Posted on 12/06/2002 3:36:49 PM PST by LSUfan
Recent developments in the Middle East have driven home two points that members of the Navy/Marine Corps team have known for decades: The U.S. needs more aircraft carriers and more Marines to man Amphibious Ready Groups.
This will be even more true in the future than it has been in the past.
The early stages of Operation Enduring Freedom were complicated by the refusal of several key Middle East "allies" to allow U.S. forces to stage out of U.S. facilities within their borders.
The key example has been Saudi Arabia. Not only did Saudi Arabia not allow U.S. aircraft to strike Afghanistan during Enduring Freedom, they have, until very recently, steadfastly refused us basing rights in any campaign to rid the world and the region of Saddam Hussein's regime and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Saudi Arabia has been anything but a reliable ally, however, even well-meaning allies in the region are subject to internal and external pressures that could limit American military flexibility in a variety of military operations. In Muslim and Arab nations in particular, America is often unpopular among the masses and regimes in the area are often in untenable positions. The Saudi regime is particularly unstable with an unhappy populous and Wahabbi Jihadists waiting in the wings--even within the royal family.
Now we find that even our NATO ally Turkey is waffling on the use of Turkish soil to go after Iraq, sending mixed signals over whether to allow U.S. aircraft to fly from Turkish bases and refusing outright to allow U.S. ground forces to invade Iraq through Turkey.
The problem is nothing new. In April of 1986, France refused to allow U.S. F-111s to fly from England over France to raid Libya in response to a terrorist attack.
Many of these problems will be ironed out...this time. But they make prior planning very difficult. How can a U.S. commander plan operations not knowing for sure where his forces can stage and fly from? And in future operations necessitated by the war on terrorism or other nations with weapons of mass destruction in the region (notably Iran), who knows what allied support we would have?
Moreover, outside the region, there are other hot spots that could present similar problems: the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan strait to name two. Would Japan and South Korea allow U.S. aircraft to raid Kim Jong il's nuclear complexes? If we had to defend Taiwan, where would we stage from?
All of this points in one direction. In order to defend our own national security, we must have the capability to bring powerful forces to bear which are independent of allies often fettered by domestic political considerations, weakness and outright fear.
The most flexible and realistic means are naval forces: the Navy-Marine Corps team. The key forces in that team are the Carrier Battle Groups (CVBGs) and Amphibious Ready Groups (ARGs).
Carrier battle groups are obviously task forces centered around aircraft carriers. They usually include one carrier and 4 to 5 cruisers, destroyers and frigates as escorts--along with a nuclear powered submarine.
Amphibious Ready Groups are task forces containing amphibious transport vessels such as LHDs, LHAs, LPDs and LSDs. These ARGs usually consist of one LHA or LHD accompanied by a pair of LSDs or LPDs. Embarked on board is a Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) (MEU(SOC)). That unit is a Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) consisting of a reinforced rifle battalion with armor, artillery, helicopter and fixed wing aviation support. It consists of about 2,000 Marines. Larger MAGTFs are the Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) and the Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF). These units are unique in the world in that they are self-contained warfighting units with everything needed--including the beans, bullets and band-aids to keep fighting for at least 30 days.
These forces can steam anywhere that we choose in international waters, provide a visible deterent force, and strike quickly to defend American lives and security around the world. They are America's 911 force. They are not designed to fight extended, fixed-piece campaigns. They are strike forces designed to "kick in the door" or punish an adversary and get out. In other words, they are exactly what we need in today's world: flexible forces unfettered by allied intransigence with enough firepower and staying power to take on any foe short of a superpower confrontation.
The problem is this: we don't have enough CVBGs or ARGs any more. And the ones we have are overused and overworked.
Today we have 12 carriers in service, with as many as 3 or 4 in long-term maintenance or overhaul at any point in time. Twelve simply is not enough.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, the Navy created a program called SLEP (Service Life Extension Program). This program was a modernization program that was designed to extend the service life of each aircraft carrier from 30 to 45 years. Had the Navy been allowed to follow through with that program, we would have at our disposal, right now, as many as 17 aircraft carriers. (Of course we would not have the airplanes or personnel that make aircraft carriers what they are, but that is a different subject.)
What happened to the aircraft carriers? Bill Clinton happened.
The USS Forrestal went through a SLEP and was decommissioned after only 38 years of service. The USS Saratoga went through a SLEP and was decommissioned after 38 years of service. Neither ship is even available for recommissioning any more.
The USS Ranger went through a SLEP and was decommissioned after 36 years of service. The USS Independence lasted 39 years.
Not one of these ships stayed in service for the 45 years they were designed to last simply because the Clinton administration was intent on cutting the military. But it gets worse.
The USS America was decommissioned after only 31 years of service and never even went through the SLEP program. Her sisters USS Kitty Hawk and USS Constellation, both now headed to the Persian Gulf will never go through a SLEP and will be decommissioned soon---after a SLEP in the early 1990s--with nearly the full 45 years service.
We need more aircraft carriers. As part of his defense build-up, President Bush needs to establish a plan to increase America's carrier might. The same goes for the ships and equipment of the Amphibious Ready Groups.
In the early stages of Enduring Freedom, it was carrier based aircraft that provided almost all of the air support. And when U.S. ground forces deployed into Afghanistan, they were led by a Marine Expeditionary Unit which was deployed inland from the sea--further inland in fact that any Marine unit in history.
In the future, we will need these forces more and more to bring the war home to the Jihadists in places like Iran and the Bekaa Valley and to prevent rogue regimes such as those in Iran and Libya from obtaining or using weapons of mass destruction. Without a properly funded and equipped Navy-Marine Corps team, the issue will be in doubt.
The big problem with our manpower now is that we need to reassign a lot of it, not so much that we need more. The Army's divisions in Germany should be moved. I'd suggest some to Northern Poland, near the port of Gdansk (for quicker redeployment). The rest farther south near Mediterranean or Black Sea ports -- Romania or Bulgaria perhaps? Italy would be ideal for deployment (there was a geographical reason for the Roman Empire), but not for training if it's a mechanized unit.
The battalion in the Sinai as well as the forces in the former Yugoslavia need to be redeployed. We also need to establish permanent bases in Iraq after this fight. From there, a US armored force could protect and/or conquer the oil fields of the entire region. This might be a better spot for some of those redeployed German-based units. Think about it, instead of months of redeployment, the US could simply roll out the battalion on alert at an Iraqi base and seize Saudi oil fields in under a day.
The division in Hawaii seems misplaced also. It's not a great area for training, it might just be better to forward deploy them to Guam or Korea or some other place in East Asia.
Then there's the huge amount of manpower tied up in all the services in various support functions.
I'll never forget seeing the Ranger as it left the former Long Beach Navy yard, and was towed north to meet its fate.
I was flying a STOL capable C150/180 towing a banner off the beach. There was this nice 10-15 knot wind the carrier was being towed into about 5 miles offshore. I flew out there, banner behind the plane and all, just to see it.
It was REAL tempting to ditch the banner and do a quick touchdown on the thing. But there were a couple of containers in the middle of the deck, probably to discurage just such a thing.
And it'd probably be the last airplane I ever flew after the feds took my license.
Oh, well.
Yeah, it was my bad.
It was Cheney/Powell that initiated the hardware downsizing/transformation under Papa Bush.
Prior to 9/11, Rummy was preoccupied with base closings and Star Wars.
Rumsfeld talks up 'son of star wars'
Bush's Plans for the Pentagon Include Base Closings and Money for Missile Defenses
The "two war" strategy that has underpinned U.S. military planning for the past decade has outlived its usefulness, leaving the United States increasingly vulnerable to emerging threats like ballistic missiles and cyberattack, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told Congress.
Rumsfeld Calls U.S. Defense Strategy Out of Date
(Posted on 06/23/2001)
"erratic"???
What do you mean "erratic"???
One problem with the "two war" strategy is that we've never been willing to pay for the forces that would actually be required to fight two major wars at once. The other problem is that the two-war strategy actually boiled down to strategy and forces to fight two very particular wars (Iraq and Korea), while the real-world crisis responses we did were all over the damn place. Some of our initial fumbling in Afghanistan was due to the mismatch of forces and strategy this caused.
The thing would make the Typhoon class look pretty small...
Which is why Rummy doesn't want more carriers and subs.
He wants to spend the money on the high-tech Nintendo stuff instead.
I KNOW that Poopster.
It's what I said to begin with.
You're the one who seems to be getting hyper simply because I
forgot it was Cheney who started the shebang under Papa Bush.
A hull that big means a lot of power to push it. That means lots of cavitation and hull flow noises.
Very large underwater structures are going to be problematic at best--the steel strong enough to get significant depth is not easily welded, and even slightly defective welds would have to be redone.
If you opt for staying shallow, then you have a problem with the Bernouilli hump and Kelvin wakes--basically, signatures that, for a sub that big, can be detected by maritime patrol aircraft and/or space assets.
That's what I mean.
In the meanwhile, have a great time with your daily "layoffs - economy swirling further into the dumper" cut and pastes.
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