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Younghusband
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Younghusband

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September 27th, 2009

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Still waiting for the navy’s Boyd moment

With a swipe at Our Bob, Tom Barnett links to an article in Parameters on The End of Seapower as we know it.

The article, written by a captain of the USCG, is a laundry list of complaints about the US Navy with regards to an alleged lack of action in an age of terrorism. He asks many questions about the usefulness of sea power in the face of the “current threat”, but balks at providing answers. Despite his criticisms, the good captain does think sea power is vital, just not the way it is being conducted now. To paraphrase: Death to sea power! Long live sea power!

I think the captain’s criticisms are all valid. In fact, I made a similar call for a Boyd of the sea nearly two years ago. It seems we must wait some more.

There is a common underlying theme in all of these arguments: the arms race culture of the Cold War has turned us into victims of our own procurement systems. The Military-Industrial-Complex is limiting us in achieving true full-spectrum capabilities. This argument is bigger than the navy, but perhaps the navy is the furthest behind in developing solutions. Considering the momentum of that massive ship we call “naval procurement”, it is no wonder that its tactical diameter is far beyond the expectations of those wanting to deal with sudden threats. I have heard it said that in procurement you start building the platforms you plan to use thirty years from now. That is a disadvantage to the high-tech, so-called American Way of WarTM. I sense an opportunity here for a Boyd-like character to discover some tactically efficient solutions with more rapid development cycles. A similar revolution is underway in the tech industry today, with push towards “good enough” tech. Maybe the navy can find some inspiration there.

***

The good captain warns against “relying almost exclusively on a vision of frozen history”, and Barnett picks up on this to criticize Kaplan. Yet I wouldn’t throw out the history books just yet. The Cold War was an aberration, a rarity of extreme balance in the international system. There are thousands of years of naval history between the Cold War and the Pelopponesian War that we could learn from. Colin S. Gray, the only notable modern naval war theorist that I can think of, recently advised:

To advance understanding of war and strategy we need to theorize on the basis of history, without being unduly diverted by the singularity of events.

The good captain could start his search for a new strategy in the back issues of Parameters.

h/t to The Chief for bringing this to my attention.

Comments to this entry

Curzon
September 27, 2009
4:25 am
"The Cold War was an aberration, a rarity of extreme balance in the international system. "

Or to paraphrase Kaplan: "The Cold War was probably the closest we ever got and will ever get to Utopia."
kurt9
September 27, 2009
4:55 pm
The Navy keeps the sea open and safe for trade. This is the most important function for the military of a trading republic.
McKellar
September 27, 2009
11:33 pm
The most important thing the USN does right now is to be so overwhelmingly powerful that no other nation even bothers with building an offensive naval capability, and so doesn't even consider waging traditional warfare. China will use soft power to reclaim Taiwan, and Russia will limit her ambitions to her immediate vicinity. That alone seems to justify the cost to me.

In addition, the Navy is invaluable in how it allows to base personnel and weapons off-shore in international waters, limiting the impact our operations have on the local population. Capt. Watts mentions the Tsunami relief efforts, where US troops delivered aid by day but returned to ship each night, making it clear that they were no occupation force. Using AEGIS cruisers and destroyers as ballistic defense shields does the same thing, protecting our allies without building bases in other people's homes.

As for procurement, the Navy had a model that worked, building generic, modular platforms like our Carriers and the Spruance class, and then upgrading weapon systems and aircraft in a much tighter cycle. The DDX was just a way to claim R&D funds for the Navy, but the LCS debacle is just inexplicable, a good idea ineptly executed.
SJPONeill
September 30, 2009
4:06 pm
Maybe what the Navy doesn't need so much is a new strategy but a return to some old truths like those espoused by Alfred Thayer Mahan a century or so ago...? I'm not a sailor but it is probably a fair assumption that, just like Clausewitz et al in the land environment, many of those principles and guidelines captured by Mahan still hold water today and apply to the present and near future. The trick is not to read them in the black and white of the period covered in Seapower but to distil the key themes - I last did this in the late 90s and they seemed to still hold pretty true then...

Just because we don't need a Navy in Afghanisatn, does not mean we don't need one to acheive other effects in the ongoing global game as stated in two of the comments above. In the littoral where some massive proportion of the world's popular live, naval forces still offer huge advanatages across the spectrum of operations - let's keep 'em around a while longer....
Younghusband
October 1, 2009
8:28 am
Naval power has been integral to state power since at least Salamis. I think we all agree that it is not going away. The issue is the changing nature of naval power — something we have witnessed throughout history and mostly due to technology from galleys and sail to steam and diesel. Now the "capital ship" of a state is nuclear powered and is either invisible under the water, or serves as a floating airstrip.

Notice that both are _platforms_ for weapons rather than weapons themselves. Combine that with the overwhelming focus on land forces in the past 20 years, and I think what you get is a navy resenting its secondary status. Rather than war-fighting, the navy's role for the past dozen years has been transport and supply, off-shore basing, "presence" patrols, etc. In other words police action (with the exception of underwater SOF insertion). Maybe the navy is looking for a role better left to history.

Frankly, I think the Mahanian strategy suggested by SJPONeill and McKellar (in his first para) has been what has been holding back innovation in naval theory these past hundred years. Total naval dominance these days can be achieved with much more cost effectiveness from the air (UAVs) and space.
McKellar
October 1, 2009
3:37 pm
The Mahan doctrine used by the Navy isn't the same build-a-line-of-battle thinking that predominated before WW2, with no real rival navies since the death of the IJN, the USN has been more focused on projecting power from the sea, usually in support of land operations by Marines or the Army. I don't think the Navy has a problem with a 'secondary status', that's more of an Air Force problem, dating back to when they thought nuclear weapons would make land forces obsolete, and justified making a separate Air Force.

The LCS was supposed to the Boyd-moment for the Navy, a cheap, modular design that gets the job done, all focused on the littorals and the asymmetric conflicts that will probably occupy the 21st century. Its developmental failures indicate that something is wrong with our military-industrial complex, not naval theory. The DDG-1000, which is soaking up ungodly amounts of money, is a product of the same system. Originally designed to operate in the littorals, it got so expensive that its only use now is as a high-end blue-water cruiser.
Younghusband
October 10, 2009
1:10 am
I agree with your comment about the MIC — I think we can all agree there are problems with the procurement system. Boyd's work with the Fighter Mafia showed that procurement was part of strategy. Since the same procurement problems are faced by all services, especially for big ticket items like ships and planes, what does that say about our military strategy overall?

I have been thinking about the future of naval strategy a lot in the past week and hope to have a post up in the next couple of days.