30-Year Navy Plan Cuts Subs, Carriers

The new shipbuilding strategy could spell trouble for Northrop Grumman Newport News.

WASHINGTON -- The Navy is considering shrinking its fleet of aircraft carriers to as few as 10 ships within the next 30 years, a move that would produce the smallest carrier fleet in at least a half-century.

You still need platforms for those newly-preeminent weapons to be launched from, and directed accurately, and damage assessment to be made from. I don't think we can prematurely write off the carriers and attack subs as losers in a dynamically fluid future combat scenario. A broad mix forces maximum uncertainty and stress for an aggressor to address your capabilities.

There is a report that seems to be driving the decisions Rumsfeld is making from this same Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, by an Andrew Krepinevech (lengthy, but there is no direct link to the internal page, hence I give you the whole thing):

A New Navy For A New Era

Andrew Krepinevich	Published 05/00/1996 Report by CSBA

Contents

Executive Summary

I. Introduction

II. The Carrier, Strike Operations And Forward Presence

III. Carriers: Sinking the Navy Budget?

IV. Scenario: The Battle For The Strait Of Hormuz

V. Needed. A New Navy For A New Era

VI. Conclusion

Executive Summary

Recent experience and a number of key trends suggest two important conclusions with respect to the Navy’s carrier fleet. First, carriers are becoming increasingly vulnerable, a trend that cannot be easily (or cheaply) reversed. Second, there are a significant and likely growing number of alternatives to the carrier for providing prompt strike capabilities and conducting forward-presence operations.

These trends do not indicate that the Navy should consider abandoning the carrier. They do, however, suggest that the Navy should begin in earnest a transition process designed to reduce its reliance on the carrier to carry the overwhelming burden for strike and forward presence operations.

The United States Navy needs to accelerate its restructuring efforts toward developing a “distributed” capital ship. The “distributed” capital ship comprises a network of Navy long-range strike platforms, to include carriers, surface combatants and submarines armed with vertical launch systems capable of firing long-range precision-guided munitions (PGMs), such as the Tomahawk land-attack missile (TLAM). But it also would include new combatants, such as the arsenal ship and converted Trident submarines (so-called “stealth battleships”). This architecture of strike platforms would be integrated by an expanded version of the Navy’s Cooperative Engagement Capability.

There are several key trends that inform this observation:

• Carriers are likely to become increasingly vulnerable over the next decade or two, a trend that will not likely be easily (or cheaply) reversed. This growing vulnerability has both strategic and technological roots. The Navy’s growing emphasis on littoral warfare will see carriers operating less in the broad expanses of the world’s oceans and more along the shores of would-be hostile states. This will make carriers increasingly easy to find, while also reducing their warning time of an attack. Moreover, the diffusion of advanced targeting technologies (e.g., communications, positioning, and imaging satellites) and weapon technologies (e.g., submarines, anti-ship missiles, long-range strike systems such as ballistic missiles and high-performance aircraft, and even anti-ship mines), may increase substantially the carriers’ vulnerability.

• Since their spectacular performance in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II, carriers have, over time, seen many of their unique features eroded by technology. For example, the carriers displaced the battleship as the capital ship in large part because of its strike range advantage. But now that advantage has been eclipsed by other ships carrying long-range PGMs, and by long-range bombers. Whether it is the strikes on Baghdad during the Gulf War, or retaliatory strikes against Iraq after the war, or punitive strikes in Bosnia, increasingly the weapon of choice is the long-range PGM, not carrier-based aircraft. In short, there are a growing number of alternatives to the carrier for providing prompt strike capabilities.

• With the proliferation of ballistic and cruise missile technology, the long era of sanctuary for U.S. forward bases will probably come to an end. Third World nations armed with improved “Scuds” and low-observable cruise missiles will likely make the forward deployment of land-based aircraft and large ground forces in future regional conflicts a far more hazardous enterprise than it was during the wars in Korea, Vietnam, or the Persian Gulf. This will place a premium on the U.S. military’s ability to conduct long-range precision strikes against enemy weapons threatening in-theater, high-value, fixed-point targets. The primary means for conducting these strikes will be Air Force long-range bombers and Navy precision-strike platforms, linked into a distributed network.

The “distributed” capital ship offers the following advantages over current fleet strike capabilities:

• Military Effectiveness. The Navy’s strike capabilities are not likely to be sustained at even today’s level of effectiveness unless the Navy can meet the challenge of increasingly capable Third World military systems. Much as the carriers of an earlier era held a range advantage in strike operations over the battleship, so today these latter-day “battleships” – the arsenal ship and converted Trident submarine – can “outrange” the carriers. They do so by virtue of their missiles and their reduced vulnerability, which will allow them to operate more closely to shore than do carriers at a comparable level of risk. The “stealth battleships” also can undertake offensive mining and countermine operations, and still operate with less detection – and less protection – in the littoral areas than can the carriers.

• A Hedge Against Uncertainty. An emphasis on a more balanced, more distributed fleet that exploits those technologies that are advancing most rapidly will provide future fleet commanders with a variety of options for conducting strike and presence operations. It also will present would-be adversaries with more operational “problems” to solve before they can feel comfortable taking on the U.S. Navy.

• Reduced Cost. The distributed capital ship offers the Navy a way out of its long-term budget dilemma. Maintaining a twelve-carrier force has “crowded out” investment in long-range precision munitions, countermine warfare, and the recapitalization of surface combatants, among other things. Carriers cost over $4 billion to construct and nearly $2 billion per year to operate. Projected costs for the arsenal ship run at about $700 million, and the conversion of Trident boats to stealth battleships is estimated at $450-700 million each. Due to dramatically reduced crewing, and the use of missiles in lieu of aircraft, among other factors, operating costs of a fleet employing a distributed capital ship approach is likely to be substantially lower than a fleet based principally on carriers. Finally, both the arsenal ship and (especially) the converted Tridents would require considerably less in the way of combat escorts, producing additional savings.

• Advantages Over Surface Combatants. Both the arsenal ship and Trident “stealth battleship” have three principal advantages over surface combatants. They are less vulnerable. With far smaller crews, their operating cost would likely be considerably less than those of surface combatants with comparable strike capabilities. Finally, the arsenal ship carries several times as many vertical launch systems (VLS) as any other surface combatant.

• Casualties (Strategic Culture). If the Navy is to make good on its avowed mission to be first on the scene in the event of crisis, and to provide a prompt global strike capability when the nation requires it, then it will have to find some way of doing it without putting so many of its sailors in harm’s way, especially for those contingencies where the stakes are relatively low. As recent crises have shown, the carriers have long since lost their monopoly in both crisis and strike operations to a variety of other platforms, from Marine amphibious ships, to Navy surface combatants, to long-range Air Force tactical and strategic aircraft. Over time, both the arsenal ship and the “stealth battleship” will likely offer an increasing capability to conduct substantial strike operations, while risking less damage to themselves and their crew, than the carriers.

In summary, it seems prudent for the U.S. Navy to begin the transition toward a distributed capital ship comprising perhaps eight to ten carriers (the number that can be sustained within projected Navy budgets), and between two and four arsenal ships and a comparable number of Trident “stealth battleships.” This should permit a vigorous level of experimentation and innovation to determine the optimal force that will comprise the “distributed capital ship.”

If the Navy fails to invest in a distributed capital ship strike architecture, and carriers do become progressively more vulnerable, the worst case scenario could be catastrophic. Under these circumstances, having bet everything that the future conflict environment at sea will be very similar to what it was during the Cold War, or the Gulf War, the Navy would be left with relatively little operational flexibility. Fortunately, the Navy leadership has wisely given itself the opportunity to create a fleet that will meet the very different geopolitical and military-technical challenges of a new era. But now it must seize upon that opportunity, for as Francis Bacon once observed, “He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.”

Introduction

For the U.S. Navy, the early months of 1942 proved a difficult and discouraging time. The devastating Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 had destroyed or damaged much of the American Pacific Fleet sitting at anchor along “Battleship Row.” In the months that followed, as the Japanese scored one victory after another – in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Wake Island – the American people and their leaders were desperately searching for some sign, no matter how small, that the tide would soon turn and victory would ultimately be theirs.

To raise American spirits and signal national resolve to the enemy, President Franklin Roosevelt directed his military leaders to develop a plan for striking directly at Japan as soon as possible. Given the strategic situation, the great distances involved, and the forces and technology available, the Army and Navy found it necessary to combine their capabilities to meet the president’s demanding task. Sixteen modified B-25 Army Air Corps medium bombers received specialized training on short-field takeoffs to determine if they could operate off the decks of a Navy aircraft carrier. After determining the bombers could be launched from a 750-foot carrier deck, they were loaded aboard the carrier USS Hornet and, accompanied by a heavy escort, sailed for Japan. The "Doolittle Raid" was born.

The rest, as they say, is history. The Hornet sailed undetected to within 700 miles of the Japanese coast. Then, having been spotted by a Japanese fishing boat (part of a special early warning fleet of radio-equipped fishing boats), Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle decided to launch his aircraft at maximum range, on rough seas and into a strong wind. All sixteen bombers made it to Tokyo, dropped their small payloads, and continued on to China where all but one crash-landed. Of the 80 crew members who lifted from the Hornet's pitching deck, 71 eventually returned to the United States.¹

Although the Doolittle Raid did little to alter the course of the war, its impact on American morale was electrifying.² Colonel Doolittle was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and the nation received a much-needed psychological lift. Two months later, following the Battle of Midway, the tide of the war turned for good.

That Was Then: This is Now
The world has changed a great deal since that remarkable raid in 1942. Certainly today’s strategic environment bears very little resemblance to the Cold War, let alone the environment of the early 1940s. The technological advances made over the last half century would astound Doolittle's Raiders and the crew of the Hornet. Indeed, if the U.S. military were given this strike mission today, employing carrier-based aircraft would still be an option, but not the only option, nor necessarily even the best option.

This paper addresses the U.S. Navy’s capital ship, the aircraft carrier, with emphasis on its future role in a world undergoing both geopolitical and military-technical revolutions. It first examines the growing number of alternatives to conducting the traditional carrier strike (power-projection) and forward-presence missions. Next there is an overview of the new challenges the carrier will face as a consequence of the Navy’s changing focus from open-ocean operations to the world’s littoral regions, and the growing diffusion of military technologies to so-called “rogue” states (e.g., Iraq, Iran, North Korea). This is followed by an evaluation of the carrier’s recent performance in strike and forward-presence missions.

Having addressed the carrier’s operational environment, the paper then assesses whether the Navy’s commitment to a twelve-carrier fleet might not “sink” other worthy Service programs in an environment of increasingly tight resources. There also is a short discourse on how the U.S. political culture might influence the carriers’ future role.

Finally, the paper presents an overview of a more diversified fleet – featuring a “distributed capital ship” – that offers the Navy several important prospective advantages, to include improved military effectiveness and flexibility within current budget limitations.

The Navy cites five missions as being central to its operations: strategic deterrence, strategic lift, sea control, forward presence and power projection. In the foreseeable future, the carriers’ principal emphasis will likely be on the last two missions. In its new strategic guidance, Forward . . . From the Sea, the Navy accords primary focus to littoral operations.³ This stems from its recognition that, with the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, there simply is no "blue water" enemy fleet to sink. Nor is there any naval competitor on the horizon that one could envision possessing the ambition and the capability to challenge the U.S. Navy directly for command of the sea, mandating the capability to conduct a maritime campaign of the magnitude that Nimitz, Halsey, and Spruance waged so magnificently in the central Pacific during World War II. Moreover, the radically altered security environment has eliminated the carriers’ role in the strategic deterrence mission. Consequently, the U.S. Navy today enjoys a position roughly comparable to that of the Royal Navy during the Pax Britannica of the 19th century, when it went generations “policing the empire” without a single major challenge to its supremacy.⁴

In summary, the Navy’s strategy anticipates that the fleet will operate increasingly in littoral areas in the early stages of a regional conflict, and continue to provide a U.S. global “presence” as the U.S. global network of overseas bases continues to contract.

The Carrier, Strike Operations And Forward Presence

Strike Operations: Growing Alternatives to the Carrier
If asked to undertake a “Doolittle Raid” today, the Navy could assemble a carrier battle group – or CVBG as they are now known – for that purpose. The battle group would steam across the northern Pacific until it had moved within the combat radius of its current primary ground attack aircraft, the A-6 Intruder. Since the Intruder’s range is roughly 675 miles, the Navy would launch aircraft from nearly the identical spot where Doolittle launched his B-25s in 1942. If the CVBG were equipped with the A-6’s replacement, the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, then the CVBG could stand off outside Doolittle’s launch point, under certain circumstances.⁵ In addition, depending on the number of aircraft assigned to the carrier for its own defense, which is substantial, the number of A-6s launched for the attack could be as low as 17 – again, about the same number of aircraft as Doolittle crowded onto the deck of the Hornet. To be sure, the A-6s and F/A-18E/Fs carry a much greater and more lethal payload than did the B-25s, and Doolittle would have greatly appreciated today’s carriers’ ability to provide fighter escorts.

But technological advances over the past half century have provided the U.S. military – especially the U.S. Navy – with a variety of options for performing what was, in April 1942, a feat of daring in which the aircraft carrier was an indispensable element. Then there was simply no way to strike at Japan, even symbolically, other than asking Doolittle to accept the risks of flying Army medium bombers off Navy carriers. The range of land-based aircraft was quite limited compared to today’s bombers with their intercontinental range. Furthermore, there was no easy way of positioning and supporting forward-based, land-based aircraft (in China, for example). In-flight refueling was unknown. The Doolittle "force package" was literally the only practical option for the mission.

Today this is far from true. Other types of air strike alternatives are open to U.S. decisionmakers, to include:

• Launching the strike from the continental United States. Since the mid-1950s, the U.S. Air Force has maintained a force of intercontinental bombers that possess far greater range, and carry a considerably greater payload, than any carrier aircraft.

• Employing forward-based, land-based aircraft. In many instances land-based aircraft are also more responsive than carrier aircraft.⁶

• Conducting strikes with cruise missiles and other stand-off precision-guided munitions (PGMs). Perhaps the best-known PGM is the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM). With a range of 700-1,000 miles or more, and an impressive ability to avoid enemy air defenses, the Tomahawk can be launched from a variety of surface and sub-surface platforms.⁷

These systems and munitions have increasingly been encroaching on operational “turf” that was once the sole preserve of the carriers. For example, the Tomahawks were the only Navy weapons employed in strike operations against Baghdad during the Gulf War.⁸ They also were the only weapons used by the Navy in its attacks against Baghdad after the Gulf War (in retaliation for the Iraqi plot against former President George Bush). Most recently, TLAMs have been employed against Bosnian Serb forces in the Balkans.

Notwithstanding the Tomahawk’s remarkable performance to date, the Navy surface, sub-surface, and aviation communities once viewed it as an undesired competitor for their missions and budgets.⁹ This attitude may persist even now, with recent Navy cutbacks on projected TLAM purchases.¹⁰

In summary, today U.S. mission planners are presented with a situation quite different than that which existed over half a century ago. Carriers now represent but one of several options for executing a strike mission rather than an indispensable element for accomplishing the mission. To be sure, carriers retain important advantages (which will be discussed presently). However, recent carrier performance in such operations, combined with their high procurement, operations, maintenance, and personnel costs, and rapid advances in military technology, will likely have the effect of eroding, over time, the carrier battle group’s primacy in executing such missions. Finally, carriers suffer from the relative disadvantage of placing a far greater number of service members at risk when conducting strike operations when compared with prospective alternatives.

Strike Operations: Challenges to the Carrier
Modern technology provides senior U.S. decision-makers with a range of strike options that were unavailable in 1942. But in addition to providing strike capabilities that can supplement, or even surpass, those offered by carriers, technology has also advanced in ways which may significantly diminish the carrier’s relative effectiveness. The increasing rate of diffusion of military technology and advanced military systems offers the prospect that rogue states will, in the next decade (if not sooner), present the fleet and its carrier battle groups with far more formidable challenges to their operational effectiveness than they faced during the Gulf War. The following is a brief summary of the military capabilities that Third World rogue states will soon be able to acquire, if they do not already possess them.

Reconnaissance and Strike Capabilities. In Doolittle's day the Hornet was able to transit most of the Pacific undetected, allowing the B-25 raiders to achieve considerable strategic and tactical surprise. It might be very difficult for a CVBG to duplicate this feat today against a great power (or, it seems, in the not-too-distant future against even a regional power). The increasing availability of surveillance satellites and other intelligence collection capabilities means that a carrier battle group could be observed from space, perhaps for days before its targets came within carrier aircraft range. These types of long-range reconnaissance capabilities are likely to diffuse rapidly to Third World nations, including the BUR’s rogue states.¹¹

Despite their size, however, carriers are not easy to find at sea. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union often encountered difficulties in tracking U.S. carriers far out at sea, in large part due to the carriers’ ability to operate while maintaining electronic silence, and the limitations of Soviet reconnaissance satellites. However, with the Cold War over, concern over regional rogue states like Iran, Iraq, and North Korea has led the Navy to emphasize operations in littoral areas, to better support U.S. military operations ashore should aggression occur. Thus although Third World aggressors may still find it difficult to locate U.S. carriers far out at sea, this may not be necessary. Rather, these aggressors could focus their reconnaissance assets exclusively on their littoral area, which the carrier would have to enter to launch strikes far inland. Simply put, finding carriers in a relatively small littoral area is a far less demanding proposition than trying to track the movements of CVBGs around the world (which, one suspects, is what the Soviet Union would have set as an objective).

Third World rogue states also are acquiring the means to strike targets at far greater distances and with greater precision than they could just a few years ago. The relatively primitive Scud ballistic missiles employed by the Iraqis during the Gulf War are being supplanted by missiles of greater range and accuracy. For example, North Korea possesses a growing number of such systems, which it not only produces but exports as well. Iran has provided financial support for Pyongyang’s missile programs since the mid-1980s, and both Iran and Syria have test-fired North Korean-made ballistic missiles in recent years.¹²

This is just the tip of the iceberg. More than fifteen nations (including Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea and Libya) have ballistic missiles. Moreover, more than 25 countries possess or are developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.¹³

But even if rogue aggressors could identify the carriers’ location, and even if they had ballistic missiles of considerable range, is it likely that they could move the targeting information quickly enough, and that the missiles would be accurate enough, to conduct successful strikes against the carriers? And even if these challenges could be surmounted, would an aggressor state be able to saturate U.S. fleet missile defenses to insure the missiles get through?

Furthermore, while Third World militaries seem to be placing emphasis on increasing their missile holdings in their defense “investment portfolios,” there also have been improvements in the capability and range of manned aircraft. For example, the U.S. intelligence community reports that Iran has developed in-flight refueling probes for its land-based MiG-29s. Iran has roughly 30 of these aircraft. Under some flight profiles, the Mig-29 would have a greater range than carrier-based aircraft.¹⁴ But again the questions must be posed: can the aircraft find the carriers and, if so, can they pierce the carriers’ defenses?

As with earlier advances in technology, those described above present challenges both for the Navy and its prospective adversaries in regional conflicts. The effect of these developments may well allow the Navy’s adversaries to push the engagement envelope further from their shores at the same time the Navy is looking to operate its carrier battle groups in littoral areas. Is the answer to surround the carriers with ever thicker arrays of defenses? Or is a solution to be found along another path, one that relies less on marginal improvements to existing capabilities but, rather, which looks at exploiting rapidly emerging technologies and capabilities to develop a dramatically different solution to this prospective operational challenge?

Antiship Cruise Missiles. Over forty Third World militaries now possess antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs), which can be launched from the ground, aircraft, ships, or submarines. While not cheap, these missiles have been used to good – and sometimes devastating – effect in recent years. For instance, during the 1982 Falklands War Argentine Exocet missiles caused substantial damage to the Royal Navy. In 1987, when the U.S. Navy escorted reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War, another Exocet fired by Iraq severely damaged the USS Stark, killing 37 of her crew.¹⁵

Iran has been particularly enamored of these missiles. Recently the Iranian Navy test-fired an ASCM with a 60-mile range. The commander of U.S. naval forces in the region has expressed concern that, over time, Iran’s acquisition of an increasingly capable inventory of ASCMs, when combined with its attack submarines, ballistic missiles, and antiship mines could make the fleet’s job “a lot tougher.”¹⁶

If they can be detected, relatively slow surface ships will likely exhibit greater vulnerability to the high-velocity, sea-skimming weapons increasingly available on the international arms market. This is especially true for those surface combatants operating in littoral areas where warning times are likely to be far shorter than for those combatants operating far out at sea. According to the Navy, if these ASCMs are deployed on fast-moving patrol craft, they could significantly stress the battle group’s defenses, since this “allows the missiles to come at you from any direction.”¹⁷

Antiship Mines. Add to this the problems presented to surface combatants by increasingly sophisticated anti-ship mines. These mines are especially effective in the shallower, littoral areas where, according to its vision of future operations, the Navy will increasingly find itself operating.¹⁸ Whether the Navy’s carriers will actually find themselves in mine-infested waters is uncertain. Mines typically are deployed in coastal waters, while carriers operate further out at sea. But if carriers are forced to operate in restricted waters, such as straits, as they were in the Gulf War, or if mine seeding occurs further out to sea, then mines could pose a significant problem for the carriers, and for the battle group ships whose mission is to protect them.¹⁹

Mines have long posed a vexing challenge for the Navy. Of the 18 Navy ships seriously damaged in operations since 1950, 14 were due to mines.²⁰ During the Korean War, a planned amphibious assault at Wonson was stalled when it was discovered that the port had been heavily mined by primitive North Korean fishing boats. According to Navy lore, a disgruntled U.S. admiral later observed that “we lost control of the seas to an enemy without a navy, using World War I weapons employed from vessels that were built before the time of Christ.”²¹ During the Kuwaiti reflagging operation in the late 1980s, the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts was damaged by a World War I-era mine in the Persian Gulf.

“And as we were to find out in 1990, not a heck of a lot had changed,” observed Marine Lieutenant General Charles Wilhelm.²² During the Gulf War the cruiser USS Princeton and a countermine task force flagship, the USS Tripoli, were both damaged by mines that cost less than $1,500 each.²³ After the Gulf War, General Schwartzkopf described the Navy’s minesweeping force as “old, slow, ineffective and incapable of doing the job.”²⁴

Today there are 48 navies capable of laying mines. There also are 31 nations manufacturing mines, nine more than in 1991. More than 20 nations now export mines.²⁵ The Navy has made an attempt to address the problem. Twelve new mine countermeasure ships have been added to the fleet since the Gulf War, and 12 ships are in the Navy’s plans. A Mine Warfare Command was established in July 1993.

The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral Jeremy Boorda, has acknowledged the Navy’s mine hunting limitations and has made improving the Service’s capabilities in this area a high priority. At his confirmation hearings in April 1994, Admiral Boorda testified, “The [mine] problem is very, very difficult. You’re dealing with a weapon that is very cheap, that there is an unbelievable number of mines available to some of the poorest countries in the world, and it’s a tough problem . . . . Once they’re in the water, you’ve got a big problem.” Boorda also acknowledged that “It doesn’t sound very classy, but mine hunting is something you end up doing quite often because it’s easy to make a very sophisticated mine that is very hard to sweep . . . . “ The admiral concluded by stating that “[i]t [an anti-ship minefield] is a show-stopper for a lot of operations . . . . We saw it in the Gulf War. We saw it in World War II. I will pay a lot of attention to it.”²⁶ The Marines’ General Wilhelm seconded the admiral’s concerns, declaring that mines are “at the top of my list of Achilles’ heels.”²⁷

The Iranian military seems to agree with the CNO’s view that antiship mines have considerably utility for Third World rogue states. Iran is interested in increasing its inventory of several thousand Russian and Yugoslav antiship mines by purchasing Chinese EM52 rising mines. These mines are designed to remain on the sea floor until activated by a passing ship, whereupon they are propelled by rockets upward to their target.²⁸

Admiral Boorda later declared that countermine concepts would be elevated to the same level as higher profile areas of naval combat, such as antisubmarine warfare (ASW), and directed that additional mine warfare scenarios be scripted into fleet exercises to get countermine operations into the “everyday mindset of the Navy.”²⁹ While both the anti-ship missiles and mines might be defeated, the costs of doing so are clearly quite high.³⁰

But what does this mean for the carriers, that may be operating out at sea? In many cases, it may mean little or nothing. On the other hand, the Navy found it necessary to operate carriers in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm. To enter the gulf, the carriers had to transit the Strait of Hormuz, which can be mined. Again, it seems, the focus is on orientation and range. The Navy is increasingly focusing its efforts on supporting the battle ashore. The closer its carriers come to shore, the further inland their aircraft can operate. But the closer they come to shore, the more danger they face from mines, which are being placed further and further out at sea.

A final issue concerns the level of damage a carrier would sustain after being struck by a mine. Carriers are enormous in size, approaching 90,000 tons, and the U.S. Navy is renowned for its damage control skills. How many hits could a carrier sustain and still keep operating? Does a carrier have weak points and, if so, how easy are they to hit? Apparently, carriers are comparatively rugged when it comes to absorbing damage from antiship mines. But how formidable will mines be in ten or fifteen years? And is it sufficient for an enemy merely to put a carrier out of action, as opposed to sinking it, with mines?

Submarines. Conventional submarine sales are expected to double over the next decade, with an estimated 50-60 submarines being bought by some 20 countries.³¹ The Navy also has voiced concerns over the Russian military’s continued emphasis on submarines, despite its obvious resource difficulties. These concerns center, in part, on Russia’s willingness to sell its sophisticated submarines to any country with the money to pay for them.³² Both the Russian and Chinese navies continue to place strong emphasis on their submarine flotillas.³³

It may be more difficult for the Navy to conduct effective antisubmarine warfare operations in the littoral areas, where noise levels are considerably greater than out in the open ocean. However, this may be counterbalanced by the difficulty Third World navies are encountering as they attempt to become proficient in operating such complex pieces of military equipment.

Finally, one must again ask: How difficult is it for a torpedo to sink a carrier? It seems that a carrier would be able to sustain considerable damage and continue to operate effectively. However, there is evidence to suggest that a single torpedo hit may be sufficient to sink a carrier. And by operating in the littoral areas carriers also will make the submarines’ searching task easier.

Strike Operations: Carrier Proficiency
Conflicts in the immediate future are likely to be regional or internal in nature. They have predominated since the end of the Cold War (indeed, they predominated during the Cold War). The Navy clearly recognizes this in developing its vision of the post-Cold War security environment.³⁴ The Service also clearly sees carriers as having great utility in executing prospective strike operations in future regional conflict contingencies.

Yet the new geostrategic environment, technological imperatives, and budget realities would suggest that the Navy should strongly explore the virtues of beginning a transition to a fleet that is not only smaller than its Cold War ancestor, but substantially different as well: a fleet that relies on both carriers and on newly emerging strike capabilities to meet the challenges of a new military-technical era. One factor that should stimulate ongoing efforts to “reinvent” the Navy is the declining influence of carrier-based air in recent regional, littoral conflicts. A brief summary follows.

Beirut 1983-84. In December 1983, a contingent of Marines were ashore in Beirut, caught in the middle of Lebanon’s internal conflict. Washington’s nerves were clearly on edge following the 23 October bombing of the Marine barracks at Beirut airport that had resulted in the deaths of 241 Marines. When a Navy F-14 flying a photo reconnaissance mission from the carrier John F. Kennedy was attacked by Soviet-made SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles, a retaliatory attack was ordered. The Pentagon promptly launched an attack comprising a mix of 28 A-6 and A-7 aircraft, flying from the carriers Kennedy and Independence, against suspected Syrian anti-aircraft and radar positions near Beirut. During the raid, two of the attacking aircraft, an A-7 from the Independence and an A-6 from the Kennedy, were shot down by Syrian ground fire, creating a national furor in the United States. The attack apparently had little if any impact on the Syrians or the warring Lebanese factions and was never repeated. In February 1984, the Marines withdrew from Lebanon leaving the conflict to fester for another five years before it slowly burned itself out.³⁵

Libya 1986. In April 1986, after Washington determined that the Libyan government of Colonel Mouamar Qaddafi was involved in a Berlin terrorist attack which killed several American servicemen, a punitive strike was ordered against Libya. The target sets for the attack were on opposite ends of the North African country, centered around the airfield at Benina outside Benghazi in the east, other airfields and Qaddafi's residence outside Tripoli, five hundred miles to the west. Although two carriers (the USS Coral Sea and the USS America) were available to the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, Air Force F-111s operating out of American air bases in Great Britain were designated to attack Tripoli, the main target, leaving carrier aircraft for the attack at Benghazi. Although the operation was a success, it is unclear whether Air Force participation was a consequence of limitations in carrier air’s capability to conduct a major strike operation, or of interservice rivalries within the U.S. military.³⁶

Panama 1989. In the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama carriers were conspicuous only by their absence.³⁷

The Gulf War 1990-91. The contribution of carrier-based air to the outcome of Desert Storm appears to have been relatively modest. While the Navy ultimately placed six carriers on station in the waters surrounding the Kuwaiti Theater of Operations, the contribution of carrier-based aircraft was small compared to that of land-based air. The Navy eventually deployed roughly 25 percent of the combat aircraft in theater, yet mounted only 17 percent of the air-to-ground missions, and delivered only 7 percent of the precision-guided munitions (which proved to be the most effective means of attacking Iraqi targets).³⁸

Somalia 1992-94. The U.S. ground forces deployed to Somalia during 1992-94 enjoyed considerable support from the Marine amphibious ships off-shore; but apparently having the USS America stationed off-shore added little to their effectiveness. Following the October 1993 battle in Mogadishu in which U.S. Army Rangers sustained heavy casualties, one carrier air wing commander observed that, despite the carrier’s mission to protect U.S. forces in Somalia, carrier aircraft “might be the last thing to be used” in dealing with the situation.³⁹

Iraq 1993 (January). Just prior to the inauguration of Bill Clinton as president, Iraqi military provocations increased, and a number of incidents between Iraqi and coalition aircraft ensued. In response, U.S. aircraft launched attacks on eight radar and missile sites in southern Iraq, but with marginal success. When the strikes failed to alter Saddam Hussein’s restrictions on U.N. inspection teams, a Tomahawk missile attack was conducted on the Zaafaraniyah nuclear-fabrication facility near Baghdad, with considerably greater effect.⁴⁰

Iraq 1993 (June). In responding to an Iraqi plot against the life of former President Bush, the U.S. military conducted a long-range retaliatory strike against the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad. The strike was executed, not by a carrier, but by the USS Peterson, a destroyer, and the USS Chancellorsville, a cruiser, employing Tomahawk cruise missiles.⁴¹

Haiti 1994. Despite the lengthy presence of a large naval force off the coast of Haiti in the period leading up to the U.S. occupation, apparently it was not until an airborne assault by the Army’s 82d Airborne Division was imminent that the Haitian military junta felt compelled to cede power and allow the return of exiled President Jean Aristide.⁴² As for U.S. carriers, the USS Eisenhower and USS Roosevelt were used as launching platforms and command ships for the Army's 10th Mountain Division, deploying from Fort Drum, New York. Although the idea was suggested by senior Navy leaders, the sight of carrier decks filled with Army helicopters may have been unwelcome to some in the Navy. One observer referred to it as the equivalent of delivering the mail in B2 stealth bombers. Another source described it as the Navy providing "airport and limousine service" for the Army.⁴³ It was not so much that the carriers had been irrelevant, but rather that transports for shipping Army forces were in short supply, even though transports are cheap compared to carriers.

Iraq 1994. The U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps military conducted a rapid reinforcement of their units in the Gulf region following the movement of significant numbers of Iraqi forces toward their border with Kuwait. Possibly in response to the U.S. reinforcement operation, dubbed Vigilant Warrior, Iraqi forces quickly withdrew from the border area. As Admiral Boorda observed, “There was a Navy carrier battle group, the [USS] George Washington, in the Mediterranean. We did not have the carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea at the time. Within two days, that carrier had come out of the Adriatic off of Bosnia and was within striking distance of Baghdad.”⁴⁴ This raises interesting – and important – questions regarding the Navy’s assertion that it requires independent CVBG coverage for both the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf regions.

Bosnia 1995. During the late summer of 1995, NATO forces conducted a strike campaign, code-named Operation Deliberate Force, against Bosnian Serb forces. The Navy employed both carrier air and TLAMs in supporting the NATO operations. During this period over 3,500 NATO sorties were flown, and the Navy cruiser USS Normandy launched 13 TLAMs against Bosnian Serb air defense units on 10 September.

In recent U.S. force deployments in support of Southern Watch (the no-fly zone over southern Iraq), Provide Comfort (the mission to provide humanitarian relief to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq), and Deny Flight (the no-fly zone over Bosnia), the U.S. Air Force has flown over four times as many sorties as the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps combined. Allied forces have flown two-and-a-half times more sorties than have Navy and Marine aircraft. Finally, in the last three incidents where U.S. aircraft engaged enemy aircraft, the Navy’s carriers, although deployed in the region, could not position themselves quickly enough to participate.⁴⁵

In summary, it should be recognized that carriers play a role in many U.S. military operations. They often play an important role. However, it is clear that, in strike and prospective strike operations, carriers are often not the only means available to execute such operations, nor are they necessarily the most effective means.

Forward Presence: Alternatives to the Carrier
As with strike operations, carriers also find themselves increasingly competing with other means of providing forward presence. The “Bottom-Up Review,” (BUR), the Clinton Administration’s blueprint for its defense program, states that U.S. maritime overseas presence forces demonstrate both to "friends and potential adversaries that the United States has global interests and the ability to bring military power quickly to bear anywhere in the world." Furthermore, U.S. maritime forces "have the operational mobility and political flexibility to reposition to potential trouble spots by unilateral U.S. decision." Their operations would include crisis resolution, evacuation of American nationals in danger, rendering humanitarian assistance, and strike operations "against countries supporting terrorism or defying U.N. resolutions."⁴⁶

In the past, carriers have executed some very “high profile” forward presence missions. One recalls their sailing through the Taiwan Strait during the Quemoy-Matsu crisis in 1958, patrolling in the eastern Mediterranean during the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, and, in January 1996, again operating near the Taiwan Strait during a period of increased tensions between China and Taiwan.

However, with respect to forward presence operations, the BUR does not establish that carriers are unique in their abilities to resolve crises (such as those noted above), evacuate U.S. nationals in danger abroad, or render humanitarian assistance. For example, in 1988 U.S. naval forward presence operations included deploying an amphibious squadron off the coast of Haiti, a Marine Fleet Anti-Terrorist Support Team to Panama, and a Marine Amphibious Ready Group off the coast of Burma during periods of civil unrest in those countries. Carriers were not involved in these operations. However, in 1989 carriers were involved in crisis response operations involving the Panamanian elections (May), Chinese civil unrest (June), the hostage situation in Lebanon (August) and the Philippine crisis (November). But again, the 1990 Somalia and Liberian evacuations were conducted successfully without carrier involvement, as were the 1994 evacuations from Somalia and Rwanda.⁴⁷

In summary, it seems likely that many forward presence operations traditionally dominated by carriers could be undertaken by other force elements with little or no loss of military effectiveness, and at considerably less expense. It may be that, in many of these instances, an aircraft carrier battle group would be a welcome addition to the other U.S. forces deployed. But what is desirable is not always necessary, nor is it always affordable.

Carriers: Sinking the Navy Budget?

The United States defense budget has declined in real (inflation-adjusted) terms in each of the last 11 years. Given the Clinton Administration’s current projections, and those of the Republican Congress as well, it is likely that defense spending will continue its decline for a decade more, absent some dramatic shift in the international environment.⁴⁸ Sooner or later, barring some dramatic change in the budget environment, this will likely spell the end of the Clinton Administration’s Bottom-Up Review defense program and its twelve-carrier Navy.⁴⁹

The Navy faces the prospect of major funding shortfalls, both in the near-term future and over the longer term as well. In a recent interview, the Navy’s Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Resources, Warfare Requirements, and Assessments (N8), Vice Admiral Thomas J. Lopez stated, What I need at the turn of the century is $4 billion to $5 billion a year [more than is currently projected for modernization] and the only way to get it is through savings.⁵⁰

However, by FY 2001 the Navy expects to realize, at best, only $2.5 billion per year in savings from its infrastructure reduction (i.e., base closure) efforts.⁵¹ Navy budgeteers are already “backing out” these projected savings from the operations and maintenance budgets and reallocating them for procurement. This concerns Robert Pirie, the Navy’s assistant secretary for installations and environment, who feels that in some cases the budgeteers “have taken more than makes me happy because in some cases they amount to anticipatory cuts.” Admiral Lopez also admitted that, even if these savings are realized, the Navy would still require an additional $15 billion through the year 2010 to fund its program.⁵² Worse still, internal Navy planning documents suggest that the cost of the Navy’s procurement plans may, on average, be as much as $6-7 billion (FY 1997 dollars) higher per year over the FY 2002-2016 period than the level of funding currently proposed for Navy procurement in FY 2001.⁵³ Thus, although there is some debate over how far the Navy will have to scale back it plans, there is little doubt that significant cuts will have to be made.⁵⁴

How might the Navy begin to address this problem while positioning itself for the future?

Carriers have thus far been relatively well insulated from the Navy’s post-Cold War budget cutting. But carriers are very expensive, both to construct and to operate. Furthermore, since carriers operate with other ships whose principal mission is the carrier's protection, the cost of the carrier also must include the cost of its CVBG escorts and, of course, its aircraft. On average, it costs some $1.8 billion a year (in FY 1996 dollars) to equip, operate and support a single CVBG.⁵⁵ The carriers themselves cost well over $4 billion each to construct. This does not include the cost of the aircraft that comprise the carrier’s air wing. Nor does it include the other surface combatants and support ships that comprise the carrier battle group.

The Navy is faced with some difficult choices, to include not only the long-term size of the carrier force, but the modernization of its naval air wings as well. Under agreements forged in 1992 and renewed each year, the Marines agreed to provide the Navy with up to four of their F/A-18 squadrons and two EA-6B electronic warfare units to offset carrier aircraft shortfalls. However, even with the Marine squadrons, the Navy still faces a prospective shortfall of five squadrons of F/A-18 aircraft, the effects of which could be felt as soon as 1997.⁵⁶ Admiral Lopez has described the tactical aviation budget squeeze as “very tight.”⁵⁷ It will cost between $500 million and $1 billion to alleviate the problem. But no additional funding is available to help the Navy fix its carrier air problem. As Admiral Boorda observed, “I think we are going to do this within the resources and the dollars we have. We are not going to go out and say ‘Give us more money to do this.’”⁵⁸

But the Navy’s carrier problems do not end there. Evidently there are significant reservations within the Service’s aviation community over the F/A-18E/F’s capability and affordability. With respect to the former, the aircraft has been described as “less than adequate” by one carrier battle group commander.⁵⁹ The Navy and Marine Corps plan to buy roughly 1,000 of the aircraft, with production running to the year 2015. On the positive side, the aircraft boasts a 30 percent increase in bomb load and 33-50 percent increase in range over the F/A-18C/D. However, the aircraft may have difficulty exceeding the range of the A-6 attack aircraft it will replace. The F/A-18E/F program is estimated to cost (FY 1997 dollars) $80.959 billion.⁶⁰ Still, few would question that the Navy needs to replace its aging strike aircraft, and that the F/A-18E/F is the logical (i.e., only apparent) successor. However, given projected funding shortfalls, it appears very unlikely that the Navy will be able to procure 1,000 of these aircraft, as currently envisioned, without severely dislocating its overall modernization program.

The situation has apparently created some concern among the Marines. Having integrated some of its F/A-18 aircraft into the Navy, and facing a substantial budget shortfall of its own, the Corps apparently is becoming less enamored of the F/A-18E/F as it makes the hard choices of where it must divest.⁶¹ One senior Marine official declared, “So far, in this [aircraft] integration, the door has only swung one way – in the Navy’s favor.”⁶² General Charles C. Krulak, the Marine Corps Commandant, is even more direct. Despite the Navy’s strong support for the F/A-18E/F, Krulak has declared that “we cannot afford that aircraft.”⁶³

The Twelve-Carrier Navy: “Crowding Out” Navy Investments for the Future?
What will emerge as the “billpayers” for the carrier force and its associated air wings? How much should the Navy sacrifice to maintain its carrier fleet at twelve? The answer is unclear. As the following discussion shows, what is clear is that the Navy already has cut back in other areas to sustain its dozen carriers.

Surface Combatant Requirements. Defense Department guidance stemming from the BUR calls for a Navy of between 111-116 surface combatants (cruisers, destroyers, and frigates).⁶⁴ However, to meet the BUR’s requirements to fight two nearly simultaneous regional conflicts and to provide ships for forward presence, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Boorda has declared that “we need 149 surface combatants.”⁶⁵ The Navy’s early analyses supporting the 111-116 surface combatant level has been publicly disavowed and declared “deficient” by Rear Admiral Phil Coady, the Service’s director of surface warfare.⁶⁶

However, it is unclear whether the CNO’s estimate stems from actual Navy requirements, or whether it is dictated by his assessment of internal Pentagon politics. As Admiral Boorda told a gathering of senior Navy officers, “If we can [meet our requirements] with 111 surface combatants we’ll get 85, which is the rate at which we’re recapitalizing surface combatants . . . . We need to drive up commitments to justify force structure. We need to demonstrate demand for our product.”⁶⁷

Perhaps it is not surprising that recent Navy wargames indicate a stronger need for the Service’s “product” than is reflected in the Bottom-Up Review analysis. These games and other internal analyses determined that between 135-165 surface combatants are needed to satisfy the Bottom-Up Review’s two nearly simultaneous major regional conflict warfighting requirement, along with Navy forward presence requirements. The Navy hopes to maintain 120-135 active surface combatants with the balance coming from allies and the reserves.⁶⁸

The requirement to maintain twelve carriers creates two contradictory pressures on the Navy’s plans for surface combatants. First, it drives those requirements upwards, since the primary (though certainly not sole) role of most surface ships is still related to protecting the carriers. Second, because of the carriers’ high cost, it reduces the resources available to procure surface combatants.⁶⁹

Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. Programmed purchases of Tomahawk cruise missiles have been scaled back, despite their recent success in Bosnia and Pentagon war games indicating a rapidly growing need for TLAMs relative to carrier-based aircraft.⁷⁰ Most recently, industry sources have indicated that the Navy may reduce its planned buy of TLAMs from 164 in FY 1997 and 120 in FY 1998, to only 120 in FY 1997 and 100 in FY 1998.⁷¹ Nor are there currently enough Tomahawks deployed on Navy ships to meet basic requirements set by the regional CINCs.

Strategic Sealift. The Navy typically invests less than 1 percent of its budget in strategic sealift.⁷² Yet the nation must have the capability to move combat forces quickly and efficiently to remote spots around the globe, such as Korea and the Persian Gulf, the current BUR scenarios. On one level this lack of investment in sealift is understandable. Strategic sealift is a relatively “unglamorous” mission that involves moving the other Services’ forces and equipment across the oceans to support combat operations in distant theaters.

Yet, as was demonstrated in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the United States’ position as a global power with global interests places a premium on being able to move large quantities of war materiel quickly over great distances. Moreover, unlike the Cold War era, where much of the essential warfighting equipment was forward based in a clearly defined theater, the decline of the U.S. overseas basing infrastructure, combined with today's uncertain world, means that most of the vital warfighting equipment will have to be transported to the area of the conflict. Over 90 percent of tonnage moved to the Persian Gulf for Desert Shield and Desert Storm moved by sealift.⁷³

Desert Storm also demonstrated that the Navy had underinvested in strategic sealift forces. The Fast Sealift Ships (FSS) – eight commercial cargo ships purchased by the Navy and converted to a roll-on/roll-off configuration – outperformed all other sealift assets. But, their enormous contributions were significantly limited by their small numbers. As for the 70 Ready Reserve Fleet (RRF) ships, distressingly few achieved desired activation standards. Of the 44 ships originally activated, only 12 activated on schedule. Of the 26 remaining ships called up in Phase II of the sealift effort, only three met the established standards. According to the Defense Department’s official report prepared after the conflict, “Delays were directly related to prior year funding cuts for RRF maintenance and activation exercises.”⁷⁴

Currently the Navy has only 60 percent of the sealift it estimates will be necessary for the Bottom-Up Review’s two regional conflict force posture.⁷⁵ The Navy has begun to expand its sealift forces, but given other budgetary pressures, it is unclear whether it will be able to sustain this effort over the long term.

Countermine Warfare. Despite the strong rhetorical support for countermine warfare, the Navy is actually cutting back on its mine countermeasures efforts, both in absolute and in relative terms. Prior to the Gulf War, the Navy allocated roughly 1 percent of its budget to mine warfare. Now mine warfare captures less than half of one percent of the Navy’s budget. According to the head of the Navy’s mine warfare branch, the Navy’s $1.5 billion mine warfare program is underfunded by at least $500 million over the future years defense plan (FYDP), which runs from FY 1996-2001.⁷⁶ Nine programs intended to boost the Navy’s countermine capabilities have either been canceled or slowed.⁷⁷

As mines proliferate in numbers and sophistication, and as mine belts are deployed further out to sea, countermine operations will likely be increasingly critical to the success of fleet littoral operations in general.⁷⁸ Given these considerations, the Navy’s decision not to fund a more vigorous countermine effort is a curious one.

However, thanks to Admiral Boorda’s strong support for countermine operations, this attitude may be changing. The CNO recently issued a memo titled “Mine Countermeasures – An Integral Part of our Strategy and Our Forces.” The memo calls for the Navy to develop a detailed “Campaign Plan” to integrate countermine capabilities and operations throughout the fleet. The Campaign Plan is also tasked to “provide a wise [countermine] investment strategy.” Navy spending on mine warfare is now scheduled to increase from $660 million in FY 1995 to $770 million in FY 1996. Funding also is scheduled to increase further in FY 1997.⁷⁹ But this is somewhat misleading, since even with these increases, the countermine acquisition budget will capture less than one quarter of one percent of the Navy’s budget, a substantial relative decline from pre-Desert Storm funding levels.⁸⁰

While the CNO’s initiative is encouraging, concerns remain. The countermine program still remains underfunded. Moreover, as the Navy comes to grips with its funding shortfalls, it is far from clear that, given the primacy given to the carrier force, the countermine budget will avoid further cuts.

Strategic Culture
It is characteristic of the American strategic culture for a commander to spend firepower as if he is a millionaire and husband his men’s lives as if he were a pauper.⁸¹ Following the Cold War, the popular perception is that Americans are not willing to risk, let alone sustain, high casualty rates in military operations that are not clearly linked to the nation’s survival or basic well-being.⁸² The prompt withdrawal of U.S. forces from Somalia following the loss of 18 Army Rangers in October 1993, and the concern over possible casualty rates in U.S. military operations in Haiti and Bosnia would seem to confirm this perception.

One of a carrier’s virtues is its potential to be employed early in a period of crisis. Given the new strategic environment (i.e., the absence of a significant blue-water challenger) this will require the carrier to move ever closer to shore, as the Navy’s Forward . . . From the Sea doctrine prescribes, and as the carrier’s shorter-range aircraft require. Yet this means putting the lives of the carrier’s 5,000-6,000 person crew at ever greater risk, for what may amount to interests far less than vital to U.S. survival or well-being. One cannot discount the risk of putting 5,000-6,000 sailors at risk aboard one large platform when it may be possible to perform the mission at an acceptable level of proficiency at a far lower hazard to life and at a substantially lower cost.

Scenario: The Battle For The Strait Of Hormuz

The Navy’s challenges are not limited to making its modernization program fit its budget. As noted above, military technology continues both to advance rapidly, and to diffuse rapidly as well. In the not-too-distant future the Navy will likely face a very different kind of challenge in the Third World than it experienced during the Gulf War. Carriers will likely find themselves “pushed” further and further out to sea, at least in the early period of a conflict. This is somewhat ironic, since one of the carriers’ greatest traditional assets has been its ability to arrive quickly on the scene and project air power.⁸³

The risk to carriers that steam into harm’s way is rising, and will likely continue to do so. Offsetting the risk by looking for a “carrier-centered” solution will likely prove prohibitively expensive.

The following scenario shows just how different an environment the Navy carriers may face in the mid-term future from what they experienced during the Gulf War.

Iran and the Gulf
It is October 2011. The United States is about to confront the first major act of regional aggression since Iraq invaded Kuwait 20 years before. This time the aggressor is Iran, but Teheran takes a very different path than that chosen by Iraq in 1990, or anticipated by the authors of the U.S. “Bottom-Up Review” defense program.

For Iran the new century has meant turbulence, both internal and external. Internally, the Iranian people have grown weary of nearly a quarter century of Islamic Fundamentalist rule. The mullahs, in an attempt to diffuse growing discontent, have tried to apply the “Chinese” model; i.e., engineering rapid economic growth to mute political (and sectarian) opposition. Thus between 2003-2009 Iran adopts a much more friendly approach to the West. State-sponsored terrorism is suspended. Threats to blockade the Straits of Hormuz cease. Attempts are made to cultivate better relations with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States.

The reaction from the West is overwhelmingly favorable, except from the United States. Washington objects to Iran’s decision to purchase sophisticated military equipment and commercial nuclear reactors from Russia, along with arms purchases from China. Teheran retorts that it remains a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and that given the relative instability of the region, it is only prudent to engage in a slow-paced modernization of its armed forces.

Washington’s European allies, having grown increasingly distant from America over economic issues and NATO’s inability to deal successfully with a series of Balkan crises, embrace Iran’s friendly overtures. Soon European and Japanese energy firms are operating in Iran, focusing especially on developing that nation’s huge reserves of natural gas.

But rapid economic growth proves difficult to achieve. Developments “conspire” to work against the Iranian leadership. First, there is the continued global transition from “industrial” to “information” economies, which flattens the growth of energy demand. Second, alternatives to carbon-based fuels are coming “on line,” especially nuclear power (in Japan and China) and renewable energy sources (i.e., solar, wind). Third, the long decline in Russia’s energy production is reversed in 2004. Fourth, the lifting of sanctions on Iraq in 1999 brings that country back fully into the oil market – while creating a growing security threat to Iran.

Matters come to a head with the reverse energy “shock” of April 2010, when the factors described above produce a temporary “collapse” of oil prices. Efforts to enforce limited production agreements among exporting producer states prove fruitless. This leads to a political backlash in Iran, with hard-line Fundamentalists in the ascendant. The hard-liners argue that Iran is again being exploited by the West, which is acting to depress oil prices while supporting Iran’s prospective enemies in Baghdad (through the lifting of sanctions) and Saudi Arabia (through the sale of advanced arms, including a theater missile defense system that is manned and maintained primarily by Americans).

The hard-line faction in Teheran argues that the only way to insure Iran’s economic growth and political stability is to achieve freedom from western exploitation. This requires confronting the West and altering dramatically the world energy equation in favor of the “exploited” oil exporting states. The Iranian military is instructed to prepare to execute long-held plans to block the Strait of Hormuz and hold Saudi and other Gulf oil state production facilities at risk. The target date is November 2011.

It turns out that Washington’s suspicions regarding the Iranian nuclear weapons program were not without foundation. By the fall of 2011 the U.S. intelligence community suspects that Iran may possess a clandestine inventory of up to eight nuclear weapons, which could be mated to eight of its nearly 1,400 ballistic missiles. The Iranian military also boasts over 1,200 cruise missile systems (including several hundred low-observable precision-guided missiles), over eight hundred advanced conventional munitions (e.g., laser- and optically-guided bombs), and wide access to commercial satellite communications networks. Iran also possesses limited chemical munitions stocks, nearly 7,000 antiship mines (some quite advanced), and some late-generation "traditional" systems (e.g., tanks, aircraft, surface warships), including five diesel submarines capable of conducting clandestine mine-seeding operations. Finally, Iran has maintained a core terrorist network in the Middle East and Europe, with a few cells in the United States.

On 6 November 2011 the Iranian war plan is executed. The Iranian ballistic and cruise missile forces are dispersed. Mine seeding of the Strait of Hormuz commences. Iranian submarines begin their “underwatch” patrols of the mine fields. Antiship missile batteries (e.g., Silkworm and Seersucker) are positioned along the approaches to the strait. Iran’s small air force, equipped primarily with antiship missiles, also is dispersed.

The Iranian leadership moves to deep underground shelters for its protection. Essential communications are handled by fiber-optic land lines or through satellite “subscriber” services on systems like Iridium. Overhead reconnaissance is handled by Russian satellites. (Russia is only too happy to both reduce the influence of the United States and the EU in the region, and to realize windfall energy profits during the crisis – and after, assuming the Iranian ploy is successful.) Global positioning data is available both from the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Russian GLONASS system.

On 9 November, having deployed its forces to their wartime positions and begun initial operations (e.g., deploying antiship mines) the Iranian leadership announces the conditions that must be met before the Straits will be reopened and the flow of oil resumed.

• First, all western forces must depart the region (i.e., the U.S. support forces in Saudi Arabia).

• Second, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states (save Iraq, which, it will later be confirmed, is a silent partner of Iran’s) must substantially curtail oil and gas production.

• Third, tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz must pay a transit fee to Iran.

The mullahs believe that, if they can achieve these objectives, the key, enduring effect will be to make the Saudi Kingdom and the Gulf Cooperation Council states wards of Teheran. Recalling the Gulf War, Teheran issues a warning to all states in the region. Cooperation with any powers “external to the region” will lead to “dire consequences” being visited upon the cooperating state. Several options are open to Iran in making good on this threat. First, if it has in fact acquired weapons of mass destruction, it might employ them. Second, it might conduct precision strikes on oil and gas fields in the region. Third, it could threaten “dirty war". Iran’s hope is that these threats may deter potential U.S. allies, especially within the region of conflict. Ideally, these concerns could be sufficient to preclude U.S. military action. As an aside, Iran plans to launch a missile attack against Israel (although Iranian leaders believe this will not be necessary), if other measures fail to break any U.S.-Arab coalition.

As the United States and other extra-regional coalition members prepare to project their forces into the region, they find all major ports and airfields targeted by Iranian missiles. Furthermore, the Iranians do not intend to challenge American and other coalition naval forces directly. Their objective is not command of the seas, but rather sea denial. Teheran uses information obtained through third-party commercial satellites to plot the movement of U.S. forces at sea, for early warning and (with far greater difficulty) targeting. Washington is faced with the dilemma of allowing its forces to be observed in this manner, or of attempting to deny this information to the Iranians by convincing Russia to cease providing satellite information to Iran, and by shutting down certain portions of its Global Positioning System data links, which have become indispensable for a variety of civilian and commercial activities. Other alternatives involve employing electronic warfare against the satellites or ground stations, or perhaps even attacking the satellites themselves, although the United States possesses no specific capability for the latter operation.

Iran does not have the means to conduct long-range strikes against U.S. forces on the open seas with a high confidence of success. It hopes to make up for this shortcoming by combining a mix of relatively low-tech systems and weapons to make American power projection operations difficult, or even unfeasible. It hopes to employ its handful of modern diesel submarines and mine barriers to slow and canalize U.S. movement (an action that would be especially effective around the strait), and employ covering fires in the form of missiles or long-range aircraft that might be employed selectively against high-value U.S. targets (e.g., carriers).

The Reaction in Washington
On 7 November, U.S. intelligence reports that the Iranian military has begun dispersing to wartime locations. Confirmation of Iranian aggressive intentions comes on 8 November, with reports that the Strait of Hormuz, and perhaps areas further out to sea, are being mined. The U.S. National Security Council (NSC) meets at the White House that evening. Following Teheran’s declaration of its conditions for raising the blockade, a second NSC meeting is held where it is determined that the United States will resist this act of Iranian aggression, by force if necessary. American ballistic missile defense forces (BMD) in Saudi Arabia are instructed to deploy to their wartime positions. Two squadrons of U.S. Air Force aircraft forward deployed in Saudi Arabia go on alert. Combat air patrols are initiated.

At the president’s authorization, the Joint Chiefs of Staff put into effect war plans designed to achieve primary U.S. objectives in the crisis, which are defined as:

• Raising the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and restoring free transit in the Persian Gulf;

• Protecting U.S. allies in the region from Iranian attack;

• Protecting the oil and gas fields from damage; and

• Terminating hostilities with Iran on terms favorable to the United States and its allies.

Initial operations see U.S. Air Force long-range B-1B and B-2 bombers arriving at the U.S. base in Diego Garcia, and in Egypt. Air Force fighter aircraft begin deploying to airfields in Saudi Arabia. A Navy CVBG operating in the Red Sea begins moving toward the Gulf.

The U.S. plan for deploying forces into the region is disrupted when a salvo of over 230 Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles strikes at U.S. forward air bases in Saudi Arabia. Although over 30 percent of the missiles are successfully intercepted by U.S. ballistic missile defense forces operating in Saudi Arabia, many of the remaining missiles hit their targets. Over 30 Air Force aircraft are damaged or destroyed. Maintenance and support elements are heavily damaged. The fast flow of U.S. tactical air forces into the region comes to an abrupt halt.

The Battle for the Strait of Hormuz
In early January the U.S. Fifth Fleet has concentrated several hundred miles northwest of Diego Garcia, out of range of most Iranian ballistic missiles. It comprises four of the Navy’s eight carrier battle groups, along with three of its four arsenal ships, and all three of its Trident “stealth battleships.”

On 11 January the fleet begins to sail toward the Gulf. It is led by a screen of attack submarines, whose mission is twofold: to conduct ASW against Iranian subs and to begin clearing the Iranian minefields blocking the Strait of Hormuz. Behind the screen are the “stealth battleships,” followed by the arsenal ships. The “stealth battleships” are converted Trident submarines. Two are equipped with 162 precision-guided strike missiles (e.g., TLAMs, ATACMS) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The third “multimission” boat has a mix of 117 missiles and UAVs, and a dozen Navy SEAL and Army Special Forces teams.⁸⁴

The arsenal ships look more like tankers than traditional surface combatants. They ride low in the water (i.e., they are semi-submersibles) with almost no superstructure and incorporate stealth design and materials to minimize the risk of operating in harm’s way. Each arsenal ship boasts some 500 launchers able to support a variety of missile types, including ballistic missile interceptors, Tomahawks, ATACMS, and the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM).⁸⁵ They also carry UAVs.

Once lanes have been cleared in the mine belts, the multipurpose Trident boat moves in behind the attack submarines close to shore and begins to disgorge its special operations forces (SOF) on 24 January. Two days later and a few score miles out to sea, the “stealth battleships” and arsenal ships begin launching UAVs, along with missiles designed to deploy remote sensors. Eighteen hours later a U.S. deep-strike architecture is in place and operating. It comprises an upper tier of satellites, a UAV “grid,” remote sensors, and special operations forces (both those inserted by the Navy and those which have been infiltrated by other means). It provides a crude approximation of the “dominant battlespace awareness” capability the Pentagon has been striving to realize for over a decade.

Even before the architecture is in place the “stealth battleships” and arsenal ships – in combination with long-range Air Force bombers – begin an extended-range precision-strike campaign against key Iranian fixed targets on 25 January. These strikes are quickly supplemented on 27 January by similar (although far less effective) attacks on critical mobile targets which can be identified and tracked by the U.S. deep-strike architecture.

The Iranians respond on 30 January by launching another barrage of nearly 400 ballistic and cruise missiles, employing conventional munitions only. Thanks to U.S. information dominance, persistent attacks on Iranian missile units and land- and sea-based ballistic missile defenses, the effects of the attack are mitigated considerably.

With the missile threat beginning to subside, other Navy surface combatants with long-range precision-strike capabilities (including some combatants with over 100 vertical launch systems) now add their fire support, launching TLAMs with a range of over 1,000 miles. The carriers move closer to shore and begin launching strike aircraft equipped with Standoff Land Attack Missiles (SLAMs) and SLAM-ERs (extended range SLAMs). Because of their relatively limited range and the desire to minimize the risk to the platform and its large crew, the carrier air strikes are focused on those targets closest to shore.⁸⁶

Ironically, the U.S. precision-strike campaign proves to be a victim of its own success. Faced with the progressive whittling away of its missile forces, on 3 February the Iranians launch another salvo of over 100 missiles against targets in Saudi Arabia and against the Fifth Fleet forces.

To increase the pressure on Iranian forces and to better protect the civilian populations of U.S. allies in the region, Air Force tactical aircraft are deployed to bases in the Gulf, while the Fifth Fleet carriers are directed still closer to shore. The effect is to increase sortie rates and target coverage dramatically – at the cost of increased risk to the forces involved.

By the end of February the Iranian armed forces no longer possess the capability to deny U.S. naval forces freedom of movement in the Gulf region. Less than ten percent of Iran’s missile forces remain. Over 30 percent have been destroyed on the ground; with another 25 percent intercepted by U.S. missile defenses. As for the remainder – slightly over a third of the Iranian force – nearly half of these missiles fail to strike their targets (due to malfunctions, guidance limitations, etc.). Thus roughly 15 percent of the Iranian missile force hits its targets. Eight U.S. surface combatants have been damaged by mines and missiles, with five requiring substantial repair work. Two U.S. combatants have been sunk; one by mines, the other by a torpedo. Although they fail to sink any ships, to some naval observers, the Iranian missile strikes recall the Japanese kamikaze attacks during the last days of World War II.

The Navy’s carriers, now able to operate relatively freely outside the mine belts, lend the full weight of their air wings to the Air Force tactical wings operating ashore and the Navy and Air Force long-range strike forces. By the second week in March, with U.S. and NATO ground forces deploying in large numbers to the region in preparation for a land assault on Iran, the government in Teheran requests a cease-fire through the United Nations. On 24 March the cease-fire enters into effect. This is followed by NATO’s occupation of Iran along the northern Persian Gulf littoral to a depth of 30 miles; the withdrawal of all Iranian forces 200 miles inland; and the beginning of a U.N.-supervised disarming of the Iranian forces of all “offensive” weapons.

Needed. A New Navy For A New Era

The Super Carrier: A 21st Century “Sunset System”?
Is the Navy’s carrier fleet sailing on the cusp of extinction? Hardly. Despite the serious concerns raised over the wisdom of the Navy’s continuing its current level of emphasis on carriers for strike and presence missions, carriers will almost certainly remain an integral part of the U.S. force structure for decades to come, for the following reasons:

• They are capable of conducting sustained strike operations on relatively short notice when forward-based air assets either do not exist or are unavailable. There may be instances where the U.S. military needs to conduct continuous strikes against littoral targets, but cannot utilize forward-based strike aircraft (either because no U.S. forward bases exist, or because the host nation refuses to allow the strike to originate from its territory, or because bases are available but are deemed too vulnerable to preemption by enemy long-range strikes – e.g., from ballistic or cruise missiles). As the Navy often points out, unlike in-theater land-based air forces, carrier aircraft do not require “passports or visas” (i.e., host nation support or approval) to conduct operations.

• The carriers are a hedge against the uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of new and emerging military capabilities, and the failure to maintain existing capabilities. The carrier’s ability to launch strikes over a prolonged period of time also may prove critical if U.S. stand-off precision-strike forces prove less effective than currently anticipated, or if the United States lacks sufficient long-range precision-strike capability, either with aircraft (e.g., bombers) or missiles. As demonstrated earlier, however, this very expensive “hedge” may be increasingly difficult to sustain at today’s force levels, especially given the increasing number of instances where stand-off precision-strikes have demonstrated their effectiveness.

• Senior military leaders are typically reluctant to reduce their reliance on those defense systems that have worked well in the past, even if, as with the carrier, there are indications that its advantages may be eroding. There is considerable precedent for this sort of behavior when it comes to world-class navies and their attachment to capital ships. During the naval revolution of the 19th century, the Royal Navy proved a somewhat reluctant convert to the advantages of steam propulsion, or of replacing wooden hulls with metal.⁸⁷ And despite the military revolution that occurred between the world wars, which led to the rise of naval aviation, the United States Navy entered World War II as a “battleship navy.”⁸⁸

• The United States has a large capital stock inventory of aircraft carriers. That the Navy has so many carriers and plans to build at least two more Nimitz-class carriers, combined with the considerable investment of national treasure that they represent, practically insures that they will be around for many years to come. Although the carrier force may be an “anchor” that arrests movement toward a “distributed” fleet, the Navy has been quite successful in maintaining support for carrier production. For example, the Nimitz-class carrier now under construction involves some 4,000 suppliers distributed over 43 different states receiving over $2 billion for their services.⁸⁹

But how much should the nation continue to invest in carriers and their associated supporting elements, at the expense of beginning the transition to a fleet that both reflects the geostrategic realities of the Cold War’s end, and the challenges and opportunities presented by rapid advances in military-related technologies?

Needed: A “Distributed” Capital Ship
The U.S. military still has far and away the world’s best defense technology base, and there are a number of options that can be pursued to maintain the fleet’s competitive advantages in these rapidly changing times. But the Navy cannot seek to both maintain the carrier force at near peak Cold War levels, and to transform itself into the Navy of the future as well. Some tough choices will have to be made. Admiral Boorda has argued that the Navy should not “compete today’s forces against tomorrow’s vision.”⁹⁰ Although one can sympathize with the CNO, the Navy has always had to work with limited resources and so, consequently, it has always had to do what the admiral cautions against doing. The challenge is to minimize the overall risk to the national security, over the short- and long-term future, given the resources at hand. It requires making difficult choices, but trade-offs between current and future capabilities are inevitable.

In the military, old loyalties die hard. Innovation is often difficult, even (or, perhaps, especially) in successful military organizations.⁹¹ “Proven” weapon systems are rarely abandoned in the absence of a war that confirms a new military regime has arrived. Even then, artifacts like the horse cavalry and the battleship have proven remarkably resilient. Although some senior Navy leaders thought the Service might begin transitioning away from the Nimitz-class carrier following CVN-76, the Navy is now pressing for CVN-77, another Nimitz-class ship.⁹²

The Navy, in its “Project 78” study (CVX-78) is planning a future carrier class, which may involve abandoning nuclear propulsion and steam-powered catapults, and incorporating radar-absorbing materials and electromagnetic catapults. A major objective, according to Rear Admiral Harry Rittenour, the Navy’s director of carrier and air station programs, is to “generate as many sorties as you can.”⁹³ But these alterations represent evolutionary improvements in the Navy’s existing capital ship, when what is (arguably) also needed and possible are revolutionary improvements in the fleet’s strike capabilities.

Given existing resource constraints and an emerging military revolution, the Navy has both fiscal and warfighting reasons to begin reducing its emphasis on carriers and increasing its emphasis on experimenting with a “distributed” capital ship. With their high cost, increasing vulnerability, and declining competitive advantages in projecting both presence and power, carriers, in their current numbers, are a luxury the Navy and the nation cannot afford. Perhaps revealingly, the last two naval revolutions witnessed the military effectiveness of the naval powers’ capital ships – the wooden ship of the line and the battleship – diminish precipitously.⁹⁴ The Navy can, and should, identify areas where it can scale back or even “divest” itself of some current assets to offset the cost of sustaining and modernizing the fleet over the long term, exploiting the military revolution, and preparing for a future conflict environment that will be very different from either the Cold War or Desert Storm – i.e., an environment very different from that for which the Navy is now structured.⁹⁵

Fortunately, the U.S. Navy has, at times, shown itself to be a remarkably innovative military organization over the course of this century. During the 1920s and 1930s, Navy innovators developed the principals of naval aviation on modest budgets. Two battle cruisers were converted into the USS Saratoga and the USS Lexington, the first big-deck carriers. When the shock of Pearl Harbor wore off and the Battle of the Coral Sea was fought, it became clear that a new capital ship had emerged. Because of their interwar innovations, the Navy now had people with a feel for the new operational concepts for war at sea, an understanding of how to operate a carrier force, and an industrial base capable of building carriers and carrier aircraft.⁹⁶ This foresight on the part of Navy leaders paid off as the fast carrier task forces proved a source of great competitive advantage in the Pacific Theater. Fortunately, a war was not necessary to demonstrate the value of the Navy’s ballistic missile submarine force, another remarkable innovation which, over time, has come to constitute the core of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

But can the Navy effect the kind of transition to the fleet that will be needed to conduct the kind of fleet operations described above in the Strait of Hormuz scenario? There are some encouraging signs, especially if the Navy is willing to consider reducing its reliance on the carrier as the centerpiece of the fleet. Consider the following initiatives now under consideration:

The Arsenal Ship. The concept for an arsenal ship dates back at least to the late 1980s, when Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf published a paper in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings in which he challenged traditional surface combatant designs and laid out the basic characteristics of the “strike cruiser”: a stealthy, sturdy warship that could deliver a devastating amount of ordnance at great range.⁹⁷

Today the arsenal ship is envisioned as highly automated, with a crew of less than 100, as compared to the 5,000-6,000 sailor crew of a carrier. For enhanced protection, the arsenal ship would be a semi-submersible combatant with a very low profile incorporating stealth design and composites, and with practically no superstructure. It also would have point-active defenses, and a mine and missile resistant double-ballasting hull. The arsenal ship’s double-hull design offers good protection against mines or torpedoes. During Desert Storm, roughly 30 double-hulled tankers hit mines, but only three had to be taken out of service.⁹⁸ The arsenal ship would have some 500 vertical launch systems (VLS) capable of launching a wide variety of extended-range precision munitions like TLAM, ATACMS, and the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile, and UAVs as well.⁹⁹ It would be nothing less than the battleship of the 21st century.¹⁰⁰ Only now – unlike in Doolittle’s time – the battleship fires would outrange those of the carrier aircraft.¹⁰¹

However, despite the enthusiasm for the arsenal ship in some Navy quarters (Rear Admiral Alexander Krekich, the Navy’s director of surface warfare programs, for example, envisions a fleet of four to six arsenal ships), the Navy’s submarine and aviation communities may be reluctant to support a surface platform that could siphon funding from their prized programs.¹⁰² Thus even though the prestigious CNO Executive Panel (comprising distinguished defense experts whose advice on the Navy’s future is frequently sought by CNOs) recommended the arsenal ship be built and incorporated directly into the fleet, there are reports that the Navy may still take a more traditional approach. Specifically, it appears the Navy may not build the hull envisioned for the arsenal ship, but instead attempt to adapt a DDG-51 hull for the purpose.¹⁰³ However, for a few hundred million dollars spread over five years, the Navy could gain the benefit of funding four or five different arsenal ship conceptual designs, and selecting two for construction as demonstrators before choosing the optimal platform. It is another case where investment in a key Navy program may well be “crowded out” by more traditional concerns.

The Trident “Stealth Battleship”: Submarines have a proven track record as “capital ships” in their own right. For example, during World War II, with only 2 percent of naval personnel, the Navy’s submarine force accounted for 55 percent of Japanese losses at sea. The Navy’s submarines sunk over 1,300 Japanese ships, including a battleship, eight aircraft carriers, and eleven cruisers.¹⁰⁴ Today the Navy has the opportunity to convert four Trident ballistic missile submarines to “stealthy, general purpose” warships. Conversion options include a stealthy strike Trident, with up to 162 missile tubes; a stealthy troop transport carrying 500 troops for short periods (or 144 troops for an indefinite period); or a stealth multi-mission boat with 117 missile tubes and 100 troops.¹⁰⁵ The boat could launch long-range precision munitions such as TLAMs and ATACMS, unmanned aerial vehicles, and unmanned underwater vehicles.¹⁰⁶

Trident conversion is possible, in large part, because the Navy is removing four of the boats (USS Ohio, USS Michigan, USS Florida, USS Georgia) from strategic service. With two boats each operating out of Bangor, Washington, on the west coast and Kings Bay, Georgia, on the east coast, the Navy could maintain “one dedicated Trident (Strike) in each of two regions of concern . . .” (presumably East Asia and the Middle East) with the second boat available in less than seven days transit time.¹⁰⁷ At present there are no plans for the Navy to undertake such a conversion.

Cooperative Engagement Capability(CEC): This Navy program seeks to combine all the combat systems and major sensors on ships into a single, integrated architecture for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and C4I (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence). If successful, the CEC would give commanders a dramatically improved picture of the extended battle area and greatly improve their ability to engage successfully targets at extended ranges employing long-range precision strikes. In short, it has the potential to assist the Navy’s long-range strike assets, be they based on carriers, surface combatants or submarines with VLS and PGMs, or arsenal ships and Trident “stealth battleships.”¹⁰⁸

In summary, both for reasons of operational effectiveness and fiscal prudence, the Navy should consider increasing its investments in two platforms – the arsenal ship and the “stealth battleship” – and in CEC as well, while reducing its carrier force. The advantages of pursuing such a course of action include the following:

Military Effectiveness. The Navy’s strike capabilities are not likely to be sustained at even today’s level of effectiveness unless the Navy can meet the challenge of increasingly capable Third World military systems. As shown in the contingency scenario above, to do this the Service will have to increase its emphasis on conducting long-range precision strikes, and on defending the fleet from the threat of submarines, mines, and antiship missiles.

Much as the carriers of an earlier era held a range advantage in strike operations over the battleship, so today these latter-day “battleships” – the arsenal ship and converted Trident submarine – can “outrange” the carriers. They do so by virtue of their missiles and their reduced vulnerability, which will allow them to operate more closely to shore than do carriers at a comparable level of risk. The “stealth battleships” also can undertake offensive mining and countermine operations, and still operate with less detection – and less protection – in the littoral areas than can the carriers.

A Hedge Against Uncertainty. An emphasis on a more balanced, more distributed fleet that exploits those technologies that are advancing most rapidly will provide future fleet commanders with a variety of options for conducting strike and presence operations. It also will present would-be adversaries with more operational “problems” to solve before they can feel comfortable taking on the U.S. Navy. Just as the Navy – then a “battleship navy” – converted battle cruisers in the 1920s into the carriers USS Saratoga and USS Lexington, and experimented with the radically new capabilities that naval aviation seemed to promise, today’s Navy must not fail to invest adequately in the future – a future in which carriers, like the battleships before them, may no longer be the only – or perhaps even the brightest – jewel in the fleet’s crown.

Reduced Cost. The Navy clearly cannot afford its twelve-carrier fleet, absent some radical change for the worse in the international order that will result in higher levels of defense spending on the fleet. Perhaps most important, in attempting to maintain a twelve-carrier fleet, the Navy risks “crowding out” investment in other capabilities, such as long-range precision strike, dominant battlespace awareness and countermine operations.

Admiral Boorda has stated that the Navy will have to make do with the budgets currently projected, and quite likely with less. Admiral Lopez has clearly outlined the Service’s inability to sustain the fleet envisioned in the BUR, let alone the additional surface combatants the Navy says it now needs. A carrier costs some $4.5 billion to build and a carrier battle group expends roughly $1.8 billion a year to operate and support. Projected costs for the arsenal ship run around $700 million.¹⁰⁹ The Trident conversions are estimated at $450-750 million per boat.¹¹⁰

The cost gap widens when operations, maintenance and personnel costs are considered. For example, the arsenal ship’s crew size is projected at between 30-100 sailors. Crew size for the “stealth battleship” and its variants is not yet known, although it is likely to be a small fraction of the 5,000-6,000 crew required for a carrier.¹¹¹ Furthermore, the Navy would also realize substantial operations and maintenance savings from its new ships, as missiles require less maintenance than aircraft, and the training for missile crews is less costly than for pilots and ground crews.

Both the arsenal ship and (especially) the converted Tridents would require considerably less in the way of combat escorts, producing additional savings. As one senior Navy official observed, “Why pay that money to have a battle group move into an area where a submarine can do the job?”¹¹² The same might be said, albeit with somewhat more qualification, with respect to the semi-submersible arsenal ship.

In summary, the arsenal ship and Trident boats would enhance the fleet’s overall effectiveness, including the carriers’ effectiveness as well, while freeing up funding for worthy Navy programs in need of additional support, such as missile defense, countermine operations, sea lift, and precision munitions.

Advantages Over Surface Combatants. Both the arsenal ship and Trident “stealth battleship” have several advantages over surface combatants. First, they are less vulnerable. Second, with far smaller crews, their operating cost would likely be considerably less than those of surface combatants with comparable strike capabilities. Third, in the arsenal ship’s case, it carries several times as many VLS as any other surface combatant.

Casualties (Strategic Culture). If the Navy is to make good on its avowed mission to be first on the scene in the event of crisis and to provide a prompt global strike capability when the nation requires it, then it will have to find some way of doing it without putting so many of its sailors in harm’s way, especially for those contingencies where the stakes are relatively low. As recent crises have shown, the carriers have long since lost their monopoly in both crisis and strike operations to a variety of other platforms, from Marine amphibious ships, to Navy surface combatants, to long-range Air Force tactical and strategic aircraft. Over time, both the arsenal ship and the “stealth battleship” will likely increasingly offer the capability to conduct substantial strike operations, while risking less damage to themselves and their crew, than the carriers.

Conclusion

Recent experience and a number of key trends suggest two important conclusions with respect to the Navy’s carrier fleet. First, carriers are becoming increasingly vulnerable, and this trend cannot be easily (or cheaply) reversed. Second, there are a significant and likely growing number of alternatives to the carrier for providing prompt strike capabilities, and conducting forward presence operations.

These trends do not indicate that the Navy should consider abandoning the carrier. They do, however, suggest that the Navy should begin to reduce its reliance on the carrier to carry the overwhelming burden for strike and forward presence operations. In particular, the arsenal ship and Trident “stealth battleship,” especially when linked with an expanded version of the Navy’s proposed Cooperative Engagement Capability, seem to offer several major advantages to the fleet.

First, they may provide the Navy with a distributed capital ship strike architecture to match the distributed CEC reconnaissance architecture. This will provide the fleet with a more diverse array of strike capabilities while also minimizing the risk of concentrating too much of this capability in “one basket.” They also could contribute substantially toward extending the carriers’ effectiveness.

They also offer the promise of helping the Navy “square the circle” of trying to meet too many commitments with too few resources. The arsenal ship and the Trident “stealth submarine” will likely cost far less than the carrier to construct, operate and maintain. They will almost certainly require fewer supporting ships for protection, and would place considerably less stress on the Navy’s proposed theater ballistic missile defense system. They also would lessen the risk of crowding out investment in other worthy Navy programs, such as the development and procurement of PGMs, countermine warfare, and strategic sealift.

Finally, they offer the Navy a way to hedge against the uncertainty of its new strategic environment. Unlike the Cold War era, the Navy does not know who its next major competitor will be, when that competitor will appear, or how that competitor will choose to compete. This is compounded by the uncertainty of not knowing how rapidly advancing military-related technologies will influence the character of conflict in the coming years. The distributed capital ship strike architecture allows the Navy leadership to hedge against this uncertainty in a manner similar to that practiced by their forebears in the 1920s and ‘30s. Then the Navy introduced a number of new ships called aircraft carriers into the fleet to complement the battleship. When it became clear after the battles of Coral Sea and Midway that a major transformation had occurred in war at sea, the Navy was prepared for it.

There is no reason to rush pell-mell into a new navy that is based exclusively, or even principally, around the arsenal ship, Trident “stealth battleship and CEC – not simply because the Navy cannot afford such a rapid transition, but because it must also hedge against the uncertainty concerning how effective the new technologies underwriting these new capabilities may turn out to be.

In summary, it seems prudent for the U.S. Navy to begin the transition toward a more distributed fleet comprising perhaps eight to ten carriers (the number that can be sustained within projected Navy budgets), and between two and four arsenal ships and a comparable number of Trident “stealth battleships.” This should permit a vigorous level of experimentation and innovation to determine the optimal mix of ships that will comprise the “distributed capital ship.” If the Navy undertakes to exploit emerging technologies in this manner, the worst case would be that the new systems prove relatively ineffective. But the consequences would not likely be dire. The Navy would still have eight to ten carriers to cover at least one major regional conflict, and probably two, in this period of relatively low danger to the national security.

However, if the Navy fails to invest in a distributed capital ship strike architecture, and carriers do become progressively more vulnerable, the worst case scenario could be catastrophic, as the Navy would have bet everything that the future conflict environment at sea will be very similar to what it was during the Cold War, leaving it with very little operational flexibility. The Navy has wisely given itself the opportunity to create a fleet that will meet the very different geopolitical and military-technical challenges of a new era. But now it must seize upon that opportunity, for as Francis Bacon once observed, “He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.”

See Carroll V. Glines The Doolittle Raid, (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1988), pp. 9-78. Task Force 16, commanded by the legendary Admiral William F. Halsey, comprised some 23 ships including two carriers: the Hornet, carrying Doolittle’s planes; and the USS Enterprise, which provided air coverage since the Hornet’s deck was unable to support normal flight operations while the B-25s were aboard.
This is the popular view of the Doolittle Raid. However, some argue that the raid had long-lasting military significance. See James G. Roche and Barry D. Watts, “Choosing Analytic Measures,” The Journal of Strategic Studies (June 1991), pp. 184-89.
Admiral J. Boorda, John H. Dalton, and General Carl E. Mundy, Jr., Forward . . . From the Sea (Washington, DC: Department of the Navy).
For a discussion of this period, see Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: The Ashfield Press, 1976). During the period of British naval dominance, which Kennedy describes as between 1815-1859, the Royal Navy was driven by reduced budgets to reduce dramatically the size of the fleet. No longer plagued by a great power challenge such as had been presented by Napoleonic France, the Royal Navy found itself policing the British Empire, conducting “blue helmet” operations such as combating piracy, and undertaking “humanitarian” operations such as charting the world’s oceans.
The referenced combat radius of the A-6 comes from Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, April 1992), p. 661. Hereafter cited as Report. However, Jeffrey Record, Hollow Victory: A Contrary View of the Gulf War (New York: Brassey’s, Inc., 1993), p. 131, lists the A-6 combat radius as only 390 miles. The F/A-18E/F’s interdiction range is 546 miles. This assumes two 480-gallon fuel tanks. See Fred Rainbow and Mac Greeley, “The New Hornet Is Coming: Interview with Jerry Daniels,” Proceedings (June 1995). However, the F/A-18E/F’s strike range is 640 miles when configured for a strike mission (i.e., armed with two Mark 84 laser-guided bombs, two AIM-9s, one AIM-120, and with external fuel tanks). A similarly armed A-6 flying a similar profile would have a range of 735 miles. The F/A-18E/F also is capable of being refueled in flight by another F/A-18E/F (“buddy refueling”), extending its interdiction range to 975 miles, but only when flying a “high-high-high” profile. In short, the reader should note that an aircraft’s combat radius can vary significantly depending on such factors as ordnance load, mission profile, and the availability of tankers for refueling.
Response time is influenced considerably by location. Will carriers be forward deployed and close to the scene of crisis? Will they be deployed in sufficient numbers? Or is it better to rely upon forward land-based aircraft, which will likely have to obtain permission from their host government before undertaking combat operations? These are but some of the many important questions that need to be resolved in determining the proper “mix” of land- and sea-based aircraft.
Michael Evans, “Improved Tomahawk Makes its Balkan Debut,” London Times (12 September 1995), p. 11. The Tomahawk Block II (employed during the Gulf War) has a range of roughly 700 miles; the newer Block III employed in Bosnia has a range of 800-1,000 miles. The land-attack Tomahawk has a range of 1,550 miles. United States Navy, Navy Fact File (no date, no publisher). See also Stanley W. Kandebo, “New Tomahawk Upgrade on Tap,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (25 January 1995); and Robert Holzer, “Tomahawk Missile Surfaces as Navy’s Top Gun,” Defense News (5-11 July 1993), p. 18.
See Report, pp. 786-788. During the Gulf War, 288 Tomahawks were launched against targets in Iraq. Tomahawks and Air Force F-117A aircraft were the only systems employed against downtown Baghdad.
See John F. Lehman, Jr., Command of the Seas (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), p. 169. Lehman details how the surface community in the Navy felt the Tomahawk detracted from their traditional roles. The submariners did not like giving up space for torpedoes needed to attack enemy submarines, and the aviators were skeptical of the pilotless Tomahawk.
Robert Holzer, “Navy Takes Ax to Tomahawk Purchasing Plan,” Navy Times (17 July 1995), p. 33. Navy officials originally planned to buy 217 cruise missiles a year between 1995 and 1998. However, the Navy now is requesting only 120 TLAMs for FY 1997, and apparently plans to request only 100 TLAMs in FY 1998. See Robert Holzer, “U.S. Navy Eyes Cruise Missile Dearth: Procurement May Leave Service’s Commanders Short-Handed,” Defense News (8-15 January 1996), p. 4. See also “Program Acquisition Guide,” Department of Defense Budget for Fiscal Year 1997 (Washington, DC: DoD, March 1996), p. 32.
Nations such as France, Russia, South Africa, India and Israel are contemplating expanding the use – and availability – of their high-resolution satellite imagery systems. These countries are demonstrating a growing willingness to consider providing high-quality satellite imagery as a commercial service. This trend is likely to grow as commercial firms engaged in multinational ventures to launch satellite constellations to provide imagery and communications (e.g., Iridium, Globalstar) bring their capabilities on line. Jeff Cole, “New Satellite Imaging Could Transform the Face of the Earth,” Wall Street Journal (30 November 1995), p. 1. As the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) becomes indispensable to the commercial sector, and as the Russian Glonass system comes on line, guidance and navigation capabilities could be dramatically enhanced. Bruce Nordwall, “GPS Technology Ripens For Consumer Market,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (9 October 1995), pp. 50-51; and “Glonass Nears Full Operation,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (9 October 1995), pp. 52-53.
For an overview of the North Korean program, see Greg Gerardi and Joseph Bermudez, Jr., “An Analysis of North Korean Ballistic Missile Testing,” Jane’s Intelligence Review (April 1995). The North Korean No-dong 1 missile is believed to have a range of 1,300 kilometers, and to have entered into production in 1994. More sophisticated missiles, the Taep’o-dong 1 and Taep’o-dong 2 missiles (with ranges of 2,000 km and 3,500 km, respectively) are in development.
William J. Perry, Annual Report to the President and the Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, February 1995), pp. 239-40.
“Navy Faces Extended Range of Iranian MiG-29s,” Navy News & Undersea Technology, p. 1.
K. Scott McMahon and Dennis M. Gormley, Controlling the Spread of Land-Attack Cruise Missiles (Marina del Ray, CA: American Institute for Strategic Cooperation, January 1995), p. 12; and Tim Weiner, “Cruise Missile Is Test-Fired From a Ship By Iran’s Navy,” New York Times (31 January 1996), p. 5.
Weiner, “Cruise Missile Fired,” p. 5. The missile is the Chinese-made C802, which has a 15-120 kilometer range, and a 700 kilogram warhead.
Ibid.
For a discussion of the difficulties of the mine threat, see Jason Glashow and Robert Holzer, “U.S. Confronts Non-Traditional Mine Threats,” Defense News (14-20 November 1994), pp. 6-9.
Indeed, during the Gulf War the Navy had assumed that the Iraqi antiship mines were laid in shallow waters close to shore. Instead, the Iraqis had deployed their mines much farther out, constructing a five-mile wide mine belt almost 30 miles out to sea. Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, The Generals’ War (Boston: Little, Brown and Company), pp. 345. However, with the exception of areas such as straits, mines may pose little problem for the carrier, assuming it operates some 50-60 miles out at sea.
John Robinson, “Navy Crafting Mine Warfare Campaign Plan,” Defense Daily (31 October 1995), p. 138.
David Wood, “Navy Tries to Handle Mines,” Cleveland Plain Dealer (23 September 1995), p. B-11.
Ibid.
Robert Holzer, “U.S. Mine Warfare Budget Sinks,” Defense News (25 September-1 October 1995), p. 4.
Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, pp. 343-45; and Rick Atkinson, Crusade (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993) pp. 237-38, 323-30.
Holzer, “Mine Warfare Budget,” p. 4.
Hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee, Nomination of Admiral Jeremy Boorda to be Chief of Naval Operations (14 April 1994).
Holzer, “Mine Warfare Budget,” p.4.
Philip Finnegan and Robert Holzer, “Iran Steps Up Mine, Missile Threat,” Defense News (27 November-3 December 1995), pp. 3, 29.
Mark Walsh, “Mine Warfare Technologies Support At Sea in 1996,” Defense Week (20 November 1995), pp. 1, 12; and Robinson, “Mine Warfare.”
Holzer, “Mine Warfare Budget,” p. 4.
Giovanni de Briganti and Robert Holzer, “Experts: Submarine Exports to Double: Asia to Top Buyers,” Defense News (23-29 October 1995), p. 3.
Robert J. Murray, “Russia’s Threat Beneath the Surface,” Wall Street Journal (25 August 1995), p. A8.
Ibid.; and Anthony Preston, “The Submarine Threat to Asian Navies,” Asian Defense Journal (October 1995), p. 18. Russia’s Minister of Defense, General Pavel Grachev, has declared, “A nuclear submarine fleet is the future of the armed forces.”
For an acknowledgment that today’s conflicts have shifted from “a focus on a global threat to a focus on regional challenges,” see ... From the Sea: Preparing the Naval Service for the 21st Century, Department of the Navy, 1992, p. 2. Also, see, Force 2001: A Program Guide to the U.S. Navy, Department of the Navy (N8), 1994, p. 2. The Force 2001 publication states that the Navy is shifting “away from an open-ocean warfighting force to one focused on joint littoral operations.”
For a discussion of the 1983 Lebanon raid, see Lehman, pp. 326-338. Although Lehman argues that the raid was flawed in its tactical execution, it is difficult to see how even a perfectly executed attack would have had any major impact on the warring Palestinian, Lebanese Christian and Lebanese Muslim factions.
See James A. Winnefeld and Dana J. Johnson, Joint Air Operations: Pursuit of Unity in Command and Control, 1942-1991 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1993), pp. 83-96. One might argue that the “solution” to a carrier shortfall problem is to buy more aircraft carriers. However, purchasing several more carriers, along with their air wings and the associated support ships comprising the CVBG, would cost far in excess of the Air Force aircraft (including tankers) that contributed to the strike. As we will discuss presently, the Navy is having difficulty maintaining its current carrier and air wing levels, let alone contemplating how it might procure more. With respect to interservice rivalries, there is reason to believe that Air Force strike aircraft was not essential to the raid’s conduct.
Mark P. Sullivan, “Panama, 1989-1990,” in Mark M. Lowenthal and Robert L. Goldich, coordinators, Use of Force by the United States: Case Studies 1950-1991 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 14 October 1992), pp. 89-91. The operation, code-named Just Cause, was conducted without carrier support even though U.S. forces began rehearsing the plan’s execution months before the actual attack.
Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), 1993), p. 184.
Keith B. Richburg, “Crew on Carrier Wonders if Somalia is Place for Its Kind of Action,” The Washington Post (November 10, 1993), p. A31.
The air attacks achieved marginal results, hitting 16 of their 33 aim points. The Tomahawks scored 37 hits out of 45 missiles fired. Following the Tomahawk strike, Saddam Hussein agreed to permit U.N. inspection teams to operate in compliance with U.N. resolutions. Rear Admiral Walter M. Locke (retired), and Professor Kenneth P. Werrell, “Speak Softly and . . . ” Proceedings (October 1994), p. 33.
U.S. General Accounting Office, Proven Capability Should Affect Aircraft and Force Structure Requirements (Washington, DC: GPO, April 1995), p. 8; and Rowan Scarborough, “Saddam Behind Bush Plot, Aspin Says,” Washington Post (28 June 1993), p. A1.
See transcript, “White House Briefing Regarding the Agreement Reached in Haiti,” 18 September 1994, 9:55 am EDT.
See “Risky Business,” Navy Times, 26 September 1994, p. 37. Also, see Lawrence E. Casper, “Flexibility, Reach, and Muscle: How Army Helicopters on a Navy Carrier Succeeded in Haiti,” Armed Forces Journal, January 1995, p. 40.
Hearings, Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Authorization Request for FY 1996 (7 March 1995).
Major Gary Crowder, “Forward Naval Presence?” Proceedings (April 1995), p. 45. Of the 135,000 sorties flown through January 1995, the Air Force had flown 54%, U.S. coalition associates 30%, and the Navy and Marine Corps 12% (the Army had flown 4%). The three incidents referred to are 27 December 1992 in Southern Watch, 17 January 1993 in Provide Comfort, and 28 February 1994 in Deny Flight.
Les Aspin, Report on the Bottom-Up Review (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, October 1993), p. 8. Hereafter cited as “BUR.”
For a detailed presentation of carrier involvement in forward presence operations, see Adam B. Siegel, The Use of Naval Forces in the Post-War Era: U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps Crisis Response Activity, 1946-1990 (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, February 1991). See also John H. Dalton, “Report of the Secretary of the Navy,” in William J. Perry, Annual Report to the President and the Congress (Washington, DC: GPO, February 1995), p. 286 (Table VIII-1, 1994 U.S. Navy/Marine Crisis Operations).
For an examination of the Clinton Administration’s projections for defense spending to the year 2005, see Steven Kosiak, Bottom-Up Review Won’t Fit in New Clinton Plan (Washington, DC: Defense Budget Project, 16 June 1995). For an overview of Congress’s projections for defense budgets to the year 2002, see Steven Kosiak, Republican Defense Proposals May Worsen Plans/Funding Mismatch (Washington, DC: Defense Budget Project, 30 June 1995).
Former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, the BUR’s architect, declared early in 1995 that “it is doubtful” the defense budgets the Clinton Administration has planned are adequate to buy the BUR force he planned for in 1993. William Matthews, “Can the Force Keep Up This Pace?” Navy Times (2 January 1995).
Robert Holzer, “U.S. Navy, Marines Foresee Modernization Gap,” Defense News (17-23 April 1995), p. 4.
“Base Closings Will Yield Navy $2.5 Billion in Savings Each Year,” Inside the Navy (13 November 1995), p. 4.
See Eric Rosenberg, “Helping Steer the Navy Through Tough Times,” Defense Week (22 May 1995), p. 9; and Department of the Navy, Shaping the Navy for 2015 . . . and Beyond: Hard Choices for Uncertain Times, August 1995.
DoN, Shaping the Navy.
Secretary of Defense William Perry recently stated that if major savings are not realized from acquisition reform, and also from base closures, and if the defense budget is not increased over the next five years, “then we will not be able to have adequate modernization.” Since Perry is unwilling to compromise on his number one priority for near-term readiness, “the only alternative is to cut force structure.” Since it is increasingly unlikely that these conditions will be met, it appears the Navy, along with the other Services, will be faced with additional reductions to the force. David A. Fulghum, “Two-War Strategy May Be Abandoned,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (29 January 1996), p. 40.
See GAO, Navy Carrier Battle Groups: the Structure and Affordability of the Future Force, (Washington, DC: GPO, February 1993), p. 19. The annual cost could rise to as much as $3.7 billion (FY 1996 dollars) if a broader range of indirect O&S and acquisition costs are included. See Paul Taibl and Steven Kosiak, An Affordable Long-Term Defense (Washington, DC: Defense Budget Project, February 1993), p. 27.
Robert Holzer, “U.S. Navy Faces Paucity of Planes,” Defense News (8-14 May 1995), pp. 3, 13.
Holzer, “Modernization Gap,” Defense News (17-23 April 1995), p. 4.
Robert Holzer, “Navy Plans F-18 Expansion to Counter Strike Shortfall,” Defense News (29 May-4 June 1995), p. 4. See also Holzer, “Paucity of Planes,” Defense News (8-14 May 1995), p. 3.
Ed Offley, “Admiral Raps Navy’s Use of New Bomber,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer (19 July 1994), p. 1. The author refers to a message from Rear Admiral William Hancock, which highlights the F/A-18s inferior range and bomb load compared to the aircraft it is intended to replace, the A-6E. Hancock argued that “it would not be wise” to proceed with an air wing comprising only F/A-18s until the Navy has fielded a system that can fully “replicate” the A-6E’s capabilities.
Department of Defense, “Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) Summary Tables as of 31 December 1995,” 5 April 1996, p. 4. This represents a decrease in cost of nearly $10 billion from earlier estimates of a 1,000-plane buy. However, there have been recent reports that the Marine Corps does not intend to buy any F/A-18E/Fs. Therefore, the aircraft buy may be overstated by 340 aircraft. See Tony Cappacio and Mark Walsh, “GAO: End Pentagon’s Most Pricey (sic) Program,” Defense Week (22 April 1996), p. 14.
General Wilhelm, then commanding general of the Marine Corps’ Combat Development Command, testified that the Marines’ annual procurement budget needed to be increased by nearly fifty percent, to nearly $1 billion per year, by FY 1998 if it is to avoid “difficulties.” John Robinson, “Marines Want Procurement Budget Raised to $1 Billion Per Year,” Defense Daily (4 May 1995), p. 166.
Robert Holzer, “U.S. Marine Chiefs See Dearth of Aircraft, Manpower,” Defense News (16-22 October 1995), p. 16.
Gidget Fuentes, “Krulak Takes to the Adriatic,” Navy Times (8 January 1996), p. 10.
William J. Perry, Annual Report to the President and the Congress (Washington, DC: GPO, January 1994), p. 167.
Admiral J. G. Prout III, Memorandum for the Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet, CNO Comments at Surface Warfare Flag Officer Conference (SWFOC), 23 September 1994.
“Bucking Clinton Strategy, Navy Seeks 135 Surface Combatants,” Inside the Navy (26 October 1994), p. 127.
Prout, CNO Comments.
“Navy Shows Flexibility With Future Force Levels,” Navy News and Undersea Technology (6 November 1995), p. 1.
In making trade-offs to maintain the carrier force at twelve, the Navy also has reduced the size of its task forces in overseas deployments. For example, some carrier battle groups that had been deploying with ten combatants now have only six. As Vice Admiral Thomas J. Lopez, the Navy’s Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Resources, Warfare Requirements and Assessments recently observed,“ . . . [W]hen I was in the Sixth Fleet, I had ten combatants with every carrier that came in. Now, [it’s] six . . . .[T]hat’s an acceptable risk, because we don’t have a Soviet Union that’s poised in a Cold War.” See “Defining and Paying for Navy’s Future,” Navy Times (19 June 1995), p. 16.
The Navy employed 288 TLAMs in the Gulf War. However, the Navy’s recent Surface Combat Force Level Study projected that meeting the BUR’s requirement to win, quickly and decisively, two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts on the scale of the Gulf War would require 1,719 TLAM strikes, nearly six times the Gulf War requirement. According the war games conducted as part of the study, 1,113 TLAMs would be needed for a contingency on the Korean Peninsula, and another 603 for a second Gulf War. Roughly 50 percent of the initial naval strikes in the Persian Gulf scenario were executed by TLAMs. See Beth Jannery, “Future Korean War Would Require 1,113 Tomahawks, Navy Estimates,” Inside the Navy (2 October 1995), p. 5.
Holzer, “Cruise Missile Dearth,” p. 4.
This estimate is derived from DoD’s table on the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) by Major Program and Appropriation for the years FY 1990-FY 1995.
Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Revolution in Warfare? Air Power in the Persian Gulf (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), p. 4. Originally published as Gulf War Air Power Survey Summary Report in 1993 by the U.S. Government Printing Office.
See Report, pp. 377-379. For a more comprehensive report on the performance of sealift forces during Desert Storm, see Ronald F. Rost, John F. Addams, and John J. Nelson, Sealift in Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm: 7 August 1990 to 17 February 1991 (Alexandria: Center for Naval Analyses, 1991), especially pp. 4-5, 8-9.
General Robert L. Rutherford, “Working Together for Defense Transportation System 2010,” Defense Issues, Vol. 30, No. 10, p. 5.
Holzer, “Mine Warfare Budget,” p. 4.
Robert Holzer, “U.S. Mine Warfare Budget Sinks,” Defense News (25 September-1 October 1995), p. 40. As one Naval officer observed, “We keep promising more money for mine countermeasures in the [future], but we never get to spend it.”
During the Gulf War the Navy had assumed the Iraqis would lay their mines in shallow waters close to shore. Instead, the Iraqis deployed two mine belts farther out to sea, with the furthest extending almost 30 miles into the Gulf. Gordon and Trainor, General’s War, p. 345.
William Garland, “Mine Warfare Pushed,” Corpus Christi Caller Times (20 January 1996), p. 1.
Countermine acquisition budgets comprise 0.18 percent of the Navy budget in FY 1995, 0.19 percent in FY 1996, and are projected to comprise 0.24 percent of the budget in FY 1997.
David R. Palmer, Summons of the Trumpet (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978), p. 144.
See, for example, Edward N. Luttwak, “Where Are the Great Powers?” Foreign Affairs (July/August 1994), pp. 23-28.
Indeed, the BUR sees the carrier continuing to provide substantial amounts of power projection early in a future regional conflict, despite the experience of the Gulf War and Third World military trends. See Aspin, BUR, p. 16.
Department of the Navy, Trident Conversion: Stealthy , Robust, Multimission Capability for the Littorals, Undated briefing.
Department of the Navy, The Arsenal Ship, Briefing of 29 August 1995.
The F/A-18E/F, equipped with two Mark 84 laser-guided bombs (LGBs), two AIM-9 and one AIM-120 missiles, with external fuel tanks, and flying a high-medium-high flight profile, has a range of 640 miles. The SLAM missile has a 60-120 mile range.
When in 1858 the French Navy laid the keel of the frigate, La Gloire, the world’s first oceangoing ironclad, the Royal Navy’s initial response was to order another, bigger three-decker ship of the line, the H.M.S. Victoria, which was a larger version of Admiral Nelson’s Victory, built exactly a century before. Despite the 1862 exploits of the ironclad CSS Merrimac in the American Civil War, the Royal Navy continued to lay down wooden hulls until 1866. Royal Navy ships continued to be rigged with masts and sails well into the 1880s, even though they had engines. The British Manual of Seamanship, published in 1859, noted that “although we are living in what may be termed the steam era and our Navy is a steam navy, I have in this work wholly excluded the consideration of steam power as, owing to the great cost of coal and the impossibility of providing stowage for it except to a limited extent, the application of steam power for ordinary purposes must be strictly and subordinate and its employment on general service the exception rather than the rule.” See Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought (New York: Random House, 1991), pp. 386, 389-90.
Although the U.S. Navy proved quite innovative in developing naval aviation, the fact remains that in the years leading up to World War II American fleet exercises still tended to conclude with a traditional set-piece battleship engagement. Nor did the U.S. Navy develop carrier task forces in 1930s. Geoffrey Till, Adapting to the Carrier: Three Case Studies (Unpublished paper, June 1993), pp. 49, 51.
Eric Rosenberg, “The Press to Ensure A Pro-Aircraft Carrier Vote,” Defense Week (2 May 1994), p. 2.
Admiral J. M. Boorda, “Fighting Smarter: A Navy Tradition,” Marine Corps Gazette (December 1995), p. 18; and “Navy Should Not ‘Compete Today’s Forces Against Tomorrow’s Vision,’” Inside the Navy (11 September 1995), p. 3.
See, for example, Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); and Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).
Kerry Gildea, “Admiral Sees End of Large Deck Carriers After CVN-76,” Defense Daily (13 April 1995), p. 59; “Nimitz Carrier to End With CVN 76,” Navy News & Undersea Technology (22 May 1995), p. 1.
“Navy to Brief Senior Pentagon Official on Future Aircraft Carrier Plans,” Inside the Navy, (11 December 1995), p. 1; and Robert Holzer, “U.S. Navy to Blend Technologies in New Carrier,” Defense News (30 October-5 November 1995), p. 16. It is possible that the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) aircraft could be a joint takeoff and landing aircraft. This would eliminate the need for catapults entirely.
The naval revolution of the late 19th century saw the wooden ship of the line displaced. The interwar military revolution during the 1920s and ‘30s led to the battleship’s eclipse and the rise of the carrier. For an overview of the phenomenon of military revolutions, see Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., “Cavalry to Computer: The Patterns of Military Revolutions,” The National Interest (Fall 1994); and Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., “Keeping Pace With the Military-Technological Revolution,” Issues in Science and Technology (Summer 1994).
Interestingly, the Navy’s sister service, the Marine Corps, is, like the Navy, petitioning for additional funding. The Marines, however, under their new commandant, General Charles Krulak, intend to put a number of programs on the budget chopping block in a “divestiture approach” – sacrificing some needs today in order to maintain access to capabilities that will be needed tomorrow. See “Marine Corps Begins Risky ‘Divestiture’ Study Now to Chop Systems,” Inside the Navy (28 August 1995), p. 26.
For a discussion of the U.S. Navy’s interwar innovation in aviation, see Rosen, Winning the Next War, pp. 76-80, 96-100; and Geoffrey Till, Adapting to the Carrier: Three Case Studies (Unpublished paper, no date).
Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf III, “Revolution at Sea,” Proceedings (January 1988). See also Jacques J. Bally, “The Shape of Ships to Come,” Armada International (February/March 1994); and Colonel James A. Lasswell, “Why the Arsenal Ship Concept Is Gaining Momentum,” Marine Corps Gazette (January 1996), pp. 31-32.
“Industry Gears Up for New Arsenal Ship Concept,” Navy News & Undersea Technology (30 October 1995), p. 1.
Department of the Navy, The Arsenal Ship (Unpublished briefing, 29 August 1995), p. 7. The Navy estimates the arsenal ship will fire more than fifteen types of missiles and rockets. See Eric Schmitt, “Aircraft Carrier May Give Way to Missile Ship,” New York Times (5 September 1995), p. 1. Early in 1995, after much internal resistance, the Navy successfully fired an ATACMS missile from a Marine amphibious assault ship. See John Robinson, “Navy Weighs Next Generation “Power Projection” Ship, Defense Daily (10 May 1995), p. 202.
Indeed, Admiral Boorda himself has referred to the arsenal ship as “a modern equivalent to the battleship.” Schmitt, “Missile Ship,” p. 1.
The description of the arsenal ship is based on initial Navy conceptions. Recently the Navy signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) to proceed jointly with the arsenal ship concept. Key features include 500 vertical launch systems, CEC linkage, a crew not to exceed 50, and a low-observable design. Author’s discussions with Navy program officials and John Robinson, “Navy, DARPA Ink Agreement for Arsenal Ship,” Defense Daily (21 March 1996), p. 429.
Dale Eisman, “Arsenal Ship Wouldn’t Replace Carriers,” The Virginia Pilot (11 September 1995), p. 8; and Robert Holzer, “U.S. Navy Seeks Funding For Futuristic Arsenal Ship,” Defense News (21-27 August 1995), p. 1.
John Robinson, “Navy Taps CG-48 As Smart Ship; Arsenal Ship to Use DDG-51 Hull,” Defense Daily (20 December 1995), p. 400. The choice is seen as a “safe” one for the Navy in that it represents the minimum possible deviation from current design practices and logistical support.
Ronald H. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun (New York: Random House, 1985), pp. 486-87.
DoN, Trident Conversion: Stealthy, Robust, Multi-Mission Capability for the Littorals, no date; and Ernest Blazar, “Ships with Two Points of View,” Navy Times (4 September 1995), p. 22.
John Robinson, “Navy Takes First Serious Look At ‘Underwater Battleship’, Defense Daily (24 August 1995), p. 271. Navy studies could identify no technical reason why ATACMS could not be fired from a submarine. Rear Admiral Dennis Jones, Director of Submarine Warfare, has declared that ATACMS could be placed on future Navy submarines. Another Navy official has declared that “there are no physical or operational impediments precluding the incorporation of the submarine-launched ATACMS into the current weapons inventory.” “Submarine Role Studied for ATACMS,” Jane’s Defense Weekly (1 July 1995), p. 8.
DoN, Trident Conversion.
“Aegis Ships Head for Hawaiian CEC Experiments,” Navy News & Undersea Technology (8 January 1996), p. 1.
DoN, Arsenal Ship.
DoN, Trident Conversion.
Ibid., and DoN, Arsenal Ship. Admiral Boorda, in discussing the personnel requirements for the arsenal ship, declared, “Some people are saying less than 100. I am saying in the twenties.” John Robinson, “Navy’s Concept of an Arsenal Ship Taking Place,” Defense Daily (9 August 1995), p. 200.
Robinson, “Underwater Battleship,” p. 271.

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