Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part LXXXV

It will be at least a year, more likely two, until we have a firm grip on the impact the mountain of immeasurable debt the USA and other nations have been burdened with due to COVID-19.

This is a completely new environment we are all simply going to have to work our way through.

Regular readers here have been reading and discussing the "Terrible 20s" for over a decade, but I did not predict this event to throw on top of it. It will be worse than we think. 

The easiest thing to know now is 355 for the USN - a near run thing anyway - is simply not going to happen. Where will we wind up in 2030? Somewhere between 240 and 270 is my bet.

Where will the rising power China be? Their plans will see an unexpected headwind, but let's look at where we thought they were going just under a month ago before COVID-19 hit. It is still good to get a Pre-COVID-19 Chinese naval modernization snapshot at the economic high water mark for both nations.

If you are a numbers guy, no need to get worried now about the PLAN being larger than the USN - especially on their side of the Pacific, we passed that point half a decade ago.

This kind of says it all;

Read it all, there is a lot of good stuff in the China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress.

Numbers are not everything. They still have a lot of structural and cultural problems, but you cannot dismiss their effort, drive, and desire. They are coming at us and are just waiting for the right time and place for their coming out party.

We still have an edge, but there's no slack left. Some of their weaknesses are right opposite some of our strengths. Regardless of numbers, that won't change;

Although China’s naval modernization effort has substantially improved China’s naval capabilities in recent years, China’s navy currently is assessed as having limitations or weaknesses in certain areas, including joint operations with other parts of China’s military, antisubmarine warfare (ASW), long-range targeting, and a lack of recent combat experience. China is working to reduce or overcome such limitations and weaknesses.12 Although China’s navy has limitations and weaknesses, it may nevertheless be sufficient for performing missions of interest to Chinese leaders. As China’s navy reduces its weaknesses and limitations, it may become sufficient to perform a wider array of potential missions

The Terrible 20s are here. Better get smart, because you're not going to get fat.

Lies, Damn Lies, and a Fired CO

With time we will know more details from January's firing, but I kept thinking back to reference points in my career. 

I've seen people lie about readiness, I've seen units simply refuse to CASREP broken equipment. I've seen inside the lines but incredibly sketchy manpower moves ... and I've seen some pressuring behind closed doors that left everyone feeling unclean ... but I have never seen something so incredibly brazen.

The captain of the San Diego-based guided-missile destroyer Decatur was removed from command in January for filing false position reports to the Navy, according to a Navy investigation recently obtained by the Union-Tribune. 

According to the investigation, Cmdr. John “Bob” Bowen, the Decatur’s commanding officer, ordered his crew in September not to report that the ship had gone dead in the water.

The ship had stopped to conduct maintenance on one of its propeller shafts while transiting the eastern Pacific from Hawaii to Seal Beach, California.

In order to hide the four-hour-long stop from the fleet, the crew reported inaccurate ship positions to make it appear as though the vessel never stopped, the investigation said.

I have been told of other people who have worked with/under people who lied about operational items on a regular basis - it happens, I guess.

There are lies of commission - such as this, and there are, what would we call it, lies of omission such as finding yourself inside an international standoff by just a tad and sneaking out before anyone knows - and as nobody caught you - so you don't report it; are they all the same?

I don't know, but asking an entire ship to lie in such a manner as this?

Lying is a habit, especially petty lies. A petty habit grows to big lies, and eventually it crosses a line. 

Lies become a shortcut. It can help one avoid accountability, uncomfortable reality, or to position for personal gain. Those are often tied together if there is a feeling that there is nothing to gain from the truth. Accepted truth is a narrow and unforgiving path, so in order to get from one point to another, some people may decide they need to widen the path in order to successfully make the journey. Getting to the end justifies the means to get there.

Is this what we are seeing, simply someone with a habit that caught up to them, or is this simply someone who was an otherwise good and honorable man who found himself in an environment where he thought he had to do this?

I don't know - but I sure would like to know.

Why is this only breaking above the background noise in April if it happened in January? Why hide this? Wouldn't this serve as a good example as to what we will and will not accept as an organization - to both those inside the Navy and the nation it serves? Wouldn't it be a warning to the next CO who found themselves wanting/needing to fudge reality to avoid sending out a message?

No Rush on SECNAV Hearings

Rightfully, the month of April for navalists has been dominated by COVID-19's impact on the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), the Acting Navy Secretary, and the Navy as a whole. Time to roll up the work week with a reminder that there is a pre-existing nomination for SECNAV out there. 

To discuss the issue, we have a guest post by Bryan McGrath. Bryan, over to you.

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Late last year, the Secretary of the Navy resigned after crossing streams with the White House and the Secretary of Defense. Within hours, the President announced that he would be nominating a gentleman named Kenneth Braithwaite—then serving as the United States Ambassador to Norway—as the new Secretary of the Navy. In the meantime, Under Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly became Acting Secretary of the Navy. It is from this position that Modly last week fired the Commanding Officer of the USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (CVN 71) and was then fired/asked to resign for his unfortunate remarks to the TR crew.

There are reports in the defense trade press of a desire on the part of the Secretary of Defense for the Senate Armed Services Committee to put Braithwaite to the “head of the line” so to speak, in order to ensure that there is a Senate-confirmed Secretary of the Navy to guide the service through its ongoing inability to get out of its own way. And although there are a number of dark corners in the Navy worth shining light on, it occurs to me that the presence of Senate-confirmed individuals atop the Navy civilian bureaucracy has not been as causal to these troubles as the judgment of the individuals occupying those offices. Which brings me to Ambassador Braithwaite.

Clearly, Ambassador Braithwaite is an accomplished man, rising to flag rank in the Naval Reserve in the Public Affairs career field, in addition to his successful civilian life. He may indeed turn out to be a solid choice to lead hundreds of thousands of people in the Department of the Navy, civilian and military, an organization with a budget of over $200B annually.

My wariness of the pick rests on two matters, both of which are worth due consideration in a deliberate process of vetting.

The first, is that what strikes me as having been Braithwaite’s primary qualification for the job of Secretary of the Navy is his close personal relationship with the Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper. I like being surrounded by my friends as much as anyone, but I am not running the Pentagon. And one of the problems with the Navy that I have identified elsewhere is that the Navy Secretariat (and the other service secretariats, I assume) has through the years declined in influence and effectiveness, with much of its authority diffused either downward into the uniformed service staffs it oversees (Navy, Marine Corps), or upward into the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Truth be told, both trends were aided and abetted by the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose former Chairman, Senator John McCain, seemed to have no love for the Secretariats.

Crucial to American Seapower is a reinvigorated Navy Secretariat that recognizes the unique role it plays in the nation’s security and prosperity. While there has been some forward progress in identifying renewed great power competition as the defining focus of national strategy, there has been little progress made in defining strategy suitable to that focus. It is my view that such a strategy would necessarily privilege Seapower, but that is debatable. What is NOT debatable is that a Secretary of the Navy would have a fundamental role in shaping such a strategy, and that doing so would almost certainly be a point of friction within the Department of Defense. Mr. Esper has already been dismissive of the Navy’s efforts to define its future architecture and placing an old friend in charge of the Navy is not a recipe for tough debate. Bureaucratically speaking, it is just the opposite. Which brings me to my second objection to moving forward quickly on this nomination.

Let’s assume for a second that Mr. Esper greatly desires his service secretaries to be independent power bases and thoroughly effective spokespersons for the capabilities resident in their services and the contributions those capabilities make to the National Defense Strategy. For this best-case scenario to be enabled, the Secretary of the Navy would have to thoroughly understand those capabilities, how they roll up into a coherent case for American Seapower, and how the strategic benefits of American Seapower decompose into desired capabilities. And while Ambassador Braithwaite has led an accomplished life, there is simply no evidence that he ever considered these matters closely before his name was put forward. I look forward to being disabused of this notion if there is an extant record, but my research does not reveal it. Graduating from the Naval Academy and then serving as a naval aviator for one’s junior officer tours—while common to Secretary Spencer, Secretary Modly, and now Ambassador Braithwaite—simply does not predispose one to think deeply about the things that a Secretary of the Navy deals with on a daily basis.

A final note. Flag Officer biographies are sometimes difficult to read, but as I look over Ambassador Braithwaite’s, it is difficult for me to discern where in the last 36 years since graduating from the Naval Academy he served in even one full-time Pentagon job. Is this a requirement for running an armed service? Not to my knowledge. But it strikes me as worth considering given the Byzantine world of process and culture that exists there.

I urge the members of the Senate Armed Services Committee to exert their influence in this situation. They should re-evaluate their complicity in the decline of the service secretariats, and they should require of this and all presidential administrations a higher level of professional knowledge and experience in Senate-confirmed positions within the services. Furthermore, the SASC should use its “advise and consent” power to foster sufficient organizational tension within the Department of Defense to encourage strategic debate. Finally, the SASC should slow down and think deeply about this nomination, and why it is so important to some that it be hurried. Ensure that Ambassador Braithwaite is his own man, and that he can articulate a theory of American Seapower that advances this nation’s security and prosperity. The uniform leadership of the Navy and Marine Corps can take the tiller while you do your work in thoroughly vetting this nomination.


Bryan McGrath is the Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group LLC. He currently consults for the Navy on matters of Surface Warfare force structure and operational concepts.

What the Navy Knew About COVID-19 on 19 MAR 20

A few critical dates for everyone to remember:

08 MAR: TR departs Da Nang, Vietnam.
15 MAR: USS BOXER (LHD-4) has first case of COVID-19 on a USN ship.
22 MAR: USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (CVN-71) has first COVID-19 case.
27 MAR: TR pierside Guam.
30 MAR: The Crozier memo goes out.
02 APR: CO of RT, CAPT Crozier, relieved of command.
05 APR: Acting SECNAV Modly gives his speech to the crew of the TR over the 1MC.
07 APR: Modly submits his resignation.

That my friends, is a compact and busy timeline.

One of the top questions that comes to mind is; when it comes to COVID-19, what did the USN know and when did it know it?

One note of caution, usually it takes a day or two from when something is published for it to be distributed and then in front of the eyes of the decision makers to see it - or be briefed on its content. That is when a Staff works correctly. Rarely do you get same-day info unless it is flash traffic.

On 19 MAR, here is what the USN medical community produced for decision makers and leaders to consider for what they may face for COVID-19.

Look for the information about "Shipboard Population of 5,000" estimates, that is a CVN.

Ponder; what would you do?

Hat tip John Cordle.

The Sound of Silence

Have you heard what is not there?

How do you define a leadership vacuum?

Are you seeing military leadership, or political manouvering?

Is our Navy better set up for the next decade now than it was 10-yrs ago? 30-yrs ago? When?

Are you any good at acoustic ASW?

Confused and or pissed at what is going on WRT the TR vs. COVID-19?

All those things are wrapped up in one nice little post over at USNIBlog.

Come on by and give it a read!

Frigates, Now More Than Ever

There are some arguments that are so sound they become timeless.

In the lexicon of USN "Gods of the Copybook Headings" there is a, "We Need Frigates."

The call remains constant because the reasoning is sound and survives the test of time.

The standing requirement for the US Navy to have a ready percentage of its fleet in "smaller" multi-mission warships, AKA frigates and corvettes really can no longer be credibly argued against. LCS does not count, because they simply don't count for much. 

We have been on this message here for over a decade and a half. We have not been alone - another person engaged in our long-term insurgency to do what we can to get our Navy to do what it needs to do is Jerry Hendrix.

Detecting some quiet, he has set back up his drums to remind everyone the what and why.

Read the whole thing over at NRO, but here's the meaty bits;

So why are high-end ships being used so consistently to do low-end missions, of which counter-drug operations in the Caribbean and Pacific are yet another example? The answer is that the Navy doesn’t have the low-end ships to match with those missions.

“Low-end” refers traditionally to frigates and corvettes that are smaller than destroyers or cruisers, have smaller crews, lower sensor-system and weapons complexity, and lower costs so that navies can purchase them in larger numbers to perform day-to-day presence, escort, surveillance, and interdiction missions. British admiral Horatio Nelson referred to frigates as the “eyes” of the fleet, and historically corvettes were designed to be small enough to operate in an enemy’s close-to-shore littoral regions. By this standard the U.S. Navy’s littoral-combat ships would normally be considered corvettes. Although the Navy has purchased 30 of them, these ships have not been as effective as the Navy had hoped, with nearly all of them presenting difficulties with their combat systems. To fulfill the counter-drug mission described by the president and his team, what the Navy and the Southern Command really need is frigates, and fortunately, they should be coming soon.
...
To meet persistent requests and requirements, the Navy keeps about 110 ships deployed at any given moment — out of a total of only 296 ships. Normally a ship should spend about six months in maintenance and then six months in training before deploying for six months; it then returns home to spend another six months in a ready-surge status before beginning the cycle again. The Navy’s current 110-to-296 ratio means that compromises have been made throughout the cycle — truncated training or maintenance, or extended deployments, or ships unready for crisis surges. As the Navy charts its course to 355 ships, new frigates will offer a solution to the problem. For now, however, it must assign the high-end, and highly expensive, destroyers to perform counter-drug patrols off the shores of Central and South America, as well as to put additional pressures on Maduro.

For our FFG(X), I continue to ask that you light a candle for FREMM, and hopefully we'll see.

If you want to see what a challenger is building, check out the latest Russian offering.

Nice.

Africa and COVID-19

As we like to do here, as others look away - we like to keep an eye on sub-Saharan Africa. In economic, demographic, radicalism, migration and other areas - Africa will produce more friction by mid-century than it can consume locally.

From the expansion of ISIS in the north, to the crippling secondary effects of HIV/AIDS in the south - anything that further keeps back the continent's progress will make an already challenging present and future more difficult.

COVID-19 is pulling every corner of the world down, Africa will be no exception. As they are already so far down the development ladder, this shock holds the potential to drive negative effects in all directions.

Adding to this already grim prospect is an assumption that COVID-19 will act in a similar way through different populations - with different outcomes relative to the access to and quality of available health care. Africa, even on a good day does not look good with that variable.

Could it be worse? Things can always be worse. 

History shows that some diseases have a predilection to be deadlier to some populations more than other based on shared DNA. Though more research is needed, in the first nation with a significant population of sub-Saharan African extraction, the USA, is fighting through a COVID-19 infection, we are seeing signs that the disease is deadlier to those of sub-Saharan African extraction.

If COVID-19's deadliness can vary among population groups relative to DNA commonality ... what does that hold for Africa?

Some of Uganda’s poorest people used to work here, on the streets of Kampala, as fruit sellers sitting on the pavement or as peddlers of everything from handkerchiefs to roasted peanuts.

Now they’re gone and no one knows when they will return, victims of a global economic crisis linked to the coronavirus that could wipe out jobs for millions across the African continent, many who live hand-to-mouth with zero savings.

“We’ve been through a lot on the continent. Ebola, yes, African governments took a hit, but we have not seen anything like this before,” Ahunna Eziakonwa, the United Nations Development Program regional director for Africa, told The Associated Press. “The African labor market is driven by imports and exports and with the lockdown everywhere in the world, it means basically that the economy is frozen in place.

There is so little flex in Africa, you can assume where this is going. Economic dislocation brings conflict and migration.

Keep an eye here, especially if you live in Europe.