Admiral Harvey ... this boils down most of our troubles to its essence: "For the past several decades, there has not been either a meaningful or, more importantly, a sustained consensus, either inside or outside the Navy, on what our Navy is for, what it should look like and how it should operate. Absent this consensus, it is a warfare community-driven program that rules the day inside OPNAV from year to year and guarantees our future Navy will look pretty much like our current Navy." - thank you.
ADM Harvey's homework recommendation should be taken to heart, at all levels, service academies, department head, war college, and in a P-4 to all O-6 and flag selectees. And to members of congressional committees and their staffs who mess with/up military matters.
There is much to be learned from history, and while the gadgets have changed from the 1923-1940 period, the basic concepts, and the realities of distance have not. The only new element is that of ICBMs reducing the protections formerly assured for support bases far from the site of any fleet actions.
Sep 18, 2023·edited Sep 18, 2023Liked by CDR Salamander
"For the past several decades, there has not been either a meaningful or, more importantly, a sustained consensus, either inside or outside the Navy, on what our Navy is for..."
I was in Pensacola this weekend, and didnt recognize the gent in camo in front of me at the Hertz line was a USN Chief until he turned around and I saw the -barely discernible- low contrast anchor at his sternum.
The USN has literally shed any unity of identity, so its no wonder that there is such a lack of Organizational Consensus.
Regardless of community, its high time the USN started dressing like they are actually in a "Navy"
And the 4 stars really need to "Lead From The Top"...
Isn't this just aesthetics? "dressing like they are actually in a "Navy" " looks different from one era to another. The Khaki uniform was not even adopted by the Navy for chiefs and officers until 1942. The 21st Century Navy dresses differently from the 20th Century Navy. However, the 20th Century Navy dressed a lot differently from the 19th and 18th Century navies.
Otherwise, uniforms wouldn't be needed at all by your logic.
Yes, uniforms change. However, in each era you cite, Sailors wore the same uniforms.
It fosters organizational identity and pride.
That the USN is riven by internecine strife, as Adm. Harvey comments is a problem.
And the balkanized 'Community' attire in the USN is a bright and shining symptom of that.
Going back to harmonized uniform standards across the fleet...where people look -and hopefully eventually feel...like they are on the same team will go a (surprising to you) long way in fixing the balkanized mess of today.
"Otherwise, uniforms wouldn't be needed at all by your logic."
Strawman. Not saying uniforms aren't needed. Just saying that what "looks like a Navy" changes overtime.
Sailors are wearing the "same" uniforms now, at least to the same degree, as they did in the 20th Century.
You had "balkanized community attire" in the 1920s too.
The reality is that the Navy never had the same uniform for everyone in the Fleet, regardless of community, rank, rating or fleet/office wear, at any point in its history. In fact, the move to Type III and a smaller seabag goes a long way towards your ideal then you realize. Probably again because you prefer the late 20th Century uniform aesthetic.
"Probably again because you prefer the late 20th Century uniform aesthetic."
The average civilian cannot distinguish a Sailor from a Soldier today.
No wonder there is no support for the Navy from the general public.
The only part of it they recognize are the SEALS.
And the "TopGun" guys who are indistinguishable from the Air Force.
(May as well follow the Brit model, and fold Naval Aviation into the USAF)
And again, the lack of any unique identity is emblematic...and a direct symptom of... what Admiral Harvey said here, rebumped in case you glossed over it:
"For the past several decades, there has not been either a meaningful or, more importantly, a sustained consensus, either inside or outside the Navy, on what our Navy is for, what it should look like and how it should operate. Absent this consensus, it is a warfare community-driven program that rules the day inside OPNAV from year to year and guarantees our future Navy will look pretty much like our current Navy."
Aside from not looking like the Navy, they all look more cop like paramilitary as the cops militarize and the military "warfighters" itself out of knowing WTF it needs to know how to do which basically has been pretty solid since the Roman Republic and got spruced up again about the time of Napolean.
Military uniforms are standardized, distinctive forms of dress that distinguish soldiers and sailors from civilians. There are many psychological implications of military uniforms, including the importance of style, appearance and color, as well as insignia, decorations, and so on. These contribute to togetherness, orderliness and discipline, and add to the soldiers' sense of camaraderie, cohesion, and esprit de corps.
Thanks to both of you for a great discussion of the situation. We need more clear thinking and desire to “work the problem” inside and outside the Pentagon. Our need for a capable Navy is always at hand, so we need to do both things- keep what we have and pla/build for the future - without gimmicks.
Part of what made LCS such a debacle was a small multi-mission ship already existed; MEKO 100. Giving one of our allies a couple bucks per ship would have saved us a LOT of money.
What a solid, reflective, useful trip down Memory Lane! And per the date on my driver’s license, I too recall those days of yore. To which I must add:
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The 1990s were a time of a general DOD (and Big Navy) war on people; not to put too fine a point on it. Cuz “man”-power is expensive and an easy way to fast-reduce the cost element. Ergo… Retire. RIF. Force-shaping. BRAC. De-emphasize the people-pipeline, from HS to recruitment, ROTC to OCS. Just neglect the seed corn. Cuz fewer ships need fewer people and (we now regret) fewer shipyards. With a future, tantalizing vision of… ahem… reduced “man”-ning. Applicable to both military and civilian support; y’know… no need for so many of those paycheck-collecting contract specialists, estimators, naval architects, inspectors, welders, pipe-fitters, etc. And now we are deep into the second generation of this people-shunning attitude, and in the midst of a recruiting crisis, in a culture where a mere 9% of youth even consider a military career, and… hmm… where do we go from here? Lots of legacy problems on the table.
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On a complete different tangent, there’s that long-term DOD/Big Navy emphasis on shiny platforms like ships, airplanes & stuff, to the neglect of things that shoot and inflict harm. Do we have better, oh… I dunno… guns? (DDGX Gun was a disaster; LCS fielded a mighty 57mm thingie; better CIWS even?). Or better missiles? (Aircraft AAMs seem to take forever to get incrementally better; Standard Missile series long ago reached its Boeing 737 moment; and lack of hypersonic reveals scandalous failure of both intel/foreign analysis and internal R&D — esp the “D” part — by the Big Brains who must do these technically difficult things). Or even torpedo systems? (MK-48 traces industrial DNA to the 1960s and yeah-yeah-yeah, it’s better today. But is it, too, at its B-737 point?). And how about EW? Which still seems like a collateral duty for specialists, versus an overwhelming issue that ought to dominate everyone’s waking thoughts. That is, just as everyone on a ship should be a firefighter, so should everyone associated with war fighting be an EW geek.
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And to borrow from Mark Twain, “Forgive the length of this note. I’d have written less if I had more time.”
Here's the problem, for most things 737s are fine. Can we really improve on the effectiveness of Standard? Or at least, do it affordably, while being able to produce the replacement at at least the same rate? And the affordable issue really slams hypersonics; the targets that really need a faster response than a Tomahawk, NSM, or SM-6 aren't that numerous.
Sep 18, 2023·edited Sep 18, 2023Liked by CDR Salamander
"Here's the problem, for most things 737s are fine."
They make money.
The basic formula is how far you can fly a butt whose owner (and how many of those) has paid with the best operating cost.
The Concorde proved that fast doesn't make money. Nor will it anytime soon, no matter what fanciful proclamations have been made recently.
The A380 proved that "Giantness" breaches the threshold of how many butts in one tube can be profitable.
Wars are fortunately not all that common, but trying to make a dime is an everyday affair.
Especially in the airline biz. If you have a huge fortune, go ahead and get in the airline business. Its a guarantee your fortune will become much smaller.
737 is a metaphor. Sturdy old bird. Original design in 1960s. Legacy tech from 50s. And well-evolved over many decades. More. Better. Stronger. Lighter. Smoother. But then came that last decision…. One… More… Stretch. Max it out, so to say. When a clean sheet would’ve been better. And clean sheet doesn’t mean start from zero. No need to reinvent aluminum or rubber tires. But eventually you have to leapfrog the legacy. Start new. Ask “What if???”
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US Navy/DOD is there w many systems. 737 Moment…. Come to Jesus. We’ve known for years that good air defense can take down Tomahawk. And can SM really defend against the looming swarms of missiles inbound? M6, 7, 8…. C’mon. Ukraine aerial war speaks for itself.
In the commercial context, maintaining the status quo with a mature profitable design makes sense.
Delving into the 737 analogy deeper, the 737 Max travesty was precipitated precisely because Boeing got "Transformational" with the engines.
There's alot more, but this isnt the discussion except to say that weapons system requirements should not be driven by a "Commercial Enterprise" mindset.
You end up with the mish mash mediocre -but highly profitable- junk we've bought.
FWIW, Airbus followed like a lemming behind Boeing with the A320 Neo and they're having troubles as a consequence...
Well, Ukraine has shown that current tech can take down hypersonics. And if you can launch 10 Tomahawk for 1 hypersonic, the math favors Tomahawk. Enough missiles... doesn't matter what AD system you have; you're going to get hit.
Great article. But I am not sure if the U.S. Navy is still the finest Navy in the world. I believe we have lost more than a step for a variety of reasons ranging from crooked contractors to DIE CRT PC wokeness. Also, those CVNs may be as obsolete as Dreadnaughts in the age of missiles and drones. Worse is underestimating the capabilites of our adversaries. Those Russian and Chinese sailors look impressive.
CV/CVNs were at risk post-Nautilus. There just hasn't been a world war to test the SSN hypothesis. Fewer escorts in a CVBG and no S-3's for distant target prosecution will likely make that even more obvious when finally tested.
Their subs and icebreakers look impressive to me. It's true that their carriers are not so impressive, but ours might not be either given a barrage of missiles and drones. Anyway, I was thinking of their sailors as individuals. Can you honestly say that an American sailor is better than his Russian counterpart?
I would agree that their modern subs are rapidly catching up and their icebreakers are enviable. And their SS-N-33 cruise missile (“Zircon”) is solid.
However, as a generality, they have a poorly trained and maintained navy. Alcoholism and drug use are rampant, as is corruption. They are poorly fed, poorly paid, and their military medical system is atrocious. For years they dumped their SSN reactor components into the relatively shallow Arctic, before they acknowledged that might be a problem for the fishing industry and energy extraction platforms…
Expanding the argument a bit, many of their bases are literally crumbling, and while some of our older bases aren’t much better, I have personally seen barracks buildings in Baikonur with cracks so large you can see people walking inside. I have seen toilets installed inside former jacket closets, vastly uneven stair steps (both depth and height) that caused people to have to look at their feet to traverse them, and base roads so mangled by frost surge and potholes that one pothole hit bent our van rim.
Yes, I can say with 100% certainty that US sailors are better than Russian and Chinese sailors, although Chinese are rapidly catching up. Better than maybe the UK? That’s where it gets interesting.
One other problem is the lack of inspiring leadership. Can you think of one admiral in today's Navy that inspires a young sailor the way that a Bull Halsey or a David Beatty did in the last century? Today's admirals seem more concerned about their post retirement plans than they do about their ships and crews.
I welcome inspiring leadership but I also have far greater admiration for those who understand that mechanical and electrical systems, aka the boring *&@#$, gets a "vote" on whether things ultimately line up with inspirational thinking. Take the propulsion system on the Zumwalts. Next gen... never done on a Navy surface combatant. One might imagine that this would have been an opportune time for the Navy to have built a dedicated ground-based or even pierside facility expressly for the purposes of fleshing out ALL the gory details on electrical propulsion BEFORE stuffing it into a hull. Similarly, the LCS is it's own EPIC fail with regard to it's own propulsion machinery. Hugely embarrasing and likely emboldened our adversaries.
Thanks to Bob Work for this interesting walk down memory lane. Getting name-checked in a piece by a former Deputy Secretary of Defense is a high honor. I'm quite certain when Bob wrote these words, he knew he'd get a rise out of me:
"The implosion of the Navy’s shipbuilding program was accompanied by a resurgence of the presence school. Their cries reached a crescendo with the 2007 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (CS21), which implied that naval presence was the key to preventing war, and “preventing war is as important as winning war. I mark this as another major disruption to the alluvial plain. In fact, I’d argue it was nearly as consequential to Navy thinking as the end of the Cold War. In my view, NOTHING is as important as winning our nation’s wars and being always ready to do so. I think CS21 is where the Navy stopped thinking like warfighters and started thinking like diplomats. I know that to my friends Bryan McGrath and Jerry Hendrix and all card-carrying members of the presence school, these are fighting words. I have written elsewhere about what I see as the Navy’s misguided emphasis on presence rather than warfighting but can’t bring myself to expound on it here."
Bob does an excellent job of providing context where it is supportive of his narrative. Here--not so much. What he fails to address in the CS21 run up was the existential crisis that Navy leadership felt as Navy force structure FOR WHATEVER USE was coming down 20% as the nation waged its "global war on terror" including two simultaneous land wars. The amount of "why do we even have a Navy" in the air at that time was deafening, as were the number of "we'll never have another war with major fleet engagements like WWII again". Bob wanted the 2006 Navy leadership to focus on winning wars that precious few political masters thought were even possible. There was at least one year during the GWB administration where ZERO combatants were acquired. Some argument OTHER than just "winning wars and being able to do so" had to be made in order to ensure that there was a Navy in existence to address those functions, and the best we we came up with was to describe just what it is that the Navy does---oh, 99.99% of the time it isn't shooting at anyone. If Bob thinks that all we had to do was make a better warfighting argument in 2006, not only is he wrong, but he ignores the degree to which 20 plus years of Goldwater-Nichols had watered down anything even resembling services advocating for themselves. Where Bob is right--in fact, spot on--is our inclusion in CS21 of "naval presence" as a mission of the Navy, a continuation of something the Navy had claimed as a mission for the previous 22 years since VADM Stansfield Turner offered it up in the mid 70's. This was a huge mistake, and I urge current Navy leadership not to repeat it.
Presence is not a mission, it is a posture, an operating habit. A nation must choose whether it needs a Navy. If the answer is yes, it must then decide what it is it wants that Navy to do. This basic decision on what the function of the Navy is to be determines the posture or operating habit of that navy. Some navies are local/coast guards. A Navy can be a "cruising navy", sending its fleet(s) out as necessary to "show the flag". A Navy can be a "surge navy", operating mainly out of home fleets and then pressing forward in response to threats to national interest. Our geography and interests caused us to maintain forces forward (presence), and post WWII free world leadership codified it. We do not maintain forces forward for the sake of presence. We maintain forces forward to deter, to assure, to respond to crises, and to be favorably positioned to fight and win. If we could effectively and economically look after our national security and economic interests with a surge navy, we would. If we could effectively and economically look after our national security and economic interests with a cruising navy, we would. If we could look after our national security and economic interests with a coast guard, we would. But we cannot adequately meet the missions we are handed by political leadership with any posture except one that is forward. Being forward is not its mission, it is a means to meet the mission.
The most damaging thing about Bob's rhetorical "presence" jihad is the influence he's had on a generation of (mostly) Democratic national security thinkers who have taken maximal views on Navy force structure that lead to the conclusion that if it isn't in the China fight, it isn't worth having. The Congress disagrees with Bob and his acolytes, so much that it CHANGED the Navy's Title 10 mission in 2023 to include those annoying things it does when it isn't guns ablazin' against its latest foe, like advance our security and prosperity.
And this bit: "So, all I’ll say is post CS21, all you must do is look at the alarming subsequent collapse of battle force material readiness, the ship handling disasters in the 7th Fleet AoA, and the dithering on the pier among senior leaders about who was in charge while the steel of Boney Dick burned and melted next to them. Are these the actions of a battle force that is spending the majority of its time thinking about how to win modern naval wars and send the PLAN to the bottom? I think not." Is just scurrilous. What we reaped in those tragedies was a whirlwind of "efficiencies" that were gained at the cost of "effectiveness", in no small measure BECAUSE of the "warfighting uber alles" approach to resourcing the Navy, one that starved ships of the time, parts, and training needed to feed the warfighting beast. Would that my friend Bob were at any point to make a case with the eloquence and vehemence that he makes this one--that the Navy needs more resources to do the things it is asked to do. He'd rather ask it to do fewer things (but better), which as I have written before, would result in a Navy marginally better at fighting a war it is considerably worse at deterring.
Rusty billion dollar ships colliding with merchant ships does not deter. While that may have been shown our enemies and allies just what the modern US Navy is capable of, perhaps we should have left them in suspense?
I greatly appreciate the former deputy secretary's remarks but a lot of this leaves me with even greater raging heartburn. A great many assumptions that carried enormous risks with them if they failed to live up to expectations... as clearly many did not. Did that alter senior leadership's thinking? Did we learn from hugely successful Aegis' model? Theoretical and mathematical modeling serving to "validate" transformation concepts that cannot possibly be validated under realist operational conditions; especially given the Navy's propensity to go with narrowly confined and scripted "do over" & "resets" wargames. The absence of vigorous ground testing of new tech before it went into a hull to determine, not only its efficacy, but "could we even maintain this $#&#@"????? Lead times for critical components? Validated before it went into a hull? Think not. Realistic T&E to determine what personnel it would take to maintain this new wizardry of high tech. The passionate love affair with new tech and concepts while ignoring the mundane headaches that directly impact the Navy's ability to stay in the game, e.g., replenishment of VLS on ABs without forcing each hull to transit thousands of miles once they've exhausted their cells... Ignored that one for decades. One didn't need a crystal ball to imagine how an adversary could employ huge numbers of deceptive decoys, electronic jammers and low cost cruise missiles in saturation attacks in order to rapidly exhaust an AB's magazine. We knew of a predecessor saturation strategy from the time of Soviet's and prop driven Bears with their bellies loaded up with cruise missiles... sprinkle in decoys and jammers. Known... imminently predictable from observable data and what? Lasers and thousands of unmanned vehicles. Yeah OK...
They need to make sure every surface VLS is loaded with SAMS. Maybe some VLA. The Tomahawks, if on the surface, need to ride around on something designed to carry them around in Mk 70 launchers. Shuttle them up and back as needed. Load them in the closest safe container port.
If "every surface VLS is loaded with SAMS", the Surface Navy becomes a self-licking ice cream cone. You need to be able to perform another mission set besides self-preservation.
Was in the "transformation" game for over a decade. Joint Experimentation (IMO) was a major contributor to the collapse of all the service acquisition failures of the last 23 years. "Experimentation" literally became a four letter word for overpromising and underdelivering and deserved it. The concept development to acquisition was not broken because it never existed (see JCIDS chart for reason why). The Iron Triangle of the Pentagon, Congress, and major defense contractors drive the force development process in directions that benefit them (contracts, jobs in districts, promotions and retirement jobs on company boards) and only use concepts when they align with what they want to do. When they don't line up, justification is title 10, services "organize, train, and equip, so stay out of our business. That's how you end up with LCS, over or underemphasis on "presence", USAF aircraft development failures, Future Combat Systems, etc. Warfighting is not a priority these days, which is sobering considering our thirty year track record of starting conflicts but not finishing them. Perhaps that's on purpose?
Since we don’t have a lot of large shipyards, when are we going to realize we need designs that can be built at smaller shipyards? In bulk? Where are the 30kt CVEs? The DDs, and the FFs? And if our shipyards are maxed out, the Build American argument goes out the window - have our closest allies build to our specs since our shipyards have nothing to lose.
And tell me again why something like a Soryu/Taigei conventional submarine, based and operating near the SCS, not roaming the world (as is always pushed as a critical need necessitating SSNs), would fail? Kilos and the like are deadly dangerous in the hands of our less tech-evolved adversaries but are useless in the hands of those that literally wrote the book on submarine operations? I think not, and I throw a BS flag on the field.
And as we explore this new naval world, how about some love for the support ships? How old are those tenders? How old are the C2 ships? Steam-powered merchants? Are you kidding me??? How will any of this new world move forward without them?
Either we are in a wartime mentality, or we are not. This is 1940, but our shipbuilding is dragging, our weapons procurement can’t even keep up with Ukraine usage and we can’t even keep our VLS cell count break-even. Our organizations are not remotely ready, with all of our datalinks and high bandwidth drone video, to deal with cut undersea cables, or blasted comsats or operating in EMCON, let alone compromised networks that run our logistics (civilian and military) and will likely crash in times of war.
To be blunt, I’m not seeing anything that tells me we aren’t putting up the mother of all bluffs on Taiwan. This is not the leadership and not the Navy that will fight and lose massively for Taiwan, despite big talk. This is not a national leadership, nor a Navy leadership, that is serious.
I want every UxV-lover to explain how their system works without comsats, talking back to ships in EMCON, or back to forward facilities cut off due to cable cuts. Tell me how those USVs deter two guys with C4 charges coming in from a zodiac from a fishing boat? What happens when the engine conks out 1000 miles from Pearl or San Diego?
My assumption is they will do routine maintenance when they come aboard for refueling as specified in the RFI. Just spit balling, but design spec on an EDG is 80% reliability with 2 weeks continuous use. If the gear on these ships can meet that standard it should be able to keep running between refueling visits.
MUSV will make 28 knots fully loaded and be able to turn in a boat length. It is to make 20 knots even if an engine has had a casualty and is to have 4 engines. The crux of what they are working on is autonomy. If it can't communicate, it will know to keep doing other things.
Andy, the issue with autonomy is that it works until something happens that was not in the test cases. A good example is the Perseverance rover on Mars a couple of weeks ago. With up to a 40 minute comm delay, autonomy is key for the rover's travel. A path is pre-planned using the Mars Reconnassiance Orbiter's 0.3 meter resolution maps but an onboard self-driving algorithm is still necessary to avoid unresolvable hazards. The rover found itself in a boulder field and ended up doing an unplanned 200 meter loop. The good thing is the system work. The rover did not get irrecoverably stuck. The navigation team evaluated the data and made changes. Subsequently, the rover traversed the boulder field and made it's longest single run to date. Autonomous systems operating within their expected parameters will always be faster than humans, but humans have the possibility of adapting faster in unexpected situations.
Many thanks to Bob for the thoughtful piece, Sal for hosting, and all of you for weighing in.
From my own humble perspective: I think Bob's piece mostly overlooks the foundational issue here, possibly because it is too simple and unsexy to attract the attention and analysis of anyone serious who has devoted their life to national security matters. The issue, IMO, is execution; pure and simple. Not presence VS projection, not this gun design VS that gun design, not manned VS unmanned. These feel like reasonable areas to focus and draw in the engaged mind, because we are in a bad spot and SURELY therefore better or different decisions would have resulted in a better or different outcome. They would not. And I suggest that pretending so is harmful wishcasting in and of itself, albeit of the intellectually stimulating variety.
When it comes to weapon systems, it is time to accept that we quite simply **cannot** reliably deliver a thing we set out to do. The Navy can't. The Army can't. The AF & USMC can't. Beyond the weapon system context, we as a society have become functionally disabled in the area of large scale public sector procurement and development. Until this is root-caused and fixed, or a workable model for even further privatization is accepted, count on more of the same, regardless of how correct we may be re: strategy, intent, or future forecasting.
However, we went off the rails when the DoD largely turned to contractors to provide much of the expertise that was traditionally on the civilian side of the services. We kept ships construction on schedule because the naval program offices had gray hairs that in many cases were war vets themselves, and knew the systems as well as the manufacturers, and they didn’t hesitate to call BS.
Now the acquisition folks know paperwork, and largely rely on contractors, much of the time with far less experience, to provide status. That system was destined to fail, and has spectacularly.
Procurement only works when govt keeps a deep cadre of experienced folks in house. But that is tough because that isn’t where the money is in DC.
This is a very apt discussion. Two parallels have been in my mind:
1) Public transportation infrastructure costs the US 5-10x what it costs Europe or Asia. This also applies to other civil infrastructure, e.g. the replacement Tappan Zee Bridge cost about the same as the Øresund Bridge despite the latter being 5x longer and far more difficult technically. One major cause has been the gutting of public sector technical engineering staff, and the outsourcing of major design and oversight work to private-sector contractors. While there has been significant research in the last decade outlining the problems, it has so far gained little traction in government.
2) The space launch industry spent 50 years in the wilderness, producing low-volume rockets as if they were disposable maximum-performance artillery systems instead of commercial aircraft. The public sector (NASA) lost much of its post-WWII technical development ability and yet continued to administer enormous sums of money funneled through to aerospace contractors. This diagnosis dates back to the 1980s and 1990s, but it wasn't until SpaceX that the situation changed and space launch returned as an area of overwhelming American leadership.
Bill - that's a super nuanced question. I say "can't" for two reasons: 1) I believe that no one person or organization is *actively* choosing for all these efforts to fail. Indeed, I'd WAG that good intentions across the board is a more accurate mental model than the inverse. 2) I don't believe there is a person or organization who could fix the situation today or who could achieve success within the system that exists.
But, as your question implies, clearly the laws of physics haven't changed. It remains entirely theoretically possible for the US, still the richest and most advanced country on earth, to build a warship or a plane or a bridge. Where's the disconnect then? IMO it is a simple matter of the cost of failure. Failure at any (or even all) of these projects hasn't posed an existential risk to Americans' way of life for decades. So long as that remains true, there's no need to re-balance trade-offs or steamroll the "whatabouts" that ultimately represent the death knell of these efforts.
Ultimately, we will face such a challenge. Whether we are able to return to a "success at all costs" mentality fast enough to rise to the occasion will determine how pleasant a place to live this wonderful country we call home remains.
We can build fabulous warships (bridges/roads/aircraft/etc/etc/etc) or we can satisfy the long tail of congressional handouts/environmental impact assessments/diversity-first-hiring/carbon neutral supply chain/etc. We've simply prioritized the long tail more and more for 50+ years.
Technical competence becomes irrelevant if the voters don't want projects done at all. Things are just supposed to work, without inconvenience or other costs.
"........but these failures had less to do with the transformation problem and more to do with a failure in cost-informed ship design and inability to contain operating costs. That’s the original sin, and one the Navy continues to commit."
Ain't that kinda' a NAVSEA function that's overseen by the highly paid Senior Executive Service employees? Perhaps a purge is overdue.
one additional and very dangerous drug that the Navy and the DoD were high on during the time was (and is!) outsourcing. i can show how outsourcing caused the debacle at Red Hill, the problems with sustainment of the F-35, and high costs of maintenance of LCS, and on and on and on. Only now are traditional views on sustainment starting to restore some semblance of readiness for specific weapon systems... Additionally, the increased dependence on DLA, without growing their working capital fund, is one of the main causes of Submarine maintenance delays, and will also be our achilles heel in the next fight. "Change it: Get a Medal. Change it back: Get a Medal!". it's time to 'Change it Back'!
Admiral Harvey ... this boils down most of our troubles to its essence: "For the past several decades, there has not been either a meaningful or, more importantly, a sustained consensus, either inside or outside the Navy, on what our Navy is for, what it should look like and how it should operate. Absent this consensus, it is a warfare community-driven program that rules the day inside OPNAV from year to year and guarantees our future Navy will look pretty much like our current Navy." - thank you.
ADM Harvey's homework recommendation should be taken to heart, at all levels, service academies, department head, war college, and in a P-4 to all O-6 and flag selectees. And to members of congressional committees and their staffs who mess with/up military matters.
There is much to be learned from history, and while the gadgets have changed from the 1923-1940 period, the basic concepts, and the realities of distance have not. The only new element is that of ICBMs reducing the protections formerly assured for support bases far from the site of any fleet actions.
"For the past several decades, there has not been either a meaningful or, more importantly, a sustained consensus, either inside or outside the Navy, on what our Navy is for..."
I was in Pensacola this weekend, and didnt recognize the gent in camo in front of me at the Hertz line was a USN Chief until he turned around and I saw the -barely discernible- low contrast anchor at his sternum.
The USN has literally shed any unity of identity, so its no wonder that there is such a lack of Organizational Consensus.
Regardless of community, its high time the USN started dressing like they are actually in a "Navy"
And the 4 stars really need to "Lead From The Top"...
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Isn't this just aesthetics? "dressing like they are actually in a "Navy" " looks different from one era to another. The Khaki uniform was not even adopted by the Navy for chiefs and officers until 1942. The 21st Century Navy dresses differently from the 20th Century Navy. However, the 20th Century Navy dressed a lot differently from the 19th and 18th Century navies.
No it is definitely not...
Otherwise, uniforms wouldn't be needed at all by your logic.
Yes, uniforms change. However, in each era you cite, Sailors wore the same uniforms.
It fosters organizational identity and pride.
That the USN is riven by internecine strife, as Adm. Harvey comments is a problem.
And the balkanized 'Community' attire in the USN is a bright and shining symptom of that.
Going back to harmonized uniform standards across the fleet...where people look -and hopefully eventually feel...like they are on the same team will go a (surprising to you) long way in fixing the balkanized mess of today.
"Otherwise, uniforms wouldn't be needed at all by your logic."
Strawman. Not saying uniforms aren't needed. Just saying that what "looks like a Navy" changes overtime.
Sailors are wearing the "same" uniforms now, at least to the same degree, as they did in the 20th Century.
You had "balkanized community attire" in the 1920s too.
The reality is that the Navy never had the same uniform for everyone in the Fleet, regardless of community, rank, rating or fleet/office wear, at any point in its history. In fact, the move to Type III and a smaller seabag goes a long way towards your ideal then you realize. Probably again because you prefer the late 20th Century uniform aesthetic.
"Probably again because you prefer the late 20th Century uniform aesthetic."
The average civilian cannot distinguish a Sailor from a Soldier today.
No wonder there is no support for the Navy from the general public.
The only part of it they recognize are the SEALS.
And the "TopGun" guys who are indistinguishable from the Air Force.
(May as well follow the Brit model, and fold Naval Aviation into the USAF)
And again, the lack of any unique identity is emblematic...and a direct symptom of... what Admiral Harvey said here, rebumped in case you glossed over it:
"For the past several decades, there has not been either a meaningful or, more importantly, a sustained consensus, either inside or outside the Navy, on what our Navy is for, what it should look like and how it should operate. Absent this consensus, it is a warfare community-driven program that rules the day inside OPNAV from year to year and guarantees our future Navy will look pretty much like our current Navy."
"You had "balkanized community attire" in the 1920s too. "
Not as much as you characterize:
https://www.usni.org/sites/default/files/styles/hero_image/public/Photo%20479.jpg?itok=GLLNQ7Uj
https://www.usni.org/sites/default/files/styles/hero_image/public/magazine_uploads/images/FriedmanF0SO10.jpg?itok=PmlEp-qx
Aside from not looking like the Navy, they all look more cop like paramilitary as the cops militarize and the military "warfighters" itself out of knowing WTF it needs to know how to do which basically has been pretty solid since the Roman Republic and got spruced up again about the time of Napolean.
Another example of the psychological effects of uniforms...this to the negative.
It is absolutely -NOT- a good thing for civilian law enforcement to dress and act like an SOF team.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/03/expert-looks-at-how-and-why-police-resist-reforms-to-militarization/
A nationalized Stanford prison experiment.
I guess we should go back to what "looked like a navy" in the Napoleonic era then...
Now, thats a Strawman!
Never said to head back to the 18th Century.
Here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286857200_Psychological_issues_in_military_uniform_design
Military uniforms are standardized, distinctive forms of dress that distinguish soldiers and sailors from civilians. There are many psychological implications of military uniforms, including the importance of style, appearance and color, as well as insignia, decorations, and so on. These contribute to togetherness, orderliness and discipline, and add to the soldiers' sense of camaraderie, cohesion, and esprit de corps.
Thanks to both of you for a great discussion of the situation. We need more clear thinking and desire to “work the problem” inside and outside the Pentagon. Our need for a capable Navy is always at hand, so we need to do both things- keep what we have and pla/build for the future - without gimmicks.
Part of what made LCS such a debacle was a small multi-mission ship already existed; MEKO 100. Giving one of our allies a couple bucks per ship would have saved us a LOT of money.
German ships don't dump money into US congressional districts. I don't believe that ThyssenKrupp has a North American shipyard.
Oh, I meant produce here under license. Should have been clearer.
I came here to ask this very question. Considering the domestic political concerns, would B&V have sold a license to produce domestically?
What a solid, reflective, useful trip down Memory Lane! And per the date on my driver’s license, I too recall those days of yore. To which I must add:
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The 1990s were a time of a general DOD (and Big Navy) war on people; not to put too fine a point on it. Cuz “man”-power is expensive and an easy way to fast-reduce the cost element. Ergo… Retire. RIF. Force-shaping. BRAC. De-emphasize the people-pipeline, from HS to recruitment, ROTC to OCS. Just neglect the seed corn. Cuz fewer ships need fewer people and (we now regret) fewer shipyards. With a future, tantalizing vision of… ahem… reduced “man”-ning. Applicable to both military and civilian support; y’know… no need for so many of those paycheck-collecting contract specialists, estimators, naval architects, inspectors, welders, pipe-fitters, etc. And now we are deep into the second generation of this people-shunning attitude, and in the midst of a recruiting crisis, in a culture where a mere 9% of youth even consider a military career, and… hmm… where do we go from here? Lots of legacy problems on the table.
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On a complete different tangent, there’s that long-term DOD/Big Navy emphasis on shiny platforms like ships, airplanes & stuff, to the neglect of things that shoot and inflict harm. Do we have better, oh… I dunno… guns? (DDGX Gun was a disaster; LCS fielded a mighty 57mm thingie; better CIWS even?). Or better missiles? (Aircraft AAMs seem to take forever to get incrementally better; Standard Missile series long ago reached its Boeing 737 moment; and lack of hypersonic reveals scandalous failure of both intel/foreign analysis and internal R&D — esp the “D” part — by the Big Brains who must do these technically difficult things). Or even torpedo systems? (MK-48 traces industrial DNA to the 1960s and yeah-yeah-yeah, it’s better today. But is it, too, at its B-737 point?). And how about EW? Which still seems like a collateral duty for specialists, versus an overwhelming issue that ought to dominate everyone’s waking thoughts. That is, just as everyone on a ship should be a firefighter, so should everyone associated with war fighting be an EW geek.
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And to borrow from Mark Twain, “Forgive the length of this note. I’d have written less if I had more time.”
Here's the problem, for most things 737s are fine. Can we really improve on the effectiveness of Standard? Or at least, do it affordably, while being able to produce the replacement at at least the same rate? And the affordable issue really slams hypersonics; the targets that really need a faster response than a Tomahawk, NSM, or SM-6 aren't that numerous.
"Here's the problem, for most things 737s are fine."
They make money.
The basic formula is how far you can fly a butt whose owner (and how many of those) has paid with the best operating cost.
The Concorde proved that fast doesn't make money. Nor will it anytime soon, no matter what fanciful proclamations have been made recently.
The A380 proved that "Giantness" breaches the threshold of how many butts in one tube can be profitable.
Wars are fortunately not all that common, but trying to make a dime is an everyday affair.
Especially in the airline biz. If you have a huge fortune, go ahead and get in the airline business. Its a guarantee your fortune will become much smaller.
Howard Hughes found that out:
https://simpleflying.com/twa-1992-bankruptcy-filing-explanation/
737 is a metaphor. Sturdy old bird. Original design in 1960s. Legacy tech from 50s. And well-evolved over many decades. More. Better. Stronger. Lighter. Smoother. But then came that last decision…. One… More… Stretch. Max it out, so to say. When a clean sheet would’ve been better. And clean sheet doesn’t mean start from zero. No need to reinvent aluminum or rubber tires. But eventually you have to leapfrog the legacy. Start new. Ask “What if???”
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US Navy/DOD is there w many systems. 737 Moment…. Come to Jesus. We’ve known for years that good air defense can take down Tomahawk. And can SM really defend against the looming swarms of missiles inbound? M6, 7, 8…. C’mon. Ukraine aerial war speaks for itself.
Thats kinda the point I was trying to make...
In the commercial context, maintaining the status quo with a mature profitable design makes sense.
Delving into the 737 analogy deeper, the 737 Max travesty was precipitated precisely because Boeing got "Transformational" with the engines.
There's alot more, but this isnt the discussion except to say that weapons system requirements should not be driven by a "Commercial Enterprise" mindset.
You end up with the mish mash mediocre -but highly profitable- junk we've bought.
FWIW, Airbus followed like a lemming behind Boeing with the A320 Neo and they're having troubles as a consequence...
https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Airline-News/Airbus-A320neo-engine-issue-more-extensive-than-first-reported
Well, Ukraine has shown that current tech can take down hypersonics. And if you can launch 10 Tomahawk for 1 hypersonic, the math favors Tomahawk. Enough missiles... doesn't matter what AD system you have; you're going to get hit.
Great article. But I am not sure if the U.S. Navy is still the finest Navy in the world. I believe we have lost more than a step for a variety of reasons ranging from crooked contractors to DIE CRT PC wokeness. Also, those CVNs may be as obsolete as Dreadnaughts in the age of missiles and drones. Worse is underestimating the capabilites of our adversaries. Those Russian and Chinese sailors look impressive.
Definitely have world-class rust on many ships. CDR Sal has published photos.
CV/CVNs were at risk post-Nautilus. There just hasn't been a world war to test the SSN hypothesis. Fewer escorts in a CVBG and no S-3's for distant target prosecution will likely make that even more obvious when finally tested.
You lost me at Russian sailors look impressive. The Black Sea fleet begs to differ as does their smoke-belching excuse for a carrier.
Sure, in some areas they excel, but overall? No.
Their subs and icebreakers look impressive to me. It's true that their carriers are not so impressive, but ours might not be either given a barrage of missiles and drones. Anyway, I was thinking of their sailors as individuals. Can you honestly say that an American sailor is better than his Russian counterpart?
I would agree that their modern subs are rapidly catching up and their icebreakers are enviable. And their SS-N-33 cruise missile (“Zircon”) is solid.
However, as a generality, they have a poorly trained and maintained navy. Alcoholism and drug use are rampant, as is corruption. They are poorly fed, poorly paid, and their military medical system is atrocious. For years they dumped their SSN reactor components into the relatively shallow Arctic, before they acknowledged that might be a problem for the fishing industry and energy extraction platforms…
Expanding the argument a bit, many of their bases are literally crumbling, and while some of our older bases aren’t much better, I have personally seen barracks buildings in Baikonur with cracks so large you can see people walking inside. I have seen toilets installed inside former jacket closets, vastly uneven stair steps (both depth and height) that caused people to have to look at their feet to traverse them, and base roads so mangled by frost surge and potholes that one pothole hit bent our van rim.
Yes, I can say with 100% certainty that US sailors are better than Russian and Chinese sailors, although Chinese are rapidly catching up. Better than maybe the UK? That’s where it gets interesting.
A nit to pick...
The Kuznetsov is in the Northern Fleet, and not in the Black Sea...
Agreed.
An excellent essay - thank you.
One other problem is the lack of inspiring leadership. Can you think of one admiral in today's Navy that inspires a young sailor the way that a Bull Halsey or a David Beatty did in the last century? Today's admirals seem more concerned about their post retirement plans than they do about their ships and crews.
I welcome inspiring leadership but I also have far greater admiration for those who understand that mechanical and electrical systems, aka the boring *&@#$, gets a "vote" on whether things ultimately line up with inspirational thinking. Take the propulsion system on the Zumwalts. Next gen... never done on a Navy surface combatant. One might imagine that this would have been an opportune time for the Navy to have built a dedicated ground-based or even pierside facility expressly for the purposes of fleshing out ALL the gory details on electrical propulsion BEFORE stuffing it into a hull. Similarly, the LCS is it's own EPIC fail with regard to it's own propulsion machinery. Hugely embarrasing and likely emboldened our adversaries.
Inspiring leadership is not limited to the bridge of a battleship. Jackie Fisher and Hyman Rickover inspired people by building great ships and bases.
Does anyone remember the Packard Commission that was set up by Ronald Reagan to deal with Pentagon overspending?
Thanks to Bob Work for this interesting walk down memory lane. Getting name-checked in a piece by a former Deputy Secretary of Defense is a high honor. I'm quite certain when Bob wrote these words, he knew he'd get a rise out of me:
"The implosion of the Navy’s shipbuilding program was accompanied by a resurgence of the presence school. Their cries reached a crescendo with the 2007 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (CS21), which implied that naval presence was the key to preventing war, and “preventing war is as important as winning war. I mark this as another major disruption to the alluvial plain. In fact, I’d argue it was nearly as consequential to Navy thinking as the end of the Cold War. In my view, NOTHING is as important as winning our nation’s wars and being always ready to do so. I think CS21 is where the Navy stopped thinking like warfighters and started thinking like diplomats. I know that to my friends Bryan McGrath and Jerry Hendrix and all card-carrying members of the presence school, these are fighting words. I have written elsewhere about what I see as the Navy’s misguided emphasis on presence rather than warfighting but can’t bring myself to expound on it here."
Bob does an excellent job of providing context where it is supportive of his narrative. Here--not so much. What he fails to address in the CS21 run up was the existential crisis that Navy leadership felt as Navy force structure FOR WHATEVER USE was coming down 20% as the nation waged its "global war on terror" including two simultaneous land wars. The amount of "why do we even have a Navy" in the air at that time was deafening, as were the number of "we'll never have another war with major fleet engagements like WWII again". Bob wanted the 2006 Navy leadership to focus on winning wars that precious few political masters thought were even possible. There was at least one year during the GWB administration where ZERO combatants were acquired. Some argument OTHER than just "winning wars and being able to do so" had to be made in order to ensure that there was a Navy in existence to address those functions, and the best we we came up with was to describe just what it is that the Navy does---oh, 99.99% of the time it isn't shooting at anyone. If Bob thinks that all we had to do was make a better warfighting argument in 2006, not only is he wrong, but he ignores the degree to which 20 plus years of Goldwater-Nichols had watered down anything even resembling services advocating for themselves. Where Bob is right--in fact, spot on--is our inclusion in CS21 of "naval presence" as a mission of the Navy, a continuation of something the Navy had claimed as a mission for the previous 22 years since VADM Stansfield Turner offered it up in the mid 70's. This was a huge mistake, and I urge current Navy leadership not to repeat it.
Presence is not a mission, it is a posture, an operating habit. A nation must choose whether it needs a Navy. If the answer is yes, it must then decide what it is it wants that Navy to do. This basic decision on what the function of the Navy is to be determines the posture or operating habit of that navy. Some navies are local/coast guards. A Navy can be a "cruising navy", sending its fleet(s) out as necessary to "show the flag". A Navy can be a "surge navy", operating mainly out of home fleets and then pressing forward in response to threats to national interest. Our geography and interests caused us to maintain forces forward (presence), and post WWII free world leadership codified it. We do not maintain forces forward for the sake of presence. We maintain forces forward to deter, to assure, to respond to crises, and to be favorably positioned to fight and win. If we could effectively and economically look after our national security and economic interests with a surge navy, we would. If we could effectively and economically look after our national security and economic interests with a cruising navy, we would. If we could look after our national security and economic interests with a coast guard, we would. But we cannot adequately meet the missions we are handed by political leadership with any posture except one that is forward. Being forward is not its mission, it is a means to meet the mission.
The most damaging thing about Bob's rhetorical "presence" jihad is the influence he's had on a generation of (mostly) Democratic national security thinkers who have taken maximal views on Navy force structure that lead to the conclusion that if it isn't in the China fight, it isn't worth having. The Congress disagrees with Bob and his acolytes, so much that it CHANGED the Navy's Title 10 mission in 2023 to include those annoying things it does when it isn't guns ablazin' against its latest foe, like advance our security and prosperity.
And this bit: "So, all I’ll say is post CS21, all you must do is look at the alarming subsequent collapse of battle force material readiness, the ship handling disasters in the 7th Fleet AoA, and the dithering on the pier among senior leaders about who was in charge while the steel of Boney Dick burned and melted next to them. Are these the actions of a battle force that is spending the majority of its time thinking about how to win modern naval wars and send the PLAN to the bottom? I think not." Is just scurrilous. What we reaped in those tragedies was a whirlwind of "efficiencies" that were gained at the cost of "effectiveness", in no small measure BECAUSE of the "warfighting uber alles" approach to resourcing the Navy, one that starved ships of the time, parts, and training needed to feed the warfighting beast. Would that my friend Bob were at any point to make a case with the eloquence and vehemence that he makes this one--that the Navy needs more resources to do the things it is asked to do. He'd rather ask it to do fewer things (but better), which as I have written before, would result in a Navy marginally better at fighting a war it is considerably worse at deterring.
This response deserves to be read into the Congressional Record!
Rusty billion dollar ships colliding with merchant ships does not deter. While that may have been shown our enemies and allies just what the modern US Navy is capable of, perhaps we should have left them in suspense?
I greatly appreciate the former deputy secretary's remarks but a lot of this leaves me with even greater raging heartburn. A great many assumptions that carried enormous risks with them if they failed to live up to expectations... as clearly many did not. Did that alter senior leadership's thinking? Did we learn from hugely successful Aegis' model? Theoretical and mathematical modeling serving to "validate" transformation concepts that cannot possibly be validated under realist operational conditions; especially given the Navy's propensity to go with narrowly confined and scripted "do over" & "resets" wargames. The absence of vigorous ground testing of new tech before it went into a hull to determine, not only its efficacy, but "could we even maintain this $#&#@"????? Lead times for critical components? Validated before it went into a hull? Think not. Realistic T&E to determine what personnel it would take to maintain this new wizardry of high tech. The passionate love affair with new tech and concepts while ignoring the mundane headaches that directly impact the Navy's ability to stay in the game, e.g., replenishment of VLS on ABs without forcing each hull to transit thousands of miles once they've exhausted their cells... Ignored that one for decades. One didn't need a crystal ball to imagine how an adversary could employ huge numbers of deceptive decoys, electronic jammers and low cost cruise missiles in saturation attacks in order to rapidly exhaust an AB's magazine. We knew of a predecessor saturation strategy from the time of Soviet's and prop driven Bears with their bellies loaded up with cruise missiles... sprinkle in decoys and jammers. Known... imminently predictable from observable data and what? Lasers and thousands of unmanned vehicles. Yeah OK...
They need to make sure every surface VLS is loaded with SAMS. Maybe some VLA. The Tomahawks, if on the surface, need to ride around on something designed to carry them around in Mk 70 launchers. Shuttle them up and back as needed. Load them in the closest safe container port.
If "every surface VLS is loaded with SAMS", the Surface Navy becomes a self-licking ice cream cone. You need to be able to perform another mission set besides self-preservation.
and mines that must be countered
The PRC has around 50K of those. I can't imagine why they would keep around such a throwback tech in the midst of the "transformational" age?
because they work as intended and we can't turn the ocean clear and 'go where they ain't'
By the way, I hope you read that as sarcasm? I left off the /sarc tag.
Was in the "transformation" game for over a decade. Joint Experimentation (IMO) was a major contributor to the collapse of all the service acquisition failures of the last 23 years. "Experimentation" literally became a four letter word for overpromising and underdelivering and deserved it. The concept development to acquisition was not broken because it never existed (see JCIDS chart for reason why). The Iron Triangle of the Pentagon, Congress, and major defense contractors drive the force development process in directions that benefit them (contracts, jobs in districts, promotions and retirement jobs on company boards) and only use concepts when they align with what they want to do. When they don't line up, justification is title 10, services "organize, train, and equip, so stay out of our business. That's how you end up with LCS, over or underemphasis on "presence", USAF aircraft development failures, Future Combat Systems, etc. Warfighting is not a priority these days, which is sobering considering our thirty year track record of starting conflicts but not finishing them. Perhaps that's on purpose?
Another set of questions.
Since we don’t have a lot of large shipyards, when are we going to realize we need designs that can be built at smaller shipyards? In bulk? Where are the 30kt CVEs? The DDs, and the FFs? And if our shipyards are maxed out, the Build American argument goes out the window - have our closest allies build to our specs since our shipyards have nothing to lose.
And tell me again why something like a Soryu/Taigei conventional submarine, based and operating near the SCS, not roaming the world (as is always pushed as a critical need necessitating SSNs), would fail? Kilos and the like are deadly dangerous in the hands of our less tech-evolved adversaries but are useless in the hands of those that literally wrote the book on submarine operations? I think not, and I throw a BS flag on the field.
And as we explore this new naval world, how about some love for the support ships? How old are those tenders? How old are the C2 ships? Steam-powered merchants? Are you kidding me??? How will any of this new world move forward without them?
Either we are in a wartime mentality, or we are not. This is 1940, but our shipbuilding is dragging, our weapons procurement can’t even keep up with Ukraine usage and we can’t even keep our VLS cell count break-even. Our organizations are not remotely ready, with all of our datalinks and high bandwidth drone video, to deal with cut undersea cables, or blasted comsats or operating in EMCON, let alone compromised networks that run our logistics (civilian and military) and will likely crash in times of war.
To be blunt, I’m not seeing anything that tells me we aren’t putting up the mother of all bluffs on Taiwan. This is not the leadership and not the Navy that will fight and lose massively for Taiwan, despite big talk. This is not a national leadership, nor a Navy leadership, that is serious.
I want every UxV-lover to explain how their system works without comsats, talking back to ships in EMCON, or back to forward facilities cut off due to cable cuts. Tell me how those USVs deter two guys with C4 charges coming in from a zodiac from a fishing boat? What happens when the engine conks out 1000 miles from Pearl or San Diego?
If they can make powerplants that don't require constant maintenance, why don't they put them in manned platforms?
My assumption is they will do routine maintenance when they come aboard for refueling as specified in the RFI. Just spit balling, but design spec on an EDG is 80% reliability with 2 weeks continuous use. If the gear on these ships can meet that standard it should be able to keep running between refueling visits.
MUSV will make 28 knots fully loaded and be able to turn in a boat length. It is to make 20 knots even if an engine has had a casualty and is to have 4 engines. The crux of what they are working on is autonomy. If it can't communicate, it will know to keep doing other things.
Andy, the issue with autonomy is that it works until something happens that was not in the test cases. A good example is the Perseverance rover on Mars a couple of weeks ago. With up to a 40 minute comm delay, autonomy is key for the rover's travel. A path is pre-planned using the Mars Reconnassiance Orbiter's 0.3 meter resolution maps but an onboard self-driving algorithm is still necessary to avoid unresolvable hazards. The rover found itself in a boulder field and ended up doing an unplanned 200 meter loop. The good thing is the system work. The rover did not get irrecoverably stuck. The navigation team evaluated the data and made changes. Subsequently, the rover traversed the boulder field and made it's longest single run to date. Autonomous systems operating within their expected parameters will always be faster than humans, but humans have the possibility of adapting faster in unexpected situations.
Agreed, but that gap is diminishing. I'd personally rather see MUSV manned 12-16 full time to cover the gap.
Many thanks to Bob for the thoughtful piece, Sal for hosting, and all of you for weighing in.
From my own humble perspective: I think Bob's piece mostly overlooks the foundational issue here, possibly because it is too simple and unsexy to attract the attention and analysis of anyone serious who has devoted their life to national security matters. The issue, IMO, is execution; pure and simple. Not presence VS projection, not this gun design VS that gun design, not manned VS unmanned. These feel like reasonable areas to focus and draw in the engaged mind, because we are in a bad spot and SURELY therefore better or different decisions would have resulted in a better or different outcome. They would not. And I suggest that pretending so is harmful wishcasting in and of itself, albeit of the intellectually stimulating variety.
When it comes to weapon systems, it is time to accept that we quite simply **cannot** reliably deliver a thing we set out to do. The Navy can't. The Army can't. The AF & USMC can't. Beyond the weapon system context, we as a society have become functionally disabled in the area of large scale public sector procurement and development. Until this is root-caused and fixed, or a workable model for even further privatization is accepted, count on more of the same, regardless of how correct we may be re: strategy, intent, or future forecasting.
I totally agree.
However, we went off the rails when the DoD largely turned to contractors to provide much of the expertise that was traditionally on the civilian side of the services. We kept ships construction on schedule because the naval program offices had gray hairs that in many cases were war vets themselves, and knew the systems as well as the manufacturers, and they didn’t hesitate to call BS.
Now the acquisition folks know paperwork, and largely rely on contractors, much of the time with far less experience, to provide status. That system was destined to fail, and has spectacularly.
Procurement only works when govt keeps a deep cadre of experienced folks in house. But that is tough because that isn’t where the money is in DC.
This is a very apt discussion. Two parallels have been in my mind:
1) Public transportation infrastructure costs the US 5-10x what it costs Europe or Asia. This also applies to other civil infrastructure, e.g. the replacement Tappan Zee Bridge cost about the same as the Øresund Bridge despite the latter being 5x longer and far more difficult technically. One major cause has been the gutting of public sector technical engineering staff, and the outsourcing of major design and oversight work to private-sector contractors. While there has been significant research in the last decade outlining the problems, it has so far gained little traction in government.
2) The space launch industry spent 50 years in the wilderness, producing low-volume rockets as if they were disposable maximum-performance artillery systems instead of commercial aircraft. The public sector (NASA) lost much of its post-WWII technical development ability and yet continued to administer enormous sums of money funneled through to aerospace contractors. This diagnosis dates back to the 1980s and 1990s, but it wasn't until SpaceX that the situation changed and space launch returned as an area of overwhelming American leadership.
Is it "can't" or simply "won't"?
Bill - that's a super nuanced question. I say "can't" for two reasons: 1) I believe that no one person or organization is *actively* choosing for all these efforts to fail. Indeed, I'd WAG that good intentions across the board is a more accurate mental model than the inverse. 2) I don't believe there is a person or organization who could fix the situation today or who could achieve success within the system that exists.
But, as your question implies, clearly the laws of physics haven't changed. It remains entirely theoretically possible for the US, still the richest and most advanced country on earth, to build a warship or a plane or a bridge. Where's the disconnect then? IMO it is a simple matter of the cost of failure. Failure at any (or even all) of these projects hasn't posed an existential risk to Americans' way of life for decades. So long as that remains true, there's no need to re-balance trade-offs or steamroll the "whatabouts" that ultimately represent the death knell of these efforts.
Ultimately, we will face such a challenge. Whether we are able to return to a "success at all costs" mentality fast enough to rise to the occasion will determine how pleasant a place to live this wonderful country we call home remains.
We can build fabulous warships (bridges/roads/aircraft/etc/etc/etc) or we can satisfy the long tail of congressional handouts/environmental impact assessments/diversity-first-hiring/carbon neutral supply chain/etc. We've simply prioritized the long tail more and more for 50+ years.
Technical competence becomes irrelevant if the voters don't want projects done at all. Things are just supposed to work, without inconvenience or other costs.
"........but these failures had less to do with the transformation problem and more to do with a failure in cost-informed ship design and inability to contain operating costs. That’s the original sin, and one the Navy continues to commit."
Ain't that kinda' a NAVSEA function that's overseen by the highly paid Senior Executive Service employees? Perhaps a purge is overdue.
and one led by engineers, not identity Studies or Journalism majors
one additional and very dangerous drug that the Navy and the DoD were high on during the time was (and is!) outsourcing. i can show how outsourcing caused the debacle at Red Hill, the problems with sustainment of the F-35, and high costs of maintenance of LCS, and on and on and on. Only now are traditional views on sustainment starting to restore some semblance of readiness for specific weapon systems... Additionally, the increased dependence on DLA, without growing their working capital fund, is one of the main causes of Submarine maintenance delays, and will also be our achilles heel in the next fight. "Change it: Get a Medal. Change it back: Get a Medal!". it's time to 'Change it Back'!
The old cold war military vanished when Desert storm ended, massive cuts a wind down of forces.
The world wasn't gonna do war anymore and if we did well we had nukes.
Bad planning bad leadership and a bad government happened and here we are.