A Cornerstone Force
Of Proven Strength

Surface Warfare Vision: A "Family" Affair

By SCOTT C. TRUVER

Dr. Scott C. Truver is group vice president, National Security Studies, Anteon Corporation, in Arlington, Va.

It is a rare occasion these days when vision, strategy, policy, and programs align--and when they do, serendipity often plays a significant role. In his first public commentary on his "thoughts on how we need to be transforming our Navy to meet the requirements of the new century"--at the June 2002 Current Strategy Forum at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.--Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark outlined his "Sea Power 21" vision for the U.S. Navy:

"At the heart of my view of Sea Power 21 and sea power in the 21st century," Clark said, "are three required capabilities. ... The first is Sea Strike, the ability to project offensive power. The second is Sea Shield, the ability to project defensive power. Third is Sea Basing, the ability to project the sovereignty of the United States of America and to team with and provide enhanced support for joint forces, afloat and ashore, around the world."

Half a year earlier, the Navy's surface warfare community had articulated its own vision and ideas about future programs, largely in response to dynamics well beyond its control that had by then required a radical restructuring of virtually all Navy plans and programs. With remarkable insight, the Surface Combatant Family of Ships (SCFOS) concept all but presaged Clark's Sea Power 21 focus and direction. Only time will tell if reality, rather than rhetoric, will be the ultimate order of the day for either or both.

Hard Lessons Relearned

"For the U.S. Navy," said Rear Adm. Donald P. Loren (deputy director, Surface Ships, in the Surface Warfare Division of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, or OPNAV), "one of the principal lessons we have learned from the past decade is the importance of being able to respond effectively and quickly to the unexpected. Naval forces, and particularly the nation's surface warfare assets, have protected important national interests and ensured continued access throughout the world. "Since '9/11 the Navy has been a key element in the Afghanistan campaign and the global war on terrorism," he pointed out. "Simultaneously, we continue to carry out important homeland security duties, working hand in glove with the Coast Guard and other U.S. agencies."

With the attack on the Aegis guided-missile destroyer USS Cole and today's operations in support of the global war on terrorism as prelude, the early 21st century promises to be both challenging and dangerous for America's sea services. Worldwide U.S. naval operations will include traditional fleet roles and missions­­establishing and maintaining maritime air, surface, and undersea superiority in deep waters as well as in the littorals, protecting vital sea lines of communication, and ensuring access for follow-on forces.

"But the reality of the war on terrorism and uncertainties in today's and tomorrow's national security land- and sea-scape," Loren predicted, "will force us beyond our core competencies. We will have to be able to respond rapidly and effectively to unscripted events, as well as to threats with which sea forces traditionally have not had to deal­­particularly 'asymmetric threats' aimed at our strategic, operational, and tactical weaknesses. The challenge before us, as Secretary of Defense [Donald H.] Rumsfeld has noted, is to recognize that the likely dangers of the future may be quite different from the more traditional and conventional dangers of the past."

For the surface Navy, said Rear Adm. Charles S. Hamilton II, program executive officer for Surface Strike (PEO S), "this means designing, engineering, acquiring, and sustaining a balanced force. Such a force must retain today's proven strengths but also be able to ensure access, effect forcible entry by expeditionary forces, deliver responsive long-range fires, and conduct precision strikes during campaigns of indefinite length and that pose logistical challenges­­well into the middle of the century." In short, Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing are key elements of Surface Warfare's vision.

"The heart of our future surface force," Loren explained, "will be a family of multimission surface combatants­­forward-stationed, netted, and distributed--that can dominate both blue water and littoral battle spaces, and will be equally capable of projecting power far from U.S. shores or defending the homeland in waters close to the United States. Our vision calls for these warships to serve as cornerstones of joint task forces but still be capable of independent operations, securely linked together by a sophisticated command-and-control capability that includes mission planning and command application," he noted.

"They will [be able to] ...meet current and future threats and will demonstrate the high operational availability that is vital to meeting the Navy's global commitments," Loren summarized.

Complementing these multimission warships will be "focused-mission" ships, built to a modular open-architecture design that will enhance their operational flexibility and adaptability. "These innovative platforms will provide specific warfighting capabilities and add speed, reduced signature, and focused lethality to the netted force," Hamilton said. "In addition, the transformational technologies that will fuel the development process for these ships can also be incorporated into today's Aegis fleet, maintaining its combat effectiveness well into the 21st century."

Deja' Vu All Over Again?

In the midst of various DDGX, arsenal ship, force architecture, and surface combatant force-level studies of the early and mid-1990s, the Surface Navy hit upon a "Surface Combatant for the 21st Century" program­­dubbed "SC 21"­­that by the end of 1996 envisioned a family of notional warships ranging in size from an austere 4,000-ton frigate-sized "Sea Dominance" combatant to a much larger (20,000 tons) "high-end" multimission "Power Projection Ship." Two other concepts also were considered: (1) a "Large Capacity Missile Ship" that, at 20,000 tons, would perform arsenal-ship land-attack and strike tasks in direct support of forces ashore; and (2) a 10,000-ton "New Design Full Capacity Combatant" to replace the CG-47 Ticonderoga-class Aegis guided-missile cruisers and DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided-missile destroyers now in the fleet.

Ultimately, the surface warfare community focused on the mid-range "Full Capacity" alternative--which Rear Adm. Daniel J. Murphy Jr., then director of the Surface Warfare Division, labeled the DD 21 "Land-Attack Destroyer of the 21st Century." Design and engineering studies began with two industry teams--headed by General Dynamics (Blue Team) and Northrop Grumman (Gold Team)--aiming for a 2001 downselect to a single full-service contractor/builder/integrator.

In a 4 July 2000 ceremony in New York Harbor, then-Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig announced that the new class would be named after the late Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., a former CNO. In many respects­­not the least of which was its embrace of human-centered engineering and human-systems integration as the only way to achieve the ship's daunting optimal-manning goal of 95 crewmembers­­the Zumwalt-class DD 21 seemed to be the Navy's transformational "skip a generation of technology" platform for which the incoming George W. Bush administration yearned.

Last November, however--following the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and the start of the war against international terrorism--the Navy restructured the DD 21 program to broaden its focus from a single ship class to several classes. On the same day that the Navy cancelled the DD 21 solicitation, it issued the new DD(X) solicitation. Navy leaders had concluded that the vision for future surface warships had to be expanded beyond the relatively narrow view that many civilian decision makers believed was implicit in the "Land-Attack-destroyer" concept, no matter how many other mission capabilities were included in the design. Defense Department leaders were not convinced that the DD 21 could do all that--i.e., carry out land-attack missions--and more, and grew increasingly concerned about the large size (estimated to be in excess of 12,000 tons) of the future warship.

"We recognized that a complementary family of surface combatants was required to meet the demands of power projection and access in light of emerging threats," Loren stated. "The service needs these combatants in the near term, but they also must be designed to take advantage of future technological developments so that they remain capable well into this century. Accordingly, we conceived and put in place the surface combatant family-of-ships concept."

The new family of ships that the Navy is now pursuing includes three primary platforms: the DD(X) multimission destroyer, which has an offensive focus to provide precision surface fires support to ground maneuver forces; the CG(X), a multimission surface warship focusing on sea-based theater and area air-defense capabilities, with a ballistic-missile defense system also included; and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), a networked, fast, modular, focused-mission ship. The service sees the SCFOS construct as the key to reducing technological risk by applying what has been called a "spiral development" approach, which seeks to leverage common systems and equipment where possible and to insert new technology as it becomes available.

"We will develop the DD(X) following an evolutionary requirements definition process," Hamilton said, "in which decisions on operational capabilities will be determined within the context of the entire family of ships. This program will introduce cutting-edge technological initiatives, expediting their introduction to the fleet efficiently and with a minimum level of risk."

The Navy also expects the DD(X) program to introduce and help implement processes for the modular introduction of key ship systems based on rapidly evolving technologies without disrupting shipyard production or increasing cost. "Spiral development, which can increase capability exponentially through periodic upgrades, will require the efficient and expeditious transition from rapid prototype to production systems," Hamilton said.

"We will also pursue risk mitigation through rigorous land-based and at-sea testing of engineering development models for systems such as the radar suite and integrated power system," he added. The lead DD(X)--for which contract award is scheduled in fiscal year 2005--will be funded with RDT&E (research, development, test, and evaluation) appropriations, similar to the practice followed in naval aviation acquisition. "This decision gives significant flexibility to the DD(X) program manager, but it also compels the program office to justify progress yearly to defend the acquisition budget."

Surface warfare leaders are convinced that the spiral-development process will benefit all future warships, not just the DD(X). "The analysis and evaluation of technologies within this process will identify equipment and systems that can be applied to both in-service and future fleet assets," according to Hamilton. "Once identified, these technologies will be incorporated into in-service assets relative to threat level, force structure, and budgetary factors. In this manner, spiral development will ensure the flexibility and formidability of our surface force against tomorrow's threats."

Loren explained that the introduction of DD(X) "signals a profound transformation within the fleet, creating new capabilities and competencies and yielding significant combat advantages at sea, in the air, and over land. These warships will incorporate dramatic signature reductions for multispectral stealth, revolutionary integrated power systems for the rapid reconfiguration of electricity and power distribution, and adaptable and scalable total-ship computing environments that will accommodate new mission requirements efficiently." Building upon the human-centered design and human-systems integration efforts for DD 21--for which manpower was a "Key Performance Parameter," or KPP, he said--"various automation technologies as well as policy and process changes will permit significant reductions in crew size, with attendant reductions in total ownership costs."

A Sailor-Centric Focus

It is in that context that the DD(X) spiral development approach is focusing design criteria not merely on optimizing crew size but also on achieving a "sailor-centric" architecture. In this manner, equipment and systems are planned, designed, tested, and evaluated not only to meet optimal manning objectives but also with sailor capabilities and limitations in mind. This approach differs from previous strategies whereby manning levels were established primarily to meet equipment, system operability, and maintainability requirements, and advanced technologies and systems were introduced later without taking human factors into account from the start. "Our family of ships will employ new technologies that increase automation, redundancy, survivability, and persistent combat power while reducing personnel demands," Loren said. "These advancements will precipitate doctrinal changes regarding how we operate and fight our ships against developing threats."

Complementing the multimission ships will be the Littoral Combat Ships. The notional LCS will be a smaller but extremely adaptable surface warship whose modular nature will allow the use of various focused-mission packages. "We are just beginning to characterize the capabilities LCS will require," Hamilton said, "but we anticipate that its size will be determined by a combination of ... [such variables as] desired combat radius, persistence on station, the quantity and size of unmanned vehicles and manned aircraft embarked, and the quantity and types of sensors and weapons to be carried. We will develop modular packages of specific sensors, combat systems, and C4ISR [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] systems, focused primarily on missions related to battle space access: countering mines, engaging surface combatants, and antisubmarine warfare."

The Navy continues to define operational requirements--as well as the size, shape, armament, and capabilities of the LCS--as part of a multiphase process. "We are approaching this in a different way," said then-Rear Adm. Philip M. Balisle earlier this year. "We want a dramatically different ship." (Vice Adm. Balisle, former director of surface warfare, is now commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command.)

The Naval War College has been working with OPNAV to develop a list of desired LCS operational characteristics. Concurrently, the Navy is studying the performance characteristics of ships such as: (a) the leased Joint Venture high-speed vessel (HSV-X1), a modified commercial catamaran under joint evaluation; (b) the Office of Naval Research's experimental LSC(X); (c) the 155-foot, 270-ton, high-speed (55 knots in transit and even higher sprint speeds) Skjold air-cushion catamaran on loan from Norway; and (d) other foreign and domestic designs. The results of these and other evaluations will almost certainly help shape the LCS focused-mission variants. Although much remains to be decided, tentative plans call for the Navy to acquire the lead LCS in fiscal year 2004.

With its size, speed, and modular-design/open-architecture characteristics, the LCS also promises considerable potential for the U.S. Coast Guard's Integrated Deepwater Systems Program, and for use, in varying configurations, by foreign navies. "In U.S. service, LCS can promote interoperability between Navy and Coast Guard forces engaged in homeland defense," Loren acknowledged, "while also fulfilling the sea-control and interception missions associated with medium- and high-endurance cutters. We are continuing to explore these possibilities with the Coast Guard, and have established a memorandum of agreement between the Navy's PEO for Surface Strike and the Coast Guard's Deepwater PEO to facilitate such collaboration."

All of which translates into significant opportunities for both the Navy and Coast Guard to achieve their respective visions. "Building upon the National Fleet concept," said Capt. Richard M. Kelly, USCG, the Deepwater Program sponsor in Coast Guard Headquarters, "the Coast Guard and Navy are forging deeper ties that promise to increase their capabilities and interoperability across key mission areas. Initiatives such as the Coast Guard's Deepwater Program and the Navy's Surface Combatant Family of Ships­­and in particular the National Security Cutter [NSC] and the LCS programs that ... the two services are pursuing­­present the Navy and Coast Guard with new opportunities for innovation and for ensuring enhanced interoperability and mission success at home and abroad.

"LCS missions are similar to those that Coast Guard units will be performing," Kelly emphasized, "particularly when deployed alongside Navy forces in some future crisis or conflict."

Another important factor in the closely linked Navy-Coast Guard collaboration is that the LCS-NSC nexus might also provide the impetus needed for a major increase in overseas sales--by "providing coalition partners and friends with a state-of-the-art surface warship," Loren explained, "that will ensure interoperability among our navies and coast guards." The economic benefits to the U.S. shipbuilding base­­and not just the handful of large new-construction yards still in business­­cannot be discounted, either. Because of the LCS's relatively small size--"around 500 tons or so," according to mid-year rumors--the smaller yards that specialize in small, focused designs may well be able to compete on a level playing field with the larger yards.

"Parallel development of the DD(X), CG(X), and LCS will be complemented by increased efforts to conduct timely, rapid insertion of evolving technologies in our highly capable in-service fleet of Aegis cruisers and destroyers," Hamilton pointed out. "For example, the Navy might be able to adapt new systems developed for the family of ships for use in the Aegis cruiser conversion program, extending the effective service lives of these warships and giving them the critical air-defense, command-and-control, and high-volume precision fires upgrades needed to support evolving joint warfare concepts of operations."

In truth, neither the "family of ships" concept nor the spiral-development approach is completely new. "The 'build-a-little, test-a-little' approach to surface warships and combat systems," said naval historian and analyst Norman Polmar in an early-July interview, "and the way Surface Warfare is now focusing on the introduction of new-generation technology are akin to the tried-and-true evolutionary approach that has served the Surface Navy well at least since the 1967 Major Fleet Escort Study. That analysis envisioned a high-end nuclear-propelled multimission cruiser, or CXGN, a multimission destroyer, or DXG, and an ASW-focused destroyer, or DX.

"The Navy did eventually build the Virginia [CGN-38] and Spruance [DD-963] classes as the CXGN and DX warships," Polmar noted. "The CG-47 Aegis [Ticonderoga-class] cruisers share the same hull form, propulsion, and electrical distribution systems as the Spruances as well as the Kidds [DD-993s]--the DXG members of the family, which were originally built for Iran.

"And," he added, "Admiral Zumwalt was highly successful in introducing a 'low-end' missile ship, the 'Patrol Frigate 109' that ultimately became the 51-ship FFG-7 Oliver Hazard Perry class." (Many of the FFG-7s have been sold or transferred to other navies in recent years.)

Hamilton concurred. "The Spruance, Kidd, Ticonderoga, Bunker Hill, and Arleigh Burke progression of ship design and development," he said, "when it has run its course, will have given us eight decades of the finest surface combatants the world has known. Our future application of common hull and propulsion system designs, and the evolutionary development of state-of-the-art combat systems over the ensuing decades, will provide the same economies of scale and maintenance in our 21st-century fleet."

Numbers Are Critical

The Navy's surface combatant forces have been experiencing high operational and personnel tempos since the early 1990s­­a fact of life that probably will continue for the foreseeable future. The 1997 QDR concluded that a force of 116 surface warships (in a 305-ship Navy) would be needed for the Navy to carry out all of its assigned missions. These targets were implicitly confirmed by the second QDR in 2001.

Force structure and force mix requirements are two Surface Warfare concerns that have been reassessed several times since the mid-1990s, with the conclusions ranging from 138 surface warships to as many as 194, depending on the initial assumptions postulated.

All of these studies found that more than 116 multimission surface warships will be needed to meet the Navy's operational requirements in the 21st century, a goal that at present seems to be unreachable, primarily because of what are called "fiscal realities." "I am very concerned about the number of surface combatants going down," said Vice Adm. Timothy W. LaFleur, commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, in a recent interview. That concern has been heightened as various projections show the surface fleet declining to only 85 ships, or fewer, by the 2015-2020 time frame unless shipbuilding rates are significantly increased from the numbers projected in the Bush administration's fiscal year 2003 budget plan. Navy shipbuilding plans announced in early 2002 show only 40 new ships being funded for the FY 2002-2007 period (6.7 per year); but 15 of the 40 (38 percent) are support vessels, not warships. The administration said that more than half (24) of the ships would be funded in the "outyears" of the long-term shipbuilding program. An average of 10 ships per year is needed, though, just to sustain the 305-ship force; at least four surface warships are required each year just to sustain today's force level.

Reports of the so-called "Tentative POM-04" plan published earlier this year seem to confirm that the fleet will drop to 291 ships in FY 2006, but increase slowly thereafter--this assumes, though, that the outyear promises are fulfilled.

"There is a certain quality to quantity," LaFleur commented. "If we don't have enough [ships] to go around, it is a problem. The solution we ... come up with must be the right one for the long term."

As noted earlier, the Navy plans to upgrade its in-service Aegis cruisers and destroyers with selected leading-edge technologies developed during the DD(X), CG(X), and LCS programs. It also will sustain some of the near-term force structure by retaining some Perry-class guided-missile frigates in service and: (a) modernizing their hull, mechanical, and electrical systems; and (b) funding some limited combat-systems upgrades to improve their survivability in the littorals.

On the other hand, the Navy also has decided to decommission all of its remaining Spruance-class destroyers by the end of 2007 because of: (a) their high operational costs and limited combat systems; and (b) the growing surplus of vertical-launch cells throughout the Navy (relative to the availability of the weapons needed to fill them).

When all of these factors are taken into account the conclusion is obvious: It will be extremely difficult to maintain current force levels, much less expand the size of the active fleet, at any time in the near future. Nonetheless, Clark and Secretary of the Navy Gordon R. England both said earlier this year that a force of "about 375 ships" would be needed to satisfy demands for both traditional and unconventional mission areas and taskings. As Clark told a Defense Forum audience, "You have to get headed on a trajectory and the trajectory we are on takes us to larger numbers, and I believe that is what our nation needs."

The most important decisions on the DD(X) and CG(X) building programs­­
the numbers of each type of ship to be built and the annual acquisition rates­­remain to be determined. However, the CNO has stated that as many as 60 Littoral Combat Ships would have to be built to reach the 375-ship objective.

At the Top of Its Game

"The Surface Navy enters the new century at the top of its game," Loren said. "Our continued ability to establish and maintain battle-space dominance in blue water and littoral operations as an integral part of joint, allied, and coalition forces will depend on our capacity to provide maritime force protection, ensured access, and surface fires in support of the land campaign,--and theater air and ballistic missile defense for the air, land, and sea elements of the joint task force."

Surface Warfare's future family of ships, in combination with upgrades to the existing Aegis cruisers and destroyers, is thus seen as a key "enabler" for meeting future mission needs for Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing. Achieving the CNO's vision, however, depends on much that the Navy itself cannot control but can only hope to shape: the concurrence of OSD (the Office of the Secretary of Defense), the White House, and the Congress, primarily. The course ahead looks to be interesting, indeed. *