The Terrible 20s Get Crunchy

Thinking and planning are easy. Words can have flexible meaning and an artful planner can devise all sorts of trap doors, detours, and branches to allow their ideas a certain degree of flexibility.

Math, however, is hard. Budgets are even harder. They are math with personality.

We have reviewed the challenges of what we’ve come to call “The Terrible 20s” for over a decade. Now that we find ourselves here, what does this upcoming decade hold now that we no longer see the 20s dimly through the haze, but can see its details in sharp relief?

The first step in solving a problem is to admit it. That is easy for individuals as it only takes one entity to take the step – it is much more difficult for institutions. Sometimes it can be impossible for government institutions. 

We’ve chronicled the myriad of challenges faced by our Navy and others raised the alarm for years, getting traction now and then, seeming to simply scream in to the void the rest of the time. We may be getting some traction.

I offer to you a document that everyone here needs to take time to read sooner more than later, The 2020s Tri-Service Modernization Crunch by Mackenzie Eaglen and Hallie Coyne from the American Enterprise Institute.

At just 73 pages, it is easily digested, but let me get a few pull quotes for you to ponder ahead of time.

The opening two paragraphs of the Executive Summary take no prisoners and puts decision makers on report. Just solid.

President Joe Biden’s new administration and the 117th Congress must respond to a uniquely difficult political and fiscal environment; as part ofthis mandate, they will be charged with addressing the enduring mismatch of US defense strategy and resources, which contributes to ongoing supply and demand imbalances regarding requests for forces by combatant commanders. Since these challenges have been growing unchecked for years, the coming decade looms large as the US military is facing a massive spending spike to pay for modernization bills across the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Army that have been ignored, deferred, or inadequately considered. Although this was foreseen and forewarned, insufficient action has been taken. Resolution requires political courage, persistence, innovation, risk, and resources.

Fleets of ships, aircraft, vehicles, and other equipment are reaching the end of their service lives, hitting the edge of their upgrade limits, and losing combat relevance. As great-power competition accelerates, the United States is offering a free and open window of opportunity and advantage to its adversaries. Unless policymakers take concrete steps now, defense leaders will continue America’s sleepwalk into strategic insolvency and its consequences. The aptly named “Terrible 20s” have arrived.

…and yes, our “Terrible 20s” has officially broken in to the general lexicon.

...there is no easy way out of this fiscal bind for the US military. Rather, now is the time for effective mitigation strategies, urgent worst-case scenario planning, hard choices, and political leadership.

100% unalloyed truth. We have run out of time for more pet theories and CONOPS running on pixie dust and unicorn poop. 

The martial branch of the Gods of the Copybook Headings has joined the chat;

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,

They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;

They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;

So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

...

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man

There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,

And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,

As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

It would be rude if I didn’t take a moment on behalf of the Front Porch (you regulars know that you are part of CDR Salamander as much as I am) to thank the authors for the hat tip;

In 2016, popular military blogger and Navy Cmdr. CDR Salamander (ret.) coined the phrase “Terrible 20s” to describe the modernization challenges before the US military this coming decade. He offered an ominous overview of the next 10 years as “that horrible mix of debt bombs, recapitalizing our SSBN [ballistic missile submarines] fleet, and the need to replace and modernize legacy aircraft, ships, and the concepts that designed them.”2 It is a bracing and accurate summary of the following analysis. In this case, the first step in addressing the problem is reminding the policymakers that it exists. The second step—incumbent on leaders in Congress, at the Pentagon, and in the White House—is being honest about the consequences. The third is generating the willpower and spending the political capital to pay for it. *

That last part cuts to the bone. Since the dawn of the Age of Transformationalism 20 years ago and through the socio-political posturing of the tenure of Mullen, Roughead, and others - how much political and institutional capital have we poured down rabbit holes for reasons of vanity or personal picayune projects? 

This is such a powerful report, but to avoid falling in to a long blog post, let’s fast forward on to the Navy section for a bit before I send you along to read the whole thing.

Of all the services, Navy leadership usually best articulates the severity of its approaching crunch. The sea services possess significant advantages in both an analytical and legislative context. Armed with long-range shipbuilding forecasting, a dedicated congressional naval caucus, and a 355-ship goal enshrined in executive and legislative policy, Navy leadership began sending up flares about the modernization crunch years ago. Annually, the CBO also sounds the alarm.

If the Navy received the same average annual amount of funding (in constant dollars) for ship construction in each of the next 30 years that it has received over the past three decades, the service would not be able to afford its 2020 shipbuilding plan. . . . CBO’s estimate of $31.0 billion per year for the full cost of the plan is almost double the $16.0 billion the Navy has received in annual appropriations, on average, over the past 30 years for all activities funded by its shipbuilding account.

This unified effort delivered results, or at least generated awareness, in the past.

True. With receptive ears, after a few FY, a new administration can move the needle in a positive direction if they so wish. One  example, see what happened when Trump took over from Obama;

What about the Biden Administration?

In the Navy’s case, its short-term 2020s procurement crunch centers on shipbuilding, partly because the Navy’s aviation modernization is largely wrapping up, relatively speaking. After dropping to only 271 battle-force ships in 2015,152 the smallest Navy since World War II, the service is challenged by the twofold task of replacing its aging submarine and destroyer fleet while procuring enough ships to work toward the 355-ship goal set in its 2016 Force Structure Assessment (FSA) and confirmed by the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy and the FY18 NDAA.

This is a known unknown, hopefully they will ignore the petty, “Trump was for it, so we can’t be” reflex.

GAO and others have expressed concern about the poor state of the Navy’s four remaining shipyards. 161 After years of underinvestment, it is unclear if the shipbuilding industrial base, already struggling to maintain the Navy’s current force, could keep up with the demands of a larger fleet.162 These issues make the 355-ship goal appear largely unrealistic and put the Navy at risk of creating a hollow force of poorly maintained and undermanned ships. Meanwhile, the Chinese navy has been expanding both its size and its shipbuilding capacity, growing its navy by over 27 percent and its commercial shipbuilding by 60 percent from 2007 to 2017, now far surpassing American industrial capability with no signs of slowing.

This is what I worry about the most today. We have so many “must do” areas overdue at the same time. We are here because of 20-years of failure to have a proper understanding to stewardship that requires hard work now so others later will harvest the rewards later. Instead, we chased short term talking points and the petty praise of the moment. 

As we’ve discussed here and over on Midrats, this maintenance leg of our maritime power – it absolutely cannot be ignored any more. I would rather have money put to this than building more ships. Easily.

If we desire to be a serious power on a global scale, we have to retain our place as the premier maritime power. We cannot be a global power without one. This decade is starting with China on the brink of being able to push us off. If we don’t start to act with vigor and purpose, we will end the decade as the secondary power at sea.

We won’t like what the world looks like after that, and neither will the world.

Decline is a choice. It does not have to turn out that way. It is in our control.

* - NB: "The Terrible 20s" was actually coined in a post about SSBN(X) in 2010.

The Terrible 20s Emerge from the Fog

Ah, yes, The Terrible 20s. What if you had the leadership and malaise of the Carter Administration mixed in with the budgetary pressures of the Clinton Administration ... with a little bit of Biden Administration special sauce mixed in?

We're not even a year in to the Biden Admin still at the start of the 20s...so you know this was coming.  

Via Joe Gould at DefenseNews;

House progressives will have a few chances to hold down the defense budget this week, but it’s going to be an uphill fight.

The House is set to vote this week on two Democratic amendments to cut the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act’s $740 billion top line. One would reduce it by roughly 10 percent, and another would undo a $24 billion a plus-up the House Armed Services Committee passed earlier this month.

...

“We face imminent threats from the COVID pandemic, climate change, growing economic inequality, and systemic racial and ethnic inequities [and] also, domestic terrorism,” Lee said. “It is time to shift our spending priorities to meet these priorities. I personally support much larger cuts to the Pentagon budget.”

There are a few amendments to be voted on too;

- A prohibition on funding for the Air Force’s nascent Ground Based Strategic Deterrent — a next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile and its warhead, the W87-1 — from Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif.

- A prohibition on U.S. military forces in Syria without approval from Congress within one year, from Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y.

- A prohibition on U.S. military logistical and intelligence support for Saudi air forces conducting strikes in the Yemen civil war, from Rep. Ro Khanna. (A separate amendment from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., would bar U.S. sustainment and maintenance support for those forces, with certain exemptions.)

- The top line-lowering amendments are a proposed 10 percent cut (excluding salaries and health care of military personnel), from Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., and proposed reduction of the defense authorization top line to the level requested by the president, from Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.

The (D) have a razor thin margin in the House and odds are the cuts won't run the board - but the anti-military (D) also know their window is about to close as '22 comes up ... they will do their best.

There are some macro patterns that are on their side - some masked by the flood of fiat money to cover the response to COVID - a classic black swan event.

Just a reminder from almost a dozen years ago, let's look at what we discussed in 2010 about where we might be today; from my Feb 2010 phrase-coining post, Looking towards the "Terrible 20's";

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.

It was so clear then ... why so many people refused to see it, I have no idea.

Navalists will need to fight every battle. Every ant hill is a hill worth dying on. Keep up the fight and don't take the bait. 

Keeping an Eye on the Long Game: Part LXXVIII

What is significant about 2033, 15 years from now?

Well:
- we will have just exited the "Terrible 20s" that we've warned about for the last decade.
- as Kristina Wong reported this summer, the Chinese Navy may be double its present size at about 550 ships+/-.

I wonder what comforting words the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, USA has for us;

...it’s likely the United States will be at war with China in 15 years.

Hodges said: "I think in 15 years — it's not inevitable, but it is a very strong likelihood — that we will be at war with China. The United States does not have the capacity to do everything it has to do in Europe and in the Pacific to deal with the Chinese threat."

That is an unalloyed fact - and one of the top reasons European NATO needs to up its game to 2%+ GDP on defense.

If coming out of the Terrible 20s we find ourselves engaged in WESTPAC, it will require every deployable air and sea asset we have. If we are smart, perhaps not as an exceptional percentage of our land forces ... but they will be shifted west anyway. That would leave Europe pretty much on their own against threats south and east.

Oh, I've wargamed this as have others. It is bad enough in 2025 (you need two separate teams due to different macro-assumptions), 2033 needs at least 3 or 4 team to do right, but I don't think it will be much better.

Unless you're paying my bill, I won't give you the full brief here but, besides praying for peace you better:
- pray for the effectiveness of the Vietnamese Army.
- pray for civil unrest in western China.
- pray for a re-militarized Japan.
- pray for a decade of political and financial stability in the USA to mitigate the Terrible 20s.

So, yeah, we've got that going for us. The four above are low probability assumptions. When you wargame without any of them  against Best/Most Likely/Most Dangerous Red COA - well ... interesting. 

CNO Goes Salamander on Ship Numbers

Actually - that is being a little like taking credit for water being wet, but considering that as an organization we have gone years telling everyone that water was actually more like lint - I take the following as a very good sign for our Navy. Very good sign.

... the Navy's top officer is telling his sailors that the active fleet will be about the same size in five years as it is now, despite recently announced plans to retire a bunch of ships early and to not build as many new ones as planned.

Adm. Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations, told sailors and Marines here that the number of ships in the fleet in 2017 "will be about the same, 285, but it won't be going up as high as we wanted."
The Navy has planned for at least 313 ships in the battle fleet for years, and has counted on rapid procurement of the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and serial production of the Arleigh Burke destroyers and Virginia-class attack submarines to help reach that number.

We have been discussing for years that a combination of forces; the high unit-cost Tiffany Navy we spent a decade planning, the predictable results of deferred maintenance and accrued degeneration of existing ships by the reality-ignoring "Optimal Manning Cult," the predictable post-war budget pressures, and in the last 3+ years the clear coming debt crisis - we knew that 313 was going to be a never-was-has-been.

And to make our problem even more acute - Admiral Greenert's predecessor (under his eyes) expended a lot of the Navy's intellectual goodwill and credibility on The Hill by putting out unrealistic, rosy-scenario predictions of our shipbuilding future.

There are more challenges on the way. As outlined in URR's post on the USS ESSEX (LHD-2), the condition of our ships is worse than even the Church of Miss Mary Dark Cloud - which I am an elder of - have warned. This will apply downward pressure on ship numbers in the "out years."

The past is the past - I hope that the 285 is just the start of an open and honest discussion of the actual condition of our Fleet and future force levels. Is 285 is too high? I think so, as we have still not fully digested what will happen in the Terrible 20s. In my dark moments I think of a 2030 Fleet of 220, but 240-50 is probably closer.

Wait until we find that LCS - which will be a huge % of the Fleet when we come out of the Terrible 20s - actually has an average life of 20-25 years as they were never designed to have a long life, will be asked to do more than expected, and will have more and more weight added over time. Let's see. When will LCS start dropping off when they reach 20-25 years service? Oh, thats right; the end of the Terrible 20s.

Ungh. Do we call the next decade; the Torturous 30s? What do do?

Well, we don't have a CG(X). I think DDG(X) is going to be DDG-51 Flt III. LCS will be ... well ... LCS. I don't think we will build a smaller Amphib than LPD-17 - so what do we do? It is FEB 2012 with 285. By OCT 2012 do I have a bid for 275 as new the official number?

The US Navy's Disarmed Hostility

So, how is your week going?

The Navy wants to shed 39 ships in Fiscal Year 2023, with the first ship set to depart on Halloween.

The list, which includes five guided-missile cruisers 

Armed neutrality is a good thing - it keeps an enemy at bay.

Being hostile while you are actively disarming yourself? That is begging for a whoop'n.

Inaction. Inattention. Slavish devotion to process. Entitlement. Distracted leadership.

That is how we got here – a destination we slid to this century on a carpet of happy-talk, half-truths, and aspirational time-buying.

First, let’s start with a statement that I could have made myself. Via David Sharp at AP;

Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, defended the proposal that emphasizes long-range weapons and modern warships, while shedding other ships ill equipped to face current threats.

“We need a ready, capable, lethal force more than we need a bigger force that’s less ready, less lethal, and less capable,” he said Monday at the Navy League's Sea-Air-Space symposium in Maryland.

I would always want three effective warships as opposed to five worn out, worm-ridden with unpublished CASREPS, partially manned and maintained Command at Sea billets … but it didn’t have to be this way; this was a choice.

Anyway, this is just another way to say, "Divest to Invest" which is a kinder-gentler version of "Do More With Less" etc that we've all seen before.

We should have five warships - and need eight - but we don’t – and we are barely through the first 5th of The Terrible 20s. We did not get here by accident or by the action of external forces - but by decisions the Navy made.

No one is allowed to be surprised.

We are a dozen years past the announcement of “The Terrible 20s.” So the structural challenges of this decade were known a few PCS cycles before they began to manifest themselves in spades. 

Generations of leadership have been happy to let their Sailors be worked down to the bone in undermanned, rusty, poorly maintained ships on extended deployments with ships only partially mission capable. Little effort was made to promote either a replacement for Goldwater-Nichols, or push back against the Ottoman-effective “Joint” requirements. Less effort was made to bring the critical importance of sea power has in enabling the standard of living and place in the world of the American people enjoy to the ears of the American people.

We lost an entire generation of naval developments with programs like CG(X) that failed to launch, programs like DDG-1000 that failed to transition, and programs like LCS who exist only to mock our claim to be the world’s premier naval power. In some areas, we aren’t even that anymore. 

No. As we covered last month, the Navalist institutions have failed their moment and we are drifting rudderless into a minefield while those with the charter to provide and maintain a navy remain at their cocktail parties reminding each other how wonderful and influential they are in a potlatchesque onomastic orgy of feather-nesting – the future be damned.

We have wallowed in failure so long, we have forgotten how we got there.

How about a little Front Porch unintended call-out?

Some detractors proclaimed littoral combat ships to be the Navy’s “Little Crappy Ship,” but that’s not fair, said defense analyst Loren Thompson.

“It’s not a little crappy ship. It does what it was supposed to do. What it was supposed to do isn’t enough for the kind of threats that we face today,” said Thompson, from the Lexington Institute.

In the Navy’s defense, threats shifted swiftly from the Cold War to the war on terror to the current Great Power Competition in which Russia and China are asserting themselves, he said.

If you have to bring out Loren to defend you, you've lost the LCS argument. I mean, really people. As was even mentioned early on in the AP article, LCS was designed for a post-Cold War threat. This reads as satire, but it is serious as people think it is informed, objective opinion quoted in the article.

It isn't.

If we can't speak truth, we sail in a sea of lies and feast on a layer of error on top of error.

Enough of that rant, I am probably losing you ... let us behold the spawn of The Terrible 20s.

There are three stories here, all different, and all damning to the leadership of our Navy the last quarter century … but mostly the leadership of the first decade of this century. They begat the child the present leadership is having to raise – and still tell us what a great baby-daddy they are.

First let’s look at the list from NAVADMIN 181/22.

The three stories are the neglected unsexy but important, the worn out, and the snake-bit. 

1. The Unsexy but Important: The USNS ships range from 8 (Glenn) to 50 (Gordon/Gilliland) years old with an average of 36.2 years. Most should have been replaced years ago, but ... well ... you know. As a side note, if anyone knows the background on the T-ESD going away so young, let us know in the comments. I can't find anything.

2. Worn out: The SSN were both ~36-yrs old, the CG averaged 35 years old, and the LSD 33 years old. The way we use our fleet units, if after 30-yrs you can't replace them 1-for-1 then that is your fault. The PC's are 28 years old on average ... way beyond what those wee ships should be. Is the CNO right about these? Sure ... but don't say, "... less ready, less lethal, and less capable." - just be honest and say, "...worn out, unrepairable, and too dangerous to ask Sailors to go to war in." Be clear and direct. Be at least as blunt as we were defending the writings of Kendi.

3. Snake-bit: the Little Crappy Ship is little, crappy, and should probably be called a hulk. Average age here is 4.7 years, the youngest just 2 years. No one has been held to account. No one. If you are new to the LCS debacle or think the Front Porch is taking too much credit, well...here is almost 2-decades of commentary on LCS. We were right from the start. Something useful is being made with the Independence Class with more money and fewer expectations, but what an opportunity cost this misadventure has consumed.

In what has been a bad decade for the US Navy’s relationship with Congress – and an exceptionally bad year when our senior leadership expended what was left of institutional good will defending racial essentialism – it appears that the powers that be insist it wants to pick a fight with the organization that feeds them. That is just picking a fight. I'm all about picking fights, but this isn't the right one.

U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Virginia, was more blunt, tweeting that it “sucks” to be decommissioning so many ships, especially newer ones.

“The Navy owes a public apology to American taxpayers for wasting tens of billions of dollars on ships they now say serve no purpose,” she said.

Rep. Lauria (D-VA), the surface-nuke that she is – knows what time it is – and can mock the lame and weak as only a surface nuke can.

So, add this to your folder of affirmative failures of vision and verve. 

U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Virginia, suggested the ship cuts were “grossly irresponsible” when the U.S. Navy has dipped from 318 ships to 297, while the Chinese fleet has grown from 210 to 360 ships over the past two decades.

Milley said it's important to focus on the Navy's capabilities rather than the size of its fleet.

“I would bias towards capability rather than just sheer numbers,” he said.

Milley doesn't know the difference between a MK-41 and a SeaRAM. 

What happened to "distributed lethality?" Nothing to the concept, it just seems that our leadership lacks the ability to have a sustained baseline strategy that lasts longer than a FITREP cycle and instead invents new buzzwords to chase around like a catnip addled kitty after a laser pointer. That and it is shamed by the empty piers LCS, DDG-1000, and CG(X) begat our already cursed decade of decline.

The 2020s were going to be hard whatever we did, but by our collective action, we have made it worse. The US Navy has earned a long, painful, and distinguished period of oversight from Congress that will hopefully result in a wholesale rebuild of our shipbuilding people, process, and procedures. 

If not, well ... the US Navy and the nation it serves had a good century in the sun. A hoot while it lasted. 

What follows will not be a hoot.

The Terrible 20s is About More Than Money

We've defined the Terrible 20s here for years, that horrible mix of debt bombs, recapitalizing our SSBN fleet, and the need to replace and modernize legacy aircraft, ships and the concepts that designed them.

Sydney Freedberg Jr. over at BreakingDefense has a great overview of the challenges all services will face in the next decade, but to make our point, let's pull up the DON Air and Surface/Sub-Surface charts. Here you will see the other part of the Terrible 20's I don't think we have talked about much - the gaping intellectual shortfall.

Where are our designs to replace DDG-51? We cannot build them until the second coming. What about the replacement for the F-18 (no, the F-35 will not be that). I see the line for FA-XX and a little chat here and there, but where is the debate (we need the debate to fight the transformationalists who seem to have sold SECNAV on unmanned systems as the Unicorn of Purity)? That is just the top two, there are other's that are in dire need of new designs too.

These need to be making shadows on the ramp and displacing water in a decade ... we are late. Please don't tell me we are going to have a last minute too big to fail no plan-b train wreck again ... but it looks like we are. I have seen no evidence that we are going to change the horrible acquisition system we have that gave birth to the F-35, LCS, and DDG-1000. We will keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. 

I pray the next administration will have the luck and wisdom to bring people in with the wisdom and power to do more than be a food-trough caretaker. Sigh.

I know these things are being worked on, but we need to drag them out of the shadows. Time and money are not going to be our friends here; we have already wasted too much of both.

The Navy Goes Full Salamander on the Terrible 20s

Remember how we have been saying for most of the last decade that eventually, the Navy will run out of HappyTalk Juice? That as shadows do not appear on the deck and water is not displaced pierside ... that it would have to admit what it denied?

It really is heartbreaking to see, as we wasted so many years in happy talk, rosy scenarios, and best case projections. Those who made this bed have long retired to well paying gigs in boardrooms of companies and K-Street - to be dealt with by the leaders in place now.

Not a good thing to gloat about - but .... behold.

The U.S. Navy can’t meet its funding needs for surface warships and a new class of nuclear attack submarines from 2025 to 2034, according to the service’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan.

The congressionally required blueprint, submitted late last week and obtained by Bloomberg News, says the Navy’s plan “requires funding at an unsustainable level” unless spending on shipbuilding is increased.

The document outlines challenges facing the plan to increase the Navy fleet to 306 vessels from the current 289 while building 12 new Ohio-class submarines, part of the nation’s nuclear triad of air, land and sea weapons.

Yea, it's that bad - and a tad more.

The average cost of the Navy plan during the period when the service will be spending the most on the new submarine is $19.7 billion a year, including more than $24 billion at the peak year of fiscal 2032, according to the report.

This budget “cannot be accommodated by the Navy from existing resources -- particularly if” the Pentagon remains under congressionally mandated automatic cuts known as sequestration, the report said.

The Navy’s historical shipbuilding budget has averaged about $13 billion a year, in fiscal 2014 dollars.

“Even if the Ohio-replacement program is removed” from the Navy plan, the average shipbuilding funding required beginning in fiscal 2020 is as much as $15 billion annually, the report found.

What the heck - no one paid me for my consult almost half a decade ago. From my Feb 2010 phrase-coining post, Looking towards the "Terrible 20's";

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?

Look at what the Royal Navy is dealing with today, and it isn't a stretch to see similar challenges for ourselves. Look and learn - and perhaps we can mitigate the pain.

We'll be blogg'n about the 20's a lot down the road; let's call this an introduction to the Terrible 20's.

We have very rough seas ahead. As you will see in my post tomorrow, we still have not set the proper condition, read the night orders, or adjusted the watch bill accordingly.

Solutions? Sure, there are some - but no one is talking about them as they require sharp elbows, flexible intellect, and the ability to not be invited to the right parties - or post retirement gigs of fortune.

Hat tip CGB.

SSBN(X) - you'll be lucky to get 10

Ok, in line with the "drip-drip-drip" series of posts about something no-one wants to talk about (the trainwreck of shipbuilding that will be the Terrible '20s), let me make a little long range prediction for 'ya. First though, set the scene.

- The fiscal nightmare of the series of deficits we are building and the debt service they will bring - along with the budgetary realities of building a Social Democracy (only tremendous political changes in '10 and '12 elections will change this), will create budgetary pressures that will drive defense spending to below 3% of GDP by 2012 (it is 4% now).
- The largest shipbuilding pressure in the 2020's will be the re-capitalization of the SSBN force.
- Don't forget the new Nuclear Posture Review ...

From the CBO, go to table 2. They are calling it going from 14 to 12 SSBN.

I'll call it now, we will be lucky if we get 10 SSBN(X). Make that a planning assumption.

Here is some more from the Bureau of the Hard Truth (BUTRU):
- Budgets will get smaller.
- Tiffany Navy shipbuilding costs will not get significantly smaller if we continue the attitude and practices from The Lost Decade.
- We will be at sub-250 ships at the end of the Terrible '20s unless something new happens in the next 5 years.
- This is not industry's fault; this is not Congress's fault. This is well in excess of 51% uniformed military's fault.

Way forward? We need radical change at the highest levels of leadership. Clark-Mullen-Roughead lineage got us here. Who am I looking for? Someone like this,

At the time of his appointment as Chief of Naval Operations, (he) was still a Rear Admiral, Upper Half (Two Star) and was promoted over the heads of many Flag Officers who were senior to him. (He) had never served as a Vice Admiral (Three Star), so he was promoted two grades at the time of his appointment as CNO.

That is a fresh start. And what did that give us?

Admiral Burke served an unprecedented three terms as CNO. He served at a critical time in world history, the depths of the Cold War. The facts that he was relatively young compared to other Flag Officers at the time, and was an excellent manager and organizer, were keys to his success. He supported the touchy Adm. Hyman Rickover in the development of a nuclear Navy. More directly, he promoted the Polaris missile program at a time when others in the Navy were very skeptical of the idea of a missile launched from a submarine.

Admiral Burke as CNO was intimately involved in the Eisenhower administration discussions of "how much is enough?", as to the number of US nuclear submarines needed for deterrence. Burke argued that a force of around 40 Polaris submarines (each with 16 missiles) was a reasonable answer. Burke further argued that land-based missiles and bombers were vulnerable to attack, which made the U.S.-Soviet nuclear balance dangerously unstable. By contrast, nuclear submarines were virtually undetectable and invulnerable. He was very critical of "hair trigger" or "launch on warning" nuclear strategies, and he warned that such strategies were "dangerous for any nation."

Earlier, Admiral Burke was involved in the "Revolt of the Admirals", a near mutiny by the leaders of the Navy in the late 1940s, and was saved from being fired by the intervention of President Harry S. Truman. His terms as CNO were times of growth and progress in the Navy. Upon completing his third term, he was transferred to the Retired List on August 1, 1961.

Time for 1955 thinking again or we will wind up having two Admirals for each ship.

Absence Makes the Need Grow Fonder

Usually, things go from here to twitter - but today we're going to reverse the flow.

What got my blood up this AM? A good 24-hrs of people commenting on Sam LaGrone's great article on our CVN deployment gap.

Aircraft carriers – the most visible tools of U.S. military power – are spending more time in maintenance and at home even as the Pentagon has declared it’s entered a new era of competition with China and Russia.

According to a USNI News analysis of more than 50 years of carrier air wing deployments over the last 15 months, the Navy has seen the lowest number of carrier strike groups underway since 1992, the year following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

It is nicely summarized with this pic;

Well, a few things. This is,
1) Good news. We’ve been shooting up the horse for way too long.
2) Get used to it. There is neither the political will or the budgetary heft to build enough CVN to meet what we think we need. Our friend Bryan McGrath is correct, 13 is the minimum, but Congress will never fund that nor the airwings to put on them - not to mention proper escort numbers.

We need to accept this as we are about to enter the Terrible 20s. Political disruption has only begun, we will have a recession NLT 1QFY21, we will spend more on interest on the debt than DOD by 2023.

Medicare goes insolvent in 2026, Social Security 2034.

We need to learn to do what we can with what we will get, than think about doing more with what we will never have budgeted.

This isn’t the future I want, but it is the one the last 2-decades of politicians gave us.

The Terrible 20s are neigh. Don't avert your eyes, focus.

H/t Cavas.

The 2020s Cruiser Crisis

Over the last few years, I have come to the firm opinion that both structurally and culturally, the US Navy is incapable of fixing itself. We have run out of time and are actually past time. To continue to work inside the same infrastructure, policies, laws, and personalities and expect a different result is insanity. We need relief from Congress. Yes, that Congress.

We need a new law and mindset towards acquisition and program management in line with a Goldwater-Nichols replacement. The latest datapoint is the absolute state of our cruiser fleet.

Like so many of the problems we have with the quality, quantity, and utility of the fleet we have today, this was all unavoidable.

It was also very predictable. We are, in spades, enjoying the fruits of Transformationalism rounded up with a decorative acquisition system which seems to be intentionally designed to prevent the development of an effective fleet. We had a series of leaders who made wrong bet, and then doubled down or allowed themselves to be distracted by the political fashion of the moment instead – as it is always easier to seek the praise of those who sneer at you, than to work hard for those you lead.

The latest chapter of “The Terrible 20s” can be seen in an under-examined part of the latest 30-yr shipbuilding plan … the decommissionings;

 In 2022: 

Six Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers will be placed in reserve: San Jacinto (CG 56), Hue City (CG 66), Anzio (CG 68) Vella Gulf (CG 72) and Port Royal (CG 73).  

...

In 2023:  

Two Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers will be placed in reserve: Bunker Hill (CG 52) and Mobile Bay (CG 53). 

... 

In 2024: 

Two Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers will be placed in reserve: Antietam (CG 54) and Shiloh (CG 67). 

In 2026: 

One Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser will be placed in reserve: Chancellorsville (CG 62).

While the budget will determine how much we will buy and how close we get to the goals of the 30-yr shipbuilding plan, the decommissioning schedule you can roughly count on. Time, wear and tear, and the issues of deferred maintenance will ensure that.

If we can’t build more than we scrap, we are a degrading force.

So, at a time when the Chinese Communists have a modern cruiser in serial production and even the Italians will cut steel on a slightly under-armed but still cruiser sized warship, why is the world’s premier Navy being left hoping the latest flight of DDG’s designed during the Cold War will carry the day?

Simply – we have an ossified, adhesion filled pile of accretions that is our acquisition system. To compound the problem, we do not seem to have the right mindset when it comes to ship design.

Just recall the disaster that was CG(X). If we were a properly functioning organization, we would already have Hull-1 ready for deployment, Hull-2 about to commission, and serial production for the next decade. We would also already have plans for the steel cut on the hull in 2025 of the first Flight II of the class, and already be briefing the follow-on CG class. 

Instead, in a period as long as two World Wars, we wait … while the Chinese Communist Navy moves from strength to strength, and allied navies with but a small fraction of our shipbuilding budget have modern ships with proven weapons in production.

It has been over a decade since I warned of The Terrible 20s. Here we are. 

The cruiser crisis of the 2020s is just a small part of a complex problem we are involved with that has economic, political, and demographic factors that would be here regardless of the decisions at OPNAV. Our self-generated failures just compound the challenges.

If anyone you associate with is a senior uniformed or civilian leader in our Navy or industry is panicked or surprised – note that. That just informs you that this person cannot see past the FY they are in. They are a danger to the people who work for them, the organizations they lead, and the nation and Navy they serve.

This is not a wake call, this is a reckoning. 

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.

The Terrible 20s With a British Accent

A little over a decade ago, we coined "The Terrible 20s" to describe what we saw as the challenge we are experiencing now. A point I made then still applies; if you want a preview of the USN in a decade, look at the Royal Navy today;

Look at what the Royal Navy is dealing with today, and it isn't a stretch to see similar challenges for ourselves. Look and learn - and perhaps we can mitigate the pain.

Have you seen the absolute state of what the Royal Navy is looking at towards the end of this decade? From the summary report of the recent report out of the House of Commons, “We’re going to need a bigger Navy;”

Towards the end of the decade in 2027–28 the Navy will begin transitioning multiple classes of vessel simultaneously. Crucially these plans must be delivered on schedule in order for the Navy to exit the period of risk that budgetary restrictions have placed it in. However, they face many structural and project-specific risks, and the Ministry of Defence’s track record on delivery is far from good.

Whenever we have investigated a failure, we have heard the customary mantra that “lessons have been learned”. Not only do we seriously doubt that this is the case, these projects are too important to the Navy’s credibility and the UK’s security to be treated as a learning opportunity. These projects therefore need greater scrutiny from Parliament and external stakeholders, and this requires the Government to be honest about its intentions and publish shipbuilding delivery plans.

In short, over the next five years or so, at least until the new classes of surface escorts come on stream, the Royal Navy will be asked to do even more with even less. This is a clear risk, which those beyond these shores can calculate just as readily as we can.

It is important to remember that our best naval partner is and will be the Royal Navy. Her problems are our problems, and likewise for her.

Both our nations suffer from the same problem; for decades our military and political elites have mismanaged their nation's requirement for sea power.

We no longer have the luxury of sub-optimalized incompetence of just getting by on not-that-bad.

We have to return to excellence to meet the challenge that China is bringing at sea. 

New leaders need to come to the front with a new attitude and a firm understanding of why they are here.

Four years after the 2010 post linked to above, I also made this point; 

Solutions? Sure, there are some - but no one is talking about them as they require sharp elbows, flexible intellect, and the ability to not be invited to the right parties - or post retirement gigs of fortune.

Those who have a clear-eyed view of the cornerstone to our nations' freedom is its sea power, we have to fight, argue, and make enemies amongst the rent seekers, bureaucrats, and the permanent natsec nomenklatura who got us here - starting with the land component fetishists.

H/t SW. 

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.