Kidd-class destroyer transfer to Taiwan marks turning point for U.S. Navy’s weapons sale process
By DAVID AXE, Special Correspondent
It was a muted celebration that marked the consummation of one of the most portentous arms deals in years. On Oct. 29, five years after expressing a desire for new destroyers, officials of the Taiwanese Navy — some in civilian clothes — joined their American counterparts at Detyens Shipyard, Charleston, S.C., to mark the handover of a pair of reconditioned Kidd-class destroyers. A second pair will be handed over in early 2007.
The Kidds will revolutionize Taiwan’s surface fleet and help give the island nation the capability to seriously contest a Chinese amphibious assault. Predictably, China has protested the sale — hence the low-key handover. The two destroyers, rechristened Keelung and Suao, arrived at the Suao Naval Base in Taiwan in early December.
The Kidd deal is critical to Taiwan’s future. But for the tiny, obscure Navy office that oversees maritime weapons transfers to foreign forces, the deal is a vestige of the past, of a time when weapons sales occurred in a relative strategic vacuum, cloaked in bureaucratic mystery. The Navy International Programs Office (NIPO) is preparing to implement a plan that will make all maritime weapons transfers subject to rigorous strategic and cost-benefit analysis in order to make the best use of limited resources — and to equip allies for truly effective coalitions.
Weapons sales and transfers — “security assistance” in Pentagon parlance — are a powerful tool of American strategy. Ship transfers increase allied fleets’ combat capabilities at minimal expense and enhance their interoperability with U.S. forces, according to Rear Adm. Mark R. Milliken, NIPO director.
NIPO’s obscurity and small size — just 190 people — belie its disproportionate power.
“We’re the wizard behind the Land of Oz,” Milliken said of his Washington, D.C.-based organization.
In the wake of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen’s “1,000-ship Navy” speech at the Naval War College in August, the organization has received “a flurry of flag-level interest,” according to Jason Colosky, NIPO’s director of Strategic Planning, Sea and Land.
Mullen envisions a “fleet … comprised of all freedom-loving nations standing watch over the seas,” Colosky said, adding that Pentagon and State Department planners want to see Mullen’s concept turn into a “1,000-ship Navy of value,” meaning ships need to be capable and interoperable. That requires a concerted, proactive effort to get the right technology into the right allied hands.
By contrast, “In the past, security assistance was never a proactive measure,” Colosky said, noting that most sales and transfers originated with an expression of interest from foreign customers for new or surplus weapons. Some requests were truly in U.S. strategic interest; others were not. All requests, worthwhile or not, disappeared into a labyrinthine bureaucracy: Some resulted in hardware actually changing hands; many did not. Sometimes unrealistic assistance programs were underwritten by the U.S. and resulted in millions of wasted dollars.
The bottom line, Colosky said, is that historically there has been disconnect between security assistance programs and theater combatant commanders’ visions for allied capabilities. NIPO wants to connect security assistance to national strategy, which means making assistance programs transparent to the combatant commanders, giving them the information they need to initiate and push for the programs that truly matter.
“A big part of what we’re doing is getting everyone on the same sheet of music [concerning] what is truly in our national interest,” he said.
To that end, Colosky said NIPO will implement its new Theater Security Assistance Cooperation Plan (TSACP) in March.
TSACP is a clockwork of matrices and formulae, a mathematic system for assigning value to capabilities and platforms based on strategy, which itself is a product of input from combatant commanders and the State Department.
“We’re trying to develop a standard list of priority programs based on a fusion matrix,” Colosky said, grimacing at his own jargon.
The system takes into account certain barriers, such as the need to keep sensitive technologies from unreliable allies. It also considers U.S. industrial capabilities and the industrial benefits of a particular transfer. TSACP is flexible enough to accommodate traditional ways of doing business, such as Foreign Military Sales and Excess Defense Article (EDA) transfers.
The Kidd deal comes under the EDA rubric. In the future, under TSACP, such a transfer might come under greater scrutiny — and happen faster and with greater transparency to concerned parties. Perhaps more importantly, the system should identify the need for such a transfer more reliably than the previous ad-hoc approach to foreign assistance.
Don Aiken, a NIPO deputy director, said declining domestic resources is one factor in the growing emphasis on efficiently assisting foreign allies.
Coincidentally, budgetary pressures have forced the U.S. to retire a large number of relatively young hulls in recent years — and these hulls are potent fodder for foreign transfer. The Kidds were less than 20 years old and had been recently updated when they were retired beginning in 1998.
Since 1994, the U.S. Navy removed from service 21 Perry-class frigates and all 31 Spruance-class destroyers, among other vessels. Perrys have already been transferred to Bahrain, Egypt, Poland and Turkey; others are still available. The Spruances, many around 20 years old, could also be transferred, according to Milliken — assuming recipient navies can afford to man and operate them. India, Pakistan and Turkey have expressed interest.
Colosky stresses that NIPO deals with more than just warships. Every maritime defense article imaginable, from wool blankets to fighter jets — anything that can improve an ally’s ability to defend itself and to cooperate with U.S. forces — comes under the office’s purview.
“We’re taking a look at the breadth of nations and the breadth of platforms out there. We want it all to line up,” he said.
