NATO Builds Starfleet Headquarters

I've been in a grumpy, snarky mood all week - why stop now?

I always thought that San Francisco was a bad place for Starfleet Headquarters - so Brussels is not bad by comparison. Look.


NATO Headquarters Brussels.

When Anders Fogh Rasmussen drives to his office in the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels in the morning, he gazes longingly at a large construction site across the street. The site, where construction cranes jut into the sky, will eventually be the home of the new, 250,000-square-meter (2.7-million-square-foot) NATO headquarters. Price tag: more than a billion euros.

In 28FEB13 Dollars - that comes to over $1.31 billion. That is a lot for an organization that really doesn't need something that big. Really. It doesn't. It should have something that is both more reasonable, to scale - and artistically ... well ... more something else than a modernist masturbatoreum found in a dusty B-roll from Tomorrowland.

Our friends over at NATOSource ask nicely;

The revelation comes as NATO is pushing to slash its costs and streamline its bureaucracy against a backdrop of savage defence cuts in practically all member states.

... I'll be a bit more blogg'y. OK serfs ... errrr ... I mean taxpayers. As European economies sag under austerity plans, the USA pretends it is Greece spending wise as it stumbles through a 4th year without a budget - the NATO militarizes are fading in to gendarmerie level of capability; here is the NATO staff's response;

Nations recognised that the current facilities were inflexible and had reached saturation point. (The current HQ was constructed on a temporary basis in 1967 and has now been in service for 41 years). Put simply, the need for a new Headquarters is overwhelming. The revision of NATO's working methods, launched under NATO +, must be underpinned by modern, flexible, user-friendly facilities which provide a pleasant and effective working environment for all staff.

The new Headquarters will be designed around staff needs. A state-of-the-art building will ensure maximum flexibility so that working space can be configured in different ways to suit individual and collective needs. New restaurant, leisure and support facilities (shops, banks) will bring working and living conditions closer together and provide staff with better overall services on site.

In consequence, nations agreed that NATO needed and deserved a new building for the new millennium to reflect its success as an organisation and its new missions and activities.

A comfortable Staff building in NATO is about as important as the Flags-to-Post outcome. Actual expenditures in to capability too by our European friends? Child please.

According to an internal breakdown by Rasmussen, the American share of the NATO budget has increased from 63 to 72 percent in the last decade, a development the Americans have long deplored.

Joseph A. Harriss over at TheAmericanSpectator isn't all that impressed either;

... the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has just begun construction of a splendiferous new $1.38 billion headquarters on a 100-acre site in Brussels. Designed by Chicago architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, renowned for luxurious commercial buildings including the tallest in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the futuristic new NATO offices will feature eight sweeping wings covering 2.7 million square feet. Glass-walled elevators overlooking cavernous atriums showering natural light. Ecologically correct grass growing on the roof. Seventeen conference rooms. A range of amenities from cafeterias, restaurants, and banks, to shopping, sport, and leisure facilities.
...
Today about 4,500 staff are at the Brussels headquarters. Along with thousands of others in its multifarious agencies and strategic and regional commands, they engage in a giddy flurry of activities. Many have only an imaginary relation to security. For example:

• The Academic Affairs Unit runs a fellowships program and organizes conferences, seminars, and visits for academics and think tank researchers to “project the Alliance’s point of view and strengthen information on its goals.” In other words, a glorified PR operation with academic pretensions.

• The Science for Peace and Security Committee “contributes to NATO’s mission by linking science to society,” whatever that means. Concretely, it funds grants for research on soft, fashionable subjects like civil science and environment.

• The NATO Undersea Research Center in La Spezia, Italy, has a vast program including Marine Mammal Risk Mitigation that studies the effects of sonar on marine animals, “to counter the threat from quiet submarines.”

• Then there’s the NATO Multimedia Library with its more than 18,000 books and subscriptions to 155 newspapers and magazines. And its annual Manfred Wörner Junior Essay competition with a $6,800 prize. And the NATO photo competition for young shutterbugs who learn that, for example, “Taking photographs of random strangers can be risky.”

To keep the snark going strong; those who have done NATO tours know that the 4th billet is the most important for the new HQ.

The facilities will comprise :

• up-to-date conference facilities;
• office accommodation for Delegations, Military Representations, International Staff (IS) and International Military Staff (IMS), Agencies and Partner Missions;
• modern, up-to date communications and IT facilities.
• a variety of support services such as: restaurants, banking, shopping, leisure and sports facilities;

Look at it closer and then think of all the metal and glass structures that has blighted the landscape since WWII. They don't age all that well, do they?  This will be different, yes? If we are spending over $1.31 billion on a building, then we plan to have it last a long time, right? Responsible with other people's money, correct?

... the requirement for an austere, sober and functional building with the need for a reasonable level of comfort and the provision of modular, flexible space, which can be systematically reconfigured and/or extended. The facilities must also guarantee value for money (a sensible level of cost over a 30 year life cycle) as well as long term soundness.

Also, putting on my red hat; give me an Airbus and three guys who want to die; unlike the Pentagon, this doesn't have a stone anywhere nor all that much concrete to get in the way. Easy target.

I know, I'm just being a cynic - but honestly; I'm not all that impressed. Mostly, it is because I prefer neo-Classical, Romanesque, and neo-Gothic architecture - with stone. But, that is just me.

Here, let these guys explain themselves.



As per the DD1390, in the 2013 DoD budget, we are spending $26.969 million, representing DoD's 60% of the USA contribution. DoS is covering the other 40%.
- 2012 it was $24.118 million.
- 2011 $31.863 million.
- 2010 $41.4 million.

That gives you a running average. Construction started in 2009, and the land came gratis from The Kingdom of Belgium.

So, there you go.  Here is a shot of the old building. Just another clapped-out modernist 1960s building ... which is what this will be in 30-years. 

One would think that a modern organization such as NATO would go for a much smoother, smaller, more nimble HQ - especially when you consider that SHAPE is just down the road in Mons ... but this is a largely European run bureaucracy - hence it must grow, and we have Starfleet Headquarters. 

Other people's money and all. Good positive things here in one way; NATO orders are simple outstanding both professionally and for the family ... so a chance to live in Europe for Americans.

Got to get you money's worth.

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UPDATE: Yea ... as Pat points out in comments; perhaps not the best design. Look at the pick above ... and .... ummmmm ....

When you answer is, "pour more concrete" - you've lost me

The last week seemed to be a, “I’m going to complain about why we can’t seem to build anything right anymore” to Sal week.

I’ve had the pleasure of exchanging notes to something that has been a stable since the start of this blog last decade; the unending and seemingly avoidable dysfunction that is our procurement system – one where we have not been able to produce a well designed warship since the end of the Cold War era DDG-51, and haven’t had an aircraft program blow up in our face since we adopted the 2nd place finisher in the 1970 light fighter program. (and no, the P-8 does not count – it is a converted airliner and our version does not have a MAD. The FA-18E/F does not count as “new aircraft” either).

Why? The problem is both personality based and the system we have designed to control the personality problem. Both are made worse by something else; narcissism.

The timid, the weak, and the insecure enable the narcissist. Combine narcissism in one strong will person with a gaggle of handpicked obsequious lickspittles in tow, toss in a contempt for history and the hard learned lessons of previous generations, leaven with a embittered resentment for the very real talent of those who came before – and you get that modernist and post-modernist mindset. In the Navy, those people are transformationalist, and their mantra is Transformation!TM

Can you find any other reason that explains the failure of the A-12, LCS, DDG-1000, ACS, and the long slow birth of V-22 and F-35 – or the Tiffany show pony that still is LPD-17?

It is there that I find a tie-back to another passion of mine that I don’t cover as much as I used to on this blog – architecture and the nightmare that has been modernism and post-modernism.

In a blindingly honest takedown of Zaha Hadid and her "Tomorrowland meets Logan's Run" style, Harry Mont shows how it is done;

In my 16 years as a journalist, she was the rudest interviewee I’ve ever met. She kept me waiting for an hour at her Clerkenwell office, before rearranging the interview for another day. And then she rearranged it twice more. Not that she did any of the rearranging – her extremely polite assistant did all that sort of thing.

When I finally got to see her, she never apologised for summoning me to her office and then putting me off. She was like a spoilt, medieval queen: grumpy, humourless, entitled, used to her orders being obeyed instantly, careless of the disruption those orders created.

Narcissistic, too. Her flat was empty, except for objects she’d designed herself: a curved sofa, a swooping table and a futuristic tea set. There was little sign of pleasurable human occupation: no books, no CDs. A lone iPad on a table displayed revolving pictures of her own works. The walls, floor and ceiling were monochrome white, with black metal-framed windows. A rectangular cavity housed a fireplace, filled with identical beige pebbles.
...
her first real building, a small fire station in Germany, never really worked for its intended purpose: ‘Its shrieking concrete angles and disruptive interiors photographed very well and were dutifully recorded in the magazines, but were not much liked by the firemen. It was decommissioned and is now an exhibition centre.’

Yes, some of her buildings made for dramatic, swirling sights on the outside. But the inside of buildings is just as – if not more – important.
...
Her Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton was praised for its bold, zig-zag shape, with a running track piercing its heart. I thought it was certainly original enough when I went round it, with the usual Hadid trademarks: curves, skewed angles and asymmetrical shapes. Inside, though, the classrooms, gym and dining area were a dreary mass of concrete, steel and glass planes, with a few zig zag motifs and primary colours slapped on. I’d have much preferred to be taught in one of the elegant Victorian terraced houses flanking the academy – with their brick, plaster and stone, full of history and detail. The Evelyn Grace Academy wasn’t much different from the 1970s Grange Hill School of Education Architecture – which also did nothing to please the poor children inside.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. In our interview, Hadid professed to admiring Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens tower block in Poplar, built in 1972. Robin Hood Gardens is the perfect example of a concrete and glass horror, loathed by the public at large, but adored by modern architects.
...
‘Most artists, or people who think of themselves as such, have to get the public to watch or listen before they can sod it,’ wrote Amis, ‘Architects are different. They have the unique power of sodding the consumer at a distance, not just if he lives or works in the building concerned, or just when he passes it a couple of times a day, but also when he happens to catch sight of it miles away on the skyline.’

Architects are also, Amis added, deeply subject to the principle of how it will go down at the club – ‘i.e. in the circle of his colleagues, his friends in the profession, certain critics and a more or less specialised and expert section of the public. The effect of this is to drive him towards the technically stimulating, the obscure and the ‘sophisticated’ and away from the older goals and values of whatever can be called pleasing, straightforward, entertaining, popular.’

Zaha Hadid went down extremely well at the club; not so well with the people who have to live and work in – and pay for – her buildings.

Sometimes it is OK to speak ill of the dead - especially when they are subject to a bunch of virtue-signaling praise by those who are as obsequious as she was narcissistic.

Art and architecture is critically important to the culture at large and deserves to be openly and aggressively debated.

And yes, this applies to more than architecture.

We'll have more maritime directly-related discussion tomorrow.

OK Naval Futurists, Wargame This

Yes, yes, yes ... this technology has been touted as "just around the corner" since Disney's Tomorrowland was considered a plausible view of the future, but ... from weapons that require a lot of electrical power, to power itself, to a further diversification of the world's energy options ... ponder.

Lockheed Martin Corp. said on Wednesday it had made a technological breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, and the first reactors, small enough to fit on the back of a truck, could be ready in a decade.

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed's secretive Skunk Works for about four years but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a 100-megawatt reactor measuring 7 feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck and is about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire said.

You read that size correctly. Scalability? Safety? We'll see.

Compact nuclear fusion would also produce far less waste than coal-powered plants, and future reactors could eliminate radioactive waste completely, the company said.

McGuire said the company had several patents pending for the work and was looking for partners in academia, industry, and among government laboratories to advance the work.

Lockheed said it had shown it could complete a design and build and test it in as little as a year, which should produce an operational reactor in 10 years, McGuire said. A small reactor could power a US Navy warship and eliminate the need for other fuel sources that pose logistical challenges.

US submarines and aircraft carriers run on nuclear power, but they have large fission reactors on board that have to be replaced on a regular cycle.

"What makes our project really interesting and feasible is that timeline as a potential solution," McGuire said.

Tom Wolfe, Tomorrowland, Transformationalism and getting ready for the next naval war.

People who should know better are promising the same miracles they've promised before ... hoping no one notices, no one cares, and no one refuses to send them billions.

I'm controlling my desire to rage over at USNIBlog.

Come on by and grind your teeth with me.

OK fine; just call Hull-1 USS Salamander (FFG-62) and I won't beat you with an iron rod

I'm sorry - I'm laughing my head off.

Byron has some nice shipfitter words to yell, and Sid will just wave his hand and order another round - but really guys - this is just off the hook funny. Think about all the time we have spend over the last - dare I say - almost decade about LCS. About the real need for a solid patrol frigate. How we were told what "old thinking" ignoramuses we were. About what bad players we were not fully supporting the bright and shiny LCS of Tomorrowland.

Well ... great. A decade later and a few billion down the scupper; via Chris Cavas, you're welcome.

Christine Fox, acting deputy defense secretary ... in a classified memo ... directed the Navy to halt LCS production after 32 ships and begin development of a “more capable surface combatant.”
...
A capability gap already has been identified for an escort ship, said Bryan Clark, a naval analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. Until last year, Clark also was a special assistant to Greenert, where he led the development of Navy strategy.

“The real need is for an escort to accompany convoys, logistic ships, even parts of the battle fleet. Analysis shows that as a gap. But LCS cannot provide air defense to ships it’s escorting — it only has self-defense,” Clark said.

Yea - read that again. You're frack'n welcome.

A frigate of about 4,100 tons, he said, would be a ship less capable than a 9,200-ton Aegis destroyer, but larger than the LCS.

“A frigate study would need to focus on designs that currently exist, that could be rapidly implemented at a US yard. And they’d probably include designs based on the LCS as well,” he said. “The study could include existing designs as well as starting from scratch. Foreign designs would be part of the mix — just as LCS is a derivative of foreign designs.”
...
“The Navy doesn’t really have an escort vessel that can do this mission. If you get into a large conflict you need to protect ships,” Clark said.
...
Work on future surface combat ships already is underway at the Pentagon by the director of surface warfare, and under the direction of the surface warfare commander in San Diego, but neither of those efforts is focused on a frigate. A new study, Clark said, would be aimed at a ship that could be developed within only a few years.

Regardless of the LCS debate, “this need was starting to emerge anyway,” he said.

Starting to emerge? Shipmate - it emerged a decade ago when any clear-headed analysis showed that LCS was not what a global, power-projection Fleet needed. Sure, I can and had defended the niche for a corvette size ship - but the whole "we don't need frigates, but this will replace frigates and do their job" line was wrong from step one.

The LCS über alles mafia was sailing in the face of history, physics, technology risk studies, and just plain best practices - and destroyed careers, reputations and inpuned the motives of anyone who tried to warn them of the wrongheadedness of this reckless act.

Yes, we are now slowly backing away - but the deathbed conversions just rub me wrong a bit. Yes, I am being petty - but come on.

Let me grab a pull quote again,

...neither of those efforts is focused on a frigate. ...

Then what, pray tell, are they focused on? We have two groups studying DDG-X? No, time for a FFG-X team.

Clark is on to something too;

...could be developed within only a few years.

Yep'r. We've wasted enough time. We got the OHP's that way, and they seemed to do a fine job. Benchmarking a lot of the good Eurofrigate designs - we can do it.

All it needs is that one little word everyone is hungry for; leadership.

Chop, chop!

As we move forward - let's drop the never-may-be FFG-(X) and put a little cautionary note out there.  

So many of the problems we have with LCS had to do with falling in love with your own PPT and not thinking critically about what we were putting to luck and best case scenarios. As was warned last decade, once LCS hulls were displacing water, the issues PPT'd over could no longer be avoided. That is what we are seeing now.

One more quote;

Key to that is effective anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and anti-air combat systems. The ASW mission package under development for LCS is getting early rave reviews from surface warfare officers,

No. You cannot give rave reviews to a system that has not been underway and operated by Sailors - much less worked with during a deployment under various conditions or even a real ASW exercise.

Remember that ASW is not some quick "bolt out of the blue" tactical action. ASW "Awfully Slow Warfare" is more of a campaign. It is days, to weeks to months of regular, steady work. There has never been a "war winning" technology that you can pull out of your hat at war and like magic sweep the seas of submarines. Though stated as such, it didn't work for sonar, depth charges, or the homing torpedo. ASW is hard on people, logistics, and equipment - and when you are actually faced with a hostile submarine - it will quickly drain what few ASW weapons you have.

That leads us to the end of the kill chain - our ASW weapons. No reason to go in to too much detail, but this is clear; we have little diversity in weaponeering options, depth of magazine, and to be frank - history shows that we should be suspect of the quality of the LWT that we have.  LWT is the only tool in our ASW set ... so ....

ASW with LCS is all theory and hope - just like so much of the LCS program. With the decision made that LCS will be such an important part of the Fleet numbers wise, we need to get it right ... but for now, I would recommend that people keep their professional reputation intact by not telling people what "rave reviews" you have of a system that hasn't even been through a COMPTUEX yet.

The CNO and the Compelling Attractiveness of Maturity

We have been waiting over a decade for a CNO to say this. Admiral Greenert, BZ.

The ship that was to revolutionize surface warfare has been controversial since its inception 12 years ago. But the firestorm over the littoral combat ship might have been avoided had the Navy better explained the rationale for the ship and answered critics' questions more clearly, said Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert.

When you boil down the arguments made and and other places since the second Bush43 administration, this is one of the cornerstones of the critique;

Former Deputy Defense Secretary Christine Fox called LCS a "niche platform" that can only operate in "permissive" environments.

The CNO is, as the position demands, a bit of a politician. As such, we have to allow him some running room to give a little hug and kiss on the cheek,

"I don't think we made any mistakes per se, but I think we could have been more clear on our intention for taking the sea frame and evolving it through the life of the ship," he said. Greenert noted that some of the Navy's most successful ship classes grew in fits and starts, not unlike LCS. The Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate had four flights, he said, using the Navy term for technology updates. The Spruance-class destroyers went through two flights and the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers had four.

... before slipping the knife in between the ribs;

"We never really articulated formally or discussed the feasibility of having flights" in the LCS program, nor has the Navy explained "how we intended to upgrade it for survivability," said Greenert.

Sigh. Should I give him a pass on this old and busted "oldthink?"

"This is a very transformational concept," said Greenert. "As with any first of class ship and aircraft, complications emerge."

Gives me hives just reading that for the 1,000,000 time.

Why the ship ended up being the subject of relentless criticism is not anyone's fault in particular, said Greenert, who declined to point fingers. "I don't want to be judgmental."

That's OK CNO; we've got that sector covered for 'ya.

One of the reasons why the Navy did poorly at selling LCS within the Defense Department and to Congress, he said, was turnover and difficulties managing changes that were made over the years to ship designs and to procurement strategies. "People change offices. It was very difficult to keep up, I think."

This argument is valid, but weak. What was the turnover for SPRU and OHP? VIRGINIA SSN? Taht being said, I think the CNO is again trying not to hurt feelings too bad, but then ...

Now, he added, "We've reached a node where people are saying we need to take a deep breath and take another look at this."

Boom.

This last little pull quote from the article should give everyone pause, and a smile;

“If we go to a new design, it has to be mature,” Greenert said. “If something is compelling, but would take more time, we'll relay that to the secretary.”

Verily. Verily. Verily.

The return of the evolution - and putting the revolution back in Disneyworld's Tomorrowland where it belongs.

Hat tip C.

Tomorrowland is Going to Get us Killed

We think we know the future, we don't.

We thought our leadership would learn from killing 17 Sailors in the summer of 2017, but it didn't.

We thought our Navy would be ready for war sometime this decade, but we've decided to taunt fate and push two decades down the road.

Pray for peace.

Details over at USNIBlog.

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UPDATE: Link fixed. Sorry, my bust.

So, you think you're a POLMIL futurist?

I have little use for the Tomorrowland Transforationalists who sell you their snake oil with flash, glitter and distraction.

One thing I do have an unending appetite for are fact based, historically grounded, and hopefully - statistically supported assumptions and inferences.

In that light I give you 200 countries, 200 years in only 4-min with Hans Rosling.

A few things I want you to keep close attention to, as all of these are critical to advanced planning:
1. The power of free markets and relative political & cultural openness (there was a reason GBR and NLD started at the top).
2. The regular downward spikes and recovery due to war and disease. We are overdue.
3. The internal split in China - that never ends well.
4. The unending basket case that was, is, and will be sub-Saharan Africa.

Michèle Flournoy's Neo-Rumsfeldism

For most of the last decade, I have heard nothing but good things about Michèle Flournoy. Indeed, she's been making appearances on this blog since 2008. 

The fact she's been soaking in national security issues for decades and is highly respected is a given - but this article by Aarn Mehta gives me great pause. 

As I read this, I was reminded that it was twenty years ago that the greatest advocate for Transformationalism came in to power and drove it through the Navy and other services; Donald Rumsfeld. He meant well (and for the record I am a fan of a man as imperfect as I am), but the ideas he proposed - well known to readers here - threw away decades of evolutionary progress in weapons development, assumed risk away, and acted that just by saying it - things would happen. Transformationalism is attractive; an almost religious belief in the power of technology; an amost mystical attraction to the syren song of the well briefed "cusp of being operational" PPT brief; an impatience with the plodding, slow, and tedious work of building billion dollar systems in an effective manner.  

Let's review why I'm concerned; we've seen this movie before:

The next U.S. defense secretary must be prepared to invest heavily in game-changing technology, even if it comes at the cost of existing capabilities

Why are we not a learning institution?

“I think there’s, sort of, two parallel efforts that have to happen. One is investments that may take a decade to be fully realized and integrated into the force. Another is the question of, what can we do in the next five years with what we have, but use it differently,” she explained.

This is true, but has always been true. If Flournoy just stayed here ... she'd be a world winner ... but no:

“Defense budgets are probably going to flatten in the coming years, no matter who wins the election,” Flournoy said. “That means you have to make trade-offs and you have to make hard decisions, which means you probably need to buy fewer legacy forces in order to invest in the technologies that will actually make the force that you keep more relevant, more survivable, more combat effective, and better able to underwrite deterrence.”

What a cancerous idea to keep injecting in to our veins. This is exactly what had us sinking SPRUANCE Class destroyers and PERRY Class frigates with years to a decade of usable service ahead of them for the promise of LCS that still has not been fulfilled. It is what had us clunkingly restart DDG-51 production when we no longer could lie our way out of DDG-1000's failure anymore. What has our TICONDEROGA CG limping in to their dotage without effective replacement.

...there is a “whole laundry list” of future technologies on which to make big bets, Flournoy highlighted two she considers particularly important. The first is a “network of networks” for secure communications as well as command and control that can survive an attack from any domain — space, air, naval, land and cyberspace — that China could seek to use.

If we hedge everything to "Network Centric Warfare" we will first be made blind and mute. Then we will find ourselves lost and impotent. Then we will be killed.

In a peer war, we will not have unobstructed access to the electromagnetic spectrum and satellite vox/data. If everything rides on the assumption we do, we will lose. 

“We need a command-and-control system that is powered by artificial intelligence to enable that kind of resilience in a much more contested environment,” Flournoy explained.

Oh, hell no!

Who briefed her on this?  Does she have a handle on the very real problem with AI as it stands right now? How about the intersection of the ethical and legal issues with "AI" making C2 decisions? 

Next ... well ... I can't be the only one who sees this?

“China has created a set of threat rings that are very, very lethal places for U.S. forces to go,”

Yes, yes China has ... and how has she done this? With a steady building in number and quality an evolutionary force based on proven "legacy" systems that - while we were dreaming of Tomorrowland - made the American Lake that was WESTPAC in to a prickly and poisonous place. 

With the fruits of the previous Age of Transformationalism fading in to the mist to nothing - we are stuck with under-resourced and maintained Cold War systems and units that check a number box but are combat ineffective in almost peer conflict scenario.

Yes, we need make trade offs, but for at least the next half decade they need to be made in favor of repairing and reconditioning that which we neglected for the last two decades, starting with maintenance, manpower, and training. 

 “Sometimes when the department is trying to make those trade-offs to move money from one program to another, if they don’t do a good job explaining that to Congress they sort of get the hand from Congress,” Flournoy said.

If I were in Congress and someone brought that patronizing shinola to my committee room, it would be a nasty, brutish, and short hearing. 

No, when you over-promise, under-deliver and tell clear falsehoods year after year, an institution loses its institutional credibility and had no institutional capital left to demand anything from Congress but its guidance. 

Here is the baseline;

We are still suffering from the (to some) expected backwash from the Age of Transformationalism; the lost opportunity cost for things we can use now spent on futuristic promises that never came in to being; a denuded depot level maintenance infrastructure; a force equipped with sub-optimal equipment no one can use, upgrade, or can ergonomically work in the operational environment; a manning CONOP that looks at people as a problem, not an asset - something that can be burned out in perfect synchronicity with an exquisitely crafted schedule from the banks of the Potomac. You know the drill. 

We do not need a Rumsfeld II: Electric Boogaloo. We need a humble, hard working, clear eyed leader with an eye on the future, but ensuring they have the forces they need to fight 1QFY21, not just FY35. We need someone who is brutally honest with The Pentagon and the larger Military Industrial Complex about how they have fooled, hoodwinked, and bamboozled other appointees - but not this one. 

We need a SECDEF Lombardi, a Secretary No, someone who will not have us waste another generation's billions of dollars on things that fluff up balance sheets, but fail to make a shadow on the ramp, displace water, or give the infantry an extra hour of fight. 

Whoever wins in November, whoever is the next SECDEF ... may none of them take us back to the 00s. No more failed wars; no more failed transformations.

From Berlin, Beijing, to Brasilia – a New Era is Setting Up

Though human nature and geography are generally constants through history, there are pivot points where the needs, wants, and desires of people and the leaders of the nations they inhabit cause a change in the course of history.

We are clearly in one of those pivot points of how our world works.

Whatever the “Post Cold War Period” was, it’s long over. When did it end? Somewhere between the attacks of 2001 and the election of Barak Obama in 2008.

As I’ll outline below, much of what some called a new-era in the recent past were not quite right, they just saw the ending chapters of the age of their lifetime.

Though the press is obsessed with President Trump defining a change we are seeing, that is a classic case of mal-educated Amerocentrism. The shift started before him. He is just a symptom, not a cause. It isn’t even an American phenomenon. If anything we are lagging the global trend.

What period started to come to an end at the start of this century? The end of the post-Cold War as a period by itself? I don't quite buy it. There is a lot of talk of an end to the post-WWII, “Liberal World Order” (LWO). I think that might be right.

The LWO began at the end of WWII. The period after the fall of the Soviet Union that people call as the Post-Cold War Era wasn't really an era. It was either the final or the penultimate chapter of the long running LWO that the Cold War was just a longer chapter of. Even while the Soviet Union was on its death bed we saw the next chapter, AKA Bush41’s “New World Order” (NWO).




One could argue the NWO was the penultimate chapter, and 2001-2008 the final chapter of the LWO.

Hard to say right now, but if forced, I’d put my chips on that argument.

The NWO lasted less than a decade, if that. It was a period of unchallenged American dominance, but that rode on the back of the “The Liberal World Order” built in the post-WWII period.

What I would call the final chapter, somewhere from the attacks of September 2001 and the newly elected President Obama's apology tour and welcoming of a rising China, I'm not sure - but it marked a shift to something new. The pivot is not yet complete - it is a slow turn that took awhile to get here.

The last two chapters of the LWO saw the falling apart of those structures – the EU, ascendency of Western culture, extra-national international legal bodies, American dominance of the high seas - that defined the success of the old age. The vacuum left behind by them, and the fragility of remaining ones like NATO, is feeding change.

This new era is a movement of returns, reckoning, and realization. Strangely, end of the LWO can probably can be traced back to the Muslim world. They were an the early adopter or canary in the coal mine of the structural culmination of the LWO. There you find the first place where the assumptions of the ruling Western elite began to fail.

Just look at the pictures of Cairo and Kabul in the 1960s and 1970s. Western dress, cultural norms, secularism, and political systems (socialist, capitalist, or a mixture of both) dominated. At the end of the 1970s the wave crested first there when you saw decades of progress for women in the public space begin to retreat from Islamabad to Alexandria.

Those were indications that the West had lost its confidence and its appeal. Once that support goes soft, everything it underpins weakens. Much of the weakening started with the anti-Western efforts in our own universities and popular culture. Jesse Jackson’s “Hey, hey, ho, ho; Western Civ has got to go” was just one of a long series of notes to the outside world that things were well along the way to being not quite right.

If you value Western values of tolerance and progress, how do you expect them to grow and expand abroad when you cannot support them at home? In their absence, something will fill the void.

What will it be? I think too much is in flux, too many assumptions false to really know – but whatever it is, it is forming right in front of us. Some aspects and characteristics of our new era are revealing themselves bit by bit.

Here are three items in the mix.

Berlin - Enough Self-loathing:

It is difficult for Americans to understand the German national mindset. From the end of the Franco-Prussian War to the end of WWII, the national record was a horror show for a people who for centuries contributed so much to Western culture, industry, and advancement.

For obvious reasons, the German establishment's political body remains sensitive to a wide variety of triggers, and they over-compensate. Even though they had already festering crime and internal security problems imported mostly from Asia Minor and North Africa over decades, the former East German Merkel took over from the SDP’s Russian toy Schröder, ruled well, and then decided to take Germany somewhere she didn't want to go.

Though her CDU/CSU was right of center for their politics, Merkel was more in line with center-left American Democrat – but with less patriotism to the point of refusing to wave the national flag.




As a by-product of working out her generation's German's national self-loathing, she invited millions of military age economic migrants from mostly Muslim nations who had little desire or history to assimilate – much less have skills needed in the modern German state. She even accepted the eventual forced change of their national character.

Along with the rest of her internationalist peers, she scoffed at the concerns of the German people – or at best was willfully blind to them. It was bad enough that – being that there was no place for their concerns to be addressed to the left – an ever growing percentage of the German people moved right to the AfD outside established parties, and inside the CDU/CSU moved to undermine Merkel.

As Germany was part of the EU, Merkel’s call for millions of migrants all of a sudden became an EU wide problem. All around Germany, this helped accelerate and already growing populist movement in Poland, Hungary, Italy, France, UK, and elsewhere.

The internationalist elite of Europe’s contempt for their own people and self-loathing of their culture was too much for their own indigenous populations. Merkel, who could have ruled for the rest of her natural life, is now in the process of a long goodbye. She says she will leave in 2021, but I don’t think time will be that patient with her.

The center throughout Europe is under stress. In some nations, established parties are trying to fill the void by moving in the direction of the people, but so much damage has already been done. 

This story is not even close to playing out.


Beijing – those are your rules, not ours:

After centuries of humiliation from near and far abroad, China is returning to her place in the world. Few see how huge this move will be. The scale is hard to grasp for many. You could remove the equivalent of the entire population of the USA, and China would still have almost a billion people.

Unlike her fellow mega-nation India, China is not content with making things best inside her borders.

She wants a global stage, and she is buying as much of it as she wants to.

She was not party to this “Liberal World Order” others keep telling her about, and she is not bound to it. She reserves the right to approach international law cafeteria style; she’ll take what she wants and slide by the rest.

She has scores to settle and strategic depth to secure.

President Xi Jinping has told his military commanders to “concentrate preparations for fighting a war” as tensions continue to grow over the future of the South China Sea and Taiwan.
...
“We need to take all complex situations into consideration and make emergency plans accordingly,” President Xi told the officers of the Southern Theatre Command.

This is bluster, but it also is Direction and Guidance. We are close to this point already, but by the end of the next decade, American policy leaders need to have a realistic view on what they are or are not willing to go to war over. The Chinese will test where they find weakness first.

When they do, they will pull us in close and then they will make a point. 

If I were Chinese, I would already have three COA to the east for leaders to consider. All I would ask for is a few more POMs and a bit more ripening.

This new China is growing, and not going anywhere.


Brasilia – Forever Tomorrowland:

Remember just a few short years ago when Brazil, again, was to be the vanguard of a new surge of leftist governance? I do.

And so, where does that leave us? After over a decade in experimentation of a new post-Cold War leftist governance in Central and South America, they find themselves where we Chicago School folks warned them they would be.

Of use, the basket cases of full socialism, Venezuela & Nicaragua, are right there for people to point to and say, “Let’s not do that.” Argentina, an nation a century ago that had a per-capita GDP on par with the USA, continues to struggle with decades of bad governance, corruption, and leftist economic policies.

Uruguay and Chile are doing quite well, with the other nations in South America somewhere in between – but the superpower of South America should be Brazil. With a population 2/3 that of the USA and almost the same landmass, she only has a GDP about 1/6th the USA.

The Brazilian people are flooded with crime and corruption. Their leftist governments, the darlings of the internationalist BRIC fetishists, only built on that record of crime and corruption.

The people of Brazil were left with what option then?

All the correct people with all the correct opinions are tut-tut’n the election of Jair Bolsonaro, but what did they expect? The center-right and the center-left, again, failed to properly respond to the demands and concerns of the people who brought them to power. The left did what it always does; what it did not steal, it destroyed. The Brazilian people reacted accordingly after they saw what the left did; personal enrichment, the acquisition of power, and as President Obama once said – reward their friends and punish their enemies.

They wanted the correct friends, the press to write nice things about them, and invitations to the good conferences and ceremonies – with a nice picture next to Bono for the effort. They were willing to sell their nation's future for it.

We see this pattern throughout the West. As I pointed out this weekend over on twitter, the turn to populism is due to the failure of the center-left & center-right to do the basics of governing, and instead choosing either corruption or concern for extra-national internationalism over the concerns of their own people. 

I don't know what it will take for this T-Paw/Walker/Rubio/voted-for-Jeb!-3-times (R) to see a return to the center - but many of the people yelping about the tide of nationalist-populism are responsible for its birth towards the fringes.

Make no mistake, populism is not sustainable. When you hollow out the center, all you will have are wild swings from one extreme to another – and with each swing, a wider gulf develops between the sides – the center cannot hold. Once that happens, violence follows.

If the West is to meet the challenge of this new era we need better leaders, braver leaders, and a people who demand good governance and individual liberty, instead of a call to tribal sectarianism and an ever more powerful state waiting for the next populist.

The correct path is the more difficult path in the short term, but the most rewarding in the long term.

Especially in Europe where so many of their leaders don’t even have children, asking for a long term focus in the West may be too much to ask.

Beers with Don

The immediate past CO of LCS-1, CDR Don Gabrielson, has put up a defense of LCS over at Phil Ewing's blog. Let's chew on what he has to say for a bit.

Now, I think it is fair to say that Don is a friend of the blog - or at least a professional acquaintance. He has commented here before, and I have had the opportunity to exchange a few emails with him as well; solid folk. He gives as well as he takes - and that is good enough for me.

I just wanted to say that for the same reason I titled this post the way I did - this is a friendly, "Having a beer on Phib's front porch" post - an atmosphere that the blogosphere has trouble recreating unless you specifically point it out - so no taking this post as any more that that.

Give Phil's post a read, but there are a few things Don said that I want to cover here.

We have been pinging on LCS pretty much since I started this blog. We have come at it from a few angles (there are so many to choose from), and I would expect a spirited defense of LCS to address the thorny parts of it.

Well, Don didn't do that really - and that is OK, we all have our favorites - here were his observations aimed at some LCS critics.

Size. People talk about LCS as a ‘small ship.’ Last December, we tied up in Norfolk across the pier from an FFG. My first reaction was, “Who shrank the frigates?” From our bridge wing, we looked across the top of the superstructure of the FFG — and we had two more decks above our heads. Small is a relative term — LCS isn’t small to anyone but us.

Modularity. This means we’re never stuck with an outdated capability longer than it takes to develop a new one — as soon as it’s ready, we can bring systems to the ships, wherever they are, and install them overnight. No other ship can do this. Period. We are barely coming to grips with what this will do for us.
Warfighting capability. When you compare what LCS brings with its mission packages along with core systems that are always onboard, it’s hard to see these ships as anything but incredible war machines. These are three thousand ton ships that are packed with warfighting teeth. They aren’t DDGs because they don’t need to be DDGs.

Maneuverability and access. Shallow draft opens more than five thousand ports to LCS that other US Navy ships can’t enter. We commissioned FREEDOM in Milwaukee — in 17 feet of water. We tied up in a river that was 150 feet wide in Buffalo. We backed into a 75-foot wide dock in a river in Norfolk — without help. The hullforms allow maximum speed in shallow water — FREEDOM exceeded 45 knots in 26 feet of water; waterjet propulsion brings incredible maneuverability — FREEDOM can do a zero-radius turn and reverse course from 15 knots in about 90 seconds, and is incredibly smooth riding at full speed. This will bring huge advantages in warfighting and humanitarian missions, as many small ports lack tugs and other infrastructure associated with larger ports, which means that LCS’ inherent maneuverability will be a distinct advantage. We were able to undock in a river, in 7 knots of current, at night, rather than waiting 24 hours for a tug. In forty sea details, we used tugs far less than half the time, and mostly because they were there. That is unique in my experience on five ships.

Speed. When was the last time you saw a football field go 60 miles per hour and turn on a dime? Every single time we demonstrated what speed combined with phenomenal agility bring, the conversation changed. Skeptics became believers. No other vessel on the water can overtake or outrun LCS in waves above 5 feet. There is no equation that says how much speed is enough – that’s like asking a fighter pilot how fast is too fast, or an army tanker, or an amphibious ops boat driver. If speed didn’t matter, we’d still be flying biplanes and driving tractors with guns, bringing Marines ashore in landing craft instead of LCACs and V-22s. Speed alters the tactical situation and the strategic impact is huge. No one can outrun a bullet. But speed, with agility, can surprise and outrun its aim. Speed will save lives and improve our ability to outmaneuver adversaries.

Crew Size. We could have cut a few bodies here and there from a legacy manning model, or we could force ourselves to rethink how we operate by manning the ship around new technological capabilities. Crew size, more than any physical feature, is a capability driver. I’ve taken to describing the crew size as 40+35, the core crew plus mission package, plus the shore support. It will work, because everyone has the freedom (pardon the pun) to approach their work from an entirely new perspective, and the ship was designed to be operated by a small crew – an important point. We will continue to learn how to do this better – nothing we could conceive of will teach more than the upcoming deployment. But it is working very well. And the crews love it.

Comments:

Size: I wouldn't call that a good thing. That actually reinforces part of the critique of conceptual concept vs. reality of LCS. It is a big Corvette. It is a big target. I don't care how fast you go - if you go zooming close to a place like Kismaayo with that thing, a gaggle of goobers with RPG's or twin-23mm on the back of a Honda will eat your lunch. Heck - just remember the INS Hanit - and she has less than half the displacement of LCS. If you are going to get close - and the "L" stands for "Littoral" then big is bad. MK1 MOD 0 eyeball works great up close and personal. Sure, we call her "Little Crappy Ship" - but that is just a pet name.

Modularity: What you started discussing is open architecture. Of course it has open architecture. Standard industry practice going on two decades - I hope so. My wife's new Volvo has a two to three little computers in it making it run - that does not make it transformational.

The rest of the quote is all PPT. We do not have that capability. We do not even have the mission modules developed and validated in an operational environment. We would like to - but we are not there yet. You may call her what you want - but even if the modules come online in enough numbers to allow quick swap out of modules and crew when you find that in C5F AOR you need MIW vice ASUW - you still have a uni-mission ship. The LCS version we are building is not a multi-mission platform.

Maneuverability and access: About those 5,000 ports - I think most are concerned about the liberty policy at those 5,000 .... But, to be serious; it is a nice speed boat that can do cool turns - but in a large Corvette sized ship - that is all just sexy fun stuff. Most of its work will be done from steerage way to 20 kts. The Navy needs warships, not Willy's Water Circus stunt boats. Speed did not make the Battle Cruiser a superior warship in WWI. Speed did not make the RA-5C a superior reconnaissance aircraft in Vietnam. Which brings us to ...

Speed: Actually, a football field going 60 MPH looks rather slow - you know, like one of those AN-225s we hire out to supply our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan taking off and landing. High speeds eats up fuel. High speed has tradeoffs. To an aircraft with a bone in his teeth - just like to the guys with the twin 23mm behind the beach condo - you are just another target that you lead just a little more.

Crew Size: The realization in official circles has already set in that LCS is undermanned - and changes are being made to increase manning capacity. The original concept for crew size barely outlasted the PPT slide - and in reality didn't even survive the first deployment. The studies are being made - and the extra bunks are being readied for the first deployment. The real issue with crew size has to do with the more important issues with LCS. Let's do a quick review.

The real problem with LCS started with the crew size. With the primary driver being saving manpower costs, we have given up the ability for sustained and effective watch keeping in a combat environment - not to mention habitability.

That leads to another huge issue with LCS - cost per hull and its mission modules. We have decided that a $700 million to $1 billion ship does not need an effective combat damage control capability by design or manning.

Despite all experience - and what we know about the benefits of full ownership - we have outsourced much of what used to be done from ship's company. That is going to be ugly down the road - and will make the material conditions of the SPRUANCE class at 20 look like Japanese ships.

From the penny wise and pound foolish school, we have also managed to design and entire class of ships who per-hull cost is such that we cannot build a Fleet of adequate size. Those ships, to make matters worse, are not multi-mission units - but will be asked to perform missions that would usually go to multi-mission ships such as Frigates - because we won't have any.

As LCS are not multi-mission (swapping out Mission Modules does not make you multi-mission), the enemy will not wait for your ASUW suite to show up when it goes after you while in ASW mode. As a result, much of our fleet will suffer from tactical rigidity. Budgets as they are, the likely inadequate number of Mission Modules and extensive support infrastructure LCS will require, will result in many LCS having one, or no, mission modules in place for the majority of a crew member's PCS cycle.

Excusing program duplicity. Many like to point fingers at GD or LMT for LCS's problems. Me? Notsomuch. This is an all Navy problem. We pushed a program based on bad theory on companies, and then kept changing requirements etc to the point it became what it is; a very expensive large Corvette of limited tactical utility. Never before has so much money bought so little capability from so few ships. Speed does not make up for it.

We are getting the LCS - so we will just have to accept the foolish sunk-cost and lost opportunity costs from what could have been. We decided on certain tradeoffs - it is what it is.

What can we learn from this whole episode? Well - click the LCS tab below for some of the ideas - but let's look at what intellectual school is largely responsible for this debacle of a program - and why LCS is the ship that keeps throwing off sparks between those who think it is the bees knees, and those who think it is a naval Shakespearian tragedy.

Part of it comes to how Phib and Don think about LCS. I like Don - and from the communications I have had with him - I don't think he spits on the ground at the mention of 'ole Phib either.

In the best spirit of the blogosphere, let's have a little creative friction without conflict.

Again, this is the blogosphere and CDRSalamander - so this is a sharp-elbowed conversation on the front porch, but a friendly one.

So off we go.

I think part of the problem between these two well meaning people known as Phib and Don is their very different "world views." The main fault line comes down between two intellectual filters; the futurist vs. the historian. Now and then I have a little fun and call it transformatinalists vs. antitransformationalists - same thing really.

You can get a little better understanding of Don's view of things here,

A noted MIT futurist named Ray Kurzweil wrote a book called “The Singularity Is Near” that discusses the rate of change of knowledge over time. He theorizes that the sum total of knowledge created in the last hundred years exceeded the thousand years before it — which means that in order to stay ahead, you have to work faster.

That is when I giggle a bit and Don looks at me with squinted brow.

Futurists are fun and all, but they do not have perfect vision, and have a very sketchy track record.

When they pontificate, they are a squirmy group to pin down. Usually, futurists will give you an upturned-chin, whaff of the hand dismissal of your concerns with a, "You must be forward looking, not backward looking" comment. Then they try to impart the importance of their new found philosophy by making exaggerated statements like, "...the last hundred years exceeded the thousand years before it ..." or "War is new!" or other such silly phrases.

Intentionally or not, such comments are based on an assumption of ignorance on the part of the vast majority of those who the comments are directed at. Anyone with a wide reading of history will understand that it is intellectual malpractice to state that - let's take an actual city that saw it - living, working and conducting business in Köln/Cologne, Germany from 1909 to 2009 is more radically different than living, working, and conducting business from 909-1909. That is just insulting. Do I even need to explain why?

Akin to teen-agers thinking they have discovered sex, they will then throw Captain Obvious phrases like, "..in order to stay ahead, you have to work faster." Harumph. That has been in effects since Homo Erectus first tried to keep his antelope away from Panthera Pardus. Silly phrase, Don - though I know what you mean.

Let's get back to the futurists track record a bit though. It would be easy to just point to Tomorrowland and the 1939 World's Fair to get a giggle at the Futurists track record of getting some things right (usually the evolutionary estimates) - but critically missing or mitigating the second and third order effects - and totally missing the obvious shortcomings of their "transformational" or "revolutionary" projections.

On the military side of the equation we can even giggle at the NB-36H and other nuclear powered bombers - just to start.

Closer to the nerve, we could also talk about the futurists in the Canadian Defense Forces who were within a FY or two of getting rid of all their tracked armor - including all tanks - as they saw "a future of an all wheeled force" and poo-poo'd the tracked tank as an anachronism. Well - the kick in the teeth of actual conflict in AFG showed them that they not only needed their Leopard I's in theater - but that the needed to upgrade to Leopard II's. Another cautionary tale of many for those who ignore the lessons of combat.

No, let's look at the very cautionary lessons of an uncritical embrace of futurism on the civilian side of the house; just a couple.

The Bauhaus influenced post-WWII urban renewal programs that gutted and destroyed so much of once was functional multi-use urban communities. Something to this day we are expending billions to repair. As we see around us - the best icons of "modernist" architecture are morphing into monuments of their myopia - as was warned about.

To boldly adopt the transformational wheeled bus; the destruction of once fully mature, efficient, clean, and popular urban mass transit trolly/light rail systems from DC to LA - again mistakes needing correction today at the cost of billions. Cities like Amsterdam never destroyed their systems, and are better cities because of it.

Futurism is a fine thought project and is helpful if fleshing out ideas, but is not a sound foundation for building a Fleet or designing a strategy.

Back to the present; finally, there is this note from Battine Chavanne in AviationLeak:

The Navy’s bid to right the LCS program is evident in efforts being undertaken at PEO-Ships, which is attempting to formalize the procurement, acquisition and program management process. PEO-Ships manages 20 major surface ships in seven yards, and projects 25-30 ships by the end of the 2009 Future Years Defense Plan (not to mention hundreds of smaller boats and yards).

Landay’s (read: the Navy’s) focus is, “Can you deliver an affordable ship on time and . . . of sufficient quality?” Sometimes the answer is ‘yes,’ “sometimes ‘no.’ So we’re identifying where we can do better.”

The list of potential improvements reads more like lessons learned from LCS: get the program right up front, understand risk and lock in cost estimates, focus beyond the next budget to account for growth and make sure “we’re not starting construction until we have mature designs,” Landay says.

That sums up nicely what 'ole Phib, Sid, Byron, and the rest of the crew have been pounding about on the program side for years. Glad to know Big Navy is coming around.

As for the warfighting limitations - we will just have to play to her strengths and try to mitigate her larger weaknesses.

We all know we will have LCS in the Fleet - but we should not sell her for something she is not. She will have a use and a place. You go to sea with the ship you have .....

For now though, we need to be looking for a better frigate sized ship, now - something we have also posted a lot on.

Don; I'm shifting from beer to scotch - you game? I'm going to have an glass of Tobermory - let me guess, you are more of a Dalwhinnie type?