Navy Strives for Eight Carrier Battle Groups Ready to Roll

England: "We Have to Stop Building DDGs and Think in Terms of the Next Generation"

By HUNTER KEETER
Associate Editor

The Navy leadership is rebuilding its fleets following the experience of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but don't expect Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, or Navy Secretary Gordon R. England to call for more ships or more money before they decide on the shape the reconstituted force ought to take. The Navy has stopped arguing for "presence" and "numbers" in favor of "presence with a purpose," and a fleet that is measured in terms of its capability rather than hulls.

Clark, who has accepted a two-year extension of his tenure as CNO, has ordered a cadre of analysts in a classified office known as Deep Blue to develop plans for putting the fleet back together "in a way that is better than what we started with," he told an audience Nov. 1 at a banquet of the Navy League of the U.S. in Arlington, Va. Clark, who became CNO in July 2000, is concerned with the shape of forces following Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, in which 70 percent of the operational Navy was deployed.

"It gets back to what kind of capability the president needs," Clark said. "When the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [Air Force] Gen. Richard B. Myers asks if he can have four carriers and I tell him he can have eight ... that is one of the proudest moments of my life. I happen to believe in the marketplace, and the marketplace is a demanding place. I will tell you that we are responding to that market demand. As of November, we are back in a position to provide six aircraft carrier battle groups for the president. Give us another 60 days or so, and we will add another two."

In October, England returned from a one-year stint at the Department of Homeland Security to become the second man to be Navy secretary twice--after John Y. Mason, who served in the mid-19th century. A former executive with General Dynamics Corp., England in October told Sea Power that he relished the opportunity to take up where he left off in January 2003, emphasizing efficiency and effectiveness in naval operations.

For England, just as for Clark, the answers to questions of fleet size, force structure, and the number of ships are related to the speed with which the service will be able to reinvest funds in buying next-generation equipment. For example, in its fiscal year 2003 budget, the Navy had nearly $400 million in "new money," according to England, yet the service paid for two new ships and 18 aircraft. The new money was not enough to pay the bill for the new platforms; the balance came from "self-generated money" from retiring older ships, aircraft, and vehicles, he said.

"People keep asking me, 'When does the number of ships in the fleet go back up?' I tell them that it goes back up as we buy them along with the next generation of equipment," England told Sea Power during an interview at Newport, R.I. "We haven't quite bottomed out. I don't think we bottom out until next year [fiscal 2005]. We have got to get new systems into production. We have to stop building DDGs and think in terms of the next generation, for example."

Acquiring the next generation of combat ships begins in 2007 with deliveries of the Littoral Combat Ship. The DD(X) acquisition is scheduled for a construction contract to be let in 2005, with the first ship to be delivered in 2012.

England does not assume that increased budgets equal greater capability. Historically the government's approach to budgets was that reducing funding reduced an organization's effectiveness; that more money would always be good, and less money bad. England noted, however, that a ship in dry dock for 10 months does not represent combat power. It is merely absorbing money. If the service can find ways to make ships more reliable or to maintain and repair them more quickly, it could derive more days at sea from its platforms.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Michael W. Hagee has also outlined his priorities, emphasizing more efficient and effective operational capability. For example, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Marine Corps and Navy projected more than 75,000 Marines into Kuwait in fewer than 60 days, about half the time required for a similar task in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm/ Desert Shield. Marines covered the distance from a Kuwaiti naval base to the Iraqi city Tikrit, where I Marine Expeditionary Force halted at the end of the war-- about the distance from Washington, D.C. to Atlanta, Ga.-- was covered in 26 days, and in the process helped destroy better than four Iraqi divisions.

"The Marine Corps' priority is to be able to project that kind of power even better, and by that I mean faster," Hagee told Sea Power in September. "I think we should go further. My goal is to prepare the Marine Corps to project that force wherever it is needed, from the sea, faster, and to be ready to go quicker and, when we are on the battlefield, to increase our flexibility and adaptability. We also saw that during Operation Iraqi Freedom: our ability to respond to changing situations on the battlefield. We want to do that better, too."

Hagee, Clark, and England have been working on a formal list of priorities for the year ahead, to take advantage of the support the sea services have so far enjoyed from the current administration and Congress. The priorities are unlikely to change dramatically from the four areas outlined last year by England and Clark and then-Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones: Supporting personnel; developing enhanced combat capability; embracing new technologies; and building good business practices.

"Our goals have not changed," England told Sea Power. "However, the CNO and the commandant and I are putting together a new list of top priorities so that we are totally aligned. The CNO has had his term in office extended for another two years ... while we know for sure that George Bush is the president, we have a Republican Congress, and I am here, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is here. While we have this team in place, we plan to get everything done we can to leave a solid foundation for the Navy and Marine Corps team going into the future."

Clark told the Navy League that personnel and readiness are important, and that first-term retention (the continuance of service beyond a sailor's first enlistment) is at more than 60 percent for the third consecutive year. Over the course of Clark's career, the average first-term retention has hovered around 30 percent, he said.

To build what he called a "culture of readiness," Clark has ordered his leaders, such as Commander of Fleet Forces Command Adm. William J. Fallon, to execute a concept called the Fleet Readiness Program, developed with Vice Adm. Charles W. Moore Jr., deputy chief of naval operations for fleet readiness and logistics. The Navy's operational pattern during the Cold War was to deploy for six months its battle groups and amphibious ready groups, retrieve these for maintenance and training, and repeat the cycle 12 to 18 months later. The Fleet Readiness Program resets that schedule around the need for surge capability--the ability for ships to be organized, readied, and deployed with little notice.