LCS: Bringing a Junkie's Mentality to a Great Service

Let's start with a quote from the Behavioral Medicine Association, shall we?

The first casualty of addiction, like that of war, is the truth. At first the addict merely denies the truth to himself. But as the addiction, like a malignant tumor, slowly and progressively expands and invades more and more of the healthy tissue of his life and mind and world, the addict begins to deny the truth to others as well as to himself. He becomes a practiced and profligate liar in all matters related to the defense and preservation of his addiction, even though prior to the onset of his addictive illness, and often still in areas as yet untouched by the addiction, he may be scrupulously honest.

First the addict lies to himself about his addiction, then he begins to lie to others. Lying, evasion, deception, manipulation, spinning and other techniques for avoiding or distorting the truth are necessary parts of the addictive process. They precede the main body of the addiction like military sappers and shock troops, mapping and clearing the way for its advance and protecting it from hostile counterattacks.

Because addiction by definition is an irrational, unbalanced and unhealthy behavior pattern resulting from an abnormal obsession, it simply cannot continue to exist under normal circumstances without the progressive attack upon and distortion of reality resulting from the operation of its propaganda and psychological warfare brigades. The fundamentally insane and unsupportable thinking and behavior of the addict must be justified and rationalized so that the addiction can continue and progress.

One of the chief ways the addiction protects and strengthens itself is by a psychology of personal exceptionalism which permits the addict to maintain a simultaneous double-entry bookkeeping of addictive and non-addictive realities and to reconcile the two when required by reference to the unique, special considerations that àat least in his own mind- happen to apply to his particular case.

The form of the logic for this personal exceptionalism is:

Under ordinary circumstances and for most people X is undesirable/irrational;
My circumstances are not ordinary and I am different from most people;
Therefore X is not undesirable/irrational in my case - or not as undesirable/irrational as it would be in other cases.

Armed with this powerful tool of personal exceptionalism that is a virtual "Open Sesame" for every difficult ethical conundrum he is apt to face, the addict is free to take whatever measures are required for the preservation and progress of his addiction, while simultaneously maintaining his allegiance to the principles that would certainly apply if only his case were not a special one.

Could there be a more accurate description about where our Navy finds itself at the start of 3QFY18 concerning LCS?

Let's spin the golden oldies, shall we? Back to the dulcitones of yesteryear, in this case almost a decade ago to 2009;

The Navy announced Oct. 13 the decision to deploy the USS Freedom (LCS 1) in early 2010 to the Southern Command and Pacific Command areas ahead of her originally scheduled 2012 maiden deployment.

According to Navy leaders, littoral combat ships (LCS) are needed now to close urgent warfighting gaps.

"Deploying LCS now is a big step forward in getting this ship where it needs to be - operating in the increasingly important littoral regions," said Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations. "We must deliver this critical capability to the warfighter now."

The Freedom will have an immediate impact on fleet readiness and global reach as an asset with unique combat capabilities and the ability to meet littoral tasking not previously seen in the modern cruiser or destroyer fleet.

"The Navy plans to build a considerable number of littoral combat ships which will form the backbone of our future fleet," said Adm J. C. Harvey, Jr., commander, U.S. Fleet Forces, charged with executing the early deployment. "The sooner we integrate them into our fleet, the sooner we can incorporate them in the order of battle. This deployment offers a golden opportunity to learn by doing. Employing the USS Freedom in theater two years ahead of a normal timeline allows us to incorporate lessons that can only be learned in a deployment setting more quickly and effectively in the LCS fleet integration process."

...and here we are.

A decade after commissioning Hull-1. A decade and a half after the triumph of the Transformationalist movement. How many changes? How many excuses?

Here we are;

The Navy may not deploy any of its Littoral Combat Ships this year despite previous plans to deploy one to the Middle East and two to Singapore in 2018, due to a confluence of maintenance availabilities that has most of the LCS fleet sidelined this year.

Three of the Navy’s four original LCSs are in maintenance now, and four of the eight block-buy ships that have commissioned already are undergoing their initial Post Shakedown Availabilities (PSA), Cmdr. John Perkins, spokesman for Naval Surface Force Pacific, told USNI News.

In addition to the deploying ships themselves being in maintenance, so too are the training ships that will be required to help train and certify the crews.

Still, no ability to do ASW. No ability to do MIW. Exceptionally limited - almost comical - ASUW.

Oh, and the air det?

Weaponized MQ-8B Fire Scouts are ready for deployment, they just need the Littoral Combat Ship program to reconfigure its weapon storage to squeeze in the ammunition, program officials said.
...
The weapons testing went great from the airframe standpoint,” Dodge said. “One of the issues with the advanced weapons systems is because it’s based on an unguided rocket, it’s designed to be built up in an armory and the LCS armory doesn’t have the space that you can build up.”

The LCS has one magazine, used to store all the ships weapons, including any that would be used for aircraft and other weapons systems.

Good googly moogly; ready, fire, aim.

We chose this path over a decade ago, and yet not only do we not have mission systems, the Sailors' training pipeline en route to the ships is so jacked up, we don't have enough Sailors to properly man the ships we have conducting extended static displays ... not to mention training them once they are there.

As a Fleet LT told me, deployment isn't a priority; deliver is.

And there is your problem. We are so focused on spending money on hulls that equipping them, manning them and training them for warfighting is an afterthought.

It is 2018 and we still do not have it right.

We have what we have and need to make the best of it - but we simply can't. The solution now is what the solution was that I offered over a decade ago. Stop building these ships NOW and find some use for what we have. License build a couple of dozen Eurofrigates until we get a good USA design ready to go.

We have built way more of these white elephants now than if we followed Plan Salamander a decade ago, but it is never too late to do the right thing.

Stow the cost arguments before you drag them out again. 

Look at what OHP, SPRU and DDG-51 Class warships were doing 10-yrs after commissioning of their Hull-1, and then behold LCS.

Remember, what would you rather have; 3 FFG deploying in 2018, or 5 LCS hanging out pierside? What is the real value for your money?

Over and over again we continue to choose LCS or to make excuses. We define deficiency down for the sake of what?

Like any addict, we will make excuses and warp everything to feed that addiction. What are we addicted to, our own desire to defend our bad decisions? Hope?

Choose life my dear Navy. Choose life.




...but to really understand that, you need the non-Kristen friendly OG version.



Hat tip Sid.

Watching Syria? I hope so.

If you have not already, you should have a short list of reliable sources of information on what is going on in Syria.

Over at USNIBlog I'm making a recommendation. Check it out and add it to your list.

NB: USNIBlog seems to be having trouble. Check back in later when they have it fixed.

John Lewis Gaddis and the Mal-Education of Strategy

Trying to understand strategy should make your mind hurt. In his latest book, On Grand Strategy, it seems that John Lewis Gaddis is out to do just that.

From Aaron Maclean's review in The Weekly Standard, it appears Gaddis does not disappoint. I greatly enjoyed Gaddis's book on George F. Kennan, but this looks like a heavier load.

Take time to read full review, but here is a taste on the very wide aperture the author takes to the discussion, opening up on what it takes to get strategy right, and why those we trust to form it seem to be coming up short.

A gap has opened between the study of history and the construction of theory, both of which are needed if ends are to be aligned with means. Historians, knowing that their field rewards specialized research, tend to avoid the generalizations upon which theories depend: they thereby deny complexity the simplicities that guide us through it. Theorists, keen to be seen as social "scientists," seek "reproducibility" in results: that replaces complexity with simplicity in the pursuit of predictability. Both communities neglect relationships between the general and the particular—between universal and local knowledge—that nurture strategic thinking. And both, as if to add opacity to this insufficiency, too often write badly.

As the review notes, there is a problem in academia - one we've discussed often here on on Midrats. It is a problem of narcissistic curiosity; when one is only interested in what happened in your lifetime or that of your parents.

Moreover, young people interested in geopolitics are very likely to get their first meaningful exposure to the subject not from a history department or a classics-oriented course in grand strategy like the one at Yale, but from an introductory course in international relations. A yet-unpublished study by the Alexander Hamilton Society—an organization dedicated to promoting debate on the first principles and contemporary dilemmas of American foreign policy—reviews the syllabi of such courses at the 10 universities atop the 2017 U.S. News & World Reportrankings and finds that of the most commonly assigned readings, only one author (Thucydides) was not born in the 20th century; the other nine are contemporary or near-contemporary political scientists of the likes of John Mearsheimer and Robert Jervis. Such a pedagogical approach implies that our knowledge of statecraft, like our knowledge of materials science or of how to treat cancer, is steadily accumulating. Each generation of theorists will know more, or at least will know better, than the last.
...
On the evidence of the results of the last 25 years of American foreign policy, it seems as though the question of how to educate strategists ought to be acute for us. In particular, Gaddis's general hostility toward dogmatism of any variety deserves attention: He gets a great deal of mileage out of one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's glittering and somewhat glib aphorisms, that "the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." For Gaddis, the strategic value of such an observation is the suggestion that one might take "the best from contradictory approaches while rejecting the worst."

Fitzgerald's remark ultimately leads Gaddis to the observation that terrible strategic dilemmas can only be resolved by "stretching them over time. We seek certain things now, put off others until later, and regard still others as unattainable." The American project of self-government began with a compromise between the high moral principle of the Declaration of Independence and the barbarity of slavery, a dilemma that took a century to resolve; we redressed the balance of power in Eurasia three times in the last century, and on two of those occasions succeeded through cooperation with an ideologically hostile power (with Stalin to defeat fascism; with Mao and his successors to defeat the Soviet Union). Each resolved dilemma, each geopolitical success, vindicated the reputation of our bold project of self-rule. Acting creatively within such tensions—between the dreams of "idealism" and the demands of "realism"—is the very stuff of the American approach to strategy. Or as Gaddis puts it, quoting Isaiah Berlin, "Perhaps there are other worlds in which all principles are harmonized, but 'it is on earth that we live, and it is here that we must believe and act.'"

I've got to pick this up.

Note, if you will, the overview at the opening of the article. In a subtle way it reminds those in elder-cohort GenX and older something we remember from our youth, and what younger may not realize; there were and are academics that regret that the West won the Cold War. Even while vast parts of the globe were covered with blood-red Soviet domination, they made excuses. They never felt the joy of the end of the Cold War. They acted like, and it may be true, their side lost. The halls of our institutions of higher learning are worm-eaten with blood-soaked communist apologists. They hate people like Gaddis - which should make you like him even more.

Remember, The Killing Fields' Comrade Phat was a college professor.

A Whisky on the Rocks Chaser's Hangover in Sweden

Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) is more than just a perishable skill, it is a needy skill.

Four years later, Sweden’s defense establishment is finally hearing what those with knowledge of ASW have been yelling for years both inside and outside the SCIF.

In 2014, the Swedish Navy turned its painfully unsuccessful hunt for a "Russian submarine" into an international thriller. Today, Navy experts are blaming substandard maps of the challenging and difficult-to-navigate seascape for reducing the nation's submarine hunting capacity.

Poor measurement of the seabed poses extra problems for the country's Naval Forces, making it particularly challenging to discover naval mines or hostile submarines, the military magazine Officertidningen reported.

Have you been told or have told others that we are ready to find and kill submarines from the Baltic to the South China Sea?

Because the oceans are vast and the detection ranges are so relatively small, hunting submarines is a numbers game. It is also a game that requires a lot of different tools to play successfully and a bespoke set of kit with highly trained and focused specialists.

It is not a pickup game. It is not something you can place in reserve to restart when war comes. It is something that can be helped with technology, but needs the human to make sense of what is found. It is something that needs a constantly evolving and updated support structure to ensure effectiveness. It is not cheap to do in peace, but it is less expensive than sunk warships you can’t replace at war.

ASW requires a hunter’s instinct fused with a technologist’s intelligence. It isn’t a hunt where the hunter is going after prey; it is a hunt where the hunter is going after another hunter. The hunted knows that it is being hunted, and it knows that thing which is hunting it also knows it be being hunted in return.

There is no rapid build-up to a dramatic engagement. It is a process put together bit-by-bit by multiple parties. It is hours, days, weeks, of mind-numbing ambient inconsequence suddenly broken by a clear, bright indication that something human is out there in the inhuman chaos … or is it?

It is a game full of ghosts, tricks, phantoms, and futility. It is a game full of false paths, dead ends, lies, hidden truths, sleight of hand, wishful thinking, ignored solutions, and trusted mirages. It is not a game for amateurs or accountants. It is not the game for the easily bored or excitable.

It is needy. It is jealous. It is expensive. It hates to be ignored or neglected - it has a mean streak.

Its greatest enemy are its esoteric complications. Policy makers and warfare commanders have only a paper-thin understanding of the challenges – until they need to find the submarines that suddenly people are telling them are a danger to their entire enterprise.

In every war in the last century where a belligerent had submarines, the same pattern emerges – the ability to locate, track, and attack enemy submarines that was promised in peace simply does not work at the war.

WWI, WWII, Indo-Pakistan Wars, The Falkland Island War, all have similar patterns. There are not enough ASW capable units to effectively negate the threat; expenditures of search and kill-stores far exceed peace-time expectations. The advantage is with the submarines, causing surface ships to have less freedom of movement than expected.

Of course, this was all known prior to the beginning of hostilities, but why the shock with the reality of war?

Money and priorities. ASW is pricy, is not as “sexy” or career enhancing in peace as other areas. As such, it suffers.

It is a hard sell, and that is part of the problem – decision makers do not have the patience or background to understand the unique nature of hunting submarines. It really isn’t their fault, they just have never had to ask.

It is way too easy to conflate ASW with other kinds of warfare areas and as a result, feel that you have a handle on the challenges. You don’t, and here’s why;

- Water: Water is not air. Though there are some sexy and not so sexy non-acoustic ways of finding submarines that we simply will not discuss here or on the comments section – ahem – for the vast majority of the world and in most tactical situations, you are looking at acoustic sensors, active and passive.

Water, to a much greater extent than air, has density, temperature layers, and life that live in it. All impact how you can see what is there. Imagine that you were walking around town looking for a specific person and every few steps you took and each different direction you turn, the glasses you were wearing changed tint, had different polarization filters come and go, had mirrors and prisms slide in and out of view.

Sound: Drive over to a friend’s house. Have them blindfold you and drive you to an open field a few hundred yards from a train track. Listen. In 5-min, 5-hrs, or 5-days a train comes by. By listening to it, I want you to tell me what direction it is heading to. How fast is it going? Where it is relative to you when it comes closest to you? What kind of train it is? What is the production number of that kind of train is this one? That was easy. Now I want you to have one ear with an ear-bud in it playing AM radio static. I also want you sitting in the back of a flat-bed truck that is driving up and down the dirt road in a thunder storm.

Geography: Sure, the ocean looks smooth, but that is the trick it plays on you. Under the surface there are mountains and canyons that make those on land look like cute little models. There are ocean bottoms that soak up every bit of sound like a dry sponge does water. There are other ocean bottoms that do to sound what rooms of mirrors in funny houses do to light. There are walls, cliffs, dizzying drop off in to the actual abyss. There are forests as crowded and noisy as any terrestrial rain forest. People will ask you to drive a truck down a bike path. They will ask you if you can see things through mountains, to hear the whisper of a child over the roar of a waterfall.



Sensors: “Best if Used By” dates apply to more than just food. In addition to the intellectual limited shelf life and ongoing need to replenish and refurbish grey matter, especially on the air-ASW side of the house, sensors (sonobuoys) take up a lot of space and stocks deplete quickly when prosecutions are underway. How many days/weeks of stores do you have available on your ship/air station/AOR? Care and maintenance of surface/subsurface ASW sensors are as challenging as anything exposed to the sea for extended periods of time. Are your estimated usage rates based on exercise data, or what you expect in a wartime footing when nerves are touchy and the attitude is, “You can’t find a sub with a helo/MPR bird on the deck or a buoy in the tube. You can’t kill a submarine if a torp isn’t in the water.” Are your stocks instead based on what crumbs you’ve managed to collect at the edges of the POM?



Weapons: Ah yes, the toothy end of the kill chain. Let’s put the submarine’s MK-48 HWT to the side for a moment and focus on the surface and air side of the ASW house. What do you have to kill a submarine with? You only have one option, the LWT of the MK-46/50/54/Stingray/MU90 variety. Let me pose to you this question. You are a hunter responsible for feeding your family and your poor and slightly lazy neighbors. You are, unfortunately, only allowed one gun in one round. You have your ideas about what you need as you will be hunting everything from squirrels, to ducks, to quail, to deer, from deserts to leafy woodlands. However, you are not making that choice. Your Aunt Mable in town who runs the family accounts is making that call. You’re getting a single shot Stevens break open rifle in .22 short. It will work great for squirrels and moderately good for rabbits. You better be real lucky if anyone expects you to bring a bird to the table. You’re not sure how she expects you to take a deer at the other end of the bean field - but Parson Jones told her that a .22 is dangerous out to a mile – in theory – so a 200-yd shot shouldn’t be a problem. In theory with a shot through an eye socket you might be able to bring a deer home, but … well … you’ll just have to see what you can do. Does save money, in a fashion. You tried to be reasonable and asked that you could get by with a 20-ga and a .308. Didn’t have to be fancy, but … they wouldn’t hear of it. And so, that is what we have at the pointy end. You’re going on a trip to Kansas to hunt Pheasants and Montana to hunt Pronghorn next year. Make it happen. Would it be better to have a gun cabinet of .22, .243, 30-06, 6.5mm Creedmoor with a 20-ga over/under and 12-ga autoloader to choose from instead? If you wanted to be successful, yes.

Is ASW doable? Sure it is. Ask the German Navy about late ‘43-45. Is ASW hard to convince people in peace how hard it is? Sure, ask the Royal Navy from 1939-42 and again in 82.

Ask the Swedes today.

Ask the VCNO next time you see him. He’d probably enjoy the question as a welcome distraction from what he is usually asked. If you’ve listened to him speak, you can detect a man who knows his ASW.

...and yes, I know. Sputnik News ... but it is in English and besides the defense industry ads, the source document is all in Swedish.

Hat tip Bob Hein.

Turkey Moves in the Syrian Civil War in Afrin, With Michael Goodyear

As the Islamic State Caliphate's territory in Syria is shrinking to just a few isolated pockets, rebel force opposing Assad lose more an more ground, and Kurdish led forces solidify lines, another chapter in the Syrian civil war is about to begin.

Time will tell, but the Turkish move in to Afrin may have been the opening.

What is Turkey trying to accomplish, and how does this complicate the interest of the Kurds and their American, French and other partners, Russians, Iranians, and the Syrians supporting Assad?

For the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern our guest to examine this question and related issues will be Michael Goodyear.

Michael is a law student at the University of Michigan Law School and holds degrees in History and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the history, culture, and politics of the Balkans and the northern Middle East.

As a starting point for our conversation, we will reference his recent article in Small Wars Journal, Paradigm Shift in Syria After Afrin.

Join us live if you can, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio or Stitcher. 

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.

Fullbore Friday

Boil down your duty to its essence.

Not the rah, rah, kind of duty. Not the duty some preen to themselves about. No, duty.

That duty that stands against every instinct you have for self-preservation. That instinct to flight. That duty that stands, calm and determined.

Do you have faith in your duty? What about those next to you? What about those who count on your sense of duty?

After holding out for eight days and taking hundreds of casualties, the remaining British troops evacuated across the Rhine river before the Germans overran their positions.

Selfless Sgt Clarke passed up the chance to escape with them and instead remained at the aid station to carry on giving treatment and comfort to wounded and dying comrades.

In doing so he knew full well he would be taken prisoner.

Sgt Clarke, a glider pilot, spent the rest of the war in a PoW camp in Sagen, Poland, until February 1945 when the Russians advanced from the east.

That is a measure any man would hope to meet. Staff Sergeant Peter Clarke, OBE, British Army was that measure. He recently passed at age 96, a life well lived.

Sgt Clarke died on Tuesday at his home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, following a short illness.

His wife Jean died in 2016 and he leaves two daughters.

Tributes flooded in yesterday (thu) for Sgt Clarke.

...

Dr David Pasley, secretary of the society, added: "There were so many acts of heroism at Arnhem but Peter's was the one that stuck out for me.

"He didn't think it was special, he was just doing what was right.

Duty is, in the end, what is right. Fullbore.

Don't Discount the French Role in the Long War

The French get a fair bit of grief, some deserved, most not. Most of it has to due with some of the unpleasantness from WWII, but in a certain way it is because it takes one to know one. The French are more like Americans than either nation would be willing to admit.

You can't take away the fact that they are one of the finest militaries in the world. When taken from a long view, they have an impressive military record in wars both large and small. Their national character - still dented from being bled white in WWI - is still there as it has been since Charles Martel.

Especially in Africa, they have been critical players in the Long War. If you need a catch up, check out Michael Shurkin over at Politico.

There is a French way of warfare that reflects the French military’s lack of resources and its modest sense of what it can achieve. They specialize in carefully apportioned and usually small but lethal operations, ...
...
Emblematic of the French approach was France’s military intervention in the Central African Republic in March 2007. To stop a rapidly moving rebel advance into the country from the Sudanese border, the French attacked using a single fighter plane and two waves of paratroopers totaling no more than a “few dozen” who dropped into the combat zone in the Central African town of Birao. In military terms, what the French did was a pinprick, yet it was sufficient to break the rebel advance like placing a rock in the path of a wave. It was, moreover, a risky thing to do: Airborne assaults are intrinsically dangerous, all the more so when one has little capacity to reinforce or withdraw the lightly armed soldiers in an emergency. The first wave of “less than 10” soldiers reportedly made a high-altitude drop. The French military, moreover, did all this quietly, with the French press only learning of the intervention a few weeks after the fact.
...
France’s intervention in Mali in January 2013 also illustrated these attributes amply.
...
They did so, moreover, with a scratch "pick-up team" consisting of bits and pieces of a diverse array of units cobbled together in great haste and on the fly. Some of these could be considered elite, but most were not. In addition, the French put this ad hoc force up against a dangerous enemy that was operating in the worst imaginable physical environment–all with barely enough supplies simply to keep French troops from dying of thirst and heat exhaustion. French soldiers’ boots literally fell apart because the glue holding them together melted from the heat. The French went places their enemies assumed they would never dare go, fighting hand-to-hand among caves and boulders deep in the desert.
...
What makes the French way of war distinct from, say, the U.S. way of war has to do with scarcity. The French military is highly conscious of its small size and lack of resources.

Read the rest for the details.

We could learn a lot from the French.