Sea Blindness

Over at USNIBlog, my co-host over at Midrats and general hail fellow well met, EagleOne of EagleSpeak, has a post up about a regular topic - Sea Blindness.

Along with others, over the last few years we have been beating the drum at our homeblogs and especially over at Midrats on the topic - if you need to catchup, E1 does a great job providing links, another reason for you to read the whole thing. Good news? It looks like the right people are starting to do the right thing;

A couple of weeks ago, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Greenert went before the House Armed Services Committee and did a little “Counter-Sea Blindness” work, both in his written testimony and in his spoken words.
...
As Claude Berube wrote somewhere, when the big headline news was the Army being cut to pre-WWII levels, the Navy had already been cut to pre-WWI levels. See here, where it shows the fleet in April 1917 had 342 ships.
Admiral Greenert and Secretary Mabus deserve praise for standing up on this issue.
However, that message needs to be spread further and faster – that the U.S. Navy – the flexible forward presence that this country depends on for freedom of the seas and protection of both vital sea lines of communication and helping its allies abroad- is becoming too small to carry out 40% of its primary missions.
...
Those “faulty premises and a lack of strategic direction” are exactly the symptoms of “Sea Blindness” that have gotten us this tipping point of fleet size.
As stated above, it is good that the CNO and SecNav are speaking out on this issue- but that is not enough. More voices need to spread the word of the vital importance of sea power to this country and the facts of what the reduction of fleet size on this country. 

The cure to “sea blindness” is sunlight – shining light on the situation. Those of us who believe in a strong Navy must spread the word of what the Navy does and why a larger fleet is vital to our national interests and defense.

Amen ... and amen.

Midrats Episode 24: The Navy's New Normal

The budget axe points to sea; the nation suffers sea blindness; a non-traditional actor challenges a fundamental exercise of naval power.

Join EagleOne and me live this Sunday, 06 JUN at 5pm EST as we look at the return of familiar challenges to making the Navy effective.

As our guests we will have two Midrats regulars; Bryan McGrath and Claude Berube.

To discuss “The Navy Under Siege—SECDEF and Naval Preponderance” and "Sea Blindness" will be Bryan McGrath, CDR USN (Ret.) the Founding Director of Delex Consulting, Studies and Analysis (CSA), a division of Delex Systems, Incorporated, headquartered in Vienna, Virginia. Delex CSA is a niche consultancy, specializing in Defense and National Security issues, including strategy and strategic planning, executive communications, and strategic communications.

Bryan spent 21 years on active duty including a tour in command of USS BULKELEY (DDG 84), a guided-missile destroyer homeported in Norfolk, Virginia. His final duties ashore included serving as Team Lead and Primary Author of the US Navy’s 2007 Maritime Strategy “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower”. He also hosts his own BTR format radio show and blog by the same name, Conservative Wahoo.

Claude Berube, LCDR USNR will follow up with a broad discussion of NGOs at sea. Though the recent incident off Gaza brought the issue to the front - his recent article in the Small Wars Journal outlines that there is a lot more out there involving aggressive civilian entities from NGOs to advocacy groups using the maritime domain to pursue their larger goals.

Claude is a Visiting Fellow for Maritime Studies at The Heritage Foundation. He has taught at the U.S. Naval Academy, and worked on Capitol Hill, at the Office of Naval Intelligence, and for a defense firm. A lieutenant commander in the US Navy Reserve, he's been mobilized several times including a deployment with Expeditionary Strike Group Five in 2004-05. In addition to many articles, he has co-authored two books. His next book will be published next year on maritime security companies (Eagle1 is a contributor). For the past year, he's served as the President of American Independent Writers.

Join us live if you can and pile in with the usual suspects in the chat room during the show where you can offer your own questions and observations to our guests. If you miss the show or want to catch up on the shows you missed - you can always reach the archives at blogtalkradio - or set yourself to get the podcast on iTunes.

As a show note - one of the only real issues with the show to this point has been some technical and connection problems ... well ... we've update our software and switchboard. Hopefully, all will have a much better listening experience.

Listen to Midrats on Blog Talk Radio

Nord Stream's Tap on the Shoulder

Outside everyone's interest in knowing "who'dun'it" in the blowing up on the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea, there has yet to be an full appreciation of the larger meaning of its destruction.

1937's bombing of Guernica gave a preview of what would befall Europe's cities just a few years later. The Russo-Ukrainian War is giving hints of what has changed over the last few decades that should give everyone pause to review their assumptions and critical vulnerabilities. Small and medium wars are good for that - they give hints to issues that will arise in future large wars.

While it is easier to understand, even in the face of "sea blindness," the importance of the trade that arrives by ship, food and fuel at the top of the list, from the man on the street to policy makers in nations' capitals, the importance of what lies on the sea bed is lost to most.

Though focused on the UK, our friend Alessio Patalano today has an article up at the Council on Geostrategy,  Unseen but Vital: Britain and Undersea Security, that is worth an investment in your time for a quick read;

The first and third aspects of today’s maritime century have direct relevance to undersea security. Maritime connectivity is both a function of, and a key driver behind, contemporary prosperity. It is a well-known fact that some 90% of global trade is carried by sea, yet it is a less well-known fact that some 99% of the world’s communications are delivered by 1.4 million kilometres of submarine cables. Of no less significance, a substantial part of gas and electricity resources is delivered through a series of undersea connectors.

...between 2010 and 2021, the capacity of energy interconnectors has increased to unprecedented levels. According to official data, electricity imports to the UK increased almost tenfold, with HM Government planning to expand the country’s capacity from 7,440 megawatts to 18 gigawatts by 2030.

Within this context, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and the Republic of Ireland are primary energy trade partners for the UK, with new interconnectors set to link the UK to Germany and Denmark in the near future. The undersea security of Northern Europe is indivisible from the security of the UK.

By a similar token, much of the UK economy and social services rest upon the continuous and uninterrupted use of undersea cables delivering data connectivity. As one informed observer recently noted, a disruption to the network of the approximately 60 British undersea cables would have potentially devastating consequences. Incredibly diverse aspects of life in the UK, from multimillion international bank transactions to medical activities resting on access to cloud-based access to data, would be at risk if a sufficient number of cables were severed or sabotaged.

As we covered in a FbF back in 2009, attacking undersea cables dates back to the 19th Century - but the modern reliance on what is on the sea bed is orders of magnitude greater than just telegraphs were back then.

Getting to them is not easy ... but life once they are cut is even less easy. 

Time to think about what is needed to keep them secure, especially in any time of heightened tensions...but in an era of international terrorism, is there really a time of peace for vulnerable targets?

Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part LXVIII

We need to get moving towards the 350+ Navy sooner more than later - and we need new designs for the new reality of war at sea.

1. Range.
2. ASUW.
3. Number and diversity of ASW tools and weapons from search, location, tracking, and especially attack. Without going in to too many details on this net, the last part especially. The professional malpractice, blindness and complacent arrogance there is gobsmacking.

Right now we have decks full of light strike-fighters (F-18 E/F are better than A-D but still), DDG designed in the Cold War (though greatly modified and as history has looped back to blue water, still very useful even if most don't have ASUW capabilities beyond their 5" gun), and the smaller part of our fleet consists of two Tiffany price, China-doll robust, "exquisitely designed" LCS that still can't address the threats from the Clinton Administration that helped spawn it.

The only thing that seems to be going well is our submarine force.

The CO of the Chinese aircraft carrier Captain Liu Zhe, PLAN had an interesting article out that in a very Chinese way, points where they are going;

Throughout history, the development of great power is closely related to the ocean. Some people say, "stronger than the world who will be better than the sea, the decline in the world who will be weaker than the sea."

Today, in the process of realizing the dream of China, in the process of building a strong ocean, the development of "all the way along the way", not only the wealth of the sea, friends from all corners of the globe, and security threats are mainly from the sea. The more turbulent changes in the undercurrent, the more the need for military Yong Li tide wave. As the President suggested, as a soldier, must be brave to assume the historical responsibility of our generation of soldiers.

Although the Chinese soldiers do not produce grain, but the production of security; not create wealth, but to defend the peaceful environment of peace and comfort. The party and the people to us this aircraft carrier, is the national strength of the cohesion, is a symbol of national will, is the national security barrier, it is a strong backing of world peace. The Liaoning ship forged into a war can win the battle of the aircraft carrier, we are duty-bound
...
Not far from the future, our pace will be bigger, go farther, Liaoning ship will ride in the broader ocean, J-15 fighters will fly in the more distant blue sky. We will continue to forge ahead in the forefront of the construction of the Navy transformation, fighting in the national interests of the new frontier, adhere to the first line in the maintenance of world peace. We firmly believe that the farther away from the territorial sea, the more secure the motherland will be behind, the world peace will be more of a guarantee.

You can't say we weren't warned. Remember this as well - China increased their military budget 7% last year.

H/t SJS

Want a 30-yr Shipbuilding Plan Bad? Well, you’ll … well … you know

American navalists must endure the hardships of a long march in the winter of their discontent. In this struggle we will see who is dedicated, who is strong, who will be best to bring the fight when the season changes and time is right to advance sea power to its proper place. The self-promoting amongst us will fade away. The weak shall perish. The dishonorable will change sides. The ideologically unsound will confuse themselves and others. This will be a filtering, a purifying, an ultimately strengthening trial of The Terrible 20s.

We are only partially through this march, but we are already seeing a healthful pruning of our ranks. The first tranche of the careerists, the lickspittles, the confused, and the just plain congenitally wrong are already sloughing off the navalist host like so much dead skin. The exposed flesh does hurt, but will heal and be stronger by the intellectual debridement it endures.

Like most of you I have been waiting for the required but long awaited 30-yr shipbuilding plan. Of course, we all know that it is only accurate for a few POM cycles, but it is a great tool to point out issues and problems, and to message. If you are looking at what we will have to fight west of Wake, you can ignore any of the dreaming past 2030 in the report. How it is written and phrased outside the tables can tell you much about the fight in the naval arena in the promotion of the natural comparative advantage – and requirement – of the Unites States; that as a maritime and aerospace power.

And so we have OPNAV’s “Report to Congress on the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2023.”

I printed it out, two pages per sheet of paper with pen and highlighter ready to go – as I do – and almost as excited as a kid at Festivus, but alas … I behold an almost unintelligible act of self-sabotage. 

Even the most gifted navalists, if they squint and rotate OPNAV's N9’s cube 45-degrees along all three axis, can only guess at what the intellectual difference between Alt 1 & 2 are. Heck, get three of us together and we’ll give you five different answers. I’ve beta-tested this today with some of the best. We’re all … well … disappointed would be a nice thing to say.

They do help some with these graphs, where Alt 3 "give me more money" is the gold line, and the upper and lower limits of Alt 1 and 2 is represented by the blue band. Again, it is all after 2030-35, but still, it is just, "For Deposit Only" as we don't know the argument between Alt 1 and 2. We have OUR ideas what the intellectual basis of the difference is, but I want to know what N9's is.

Remember what I said about a few POM cycles? You know the "Davidson Window." Just look at 2030-35 - the timeframe that is most accurate.

Now, how interested are you in seeing what the PLAN's numbers are in WESTPAC by 2030? Do you want to see what they desire to have displacing water in 2055? Do you think N9 does? Congress? 

What a lost opportunity this is at such a critical juncture where “sea blindness” is close to tipping in to “sea disinterest.” 

At a time when we need something to help push the argument forward – the very top of the Navy shrugged.

If that is the state of things amongst the most interested, then of what use is such a document to 99.784% of other natsec people who are trying to read it?

How are our advocates in Congress, the press, and civil society going to get any use out of this to pursue the goal of building a navy that this nation needs? 

Instead of making a good argument and providing a framework to argue our position from strength, it reads like something written by Qing Dynasty palace eunuchs for other palace eunuchs. 

In the summary – at the very end – N9 kind of let the cat out of the bag.

Difficult choices must be made to ensure that the Navy best meets Joint Force operational requirements.

Of course. 

I’m not going to pull up a bunch of the graphs and charts, just maybe one or two, you can see them yourself, I am just going to pull out a few quotes for consideration because they tell the full story better.

This plan highlights the Navy’s work ... to build a modernized naval force that makes needed contributions to advance the Joint Force’s ability to campaign effectively, deter aggression, and, if required, win decisively in combat. ... For the ranges in the FY22 shipbuilding plan, the FNFS Future Fleet Architectures (FFAs) were adjusted for final analytic insights based on combat effectiveness, industrial base production feasibility, and no real budget growth.

If that isn't a weak tea pre-emptive surrender and masochistic desire to be a secondary power to the People's Republic of China in the Pacific, I don't know what is. 

Well, there is a positive point to be found; it validates our criticism here at the Front Porch the last 18 years;

The DoN, working with industry partners, will deliberately reduce execution risk through improved cost estimation, prototyping, and landbased testing systems to de-risk critical technologies and ensure that new programs deliver on expected capabilities.

Just search for "program risk" here at CDRSalamander - this is not new. It is nice that in 2022 we're talking about it.

We should take the "W." 

We should also take the "W" on frigates;

Increased numbers of smaller multi-mission combatants, such as Constellation Class Frigates (FFG 62), enable more efficient distribution of missions across the surface fleet, freeing up the more capable DDGs for critical high-end missions.

They could really just save the ink and say, "Salamander and the Front Porch were right about the Age of Transformationalism and we were wrong," but alas, we'll just have to pat each other on the back in the shadows.

This next line is simply gobsmacking.

New submarine tenders will be constructed to support the Navy’s new SSNs and SSBNs.

Considering how old the ones we have are, this is good, but why do a 1-for-1 replacement? Recent experience has shown the vulnerability of static support facilities in an age of exceptionally accurate conventional ballistic and hypersonic conventional weapons with global reach. We need to plan for attrition at war. We need more mobile repair facilities. We need destroyer tenders along with submarine tenders and more tugs, repair ships etc.  

There is also a bit of wishcasting;

Unmanned platforms show significant potential

One thing demonstrated clearly the last few decades is that unmanned platforms overperform in unexpected areas, and underperform in others. Until you start operating them in an extended, unscripted operational environment with standard issue operators, you really don't know fully what they are. 

We need to continue to build a little, test a little, operate a lot, learn a lot - and be humble. Just because we say something in 2022 does not mean it will manifest in 2035 - especially when it plays just too conveniently towards fixing your problems. Just look at the 2006 shipbuilding plan. 

We will get some things right, some things wrong ... but in all cases, go in being humble and take your results with humility. No one, not even 'ole Sal, can see the future clearly. Neither can you. The Potomac Flotilla unquestionably can't.

One thing we can know with certainty is that negotiating with ourselves and pre-emptive surrender is no way to maintain our place as the world's premier maritime power.  

Two decades of happy talk and self-delusion have eroded almost all the credibility our senior leadership has in Congress, press, and the American public. We have no expectations that anything will be done on time and on budget. We do not have an Executive Branch that is supporting a larger Navy. One month we will have the CNO say we need a 500 ship Navy, and then the next he will let his staff put their name - without protest, a document such as this.

Maybe there is an intention here to do a passive-aggressive 3D chess to make a point, but I'm sorry, it fails. I'm not sure what this does but signal that the Navy is supine and resigned.

To expect others to fight for you when you won't even fight for yourself is not indicative of an organization who wants to win - or for that matter - should be allowed to.

The cost to procure a larger Navy represented by the third profile in Table A1-5, is shown in the third graphic of Figure A2-1, and assumes industry produces future ships on time and within budget. The high range represents an additional $75B real growth beyond the FYDP in FY2022 constant dollars. The increased procurement level, informed by industrial base capacity and on-time and on-budget performance, achieves 326 manned battle force ships in the mid-2030s, and ultimately achieves 363 manned battle force ships in FY2045. The previous analytic work depicted in Table 1 will be updated with follow-on force structure assessment based on, and thus reflective of, the warfighting requirements of the 2022 NDS.

The cost to sustain a larger Navy is in addition to that required for procurement and is phased within the appropriate accounts (i.e., manpower, support, training, infrastructure) to match ship deliveries. Appendix 3 illustrates the projected cost of owning and operating (operations and sustainment) the fleet at the ranges that represent no real budget growth. This appendix does not include the funding associated with Appendix 5, which discusses the growing logistics requirement and sealift recapitalization. 

How is one supposed to fight for something when you are handed a weapon without handle and no readily recognizable lethal edge?

How are we supposed to build new relationships and nurture established relationships in Congress when we do such things?

The Terrible 20s was not supposed to be characterized by internal malaise and self-loathing, but here we are.

Read the whole report here if you wish.

Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part VI

Note it on your calendar: Today is PLAN Day!!! Now, everyone knows that CDR Salamander considers every day People’s Liberation Army Navy Day (NB: my friends from the Middle Kingdom, we REALLY need a new game there shipmate), but it seems that 13 DEC 04 the MSM ran out of “US not up-armoring field latrines in Iraq” stories and have all of a sudden noticed a billion or so Chinese getting in shape and thinking about returning from a few hundred years of sleep to regain their seat at the big table.

No small fish in the MSM, Mark Helprin at Opinion Journal gets a direct hit with secondaries, with supporting fire from our British allies at (!)The Guardian via Ian Black.

WOW. Nice to see. Read the whole thing, but here are some of the Executive Summary quotes:

Helprin:

“….China is now powerful and influential enough, at least as a "fleet-in-being," to make American world dominance inconceivable. And in the longer term, China is bent upon and will achieve gross military and economic parity with the United States.”

Exactly. They want “their” Asia back under their petticoat, or whatever the Han Chinese version of that is. As long as we stay out of their backyard and don’t fiddle with their lifeline, they will leave us alone. The problem will be agreeing on the survey lines.

“China is methodically following the example of Meiji Japan in moving from a position of inferiority to one of military equality with far superior rivals, by deliberate application of a striking phenomenon of economics that is to the military relation between states what the golden section is to architecture. Consider a hypothetical country of 10 million people, and a $1 billion GNP, that devotes 10% of its $100 per capita GNP to defense. The people are left with $90/year, suffering one day in 10 to support a $100 million military outlay. But after 18 years of 8% economic growth and 2% population increase per annum, it becomes a hypothetical country of 14 million souls, a GNP of $4 billion, and a per capita GNP of $285. If the people retain only three-quarters of this, they are still almost two and a half times richer than they were before, and the military budget can safely rise to $1 billion. Thus, the GNP increases by a factor of four, per capita GNP more than doubles, and defense outlays swell by a factor of 10.”

Second semester Macro Economics, but again he nails it. Mmmmmm. Meiji Japan. Nice parallel……and we know how that ended up.

“China, however, moves with great deliberation, and many signs suggest that it is aiming for parity in 20 or more years time and in synchrony with advances in technology and military doctrine.”

….and you ignore this at your own peril.

“When China was great, it sent out military expeditions by land and sea into a large part of what was for it the known world, and despite robotic protestations to the contrary it will do so again. It has already begun what it itself might at one time have called imperial expansion, driven not by ideology but the need for markets and raw materials.”

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Oh, I can’t help myself. THEY CAN CALL IT THE “GREATER EAST ASIA CO-PROSPERITY SPHERE”! Oh, wait. The Japanese already did that one. Hit the history replay please.

“This and a persistent blindness in regard to China's probable trajectory are wounds gratuitously self-inflicted, for no country, ever, has had both the mass and income at the margin that the United States has now, but rather than anticipate, meet, and discourage China's military development, as it easily could, the U.S. has chosen to ignore it………when China does develop the powerful expeditionary forces that it will need to protect its far- flung interests, the U.S. will probably have successfully completed transforming its military into a force designed mainly to fight terrorism and insurgencies. ….Though the dangers of epidemics and terrorist nuclear attacks are now obviously pre-eminent, rising behind them is a newer world yet. This century will be not just the century of terrorism: terrorism will fade. It will be a naval century, with the Pacific its center, and challenges in the remotest places of the world offered not by dervishes and crazy-men but by a great power that is at last and at least America's equal. Unfortunately, it is in our nature neither to foresee nor prepare for what lies beyond the rim.”

Remember in Lord of the Rings in the mines when you heard that slow, distant beating of the drums? The future is here. Now.

Black

“An Atlanta company that manufactures yellow ribbon magnets - to display on cars to show solidarity with American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan - is in trouble because a Chinese firm is now making them for half the price; when the symbols of American patriotism are being shipped from Jiangsu province, you know that the sleeping giant is awake and busy.”

Just try to buy a US Flag pin for your lapel that doesn’t say “China” on the back. Try buying a US Flag for the front of your house from “PLANMart”, I mean WalMart, that does not have “Made in China” on it. Try.

“….the EU demonstrated last week when it announced it would not - yet - lift the arms embargo imposed after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder both made clear they wanted to do just that, arguing that the ban was an anachronism that put China on a par with pariahs such as North Korea and Zimbabwe.”

You mean, they’re not? (OK, they are better, but Fascist Italy was better than Fascist Germany too). Oh, yes. The morally superior whores, I mean politicians, at the EU demonstrated that they are feckless, money grubbing schmucks. Shocking.

“In the background is Chirac's big idea of a "multipolar" world that is not dominated by an unassailably powerful America. But big, booming, business is the main reason for the kowtow instinct.”

Read here, “Desire someone that can kill lots of Americans because we don’t have the balls to. Oh, and we would like to make money from it as well because we will do anything to prop up our unsustainable Nanny State.”

“….the EU wants to upgrade its relations with China to a "strategic partnership" - but no surprise, either, that there is a real problem about squaring that with China's commitment to human rights.”

Not that the EU has had problems “squaring” when needed.

“The French line is that "discretion" is needed for effective human rights advocacy.”

The French were very discrete in Algeria, Rwanda, Chad, Ivory Coast, Iraq, etc, etc…

Every day should be PLAN day. Until then, keep an eye on the long game.

In 2047 as I hug my Grandson goodbye as he gets underway with what is left of the SEVENTH Fleet to engage the Chinese fleet moving into blocking positions off the remains of Indonesia, I don’t want to tell him, “Sorry we didn’t do more to prepare son. We just didn’t see it coming.”