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NPS-OR-09-002-PR

NAVALPOSTGRADUATE

SCHOOL

MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA

The New Navy Fighting Machine: A Study of theConnections Between Contemporary Policy, Strategy,Sea Power, Naval Operations, and the Composition of the

United States Fleet

by

Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., CAPT, USN (Ret.)Principal Investigator

August 2009

Distribution authorized to U.S. Government agencies only (administrative oroperational use) (August 2009). Other requests for this document shall be referred

to either the Naval Postgraduate School or the Office of Net Assessment, OSD.

Prepared for: Director of Net AssessmentOffice of the Secretary of Defense

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NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOLMONTEREY, CA 93943-5001

Daniel T. Oliver Leonard A. Ferrari

Executive Vice President andPresident Provost

This report was prepared for and funded by Director of Net Assessment, Office of theSecretary of Defense.

Distribution authorized to U.S. Government agencies only (administrative or operationaluse) (August 2009). Other requests for this document shall be referred to either the NavalPostgraduate School or the Office of Net Assessment, OSD.

Naval Postgraduate Contributors to this report are:

Jeffrey Kline, CAPT, USN (Ret.)Captain Douglas Otte, USNCharles Calvano, CAPT, USN (Ret.)Professor Daniel Nussbaum

Professor Christopher TwomeyProfessor Gary LangfordCommander Douglas Burton, USNRaymond Franck, BG, USAF (Ret.)

This report was prepared by:

WAYNE P. HUGHES, JR.,CAPT, USN (Ret.)Professor of Operations Research andPrincipal Investigator

Reviewed by:

R. KEVIN WOODAssociate Chairman for Research

Department of Operations Research Released by:

ROBERT F. DELL KARL VAN BIBBERChairmanDepartment of Operations Research

Vice President andDean of Research

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This is a study sponsored by the Secretary of Defenses Office of Net Assessmentin which nine members of the Naval Postgraduate School faculty attempt to reflect theintention of the three Sea Service Chiefs A Cooperative Strategy for 21st CenturySeapower by building an illustrative fleet on paper. The fleets compositiondemonstrates the new strategys viability within an affordable SCN budget. The study

concludes with 12 actions that will begin, responsibly and experimentally, to establish thefoundation on which to create a twenty-first century Navy that reflects the geopoliticalenvironment and American national goals.

Wayne P. Hughes, Jr.on behalf of the Office of Net Assessment, OSD

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. NAVY FUNCTIONS TO GUIDE FLEET CONFIGURATION.............................1

II. COIN OF THE REALM: COSTING CONSIDERATIONS.................................11

III. FORCES FOR GREEN WATER THEATER SECURITY AND COASTALCOMBAT OPERATIONS (248 VESSELS FOR 10% OF SCN, OR$1.5B/YEAR) ..............................................................................................................17TABLE 1. THE GREEN WATER FLEET COMPONENT ............................24

IV. SEABASED AIR OPERATIONS WITH REMARKS ABOUT THEFUTURE OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES (16 SHIPS, FOR SCN OF$2B/YR).......................................................................................................................25

V. SUBMARINE OFFENSIVE AND DEFENSIVE OPERATIONS (80 BOATS,FOR SCN OF $5B/YR)..............................................................................................35

VI. AMPHIBIOUS LIFT, DELIVERY, AND SUSTAINMENT OF GROUNDFORCES OVERSEAS (125 VESSELS, FOR SCN OF $1.0B/YEAR PLUS 30CLF SHIPS FOR $0.33B/YEAR) .............................................................................39

VII. SURFACE COMBATANTS AND THEIR OPERATIONS (140 FIGHTINGSHIPS FOR $3.3B/YEAR OF SCN, PLUS TWO COMMAND SHIPS AND18 OTHER AUXILIARIES FOR $0.2B/YEAR) ....................................................45TABLE 2. THE BLUE WATER FLEET COMPONENT ...............................50

VIII. NUCLEAR WAR DETERRENCE (18 VESSELS, FOR SCN OF$1.5B/YEAR) ..............................................................................................................51TABLE 3. STRATEGIC DETERRENCE FLEET COMPONENT................52

IX. RECAPITULATION.................................................................................................53

X. CONCLUSIONS AND INITIAL ACTIONS ..........................................................57

APPENDIX.............................................................................................................................65

INITIAL DISTRIBUTION LIST.........................................................................................67

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This study is founded on the belief that major changes in U.S. fleet compositionwill better reflect the global circumstances today and be more responsive to the goals of

the Secretary of Defense, the Seapower Strategy developed by the three maritime servicechiefs, and knowledgeable members of the Congressional Armed Services committees.

The New Navy Fighting Machine promotes a wider mix of ships, in a morenumerous fleet, with better-focused capabilities, to meet a range of scenarios in green andblue water environments. The new fighting machine does this within an affordable SCN(Ship Construction Navy) budget ceiling, because the U.S. defense budget alreadydominates defense spending in the rest of the world.

The fleets new component is a green water force of small vessels to fulfill thethree sea service chiefs maritime strategy of collaboration and support of theater securityoperations now manifested in Navy global fleet stations. The green water force alsoincludes coastal combat forces, and additional reconnaissance for the land and sea side of

a littoral. These capabilities are achieved with 10% of the SCN budget.Although our green water fleet of about 240 vessels is more attuned to the needs

of the nation than anything else we have seen, the composition can be no more than asupposition, because of the intricacy of the operations described herein. For example, thegreen water component also includes an additional 400 affordable and easy-to-operateinshore patrol craft to help build up the capabilities of some countries without navies orcoast guards.

We do not believe the present U.S. Navy organization will achieve a green waterforce, and so our most important recommendation is to create a new command with theauthority to foster professionalism in coastal operations similar to that by which the Navydeveloped naval aviation in the 1920s and 1930s.

A ceiling of 10% of the budget is imposed on ships for strategic deterrence,namely SSBNs carrying offensive weapons, and surface missile ships to defend againstenemy threats. The main conclusion is that within this budget the numbers will be small,but in a risk-versus-reward context, we regard 10% as a proper ceiling for the Navycomponent of what is, in fact, a national strategic force.

The remaining 80% of the SCN budget sustains a fleet devoted to blue wateroperations. Defense planning since the fall of the Soviet Union has taken sea control toomuch for granted, so we emphasize the forces necessary to maintain maritime superiority.The blue water fleet is the essential foundation of American sea powers three greatrewards: first, the nations ability to project power and influence from the seas; second,the flawless, loss-free delivery of forces for every large or small land engagement

overseas since World War II; and third, U.S. Navy popularity among all friendly nationsof the world as their guarantor of safe sea lanes for trade and prosperity.

To give coherence to the blue water fleet, we focus on the manifest interest ofChina in maritime affairs, and its growing blue water navy. In addition, we anticipateformidable Chinese sea-denial capabilities that will threaten to reduce Americaninfluence in East Asia. For Chinaor any other prospective continental peerwecombine a maritime strategy with a different emphasis in the blue water fleet, in order to

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itions.

retain American influence over China and reassure our friends and allies in East andSouth Asia.

We also show, in rough outline, that the new fighting machine is better suited thanthe present projection-heavy 313-ship1 Navy to support regional conflicts and, if itshould become necessary, to constrain Russian amb

Submarines in greater numbers are central to the maritime strategy, but within aconstrained budget the larger force cannot be exclusively nuclear powered. We find thatdiesel submarines with air-independent propulsion not only allow twice as manysubmarines, but they also nicely complement the SSNs in the critical scenario.

Because the United States has not conducted an opposed amphibious landing innearly 60 years, the new fighting machine emphasizes amphibious lift rather thanamphibious assault. We stress the unparalleled success of national sealift in timelydelivery of ground forces where needed, when needed, and for as long as needed. It is anational treasure that has received too little attention. We assiduously maintain this strongsealift component in the new fighting machine.

The study does not eliminate high-end warships, the individual capabilities of

which are unmatched by any other nation in the world. To do so would end Americasmaritime superiority. On the other hand, a Navy of only large, multibillion dollarwarships will result in a smaller and smaller force that cannot fulfill its roles around theworld. Some of those roles, maritime interdiction operations and coastal patrol forexample, can be handled by smaller ships in greater numbers.

* * * * * *

There is a danger, however, that the proposed changes in fleet composition maydistract attention from other, equally important conclusions.

The smaller, more distributable ships can free the inevitably fewerhigh-end warships for more demanding operations. As an illustration, tosustain the total strength of seabased air power for reconnaissance, strike,and sustainment of ground operations, we have recommended a force ofsix or eight CVNs, supplemented by ten small carriers for blue wateroperations and eight more for green water operations. We believe the timehas come to build smaller carriers to supplement the big decks, for theatersecurity and maritime interdiction operations. The new F-35B STOVL(Short Takeoff Vertical Landing) aircraft and the rapidly expandingapplications of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) make this possible.

The new fighting machine is uniquely appropriate to respond to hybridwarsthose in which we must defeat a states conventional forces when

the state also sponsors or permits irregular warfare withasymmetric threats.

Large, multipurpose warships are not, as is frequently argued, moreflexible and adaptable than smaller, more focused warships. Werepeatedly found cases in which single purpose warships are superior in

1 See the Appendix for a tabulation of the Navy plan for a fleet of 313 vessels.

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A NEW NAVY FIGHTING MACHINE

Imagine now a strategical system . . . so that the navy will resemble a vast and

efficient organism, all parts leagued together by common understanding and a common

purpose; mutually dependent, mutually assisting, sympathetically obedient to thecontrolling mind that directs them toward the end in view.

Bradley A. Fiske2

In the spring of 1916, Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske published The Navy as aFighting Machine. The books strengths lay in defining what we would today call asystem of systems for battlewell trained and doctrinally united.

Fiske championed coherent integration of national policy, military strategy, andoperations; the tactics to win battles; and the technologies to build and operate a fightingmachine in which all parts fit together.

He championed the complementary roles of the machine and the people to operate

the machinery.He championed professionalism through organization and training under

coherent leadership.These are not remarkable goals, but the achievement is not easy, nor is it easy for

even our most perceptive leaders to know how well they have been achieved. Policymakers set national goals without sufficient regard for attainability. Strategists build onthe policy with military plans that lead to requirements with insufficient regard forwhether the forces will be funded. Logisticians and tacticians are a brake on unrealisticstrategic plans, but they are not always consulted. Inventors who know how to exploittransformational technology ignore whether the ships, aircraft, and sensors they arepromoting will fit into the military strategy at an affordable cost.

Fiske is a breath of fresh air because he had seen these failures at first hand. ButFiske is also a good example because of his own blind spots, illustrating that no one candesign a navy that is right in all respects in the event of war. In the year 1916, on the veryeve of American entry into World War I, German U-boats were already making theirpresence felt. In less than a year, Imperial Germany would embark on unrestrictedsubmarine attacks as a potential war-breaker. Submarines, in their own way, had becomeas significant as the German High Seas Fleet, which fought only one potentially decisivebattle against the British Grand Fleet, at Jutland in May 1916. Though Fiske missed theU-boat War, so did Corbett and Mahan, and for a long time the British Admiralty knewnot what to do about it evenas submarine success was unfolding in front of their eyes.

Fiske and Corbett were better in foreseeing the important marriage of aircraft with

wireless communications. They both correctly predicted the end of surface raiders longbefore the less astute Nazi German Navy built, employed, and quickly lost surface shipslike the Graf Spee andBismarckwhen they were employed as open ocean raiders early inWorld War II.

2 Bradley A. Fiske, The Navy as a Fighting Machine (New York: Scribners, 1916); reprint (Annapolis,MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988), 220.

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Fiske and his book are our inspiration for taking a whole-navy approachnotbecause we will design a new fighting machine perfectly, but because no one can. Wehope the New Navy Fighting Machine will be useful in stimulating the United StatesNavy, to look beyond often expensive marginal improvements to a Fleet well suited forthe past, but one that will be less effective than an imperfect design we believe is better

attuned to the twenty-first century.

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I. NAVY FUNCTIONS TO GUIDE FLEET CONFIGURATION

With one exception, none of the recent attempts to design U.S. navies foralternative futures is anything more than a reshuffle of the same deck of cardsa change

in the mix of existing ship types. The exception was done at the National DefenseUniversity for the Office of Force Transformation and included new ship designs. 3 It is abold attempt at a new fighting machine, failing only by not heeding Fiskes admonition torelate the components of the fighting machine to contemporary world events. Here wepropose alternative ship designs (and, to an extent, impute aircraft and sensor designs)consistent with national goals, and a maritime strategy to accommodate the goals, threats,and responses indicated for the twenty-first century. We start by noting the changes ofemphasis among the four functions of all navies that have taken place between 1990 and2010 for the United States.4

A. ON THE SEAS

1. Function (1): Safeguard the Movement of Goods and Services at Sea

Growing in importance because safe delivery of shipping and surface navyoperations in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean can no longer be taken for granted, asit has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

2. Function (2): Deny Enemy Movement

Also growing in importance. With the expansion of the PLA (Peoples LiberationArmy) Navy, and Chinas growing merchant fleet for trade and oil, coal, and natural gas

imports, sea denial is becoming harder to achieve, but has prospectively greater rewards.

B. FROM THE SEAS

1. Function (3): Deliver Goods and Services from the Seas

Where the U.S. Navys emphasis has been for the past 20 years, in the form ofmassive delivery of combat power in major regional conflicts. The new emphasis addsnoncombat operations, counterterrorism, and fighting irregular wars that are individuallyless costly, but are more widespread and frequent than regional conflicts.

3 Stuart E. Johnson and Arthur K. Cebrowski, Alternative Fleet Architecture Design (Washington,D.C.: Center for Technology and National Security Policy, NDU, August 2005).

4 Discussed more thoroughly in Hughes, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, Naval Institute Press,1999, pp. 9-11. Some readers may be more comfortable with the American Navys missions that wereconceived in the 1970s. The missions are: Peacetime Presence, Strategic Deterrence, Sea Control, andPower Projection.

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tructed.

2. Function (4): Prevent Enemy Delivery to Our Shores

The need of this function was assumed away upon the collapse of theSoviet Union. Now the existing terrorist threat and the future consequences of ballisticand cruise missile proliferation both demand attention to secure the homeland.

These changes are also in the context of the two great corollaries to thefour functions:

First, the seat of purpose of naval operations is on land, where peoplelive. The importance to the U.S. Navy lies in a shift to different lands andpeoplesfrom the Gulf States and North Korea to both anticipated andunforeseeable sites of interstate war, irregular warfare, andtheater security.

Second, military operations on land are about ownership, but at seathey are about links. The United States has never changed its viewtoward ownership in the past two decades. American military operationsoverseas have not been to possess the lands. We have had complexmotives, but none have been conquest. On the other hand, at sea there isan increasing regard for ownership of oceans and ocean resources amongthe nations, which complicates our efforts to preserve freedom of the seasfor all friendly states.

C. A FOUNDATION OF NATIONAL POLICY AND MARITIMESTRATEGY

In 2007, theNaval War College Review published a presentation Hughes gave at

the Center for Naval Analyses entitled A Bimodal Force for a National MaritimeStrategy.5 It reflected the above changes of emphasis by outlining a substantiallydifferent American Navy, the purposes of which were, first, to influence China at one endof the conflict spectrum, and second, to supportsmall wars on the ground and conductmaritime constabulary operations6 in many places around the world. We willdemonstrate that this more focused Navy is the most our national defense budget is likelyto support. Desirable forces to meet all requirements can and should be stated forcomparison, but they cannot be purchased. The paper explicitly asserts that the suitabilityof this bimodal force for wars in the middlesubstantial conflicts of the nature of Iraqand Afghanistanmust be tested for specific future possibilities, but only after thebimodal force had been designed. We believe the article was well received, but thefighting machine it implies had yet to be cons

Almost simultaneously, the three Sea Service Chiefs published A CooperativeStrategy for Twenty-first Century Seapower. Criticisms of it took two forms. First, theforces that would fulfill the strategy were unspecified, and so it was too vague to evaluatefor affordability and implementability. Second, the strategy described was perhaps 80%

5 Spring 2007.

6 Roughly, maritime interdiction.

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devoted to worldwide constabulary and humanitarian operations or the support ofirregular combat operations on the ground. This aroused fears that the Sea Service Chiefsmight be expressing a Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps that would be constructed inproportion to the content of the strategy. No one could appraise the strategy until theforces to implement it were specified.

Our study conjectures the ships of such a new fighting fleet, in numbers,construction costs, and service lifetimes, in sufficient detail so that the other components,including aircraft, sensor systems, command and control networks, and manning, can beinferred and (not without considerable additional effort) be added to arrive at a completeAmerican Navy. Concisely put, our new fighting machine introduces a diverse,numerous, but relatively inexpensive inshore component for frequent theater security andcoastal combat operations, while at the same time creating a more distributed andaffordable fleet for blue water maritime security in the worlds oceans. It is affordablebecause it puts less emphasis on fighting large regional wars than in the past two decades.

Except in one important regard, organizational changes are suppressed in thebelief that leadership problems are usually hindered, rather than helped, by such

restructuring.At the outset, Hughes premised that no more than 20% of the shipbuilding budget(and hence, in crude terms, the entire Navy budget) should be devoted to conflicts at thesmall wars end of the spectrum, despite the frequency of them. Setting aside at most10% for offensive and defensive strategic deterrence, 70% of the SCN (Ship ConstructionNavy) budget remained to influence China as the most important emerging peer, insofaras the Navy is concerned. The final design herein devotes 80% of SCN to the sea control(China-influencing) component because we believe the small wars component can besatisfied with 10% of the shipbuilding budget.

1. Influencing China: Blue Water Operations

The policy for China is to keep the competition peaceful, while maintaining thecapability to influence her and our friends in the region with a visible maritimeadvantage. The same navy must be capable of supporting national policies that shiftbetween cooperation, competition, and confrontation under different administrations.7Chinas antiaccess and sea denial capability against American carriers and other surfacewarships is pushing our surface forces ever farther to seaward. Distances of over 500miles are often mentioned. At the same time, the threat of striking the Chinese mainland

7 For a recent nuanced discussion in policy terms that espouses a better foundation for U.S. strategytoward China, see Michael J. Green, Asia in the Debate on American Grand Strategy,Naval War CollegeReview,Winter 2009. For example, Green writes . . . surveying the big strategic books on foreign policy

that have come out this year . . . it is difficult to discern a clear consensus on strategy for managing order inEast Asia. . . . Some authors argue that the world has moved beyond traditional balance-of-powerconsiderations altogether; others worry that rivalry in Asia means the United States must avoid provocativeactions toward China; and yet others see the emergence of a new bipolar competition with China thatrequires more active balancing. (p. 17) Later, Green correctly observes Asia is a maritime theater, and theU.S. Navy is poised at the cutting edge of each of most of that regions challenges and opportunities.(p. 26) We are skeptical of the continuity of American policy toward China and so believe the Navyschallengeas the critical U.S. force componentis a fleet with which to influence China and herneighbors positively under predictably varying policies.

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seems less and less valuable as a way to influence affairs in East Asia. We take as thestarting point of a better strategy a grim understanding that a Sino-American war, oncestarted, will last a long time, with economically disastrous consequences. Policydocuments often describe the roles of the U.S. armed forces as fostering peacefulrelationships, but if peace fails, prevailing with military force. A war to prevail over

China is likely to take the single-minded dedication of every ship, aircraft, and sensor inthe armed forces and, in addition, national mobilization the likes of which have not beenseen since World War II.8

Fortunately, thinking through an effective and affordable military strategy toinfluence China can proceed in open forum, because the outcome must be clearlyunderstood by all parties in East Asia, and indeed throughout the world. We conceive theconstraints on the strategy to be the following:

The United States will not invade China under any circumstances. Sinceboth states believe this, American influence must be one that will exploitour maritime advantage and neutralize their continental advantage. It must

show that a war of any scale must evidently be more disadvantageous toChina than to us and our allies.

We will not conduct a first strike on Chinese territory, no matter howoperationally attractive, because the risk of escalation is too great and alsoin order to marshal world opinion on our side. Japan and India areindispensible allies; South Korea, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore arevital; and a friendly or neutral Russia, Indonesia, and the Philippines aredesirable.

American influence cannot come from threatening the first use of nuclearweapons. While there are debates about the efficacy of nuclear coercion,we reject all arguments that favor first use. The robust maritime

capabilities of the new fighting machine are a better way to enhanceAmerican influence in China.9

8 It is instructive read a pithy article by Michael Vlahos, Wargaming: Enforcer of Strategic Realism,1919-1942 in the Naval War College Review 1987. He shows, as does Edward S. Miller at much greaterlength in his classic War Plan Orange: the U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945, that Navy and Armyplanners naively thought in the early 1920s it would be a simple matter to sail the Fleet to the Philippinesand repulse any invasion by Japan. War gaming at the Naval War College taught us thatas a resultprimarily of logistical demandsthe Philippines would fall before we arrived, and retaking them wouldrequire the mobilization of the Army followed by a war of many casualties in ships and soldiers. By themid-1930s, the fruits of over 100 games told us that the American public would not be content withthrowing the Japanese out of the Philippines. Foreshadowing President Roosevelts announced policy ofunconditional surrender, a total war and the utter destruction of the Japanese fighting machine would be

the outcome. Remembering Pearl Harbor, it is a similar total war with China that the first homeland attacksare likely to engender.

9 For a range of views on adversary perceptions of coercion by threatening nuclear attack, seeA. Goldstein, Deterrence and Security in the 21st Century: China, Britain, France, and the EnduringLegacy of the Nuclear Revolution,Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2000; and K. B. Paine, TheGreat American Gamble: Deterrence Theory and Practice from the Cold War to the Twenty-first Century ,Fairfax, VA, National Institute Press, 2008. That Chinas views toward nuclear weapons may be in fluxonly enhances the comparative advantages of the new fighting machine strategy described herein.

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Therefore, the seven components of the strategy ought to be:

Forward offense with many submarines, to sink Chinese warships andmerchant ships and lay mines near Chinese ports.

Distant maritime interdiction operations with aerial reconnaissance andsurface patrol craft, covered by fleet forces.

Affordable numbers of small, lethal inshore combatants capable ofdemonstrating commitment to defend, alternatively, Taiwan, South Korea,the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, or Malaysia.

The commitment includes protection of offshore energy and mineralresources (e.g., in the Spratly Islands and East China Sea).

Satellites and long-range UAVs for scouting and USAF long-rangebombers held ready for retaliatory strikes against China proper if the warthreatens to escalate.

Land-based fighter-attack aircraft based forward in Okinawa,South Korea, and Japan. Rather than being seen as held at risk of Chinese

air and missile attacks, these fixed airfields will serve as a war warning,because if Beijing rejects our war at sea strategy, then it must take outthese threats, and we will know China has chosen to expand the war.10

Hold open the option of putting a large number (say, twenty) of new,small, lethal American coastal combatants in survivable locations on theTaiwan coast. (Thirty are included in the green water component of thenew fighting machine.) This is less risky than deploying a high-valueCVN task force near Taiwan to demonstrate American commitment toresist an invasion, should we chose to do so.

After the types and numbers of the blue water navy have been developed in

Chapters IV through VIIto influence China and control its shipping lanes in the westernPacific and Indian Oceans, in Chapter IX we will demonstrate that the new fightingmachine will also be suitable to serve as a sea control force in other blue waters andprotect the freedom of the seas for all the world.

The blue water navy will take 80% of the SCN budget.

2. Theater Security and Coastal Combat in Green Water Operations

The other end of the bimodal spectrum of conflict is well described by theSecretary of Defense, the Sea Service Chiefs, and Navy documents. The shift underway

10 A war at sea strategy against the Soviet Union was explored by Secretary of the Navy Paul Nitze

in the 1960s. It was unsuitable because the Soviet Union then was more emphatically a continental powerthan modern China. The Soviets intended to spread communism internationally, but they did not haveenough trade to matter. On the other hand, the Atlantic Ocean was critical to Western prosperity and theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization. A Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute paperpublished in the Spring 2008NWCReview was unenthusiastic about a blockade of China, because it wouldbe slow acting and could not prevent logistics by land. The authors, Gabriel B. Collins andWilliam S. Murray, did not think a blockade was a suitable American strategy against China because theycould not envision a long war. Yet the possibility and avoidance of the destruction of her shipping isfundamental in Chinas threat perception and many recent actions.

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in strategic thinking is with the understanding that the projection-heavy Navy, designedto support two Major Theater Wars (now Major Combat Operations) in the 1990s, can beimproved upon to enhance inshore operations. These operations and forces are the subjectofChapter III, and take two forms:

a. Presence for Peacekeeping and Stability in the Littorals

Such operations are manifested by a Navy global maritime posture in whatare called Phase 0 operations. For the first time, humanitarian relief operations to whichthe Navy has contributed in the past are now explicitly included. Such peaceful activitiescan be anywhere U.S. interests make them worthwhile, but they cannot and need not beeverywhere at once. The numbers and types of vessels for theater security herein are aguess, in part because requirements must first be asserted by the combatant commandersfor their areas of responsibility, and second because the stated requirements must betempered by fiscal awareness.

b. Coastal Combat

Fighting may arise during constabulary operations. More likely and deadlywill be when green water forces are called on to punch a secure path through shallow,cluttered, and dangerous inshore water for land operations carried out by the Army,Marine Corps, and Special Forces. The blue and green components operating togetherguarantee safe access, and the green water component supports the operations ashoreexplicitly with single-minded naval gunfire ships, along with air surveillance and strikesfrom small aircraft carriers (CVLs). Emphasis in the new fighting machine is on theflexibility of the green water component to scale to the intensity and duration of theoperation.11 The Navy capability is, in principle, suited for anywhere in the world. Butthe number and scale of land operations is not a Navy choice, and it must be able to

deliver and sustain whatever land operations are undertaken by the President asCommander-in-Chief.

The green water fleet component must clear mines, take out the smallcombatant threat, and deal with coastal submarines. In some of these operations, theNavy will continue to operate safely from its ocean sanctuaryconditions we had cometo take for grantedbut in others, prospective enemies can be expected to developantiaccess capabilities in which the green fleet will take the casualties so that the bluefleet does not.

This paper does not refer to Navy responsibilities for brown water(riverine) operations because we believe the Marine Corps should resume the mission.Marines are best trained for and attuned to coordinated air, ground, river, and logistical

operations for irregular warfare and constabulary activities on the land. As theMarine Corps shifts emphasis from amphibious assault and forcible entry toward landwarfare of the kind in which its value is proven, the riverine mission is natural.

We believe the Coast Guard should be the supported service for allhomeland coastal defense and the Navy the supported service for all overseas port and

11 A major lesson of the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq is the difficulty of bringing events to aconclusion. Even Desert Shield/Desert Storm when our objectives were met was an inconclusive operation.

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coastal defense. Joint operations of either service to support the other in a crisis responseis natural, once the Navy has developed sufficient green water competency to share indevelopment of doctrinal collaboration.

A sufficient green water force need take only 10% of the SCN budget.

3. Strategic Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century

SSBNs for a nuclear ballistic missile strike and DDGs or CGs for ballistic missiledefense are included in the 313-ship Navy. Therefore, we have included strategicdeterrence as a third fleet component to construct and pay for. The new fightingmachines budget cannot support more than nine SSBNs and nine TBMD (TheaterBallistic Missile Defense) DDGs for offensive and defensive deterrence.

The force numbers, however, are not properly a decision of the Secretary of theNavy and the Chief of Naval Operations. The structure of the American offensive triadand emerging multi-Service systems for missile defense require agreement at the highestpolicy levels. But the Navy (with a coherent plan for an affordable fleet) can argue thecase that this national capability must be funded on top of the Navys budget if deterrentforces must be expanded beyond nine and nine.

Our plan is that strategic forces must take at most 10% of the SCN budget.

D. PERSONNEL AND MANNING ISSUES

Concurrent with broad agreement on the new fighting machines characteristics, itis necessary to calculate whether its personnel costs will be more or less than the cost ofmanning, training, and supporting the 313-ship Navy. Our impression is that:

In numbers, manning 650 mostly smaller ships will be about the same.

In terms of individual, shipboard team and fleet tactical training, the costwill be somewhat less.

The cost to support recruiting, assignment, and education will bedetermined by the outcome of the manning and training calculations.

Here and there we highlight the easier training to competencies for the smallerand more focused warships of the new fighting machine. But, in a different way, thetraining must be just as sophisticated. Examples are (1) the need to prepare juniorcommanding officers of patrol craft in the art of theater security and nation building; and(2) the return to professionalism in warships devoted to mine warfare, antisubmarinewarfare, and countering swarms of small missile boatsas compared to the

well-developed capability to deliver accurate strikes ashore. There is time to change thetraining as the new fleet is produced, but only if both the different tactics and newtraining are developed simultaneously with the new operational emphasis.12

12 Two of us had early commands and know both the joys and responsibilities entailed. One of uscommanded a minesweeper as a lieutenant, with the memory that when his sweep gear was in the water thistook tactical foresight because the ship was less maneuverable than an aircraft carrier. The othercommanded a PHM, and practiced high-speed missile attacks, sometimes in shallow coastal waters. Neitherof these seems as sophisticated as the policy responsibilities of theater security operations.

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The most important and influential issue, however, stems from modern Americanculture, as it is affecting the Navy now and will affect personnel competency of anytwenty-first century fighting fleet. A concise way to demonstrate the coming problem iswith a description of the obsolescent British Empire a century ago and why it fell behindthe competition. The personnel implications for the future fleet should be apparent.

Why Britain was unable to capitalize on her industrial head start . . . isdifficult to explain [but] had something to do with old-fashionedequipment and vested interest [of large corporations]. While the U.S. leaptfrom the oil lamp to electricity, Britain remained in the gaslight age,largely because of the power of the gas companies. Her coal mines werebecoming less and less productive as the mines went deeper and deeper,and the mine owners failed to introduce new coal-cutting machinery. As aconsequence, profits dried up, wages stagnated, and the industry becamethe seedbed for 20th Century labor unrest. . . .

Britain also fell behind in the educational race. She failed to

educate her work force or maintain the necessary connection between thescientist and engineer, let alone expose her ruling elite to science andtechnology. A classical curriculum for talented amateurs reigned supreme,and Eton, that spawning ground for effortless superiority, boasted, as lateas 1884, 28 classics masters but only six mathematics teachers and nomodern language or science instructors. Little wonder then that at the turnof the century one observer was complaining that the best brains of theupper classes will go anywhere but into industryinto a bank or amerchants office perhaps, but not into horny-handed manufacture. . . .With such an ideal as its model . . . British industry was ill-prepared tosurvive in a brutally competitive environment.13

Like Britain of a century ago but for different reasons, American education andculture are affecting the U.S. Navy. Our secondary schools put less emphasis on scienceand mathematics and our universities are experiencing fewer American students studyingtechnical and engineering subjects. At the same time, our youth is growing up computerliterate, game-smart, and proficient with iPods and other communication technologies.The officer corps reflects societys trend. What the Navy can do about these things islimited, but simple awareness is a start. We favor simpler warships with more focusedcapabilities, not in all the fleet, but in more of it than in our present all big ship,multipurpose ships. We believe small ships better nurture tactical skills, augmented bythe judgment that comes from experience at sea, and want less reliance on machines thatpurportedly do the thinking, because decision aids have limits and tacticians must knowthem thoroughly. The our Navy still enjoys superb blue water tactical training and thebenefits of steaming time unmatched by any other contemporary navy. We still have acorps of fighting sea dogs who know the connection between tactics and technologies.We do not think the Navy is in bad shape yet, any more than the Royal Navy, with its

13 Lacey B. Smith,English History Made Brief, Irreverent, and Pleasurable (Chicago, IL: Academy,2007), 141-2.

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fierce gunnery drills and practical seamanship gained all over the world, was inferior asa single, unified organism to the German High Seas Fleets superior designs andtechnologies. Nevertheless, Admirals John Jellicoe and Jackie Fisher both knewbetterthan the historians who condemned Jellicoes caution at Jutlandthat the Grand Fleetwas just one strategic error or tactical blunder away from a national disaster.

The value of American maritime superiority (as we are forced to retreat from 20years of supremacy) is as significant to the United States today as the value ofGreat Britains maritime superiority was in the nineteenth century and throughWorld War I. There is one vital difference. The leaders of Britain and every citizen knewtheir countrys greatness rested on sea power in a way unappreciated by U.S. leaders andthe American public.

Therefore, the importantfeedback for personnel considerations on ship design isthis: the officers and enlisted men of the Navys new fighting machine must be bothculturally and technologically aware. This suggests simpler designs and a move awayfrom exaggerated emphasis on large, sophisticated ships to project power efficientlyfrom a safe sanctuary at sea. Instead, the American culture ofcall it excessive

self-esteemsuggests that for wide-ranging applications, from influencing andconstraining a peer on one hand to transoceanic humanitarian assistance on the other, theAmerican nation needs a fleet that is more distributed for flexible presence, adjustableintensities, short and long durations, survival against surprise attack, and which is capableof fighting in tight corners and taking affordable losses. The new fighting machineincorporates many simpler and more single-purposed vessels so that the Fleet canrespond more quickly in an unforeseeable direction to a particularly severe threat orrewarding opportunitywhat has been called a Black Swan.14We are arguing againsta Navy with warships so hard-wired that an unforeseen surprise will be fatal, because

our present fleet is an organization of long lived big warships, some programmed to last

40 years in order to amortize their construction costs.The unanticipated threat might be similar to that of the U-boats in 1915-18. By

definition, no one can say what our Navys black swan will be, but abrupt change cancome from ingenious new missiles, war in space, insidious human or computer moles,Chinese submarines deployed off Americas coast, or terrorists delivering massdestruction with an unforeseen new chemical or biological weapon. Observe that weomit piracy, drug running, and attacks on undersea fiber optic cables. These must beattended to with more Navy effort than now, but none threaten the American jugular, andnone entail rapid shifts of construction in the way the U.S. Navy curtailed battleships and,in a few short years, built and deployed 100 aircraft carriers (some of which were littleones of 12,000 to 20,000 tons), and 1,000 frigates, corvettes, and patrol craft. These

14 A Black Swan, as it is described in the recent book by the same name, is a surprise of greatsignificance that cannot be anticipated. The basic strategy it describes is how to plan for events which, bydefinition, you cannot know will occur. On the bad side, the successful Egyptian missile attack on theIsraeli Eilat was so shocking to the world that it wasif not totally unpredictableunprepared for.Antiship missiles revolutionized war at sea. On the good side, the collapse of the Soviet Union was ablack swan. Critics have said, unrealistically, that intelligence should have foreseen it. We believe theimportant thing to be the skill with which Presidents Reagan and Bush responded, as the West watched theSoviet Union die.

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simpler warships could be pumped out as emergency responses to the unanticipateddemands in the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.

In summary, the biggest personnel issue is not whether the new manning numberswill be up or down. The vital question is how the officer corps will be educated and theenlisted component trained to operate the new ships. They, like their ships, must be

adaptive to black swans, unlike the British Empire after it lost its edge, but very muchlike its Royal Navy in World Wars I and II, which had kept most of its seagoing skillsand developed new ones.

E. COMMAND CONSIDERATIONS

The question might be asked, does the new fighting machine entail a newcommand structure? With one exception and apart from one comment, the answer is no.The fighting machine can be commanded with the present complicated arrangement andfunction neither better nor worse than the United States Armed Forces are now organized,trained, equipped, deployed, and employed.

The exception is that to endure and prosper, the green water component mustcome under a strong, authoritative command that functions in several new ways. Thecommand is described further in Chapter III, Theater Security and Coastal CombatForces. Command, control, and supporting networks for inshore operations can betterevolve from demands by the green water forces as they gain operational experience. Therelatively small and affordable ships and other components mask the complexity ofinshore operations, and the intricate relationships with coalitions, emerging Third Worldstates, the Marine Corps, Special Forces, the specialized basing and support structure, andindeed the blue water navy itself, which by comparison has a relatively well-developedC2 (Command and Control) system.

The single comment is found at the beginning of Chapter X. In the name of

coordination, cooperation, and efficiency, the present defense organization is populatedwith many offices and organizations that are a drag on every major decision in ways thatBradley Fiske could scarcely imagine in 1916 when he advocated The Navy as aFighting Machine. Therefore, with few exceptions, the ten actions recommended inChapter Xto begin the transition to a Navy suited for the Sea Services Strategy for thetwenty-first century leave unsaid who is responsiblewho has the authorityto takethem. It is a problem we can state, but cannot solve.

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II. COIN OF THE REALM: COSTING CONSIDERATIONS

Many studies in the last five years have demonstrated that a 313-ship Navy cannotbe sustained with the current shipbuilding budget (SCN) of around $11B-$12B per year.

Some studies assert that $20B-$25B of SCN will be needed.15 For constructing the newfighting machine, an annual SCN of $15B (in current dollars) has been assumed. Uponclose examination of its structure and costs, it is easy to see that amount as a floor for theSecretary of the Navy and Chief of Naval Operations to defend forcefully.

Because they have been much studied recently, ships in the force and the annualprocurement budget to maintain them in the steady state will be the coin of the realm.We premise SCN is a roughly accurate proxy that can be scaled into APN, WPN, OPNand other accounts to arrive at a total Navy budget each year. We further premise thatnumbers of ships will roughly govern other capabilities: manned and unmanned aircraft,sensors and the links with shooters, missiles and other ordnance. These assumptions willhave to be checked, but that can be done in parallel with the construction and introduction

of the new fleet components.As to manning, a reasonable question already introduced is whether a new fleet of

about 650 ships and 400 more inshore craft can be manned with the same or fewerpersonnel than the 313-ship Navy. Some sealift and prepositioning ships can be mannedwith skeleton crews until employed to deliver and sustain forces overseas. We believethere are enough billet savings from big ships eliminated to achieve this, but thecalculations must be made.

The fleet must be operated. An aircraft carrier is only a mobile airfield withoutaircraft, and its manned aircraft cost about 70% of the cost of the ship. More serious, theair wings operating cost each year is about 10% of its aircraft procurement cost, whereasa warships operating cost is only 4%-5% per year. The significance of life-cycle costs of

aircraft carriers as a complete system will be further discussed in Chapter IV: Sea BasedAir Operations.

The procurement cost of 24 Trident missiles with multiple warheads in an SSBNis substantial, too, but the missiles annual operating cost is virtually zero. Our blue waterfleet includes 20 land attack missile ships, miniature Arsenal Ships. The 50 missileseach ship carries cost only about a quarter of the land attack ships cost, and the annualmissile operating cost is trifling.16

In summary, our study is more sensitive to whether SCN is a suitable proxy fortotal Navy costs than other recent ones that concentrated exclusively on shipprocurement. The relationships can be more fully examined while the new fighting

15 The studies of Navy SCN are well known and almost too numerous to mention. A good summary ofthree, by the Center for Naval Analyses, the Center for Budgetary and Strategic Assessment, and by NDUis contained in Ronald ORourke, Naval Force Structure: Alternative Force Structure Studies of 2005Background for Congress, Congressional Research Service, April 9, 2007. ORourke has covered the Navyin SCN terms in a series of appraisals, for example, Potential Navy Force Structure and ShipbuildingPlans: Background and Issues for Congress, updated March 30, 2005, CRS.

16 In contrast, the Arsenal Ship promoted by Admiral Mike Boorda when he was CNO was expectedto carry 500 missiles, which had more investment value than the ship itself.

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machine is being built, but some decisions ought to be taken immediately to get started.The most important ones are listed as actions in Chapter X.

A. NUMBER OF SHIPS AS A PROXY FOR CAPABILITY

It may seem strange to count ships that include CVNs as large as 100,000 tons fullload displacement side-by-side with theater security patrol craft as small as 100 tons. Ifcarrying capacity was the standard, a ship count would be grossly misleading. ButSecretary of Defense Robert Gates put the true worth of the American Navy in bettercontext in a speech on 1 October 2008. He said the U.S. Navy has shrunk in numbers toomuch, but in tonnage the battle fleet is larger than the next thirteen navies combined.

The Navy has focused on large warships because we have been operating fornearly 20 years from a safe maritime sanctuary, while exploiting the large warshipsadvantage of economy of scale when delivering combat power without interference. (Arule of thumb is that capacity increases with the cube of a ships length, while itsconstruction cost increases as the square of its length. Thus, the advantage of the

100,000-ton ship over the 100-ton shipusing the carrying capacity per unit cost as ameasure of effectivenessis a factor of ten.) However, increasingly today capabilitymust increasingly take into account vulnerability. An enemy will devote a great dealmore effort to incapacitate a CVN than to sink a little coastal combatant. In addition, in anavy with responsibilities in many places around the world, some of themas we haveseen, lasting a long time, but with varying degrees of intensitymust include in acapability assessment the fleets distributability and flexibility to expand or shrink itsoperational intensity. Force capability is not easily calculated, but it is a much richerrepresentation of value than mere carrying capacity.17

In a new study, Robert Work points out the inconsistency of describing a newCooperative Strategy for 21

stCentury Seapower, while undercounting the small vessels

that contribute to green water operations.18

Moreover, not all the ships of a new fightingfleet are warships. Some MPFs (Maritime Prepositioning Ships) are counted as fleetelements, but not all of them,19 and none of the 68 ships of the strategic sealift fleetoperated by the Military Sealift Command are counted. As Work points out, theyprovide a ready pool of sealift ships [that is] an enormous competitive advantage in the

17 Around 1998, Hughes drew from a study done by the Center for Naval Analyses to quantitativelydemonstrate for CINCUSNAVEUR what had happened to ships employments for crisis responses in hisAOR (Area of Responsibility) after the fall of the Soviet Union. With 40% fewer ships, CINCUSNAVEURhad to deal with more crises annually after 1990 than he had done in the previous decade. Worse still, theduration of the crises requiring some level of Navy presence was a factor of ten greater than when theSoviet Union was our principal concern. The situation was worse for CINCPAC, who was responsible forthe Indian Ocean and Pacific. It was an eye-opening demonstration of the need for a more distributedcapability. Sometimes the full weight of a carrier strike group was required in the Adriatic, but at othertimes a smaller number of aircraft would have sufficed, and for some operations (e.g., maritime interdictionand patrol), these often could have been dealt with by much smaller, but nonexistent, patrol vessels.

18 Robert O. Work, The US Navy: Charting a Course for Tomorrows Fleet(Washington, D.C.: Centerfor Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2008).

19 The Navy counts 14 MPF (Maritime Prepositioning Force) ships carrying Marine equipment, butWork points out there are also ten with Army equipment and seven carrying equipment of other services oragencies. Op cit., 59.

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transoceanic movement of equipment, supplies, ammunition, and bulk fuel to all groundforces operating forward. His CSBA (Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments)study says today the actual number of ships for theater security and to deliver and sustainoperations overseas is not 280, but 423this number not including deployable units ofSEALs and the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command that have over 250 more small

craft.20

Moreover, the Commandant of the Coast Guard is coauthor of the CooperativeStrategy, but Coast Guard ships are not counted. Additionally, the substantial number ofadditional vessels operated by the Army should be included. Part of the value of BobWorks broader, well-founded assessment is to point out that there is a large non-SCNcost of the other ships that serve the national interest overseas.

Frequently we will refer to the target Navy force of 313 ships for comparison withthe new fighting machine. We might have used the present force of 280 warships as thebaseline, but an even more appropriate comparison would be between the 650 vessels inthe new fighting machine (not including 400 more small craft) with the current 423vessels in Works count (not including 250 small craft). Some SCN costs foramphibious lift and the delivery and sustainment of Army, Marine, and Special Forces

overseas are not, at present, costs to the Navy.

B. PRESERVING SHIPYARDS AND CONTROLLING COSTS

Preserving the industrial base for an abrupt expansion is a DoD (Department ofDefense) obligation. The industrial base does not appear explicitly in designing the newfighting machine, but an awareness of the need for competition and greater cost controlsis implicit everywhere.

Building large, multipurpose ships is a sure way to guarantee that constructiongoes to two or three shipyards and cost growth is masked by desirable newrequirements. An electronic suite competitive against the capabilities of all nations will

be hedging against many who will be our allies, coalition members, or neutral. The morenumerous fleet has both tactical (survivability) and operational (distributability)advantages. With regard to the industrial base, smaller ships with more focused militarypurposes also have the third advantage that it is easier to control cost when designing forone primary purpose. For example, it is easierand advantageousto modify Navymilitary specifications and compromise on habitability standards in small ships intendedfor short-duration green water operations. If mistakes are made using commercialproducts, or low-cost solutions for berthing, messing, physical fitness, and office space,these can be made up off-board the way we do with submarine tenders when habitabilitystandards are waived in submarine designs.

The Navy would be wise to experiment first with small warship designs in which

a failure is no disaster. Experimentation can be risked and mistakes made with smaller,more affordable designs that cannot be tolerated in an Aegis destroyer, a DDG-1000, oran aircraft carrier like CVN-21. Experimentation with automation and reduced manning,along with determining the balance between on- and off-board training and maintenance,is better conducted in small, single-purpose designs. Possible solutions to the mismatchbetween service life and fast-advancing information technologies for combat equipment

20 Work, op cit., 59, Figure 4.

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illustrates why experiments should be tried first in green water warships, such as what theLCS might have been.

Here is an illustration of design experimentation with a happy ending. It is thestory of the Treaty Cruisers built under terms of the 1921 Washington NavalDisarmament Treaty. During the 1920s and 1930s, heavy cruiser standard displacement

of 10,000 tons was the limiting design factor instead of construction costs. Four classeswere designed and built under the treaty, in 1925, 1927, 1929, and 1931-34, eachsuccessive class being obviously superior to the previous one. How much superior was ahotly debated question answered in World War II. The first two, supposedly muchinferior, ships of the Pensacola class saw as much action as any cruisers, were repairedafter battle damage, and survived the war. Looking at the 15 supposedly much improvedlater cruisers built under treaty limitations, sevenalmost halfwere sunk. Ourimpression is that the effectiveness of USS Pensacola and Salt Lake City was about 90%that of the culminating seven-ship USS Astoria class, three of which were destroyed inthe Battle of Savo Island in about 15 minutes. Equally important, when the treaty termswere lifted in 1936, we were ready with the design for 17 more heavy cruisers of the

magnificent USSBaltimore and Oregon City classes. All were ordered by July 1940 andcommissioned before the end of the war. None were sunk.In peacetime we try too hard for a perfect design. If a ship costs a billion dollars

or more, then there is merit in trying to build a good one, but observably what happens isa reluctance to experiment. Like the first treaty cruisers, LCS must not be regarded as adesign failure, but as a technological, tactical, and training test bed. The fact that it issuited well neither as a blue water or green water combatant can be useful. On one hand,it can help to design a better armed, less costly blue water frigate. On the other, LCSshows what not to do to develop affordable green water designs to perform inshore patrolmissions, clear mines, defeat small missile boats, and screen against coastal submarines.

In summary, protecting the industrial base will be easier with a more distributedcapability. More shipyards can compete and innovative designs can be exploredsequentially in smaller warships. Technology advances can be adopted more quickly inships with more focused missions. Large multipurpose warships with 30- and 40-yearlifetimes (to amortize their construction cost) are harder to keep current. Cost discipline isharder to impose. In multipurpose warships, all capabilities must be kept current withlong, expensive shipyard overhauls. Even worse, sometimes a class of warshipsdegenerates to one of limited military value for any mission, as has happened with theFFGs. In the time it takes to design, fund, construct, and shake down a multipurpose,supposedly flexible, warship, new technologyfor missile offense and defense,networked systems, naval gunfire support, inshore combat, and autonomous vehicleswill have already made them obsolescent.

C. SHIPBUILDING GROUND RULES

Four ground rules for the transition to the new fighting machine are established:

Do not decommission existing ships that have service life remaining,notably CVNs, CGs, LHAs, LHDs, LPDs, and SSGNs.

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Build all ships not in the new fleet that have already been funded, notablyLHA-6 and LHD-8, two DDG-1000s, and a squadron of LCSs.

Adapt to new circumstances. The new fighting fleet is todays end point.While the transition is underway, the end point must be modified as theworld changes, or with the aspirations of successive Presidential

administrations. Discipline big warship designs and acquisition costs, but experiment freely

with the smaller, less expensive green water designs and demand swift,cost-conscious, evolutionary improvements.

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III. FORCES FOR GREEN WATER THEATER SECURITY ANDCOASTAL COMBAT OPERATIONS (248 VESSELS FOR 10% OF

SCN, OR $1.5B/YEAR)

A. NEXUS

Theater security and coastal combat need more emphasis if the Navysown strategic concepts are to be fulfilled.

A natural suspicion is that a bimodal navy is an unconnected navythatthe blue and green components will be separately conceived, developed,and operated. On the contrary, extraordinary attention is paid tointegrating the green fleet into the new fighting machine in vital,overlapping ways, connecting the new green component to blue doctrine,tactics, training, and procedures.

The green water fleet is as intricate in its variety of missions and is asoperationally complex as the blue water fleet. Its vessels are nearly asnumerous, but on a smaller scale in terms of manning and firepower.

The Secretary of the Navy, who is empowered to organize, train, andequip the Navy, should create an organization specifically to develop acomplete green water force to match the three sea service commandersstrategy document.

B. HISTORY AND RATIONALE

Early in the twentieth century, the introduction of the torpedo and mine pushedthe battleships domain to seaward. Starting with the Russo-Japanese War and

culminating in World War I, battleships and other surface warships were sunk insignificant numbers off enemy coasts. The modern analog to the first wave of submarineand mine attacks is the missilenot as lethal in terms of sinkings, but equally fatal interms of a firepower kill. We will provide a detailed description of ASCM (antishipcruise missile) performance in Chapter VII: Surface Combatants, although it is relevanthere as well, since the foundation of understanding twenty-first century littoral warfarestarts with the missile threat from the land or fast attack craft.

Experimentation with green water vessels is cheaper, faster, and more tolerant ofmistakes. Improved designs should emerge rapidly and at affordable costs. Review ofAmerican PT boat and British MGB and MTB development in World War II shows rapidimprovements in successive classes. American development of riverine forces in the

Vietnam War was not as fast, and those familiar with the designs and operations havebeen critical of them, but Vietnam history also shows how swift the learning process canbe, once a dedicated command is established for green and brown water operations.

But when the wars were over, the organizations were veritably disestablished.Officers and men saw no professional future in small combatants and the capability wassubordinated to what was familiar to themopen ocean operations.

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We regard the green water fleet constructed herein for theater security andcoastal combat to be representativeand better than anything done before nowbut it isanything but definitive. This is because the responsibilities and capabilities for greenwater operations are, in some respects, more complicated than those of the blue waterNavy, but in miniature. We believe a dedicated organization is necessary, and if

accompanied by modest, but sufficient, funding (by means of what should properly beconceived as a planning wedge), the establishment of this permanent organization is thesingle most important recommendation contained in this study to bring the new fightingmachine into existence. Despite its disproportionately small cost, success must comefrom close attention by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and the Fleet ForcesCommander. It hardly seems necessary to note the need for extensive interfaces andconnections with the United States Coast Guard (USCG), the blue water navy, the otherServiceswith emphasis on the Marine Corps and USSOCOMthe State Department,NGOs (Nongovernment Organizations), and each theater COCOM for coordination withall deployed forces operating on both the land and sea sides of the littoral.

The NECC as a Type Commander is a suitable foundation on which to build.

USSOCOM is a flawed model because the Coastal Command must be within the Navyand subordinate to the CNO for designing, equipping, and manning it. The best analogyis the authority, responsibility, and funding that the early naval aviation communityenjoyed to speed its development in the 1920s and 1930s.

We have framed the Green Water Design Plan (Figure 1) in anticipation of twoother desirable changes to authority and responsibility.

The first restores responsibility for riverine warfare to the Marine Corps as anatural core capability. Marines have been expert at constabulary and riverine operationsover many years. Control of rivers, while powerful in its effects, is accomplished not somuch by patrolling the waters, deltas, and estuaries as it is by coordinated land, water,and air operations, accompanied by appropriate C2 systems and exploitation ofwaterways for suitable logistical support and great tactical mobility.

The second change assigns responsibility for domestic anti-intrusion operations tothe USCG as the supported command and for overseas maritime interdiction and portsecurity to the Navy as the supported command, but with new doctrine for onecomponent to support the other.21

1. Global Fleet Stations and Fleet Station Ships

Global fleet stations are a shift in Navy organizational thinking. A centralcomponent is a station ship. Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS)demonstrates that the present employment of LHAs and LHDs fulfills the need, but in anexpensive way. The same analysis showed that a new design by Mark Campbell of

21 The doctrinal connections go far beyond crisis response. Based on many efforts at NPS funded bythe Department of Homeland Security and other agencies such as MARAD (Maritime Administration)within the Department of Transportation, as well as a recent, major NPS faculty-student project, it is easyto show, for example (1) the Navy has no desire to abandon its naval base protection in the United States,and (2) cooperative development of underwater search and neutralization technology must continuebecause it contributes both domestically and overseas. The devil is truly in the details, as is the case withmany things associated with domestic and overseas coastal operations and port security.

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NAVSEA (Naval Systems Command) at $150M per ship, though less comprehensive,was adequate and could be built for a fraction of the cost of a new LPD. We haveallocated funds for 12 ships at $250M each. Twelve is enough to maintain one on each offour global fleet stations, with a reserve for surges.

2. Coastal Combatant Flotilla

The coastal combatant is not a patrol vessel for theater security operations. It is asmall fighting vessel intended to clear out the clutter of enemy or neutral vessels inlittoral waters. The afloat clutter may be swarms of enemy small craft, fast attack craftcarrying surface-to-surface missiles such as the Chinese 220-ton Houbei class, andfishing boats and coastal traders that might serve as reconnaissance posts in a targetingsystem. Coastal combatants are heavily armed, but small enough to accept affordablelosses. They should operate in tactical formations of two, four, eight, or twelve vessels.They carry no surveillance aircraft, so depend on CVLs or shore-based reconnaissance.They have small crews in combat and when put out of action the crew is expected toabandon, rather than try to save, the ship, and to be rescued by other vessels. They mightteam with friendly forces in constricted waters where the large blue water ships shouldnot be put at risk, for example, operating from Turkey or Romania in the Black Sea, fromSweden or Denmark in the Baltic, from Saudi Arabia or Kuwait in the Arabian Gulf,from the west coast of South Korea in the Yellow Sea, or Colombia or Panama inthe Caribbean.

They can serve as an advance force to screen blue water ships conductingamphibious operations, or protecting MSC (Military Sealift Command) or MARAD shipsdelivering men and materials that might be attacked while entering a friendly port.

An impediment to accepting coastal combatants is logistical support when theyare designed for short-range, short-duration sorties. We have provided for two tenders tosupport up to ten vessels each when shore basing is absent. Getting to the scene of

operations cannot be swift, implying anticipation of the locales of combat operations andforward basing.

This is the streetfighter concept espoused by the then-VCNO,Admiral Don Pilling. As President of the Naval War College, Vice AdmiralArthur Cebrowski sponsored a study by Systems Engineering Analysis students at NPS todesign such a coastal combatant. For authenticity, the project was led byProfessor Charles Calvano, who is a retired Navy captain and experienced navalarchitect. The students also included those in the Total Ship Systems Engineeringprogram. Although the term streetfighter is no longer popular, the name is apt and theneed should be evident. The NPS design, called a SeaLance, is a 600-ton,wave-piercing catamaran carrying many dual-purpose, short-range, surface-to-surface

missiles, four Harpoons, and a gun with a high rate of fire. For survival, the SeaLancedepends on speed, maneuverability, hard and soft kill point defense, small size, andtactically proficient formations in suitable numbers. At the time of the study in 2002, itwas costed at $60M. Table 1 provides for 30 coastal combatants costing $100M each.The combat crew of SeaLance is 12, but it has berthing for about 25 for training, totransport SEALs, or to embark a small staff. The design philosophy was that the coastalcombatants would go in harms way, and be prepared to accept losses while achieving

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littoral water superiority, in order to prevent losses to blue water warships and largedelivery vessels entering port. For further details, see Hughes, Twenty-two Questionsfor Streetfighter, Naval Institute Proceedings, February 2000.

The SeaLance does not exist and it might be regarded as too transformational forthe new fighting machine. A suitable, existing model with which to gain experience is the

stealthy Swedish Visby. Visby depends on its low-observability for survival more thandoes SeaLance. Another detraction is Visbys likely price of $220M, but there are otherpossibilities in worlds navies, most of which are intended for coastal combat operations.

In order to keep the vessels small and lethal, no manned or unmanned aircraft arecarried. At the time SeaLance was conceived, aerial surveillance was postulated to comefrom CVNs or LHAs standing farther off shore until the waters were safe.Admiral Cebrowski was so pleased that he commissioned another SEA (SystemsEngineering Analysis) curriculum study at NPS to design a small aircraft carrier tocomprise the air side of independent coastal task forces.

3. Gunfire Support Ship

These are single-purpose ships carrying two of the best guns available for navalgunfire support (NGFS), such as an advanced gun system (AGS), with 2,000 rounds,precise navigation, countermine underwater search, and evolved sea sparrow missiles(ESSM) combined with softkill defense at short range. The Gunfire Support Ship needhave only a small surface search radar (because it will operate in company), no stealthproperties (because it will reveal its position in action), and no sonar or ASW(antisubmarine warfare) ordnance (as a cost-saving measure). Hull size will bedetermined by the minimum space and sturdiness required for two guns and theirammunition, which in turn will determine what form of UAV for reconnaissance itmay carry.

Littoral warfare operations ashore can be greatly enhanced by the low cost, high

volume, and overall efficiency of naval weaponry over aerial bombing or land attackmissiles. When in range, the ships are also superior to land-based artillery, which has alarge support tail.

Guns in CGs and DDGs are ill-matched because their land attack missiles reachdeep inland but must be fired safely from their maritime sanctuary, which is nowsometimes 100 miles or more offshore. Missiles are expensive and so best suited forselect, fixed, high-value targets to complement the Gunfire Support ships that producerapid, high-volume fire in support of the battlefield.

If railgun technology matures, then future gunfire support ships could be built tocarry it in relatively short order. With suitable guidance, high kinetic energy at impact,and delivery on targets at a range of 50-75 miles in a few seconds, a railgun would be a

highly suitable improvement over traditional naval artillery. We think railgun technologyis a challenge. Our points are that NGFS is an important responsibility of the Navy and ifand when any new technology has been demonstrated, swift introduction is unlikelywithout a force component dedicated to the mission, the value of which was amplydemonstrated in the European and Pacific theaters of World War II, in Korea at the Pusanperimeter, Inchon, and Hungnam, and repeatedly during the long Vietnam War. A rail

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gun promises to have most of the well-known characteristics of afloat weapons in supportof ground operations:

a large volume of inexpensive fire; rapid precise fire at unseen, over-the-horizon targets; and near-instantaneous response to call for fire.Meanwhile the AGS, or any other well-designed shipboard weapon, is so much a

vital component of the green water navy that a single purpose ship should havethe responsibility.

4. Aerial Scouting, Attack, and Logistics Support

All green water operations need an air component, especially for search. We urgedevelopment of a CVL specifically designed for STOVL, UAV, and VTOL operations. Itwill be most useful if the design doubles for blue water operations, but we wont knowwhether this is possible until the carrier is designed, built, and tried out at sea. Again,evolutionary designs will be desirable, but the first ones will still be useful asimprovements are constructed. A detailed discussion of the light aircraft carrier (CVL)will be found in Chapter IV.

The C2 and networks that tie many ships and serve many functions fromcollaborative Phase 0 operations up to intense wartime cooperation with the blue navycan be developed as the coastal fleet is deployed and operational experience gained.

5. Delivery and Sustainment of Green Water Vessels

We find the delivery of small vessels to a distant theater and the sustainment ofthem to be a serious impediment in a Navy used to large ships, with long stay times at

sea, and sustained by underway replenishment. Yet, the U.S. Navy has not been inhibitedfrom the forward basing a 60,000-ton CVN and a squadron of large destroyers inYokosuka, Japan, an amphibious group in Sasebo, and, in the past, a division of450-ton minesweepers there. SSNs are tender supported in Guam, and for many yearsthey were maintained in the Mediterranean by a submarine tender and housing inLa Maddalena, Sardinia.

The Navy has experience with relatively low cost, low profile Fleet SupportActivities. For many years, when the Mediterranean was a major theater of Navyoperations, we maintained one in Naples. Today, Singapore collaborates with the Navy inmaintaining one there.

Smaller vessels operate forward today. PCs, MSOs and MHCs of 800 to 1,000

tons are sustained in the Persian Gulf. In the 1950s, 450-ton minesweepers sailedunaccompanied to New London, Key West, and Guantanamo Bay. In World War II,AMS minesweepers of 300 tons and other small craft accompanied the Fleet to Europeand across the Pacific to the Philippines.

We heavy lifted the damaged USS Roberts and Cole half way around the worldfrom the Persian Gulf. We could charter a heavy lift ship for one-time delivery of an

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entire task element of patrol craft at an affordable cost, or purchase two such ships forperhaps the same cost as one LCS and three modules.

The new fighting machine provides two tenders for the coastal combatants, eachcosting about as much as an LCS without its modules. The tenders notionally support tenvessels each, and more aerial surveillance aircraft than carried by an LCS. Tenders are

appropriate because the coastal combatants will clear out the clutter of enemy and neutraltraffic in a local region. The Gunfire support ships, fast minesweepers, and inshore ASWcorvettes are big enough to get themselves in theater in the usual way and sustainmentwould be ad hoc and dependent upon the operation. Offshore patrol ships will not belarge and might be carried. Inshore patrol craft would be carried in the same way theNECCs riverine craft were delivered to Iraq.

In general, however, we expect host nation support for theater security operations.In the spirit of the 1,000-ship navy and collaboration, we are not likely to be patrollingoff a coast without at least safe harbors and rudimentary facilities provided by the statewe are assisting. Compared with the blue water navys demands for facilities at anoverseas base, the green water fleets needs of support will be modest. Each operation

will be case specific, but sometimes the patrols will be spread up and down a long coast.Supplements to host nation support may be deliverable containers that accompany thepatrol craft in the austere regions like parts of the African littoral. Although the fightingmachine does not provide tender support except for the coastal combatants, it mightoccasionally be needed if and when an operation exceeds the capacity of the 12 globalfleet station ships in the green water fleet.

Again, we stress the benefit of a strong green water type commander, who willbe able to address delivery and sustainment, and the particulars which are necessarilycase-specific in global fleet stations around the world.

6. Achieving Rapid, Evolutionary Progress

These ships are each, on the average, more than an order of magnitude lessexpensive than the blue water component. For unit costs of $50M-$250M, the Navy candesign and build several generations and let the best evolve under relaxed procurementregulations. This is not a time for exaggerated emphasis on cost-effectiveness. The earlygenerations will not be uselessjust not as good as the third and fourth generations.British MTB and MGB designs were in the third or fourth design model by 1943at thepace of about one new generation each year.

Systems analysis to achieve perfect designs fails, except in cases of marginalimprovements of well understood hardware performing accepted missions. No one cananticipate what is involved in inshore operations until we experiment with professionalsailors. The green water navy is a chance to break out of the rigid procurement system

with multiple designs and new shipbuilding competitors in a different set ofCongressional districts. SeaLances originally built for $100M each in a short time oughtto morph into designs nearly as capable that are less expensive, especially if the sailorsknow they can have more combatants in their force that way. Progress will be made by aprofessional green water officer corps working with naval architects who can improveearly designs, for example, with technologically advanced experimental vessels such asthe small, high-speed X-craft and Stiletto designs.

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C. DESIGN PLAN

The theater security component comprises 400 small craft, each costing, atmost, $400K, for inshore patrol and to assist friendly, but poor nations in

antipiracy and countersmuggling. They must be simple to operate and aregiven the very short service life of five years in the expectation that theywill often be given as aid to these countries.22 The advantages are, first,the very low cost and simplicity relative to every other navy component,and second, experimentation with other nations can produce many designsthat can be improved quickly in ways impossible for large, multipurposecombatants.

Also included are 160 offshore patrol vessels for theater security costingabout $60M each, with a service life of 24 years and yielding thenegligible SCN cost of $400M per year to maintain the entire flotilla.23

Twelve Global Fleet Station Ships costing, at most, $250M per ship, willcover C2 and, in part, the afloat logistical responsibilities for four GlobalFleet Stations, with a reserve for surges. These will replace amphibiousLHAs, LHDs, or LPDs as quickly as they are constructed. The annualSCN is $75M.

The Coastal Combatant flotilla comprises 30 Sea Lances, or a similar verylethal design equivalent, and is budgeted at $100M each.

Two tenders to support the coastal combatants and their crews areprovided at the generous cost of $600M each.

Special, single-purpose vessels for NGFS (12 ships), rapidly deployablemine clearance (12 ships), and inshore ASW (12 ships), collectively costonly around $260M of SCN per year to sustain.

The green water contingent of the CVLs comprises eight ships displacing25-30,000 tons. They cost $3B each, or $600M of SCN annually for theforce. The small carriers consume more than one-third of the green waterSCN budget, but are expected to be flexible enough to support blue wateroperations when necessary. Each small carrier is to be capable of carryingeither 20 F-35B fighter-attack STOVL aircraft for ground support, or acombination of UAVs for scouting and helicopters suited to a varietyof tasks.

Table 1 is a concise summary of the green water fleet, its numbers and costs.

22 Such preventive assistance will pale in comparison with the extent of the costly equipment andfacilities we will leave as a legacy in Iraq.

23 Annual SCN cost is the number of ships, times the cost per ship, divided by their expectedservice lives.

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Table 1. The Green Water Fleet ComponentShip or Craft Unit Cost # Units Fleet Cost

ServiceLife

SCN/Year

OffshorePatrol $60M 160 $9.6B 24 yrs $400M

Cost is for a USCG Fast Response Cutter; but we should try some foreign craft.

Fleet StationShip

$250M 12 $3B 40 yrs $75M

Maintains four stations. NAVSEAs Mark Campbell says he can build a good GFS shipfor $150M. New LPDs and LHDs are well suited, but much more costly.24

InshorePatrol

$0.4M 400 $0.16B 5 yrs $32M

These are highly speculative averages of multiple designs.

Gunfire

Support

$200M 12 $2.4B 24 yrs $100M

To get guns off the blue water ships and inshore. 25

Fast MIW $200M 12 $2.4B 24 yrs $100MFast complies with a Where the fleet goes, weve been philosophy26

ASW Ship $150M 12 $1.8B 30 yrs $60MLots of examples of other states to crib from, e.g., the RSN Victory class

CVL (20 a/c) $3,000M 8 $24B 40 yrs $600MAn LHA, with no well deck and an enhanced aviation capability, is a good, butexpensive, model. Same as blue water CVL design, but carries UAVs and helos.

CoastalCombatant

$100M 30 $3B 20 yrs $150M

Streetfighter mission, cost like SeaLance, Visby orHoubei as paradigms.27CC Tender $600 2 $1.2B 40 yrs $30M

When CC cannot be supported ashore.28 Old DD and SS tenders can serve for now.

Totals: 248 vessels plus 400 inshore patrol. Total Cost $44.6B SCN $1.56B/year.

24 A recent NPS student study of Global Fleet Station Ship attributes and candidates proved LPD andLHD suitability.

25 One or two 155mm guns firing rocket-assisted Long Range Land Attack Projectiles (LRLAP).

26 High speed for strategic mobility carrying offboard unmanned vehicles for sweeping operations.This is a rare case of the need for new technology, but the LCS mine clearance module should showthe way.

27Sea Lance is an NPS student project design. Visby is the choice of Lt. Brad Fancher for his thesisand is excellent in all respects, except for a unit cost of around $200M-$225M.Houbei is a new PLA-N fastPGM, Type 022, which looks like it was inspired by the NPS Sea Lance.

28 The ashore support does not come free, but in friendly motivated states, it is cheaper thanafloat support.

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IV. SEABASED AIR OPERATIONS WITH REMARKS ABOUTTHE FUTURE OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES (16 SHIPS,

FOR SCN OF $2B/YR)

A. NEXUS

The role of the new fighting machines seabased air component changes toreflect the current world in which it can no longer be the primary means ofinfluencing China. On the other hand, when configured in a moredistributable force, aircraft carriers will be highly valuable for theatersecurity and fighting small wars. They will also help forestall or contributeto any major conflicts.

CVNs compensate for their considerable cost in three ways: (1) each is amobile airfield that takes its efficient maintenance with it; (2) they stay

tactically and technologically current by changes to the air wings; and(3) aided by precision strike, each one delivers a massive punch.29

Each CVN has grown so large and, with its airwing, so expensive, that(1) it is heavily defended when under risk of attack, and (2) affordabilitywill create pressure to reduce total numbers, and hence reduce its ability tobe where needed for as long as needed.

The always-important role of seabased air for reconnaissance andsurveillance in better-distributed ships and aircraft will grow inimportance relative to that of sheer striking power.

A complementary combination of CVNs for efficient striking power andsmall CVLs for greater distributability maintains seabased air numbers

and flexibility. The new F-35B STOVL aircraft that can fly from a smallerflight deck is advanced enough and fights well enough to justifyCVL development.

B. HISTORY AND RATIONALE

When aircraft carriers supplanted battleships as the capital ships of World War II,among the instructive consequences were the following. In the Pacific, there were fivebig carrier battles, four in 1942 and (after the heavy carrier losses had been more thanreplaced on both sides) one in 1944. In the five battles, the average aircraft losses in eachbattle were 40% on the American side and 60% on the Japanese side. Meanwhile, during

the war, the United States deployed over 100 carriersCVs of around 33,000 tons, CVLsof a