobs building a larger Navy would create and sustain. This is particularly troubling given that the last large-scale recovery/jobs program (2009 American Recovery and Re-investment Act) also failed to capitalize on the strategic “two-fer” offered by putting more Americans to work building warships. 

The Obama Administration can be forgiven its 2009 oversight, as it clearly had not brought China into sharp relief as a competitor/adversary. But no such grace is available now, as the Biden plan’s White House Fact Sheet plainly addresses the strategic competition, stating “The American Jobs Plan is an investment in America that will create millions of good jobs, rebuild our country’s infrastructure, and position the United States to out-compete China.” A key part of that competition is military, and the central element of the military competition is naval. Ignoring both the national security benefit of a naval building program and the economic and industrial benefits of the good jobs it would produce is a mistake that can still be rectified. In so doing, the President could gain support for a bill that will likely prove popular with an American public for whom higher corporate taxes and higher individual tax rates on high earners are not central concerns. 

This symbiotic relationship between a powerful Navy and a prosperous nation was first laid out for Americans (and the world) in the late 19th Century by Alfred Thayer Mahan, and was reinforced this week in the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute by author Nicholas Lambert. The essay, entitled “What is a Navy For,” is one of the most persuasive bits of writing on this subject since Samuel Huntington’s 1954 “National Policy And The Transoceanic Navy” and though Lambert’s piece mentions China only once—in the caption of a photograph—it is clear that Lambert is reminding a new generation of the relevance of Mahan’s thinking, and the special role that Seapower has in promoting our nation’s fortunes. Lambert explains Mahan this way:

“State power, Mahan held, was a function of national wealth, and the generation of wealth derived from commerce. In modern times, the single most valuable font of commercially produced wealth was overseas trade. Following this logic, he reasoned that access to the sea (the “common”) was essential to national well-being; hence the need for a strong navy to guarantee access.”

Writing in the late 19th Century, Mahan was responding to a set of strategic imperatives and fiscal challenges not unlike those facing America today. Here is Lambert again:

“The dispute was so intense because it occurred during a period of social upheaval and economic depression—and against the background of a still more profound debate over the future shape of U.S. society. Simply put, there were competing fiscal demands. Some interests wanted the federal government to invest instead in national infrastructure (or the Panama Canal). Others demanded more generous pensions (especially for Union Civil War veterans). A large number thought the money would be better spent fixing societal problems at home—a down payment on a redistribution of wealth necessary to create a more equitable society.”

Not only are more ships required to better compete with China, but additional infrastructure also to support those ships is needed. The Navy’s “Report to Congress on the Long-Range Plan for Maintenance and Modernization of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2020” highlights “highlights a shortage of dry docks for surface ship maintenance and the need to improve existing infrastructure at public and private yards to keep up with newer classes of ships, as well as the need for process improvements to allow private shipyards and the supply chain to grow their capacity and move faster to respond to a growing fleet size.” 

Additionally, in 2018 the Navy proposed a 20-year, $21B initiative to overhaul its four public shipyards. Called the “Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan,” recent press reports point to dissatisfaction in Congress with the pace of the plan. The Navy is reticent to move faster, citing considerable work that must continue to be done in these yards that would be disrupted with a faster pace. Perhaps then, one solution to put some of the resources from the American Jobs Plan into addressing ship repair and modernization infrastructure improvements, to include standing up an entirely new public yard?

And while the President’s bill is silent on the Navy, his party has not been. Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA), a former nuclear-trained Naval Officer, recently wrote a letter to the President making an eloquent plea for “…a National Defense Strategy, that acknowledges and prioritizes the maritime nature of the current strategic environment” while also directly stating “Now is not the time to cut our defense spending—reality requires that we spend more to meet our defense needs.” Obviously, the Navy is funded by annual defense appropriations, but that should not preclude additional targeted funding flowing to the Navy as part of this China responsive jobs initiative. 

China is in the midst of an unprecedented peacetime naval buildup, a buildup that threatens freedom of the seas in the Western Pacific and beyond. The President has proposed a plan designed to achieve several important goals, including job creation and out-competing China. It is important for him to remember that the engine of our national power is an economy that provides for the kinds of investments in infrastructure, health care, and clean energy he desires. American Seapower underwrites that economy in a way that no other element of military power does or can. He should listen to Representative Luria about directing a maritime-based National Defense Strategy, and he should make a down-payment on it by adding a naval building and infrastructure program to his American Jobs Plan. It will be far more difficult for legislators to oppose his plan if it is not only popular with the American public but also helps to rebuild the Navy. 

Bryan McGrath is the Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group. These views are his and do not represent any client. 

Interim National Security Strategic Guidance: Unto the Wilderness

The Biden Administration is still filling out the mid and lower echelons of their national security and defense team, but the major players are in and the “people are policy” effect is kicking in. 

If you were paying attention to the 2020 election, you have a general idea where things are going, but it is always best to wait to see what is put out … because that is what good staff people do; wait for higher Direction and Guidance, and then form your actions to align with them. 

This week, everyone has something to chew on, President Biden’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. 

As I like to do with such documents, I look for larger themes through the use of words. Words matter – details matter – and you can find out a lot about priorities and themes by investigating them. 

Yes, you need to see what people do and not what they say … but what they say matters. When words and actions align, it can show a well-functioning and serious organization and give you more to work with if you are looking for clues to the future. When words and actions are not aligned, that disconnect can – depending on the aspects of the disconnect – tell you even more interesting things. 

So, before we pull some of the detailed observation from the guidance, look at the word count above. That is from the document … but that only gives you so much. 

We know that national security was a 3rd-tier concern in the 2020 election; 1st was former President Trump, and 2nd was domestic policy. What do the words used tell us? 

Wordcount time. 

As I am a navalist, let’s start there to see what focus three may be on the issues of our greatest concern: 

- Navy: 0 

- Maritime/Sea/Ocean: 0 

Huh, we see where this is going. What about the “hard” natsec challenges? 

- China: 15 

- Russia: 5 

- Iran: 4 

- Pacific: 3 

- North Korea: 2 

- NATO: 2 

Well. Everyone take out your JPME-1 notebook. 

In the DIME view of the domains of national power you have Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic. You can, rightfully, accept the new reality that Military is well back in the toolbox – something they tell us in the guidance and we’ll quote later. That leaves the other three. How do these, “soft” natsec challenges come out of the wordcount? 

- Economy/Economic: 42 

- Cyber: 16 - Diplomacy/Diplomatic: 13 

- Information/Disinformation: 6 

Regulars recall a story I’ve mentioned here and on Midrats a few times; ~2010 I had with Admiral Foggo. The one point I left with him was that the best thing the Navy could do was to send more line officers off to get their PhD in Economics. Don’t shunt them off to teach at USNA, put them on your major staffs. More than any other service, the Navy needs a smart understanding of Economics. 

Ha! Sal wins again. 

Now for the real depressing part. Look at the “hard” and “soft” word counts again, and then take a deep breath. 

Center yourself. 

Go get your emotional support animal as required … now brace. 

The Terrible 20s are here, and they are pissed. 

More than anything, this document makes it absolutely clear that not only are national security issues 3rd tier, the personnel, infrastructure, and power in DOD will be used to support, advance, and defend domestic political policy agenda items. Some of that is in the “Economy” count above, but these words make it clear; 

- Climate: 27 

- Equity/equitable (NB: this does not mean equality): 11 

- Diversity: 7 

- “Build back better:” 5 

- Racial/racism: 5 

- Inclusive: 4 

- Justice: 3 

Compare those numbers and you get the direction the wind is blowing. 

It is only a 24-page document, so you should really read it all, but let me pull a few items for your consideration. 

In the President’s introduction, he outlines what he sees as the “new crisis” that demand our attention; 

...the pandemic, nuclear proliferation, and the “fourth industrial revolution.

He also wants a,

 revitalization of … our democracy. 

This in an inwardly focused national security policy, underlined by this paragraph;

Achieving these goals rests on a core strategic proposition: The United States must renew its enduring advantages so that we can meet today’s challenges from a position of strength. We will build back better our economic foundations; reclaim our place in international institutions; lift up our values at home and speak out to defend them around the world; modernize our military capabilities, while leading first with diplomacy; and revitalize America’s unmatched network of alliances and partnerships.

In a strange disconnect, there is a bone thrown in the direction of the internationalists/interventionists/R2P crowd;

And as we do this work, we must also demonstrate clearly to the American people that leading the world isn’t an investment we make to feel good about ourselves. It’s how we ensure the American people are able to live in peace, security, and prosperity. It’s in our undeniable self-interest.

They’re not wrong. The American people still do not understand the value of the Libyan chaos or underwriting German security against the Russians while the Germans are planning to surrender their energy security to the Russians. 

Good luck with that. 

The foreign aid lobby and the NGO rent seekers get a nod;

When we invest in the economic development of countries, we create new markets for our products and reduce the likelihood of instability, violence, and mass migrations.

We also have evidence that we have a large mass of people who have not learned anything from two decades in Afghanistan;

. When we defend equal rights of all people — of women and girls, LGBTQI individuals, indigenous communities, people with disabilities, and people of every ethnic background and religion — we help ensure that those rights are protected for our own children here in America.

“Build back better” – the Biden version of a campaign slogan like “Make American Great Again” – as outlined above, makes a few appearances in the document. It strives in places to want to return to some ill-defined point in the past where things were somehow better. Well, we don’t have a time machine, and the world advances in many places on its own agenda and in directions that may or may not be in our control … nor should be. 

That is a dangerous place to be. It sets up perverse incentives and unrealistic policy goals. This is the 3rd decade of the 21st Century, not the 1990s.

Diplomacy is back. Alliances are back. But we are not looking back.

If you have to say it … well. So, remember when I warned you this was mostly aligned with domestic policy agenda items?

We confront a global pandemic, a crushing economic downturn, a crisis of racial justice, and a deepening climate emergency. We face a world of rising nationalism, receding democracy, growing rivalry with China, Russia, and other authoritarian states, and a technological revolution that is reshaping every aspect of our lives. Ours is a time of unprecedented challenges, but also unmatched opportunity.

See what leads, then note what follows. Order defines precedence. Precedence established priorities. 

A final note; nothing here is “unprecedented.” It is hard to get more inwardly focused as this;

The United States must lead by the power of our example, and that will require hard work at home … to truly address systemic racism,

I am trying hard to find something that could be used in our competition against China … but as there is so little clarity and so much domestic play here, they can be used either way. One example was the use above of “racial justice.” Are we talking about domestic policy here – as we clearly do in other mentions of racial challenges – or could that be used concerning China’s treatment of Uighurs and Tibetans? 

What about the “digital authoritarianism” below, domestic or Chinese social credit system and censorship?

Together with our allies and partners, we can modernize the architecture of international cooperation for the challenges of this century, from cyber threats to climate change, corruption, and digital authoritarianism.

To further underline the desire to use the umbrella of national security to chase domestic policy shadows, note the first paragraph on page-9 under “Our National Security Priorities:”

…we must redefine America’s economic interests in terms of working families’ livelihoods, rather than corporate profits or aggregate national wealth. That places an imperative on an economic recovery grounded in equitable and inclusive growth, as well as investments to encourage innovation, strengthen national competitiveness, produce good-paying jobs, rebuild American supply chains for critical goods, and expand opportunities for all Americans. And we must remain committed to realizing and defending the democratic values at the heart of the American way of life.

If I am looking for a hook to claw back defense dollars for domestic use and call it national security related, that paragraph gives me all I need. 

Right after that … and whoever snuck this is I want them to drop me a line so I can send them a Harry and David gift basket, is something actually useful and good;

At its root, ensuring our national security requires us to:

- Defend and nurture the underlying sources of American strength, including our people, our economy, our national defense, and our democracy at home;

- Promote a favorable distribution of power to deter and prevent adversaries from directly threatening the United States and our allies, inhibiting access to the global commons, or dominating key regions; and

- Lead and sustain a stable and open international system, underwritten by strong democratic alliances, partnerships, multilateral institutions, and rules.

First bullet is “America First.” Second is to keep China down. Third is promoting a rules based international order. 

Sold. 

Someone get me an endorsement letter to sign. Keep this, throw away the rest, and we’re good to go. 

This next goal will end in tears if the recent Yemen decision that emboldens Iranian proxies is any indication;

Our aim will be to de-escalate regional tensions and create space for people throughout the Middle East to realize their aspirations.

The order here is incorrect, but I am very happy Africa gets a mention;

We will help African nations combat the threats posed by climate change and violent extremism, and support their economic and political independence in the face of undue foreign influence.

The next line is cringe. So 1980s, so “with whom?”

We will head off costly arms races and re-establish our credibility as a leader in arms control.

China – whose defense budget just grew by 6.8% while ours is posed to fall, has zero to gain from this … and anything with Russia is meaningless because they are not a problem and will violate it anyway. 

We know … and this is smart.

…we will make smart and disciplined choices regarding our national defense and the responsible use of our military, while elevating diplomacy as our tool of first resort.

On page 14 is something that is just gobsmacking if you wonder if we are a learning institution. It is as if the mistakes of Rumsfeld and the Age of Transformationalism – that we still have not started to recover from – have been forgotten. As if no one remembers the lie of “throw away what you have now and will need to fight in 5 years for the promise of pixie dust powered unicorns bearing sharks with laser beams on their head tomorrow.” 

The people with this mindset keep popping up because no one holds them accountable for their errors.

…working with the Congress, shift our emphasis from unneeded legacy platforms and weapons systems to free up resources for investments in the cutting-edge technologies and capabilities that will determine our military and national security advantage in the future. … We will prioritize defense investments in climate resiliency and clean energy

Of course. The Great Green Fleet was such a success, let’s throw more rare funds down that onomastic rat hole. 

There is going to be a hell of a battle in this administration over Afghanistan. You can see the conflict in this document itself.

The United States should not, and will not, engage in “forever wars” that have cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. We will work to responsibly end America’s longest war in Afghanistan while ensuring that Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for terrorist attacks against the United States.

I will give credit to the writers. They make it clear that national security policy is a supporting entity to the supported effort; domestic policy agenda items;

…our trade and international economic policies must serve all Americans, not just the privileged few.

There is a great scene in Dr. Zhivogo where the Red Partisan commander is arguing about all he has done for the revolution and is reminded by the Commissar that once the war is over, everyone will be judged politically regardless of what they did in the war. Boy, is that clear here.

…our strength abroad requires the United States to build back better at home. A dynamic, inclusive, innovative national economy with a flourishing population is a critical American advantage that must be renewed. That starts by decisively responding to the public health and economic crises unleashed by COVID-19. Our national strategy—reinforced by the 12 initial executive actions issued by President Biden in his first two days in office—centers on restoring trust with the American people; mounting a safe, effective, and comprehensive vaccination campaign; and mitigating disease spread through masking, testing, an expanded public health workforce, and better data.

It easy to ignore such documents or, in the wave of a cynical hand, dismiss them as meaningless – but that would be a mistake. Smart staffers try to align what they do with whatever direction and guidance they can find from those up the chain. This is that. 

Reality will change things, but for the first year of the administration, this is what we have to work with. Let me book mark this post with something to back up what we started with on the wordcounts. Why, you may ask, would such domestic issues be of such importance in a national security document? 

To understand it, you need to realize the world those appointed in the Biden Administration come from. What are their interests? What are their supporters concerned with? 

Where they can, the above will be reflected in all parts of our government under the control of the Executive Branch. You don’t have to agree with it, but it would be irresponsible not to recognize it and prepare accordingly.