|
By
JOHN G. KINNEY and GORDON I. PETERSON
Cdr. John
G. Kinney, USN, is assigned to the Fleet Plans and Policy Division on
the staff of the commander in chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet. Gordon I.
Peterson is senior editor of Sea Power.
Little more
than 13 years ago, with the public release of the U.S. Maritime
Strategy, then-Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman Jr. effectively
argued that a 600-ship Navy was necessary to meet a U.S.
national-security requirement for maritime superiority. Remarkably, the
Navy today is on the threshold of falling be-low 300 ships--the smallest
fleet since 1931. If increased ship-construction funding does not become
part of the current Future-Years Defense Plan, the Navy's force
structure inevitably will decline below the level specified in the 1997
Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) issued by the Department of Defense
(DOD). The Navy-Marine Corps team unavoidably will become less capable
of fulfilling its engagement mission as called for in President
Clinton's National Security Strategy for a New Century and the
U.S. National Military Strategy for a New Era.
There is a real
risk under this scenario that the burden of extended deployments and
inadequate resources will fall on the backs of individual Sailors and
Marines--repeating the debacle of the U.S. military's hollow force of
the 1970s. Worrisome world events continue apace to present new and
disturbing national-security risks--from the Korean peninsula to the
Taiwan Strait and beyond to the Indian subcontinent, Southwest Asia, and
the Balkans. On average, roughly 50 percent of the U.S. Navy's active
fleet is underway on any given day, and more than a third is
forward-deployed.
Unrelenting
operational demands on the Navy-Marine Corps team convincingly
demonstrate that the 305-ship Navy postulated by the QDR is inadequate
for current and future U.S. security needs. A call is being raised in
many quarters for the Navy's top leadership to advocate a fleet
sufficiently sized to support the U.S.-engagement strategy--i.e., a Navy
large enough to shape world events in a way favorable to U.S. vital
interests and to respond to emerging threats to U.S. and allied national
security. Some observers, notably former Secretary of the Navy James H.
Webb Jr., argue that Navy leaders should press for a Navy of 400 ships
or more.
In June 1999,
Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Jay L. Johnson told the U.S. Naval
War College's Current Strategy Forum that there is mounting evidence to
suggest that the Navy's 1997 QDR level is not likely to be sufficient
for the future. "Simply put," Johnson said, "numbers do
matter, especially when it comes to contested littoral warfare."
The CNO stated that the Navy's current "downsizing trajectory"
must be reversed. Johnson also expressed deep concern about the present
practice of sacrificing the readiness of nondeployed Navy units in order
to maintain the Navy's forward-deployed forces at a higher state of
readiness.
Looking to the
future, Johnson explained that, because of the ability to execute
Network Centric Warfare and employ Information Technology for the 21st
Century (IT-21), the value of maritime forces will necessarily increase
during the early decades of the next century. At the same time, a
"web of interdependence" is being created by the economic
globalization of capital, communications, and information networks.
"We are leaving behind the days where effects of regional
instability are only felt locally," Johnson said. The ongoing
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and long-range ballistic
missiles, he added, also generates heightened security risks and creates
new vulnerabilities for the United States. There is a growing strategic
imperative, therefore, to maintain a more robust Navy and Marine Corps
team capable of responding immediately to stabilize a crisis or
engage in combat operations when U.S. vital interests are threatened on
or near distant seas.
A
Strategic Mandate
The Maritime
Strategy of the 1980s justified a fleet with a sufficient number of
ships to execute an aggressive wartime strategy in a superpower
conflict. Because the United States is isolated by the oceans from most
of its allies and trading partners, the necessity of maintaining a large
fleet to sustain overseas presence, control the seas (when necessary),
and carry the fight to an enemy at a time and place of America's
choosing--horizontal escalation--received generally broad support from
DOD and Congressional decisionmakers. Multiple Cold War contingencies in
the Atlantic, Pacific, Persian Gulf, and Mediterranean regions added
further impetus to the Navy's building plans, if only to ensure that a
U.S. presence could be maintained at critical geographic hubs around the
world.
When the Cold
War passed into history, however, the size of the fleet could no longer
be based exclusively on warfighting scenarios or on the
capabilities of a nuclear-armed adversary with global reach. In a series
of seminal strategic papers beginning with "... From the Sea"
in 1992, the Navy described how it would deal with post-Cold War
challenges. As Johnson explained in his introduction to the 1998 edition
of A Program Guide to the U.S. Navy, revised strategic and
operational concepts already were transforming the Navy and providing
the doctrinal foundation "... to sustain our Navy's operational
primacy and ensure our ability to influence events ashore, directly and
decisively, from the sea." The collective thrust of those concepts
is that today's (and tomorrow's) Navy-Marine Corps team must be
forward-deployed and fully engaged in order to carry out the strategic
mandate entrusted to it.
The emergence
of engagement as a valid decisionmaking guide to determine the size of
the future fleet complements the traditional assessment by the U.S.
National Command Authority (NCA) of force-structure needs, which are
based on the requirements of a U.S. strategy calling for sufficient
force to fight two major theater wars (MTWs) concurrently. As Gen. Henry
H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Sea Power in
February 1999, the realities of today's world dictate that the United
States--the world's last remaining military superpower--must retain the
capabilities for the possibility of conflict in two geographically
separated theaters.
Greater
Reductions, Increased Risk
Because of
continued QDR-mandated reductions to U.S. force structure, however, the
risk to U.S. warfighters continues to increase. "As we tailored the
forces following the QDR," Shelton said, "we have downsized
and watched the risks associated with fighting in two MTWs go from
moderate, to high, to a solid high in the second MTW."
Future MTWs are
hypothetical events, however, and--given the difficulty of assessing the
possibility that they may eventually come to pass--it is not persuasive
to use worst-case MTW scenarios to generate widespread political or
public support to increase force structure. Moreover, as Shelton told Sea
Power, the National Defense Panel (NDP) criticized U.S. strategy. In
Shelton's words, the panel said that the U.S. defense establishment
should focus on the future and not on two MTWs. A real-world military
engagement strategy would be more responsive to the NDP's criticism and
would enable both the forward vision advocated by the panel and a
clearer articulation of the forces necessary to achieve it.
Reliance on the
transition from war-fighting to forward-deployed operations as a central
criterion for sizing Navy force structure has been previously
recognized. In the 1993 DOD Bottom-Up Review, the value of
forward-deployed naval forces was emphasized, and overseas security
commitments were identified as valid determinants of force structure.
Writing in the
June 1994 Naval Institute Proceedings, Rear Adm. Philip A. Dur
emphasized that a forward and capable Navy is what serves the United
States best. Dur also identified the need for a reliable mechanism to
measure the effectiveness of the engagement effort. A 1993 Center for
Naval Analyses (CNA) study, Peacetime Influence Through Forward Naval
Presence, also advocated the use of engagement requirements as a
determinant of force structure--and pointed out, as well, the continued
inability of the Navy to use real-world engagement requirements to make
budgetary and force-structure decisions.
Elements
of Engagement
Engagement is
now an established element of U.S. national and regional unified command
strategies. In fact, the National Military Strategy directs a focus on
engagement as the primary peacetime activity of military forces.
Moreover, the theater-engagement plans of the nation's warfighting CINCs
(commanders in chief) delineate and prioritize appropriate activities.
The U.S. naval strategy of operating "Forward ... From the
Sea" is, in part, a peacetime-engagement plan. In 1997, the
chief of naval operations enumerated specific engagement objectives in
the Navy Operational Concept document (see box on page 45).
Engagement
activity includes diplomatic, economic, and military activities or
operations conducted to achieve U.S. national-security objectives.
Engagement requirements are situational and can change rapidly. Each
engagement element provides an essential contribution to the overall
engagement effort--but the various elements are not always, or
necessarily, substitutes for one another. Similarly, diplomatic or
economic agreements are not always or necessarily substitutes for
military presence and engagement.
Naval
engagement is unique among the defense-engagement options available to
U.S. policymakers. Only naval forces offer self-sustained,
high-endurance, unfettered, and mobile air-superiority and amphibious
platforms. The combination of multimission capability, versatility, and
access from the sea offers tactical and diplomatic advantages that often
serve to make a carrier battle group, surface action group, or
amphibious ready group the force of choice for engagement missions.
Insofar as other naval missions are concerned, today's ongoing
revolution at sea--with its highly networked forces sharing real-time
tactical information, potent missile-defense capabilities, and highly
accurate long-range land-attack weapons--will place a growing strategic
premium on the availability of U.S. naval forces during the 21st
century.
Constraints
and Innovations
Efforts to
improve the ability of naval forces to conduct engagement missions have
focused on policies that manage fleet operations. Innovative
policies--including stationing ships overseas, but rotating crews from
the United States--are now under review, but they face major obstacles.
The fleet's engagement capability is now constrained by the size of the
fleet, limits on personnel days at sea, maintenance needs, transit
speed, deployment-turnaround ratios, and forward-basing diplomatic
considerations.
The Navy is
conducting an innovative exchange of crews overseas this year with crew
members of the Austin-class amphibious transport dock USS Juneau,
based in San Diego, exchanging ships with the crew of Juneau's
sister ship, USS Dubuque, based in Sasebo, Japan. Although the
ships will be exchanging homeports, Sailors and their families will
remain in place.
The ship-swap
plan will be "best for everyone," said Capt. Alan M. Haefner,
the Juneau's commanding officer. "As we approach the actual
date for the exchange of command, it is clearly evident that the
individuals who envisioned this swap over a year-and-a-half ago had the
right idea."
Juneau,
which deployed in early June, arrived in Sasebo after brief port visits
to her namesake city of Juneau, Alaska, and Seattle, Wash. The Juneau
has been outfitted to serve as the Navy's first IT-21
amphibious-force ship. Upon the completion of the ship-swap in Japan,
the crew of Juneau will become the crew of Dubuque and
steam her back to San Diego for an extensive overhaul period.
Real-World
Requirements
Such innovative
planning, however, does not alter the fact that the size of the fleet
has decreased to the point where its maximum engagement potential
already has been reached. Navy policy requires ships to be in homeport
50 percent of the time to maintain quality-of-life conditions for
Sailors. Extended maintenance periods regularly take ships out of the
deployment rotation. Transit speed affects the time available for
engagement missions, especially in the Pacific--where six-month
deployments begin and end with transits to and from homeports that can
take five weeks. Nuclear-powered carriers routinely conduct 30-plus-knot
transits to ensure that requirements of the regional CINCs are met.
Aircraft
carriers, submarines, surface combatants, and aviation squadrons were
shuttled rapidly from theater to theater in both 1998 and 1999 to
respond to multiple international crises. According to the director of
the Submarine Warfare Division in the Office of the Chief of Naval
Operations (OPNAV), "The demand for submarine services continues to
grow--there is almost an insatiable demand from the warfighting CINCs."
Many port visits, which provide Sailors and Marines with a needed
respite from the rigors of forward-deployed operations--and which offer
additional engagement opportunities--have been shortened or eliminated
to meet the demands of combat taskings or crisis-response operations. To
meet emergent requirements, personnel days-at-sea limitations have been
exceeded on a number of occasions. Overstretched forces have left
critical gaps in presence in the Western Pacific, Arabian Gulf, and
Mediterranean Sea. The Navy has pushed both its forward-deployed and
nondeployed forces--and people--to the limit to meet the operational
demands of the so-called "New World Disorder."
The fleet most
suitable for naval missions in the 21st century requires a compromise
between warfighting and engagement capability. A 1998 CNA study, U.S.
Deterrence and Influence in the New Era, offered guidelines to the
Navy to invest properly for engagement as one element in an overarching
security posture. The study points out that the best force structure for
engagement is not necessarily the best structure for warfighting.
Investing with engagement as the only priority would result in a sizable
fleet with more modest warfighting capabilities--which would not serve
U.S. interests. By contrast, to invest for warfighting alone could
emphasize more costly technologies and limit the resources available for
engagement missions.
A
Balance of Capabilities
A compromise
between these competing resource requirements still results in a force
structure of aircraft carriers, amphibious platforms, missile-equipped
surface warships, and submarines. The Navy's post-Cold War drawdown and
future force planning have, fortunately, focused on maintaining balanced
capabilities across the fleet adequate both for engagement missions and
for warfighting requirements. However, the current balance will not
last if projected ship decommissionings are not offset by a larger
shipbuilding program--largeenough, in fact, to sustain a fleet of more
than 330 ships. As CNO Johnson told Sea Power in October 1998,
"There is no substitute for being there"--i.e., for forward
presence.
Unlike
containment, engagement is more difficult to measure and analyze. The
results of more than 40 years of the U.S. Cold War containment strategy
could be roughly judged by the successful avoidance of a global nuclear
war, the net increase or decrease in the number of democratic nations
around the world, the state of U.S. international relations--and the
eventual demise of the Soviet Union.
Measuring the
degree to which a region or nation is engaged with the United States, on
the other hand, is a tedious task. It is both a subjective-qualitative
and an objective-quantitative process. Despite the challenge, it is
important to measure the results of U.S. engagement in a reliable way.
If engagement requirements can be identified and validated, then the
forces necessary to support them can be advocated more effectively.
Naval
engagement consists primarily of port visits, multinational exercises
and conferences, humanitarian-assistance operations, overseas community
relations, and navy-to-navy exchange visits. By comparing the planned
alternative levels of naval engagement activity with varied engagement
requirements, excesses and deficiencies can be identified. The U.S.
transition from a national strategy of containment to one of engagement
is complete. However, the armed services are still struggling with how
to justify the force structure they need, and how to obtain the funding
required to support the engagement strategy.
Here, economic
theory provides a suitable framework. A central tenet in the study of
economics is the concept of choice. For peacetime security planners,
this entails making decisions after the analysis and comparison of
desired outcomes, restricted alternatives, limited resources, and
competing priorities.
Models have
been developed to demonstrate the relationship and interaction of
variables affecting economic activity. In his 1890 publication, Principles
of Economics, Alfred Marshall introduced the enduring and important
economic principle of supply and demand. His model contains numerous
examples, valid today, for evaluating naval force-level options,
demonstrating the likely outcomes of planning alternatives, and
illustrating an engagement strategy's dependence on available force
structure.
Calibrating
the Cost
A supply/demand
model of engagement demonstrates the relationship between the
"amount" of engagement activity that should be provided
and the amount that is provided. The model also can identify the
opportunity cost (i.e., the value of activities that must be foregone as
the result of choosing an alternative) incurred as a result of
force-planning decisions. Further, the model can illustrate the impact
of national-security decisions that may restrict engagement
opportunities, result in inadequate force levels to conduct the
strategy, or adversely affect the national-security environment.
In short, the
model allows decisionmakers to visualize the strategic impact of
force-structure adjustments and policies. The objective of the
supply/demand analysis is not, however, simply to provide quantitative
solutions to engagement options. Rather, the purpose of the model is to
illustrate how the engagement system is interrelated so that the impact
of change can be understood.
The U.S.
military's engagement with other nations to shape the regional-security
environment in peacetime can be quantified, to some extent, in both
fiscal and operational terms. The Engagement Opportunity Cost is
defined by the value of opportunities sacrificed when specific
engagement choices are made. The resources committed to conduct
engagement--ships, aircraft, personnel, and funding--are no longer
available for such alternative force-utilization options as training,
port visits, and maintenance.
The level of
engagement activity appropriate to serve U.S. national- security
interests may be considered Engagement Demand. An inverse
relationship exists between the Engagement Opportunity Cost and the
amount of engagement provided. When the Engagement Opportunity Cost is
high, the quantity of engagement provided is low. The Engagement
Opportunity Cost is low in regions or countries more suitable for
additional U.S. engagement activity.
Engagement
Supply is the term used to define the quantity of engagement
provided. Here it is worth pointing out that the amount of engagement is
affected by the willingness as well as the ability to make forces
available for engagement activities. It is determined by engagement
policy decisions and available force levels.
Engagement
supply has a positive relationship to the opportunity cost incurred.
However, resources allocated to conduct engagement are always committed
at the expense of other
alternatives.
Engagement
Equilibrium is the point at which the demand for engagement--as
determined by U.S. strategy and national security interests--coincides
with the supply of engagement activity as determined by the NCA,
policies, and forces in place. At equilibrium, U.S. engagement activity
can be described as appropriate, based on the opportunity cost
incurred. Today, Engagement Rationing occurs because DOD
engagement resources are limited (and still decreasing, given the
continuing downslide in military force structure).
The
Search for Equilibrium
The U.S. Navy's
operations of the past several years demonstrate that a fleet of
approximately 330 ships--including at least 12 carrier battle groups, 12
amphibious ready groups, 107 surface combatants, and 65 attack
submarines--would be the valid baseline for a Navy able to accomplish
its present engagement and warfighting missions. The Navy has
effectively responded to NCA taskings related to the Former Republic of
Yugoslavia, Iraq, and North Korea and simultaneously conducted
regional engagement operations.
With an
appropriately sized fleet, necessary training, maintenance, and quality
of life for Sailors can be assured. However, continued reductions in the
size of the fleet will make it impossible for the Navy to balance all of
its competing priorities and execute U.S. national strategy
effectively.
Already, storm
flags are in the air to signal that the Navy is committed beyond the
operational limits it can sustain indefinitely. Adverse trends include
inadequate officer and enlisted retention in most warfare specialties,
recruitment shortfalls, higher cannibalization rates for spare parts, a
decline in the readiness of nondeployed forces, and legitimate
operational missions that go unfilled owing to a lack of available
platforms. Even at 330 ships, the Navy would not be capable of
maintaining the engagement equilibrium called for by U.S. defense
strategy.
A fleet large
enough to maintain engagement equilibrium should be the force-structure
benchmark for DOD resource sponsors and force planners.
Equilibrium-theory analysis demonstrates that the size of the fleet must
be significantly more than 330 ships if the Navy is to fulfill existing
and future engagement requirements. A failure to reverse the Navy's
continued reduction will result in a diminished forward presence, less
effective means for crisis resolution, growing asymmetric threats to
U.S. forces, disengagement from regions of vital interest to the United
States, and the Navy's continued progression toward a hollow force.
Moreover, disengagement will entail a decline in U.S. access and
influence in regions where the United States has long sought to maintain
a stabilizing influence and to support allied and friendly nations
alike.
If the U.S.
political leadership does not take concerted action to reverse the fall
in Navy shipbuilding and to increase the size of the fleet to more than
330 ships, U.S. peacetime disengagement will witness a greater
likelihood that regional tensions will increase during the early years
of the 21st century.
The end result
will be that operational necessity will drive the Navy to press its
reduced forces even harder in order to respond to crisis or con-tingency.
And, as then-CNO Adm. Thomas B. Hayward observed during the late 1970s
when the Navy faced a hemorrhage of more than 23,000 middle-grade petty
officers, the United States will again find itself trying to meet
three-ocean requirements with a two-ocean Navy. |
