The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Part I, US Navy Edition
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Part I, US Navy Edition
An Era of Service Cacophony, Military Dis-Jointedness, Command Naivete, and Cultural Revolution
US Navy: Too Big to Fail
In our “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” series, we will examine the major US military services' state of health for conventional warfare and alignment towards the US pacing threat: the People’s Republic of China.
The Good: As first amongst equals in US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), Navy personnel have built up excellent knowledge of People’s Republic of China military capabilities. In addition, Pacific Fleet (PACFLT) operates along the First Island Chain every day, building up operational experience in the geographic area of highest concern. Underpinning these efforts is the fact that the Navy and Marine Corps mutually post officers to each other's staff for full tours to increase interoperability. This is a great move but also strange that this arrangement isn’t the standard across all services.
Finally, most observers agree that the US submarine fleet is in decent shape and retains a significant advantage against the less sophisticated PLA Navy (PLAN) submarine force. Under the AUKUS agreement, the US will extend this advantage by selling Virginia-class submarines to Australia while US boat builders will be given extra funds to cover the construction of new Virginias for the US Navy.
The Bad: Unfortunately for the US Navy, everything else is on fire. While the Navy community is generally educated on the China problem set, the burning question is what exactly are senior Naval leaders doing about it? The high level of China expertise does not seem to be translating into an effective new maritime strategy/operational method (besides guidance to operate dispersed), a new acquisition strategy, or new training.
Naval operationalists often fixate on blockade operations against the PRC, not caring to realize that a blockade is necessary but not sufficient to defeat the PRC (ref: Sparta, Napoleon’s Continental System, the Confederacy, Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, etc). In general, too much emphasis is placed on preserving the Navy’s large surface vessels dedicated to short range fighters and not simply winning the decisive naval battle early.
This lack of operational focus is impacting the Navy’s acquisition strategy. Ship construction is potentially the worst it's been in the service’s history. From building the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and then realizing the class is obsolete a few years later and trying to sell them off, planning the construction of 32 new stealth Zumwalt destroyers and then canceling the class at 3 ships, charging ahead with the acquisition of a newer and more expensive Ford class aircraft carrier that is essentially just a product improvement of the Nimitz class carrier, to attempting to avoid acquisition of the Constellation class frigate until being forced to purchase frigates by Congress, the entire twenty year history is depressing and erodes one’s faith in the American maritime republic.
LCS 4, the USS Coronado: decommissioned in 2022 after less than 9 years in the fleet.
For the 2024 US Navy shipbuilding plan released this spring to Congress, there is more bad news. The document outlines three courses of action, two of which are likely not meant to be taken seriously. Only one of the options gets the Navy back to the statutory 355 ship battle force minimum. None of the options gets the fleet to the Congressionally mandated 31-ship floor of amphibious vessels, violating language in the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and a service agreement with the Marine Corps, which has placed amphib ships as their number one service unfunded requirement for 2024.
In another head-scratching decision, the Navy is requesting a paltry 2.1% growth to ship construction industrial base dollars over the 5 year Fiscal Year Defense Plan (FYDP, pronounced fy-dup). These dollars support the nation’s industrial ability to construct warships, and a 2% increase is as good as a cut considering inflation. The ability to construct new warships quicker would offset the last twenty years of poor choices in ship design, but there seems to be little interest from the Navy in such investments in their own force.
The Ugly: While the Navy has been experimenting with failed ship designs, China has been quite busy. From 2005 to 2020, the US Navy’s net procurement of new warships increased the size of the fleet from 291 to 296 warships; at the same time, China’s navy grew from 216 to 360 warships. The PLAN has executed the largest naval buildup of any nation since WWII, and shows no signs of slowing down. Over half the Chinese fleet is composed of vessels constructed after 2010. At the current trajectory, the future looks even worse. “By 2028, we will have approximately 291 ships or so,” U.S. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told a Senate panel on Tuesday. “I can’t predict exactly what the Chinese will have, but estimates are upward of 440 or so.” Admiral Gilday, the Chief of Naval Operations added “In only two decades, the PRC has tripled the size of its Navy and is on pace to quadruple to over 400 ships by 2030.”
If readers are unsure whether fleet size matters, consider this recent study by Professor Tangredi of the Naval War College. Tangredi, a former Navy Captain, surveyed 28 naval wars from 500 BC onwards. The study showed that in 25 cases, the side with the larger fleet won. The victory of larger fleets was even the norm in cases where the smaller fleet had better technology. Vermilion assesses this is because combat at sea is so platform centric. It doesn’t matter how many highly trained sailors are available or how much technology a ship is equipped with if there are too few ships to sustain operations. Additionally, warships have historically been very expensive, high maintenance, and very fragile. Ships will always be susceptible to being sunk by the offensive technologies of their respective era. This may especially be the case in our present time of missile warfare.
Tangredi came to the following conclusions: “In a naval struggle between near-peers, mass (numbers), and the ability to replace losses bests technological advantage. As the mass of one opponent grows, the chance of its defeat reduces. At a certain point of imbalance in mass, the larger naval force cannot be defeated, even when the opponent attacks effectively first in any one engagement.”
“I do not say that a smaller, technologically superior fleet could never defeat a much larger fleet, I only say that — with the possible exception of three cases in the past 1,200 years — none has…During [WWII], Imperial Japan built 18 carrier-equivalents … while the United States built 144. Unless the United States decided not to fight, Japan never had a chance.”
Advantages of Mass/Numbers:
Ability to absorb the first salvo of an engagement
Ability to mass fires from individual units
Ability to saturate opponent defenses
Ability to operate simultaneously in multiple theaters / regions.
Ability to retain a reserve force while suffering inevitable attrition.
Ability to present too many targets for opponent inventories of costly precision weapons.
Higher number of leaders and more competition between leaders looking to gain the edge during their ship command time.
A larger naval industrial base to support the construction, repair, and maintenance of a larger fleet.
The PLA currently fields a battle force of at least 340+82 ships. In yet another questionable decision, the Navy omits those extra 82 vessels from official reports because these vessels are patrol combatants and other shorter range craft like the Type 22 Houbei missile boat. Vermilion is calling this out as a miscount because the most likely US military scenarios for conflict with the PRC occur within the First Island Chain in the PRC and Taiwan’s littoral waters - exactly the area where these light vessels are expected to operate.
The three areas where the US Navy seeks solace out of this mess is that first, it still outclasses the PLAN in terms of total tonnage. However it is not clear at all that tonnage (measuring the weight and therefore assumed capability of the battle force) is valid in the current era of naval warfare. Higher tonnage also means that a force’s naval capability is concentrated into fewer, harder to disperse hulls.
Second, US naval thinking often relies on the greater training and higher quality of US Navy personnel versus PLAN personnel. While this advantage is almost certainly valid, it is also questionable for a service that has not fought a serious battle since the 1940s. It should also be pointed out that the Navy’s higher quality force is spread far thinner than the PLAN. The US Navy has a global mission including deterring Russia, supporting CENTCOM and AFRICOM in the Mediterranean, and providing forces to SOUTHCOM. The PLAN has no such responsibilities and can focus 95% on the First Island Chain.
Third, the Navy will attempt to lean into its greater at-sea magazine depth, but this situation will likely reverse within only a few years. Some back-of the-napkin math on munitions:
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PLA Navy Large Surface Combatants
50 Destroyers: 8 Renhai = 112+24HQ for 896+192 / 25 Type 052D = 64+24HQ for 1,600+600 / 6 Type 052C = 48+8YJ for 288+48 / 11 other classes of destroyer - rough estimate = 48+8 for 528+88
PLA Navy Small Surface Combatants
42 Frigates: 30 Type 054A Jiangkai II = 32+8YJ for 960+240 / 2 Type 54 Jiangkai I = 14+8 for 28+16 / 10 other frigates with at least 8 missiles each = 80
72 Corvettes: 72 Type 56 & 56A JiangDao = 8+4YJ for 576+288 /
60 Missile Boats: 109, 60 of which are significant - 60 Type 22 Missile Boat = 8YJ for 480
~6,900 PLA surface cells+launchers from 224 platforms
PLA Navy Submarines
1 SSGN Type 32 Qing Class @ 75% US loadout for 112
9 SSN Type 93 & 93A Song / Type 91 Han Class @ 75% US loadout 9+18 for 81+162
48 SS Tiny guys: Yuan / Song / Mong / Kilo Classes @ 50% US loadout 6+12 for 288+576
~1,220 PLA subsurface cells+torpedos from 58 platforms
PLA Navy puts to sea with ~8,120 rounds
US Navy Large Surface Combatants
17 Ticonderoga = 122+8Harpoon for 2,074+136
1 Zumwalt = 80 for 80
70 Arleigh Burke = 96+2Harpoon for 6,720+140
US Navy Small Surface Combatants
22 Littoral Combat Ship = Could theoretically be fitted with 14-18 Naval Strike Missiles for ~350
~9,500 US Navy surface cells+launchers from 110 platforms
US Navy Submarines
4 Ohio Class SSGN loaded w/ 154 Block IV TLAM capable of striking ships for 616
3 Sea Wolf SSN at least 50 munitions for 150
26 Los Angeles SSN 12+25torpedo for 312+650t
21 Virginia SSN 12+25torpedo (will be upgraded in out years) for 252+525
~2,500 US Navy subsurface cells+torpedos from 54 platforms
US Navy puts to sea with ~12,000 rounds divided by the % of naval force not in INDOPACOM
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If the Navy deploys 75% of the fleet to INDOPACOM (far more than is apportioned today) the force enters with 9,000 rounds, quite close to parity with the PLAN’s 8,120. Making this near-parity even more tenuous are three further factors: PLARF strikes, reloads, and naval shipbuilding.
First, the PRC’s People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) maintains thousands of missiles capable of targeting and killing warships. None of these weapons are calculated in the above math, meaning that the US Navy in actuality has nowhere near munition parity with the PLA as a whole within the range of these land-based PLARF launchers (mostly within the Second Island Chain).
Second, most ships and boats most of the time cannot reload at sea. They must return to port in order to take on more missiles. Obviously, the PLAN is fighting directly from its own home ports and sources of magazine depth, while US navy vessels must travel oceanic distances for homeport reload. Allied ports in Japan may be of use, but then the munitions must still travel oceanic distances from the factory to the First Island Chain and arrive promptly.
Third, the US Navy winning the first battle may not even matter. The PRC has more than 200x the ship building capacity of the US by tonnage, and the ability to rapidly replace battle fleets. It was not the existing peacetime US fleet that won WWII, but the fleet-in-being constructed after hostilities that achieved victory.
Tacoma Yard, Washington State sometime in the mid 1940s. At least 21 recently constructed likely Bogue class escort carriers can be identified.
Throughout the war, Japan would construct and operate only around half the amount of fleet carriers the US could produce. To keep the modern active US Navy funded, the DoD and Dept of the Navy have consistently divested from federal shipyards. At the same time, Washington’s withdrawal of shipbuilding subsidies in the ‘80s caused a rapid collapse of the US maritime sector in less than a decade. Private shipyards (dual-use) shuttered quickly and the PRC wisely jumped at the opportunity, supporting their own maritime sector so that today, the PRC out produces the US in ships of all types by more than 100-to-1.
While there are belated efforts to address this issue, it is becoming clear the Dept of the Navy has forgotten how to build out shipyard capacity. Shipyards are complicated multi-year projects with multi-decade service lives, and planning these efforts requires significant foresight, complex planning, and congressional bipartisanship. This type of national defense industrial base work is critical to winning the wars that matter the most to the nation, yet this type of expertise was quickly jettisoned during the years of the Global War on Terror as flag officers started getting sucked down the tactical soda straw.
For an illustrative example tying everything together from above:
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The US Navy fields a total fleet of 298 ships. The missile fighting fleet minus carriers and the gator navy is closer to 164 warships. The PLAN fields a fleet of 422, of which roughly 282 comprise the missile fighting fleet minus land-based aviation support.
If 75% of the Navy’s 164 platform fighting fleet is dedicated to the Pacific, it puts to sea with around 123 warships. By contrast, assume the PLAN is able to keep 90% of its 282 vessels within the First Island Chain, leaving a fieldable force of 253 warships. Then assume both nations are prepared and have conducted out-of-cycle maintenance for months to get readiness numbers up to max. That 130 warship gap doesn’t look great for blue.
This means that the US Navy loses even if it is three times better than the red fleet. Assuming all platforms attack but blue’s crews are better and that the blue fleet ALWAYS (123 platforms) attacks effectively first and scores at minimum mission kills on red warships 60% of the time BEFORE RED EVER FIRES, while red fleet gets a mission kill in only a paltry 20% of engagements while the PLARF inflicts 5% attrition on the blue navy per turn:
First Engagements
Blue: start with 123 - kills 73 red
Red: start with 253-73 for 180 left - kills 36 blue
PLARF attrition: 87 left, -4 blue for 83 left
Second Engagements
Blue: 83 left - kills 49 red
Red: 180-49 for 131 left - kills 26 blue
PLARF attrition: 57 left, -3 blue for 54 left
Third Engagements
Blue: 54 left - kills 32 red
Red: 131-32 for 99 left - kills 20 blue
PLARF attrition: 34 left, -2 blue for 32 left
Fourth Engagements
Blue: 32 left - kills 19 red
Red: 99-19 for 80 left, kills 16 blue
PLARF attrition: 16 left, -1 blue for 15
Fifth Engagements
Blue: 15 left - kills 9 red
Red: 80-9=71 left, kills 14 blue
PLARF attrition: 1 left, -1 blue for 0
Red Wins w/ 71 Surviving Platforms
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Even if the US Navy is three times better than the PLAN/red and always gets to attack first before being fired upon, the PLAN ends up theoretically winning the naval platform war. In every round above, the US Navy/blue wins handily, yet ultimately loses the war. This is what Professor Tangredi means when he writes that mass bests technological advantage.
To make matters worse, as discussed above, the PRC has 200x the shipbuilding capacity of the United States by tonnage. After such a battle, the PLAN only needs to out-repair and out-produce the US Navy by 3x to ensure that the US will never be able to catch up at sea, even if the US retains a sailor quality edge (even though these crews would be KIA). At that point, the US would be incapable of winning against the PRC unless the CCP decided to stop fighting.
The above is obviously not a prediction of how combat will actually play out. Key variables include blue carrier wing effectiveness, red ground-based air wing effectiveness, weather, training, and sensor to shooter network quality. However, it is a planning factor that should chasten the US Navy, Congress, and the American people.
While Congress, the Executive, the Navy, and “strategists” argue about American shipbuilding and spar over the difference of 14 or so more ships by 2035, none understand that this makes almost zero difference. 20 ships in peacetime means nothing. History is a harsh teacher, and from the Peloponnesian War, to the Punic Wars, to World War II, it is only the ability to replace fleets that has guaranteed victory to great powers fighting each other. Time and time again, the peacetime fleet’s main purpose is simply to delay the enemy until wartime production kicks in.
Ultimately, the US Navy is victim to the all too American tendency to become too big to fail. Many of the bureaucratically prestigious career paths in the US Navy are related to carrier aviation and command of fleets containing the largest warships constructed in human history. While the Marine Corps under Commandant Berger has been able to temporarily slay the cult of the infantry main effort to focus on the pacing threat, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday has been unable to wrangle the Navy even temporarily away from its belief in gargantuan manned surface vessels whose sole purpose is to support short-range fighters firing short-range munitions.
There are initiatives attempting to change the course of disaster, but they have been halfhearted. Admiral Gilday has previously assessed that adding in unmanned ships could increase the battle force by about 210 hulls, leading to a roughly 500 ship battle force. Sometime this year (if it hasn’t already happened), the Navy is planning to release the capabilities development document (CDD) for the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel (LUSV), an unmanned ship capable of firing at least an standard missile 6 (SM6). A CDD is an acquisitions document that lays out to industry what specifications and characteristics the capability should be built to. However, the CDD represents only the middle of the acquisitions process. A Capability Production Document (CPD) will have to be created and staffed for the final and exact version of the LUSV, then the CPD will have to be kicked over to Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) for oversight of an industry partner (Huntington-Ingalls, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, etc) to actually construct the vessels. The Navy will hopefully field the LUSV by 2025.
The same thinking is gaining currency with Naval Aviation, albeit at a slower rate. Early discussions point towards a carrier air wing that is 60% pilotless at an unknown future time. It stretches credulity to think that it has taken the US Navy until 2025 to realize that unmanned vehicles are useful.
USVs Ranger and Nomad unmanned vessels underway in the Pacific Ocean near the Channel Islands on July 3, 2021. US Navy Photo
It has taken the Navy too long to realize this at a time when there are more Admirals (active and reserve) than there are even warships in the battle force. These numbers do not account for the extreme growth in Department of the Navy Senior Executive Service (SES) “civilian admiral” positions which were created in the late 70s. This grotesque bloat of the military bureaucracy is clearly not enhancing decision making and simply cannot be seen by the Admirals themselves, who benefit from such a policy.
Solutions:
Civil-Military Navy Board: The level of thinking that has thrust the Navy into this perilous position is not the same level of thinking that will solve the problem. It should be clear that the service requires adult supervision. The Congress and POTUS should authorize a temporary civil-military Navy Board composed of retired and active leaders throughout the sea services and department of defense, as well as academia, industry, and congressmen involved in legacy and current House and Senate force structure legislation. Good candidates would be men like Bob Gates, Bob Work, Victor Davis Hanson, David Berger, Eliot Cohen, Mark Cancian, Jack Reed, and others.
Regardless of Senator Tuberville’s block on military positions requiring Senate confirmation, Admiral Franchetti should not be authorized to fill the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) billet. She has worked at the CNO’s office for years and is almost certainly a part of the problem. The proposed Navy Board would research the situation, identify problems, construct a prioritized set of solutions, and then be authorized by Congress to issue the prioritized list as a set of directives to a new CNO.
The first Arleigh Burke Flight III and the 75th of the class under construction in 2021- DDG 125, the USS Jack H. Lucas
Build More Burkes: From the simple math above, it is easy to identify that the center of gravity for the US surface fleet is the Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer. Each Burke Flight III packs 96 total vertical launch system (VLS) cells for missiles. At the same time, it is easier to construct than larger warships like the Ticonderoga class and has a hot production line. The Navy is tepidly pursuing this course of action and purchasing 9 Burkes through 2027. However, as we have discussed, this is not enough. Additional funds should be appropriated immediately to exercise the contractual options with HII Ingalls and General Dynamics for additional warships above the baseline 9. These Burkes under construction may be the force that the Navy has to fight with against the PRC.
Beef up Shipbuilding: While the US Navy certainly needs to increase military shipyard construction, the larger problem is the civilian shipyard sector. Civilian shipyards have greater potential for capacity and can be converted during wartime to military production. Additionally, it is civilian shipyards that are better suited to producing the mass of logistics ships required for all military operations, not just naval activity. The international market in shipbuilding is almost certainly dominated by government subsidies and is not a particularly healthy free market. Last year, the PRC achieved a shipbuilding market share higher than Japan and South Korea combined.
The solution is for the US, Japan, and Korea to create a new global shipbuilding order. These three need to grab market share from China, revitalize shipbuilding in the United States, and coordinate subsidies, incentives, and disincentives within a common shipbuilding market among all allies. Throw in Australia, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom, and this economic venture could form the basis for a future strategic partnership in the style of AUKUS.
The above allies and partners should also coordinate on the construction of a new large corvette or small frigate optimized for warfighting across the First Island Chain. The program office should have multi-national coordination much like the F-35 program, with the warship constructed in multiple countries and capable of networked warfare across the program partners.
Complete Revamp of the Naval Reserve: With a challenged budget, the US Navy needs to do more with less. The Navy currently doesn’t properly employ its’ reserve component. Extra warships should be procured beyond what the active Navy can crew. These extra warships should be placed in the Naval reserve and assigned to multiple reserve crews, with each crew training on the vessel at different drill weekends of the same month. In this way, reserve assets can be more intensively utilized while the Navy begins the accumulation of a true wartime crew reserve. In a naval war with the PRC, crew casualties are likely to be high, and having extra trained crews will be highly valuable.
Pick a Motto: The Navy has no official motto, but the larger problem is that it is losing rudder steer on its own culture. Lethality, proficiency, and being underway need to be placed back into the center of the service, not politics, fads, fashions, or frippery.