National Strategy and the Navy's Proper Role in it, with Barney Rubel - on Midrats

The role of the Navy and Marine Corps should be to provide ready and capable forces to the joint commanders. Outside of that, what is the proper role of the sea services in designing a more national strategy?

What is the state of a national and a maritime strategy, who are the different players in the discussion, and what is the proper way forward?

Our guest Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to discuss and more  will be Captain Robert C. "Barney" Rubel USN, (Ret.), Professor Emeritus, US Naval War College.

Captain Rubel, now retired, was previously the Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the US Naval War College from 2006 to 2014. Prior to arriving at NWC, he was a thirty-year Navy veteran, with experience as e a light attack naval aviator, flying the A-7 Corsair II and later the F/A-18 Hornet, commanded VFA-131, and also served as the Inspector General at U.S. Southern Command.

He is a graduate of the Spanish Naval War College in Madrid and the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI., and has an undergraduate degree in liberal arts from the University of Illinois and a master’s degree in national security and strategic studies from the US Naval War College.

Captain Rubel continues to serve as a member of the CNO Advisory Board and is active in local American Legion activities.

Join us live if you can with the usual suspects in the chat room and offer up your questions for our guest, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio. 

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Listen to internet radio with Midrats on Blog Talk Radio

---

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that you should also get BJ's first book if you have not already, 21st Century Mahan: Sound Military Conclusions for the Modern Era.

Midrats - Episode 28: Navy and Merchant Marine Mid-year Review

Where do we stand half-way through 2010 and our plans to deal with the budgetary and strategic challenges coming up this decade?

Midrats is back live and coming at you with a packed show. Today, Sunday 11 JUN 2010 at 5pm EST for a full hour.

Please join my co-host EagleOne of "Eaglespeak" as we to discuss everything from making the case for the Navy, the coming budget crunch, piracy, Haiti, to the response to the BP oil spill - and more.

Our guests will be Dr. Daniel Goure, Vice President with the Lexington Institute, Professor Robert C. (Barney) Rubel, Dean for the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the United States Naval War College, and blogger on gCaptain, USNIBlog and his own site, 'Fred Fry International' - our resident Merchant Marine expert extraordinaire, Fred Fry.

Dr. Goure is a Vice President with the Lexington Institute, a nonprofit public-policy research organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

Prior to joining the Lexington Institute, Dr. Goure was the Deputy Director, International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Most recently, he was a member of the 2001 Department of Defense Transition Team. Dr. Goure spent two years in the U.S. Government as the director of the Office of Strategic Competitiveness in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also served as a senior analyst on national security and defense issues with the Center for Naval Analyses, Science Applications International Corporation, SRS Technologies, R&D Associates and System Planning Corporation.

Dr. Goure also has done extensive consulting and teaching. From 1990 to 1991 he led a study for the U.S. Institute of Peace on deterrence after the INF Treaty. Dr. Goure has consulted for the Departments of State, Defense and Energy. He has taught or lectured at the Johns Hopkins University, the Foreign Service Institute, the National War College, the Naval War College, the Air War College, and the Inter-American Defense College. Since 2001, Dr. Goure has been an adjunct professor in graduate programs at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, and an adjunct professor at National Defense University since 2002 -- teaching a Homeland Security course at both.

Dr. Goure has appeared on all the major networks, CNN, Fox, the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. He has been published extensively in over two dozen journals and periodicals. He is also an NBC national security military analyst.

Dr. Goure holds Masters and Ph.D. degrees in international relations and Russian Studies from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Government and History from Pomona College.

Professor Robert "Barney" Rubel, a retired 30-year Navy captain, is currently Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. Prior to assuming this position, he was Chairman of the Wargaming Department of the Naval War College. Receiving this Commission through the NROTC program at the University of Illinois, his tactical background is in light attack naval aviator, with the A-7 and F/A-18. He commanded Strike Fighter Squadron 131 and also served as the Inspector General at U.S. Southern Command.

His focus ashore was professional military education. He is a graduate of the Spanish Naval War College the U.S. Naval War College. He completed three separate faculty tours at the U.S. Naval War College as a joint military operations instructor and the Deputy Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. In addition, he has been a visiting lecturer at a number of international professional military education institutions, including the German Armed Forces Staff College, the Mexican Naval War College, the British Joint Services Staff College and the Colombian Senior War College.

Professor Rubel has earned master’s degrees from Salve Regina University and the Naval War College. He has published a number of articles on a variety of subjects including naval strategy, security engagement strategy, joint operational art, advanced wargaming and air warfare.

Fred Fry is a Marine Transportation graduate of the US Merchant Marine Academy and MBA graduate of Finland's Helsinki School of Economics. He has worked in the maritime industry both at sea and ashore for his whole career and has experience working both in the US and in Europe. Fred is the creator and first author of the weekly series 'Maritime Monday' which covers weekly maritime news and events. He is a guest blogger on gCaptain and the US Naval Institute Blog and also blogs on his own site, 'Fred Fry International.'

Join us live if you can and pile in with the usual suspects in the chat room during the show where you can offer your own questions and observations to our guests. If you miss the show or want to catch up on the shows you missed - you can always reach the archives at blogtalkradio - or set yourself to get the podcast on iTunes.

Listen to Midrats on Blog Talk Rad

Presence & Command of the Sea, with Robert “Barney” Rubel - on Midrats

 

Both history and common practice show that the most fundamental role of a major power’s naval forces is to “show the flag.” The world’s premier naval power has additional responsibilities if it wishes to remain the premier power; command of the seas.

From material condition of our ships to failures of basic seamanship, the last few years have signaled that whatever we are doing, it isn’t being done in the best service of the nation or its Navy.

As we face an accelerating challenge from the People’s Republic of China at sea, do we need a fundamental re-look at how we run our Navy?

Our guest this Sunday from 4-5pm Eastern to discuss this and related topics he raises in the article, “Think Differently about Naval Presence” in the December 2021 Naval Institute Proceedings, will be Robert C. “Barney” Rubel, CAPT, USN, Ret.). 

Captain Rubel served 30 years on active duty from 1971-1991 as light attack/strike fighter aviator.  He commanded VFA-131 1990-91 and ashore served three tours at Naval War College teaching planning and decision making.  After retirements, he was brought on as a civilian analyst in wargaming 2001 and was Director of Wargaming 2003-2006, Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies 2006-2014, and Advisor to CNO 2015-2021.

He directed the 2006/7 NWC research effort that supported development of CS21 and is the author of over 30 journal articles, book chapters, and more.

Join us live if you can, but it not, you can get the show later by subscribing to the podcast. If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here. You can find us on almost all your most popular podcast aggregators as well.

Prof. Rubel on Lean Manning

Back on 20 OCT, Phil Ewing at NavyTimes had and article, Lean manning saps morale, puts sailors at risk, that we covered later that week.

In an email circulated earlier, Professor Robert C. Rubel, Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the US Naval War College, put out his thoughts on the subject that I thought were very well put, and added some good perspective to the topic.

With Professor Rubel's permission, I have turned his email into a guest post. The rest of the post below is his.

---

The point of my remarks below is not to level criticism at any particular personnel policies or decisions but to raise an issue that I ran across in my research attendant to a chapter I wrote in a forthcoming book on the history of naval aviation. There are some sentences in the Ewing article that caught my attention:

Overall, the Navy has adopted a culture of making do — of permanently covering for people who are “temporarily” gone or were never there at all, sailors said.

That mind-set is taking its toll.

“Every commanding officer will make mission — people will always get the job done,” Hatch said. “You’ll work them to death, but what’s the cost? Fatigue, [low] retention and potentially, damage.”

“In the past, we’ve kind of had this heroic mentality that says, ‘We’re well trained, we’re drilled, we’re professional,’” Davenport said. “‘Yeah, we’re gonna be tired, we’re fatigued, but we know how to manage it.’ But the science, in fact, shows us that’s not true. As people get more and more fatigued, they do have degradation of their performance in a whole variety of ways.”

These statements indicate the effect of organizational culture on safety. In the early 50s both the Air Force and Navy were experiencing ruinous aviation accident rates. The Air Force took a draconian approach to accident investigation, including imposing consequences for pilot error. They also imposed strict rules on crew rest, training, assessment, etc. Their accident rate plummeted to a small percentage of what it had been and has remained more or less at that low level ever since.

Naval aviation resisted a centralized and directive approach to safety for decades following; not as a matter of policy, but as a function of individual decision making on staffs and in units. Although great gains were made in safety, for instance the introduction of angled deck carriers halved the accident rate, the Navy mishap rate remained way above that of the Air Force until about 1988.

In going through old issues of Naval Aviation News and the memoirs of 50s, 60s and 70s era naval aviators, I found indicators that the corporate culture of naval aviation was a significant factor in the higher Navy mishap rate. The culture of self reliance and thinking for oneself -core values of the Navy officer corps - led to resistance to standardization, subjecting aviators to unreasonable risks and other related pathologies that contributed to the accident rate.

I was a card-carrying member of that culture (A-7s) from 1971 to 1985, when I left the fleet for a couple of years. I came back as XO of a Hornet squadron in 1988 and immediately perceived a different atmosphere than I had been used to. There was less pressure to "go fly" than in the past - risk was definitely linked to payoff and need. The Hornet is certainly a safer and more reliable airplane than its predecessors, but I believe a shift in naval aviation culture had a lot to do with the low accident rate we now enjoy.

Organizational culture also affects headquarters decisions. The Navy has always focused on command, not staffs - and we are proud of that. However, it has painted us into a personnel corner. Back in the late 70s when DOPMA was being developed, the services were required to submit figures for the numerical end strength tables in the statute. For large, medium and small officer corps (reflecting various sizes of drawdowns) the law contains the specific number of O-4s,5s and 6s a service can have. The numbers indicate that the Army and Air Force clearly understood that if they drew down the number of units, the number of staffs would remain the same and other functions like attaches would also remain constant. Thus they would have to get more top heavy as they got smaller overall. Not the Navy.

The Navy numbers reveal that its rank pyramid stays substantially the same shape as the service gets smaller - or at least gets more top heavy slower. Thus the Navy found itself in the 1990s having to gap key senior officer billets while forcing many senior officers into early retirement. Since nobody wants to reopen DOPMA, the Navy has had to resort to bandaid end-strength waivers on authorization bills. This indicates to me that in the late 70s, the Navy culture focused on command of units, not staffs. Successful command at sea was the sine qua non of professional success; being good at staff work was nice but no self-respecting naval officer would value it over command. I think this kind of outlook still underpins some of the decisions that have come out of the headquarters in the past few years, only it is ships at the expense of sailors.

I fully understand the dilemmas the CNO and senior admirals face, but I also think that the framework of organizational cultural values they grew up with influence their decisions - invisibly. The Navy DOPMA planners truly believed they were doing the right thing; the insidious thing about corporate culture is that it works below the level of consciousness - at the level of values.

It is too terribly true that personnel costs dominate the Navy's TOA. Reducing ship manning is a logical way to try and solve the problem, PROVIDED THAT IT CAN BE OFFSET by automation or other labor and presence reducing measures. We can put terrazzo on decks to reduce painting and we can install more computers and sensors on ships to reduce human scut work, but we cannot extend useful human conscious time. At some point, captains must say they cannot get underway safely - because their crew is tired. This is very hard because of the stigmas - corporate culture - associated with such a thing. It used to be the same way in aviation - downing an airplane for "piddling" gripes was cause to question a pilot's manhood; I used to go fly without anything remotely resembling adequate sleep. Stupid. Not in the F-18 community and probably nowhere in naval aviation today. Operational Risk Management rules.

Nobody wants to put sailors or ships needlessly at risk, but the culture puts insidious pressure on people from the individual sailor to the ship captain to the flag officers. If we recognize this, then we can deal with it.

---

Hat tip Chap.

Fleet Architecture and Strategic Efficiency, on Midrats

How do you balance cost, risk, peacetime habits and wartime requirements in designing and using the world's largest Navy?

How do we maximize the most the utility of our platforms now, and create a future fleet best suited for what is coming up?

Our guest for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to discuss will be Barney Rubel, CAPT, USN (Ret.).

Robert C. “Barney” Rubel is a retired naval officer. From 2006 to 2014, he was Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the US Naval War College. Prior to assuming this position, he was Chairman of the Wargaming Department. A thirty-year Navy veteran, he received his commission through the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Illinois. He subsequently became a light attack naval aviator, flying the A-7 Corsair II and later the F/A-18 Hornet. He commanded Strike Fighter Squadron 131 and also served as the Inspector General at U.S. Southern Command.

Join us live if you can with the usual suspects in the chat room and offer up your questions for our guest, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio. 

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Listen to internet radio with Midrats on Blog Talk Radio

A Very Barney Christmas: 2010

Yes my friends, it is that time of year - Christmas. As I have been saying for over half a decade, there is no finer gift you can give than that of books. Especially for the military professional, knowledge is essential. Knowledge and perspective can make all the difference in your professional performance. In this line of work - that means your life and the lives of those you lead.

Being retired for barely a year and self-employed, I simply have not had enough time to dedicate to book reading, as you can tell by my reading shelf on the right. As such, I am not going to put out my own list this year, but am going to defer to others.

We are starting this year out with recommendations from a top-shelf source; Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College, Professor Robert C. (Barney) Rubel.

If you liked his list last year, your are going to love this one. Thank you Professor Rubel - and the post is over to you!

---

Apparently, Phib and others found my first reading list useful because he has asked me to offer another one this year.

It’s been a busy and eventful year that has produced evidence of some profound geopolitical shifts. We have continued to suffer through the effects of the 2008 financial meltdown, a strategy reassessment and command change in Afghanistan and the President getting cuffed around at the G20 summit. So, in the geopolitical vein, my first recommendation is Monsoon, by Robert Kaplan. I suspect many of Phib’s constituents will have read this book already, but for those who haven’t, I think it is a good primer on geopolitics in plain language. Thinking about the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific as a geopolitical unity may be a novel concept for some folks, but I think Kaplan makes the case for it as well as for the future importance of the region.

Another recent book that I like is related to the Middle East. Rule Number Two by Dr. Heidi Kraft. Kraft is a former Navy psychologist who has worked extensively with Iraq and Afghanistan vets to treat post-traumatic stress syndrome. Kraft is an eloquent and compelling writer and speaker who, by relating her experiences in theater and back in the States, paints a vivid and highly affecting picture of the invisible wounds of war and how both individuals and the system try to deal with them. Many, if not most of us have either been there or know someone who has, so this book is likely to have a personal impact if you read it.

China is looming large as the principal geopolitical competitor to the United States. I was over there this spring, conducting a dialogue at Peking University with their key scholars and some retired PLAN officers on maritime strategy. I’m no China expert, but I came away with the impression that the Chinese are seriously trying to think through what they ought to do next in the maritime domain. These are serious people, intelligent and patriotic. We need to understand them better so that we do not make the mistake of cartooning or caricaturing them. There are a lot of books out there on China now, including some good ones produced by the College’s own China Maritime Studies Institute. Thus far, they have published four of them via the Naval Institute Press: China's Future Submarine Force, China's Energy Strategy, China Goes to Sea, and most recently, China, the United States, and 21st-Century Sea Power. They are based on disciplined and objective research, and are good baseline sources of knowledge on China. They help inoculate you against the immoderate language that infects a lot of the literature on China.

On the other hand, it’s good to listen to the Chinese themselves. My next recommendation is not exactly a fun or easy read, but I think it is useful for helping understand their military thinking. The Science of Military Strategy – published by the Chinese in English - is a rather scholarly book edited by two PLA major generals, Peng Guangqian and Yao Youzhi. Many authors contributed to this book and the footnotes indicate they have studied Western military thought. I would advise you that you will get the most from it if you have read Clausewitz’ On War from cover to cover. The authors explicitly discuss Clausewitz’ concept of center of gravity, but they have their own take and go beyond it with ideas like the strategic pivot. This is kind of a soup to nuts kind of book, taking on everything from infantry operations to space and information warfare. To be frank, I find their approach more pragmatic and useful than a lot of the crank military metaphysics that has infected our literature over the past dozen years. Now, the problem is that this book is hard to get. It is published by China’s Military Science Publishing House, which is an arm of the Academy of Military Science of the PLA. For what it’s worth, the ISBN is 7-80137-892-X. Their address is Qinglongqiao, Haidian District, Beijing 100091. The printer is Beijing Yihang Printing Co. Might be a fun hunt for those that like such things.

Ok, I am now going to be blatantly self-promoting. The Naval Institute has published One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power, edited by Dr. Doug Smith. Doug is a professor in our College of Distance Education at the War College, and author of Carrier Battles: Command Decision in Harm's Way. About a year ago Doug sweet-talked me and some of the other aviators around the College into writing chapters for a centennial history of naval aviation. We did, and I think you will find this book to be a bit different approach to the subject. The chapters aren’t strictly chronological; rather they focus on specific aspects of naval aviation’s history. I took on the transition from props to jets, and discovered things about my profession about which I had no clue. I think you will find this a fun read.

Finally, for those who like to listen to audiobooks on long drives, I recommend any of the Sue Grafton alphabet novels (A is for Alibi, etc.) or Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels. They are entertaining and make the miles melt away.

---

We need to give Barney a nod for the Salamander Military Quote of the Month.

... crank military metaphysics that has infected our literature over the past dozen years.

We are in the presence of a giant.

As always, if you want more recommendations, just click the books tab below. More are on the way this season.

The Truman Decision: There is History and Then There is History

We'll start this week with a response to last week's guest post by Bryan McGrath, from a man who should be very familiar to regulars here and Midrats; Robert C. (Barney) Rubel, Captain, USN (Ret).

As you will read below in a guest post from Captain Rubel, the pros and cons of the recent USS Truman refueling is bringing out some of our best minds to understand the argument. 

Barney, over to you.

---

Bryan McGrath, in his recent post concerning the Navy’s decision to forego refueling USS Truman, attempts to channel CP Snow’s book on the clash of the scientific and humanities cultures as a kind of strawman aimed at criticizing the decision. Contrasting the relative ability of history majors vs operations analysts in thinking broadly about the security environment, he attempts to show why America needs as many carrier battle groups as possible, in the process talking down those who assert the carrier’s vulnerability, asserting that history has refuted them time after time.

Now, truth be told, I was a beer major in college, scraping out a bachelor’s in liberal arts with the minimum required hours at the University of Illinois (anybody seen Risky Business?). The thing is, though, I actually lived some history as a young A-7 pilot aboard USS Independence back in late 1973 when the US Sixth Fleet faced down the Soviet Fifth Escadra in the context of the Yom Kippur War. The Soviets had 96 ships and we had 63. They had anti-ship cruise missiles and war-at-sea tactics and doctrine, we did not. Even as a nugget I could see that if it came to a fight, we were screwed. After that crisis blew over I became my squadron’s weapons and tactics officer and I worked for the next several years on anti-ship tactics. What I found was that even with a launch in the air it took almost 45 minutes to organize a strike against a Soviet formation whereas all they had to do was push a button.

Even with F-18s carrying LRASM, a carrier is way less responsive than a missile-armed surface combatant. So, the first thing a fleet commander does not want to do is place his carrier battle groups within hostile missile arcs during crisis or brink of war situation. When your threat sector is 360 degrees, I don’t care how good your defenses are, you will likely take hits, especially if you can’t fire first.

The history that Bryan cites is wrong; the assertions of carrier vulnerability have not been refuted because it has never come to an actual test. There have been cases of self-inflicted wounds such as on Enterprise and Forrestal, and in each case the crew reacted heroically to limit the damage. The contention has been that despite the damage those carriers were capable of operations within hours. Maybe they could have launched a few aircraft and recovered a few, but whether they could have continued to actually fight is quite another matter. The former USS America absorbed weeks of punishment from various weapons on a sinkex and still had to be scuttled. Again, this does nothing to prove the ship could have continued to be an effective fighting platform after receiving such hits. Remaining afloat and being combat effective are two different things. Because there has been no true test of naval combat we have continued to build carriers because, as Bryan says, they are outstanding presence platforms and they enjoy an almost legendary reputation. But it is well to remember that in 1944/45 the USN put dozens of carriers forward for operations within the range of Japanese land- based aircraft. Despite our carriers escaping harm at the Battle of the Philippine Sea due to excellent fighter defenses, many were subsequently damaged from Leyte onward to the end of the war.

In 2001 I was director of a small analysis cell within the Wargaming Department of the Naval War College. One day a faculty member, a retired Navy intel officer, came to me with a proposal to do an independent project concerning China’s buildup of ballistic missiles in the vicinity of Taiwan. What he proposed to do was count up all their missiles of various types and use this data to try and infer what kind of strategies might be available to them. I liked the idea and made that study his principal function. This led, over the years, to the formation of the Halsey Group, a student advanced research program that conducted iterative wargaming at the top secret level. They focused on high end war with China in various scenarios. I received outbriefs on their results every year for the next thirteen years. While I cannot share much of that information, I can say that it convinced me that the aircraft carrier is the wrong platform to use as the Navy’s principal offensive weapon in that scenario. I subsequently became director of wargaming and had the opportunity to design, direct, umpire and observe any number of games dealing with high end naval war. All of them, in various ways, supported this view. The latest game I observed was Global 8, a game in which Admiral Scott Swift brought key members of his Pacific Fleet staff to play. Again, it was a highly classified game, but I can say that it did not change my outlook on carriers. I contended in an article on wargaming I wrote a number of years ago that properly run wargames are a form of artificial military history. As such they are better evidence than broad assertions based on no test.

The bottom line on all this is that we really do not know how vulnerable aircraft carriers – as ships – are to modern anti-ship missiles. It is one thing to dash into Indian Country, make a strike and then bug out such as Enterprise and Hornet did for the Doolittle raid, and quite another to hang out continuously and support landings on Okinawa. We may wish for a quick, decisive engagement if war over Taiwan breaks out, but we have to be prepared for a drawn out slugfest; wars have a way of going on longer than anyone expects. In that case, the longer the carriers operate within Chinese threat rings, the better their chances of getting hit. If you think that there is no chance of them getting hit or if they do, they can shrug it off and keep fighting, then, in my estimation, which is not uninformed, you are mistaken.

But focusing solely on the hull does not address how vulnerable the airwing is to modern air defense systems. More history. I was a strike leader on USS Eisenhower during the 1980 hostage crisis. As we planned our contingency strikes we found that the Iranians had, among other US-furnished equipment, Hawk missiles. Turned out our warning gear could not see the Hawk continuous wave illumination radar. We ended up putting Fuzz Busters – which could see the Hawk - on our glare shields. However, the missile was good enough that if the Fuzz Buster went off, it just meant you had 20 seconds to live. Our losses would have been such that the wing would have been neutralized after maybe four strikes. Modern Russian SAMs are at least as good as the Hawk; probably much better. In order for the air wing to have any staying power, it will have to employ missiles from outside the considerable envelope of the S-300 and 400 systems, making the F-18 and F-35 expensive booster stages. Why not just use Tomahawk? Recent history shows a preference for Tomahawk strikes on defended targets.

Regarding the goods and others of the aircraft carrier as a presence platform, let me share some more personal history. In the summer of 1990 I was CO of VFA-131 aboard USS Eisenhower. We had been on cruise since February and it had been pretty much a love boat cruise compared to earlier ones I had made. The Soviet Union was in its death throes and everyone around Europe was glad to see us; pretty much in a celebratory mood. Even the French were welcoming. We put thousands of people through the Ike on tours during the Cannes film festival. Most all the crew wore their uniforms ashore in order to increase the chances they would be shanghai-ed by a delegation from a surrounding village, to be feted at a dinner. We were amazed at the reception but proud to show the flag.

Ike was in the Med pretty much due to the strategic momentum left over from the Cold War. Then on 2 August Iraq invaded Kuwait. Within two days we were dispatched to the Red Sea via the Suez Canal. It was eerie as we transited, watching Egyptian MIGs fly cover for us. We were convinced that Saddam would continue south into Saudi Arabia and expected to launch strikes as soon as we issued out the south end of the canal. The Air Force already had F-15s in Riyadh and tankers in Jeddah. The night of the transit we planned our strikes. The best we could come up with, even with USAF tanking, was six aircraft continuously in the Kuwait Theater of Operations, it being almost 700 miles from the ship’s position. At that point Saddam had hundreds of aircraft at his disposal, so the odds looked pretty bad.

We figured that in an all-out fight the wing could sustain losses for three, maybe four days and still have some effect. On the positive side, we were the only game in town from a US perspective. Although the Air Force quickly had jets on the scene, it took them over a week to get ammo up from the storage bunkers down in the UAE. We showed up ready on arrival to operate for at least a week at full bore. USS Independence, operating just outside Hormuz, was farther from the KTO than us; not being able to enter the Gulf because the stub oil platforms had not been surveyed, and hitting a semi-submerged one would be worse than hitting a mine.

But nothing happened. Perhaps our arrival dissuaded him from going further. My shipmates and I like to think so, but it is impossible to say. As the weeks went by, additional carriers showed up, and the Navy decided to send us back to Norfolk in September. The Navy invested six carriers in the operation and planners knew there would be an aftermath to whatever happened in Kuwait. Ike had been on cruise almost eight months at that point and needed maintenance before going back out. If SECDEF wanted a carrier presence in the region after a war, Ike needed to come home. In fact, the war disrupted carrier deployment cycles for several years after. Carriers need lots of maintenance, and any perturbation to the deployment cycle creates readiness ripples and not in a good way.

So let’s review the bidding. On the good side, the Ike was a marvelous naval diplomacy platform, more impressive than anything else the US could deploy. When called to respond to a crisis, she was there in a couple of days and ready to fight in a sustained way with no footprint on the ground in a sensitive country. This is why presidents ask where the carriers are when trouble arises. On the down side, there were very real limits to what the air wing could bring to bear. If the issue could be handled by a one-time Eldorado Canyon-like strike, we were good to go; if the situation required a sustained air campaign in which losses occurred, then a single carrier was not enough. In any case, we needed Air Force refueling in order to reach the area of operations.

Same deal later in OEF. What allowed us to plan for even six aircraft at the end of our “chainsaw” operation was the fact that there was no appreciable threat to the carrier. Had there been real threat (rumors of a missile-toting Lear Jet aside) a significant portion of the air wing would have been tied up in defending the battle group. My point is that as a presence platform the CVN has many advantages, but some very real limitations. Carrier proponents – ones who have not been, say, strike leaders - tend to overlook the details. They assume the CVNs can be moved around the geopolitical chessboard like queens. In an age where the Russians can sell highly sophisticated, land-launched anti-ship missiles to anyone, the limitations start tipping the balance scale toward the others.

Now let me be clear as I can on all this. Saying that the carrier should not be the Navy’s principal offensive weapon in a potential war at sea versus China is not the same as saying they are obsolete or that we should not buy the Ford Class – or even that we should not refuel Truman. What it does mean is that the Navy must come up with a new fleet design for the specific purpose of fighting for sea control in East Asia. In that design I envision the Ford Class – once the bugs have been worked out – as a key enabler for the Navy’s distributed maritime operations (DMO) force, uniquely able to support long-range, high-endurance unmanned aircraft that will perform a number of critical functions. A new air superiority fighter (son of Tomcat?) will keep the DMO force, including the P-8s and MQ-4s, from being shot up by Chinese aircraft. Elsewhere in the world, Nimitz Class CVNs will continue to provide credible US presence. But how many CVNs should we have? Elsewhere I believe Bryan has said, and I agree with him, that we live in a 15 carrier world. If you think about the assessment of goods and others in the previous paragraphs, you can quickly conclude that CVNs should operate at least in pairs. Thirty would thus be a reasonable number. That said, how many can we actually have? Here Bryan and I disagree.

Bryan’s post makes a tacit assumption; that Congress will eventually produce a budget that will support both an 11 carrier fleet and development of the DMO force. So far, there is no indication that is the case, which is why the Navy elected to trade Truman for development of DMO platforms. Certainly there was some number crunching involved, but in the end it was a decision based on forward-looking strategic judgment. In my view, the US cannot afford to let China successfully invade Taiwan or militarily enforce its territorial claims in the South China Sea. If we cave or are driven off, our credibility will be shot and we will be faced with either becoming tributary to China in their version of a new global system or we will have to escalate, probably to nuclear weapons. In 1973 we discussed running west through the Straits of Sicily to get to TACSIT III; untargeted and unlocated. However, that would have ceded the Eastern Med to the Soviets. If we had stood and fought we would have lost two, maybe three carriers. The NCA would have been faced with the unappetizing choice of ceding the Eastern Med or escalating, probably to nuclear. If we had had a DMO-style force we could have faced down the Soviet fleet with confidence. The USN, along with the other Services, MUST be able to win a conventional war at sea in East Asia, and that means a DMO force. That strategic imperative, combined with very real budget limitations, is behind the Truman decision, math or no math.

If Congress coughs up extra funds to refuel Truman, so much the better. If the Navy has to eat the cost, our strategic risk level will go up considerably, as we could find ourselves, as in 1973, ill-equipped to face the naval threat that pops up and as in 1980 when entering certain air defense zones was virtual suicide. That is history rhyming, and I don’t like the sound of it. I may not have majored in history, but I have sure as hell lived it.

---

Robert C. (Barney) Rubel, Captain, USN (Ret) is a Professor Emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College.

Barney’s Christmas Gift List for Seapower Wonks – Top 5 Books

Ho, ho, ho! It's off to a'read'n we go!

Second in this year's series of book recommendations. This time from the Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College, Professor Robert C. (Barney) Rubel.

---

Phib asked me to provide a list of top five books for Christmas presents. Took a bit of thinking to distill a list down to five, but here are some that come to mind as useful for those that are reasonably savvy on maritime affairs, as I imagine most folks that read this blog are. I hope some, at least, are not familiar to Salamander’s readers.

The Campaign of Trafalgar, by Sir Julian Corbett.

This is an elegant depiction of the events leading to the culminating battle of the Age of Sail. Beyond its literary merit, I believe this book influenced subsequent naval history in a very direct way. It was published in 1910 and a copy soon appeared on the shelves of the U.S. Naval War College library (the original printing is still here). Those with knowledge of World War II in the Pacific know that Admiral Raymond Spruance was in command at the Battle of the Philippine Sea and also that he was a student and instructor at Newport, undoubtedly reading this book more than once. See if you can find the passage that may well have influenced Spruance in his decision making at the Marianas Turkey Shoot. Pay attention also to the kind of mind meld that the Admiralty and the dispersed flags and captains had in an era when communications took weeks or months.

Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World, by Roger Crowley.

If Corbett’s book is elegant, then Crowley’s is voluptuous. It’s descriptions of the forces and events leading to the Battle of Lepanto are almost cinematic. I bought this as an audiobook from iTunes, and the narrator’s British accent and assiduously correct pronunciation of Spanish, Italian and Ottoman names and places further enhances its vividness. This is serious naval history though, and like Corbett’s book, provides the careful reader with deep insight into the forces and chains of events that produced that rarest of military events, a decisive naval battle.

Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies: Disguising Innovation, by Terry C. Pierce.

I reviewed this book for the NWC Review a few years back and kind of panned it. Subsequently, I found myself referring back to it routinely as I directed the War College research and gaming effort in the development of the current maritime strategy. Pierce puts his finger on some organizational dynamics related to naval innovation that I’ve discovered are relevant today. I might term the approach “insidious innovation.” Be prepared, though, high cost, poor editing and an almost indecipherable Chapter 2. The subsequent case studies are where the value is.

Agents of Innovation: The General Board and the Design of the Fleet that Defeated the Japanese Navy, by John T. Keuhn.

A book some of my colleagues don’t like, I found it illuminating despite clunky writing style in some areas and an irritating repetition of the central theme: the effect of the fortification clause of the 1922 Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty on US Navy innovation in the 1920s and 30s. Like Pierce’s book, it uncovers important organizational dynamics associated with naval innovation – a hot topic in my world right now. Like Corbett’s book, there is hidden treasure in this one too. I will give you a clue if you decide to read this book and look for it: I am a retired naval aviator who just wrote a chapter for an upcoming book on the history of naval aviation. In it I examine the near-catastrophic accident rates associated with the transition from propeller aircraft to jets.

U.S. Naval Air Superiority: Delevelopment of Shipborne Jet Fighters - 1943-1962, Tommy H. Thomason.

Available on Amazon. This book looks like a coffee table book, and indeed it is full of wonderful pictures. However this book is serious reading for anyone interested in how the Navy went from props to jets. Thomason was a flight test engineer and manager in the aerospace industry for almost 40 years, and this book is an insider’s account of how all the Navy jet fighters were developed, from the Phantom I to the Phantom II. His graphics are great; they really give you SA on everything from how and why jets need irreversible hydraulic controls and yaw dampers to the overall flow of fighter development. You don’t need to be a pilot or engineer to understand this book, but folks with stick time will definitely appreciate it. He has a companion volume on the development of attack aircraft if you want a comprehensive set.

Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice, by Wayne P. Hughes.

Ok, this is number six, but I couldn’t resist. I hope everyone that reads this blog sees this and says “yeah, I read it.” If not, and you fancy yourself as someone knowledgeable in naval warfare, then get it and read it now. I do not take seriously anyone who talks about naval warfighting and has not read this book. Written in 1986, this book is ever more relevant in today’s world. Wayne is still a force in naval innovation too.

---

If you want to see the other recommendations as we go towards Christmas, just click the books tab.

Midrats - Episode 10: Sea Control

What is "Sea Control?"

Is it,

• "... fundamentally, the ability to carry your, and your allies', commerce across the seas and to provide the means to project force upon a hostile, distant shore. A sea controller must limit the sea denial capabilities of the enemy."
• "... control over distant regions, ... it must ultimately be decided by naval power, ..., which represents the communications that form so prominent a feature in all strategy."
• "...the employment of naval forces, supported by land and air forces, as appropriate, to achieve military objectives in vital sea areas. Such operations include the destruction of enemy naval forces, the suppression of enemy sea commerce, the protection of vital sea lanes, and the establishment of local military superiority in areas of naval operations."

...or is it something else?

What does Sea Control mean in 2010 and where do we need to prepare be able to exercise it over the next decade?

These are some of the questions we will be asking this Sunday, 28FEB 1700R/2200Z/5pm EST on Navy milblog radio, Midrats.

Joining me on our panel will be EagleOne from EagleSpeak and Bryan McGrath from InformationDissemination.

Our guest will be someone well known to readers of this blog, Robert C. (Barney) Rubel, CAPT USN(Ret), The Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College.

Join us live at the Episode page or clicking the widget below. During the show, join the usual suspects in the chat room where you can feed us questions and provide comments as the show is going on. If you can't make it live, you can get to the archives at the blogtalkradio showpage, or subscribe to and download the podcast on iTunes.

See 'ya Sunday!

Listen to Midrats on Blog Talk Radio

Midrats - Episode 35: Best of COIN and Navy Overview

So, you want more than an hour of Midrats? We'll, we're going to give it to you good and hard this Sunday, 05 SEP from 5-6:30pm EST.

Just under and hour and a quarter of the best of this summer's guests. Though all of our guests are outstanding, for Labor Day Weekend we are going to have an encore performance by three of our best.

To discuss COIN will be guest to discuss this will be Andrea J. Dew, PhD, Co-Director, Center on Irregular Warfare & Armed Groups (CIWAG), Strategy and Policy Department U.S. Naval War College Newport, RI. She will be followed by a wide-ranging discussion of where the Navy stands with Daniel Goure, Ph.D., Vice President with the Lexington Institute, and Professor Robert C. (Barney) Rubel Dean, Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the United States Naval War College.

If you can, join us live and I'll try to have the chat room up on the main page and running (this is an experiment - so if the chat room doesn't come up, don't worry - its us not you). If you miss the show or want to catch up on the shows you missed - you can always reach the archives at blogtalkradio - or set yourself to get the podcast on iTunes.

Listen to Midrats on Blog Talk Rad

A Very Barney Pearl Harbor Day

It is time for Episode 2 of, "The Books You Need to Purchase This Christmas." Episode 1 is here.

Who better to bring forward some suggestions on Pearl Harbor Day than the Dean of theCenter for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College, Professor Robert C. (Barney) Rubel, CAPT, USN (Ret.).

Remember - if the right people read the right things, they may be able to prevent the next "Pearl Harbor."

Barney - over to you!

---

On the verge of sequestration and massive defense cuts, we recall what a British defense official supposedly said "Gentlemen, the money has run out, now we will have to think." My own experience is that it is difficult to get an organization composed of smart, energetic and dedicated people to not act stupid in the aggregate. For these reasons I have been thinking and reading quite a bit about the sociology of innovation this past year. Here are some of my favorites:

Moneyball (the book, not the movie) by Michael Lewis. This book has been around for a while, and anyone who's a baseball fan has probably read it. If you haven't and are someone interested in the sociology of innovation, this one is for you. It's a bit chaotic and uneven, but Lewis gets in a number of good turns of phrase. More importantly, the book brings out very compellingly some of the reasons that organizations fight innovation even as they pay lip service to it. In this case, the stats the Oakland As used to win on a shoestring budget were available to everyone, but only Billy Beane, their general manager, was able to overcome the corporate culture and milk the value out of them. Some good lessons for the Navy in here.

Innovation in Carrier Aviation, by Thomas C. Hone, Norman Friedman, and Mark D. Mandeles. This is Newport Paper 37, which can either be read on line or purchased through the Government Printing Office. Continuing the theme of the sociology of innovation, the authors take a detailed look at how the Royal Navy came to invent the angled deck, steam catapult and optical landing system, three innovations that were essential to make operating jets from aircraft carriers feasible. Concurrently, they examine why the US Navy did not come up with these things and why and how it was able to adopt these British innovations. Although readable enough for most anyone interested in naval aviation, it is perhaps most useful and interesting for insiders.

The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name, by Toby Lester. I like maps and I spend a lot of time trying to think globally. Moreover, our Museum has opened a new exhibit on the history of maps of the world. Thus I became interested in this book. Ostensibly focusing on the provenance of a particular map that first named the New World "America," it turns out to be a sweeping tale of discovery in which the sociology of innovation is ever-present. The evolution of the world in the European mind is a fascinating story of how we can individually and collectively hold highly distorted concepts to be truth, and the risks people take to challenge them. For you e-book readers, I recommend you do this book in hard cover to fully appreciate the wonderful maps.

Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal, by James Hornfischer. This is what I call SWO porn. If ever a surface warfare officer wanted to develop pride in his specialty, this is the book that will do it. It is an absolutely horrific account of the naval battles attending the campaign for Guadalcanal. The prose borders on lurid at times when the effects of major caliber gun hits on US and Japanese ships are described. The Marines sometimes think they were abandoned by the Navy at Guadalcanal, but this account will rectify any misconceptions. To continue a theme, there is plenty of grist for the sociology of innovation mill here too. The long and frustrating process of mastering radar is brought out as is the tactical development process of learning to fight in narrow waters. If you wore Navy blue, you will be prouder you did after reading this book.

Pacific Crucible by Ian Tol. Another WWII potboiler, but with a different focus. Tol takes us on a meticulous march through the first year of the Pacific War, when the US was on the defensive and had to fend off a superior Imperial Japanese Navy with relatively few assets. The title was not chosen randomly; the first year of the war was a crucible that tested the leadership in both the Japanese and American navies. Tol meticulously takes us through the backgrounds of both the leaders and the societies in order to give us a deeper insight on the events that are otherwise so familiar to us. Here again we see the broad vista of organizations being forced to innovate.

Unmanned Combat Air Systems by Norman Friedman. This is kind of a coffee table book in format, and could be viewed as a sales brochure for the Northrup Grumman X-47B unmanned aircraft. However, the book turns out to be a very clever and useful tour of what the future might hold in store for naval aviation. It is important to understand that the X-47 and its future brethren are not simply sleek looking versions of the Predator drone. As autonomous systems they will coordinate among themselves at machine speed. If this all works out, it will fundamentally change the face of naval aviation, and this book gives us advance warning and understanding of what it will look like. Many readers may recoil at the idea of armed, autonomous machines. If so, and you have not read Wired for War by Pete Singer, I recommend you do so.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good read!

Small ships, flotillas and the maritime requirements of a Global Power, on Midrats

For a maritime power with global requirements, what is the role of the small ship in times of peace and war?

What are the tradeoffs between quantity and capability, size and range, survivability and affordable?

Does the US Navy need a high-low mix; or a Strike Group-Flotilla mix?

Where do our national requirements influence how we build our Fleet vs. the process other nations build theirs?

Do we have a sustainable path towards a balanced Fleet, or are we sailing on based on outdated charts?

This Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern, our guest for the full hour to discuss this and more will be returning guest U.S. Naval War College Center for Naval Warfare Studies Dean, Captain Robert C. Rubel, USN (Ret.)

Join us live if you can with the usual suspects in the chat room and offer up your questions for our guest, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio.

Listen to internet radio with Midrats on Blog Talk Radio

Deep Strike or Distant Standoff?

A few months ago, our friend Robert "Barney" Rubel put out an article in The National Interest questioning the focus on "deep strike."

I encourage you to read it all, but I would like to break with him a bit; the real argument for extended range for our carrier strike aircraft isn't so much so they can reach deep, but so that the carrier can stand off further and as a result, complicate enemy targeting.

That being said, here's a money-quote for you;

If the Navy wants increased range, the first place to look is longer-range air-to-air missiles. Russian-made variants outrange our best right now. If a new tactical aircraft is needed, it should be a modern air-superiority machine a bit like the old F-14 Tomcat, which was long range and carried many missiles, or perhaps an unmanned version. Such a fighter would not require the intense and expensive level of all-aspect stealth that a penetrating bomber would need, and thus would likely cost far less.

The advent of artificial intelligence and long-range missiles has altered the logic of strike warfare. There is a very simple logical syllogism that should govern Navy investments in aviation and strike warfare going forward: do not do with aircraft what missiles can do; do not do with manned aircraft what unmanned aircraft can do; only use manned aircraft when the first two options are not suitable. The application of this logic will save lives and money, and actually serve to enhance the lethality and staying power of the fleet.