Transformed Our Way Out of a Functional Sh1tter

It has been awhile since we covered the second most important thing to a happy Sailor next to good food - that is an easily available and fully functional head.

Want a nasty ship? Worse than the Big E during a Suez transit?

Have the heads crap out on you.

Better yet, have it do so because someone during the Age of Transformationalism had a great PPT slide that, after telling you how equality and modernity required you to get rid of urinals, told you modern technology was going to revolutionize the heads on your transformational warships.

Via Anthony Capaccio at Bloomberg, hug your HT today;

New toilets on the Navy’s two newest aircraft carriers clog so frequently that the ships’ sewage systems must be cleaned periodically with specialized acids costing about $400,000 a flush, according to a new congressional audit outlining $130 billion in underestimated long-term maintenance costs.

The Navy isn’t sure the toilet systems on the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS George H. W. Bush can withstand the demand without failing frequently, according to the watchdog agency’s report on service sustainment costs released Tuesday.

No, there is no excuse for this. The USN has decades, well, actually over a century of experience having thousands of people use the head on a warship every day. I guess the Boomer designers and program managers just knew better than everyone who came before them.

Of course;

“The pipes are too narrow and when there are a bunch of sailors flushing the toilet at the same time, like in the morning, the suction doesn’t work,” said Oakley. “The Navy didn’t anticipate this problem.”

Amazing.

No, "the Navy" isn't the right answer.

Follow the people.

Follow the money.

Probably the same experts who sold the Navy on titanium fire mains.

Hospital Ships: Build, Buy, or Convert to Them Now

Here and on Midrats we have been calling for new and more hospital ships for over a decade. In a crisis, needs and utility come in to clear focus.

The argument should be over. I give you Rep. Jim Banks R-IN;

We need a fleet of a dozen or more hospital ships, says Navy reservist and Indiana Congressman Jim Banks.

Good people can hold different opinions on things, but good people can be wrong. Those who don’t support something between new hospital ships to replace the ancient MERCY and COMFORT on one end of the scale to taking up Banks’s idea on the other are, well, just wrong.

While there are many more, here are the Top-3 Reasons hospital ships are critical to our Navy:

1. Presence, morale and reassurance are missions. When citizens of LA & NYC see these CVN sized which ships sail in to view, they will know that their government cares and is there to serve.

2. Mobility is a multiplier. A mobile, self-supporting 1,000 bed hospital would be science fiction if it didn’t already exist. Look at the recent videos of hospitals in Spain and Italy with patients laying down on floors in hallways. Tell those people they don’t need a 1,000 bed hospital to help take even the non-COVID load.

3. Nice in peace and war. When not needed for war, pandemics, or natural disasters – imagine the positive effects to our nation of our hospital ships and other ships visiting ports of nations who have limited to no medical care for their citizens. Just ponder what a fleet of 4, 6, or 12 could do? Imagine the training our people will get seeing things they never would in the USA.

That is enough. I’ve read and digested all the reasons not to have hospital ships, and to be frank, they are weak arguments made by myopic minds.

If they can’t change their minds now, then they are just bullheaded.

Executive Director Gene Seroka: “Port of Los Angeles stands ready to partner with the @USNavy and the federal government as it prepares to bring the USNS Mercy to the Port of Los Angeles. The welfare of our residents is the top priority during this public health crisis.” #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/4p28o9TBL6

— Port of Los Angeles (@PortofLA) March 22, 2020

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UPDATE: BEHOLD!

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UPDATE:

The City of LA is thrilled to welcome #USNSMercy to the our hospital overflow strategy. Mercy will help attend to patients requiring acute care and in doing so will open up capacity in LA regional hospitals to address COVID-19 patients. #LAStrong #GoNavy https://t.co/eftVLtoKJt

— 𝐉eff 𝐆orell (@JeffGorell) March 25, 2020

Obedience, with Dr. Pauline Shanks Kaurin - on Midrats

What is the nature of obedience for those in the the profession or arms and the civilian political community?

With a review of classical studies, philosophy, history, international relations, literature and military studies, can you get a firm grounding on what it is, what it means, and how it should shape decisions and behavior?

Returning to Midrats Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to talk about this and more based around her new book, On Obedience: Contrasting Philosophies for the Military, Citizenry, and Community, will be Dr. Pauline Shanks Kaurin.

Pauline holds a PhD in Philosophy from Temple University, and is a specialist in military ethics, just war theory, philosophy of law and applied ethics. She is is a professor in the College of Leadership and Ethics at the US Naval War College. Prior to her arrival in Newport, she was Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA and teaches courses in military ethics, warfare, business ethics, social and political.

You can listen to the show at this link or below, but remember, if you don't already, subscribe to the podcast at Spreaker or any of the other podcast aggregators.

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.

Cruise Ships and the USNR: a COVID-19 Public-Private Partnership we Need Today

This will require nimble, flexible, and imaginative leadership who are willing to adjust and improvise on the fly. 

Leadership that will accept the OK CONOPS today for a good one tomorrow and be willing to make mistakes and correct them quickly. 

We have great people in the Navy Reserve who are underemployed for the skills they have, but know how to work in a disciplined manner on a ship. They don't need to be from a medical field; engineering, deck, admin, security, culinary, and the ability to stand watch are all that would be needed to bulk up and support such efforts as this.

There can be a quick turnaround if the right people with the right top-cover move now.

This is a great offer the USNR can help make better, faster, more effective.

Carnival Corporation has issued an official press release confirming its ships are available to take pressure of land-based healthcare options globally.

The company said that governments and health authorities should consider using cruise ships as temporary healthcare facilities to treat non-COVID-19 patients, freeing up additional space and expanding capacity in land-based hospitals to treat cases of COVID-19, the company said.

As part of the offer, interested parties will be asked to cover only the essential costs of the ship's operations while in port, Carnival announced.

Governments or health authorities with interest can contact Monica Puello by email at MPuello@Carnival.com or by phone at (305) 406-8656.

According to Carnival, if needed, cruise ships are capable of being quickly provisioned to serve as hospitals with up to 1,000 hospital rooms that can treat patients suffering from less critical, non-COVID-19 conditions. These temporary cruise ship hospital rooms can be quickly converted to install and connect remote patient monitoring devices over the ship's high-speed network – providing cardiac, respiratory, oxygen saturation and video monitoring capabilities. The rooms also have bathroom facilities, private balconies with access to sun and fresh air, as well as isolation capabilities, as needed.

My Eyes Have Seen the Horror of the Coming of the COVID-19

All the plans, plots, and hopes of navalists to avoid the Terrible 20s are effectively dead.

Those who hope to avoid it are simply not paying attention.

It was coming anyway, but now it will only be worse.

355? Try 255. Hope for 275.

The COVID-19 overview at USNIBlog.

Come on over and cheer me up.

Whither the Super Carrier

With apologies to Jo Moore, with COVID-19 spinning out of control, last week was a good week to bury bad news.

Did you catch it? The anti-CVN forces saw their moment, and it looks like they are making their move.

Though ordered, CVN-82 is as of yet, unnamed.

Could she be the last of her kind?

The Navy is launching a deep dive into the future of its aircraft carrier fleet, Breaking Defense has learned, even as the Secretary of Defense, dissatisfied with current Navy plans, conducts his own assessment. The two studies clearly show the deepening concern over how China’s growing might and the Pentagon’s eroding budgets could affect the iconic, expensive supercarriers.

The Future Carrier 2030 Task Force, which the service plans to announce next week, will take six months to study how carriers stack up against new generations of stealthy submarines and long-range precision weapons being fielded by China and Russia.

While always willing to give great and worthy people the benefit of the doubt, "Blue Ribbon Panels" have a spotty history of objectivity. I willing to be sold - but I'm not at the moment.

Add to that nugget, a little under two weeks' earlier, the confirmed SECDEF sent a frowny-face emoji to the acting SECNAV;

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has put a stop to the the expected release of the Navy’s long-term force structure plan, telling the service on Monday to hold off and take another look, several sources confirm.

The plan, announced last year and slated to be wrapped up by Jan. 15, has run into serious headwinds. The Navy insists it can grow the fleet to 355 ships as early as 2030 despite its shipbuilding budget being cut in the recently released 2021 budget, and as officials concede there’s little hope of significant growth in the near-term. Now Esper, who has been reviewing the plan for the past two weeks, is unwilling to sign off on it.

There you go. Unless there is significant intervention at the Congressional level - things look set up.

Even without the above, we knew this was coming.

Almost exactly 10-years and one month ago, I wrote the opening post announcing the upcoming Terrible 20s. This is what I wrote in February 2010;

Let's look at 2020 again. What else is happening in the 20s? Well, for one, we will have to find money to re-capitalized the SSBN fleet. I offer to you that the 20 JAN HASC SEF Subcommittee meeting has an outstanding money discussion about that challenge. Deputy SECNAV Work has also discussed this challenge in other venues, and I think he has a very firm grasp of the problem, as do most in positions to know.

You have to look at it in the broader context of the budget as well. The hangover in the 20s from this decade's drunken frenzy of spending will couple with another cohort of Baby Boomers retiring and putting stress on the budget in ways we still do not have a firm grasp on.

In 2020 - that ship built in 1990 will be at 30 years. That LCS built in 2009 will only have 9 years or so of service life (LCS is expected to only last 20-25 years) - so by the end of the 2020s, LCS will be dropping like flies.

When you consider that we will be limited this decade to LCS and DDG-51 for our non-amphib surface ship program (don't throw JHSV at me, that is just a truck - full stop - all else is spin and hope) - you have about a perfect story for the 20s of limited shipbuilding funds and a stunted fleet.

Stunted? If you continue to assume that CG(X) is dead, then you might get funding for the much needed DDG(X) follow-on for the DDG-51 class - might. That will be requested in light of the SSBN money sponge - and I don't see how with all the other needs in the 20's, we will be able to afford both a DDG(X) and a CG(X) - and there is a good chance that we will simply have to live with DDG-51 Flight III as our "new" platform through the beginning of the mid-21st Century.

I know that looking into the future is a fuzzy hobby. Heck, if you outlined in 2000 where we were in 2010 people would have said you were a nutty pessimist - so we can only see 2020 in very large, fuzzy pixels. The beginning of the mid-century (2030) is just a silly exercise in many ways - but one that needs to be done. There are known-knowns (DDG-1000 will be a rump, expensive class of ships, Ticos history, DDG-51 backbone, LCS decomm'n like flies), known-unknowns (will LCS even meet some of its promised ability and numbers, will DDG(X) be moving forward), and unknown-unknowns (Black Swan events), but still - 2020 is closer than we think, and there are economic facts that need to be looked at.

Huge challenge, one whose source is the lost decade we just came out of. You know, that "transformational" decade. The one that was to build the Fleet of the future. Well, it sure did, didn't it?

It holds up well, I think.

What I didn't see was the POLMIL stew our Navy would find itself in.

At this critical juncture, The Pentagon is led by the Esper/Milley West Point-West Point team while the Navy's Flag Officers try to recover from damage the previous generation of leaders inflicted on our institution over a decade spending their professional capital, like, well, drunken Sailors - mostly in WESTPAC - from Malaysian fat men to exhausted and untrained bridge watches driving Japan based destroyers. 

To top things off, those who should have spent every penny left getting ready for this decade spent what little professional capital they were able to scrape together from under the couch cushions on Ottomanesque bureaucratic protect-my-legacy games.

Almost two decades of sub-optimal performance at the highest levels has us where we are; a nice, solid-but-last-man-standing CNO and an Acting SECNAV fighting hard but wrestling two weight classes up in 4A. The previous SECNAV demonstrated what some of his problem was when he was last seen endorsing a Presidential primary candidate from the other party just a few weeks before he dropped out due to a complete lack of support among, well, almost anyone.

Of course.

Of course we are where we are.

The smart money is on a better than average chance the CVN will be killed by next POM (though perhaps not for good) and what little money is captured will be spent prosealing cracks from an overstressed and underfunded maintenance and readiness hole while trying to find some magic beans to build a useful fleet not reliant on a Cold War era destroyer as we stumble to 2030.

How will we project power from the sea in 2030? You can't do that from a submarine - a platform with limited followthrough and has its own growing vulnerability issues. You can't do that from land based aircraft. I win that wargame every time. There are not enough VLS cells in Christendom to do what a CVN can do ... with a proper airwing (which we don't have).

No, if we have to go to war in 2030, the question will be, "Where are the carriers?" ... and we will send thousands of Sailors in harm's way with an underfunded legacy system bereft of upgrades, carrying an airwing saddled with three decades of bad, short term decisions made by people trying to survive the next POM, not create a Navy ready to fight and win the next peer war.

I'm really not interested in discussing CVN vulnerability ... something known in detail since WWII. All capital ships are vulnerable ... that is why RN BB sortied so little during WWII, etc ... etc ... etc ... we've discussed that in volume here through the years. New folks can look it up, won't rehash it wholesale.

No, what are you going to replace them with? Vaporware? PPT thick programs? Unmanned systems whose performance and utility assumptions are based on AI that does not exist, robust reachback that is peace-time only, and ROE that won't survive a public university law school second-year law student?

I've seen that movie. It is stale and derivative. 

No, you can't. All you can do is, like The Thing in the dog kennel, flail around for anything that can justify taking food from Mom's plate so you can feed Dad so you can tell the rest of your family that you are taking care of the parents just fine.

With apologies to Jeremiah,

1:1 How doth TACAIR sit solitary, that was full of people!
She is become as a widow, that was great among the the services!
She that was a princess among Hollywood is become tributary to grunts!
1:2 She weepeth sore in the Unfunded Priorities List, and her tears are on her EMALS;
Among all her WBB contractors she hath none to comfort her:
All her fellow Service Chiefs have dealt treacherously with her; they are become her enemies.
1:3 NAVAIR is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude;
She dwelleth among the Mine Warfare community, she findeth no rest:
All her budgetary enemies overtook her within the POM.
1:4 The ways of PEO Aircraft Carriers do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly;
All her hangars are desolate, her Program Managers do sigh:
Her Flag Officers are afflicted, and she herself is in Executive TAP.
1:5 Her adversaries are become the head, her enemies prosper;
For SECDEF hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions:
Her JOs are gone into career transition before the selection boards.
1:6 And from the Office of the Acting SECNAV all her majesty is departed:
Her Admirals are become like harts that find no pasture,
And they are gone without strength before the CBO.

So sayeth the Book of Salamander.

A Terrible Decision by the Commandant of the Marine Corps

What are the primary drivers when it comes to the unmanned systems we will deploy forward, ready for wartime use? 

Size, range, use, mission, flexibility, technology risk, commonality, basing, cost? What weight do you give each variable - and why?

With only a few systems that will end up getting a funding line, you need to make sure you thought it through correctly, and have the right set of priorities.

This week, let's take a look at the USMC's recent decisions on unmanned air systems from the point of view of friend-to-the-blog Bryan McGrath.

Bryan, over to you.

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Since assuming the duties of Commandant of the Marine Corps last summer, General David Berger has enjoyed a fairly smooth go of it, releasing a Commandant’s Planning Guidance to near-universal acclaim and putting forward a vision of naval integration around which the Department of the Navy has wisely moved to coalesce. And so, it was surprising earlier this week to see the Commandant make a decision that so starkly works against the principles of integration for which he has so forcefully advocated.

The decision, as the Naval Institute’s Megan Eckstein first reported, was to restructure the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Expeditionary program -- known as “MUX”--from one centered around a large, medium altitude long endurance (MALE) unmanned vehicle organic to the ships of the amphibious force to a “family of systems” approach that would rely heavily on a “very large land-based aerial vehicle and a medium sized one for shipboard operations”. There are three main reasons that this decision is wrong, and Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly should intervene quickly to reverse the Commandant’s error.

Reason 1: Kiss the “Lightning Carrier” concept goodbye

Commandant Berger expressed support for the “Lightning Carrier” concept in his planning guidance. As described in detail in the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment’s 2017 Fleet Architecture Study, the Lightning Carrier would evolve the current LHD/LHA from its current singular devotion to the support of troops ashore, to a multipurpose, multi-mission conventional deterrence platform built around the considerable capabilities of the F-35B. The LHD/LHA would become more of a small aircraft carrier and less of an amphibious assault platform. Key to this transformation would be the provision of the LHD/LHA or its escorts with a proper intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (ISRT) platform, one acting as an integral part of the planned and executed operations of the amphibious presence forces. As envisioned, MUX was the platform that would create this transformation. To put it another way, to achieve the Lightning Carrier, the F-35B was necessary, but not sufficient.

Barrels of ink have been wasted over time in the distinction—made primarily in the United States—between an aircraft carrier and an amphibious assault vessel. The most important distinction has been the availability of organic ISR/T from the aircraft carrier’s deck. The E-2D more than anything else, is what makes an aircraft carrier. Its huge wingspan requires a large ship. A large ship requires nuclear reactors to be efficient and effective. As capable as the LHD/LHA has been, it is utterly dependent on land-based ISRT and the ISRT provided by the carrier air wing. Had the Commandant made the decision to provision the amphibious force with a true MALE ISRT platform, the LHD/LHA would minimize its reliance on inorganic targeting and surveillance. Denying this organic capability regrettably makes an F-35B-packed LHD/LHA into a more lucrative and less well-defended target, and less of a maritime dominance/integrated naval power platform.

Reason 2: Missed Opportunity for Closer Integration with the Navy’s Surface Forces


There is no question but that a capable MALE UAV within the MUX program would have been a costly proposition, one that it would have been difficult for the Marine Corps to shoulder alone. This is why the true value proposition for this program would have come into sharp relief in a Navy/Marine Corps program that would provide the MAGTF with the ISRT it requires under the MUX program, and the Surface Navy with the additional ISRT it requires as a result of a new generation of longer-range anti-ship and strike missiles. One of the more innovative aspects of the MUX acquisition was the oft-repeated desire that the unmanned vehicle be capable of fitting into an ARLEIGH BURKE Class Destroyer helicopter hangar. A common solution based around modular sensor and weapons packages would have been a win-win for both the Marine Corps and the Navy, bringing with it considerably more and more responsive lethality and ISRT within the forces that make up the “contact” and “blunt” layers of our National Defense Strategy.

Reason 3: Unwise Reliance on Land-based ISRT

The most disturbing aspect of the Commandant’s decision is the degree to which he is sacrificing the precision and certainty of organically-controlled ISRT for the uncertainty and inefficiency of land-based solutions, a subject my former colleague Seth Cropsey and I studied in our November 2019 monograph “If You can’t See’em, You Can’t Shoot’em: Improving US Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting”.

Looking specifically at the Navy’s MQ-4C Triton system, we suggested that the Navy’s planned buy of 68 systems (in order to have 20 deployable at all times) was woefully inadequate to the task of consistent ISRT of the area inside the First Island Chain, a task made even more difficult by the extensive fly-in ranges of the land-based aircraft that would provide the coverage, in some cases using half their fuel simply to transit the huge distances in the Western Pacific.

A truly effective conventional deterrent in the Western Pacific is one in which each and every Chinese Navy ship captain understands that he is targeted as soon as he leaves port, the kind of targeting perception under which U.S. commanding officers currently operate within the First Island Chain. This certainty is not going to be provided by wide area search platforms ferrying in from thousands of miles away. It will be provided by ISRT platforms of enough mission duration that sensor to shooter kill chains can be maintained organically, while high altitude, long endurance land-based UAV’s remain the purview of theater commanders executing operational and strategic surveillance schemes.

Putting aside the wisdom of more heavy reliance on land-based ISRT, there is a roles and missions question here. Do we need yet another service buying and operating its own large, land-based ISRT systems? Does the Marine Corps really believe that even if it were to acquire such systems, that they would be able to exercise the same level of MAGTF level control of them in an age of Joint asset allocation? The Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) should look long and hard at any USMC program that seeks to duplicate already existing and somewhat inefficient capabilities.


Conclusion

Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly has been exceptionally good at talking about Integrated American Naval Power, and he has an opportunity to strike a tangible blow for its future by halting the USMC MUX program in its tracks and directing the Commandant and the Chief of Naval Operations to report back to him on the prospects for an integrated, departmental solution to the mission requirements of the two services. An organic, MALE UAV that services the targeting needs of our nation’s conventional deterrence forces where they operate and under their control is a necessary step to providing a deterrence posture that influences the adversary to reconsider aggression.


Bryan McGrath is the Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group LLC, a national security consultancy. The ideas offered here should be considered his and are not those of any client he represents.