The Futurist

Navy requirements chief Sestak charts the road ahead

As deputy chief of naval operations for warfare requirements and programs, Vice Adm. Joseph A. Sestak Jr. articulates the capabilities that the service will need two or three decades hence and identifies the investments and programs that will help it obtain them.

Sestak balances limited resources with the need to be prepared for a long war against terrorism and the probability that the service will be involved in future major combat operations. As the Navy’s resident futurist, Sestak relies, in part, on forecasts of the ever-changing capabilities of potential adversaries.

As he looks ahead, Sestak focuses not on “each arrow” that could be fired at the United States, but on ways to ensure the Navy has the means “to take out the archer.” He is intrigued by the possibility of sprinkling the seas with portable sensors that can be quickly deployed to keep watch on enemy submarines, and is determined to help breathe life into the Navy’s Sea Basing concept to use the sea as a staging area for the troops that will fight the nation’s next war.

He comes to the job following an array of sea commands, service on the National Security Council staff and the directorship of Deep Blue, the brain trust for the chief of naval operations. Sestak readily admits that his job has its limitations, saying the Navy cannot “predict with pinpoint accuracy the precise number of ships we will need 35 years from now … a lot depends on intelligence estimates.”

How do you determine future requirements?

SESTAK: We look at future challenges, including potential adversaries and potential conflicts, including whether one of them might have a breakthrough that could threaten us with a capability gap. Some of the potential adversaries we might face in a regional conflict are building a lot of missiles, swarming boats — some with missiles on them — mines and submarines. We shouldn’t address that platform-against-platform, weapon-against-weapon. If someone is shooting a lot of arrows at you, the best competitive strategy is not to shoot down each arrow. It might be wiser to take out the archer. Or take down his network and have that go awry as he is shooting.

There are different requirements for the global war on terror. It’s finding the needle in the haystack; finding the one guy at the right time. We were in the Mediterranean two decades ago and the Achille Lauro terrorist [Abu Abbas] happened to be flying in a plane from one country to another. We had a carrier nearby with an F-14 that could intercede and force it down. You need a persistent type of presence to do that.

The Sea Swap program of rotating crews to deployed ships seems to be a basic element of your future planning. Why?

SESTAK: This is about getting more return on the nation’s investment. A deployment to the Persian Gulf is usually for six months. It takes 45 days to transit [there] at about 15 to 16 knots. It takes 45 days to come home. Three out of six months are used just in transiting. A better return on the nation’s investment is to have the hull there for approximately two years and take the crew to it.

We will eventually deploy the new Littoral Combat Ship [LCS] to the Western Pacific, among other places. One could homeport it overseas and have it ready about 85 percent of the time. Otherwise, we’ve got to rotate it and you would probably need about five in the force structure to keep one forward. But if we sea swapped, we could keep one ship out there for two years, rotate the crew and have only two LCSs back in the force structure to keep one forward.

You have a planning construct that is the basis for defining future requirements. How will it affect the Navy’s future resource decisions with regard to the purchase of ships and other hardware?

SESTAK: The planning construct is our metric for the 2007 program review. You will find us looking at investments in sea basing and the FORCEnet warfare concept, particularly in areas that give us an advantage in the global war on terror. That F/A-18E/F taking off from the carrier: Have we funded appropriately so that it has the right JTRS [Joint Tactical Radio System] with Link 16 [data information link] capability so it doesn’t have to wait until it comes back, manually download, for example, the imagery and get it developed? You have real-time links.

Have we funded for the joint helmet-mounted queuing system so that when the pilot has to act, he can act quickly? And have we funded the right AESA [electronically scanned radar array] so that he is able to pick up a contact and fire real-time with the proper links coming in? That type of FORCEnet capability will get priority in the program review.

For sea basing, we’re looking at appropriately funding an affordable type of Maritime Prepositioning Force Afloat. It should be a platform that will enable the Marines to transfer at sea, marry up with their equipment in the middle of the sea and be launched ashore in approximately 10-12 days’ time versus 3-4 weeks, in today’s amphibious force for forcible entry.

You need a ship that is a bit like Wal-Mart. You have to be able to move around the ship and select the materiel that you need, offload it to a connector platform at sea and send it onward. You can’t pull up to a nice safe pier and offload. The ship cannot be compartmented like normal Navy ships if we are to move equipment around on it. So it needs a very effective Sea Shield to protect it.

Sea basing is not worth a cent if it isn’t joint. The Defense Logistics Agency has its own brief on becoming more involved in sea basing. The Army has its HSV/TSV [High Speed Vessel/Theater Support Vessel]. But I accept the critique that we need to explain it better. Once we finish the program review in early May, we will increasingly be out and about to talk about sea basing.

The future target inventory of attack submarines will decline from 55 to about 41. Are submarines becoming less relevant?

SESTAK: The submarine is actually more relevant to our future. It is the only platform that can covertly get well inside an adversary’s defensive ring when a conflict begins. Submarines can help target key equipment, such as transportable launchers that can launch ballistic missiles. Potential adversaries can take them out of hiding, set them up in 30-60 minutes, fire and scoot back. It is key to have the submarines close in to fire against such targets.

Their capability to covertly put special forces ashore is critical. There is also an increasing threat at sea as some potential adversaries are placing more sophisticated air defense systems on ships. Having submarines take out that platform in the early days of the war is essential to creating access for the rest of our platforms.

We know that certain nations are interested in more submarines. Our submarines can be at the right place to sound the alarm and tell us that, for example, one submarine — or four submarines — are leaving the adversary’s port. But our ability to follow them all is limited to some degree, if we do so platform on platform.

Therefore, in the future, we will have the ability to quickly distribute sensors on the surface of the sea or under the sea. As these adversary platforms get underway to begin their trek of several hundred miles to our sea base, we will continue tracking them with fairly cost-efficient sensors. That’s the change — sensor against platform. We have done a lot of serious experimentation with some concrete results.

Are you keeping your options open so you’ll be able to change if that doesn’t work?

SESTAK: We will be at a high number [of submarines] for quite a few years as we continue to refine this approach.

In 1996, the United States sent two aircraft carriers into the Taiwan Strait during a time of tension. On that same mission today, would you face an increased threat and, if so, how would you deal with it?

SESTAK: Our ability to respond with two aircraft carriers to a region of potential tension is better today than it was in 1996.

In what way?

SESTAK: In several ways. The air wing that we have onboard the carriers today is a significant leap forward in capability. We have the F/A-18E/Fs, which have longer legs. We’ve done a lot with our legacy F-14s to ensure they can drop a heck of a lot of ordnance. In Desert Storm, they didn’t drop one bomb. Our cruisers and destroyers around that carrier provide much better protection because we have begun to deploy CEC today. [The Cooperative Engagement Capability is a sensor networking system that enables all platforms in a network to use data from all its sensors.] This significantly improves their ability to see and sense.

Where would you like the carriers homeported now?

SESTAK: There has been a discussion on homeporting another carrier in the Western Pacific, possibly on Hawaii or Guam. The discussion now is centered on Hawaii.

The shipbuilding industry wants more stability in the ship construction program. Is that a priority?

SESTAK: We need to establish stable requirements. We need to convey a shipbuilding plan that industry can see as stable. We need to work closely with industry to increase the capability we get for our investment. We can’t do requirements in a stovepipe and throw them over the transom.

Our future force posture is for a fleet in the range of 260-325 ships by 2035. We can’t predict the future perfectly. But we can see that the number of LCSs we will need falls within a certain range. Our needs for the DD(X) [future destroyer] and CG(X) [future cruiser] fall within a certain range.

Industry needs to understand our goals and reasoning, so they can say to me, “Look, I can help save you money by perhaps doing things differently but that support your goal in requirements.” I think our range of ships increasingly will be understood by industry, and I think industry will respond to help us define how best to work that range for the most efficient and effective war-fighting force.

But what we can’t do, and I don’t think anybody can, is predict with pinpoint accuracy the precise number of ships we will need 35 years from now. In the late 1960s, we were at about 850 ships. Five or six years later, we dropped to 500, then we went to 580 and dropped to where we are today.

A lot of it depends on intelligence estimates. Iraq was here yesterday but it’s not here tomorrow. Whither goes North Korea? If we were to have a static strategic environment out there for 30 years, we could narrow that range a lot. But we need some degree of flexibility in a 35-year plan.

Major portions of this interview were taken from a Pentagon press conference.