Friday, October 29, 2021

Fullbore Friday

 Most everyone knows that the Korean War, though mostly a South Korean and American affair, was a UN action. 

Students of the war know that many nations contributed forces to the fight, with the United Kingdom and Turkey known by most.

Just a bit more than half a decade after liberation from a crushing Imperial Japanese occupation, the Philippines joined the fight as well.

They didn't hide in the rear either. 

The below won't be a surprise to people who served in the US Navy. We, more than most, know the quality per pound of the people we served with of Philippine extraction.

Take a moment to acknowledge an underknown battle and the heroism of an unappreciated fighting nation, the Philippine Army at Yultong;

As reported, in part, by HistoryIsNow;

...the Filipino force was assigned to join the Turkish Brigade and the US/Puerto Rican 65th Infantry Regiment into the 3rd Infantry Division.  Soon after, the 3rd Infantry Division faced the Communist North Koreans at the Battle of Miudong, which resulted in their victory. That was the first battle won by Filipinos in a foreign land.


 

In the spring of 1951, the 3rd infantry division was deployed along the area of the Imjin River. The 3rd and 2nd Battalions of the US 65th Infantry Regiment positioned facing west along the river, with the Turkish Brigade occupying the east flank, and the 10th BCT was at the center. Unbeknown to these men, a storm was brewing under their noses in the form of the Chinese Spring Offensive. 

40,000 Communist Chinese troops of the 44th Division of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army under Commander Peng Dehuai planned to attack and surround the 3rd Infantry Division. He deployed the 15th Army in a narrow zone between the Imjin River and Route 33. The 12th and 60th Armies were deployed to attack the positions held by the 10th BCT and the Turkish Brigade through the Pogae-san ridges.

Chinese Spring Offensive

20:00, 22/04/1951 – Artillery shells, mortar fire, machine gun, and small arms fire greeted the Turks at the start of the battle. At 23:00, waves of Chinese soldiers assaulted the 10th BCT positions and engaged in a series of close-quarter confrontations.

Continuous artillery bombardment and some friendly fire cut the communications between troops in the 3rd Infantry Division. Fortunately, communications returned at 00:30, and the Turkish Brigade received an order to retreat to a position on the line south of Hantan River. Intensifying Chinese assaults forced the 65th Infantry Regiment to retreat several hundred yards to regroup and reorganize. The 10th BCT was surrounded and left alone to brave the ocean of Communist Chinese forces.

The 10th BCT non-combatants such as the chaplain, clerks, medics, cooks, and drivers threw themselves into the fray to bolster the strength of their outnumbered battalion. Men of the 10th fought dispersed and confused because of the lack of communication between the hills. The fighting went on and on where some men were wounded, killed, or captured. Among the captured was Lt. Tomas G. Batilo of the Able Company of the 10th.

Then Lt. Jose Artiaga Jr. led the Baker (B) Company to defend the strategic hill of Yultong but they were pushed back by the unrelenting Chinese forces. At 03:00, enemy forces penetrated deep into the formation and reached the position of the Charlie Company in the reserves. Unfortunately, the company suffered heavy losses including Lt. Artiaga. 

While all this was happening, Lt. Col. Dionisio S. Ojeda received an order to withdraw and all units complied except Captain Conrado Yap's Heavy Weapons Company. Captain Yap led his men to counterattack to rescue the wounded and to retrieve the dead. He opened the hatch of his tank and shot at the Chinese with the mounted machine gun with his gun crew firing as fast as they could. Chinese soldiers fell one by one at the rate of 17 to 1 in favor of the 10th. The Heavy Weapons Company succeeded but at the price of Captain Yap's life.

The 12th President of the Philippines Fidel Ramos, who was also a PEFTOK soldier for the 20th BCT, commented about Captain Yap's actions in his speech during the 42nd Anniversary of the Battle of Yultong: "Captain Yap—his mission accomplished—now ordered a withdrawal. While making a headcount of his boys and directing the withdrawal, he was hit by machinegun fire."

The 10th held their ground until dawn and by this time the Chinese attack slowed down and this allowed the 3rd Infantry Division to retreat. Then the C Company of the 10th, supported by two M24 Chaffee light tanks of the Recon Company and allied artillery, led a counterattack to restore the lost area of B Company. The Filipinos fought until midday when General Robert Soule fell back to Line Kansas, to a position in Anhung-ri.

Aftermath

The battle ended with over 500 dead Chinese soldiers lying dead on the battlefield and 2 of them were captured. On the other hand, the 10th BCT lost only 12 people with 38 wounded and 6 missing. It was a victory for the ‘Fighting Filipinos’.

For the act of valiance performed by Captain Conrado Yap, he was posthumously awarded the Philippine Medal of Valor, the US Distinguished Service Cross, and was awarded the First Taeguk Cordon of the Order of the Military Merit on the 65th Anniversary of the Korean Armistice Agreement on July 27, 2018. Lieutenant Jose Artiaga Jr. was posthumously awarded the Philippine Distinguished Service Cross. 

There even appears to be a little rah-rah video.


Fullbore my Filipino friends; Fullbore.  

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Diversity Thursday


Take a moment to think about all the news concerning the fragility of our maritime supply chain nodes.

One good byproduct of this crisis is that the critical importance of merchant ships and maritime infrastructure to our national economy has come under the spotlight.

For those who have spent their professional lives feeling like some Cassandra screaming in to a void of national disinterest – the opportunity to educate people while you have their attention is a once in a generation moment.

In the US, in addition to the US Merchant Marine Academy, we have some states that have their own state merchant marine academies. 

It would be logical that the last year would have inspired administrators and curricula developers to review and revamp their course catalog and professorship to better prepare their students for the world as we have it today.

One of those state merchant marine universities is the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay, MA. Founded in 1891 with a student body of 1,637, 

… Mass Maritime is the second oldest state maritime academy in the United States. Originally established to graduate deck and engineering officers for the U.S. Merchant Marine, the academy has since expanded its curriculum. Though not required, some graduates go on to serve in active and reserve components of the U.S. Armed Forces. The academy operates a training ship, the USTS Kennedy.

Well, to support that mission, let’s head on over to HigherEdJobs.com to see what full-time tenure track positions are available.

Type: Full-Time

Salary: 70000 to 80000 USD Per Year

Posted: 10/25/2021

Application Due: Open Until Filled

Well, what timely position do we have here to meet the needs of the nation?

Massachusetts Maritime Academy invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Humanities beginning Fall 2022. The position is a 4/4 teaching load that includes teaching core courses (English Composition and/or Writing About Literature) as well as upper-level courses.

These duties will include teaching English Composition along with a specialty field, such as Cultural Studies, Latinx Literature, Women’s, Gender, and Non-Western Literature Studies, Diaspora Literature/Studies, or Disability Literature Studies.

- A Ph.D. in English or related field by Fall 2022 and be able to teach in one or more of the following areas: Cultural Studies, Latinx Literature, Women/Gender Studies, Non-Western Contemporary Literature, Disability/Crip Studies, or Diaspora Studies.

- The department values equity and diversity and will prioritize applications that directly incorporate these values into teaching, research, and service. We seek empathetic teachers, innovative scholars, and collaborative colleagues... We especially encourage candidates skilled in pedagogical practices that promote classroom inclusivity.

We are particularly seeking to hire a person with demonstrated interests in inclusive pedagogy, anti-racist initiatives, anti-racist curriculum, disability studies, accessibility, and usability. Applicants should also demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion through their cover letters, CVs, and/or teaching philosophies, or they may submit an optional Statement of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

- Experience working with/teaching students that are historically underrepresented or marginalized in higher education, including but not limited to students that identify as ALANA, BIPOC, first-generation, and/or LGBTQ+.

To apply, please submit a cover letter, resume/CV, Statement on teaching (1-2 pages) and evidence of teaching excellence (including syllabi), an MMA application, Affirmative Action form and the contact information of five (5) professional references.

Of course. 

A very serious institution in a very serious nation.

h/t TheOccidentalJihadist.

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

The Fine Line Between a Lie, Spin, and Your Soul


Do we have a problem in the profession or army of being loose with the truth?

Where is the line between clever word games and lying?

Who do we owe truth to, and who should we deceive?

From the Army to our Navy, I'm pondering a bit on the topic over at USNIBlog.

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Yes, for 20-yrs the Chinese Communist Party Has Been in our Communications Ecosystem


The news isn't that they have 60-days to get out, the news is they've been allowed to operate here for two decades.

Washington has revoked the US licence of one of China's biggest telecoms companies citing "national security" concerns.

China Telecom must stop providing services in America within 60 days.

Officials said the Chinese government's control of the company gave it the opportunity "to access, store, disrupt, and/or misroute US communications".

This in turn could allow it "to engage in espionage and other harmful activities against the US", they said.

China Telecom, which has provided telecoms services in the US for nearly 20 years, called the decision "disappointing".

"We plan to pursue all available options while continuing to serve our customers," a statement said.

...and of course, their Americas HQ is in DC. Better to ... well ... you know. 

Monday, October 25, 2021

I’ll Take Sub Killing for 500

SE=SL-RD-NL+DI-PL


If you want to bench test an old Cold Warrior, put something like this out;

The Navy has created a new task group on the East Coast to ensure it has ready destroyers that can deploy on short notice to counter the Russian submarine threat in the Atlantic Ocean.
The plan is to take destroyers that have recently completed deployments and are awaiting maintenance availabilities and make them ready for training and operations in the Atlantic. ... The creation of the new task group comes as the Navy has refocused assets and efforts on the Atlantic region due to Russia’s undersea capability. The service formally reestablished U.S. 2nd Fleet, which covers the North Atlantic and East Coast, in 2018 amid concerns over Russian submarines operating in the waters. ... The ships will be based out of Mayport and Norfolk, Va., and the task group is set for full operational capability by June 2022, according to McLane, who noted the ships will still have a post-deployment stand-down so sailors can see family after being out at sea. ... “These will allow us to work with the schedules of not only the surface ships, but the submarines, the P-8 community, and the HSM, [Commander, Helicopter Sea Combat Wing Atlantic] helicopter detachments so that we can align everybody up to take advantage of whatever training opportunities may exist, as well as tactical development exercises like in the past Black Widow, and then training opportunities like submarine command course operations. We can align those assets to go after these training environments that may exist,” Rear Adm. Brian Davies, the commander of Submarine Group 2, told reporters.
This is not a flip of the switch as there are a lot of “ifs” “buts” and “whens” … but the thinking is sound for reasons our friend Jerry Hendrix outlined in his 2017 report he co-authored on Forgotten Waters.

Jerry and I are about the same age. As East Coast JOs, we spent our ENS and LTjg sea duty saying bye to the last of the Soviet threat before that empire all fell apart. If you are under-50, you have no idea.

We experienced the Reagan build-up at flood tide. If you took a snapshot at the turn of the last decade of the 20th Century, the US Navy was well positioned for high end conflict in the Atlantic Coast. 

We had the entire great circle route from Miami to the GUIK gap covered. If you could keep the Soviet SSN/SSGN out of the open Atlantic, the convoy routes to the northern European ports would be relatively safe.

Surface ASW forces were well distributed and ready to conduct ASW or escort convoys. From south to north, we had Mayport, Charleston, Norfolk, and even a few in New York City (yes, for a brief shining moment, the sanity of strategic homeporting rules) and Newport. Land based active-duty air ASW were in Jacksonville, FL and Brunswick, ME with deployment sites all over the North Atlantic.

That was just on the US side. Canada, UK, France, The Netherlands, and Norway were all punching above their weight in the North Atlantic keeping that a very dangerous place for the submarines of the Red Banner Northern Fleet.

After 30-yrs break, we are not just a smaller force, we are a more scattered and vulnerable force. The incredibly myopic and greed based BRAC process divested the US Navy of the most effective access to the great circle routes to Europe. We evacuated the North. Brunswick gone. New York, and Newport are empty. Even Charleston in the Southeast is empty. Yes, the Russian submarine force is a shadow of what the Soviets were, but it takes a lot more effort to kill a sub than to be a sub.

If you consider the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap the essential barrier, just look at the additional time to get on station. Of course, you won’t do surface ASW at 25 knots, but if you are just looking at nice round number transit speed – all caveats apply – then Newport is the closest to Iceland. A ship based out of New York will take 4.4-hrs more to get there. Norfolk 14.3-hrs more, Charleston 26.4-hrs more, and Mayport 33.4 hrs more.

Indeed, you don’t have to be a genius to see how easy it would be to place a few blocking ships in Mayport and Norfolk – not to mention some even more dramatic events – to effectively degrade the east coast Navy for weeks or even months.

If we desire to deny the Russian submarine force access to the North Atlantic, we need more than a couple of DDG between availabilities … thought I 100% support this solid concept. 

No, we are witness to decades of neglect in ASW in the Atlantic. We have left what capability we do have concentrated and incredibly vulnerable.

Task Group Greyhound is a nice opening for a long conversation.  

Saturday, October 23, 2021

China's Dangerous Decade with Andrew Erickson

 

What are the of economic, demographic, and political forces driving China through this decade? 

What direction is her growth heading and where will she find herself at the end of the decade?

Are the forces in play likely to move her towards a more peaceful or a more militaristic stance?

Using the recent article he co-authored with Gabriel Collins in Foreign Policy, A Dangerous Decade of Chinese Power is Here, as a starting point, returning to Midrats for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern will be Andrew S. Erickson.

Andrew is a professor of strategy in the U.S. Naval War College's China Maritime Studies Institute and a visiting scholar in full-time residence at Harvard University's John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. His research website is www.andrewerickson.com. 

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.

Friday, October 22, 2021

Fullbore Friday


You graduated from the Naval Academy with the world at war. While it seemed your nation’s politicians were saying they would do all they could to stay out of this war – you probably knew better. It was a big war, and one side was being fed and armed from our side of the ocean. 

After graduation you get assigned to a battleship – and within a year, your nation goes to war. Your battleship was not just any ship, she was the USS Connecticut (BB-18), the flagship for The Great White Fleet a decade earlier, and now flagship of the Fifth Battleship Division.

Yet, your war never really came. You spent the war never leaving the east coast. You spent the entire war on what you realized soon, was an obsolete hulk of another age best used for what it was used for, training of others.



With the war over, you knew naval war was in a new age – an age where the submarine and the aircraft would change forever how power is brought from the sea.

You went to sub school and spent the next 12 years in the submarine service. A select group of select officers still trying to understand how to make these exciting new platforms work.

Big Navy was not through with you though, and back you went to battleships, the 15-yr old USS New York (BB-34). Your nation by now was in the grips of a nightmarish depression and the world was quiet.

You had a great tour and as a LCDR was given command of the USS Evans (DD-78). The 4-stack destroyer had been in the Navy as long as you had and was just a few years from being sent to mothballs, but she was your ship. 



You did well in command and post-command shore duty. As the world started to heat up again in 1937 you make Commander and your Navy sent you back to submarines with the honor of commanding Submarine Division Seven in Groton.

Again, the world headed to war yet you had aged out of operational units. Command is command though … and as an East Coast Sailor, your friends at BUPERS had something interesting – a 32-yr old former collier converted into a repair ship based out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The USS Vestal (AR-4).

You’ve been in the Navy 25 years, almost 30 if you include your time at Annapolis. Maybe we’ll stay out of this war, maybe not … but command of a ship – any ship – in Hawaii, well, there are worse sunset tours for a Commander.

Then came one December Sunday halfway through your command tour; Commander Cassin Young, USN – history is finally calling, and you’re on her short list:

...Sunday in port was shattered shortly before 08:00 as Japanese carrier-based aircraft swept down upon Pearl Harbor. At 07:55, Vestal went to general quarters, manning every gun from the 5-inch (127 mm) broadside battery to the .30 cal. Lewis machine guns on the bridge wings. At about 08:05, her 3-inch (76 mm) gun commenced firing.

At about the same time, two bombs – intended for the more valuable battleship inboard on Battleship Row – hit the repair ship. One struck the port side, penetrated three decks, passed through a crew's space, and exploded in a stores hold, starting fires that necessitated flooding the forward magazines. The second hit the starboard side, passed through the carpenter shop and the shipfitter shop, and left an irregular hole about five feet in diameter in the bottom of the ship.

Maintaining anti-aircraft fire became secondary to the ship's fight for survival. The 3-inch (76 mm) gun jammed after three rounds, and the crew was working to clear the jam when an explosion blew Vestal's gunners overboard.

At about 08:10, a bomb penetrated Arizona's deck near the starboard side of number 2 turret and exploded in the powder magazine below. The resultant explosion touched off adjacent main battery magazines. Almost as if in a volcanic eruption, the forward part of the battleship exploded, and the concussion from the explosion literally cleared Vestal's deck.

Among the men blown off Vestal was her commanding officer, Commander Cassin Young. The captain swam back to the ship, however, and countermanded an abandon ship order that someone had given, coolly saying, "Lads, we're getting this ship underway." Fortunately, the engineer officer had anticipated just such an order and already had the "black gang" hard at work getting up steam.

The explosion touched off oil from the ruptured tanks of the Arizona which in turn caused fires on board Vestal, aft and amidships. At 08:45 men forward cut Vestal's mooring lines with axes, freeing her from Arizona, and she got underway, steering by engines alone. The naval tug Hoga, whose tugmaster had served aboard Vestal just a few months before the attack, pulled Vestal's bow away from the inferno engulfing Arizona and the repair ship, and the latter began to creep out of danger, although she was slowly assuming a list to starboard and settling by the stern. At 09:10, Vestal anchored in 35 feet (11 m) of water off McGrew's Point.


With the draft aft increasing to 27 feet (8 m) and the list to six and one-half degrees, Commander Young decided upon another course of action. "Because of the unstable condition of the ship", Young explained in his after-action report, "(the) ship being on fire in several places and the possibility of further attacks, it was decided to ground the ship." Underway at 09:50, less than an hour after the Japanese attack ended, Vestal grounded on 'Aiea Bay soon thereafter. Commander Young was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that day.

Many of you may recognize that name. He was promoted to Captain, given command of the USS San Francisco (CA-38) and was killed in action 13 NOV 42 during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal leading his ship against the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Battleship Hiei.

Captain Young – fullbore.

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Culture, Competition, and Conflict: three rants on the state of Surface Warfare, by Bryan McGrath

The BONHOMME RICHARD fire report has the Surface Force in the news again, and one of our favorite ex-SWOs Bryan McGrath gave a speech to the Surface Navy Association's Washington DC chapter earlier today. He had a few things to get off his chest, and the things he said are worth a broader audience. 

Bryan has been kind enough to send along the text of his remarks for publication here - well worth your time.

Bryan, over to you!




Speech to the DC Chapter of the Surface Navy Association
 21 October 2021
“Three Rants”
As Prepared for Delivery

Thank you for the introduction, Captain Bryans. It was an honor to be asked to be here, and I am grateful for the opportunity.

I hope the folks of this chapter know how lucky we are to have Bob Bryans leading us while he’s doing incredibly important and difficult work over at OPNAV. He’s the best of the best. 

When Bob asked me to do this talk, he requested a theme, and because this isn’t my first rodeo, I knew that the quicker I gave him one the quicker he’d get off my back about giving him one. So, I said, “Culture, Competition, and Conflict”, and we both went on with our lives. And while I have a feeling that I will hit each of those topics during my talk today, I ask that you give me some latitude to meander, and I’ll do so with the structure of three broad areas of concern that I call…the three rants. 

Also, I want to get something out of the way up front. I am a consultant. I happen to have business relationships with the Navy, specifically agreements with the Commander of Naval Surface Forces in San Diego and the Director of Surface Warfare Programs at OPNAV N96. In those jobs, the government pays me to tell Admirals Kitchener and Schlise exactly what I think. And that is what I do. Sometimes they agree with me. Sometimes they don’t. At no point has either one of them or their predecessors ever asked me to change or modify my opinion to suit the Navy line, nor have I ever taken a position publicly that isn’t my own. Nothing I say is carried water for anyone else. Period. Are we clear? 

Ok. Let’s get on with things.

Rant One: Good Competition

Let’s start with rant # 1, and that is, I want to talk about “Competition”. The previous administration centered its national security strategy and national defense strategy around the imperative of renewed great power competition. One doesn’t have to have a doctorate in international relations to see that we are elbow deep in great power competition again, and this was a rational response. Following this policy focus, the sea services promulgated a new maritime strategy, and the CNO updated his NAVPLAN, in BOTH CASES, raising the prominence of what has come to be known as the “competition phase” of the continuum of competition. The other phases of the continuum being “crisis” and “conflict”. 

I believe all four of these documents—NSS, NDS, maritime strategy, and NAVPLAN—were well-aligned to the security environment we face, and all pointed squarely at seapower as a primary tool of action and influence. The fact that all four placed considerable focus on the competition phase led me to several conclusions.

First, competition is different than crisis, or conflict. It is how the United States Navy spends the overwhelming balance of its time. It is where the United States Navy (and seapower more generally), has its greatest impact, acting as it does as the guarantor of America’s security and prosperity. 

The primary products of competition phase seapower are—as I said—security and prosperity, both of which owe their promotion primarily to one factor—the conventional deterrence of those who would disturb the peace.

Conventional deterrence is the ballgame, and as the Navy is the Service that promotes conventional deterrence where it matters and to a larger extent than any other element of American military power, one could and should have expected the Navy to receive more and more consistent resourcing. 

Additionally, and for the interests of this audience and the biases of this speaker, no part of America’s arsenal is as critical to providing conventional deterrence where it matters than the Surface Force. Forward, distributed, networked, lethal, visible, and sustained surface forces. 

Given the emphasis on competition, the focus on conventional deterrence, and the degree to which force structure discussions in 2020 seemed in no small part to be variations on the single theme of growing the Navy, it appeared as if an important point of consensus had been reached. The fact that it was reached after four years of TALKING ABOUT growing a Navy and with little or nothing DONE about it provided many of us with the nagging sense that the clock was running out on the consensus. 

It is now late 2021, and it appears that consensus is dead. The concept of military competition and its desired by-product conventional deterrence has been replaced by something called “integrated deterrence”, a term which strikes me as a means to de-emphasize the military contribution to deterrence while emphasizing other “whole-of-government” contributions, which invariably are less expensive than maintaining proper fleet.

We saw our first evidence of this in the 2022 budget and its approach to shipbuilding, and we continue to see more evidence of it as time goes on. No one at OSD is talking about competition anymore, as we’ve entered the stage of defense planning that goes something like “when there aren’t resources available for both the deterrence of war and the conduct of war, defer to the latter”. In the process, we—the Navy, DoD, the United States—will field a Navy that is marginally better at fighting war and LESS able to deter war. I think this is a troubling and dangerous path, and I urge the Secretary of the Navy and the CNO to take every opportunity they can to advise against it.

I know it is hard to for the numbers people at OSD CAPE and N81 to quantify the benefits of conventional deterrence. I know it is far easier to do force on force analysis and come up with exchange ratios and campaign results. But that whole system ignores what we know to be true—that persistent, powerful naval force forward—specifically, surface forces—is the backbone of our conventional deterrence posture, and if we continue to de-emphasize powerful forward presence that creates doubt in the minds of potential opponents, we will be left with terrible decisions about whether and how to intervene when opportunistic opponents realize we’ve given up on the day-to-day competition. Critics of naval forward presence sometimes suggest that it destabilizes the security situation. Do you want to know what is even more destabilizing? The other guy having the perception that the competition is over. 

A prominent voice in the national security world recently opined that we need to abandon this “cop on the beat” mentality, because we don’t have the forces required to carry it out. So, he’s telling me that instead, we should diminish the fleet while implementing more of an over-the horizon strategy that is an even less powerful deterrent? 

How about we build the Navy we need?

There is talk of yet another force structure assessment in the wind, and my fever dream is that the Navy produces an assessment that is pretty consistent with the work it did in 2020, and then take a new position on that work. Well, not a new position, per se. But the position that the US Marine Corps has taken for much of my life. And that is, do the analysis and state the requirement. If the requirement is affordable within given resources, pursue it. If it is not, let political leadership know what the risks are and then do your best with the resources allocated. But never, NEVER, let available resources be the thing you start with when you seek to derive the requirement. And never, NEVER, change the requirement to fit the available resources. 

Rant Two: Bad Competition

Ok—let’s move on to rant #2. And it is another rant about competition. But a different kind of competition. 

I want to talk a little about the acquisition system by using a couple of examples of where I think the Navy has made grave errors, and then suggest that the time is ripe to make sure we don’t make that same error a third time.

About 11 years ago, the Navy moved forward with the Air and Missile Defense Radar, or AMDR program. A huge and critical effort, AMDR replaces the SPY 1 series of radars in surface combatants going forward, and it represented a franchise win for the company that competed and won the business. 

I don’t know much about this competition, but the urban legend is that Raytheon put a ton of internal investment money into winning this contract. I can imagine the conversation between the business unit lead and the CFO, where the business unit lays out the opportunity, the costs, and upside potential once serial production began. Considerable resources were applied, Raytheon won, and we expect to see the first ship with a SPY 6 AMDR radar commissioned in 2024 or so. Or put another way, we will not see an operational SPY 6 for a couple of years on a ship that won’t deploy until later in the decade.

But that did not stop the visionaries of the Navy Acquisition system from conducting a competition recently to bring on a second source to produce SPY 6 radars?

If I am that Raytheon CFO, I gotta be coming out of my skull. “We invested all that money and before the first one is even fielded the Navy is trying to find someone to undercut our price?”  

I think he or she has a good point. 

Now, I am a political conservative. I am a capitalist. I believe in free and competitive markets.
But defense production is not a free and competitive market. It is skewed by externalities unknown to most businesses in America. It is a monopsony, or at least a near monopsony, with considerable constraints placed on doing business internationally. 

For industry to make the kind of internal investment necessary to create the advanced capabilities that the Navy requires, they need to know that they will be able to get their money out of serial production. I’m all for competing but starting the competition before the first arrays are even placed just makes no sense.

But it isn’t just SPY 6. The same, or a similar move was made on the Navy’s SEWIP Block III program recently, and from what I can discover, similar conditions prevailed. In this case Northrop Grumman won the contract after considerable internal investment. No ship afloat has a fielded SEWIP Block III. Yet Navy acquisition recently sought to compete for serial production.

This is insane, and if this race to the bottom continues, it places the Navy’s Large Surface Combatant or DDG(X) program at serious risk. And here is why.

The Navy needs a sea-based, high-powered laser. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s call it the BAL—or Big-Ass Laser. Why does it need a Big-Ass Laser? Well, it needs a Big-Ass Laser because in a war with a big, aggressive country, after the carnage of an initial series of exchanges, our fleet will have to—as my friend Paul Giarra says—fight its way to the fight, and then fight through to the fight. It will be doing this against a country with a considerable ability to build missiles, and so we need a way to counter them that doesn’t bankrupt the United States.

To my mind, the logical place to put the Big-Ass Laser is on the BAS—or Big-Ass Ship. That is the DDG(X). The folks deriving requirements for this ship and doing trade studies and analyzing hull forms and all that stuff need to understand that the purpose of the Big-Ass Ship is to carry the Big-Ass Laser. 

The case for the Big-Ass Laser is that we will not be able to operate within the contested area NEARLY confidently enough unless we can project power from protected sea space. The Big-Ass Laser will give us that confidence.

Now…back to the whole question of competition. Capable tier-1 defense firms are busy with all manner of research and engineering designed to position themselves to compete for the Big-Ass Laser. It is difficult to conceive of being competitive without spending a considerable amount of internal investment money. So here I am, the VP of Big-Ass Navy Lasers at Acme Big-Ass Laser company, and I am going to talk to my CFO about getting the money necessary to upscale our current efforts to be able to compete for this contract. I deliver my perfectly crafted pitch, and then she looks at me and says, “why would I give you a dime after what the Navy has done with SPY 6 and SEWIP? How can we go to our shareholders and say that this investment is wise, given that EVEN IF WE WIN, the Navy is going to create a competitor before the first unit is fielded?”

How do you answer that? 

The bottom line folks is that if conventional deterrence fails and we get into a shooting war, we’re going to need to project power in order to fight our way back in. The high-power laser is the thing that we need to help us do that, and the real estate, cooling, and power for it will be provided by the DDG(X). Screw up the acquisition of the Big Ass Laser and the Big Ass Ship becomes an expensive luxury. 

We must get this right.

Rant Three: Culture and Systems

Ok—my final rant. I want to talk about culture, or more to the point, the perception that there is something wrong with our culture in Surface Warfare. I’ve been on this rant for four and a half years now since the collisions of 2017.

Those two collisions created and enabled a chorus of critics to charge that the there were “systemic” problems in Surface Warfare, particularly in the Surface Warfare culture. I asserted then, and I continue to believe now, that what others want to attribute to culture or leadership or some other ill-defined systemic failure, can more properly be attributed to a lack of resources. Simply put, the fleet was on the ragged edge because there weren’t enough ships to do what was being asked of them. To the extent that the system contributed to the collisions, it was this. 

But make no mistake about it. Those two ships had collisions because people who knew better, who knew what the rules were, and who knew what the right thing to do was—chose to do otherwise. 

If you want to make the charge of systemic failure, it seems to me you have a responsibility to account for why that failure was confined to one theater and a small number of ships. ADM Davidson, former INDOPACOM Commander, got into some hot water when he suggested as much before Congress. And while that was neither the time nor the place to try and make that case, it is a case that needs to be made. 

We have problems in Surface Warfare. What we do isn’t properly understood by policy-makers, we don’t do a good job in educating them, as a result, we get insufficient funding that results in too few ships, manning problems, deferred maintenance, and sub-optimized training opportunities.  

My inherently testable hypothesis is that if we properly resourced Surface Warfare, you’d hear a hell of a lot less about systemic and cultural problems. We are maintaining nearly a similar number of ships deployed every day with 295 ships that we did thirty plus years ago with twice that number. You want a systemic problem, there it is.

The culture I know is one of mission accomplishment, and I have no desire to see this diluted. 

Every generation has had ridiculous administrative burdens. That’s part of the job. What has changed is that the fleet we own and operate is insufficient to the operational tasks asked of it. Some say we ought to cut back on those tasks, that all this stuff we do around the world should be restrained, that we ought to bring the fleet home and operate it as a surge force with a bit of a cruising mindset, rather than a forward deployed force. 

I’d be happy to go along with this, but only after I was convinced that the American people were content with no longer being top-dog. Because if you’re going to be the world’s dominant political, economic, military, and diplomatic power, you aren’t going to do it from Norfolk and San Diego. The nation that believes itself to be those things is reflected in a powerful, forward deployed Navy protecting and sustaining its security and prosperity, along with that of like-minded nations. At the center of that fleet is the surface force and the professionals who operate it. They are the nation’s primary conventional deterrent, they are the nation’s primary military diplomats, and they are the nation’s primary crisis response force forward. 

It is time to resource them accordingly. 

I only hope that people are listening.

Thank you, and I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.


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

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Burning of the Bonnie Dick


15-months later, we have a lot more information from the burning of the USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6) ... and none of it is going to make you feel better.

I am of the "responsibility of command" school, but if you don't feel and smell a larger story here, you aren't paying attention.

More, along with links to the Command Investigation, are over at USNBlog.

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Ukraine: Tough Kid in a Tough Neighborhood

You must have some sympathy for the Ukrainian people. They have simply had a nightmarish century. 

In WWI and the following Russian Civil War, the slaughter on their soil was almost unimaginable. Once under the Soviet yoke, they then had a genocide via starvation. Then WWII came with the Germans and Soviets slaughtering each other on top of the Ukrainians in a manner that made WWI look like a skirmish. 

In the post-WWII era they had a few decades of peace, then decay, and the whole post-Soviet cultural apocalypse that comes with disaggregating empires.

The Russians – who see Ukraine as rightfully belonging under their sphere of influence – will not give them rest. The Ukrainians want to join the West … but the West hesitates out of fear of the Russians. Add to that corruption and other economic inefficiencies, the standard of living continues to lag;


This was nice for us to visit;

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III met with Ukrainian leaders in the capital city of Kyiv to strengthen ties between the nations and look for ways to implement the Strategic Defense Framework that was signed at the end of August.

…but both they and we know there is only so much we can do. The Russians will not leave the Donbas or Crimea peacefully outside some black swan event, so this frozen conflict will remain … and it is that conflict that caught my eye in the story above;

Ukraine has lost 14,000 citizens in the conflict with Russia in eastern Ukraine. There are books of the dead in the memorial, and they list those killed each day.


For Americans, we should ponder that a bit. Adjusted for population, in American terms that would be 104,533 dead. 

Imagine if Mexico occupied Arizona and New Mexico, and the front has been stagnant for years, yet we had lost over 100,000 Americans in this conflict. How would that play on the American mind?

No, history never stops. It does not end. It takes a pause now and then – that is about it.


Monday, October 18, 2021

Zinni on Wargaming ... Value and Danger


Simply a superb interview with General Anthony Zinni, USA (Ret) by Mie Augier and Major Sean F. X. Barrett, USMC over at CIMSEC

What is so impressive about it is the the focus of the interview - wargaming. 

There are few things more misunderstood, abused, and poorly done than wargaming. Done incorrectly, either by incompetence or malice, it can lead to the death of millions and the destruction of nations. No, that isn't an exaggeration. 

Let's pull a few quotes that grabbed my attention; 
I think gaming was more valuable at the lower levels, at the tactical level, maybe lower operational level. ... As you go higher up, I found there was too much in the way of service politics and other things that were injected into the games.
Bingo. This is where elections and the system of incentives and disincentives in our promotion systems can bring disastrous effects.
...I watched how the games became more designed as proofs of capabilities—preordained proofs of capabilities—rather than—as much as they advertised it—open testing, having a real willingness to fail, and all that.
You will hear a lot of "X was wargamed and Y was the result" - be very suspicious of these claims, especially with systems and CONOPS that are vaporware.
If somebody talks about a game, I am usually highly suspicious about what the purpose is, who is designing it, and who is sponsoring it.

Question everything until you feel comfortable you know where people are coming from.

I loved the fact that over two decades later, Millennium Challenge keeps popping up. 

NB: we interviews Van Riper 9-years ago on Midrats if you'd like to give it a listen.

There is a lot of great stuff in the interview, especially about the timeframe from DESERT FOX to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Yes, there are contradictory stories out there ... but Zinni is part of this and his view should be included in your consideration.

They started the game, and there was a lot of media attention. After the first two or three moves, Van Riper had sunk half of Fifth Fleet and destroyed a corps. They stopped the game because it was now turning into a disaster. They brought everybody in and said they were going to restart the game because some things didn’t go right or whatever. Van Riper didn’t do what they thought or assumed he would do. They thought they had him figured out, had the “enemy” figured out.

They started the game again—same result. Van Riper kicked their butts, and now they stopped again. People were coming down from the Pentagon, and this was becoming a problem. They then said they were going to start for a third time, but this time they told Van Riper what he had to do. He said if they wanted him to go by a script, they had to advertise that it was not free play—that it was scripted. You can’t advertise something as free play when it is really being scripted—that is dishonest. They told him they were not going to do that, but that Van Riper was going to be scripted in many of the things that he could do.

The next thing that happened was a bunch of the majors that were down there revolted and went to the media, and of course Van Riper then became a superstar for every young officer in the military. Malcolm Gladwell even wrote about it. This went all the way up to the Joint Chiefs, and the Joint Chiefs dissed Van Riper and didn’t defend him. Van Riper became the hero for everybody involved in Millennium Challenge below the rank of one-star.

I wonder where those majors wound up?

This part is superb; 1) a view on the present threat from Chinese ASMB/ASCM; 2) beats the assumptions drum I love to hear;

 Yes, it is in our nature to become overreliant on technology because we created this dependency on it, and in addition to that, in some ways, we don’t leverage it enough. Every time I get into a discussion with someone about facing a peer-level military threat, it always comes down to the same thing: Well, they’ve got missiles that are going to crush us. The answer is always that we must go after those missiles, we must find them, and shoot them down. What everybody is losing sight of is one of the first things I ask: How does the missile know where you are? Then there’s a fall back: Tell me how they target you. The missile is back there, and you are out here, and they can’t see you. Something is targeting you. Is it a satellite? Is it a recon unit? Instead of wasting all this effort and resources on new technology to kill the missiles, could we blind their missiles? Could we deceive the missile in some way? Maybe the focus of our technology should be on defeating targeting, and maybe the ways we defeat it is to give it a false image, to blind it, to deceive it. To address the threat through better tactics, using what we already have. No one ever talks about that. Everybody just pushes the technology to kill the missile. My point is that it is not just overrelying on technology. Sometimes it is not knowing how to use technology through tactics to build an advantage.

In Millennium Challenge, the blue force was totally dependent on monitoring the red team’s communications, so Van Riper did not use any digital technology. He used motorcycle couriers and all kinds of alternative, simple sources of communication. He did nothing that could be captured or intercepted, so they were totally blind. They put all their eggs—that they would have superior technology to intercept his communications—in one basket. They assumed he would never initiate the fight—that this enemy would be so overwhelmed he would not attack during the build-up phase. Of course, Van Riper immediately attacked. It was a beautiful thing to watch! When we make too many assumptions, it becomes a vulnerability.

Read it all, and keep an eye out for Part-2.  Yes, I've had some issues with Zinni a decade and a half ago, but time has show that many of his concerns were solid, and I was not fully correct on my own assumptions. As such, agree or not (no one is perfect), he is a person worth listening to. I should have had a more open ear to him in the past.

Sunday, October 17, 2021

The Navy in Afghanistan at Flood Tide: PRT Khost - on Midrats

 

Afghanistan is a land locked nation, but in the USA’s two-decade presence in that country, her Navy was there from the beginning to end serving along with her sister services.

Many are familiar with the untold number of Individual Augmentation (IA) assignments Navy active duty and reserve component personnel filled, Navy Corpsmen serving with USMC units, and even SeaBee deployments to Afghanistan, but there were other units with a large US Navy presence, a few of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT).

This Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern we’re going to take a snapshot of this part of the Afghanistan conflict from its high-water mark - 2010 and 2011 - with our guests Captain Steve Deal, USN (Ret.) and Command Sergeant Major Alexander “Beau” Barnett, USA (Ret.). They  served together as the Commanding Officer and Sergeant Major of Provincial Reconstruction Team Khost in 2010 through 2011.

Captain Deal had extensive experience in command. In addition to his tour as Commanding Officer, PRT Khost, he commanded Patrol Squadron 47 in Ali AB, Iraq (2007-2008) and Patrol and Reconnaissance Wing TEN in Whidbey Island, WA (2012-2013).

Command Sergeant Major Barnett impressive experience as senior enlisted leader in addition to his tour in Khost included Operations Sergeant Major and Command Sergeant Major at Battalion level and as a USASMA Instructor, Command Sergeant Major for the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division and concurrently the Regimental Sergeant Major of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. His final assignment prior to retirement the 189th CATB CSM at JBLM Tacoma Washington.

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.

Friday, October 15, 2021

Fullbore Friday

Barely six-weeks old, our retreat and national humiliation in Afghanistan for many of us has been

I wrote the below almost exactly six years ago when we left a base that in my professional swan song, I had a lot invested in. 

Yep, that's my picture to here put as a reference point in time in late '08/early '09.

Intersting to read how my feelings were in 2014 almost a warm-up for the feelings I continue to have about what we did to the effort as a whole in AFG. I'm still not fully settled on the issue.

Anyway, if you are so inclined, join me in a quick return to OCT 2014.


I will be, uncharacteristically perhaps, brief for today's FbF.

I actually had a rather long post written, and then deleted it. Most of it really didn't need to be published, and the public consumption part most of the regulars here know; know my view of what was done to move the difficult but winnable Afghan war in one speech in DEC09 to a hopeless cause.

Don't try to fight it out either way in comments. I'm in no mood to play with tired arguments from people are at best are just temporally disjointed, ignorant, or at worst just petty trolls.

Instead of all that non-productive crap, I decided to think of the good memories of Camp Bastion/Leatherneck as I knew it here. That cross between the surface of Mars and Moon Base Alpha. 

Two visits stand out the most. The two days of heartburn when I had following my overly enthusiastic breakfast with the Brits after not sleeping for the better parts of two days. Beans, stewed tomatoes, butter soaked dry toast and some kind of sausage on a stomach like that only prepped with black coffee in a dehydration was ... well ... what it was.

In a little more than four months before I hung up the uniform for good, Bastion was the pivot point in my last, "Screw the USAF, I'll figure this out myself" adventure.

Being stuck in Qatar after a conference; needing to get back to Kabul yesterday; a "two week delay" to get a flight back; staying all night after most everyone else gave up, and convincing a C-17 loadmaster in the middle of the night to open just a few seats in their "cargo only" flight - in a few minutes he came back after checking with the aircraft commander with a thumbs up. Had 5-minutes to get on. It was one of those, "Yes, I need to get to Kabul, but for now I just need to get in to AFG. I'll find my way to Kabul from there." moments.  

On the way, with a smug, "I told you I could do this" grin on my face, I walked around the lost souls hanging on hope in the wee hours I had met that day, grabbed a SEABEE CO and CMDCM who needed to get to their command who I told to wait with me as I was "feeling lucky," another lost O-5 Navy type who, like me, refused to accept that we had to wait two weeks, and a female USAF E-4 who was just lost not knowing what to do. With my team of misfit toys in tow, we followed the loadmaster to the C-17 and, like the cat who ate the canary, just nodded at each other as wheels when up, and fell asleep. Only the SEABEEs actually needed to get to Bastion - the rest of us other places. 

Sure enough, we got to Bastion in that C-17, shook hands and went our separate ways. My plan was that I had no plan, but hey - at least I was in AFG. Thing is, when alone and needing help - always look to family. The USMC was there. I knew right where to go.

Walked over in what was in '09 just a tent next to the taxi way, to USMC flight ops to see what was going to Kabul or Baghran - and generally to hang out in a place I knew I would be welcome, even if I was just a USN terminal O5 staff weenie a log way from his desk. 

"Nothing due today." Said the Marine looking at the ink board for today's flights, when all of a sudden we heard the distinct sound of a recently landed C-130 in beta. "Who is that?" I asked. "We have no idea."

Funny but longish story later; an ANG C-130 was dropping off one pallet and then flying empty to Baghran. I asked if I could have a ride, the nice Major said, "Sure." They said as long as I was willing to do a "combat dropoff" or whatever it is called when they keep all four burning and drop the ramp for people to run off; they'd stop in Kabul to drop me off. Just me.

And so, I found my way back to Kabul, not only two weeks earlier than the pogues in Qatar said I would - but 10-days earlier than the US Army Majors I traveled to Qatar with - but didn't think I could work the system, so headed off to the tent to snooze. They may have been SAMS graduates, but they didn't have that Navy, "I'll figure it out when I get there." sense of adventure. 

What a way to return to Kabul; a special flight in to Kabul all by myself, with a big sh1t-eating grin trotting off the back of a C-130 that didn't even bother to shut down - and before I was even past the tail of the aircraft, the ramp was coming up and the plane was taxiing. 

That was the last C-130 flight I would take, heck of a way to end that run. Still makes me smile.

A call to HQ ISAF, a USAF E-5, a Kiwi and a RAF guy pick me up in a Land Rover, and back to the HQ to finish up what was, in hindsight, thrown away by small, blinkered men. We tried.

Sigh. That was when we were in the middle of getting everything up to speed for the surge and we were all optimistic about the future. Few of us thought that Obama would quit later that year.


The days of SEABEEs, Red Horse, Rhino Snot, worldwide shortage of airport matting, and the Karzai family's cornering of the rock crushing market. Good times, good times.


That is my small, insignificant, staff weenie memory of Bastion/Leatherneck - but that isn't the story of that base. 

You could fill up years of FbF with the sacrifice of the US, UK, and allied servicemembers who served there. Doing their job as best as they were allowed - but largely untold by a bored nation, distracted leadership, and a largely indifferent culture.

Yes, the above is the short post. I'm just going to end it with the videos below. I frankly, just don't know what else to say. 

All that fighting, great fighting, that so few know about, and even fewer care. BZ to all - we did what we could and at least some of us, those who served with you and others who didn't but made the effort to find out, know. 

The rest can go pack sand.

Pause, ponder, and reflect.



This.

Staff Sergeant Kenneth Oswood, of Romney, West Virginia, is one of the few members of the squadron who participated in both the Iraq withdrawal and Monday's Helmand airlift.

"It's a lot different this time .... Closing out Iraq, when we got there, we were told there hadn't been a shot fired in anger at us in years. And then you come here and they are still shooting at us," Oswood said.

"It's almost like it's not over here, and we're just kind of handing it over to someone else to fight."

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Diversity Thursday

After a summer where more and more people’s eyes have been opened to the divisive, sectarian, and even racist nature of Critical Race Theory and have risen in opposition to it and similar race-essentialist world view in to our schools, the next logical step is how people feel about it becoming an essential part of taxpayer supported public education.

As we’ve discussed it in detail here, we know there is a problem in the US Navy where the Chief of Naval Operations has enthusiastically supported the works of one of the most high-profile advocates of the most cancerous forms of Critical Race Theory, Ibram X. Kendi. With that top cover, it was only a matter of time until its advocates came out of the shadows to inject it elsewhere in our Navy.

As we covered last week, one of the fellow travelers of Kendi has become rather popular at the United States Naval Academy. Could it get worse? 

Of course it could get worse. With the Diversity Industry, that is their job. Remember, they have paychecks and world views to justify. No one wants to solve anything – indeed – the goal is to not only continue the crisis they describe, but to create it if it does not exist and to grow it if they can.

What would you think about USNA, 

“…integrating Claudia Rankine’s work into the USAN teaching and learning community?”

Oh yes … and there will be theater.


BEHOLD!



Sadly, we missed it and there doesn’t seem to have been a recording made of this glorious event. If any readers here saw it, drop me an email … I’d love to hear how it went.

I can’t seem to find a full reading, but I have something better. Here is the author discussing her play.

Is this really the mindset we want Midshipmen to bring to the fleet? Is this how we foster good order and discipline?

 

I'm not sure what is in her heart, but it isn't healthy.

Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Economic Power is Global Power


Want to get a more wholistic view of what is and what is not worth the investment of strategic effort, sacrifice, and investment?

Follow the money.

Pondering a great graphic over at USNIBlog.

Come by and puzz'l your nogg'n with me for a bit.

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Drydocks Matter


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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, let's pull that out again;

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

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

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

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

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

We can start by building some new floating dry docks. 


Monday, October 11, 2021

Sea Power is American Power - and we are Throwing it Away

 


“Divest to Invest” is the lie a declining power tells itself when temporary leaders decide to shrug the hard work today to enable a more secure tomorrow, in order to have a comfortable and pleasant tour for themselves today – forcing others to have to play catch up later. It is that, or it is just plain wrong.

We’ve seen this play before in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it failed so well last time, it is back again.

The Terrible 20s does not have to happen, but it is. Decline is a choice, and one we seem to be making … but it is reversible if a nation and its leaders have the will to stand athwart the declinist drive and yell, “Stop!”. 

While it is easy to become frustrated, now is not the time to become demoralized. We are not in a dark room surrounded by the unknown – no – we are on a well-worn path.

We should start this week by having a visit with two old friends: Claude Berube and Jerry Hendrix.

First, I’d like you to take a moment to look in detail at this essential graph from Claude. It speaks for itself.

Next, if you have not already, head over to Foreign Policy for Jerry’s superior ringing of the bell.

Now, with defense budgets flat or declining, leading Defense Department officials are pushing a “divest to invest” strategy – whereby the Navy must decommission a large number of older ships to free up funds to buy fewer, more sophisticated, and presumably more lethal platforms.

China, meanwhile, is aggressively expanding its naval footprint and is estimated to have the largest fleet in the world. Leading voices simultaneously recognize the rising China threat while also arguing that the United States must shrink its present fleet in order to modernize. Adm. Philip Davidson, who led U.S. Into-Pacific Command until he retired this spring, observed in March that China could invade Taiwan in the next six years – presumably setting the stage for a major military showdown with the United States – while Adm. Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations, has argued that the Navy needs to accelerate the decommissioning of its older cruisers and littoral combat ships to free up money for vessels and weapons that will be critical in the future.

Taken together, these views add up to strategic confusion and an obliviousness to history.

Throughout history, large naval and merchant fleets represented not just a power multiplier but an exponential growth factor in terms of national influence. All historical sea powers recognized this – until they didn’t.

As I alluded to in the opening, we are not in uncharted waters. Other people and nations have been here before.

In October 1904, Adm. John “Jackie” Fisher was appointed first sea lord of the Royal Navy. He arrived in office certain who the enemy was – Germany – but also with clear direction from civilian leadership to tighten his belt and accept declining naval budgets. Fisher’s solution to this strategic dilemma was to dramatically shrink the fleet in order to pay for modernization while also concentrating the remaining ships closer to Great Britain. His investments in modernization were breathtaking – most notably the introduction of a steam-turbine, all-big-gun battleship, the HMS Dreadnought, which would lend its name to all subsequent battleships that followed, transforming global naval competition.

Today, Fisher’s strategy would be recognized as a divest-to-invest modernization plan. And the lesson is clear: Britain found that it was unable to preserve even the façade of being a global power; it was quickly reduced to being a regional maritime power on the periphery of Europe.

The ensuing conditions of international instability, shifting alliance structures, and the global arms race contributed to the outbreak of World War I and the end of empires, including Britain’s.

There is a comfortable delusion a navy at peace can fall in to; filter upon filter takes out the hard answers to difficult questions – giving favor to soft, comforting answers resting on a platform supported by delicately crafted, untested, and fragile assumptions.

…the overarching U.S. naval strategy, stated repeatedly by defense leaders during this spring’s round of congressional hearings, is to “divest” of older platforms in order to “invest” in newer platforms that, although fewer in number, would possess a qualitive edge over those fielded by competitors. As history reveals, this strategy will produce a fleet too small to protect the United States’ global interests or win its wars.

When soft answers gain too many advocates, it steers the nation into dangerous waters. That is when the hard answer advocates must raise their voices.

To avoid the mistakes of the past, Congress should follow its constitutional charge in Article 1 and allocate funds sufficient to both provide for a newer, more modern fleet in the long run and to maintain the Navy that it has today as a hedge against the real and proximate threat from China. Such an allocation requires a 3 to 5 percent annual increase in the Navy’s budget for the foreseeable future, as was recommended by the bipartisan 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission.

Both steps are crucial. Weapons like hypersonic missiles and directed energy mounts like the much-hyped railgun are changing the face of warfare, although not its nature, and the United States must invest to keep up with its competitors in China and Russia, which are already fielding some of these systems in large numbers. … Great powers possess large, robust, and resilient navies. Conversely, shrinking fleets historically suggest nations that are overstretched, overtasked, and in retreat. Such revelations invite expansion and challenge from would-be rivals. To meet the demands of the current strategic environment, the U.S. Navy must grow – and quickly

Now, in this third decade of the 21st century, the United States must not ignore the rhymes of history, repeating the mistakes of the sea power that came before it – Britain – by lulling itself into the false belief that it can divest to invest in a brighter future while China maneuvers to overtake it. It must have larger defense budgets that will allow for a sea power-focused national security strategy in the face of rising threats. The United States must recognize yet again – as other have before it – that on the world’s oceans, quantity has a quality all its own.

The United States is a maritime and aerospace power. A strong maritime strategy is a strong national strategy. Say it. Speak up. Repeat until you tire of the argument, then repeat it more. Support those who do likewise. This will take a while.

Like the next war, this is will be a long fight.