Posted on 03/29/2005 7:42:12 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
As it shifts to purchasing smaller, lighter and more agile weapons systems, the Navy isn't losing its ability to counter attacks by major powers such as China, John Young, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said.
Some critics assert that the Navy is lowering its guard by purchasing fewer major weapons platforms such as destroyers and submarines.
But that isn't so, Young said in an interview. Currently the most senior Navy procurement policymaker, Young may become the second-highest procurement official for the entire Department of Defense.
Some shift in the Navy procurement strategy was dictated by the fact that the United States in the 21st century is confronting an intrinsically different sort of enemy, totally unlike the massed forces of the then-Soviet Union in the Cold War, Young said.
To adopt a correct posture for likely future conflicts, "we've got to have an emphasis on terrorism," Young said.
That doesn't mean, however, that Pentagon policymakers are forgetting the possibility of conflict with a major power, he said.
He and other leaders of the U.S. armed forces "continue to assess the global [threat] environment," including China, he said.
China in recent months has threatened Taiwan repeatedly, saying that if Taiwan declares its independence of China, or fails to move toward a peaceful "reunification" with the mainland regime, then China will invade Taiwan and force it to submit to Chinese rule.
Further, China—which long has deployed outmoded and ineffective weapons systems—has been purchasing or producing in its own factories a vast array of new hardware, including aircraft, ships and submarines.
The Navy is fully cognizant of this, and is ensuring that the United States retains its ability to counter any threat posed by major powers, Young said, citing several programs that clearly are capable of strategic strikes against peer competitors:
*Aircraft carriers. The last of the Nimitz Class of carriers, the George H.W. Bush, is nearing completion, and the Navy looks forward to beginning work on the next-generation CVN 21 carrier in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2008. This ship, to be made by the Northrop Grumman Corp. unit Newport News shipbuilding, would be a major investment by the Navy, by some estimates costing $13 billion to $14 billion.
*The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. This aircraft possesses radar-evading capabilities, supersonic speeds and advanced weapons systems needed to counter sophisticated hardware of leading military powers. The F-35 will be made in separate but highly similar versions for the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force by a team led by Lockheed Martin Corp., under the largest defense procurement contract in history, for $245 billion, not counting sales to allied nations.
*The Arleigh Burke DDG 51 Class of destroyers, succeeded by the next-generation DD(X) destroyers. DD(X)s will be funded starting in fiscal 2007. They may be built under a winner-take-all contract, either by Northrop Grumman Ship Systems, or perhaps by the General Dynamics Corp. unit Bath Iron Works.
These all are extremely sophisticated, advanced platforms capable of taking on daunting global powers, Young said. "Those tools are very useful," he said.
At the same time, he continued, the Navy and Marine Corps must take responsible steps in countering the emergent threats of a new millennium.
These threats include, he noted, insurgent-wielded mortars and improvised explosive devices (roadside mines) that have posed lethal hazards for U.S. soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The United States must "deal with the serious threat in Iraq," he said. U.S. forces will "choose to adapt," he said.
The Critics
Some critics have asserted that the Navy is procuring so few major weapons systems that it will become unable to counter a serious challenge by a major power.
For example, the American Shipbuilding Association (ASA), which includes General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman among its members, has decried the decline in the size of the Navy fleet to less than 290 vessels today, from a 1980s high of almost 600 craft. And the ASA has stated that the Navy plans to build so few ships that the fleet will shrink to fewer than 200 in coming years.
"Today the fleet numbers 288 ships," the ASA noted in an alert message to its members. "Though our naval fleet is the most technologically advanced power on the seas, the decreasing number of ships is placing the Navy in a vise." That vise will continue to tighten "as the number of ships steadily falls and deployments increase."
During the intense period of fighting in Iraq two years ago, some Navy ships posted tours of duty far longer than six months.
"While some may argue that the `new' enemies of today are not ones that can be challenged by the naval fleets of the `past,' a very ominous potential threat is building on the horizon," the ASA asserted.
"China has been officially modernizing its military for two-and-a-half decades. By the year 2010, China's submarine force will be nearly double the size of the U.S. submarine fleet."
More broadly, the "entire Chinese naval fleet is projected to surpass the size of the U.S. fleet by 2015," just a decade hence, ASA said. "In short, the Chinese military is specifically being configured to rival America's sea power," ASA asserted.
Similarly, members of Congress such as Reps. Jo Ann Davis (R-Va.,) and Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) have questioned whether the Navy of the future will have sufficient ships to counter multiple conflicts across the globe, especially if one of the hostilities involves facing Chinese forces in the Taiwan Strait, which at its widest is but 100 miles or so.
The Navy Replies
But Secretary of the Navy Gordon England says the Navy is aware, keenly so, of just what capabilities China and other nations are developing, and has devised an intelligent plan to counter those threats in moves that he has outlined to members of Congress in closed hearings.
"There are some areas that worry us," England said last week in a round table meeting with a few defense journalists. "You always worry about technologies" being developed by potential adversaries.
And, England said, it also is true that the United States armed forces, while possessing immense size, are slower to adapt to changing situations. Tiny adversaries such as rogue nations or terrorist groups may have very compact bureaucracies that are able to adapt and adopt new strategies swiftly, he noted.
But the Navy is aware of this, and always is poised to gather intelligence as to whether an enemy is surging ahead with a new technology, assessing whether "someone is using that faster than you are." And that awareness, he said, permits the American sea power to remain in the forefront of global military prowess.
Young concluded the interview by stating that the United States, even as it addresses the need to develop strategies and systems attuned to the threat environment of a new age, has lost none of its capability to face down world-class enemies.
As Young put it, "We're not losing sight of the big picture."
Bad link. Please post correct source.
Bad link. Please post correct source.
It's no more double-speak than the claim that China's sub force and overall navy will eclipse our own in size within a decade. While that may be true, the vast majority of that fleet is well obsolete - even the newer vessels China is pumping out. The fact remains that only a small core of each of China's armed force sectors will be truly 'modern' even by 2020.
That's not to discount the idea of a wave of lower-tech vessels overwhelming a smaller force of higher-tech vessels, but it's not as dire as some would proclaim.
I believe that regardless of all that, we should not be shrinking the fleet, and it should see a minimum floor of 300 ships. There's an array of geoPOLITICAL - indirectly strategic - reasons for not shrinking the fleet further, which seems be missed by the Pentagon planners.
The Navy's spokesmen will always support "the party line". That doesn't make it any less nonsense. We have the best Navy in the world. But that is totally meaningless if it is too small to handle the threat.
In WWII the U.S. Navy had over a million men and almost 1000 destroyers alone. It was structured to deal with two wars and one major regional conflict simultaneously.
Now our Navy has less than 300 warships and can barely deal with regional conflicts. And this is with naval supremacy, i.e. no naval threat.
Soon we will be down to a measly 200 warships while a regional asian superpower, China, is building her navy to challenge us and win. Gee, that sounds so familiar!
No. Our Navy, as with the rest of the Armed Forces, needs to expand. Sure they need to be lean, rapid, and flexible. That's not incompatible with numbers. But if we keep the current course, we'll become what Britian's Royal Navy is; excellent, but not a contender.
All the babble in the world can come out of the Pentagon. But it cannot disguise the fact we need size as well as quality. Now its a matter of national will.
A friend of mine is a naval reservist in his middle forties. He has been on active duty for about four years. He does that by requesting active duty cruises. He has had a heart attack and has an artificial hip.
He told me that not one of the vessels he served on was much over seventy five per cent manned. He does not paint a pretty picture of our naval ability.
There's a phrase you don't see every day. As opposed to "middle-brow enemies"?
Asymmetrical warfare is going to do to the rest of the Navy what Billy Mitchell did to battleships...example: USS Cole. The wars of the future will be fought by Air Force ground controllers manipulating Mach 7 drone aircraft and smart guided missiles, and using them to neutralize the "world-class opponent's" entire offensive capability in about fifteen minutes. Sounds like the Administration is well aware of this and working toward it, but has to keep up the appearance of a vigorous blue-water Navy for a while yet.
That's discouraging. The Navy has been working on a "minimum manning" concept to reduce workload and manpower requirements of ships at sea. It's way overdue. But it's only part of the solution.
How the Navy constructs, trains, maintains, and employs must be totally revamped to restore efficiency to the fleets. This would help immensely with the manpower situation. But would do little to expand the Navy.
The fundamental shift required of our Navy demands "thinking outside the box". Unfortunately, we historically implement those types of solutions only in time of war.
Numbers are one thing; total fleet tonnage is another. Even during the height of the Soviet challenge, the US Navy maintained a large advantage in tonnage. Larger vessels imply more capability. Coastal vessels tend to be small and single-purpose platforms.
Even so, I'm not saying that the Chinese challenge should be ignored.
"In WWII the U.S. Navy had over a million men and almost 1000 destroyers alone. It was structured to deal with two wars and one major regional conflict simultaneously."
"Now our Navy has less than 300 warships and can barely deal with regional conflicts. And this is with naval supremacy, i.e. no naval threat."
The U.S. Navy had 3.32 million men in service at the end of World War II, a bit more than the one million your post suggests. They also had around 738 destroyers out of 1,166 major surface and submarine combatants in August 1945.
As to your second assertion about our current Naval size, Right on! The US had 99 available carrier decks at height of its Naval power at the end of WWII. Sure only 19 of them were Fleet carriers, but they all contributed. Heck, even the Brits mustered 53 total (fleet and escort) carrier decks... Now we are arguing if maybe 10 carriers and reduced escorts will be enough (say a 250 ship Navy) in the future against China. Ah, but will all the capability expansion due to "network centric" warfare the combat effectiveness of the reduced number of ships will be so much greater than before that the reduced numbers will not matter... That is until to many ships are sunk in action, letting the U.S. Navy and the American public discover the algebraic fact that zero times a newfangled +250% effectiveness is still ZERO...
When WWII started in 1939 RN still was the strongest Navy in the world, also because it was the only Navy with a decent chance of deploying everywhere (which is a damned important asset for a great power navy). The RN could go straight to the Far East and fight there with a decent chance of success, but both USN and IJN were just strong regional navies. That changed very much for USN during WWII, but hadn’t yet in 1939.
I am not so sure they were the strongest Navy, they did have the most cruisers for their Empire before the War. I thought that the 5:5:3 ratio was to keep them in the game versus the US and Japan...
Type Pre-war Pre-war Aug 1945 Aug 1945
Royal Navy US Navy Royal Navy US Navy
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carriers, Fleet 5 7 5 19
Carriers, Fleet Light 2 2 8 9
Carriers, Escort 0 0 40* 71
Battleships/Battlecruisers 15 15 15 25
Cruisers, Heavy & Light 66 37 67 72
Destroyers/Destroyer Escorts 184 171 308** 738
Submarines, Fleet 60 112 162 232
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total Major Warships 332 344 605 1,166
Notes:
* = Includes 39 Lend-Lease Escort Carriers from USA
** = Includes 50 Lend-Lease Destroyers from USA
Source: Royal Navy and World War 2, Losses
Source: Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center, Prewar
Source: Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center, Postwar
Source: Hazegray Naval History
Source: US Department of Defense FY 2005 budget PDF file, Table 7-5, DoD Manpower - 1945, page (212/227)
The August 1945 US Navy totals do NOT include ship classes such as Mine Warfare, Patrol(Corvettes, PT boats, etc), Amphibious (LST, LSD, etc), Auxiliary (tankers, cargo etc) in any way. If all the ships in commission in August 1945 were listed the the US Navy would have an end strength of 6,768 ships. The largest Navy which has ever existed in the history of the world.
dvwjr
I especially liked your statement:
...Ah, but will all the capability expansion due to "network centric" warfare the combat effectiveness of the reduced number of ships will be so much greater than before that the reduced numbers will not matter... That is until too many ships are sunk in action, letting the U.S. Navy and the American public discover the algebraic fact that zero times a newfangled +250% effectiveness is still ZERO...
Well put!
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