Kept a fleet-in-being that tied up a number of Allied ships and shipping for over two years. Requiring the RN to keep a significant capital ship and cruiser force to cover the Murmansk Convoys, until the Battle of the North Cape (Needs more attention. A sea battle in a full gale in the Polar night).
The best part of the strategy is that it talked about what the plan would be at the end of hospitalities to stabilize the European continent… Reassure allies but on ready footing. I don’t see that type of forward thinking from our public strategies. They actively avoid saying conflict is a strong possibility.
I'd say, especially in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine, there has been a renewed bipartisan consensus for the protection of Taiwan. It is just about the only issue that both parties seem to largely agree on, frankly.
I want to see stronger evidence, in word and deed, by the Taiwanese that they would defend their island from an attack by the CCP before I would risk American lives and treasure going against the CCP.
Taiwan already does business in and with China both CCP and Taiwan have people employed in each others areas.
What will happen is a Naval and air blockade, Taiwan makes a stand either verbally or in action folds up fast and surrenders to the Mainland.
OR, Taiwan seeing the events of Ukraine decides to make a covert negotiated settlement with CCP to join the mainland.
I don't see a fight that would leave Taiwan as a smoking, crater full of dead Taiwanese, resembling Iwo Jima and their industry destroyed, neither CCP or Taiwan wants that.
My impression, from Taiwanese and other sources, is that Taiwan is not committed to go to war to keep their independence. Many in Taiwan seem to think that the mainland will treat the Taiwanese differently than they did Hong Kong, or Tibet, or Nepal, or... I spent two weeks R&R in Taiwan back in 1973. I had asked many people what they thought of the Commies. The response was 1/3- We hate them and are going to take back (though they never had it) the mainland. 1/3- were not against combining the two countries because of family, friends on the mainland, and 1/3- was ambivalent. My prior assumption was that they would all hate the Commies (because we did)- I was in error. I think that the 1/3,1/3, 1/3 might still hold true. That is my soda straw view of the situation.
Of all the pundits out there, I think that Elbridge Colby is the most eloquent, professional, informed, rational, objective commenter of them all.
I was reading that at best 73% of the Taiwanese would be willing to fight if invaded.
I truly think that is probably 50/50. They are after all Chinese.
I would hesitated to go against a superior force, with no actually declaration that my largest ally would intervene. Why turn their nation into a war zone.
How many actual Ukrainians are willing to fight in their war?
73% with one response to any question is really high. Their only way to heighten that is engagement with their people. Make sure they serve a tour see it, and constantly learn something aside from what the CCP is spewing.
What I hope the Taiwanese realize, as they should with area history, is the real pain of capitulation comes from the iron fist purging their society while enforcing CCP structure.
I think they watched Hong Kong and dread that with a passion.
Taiwan would become a Chinese Vassal and have all it's leaders and businesses not already on the payroll taken over by Politically reliable Leaders, and go to Sheesh.
Bring back Lehman. America needs a committed Navalist in the OSD. Since GN reduced the power of the services to design and develop grand strategy, it’s all gone down the tubes.
I have increasingly come to wonder whether centralization under the DoD was a mistake and maintaining a cabinet level Secretary of the Navy would not be worth it, if only to increase public visibility and the bully pulpit; Americans seem to be out of touch with the fact the United States is still fundamentally a naval power.
National Defense Reorganization Act - Eliminates CIA & DOD, makes Army & Navy cabinet level departments, Air Force & Space force rolled under the Army, closes the Air Force Academy.
It is unclear that the US can compete with China in terms of naval production. As CDR Salamander has well explained, we lack the industrial base even to support the present US fleet, never mind to build a bigger one that could compete with larger Chinese naval forces (which include grey hulled naval vessels, white hulled coast guard vessels, and blue hulled maritime militia vessels). We also appear to lack the political will to fund a larger force, and indeed, inflation means we are in fact funding a shrinking one, in spite of nominally growing funding. Worse, we appear not to grasp the significance of modern detection systems, and that they imply for easily detected, gigantic surface ships. Considerable thought in studies of future ship designs appear not to have much impact on actual planning processes. As well, calls for conventional submarines from the Special Operations community in particular, are being totally ignored. Only miniscule funding is going into minor surface combatants, even if it is fairly clear they are the only viable surface forces going forward. It will take a significant intellectual effort to conceive a force that can compete in the near and medium term. Until that is done, no one is going to present a plan of the sort called for.
We could expand quickly if we bought used FSVs and OPVs and modified them. Could also ramp newbuilds of some useful smaller ships. We need little navy as a competitor to big navy. Since we have no shipbuilding surveys any more I've been working on my own with some guiding the way from Tim Colton's site. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vGXRBmAkCuZfMZf-B16O565gF9V1tkFUaNlOsQ3Ir94/edit?usp=sharing
Excellent and timely reminder that we do not have to keep re-creating the proverbial wheel. What is needed is an OPNAV agency dedicated to studying past strategies, overlay with the realities of global priorities that use near and future term analyses and wargame the shit out of them. Current non-DOD entities such as the Navy League and other maritime-focused organizations and think-tanks need to assist in developing a maritime strategy that is not only inclusive of future requirements but can be consistently modified as variables change. And finally involve congressional bodies that will introduce legislation that is non-parochial and holistic in ensuring we have the industrial base needed to produce, modernize and repair those warships, manned and unmanned, in peace and wartime.
Focusing ship, etc. production on non-coastal America would also help drum up support for a naval expansion in corners that typically wouldn't be concerned with the issue, in the classic sense of Rickover's "fish don't vote" quip. Military manufacturing, particularly maritime manufacturing, used to comprise a far larger sector of our economy in the Midwest, etc.
The war in Ukraine while not a naval war may be showing the Squints that a large Navy is just more ducks for the punt gun.
Perhaps hopefully someone is thinking in terms of a future war Naval using Ukraine's example of drones and guided by drone warship killing weapons.
We may be at the edge of the way it became after the Monitor and Merrimac showed wood was a loser.
The same fight between the Battleship fanbois and the Carrier Fanbois maybe the new Navy war is submarines and long range drones to target and launch vert launch systems Homed all the way to a kill.
Since the North Atlantic was mentioned., and for those haven't seen it, the whole FIXEDIT Red Storm Rising series on YouTube has some great visualizations using DCS.
At its core, it appears to this non-naval type that the Chicoms are a mercantilist nation, and as such, we should threaten their merchant ships and in particular the tankers. In the run up to a Taiwan invasion, I assume that there will be a plethora of differing PR/Info War campaigns designed either to defuse or heighten tensions. We should put the world on notice that we are prepared to lay "defensive Naval Mines" near ports that are being used to support the invasion. Further, we should now be mapping the CCP Great Underwater Wall of SOSUS gear in the SCS and placing both taps and demo now. Lastly, our naval academics should write articles on "Unrestricted Submarine Warfare". My thinking is that the Indonesian and Malayan straits ae the best choke points. Far from CCP SOSUS, and dangerous for CCP anti-sub air assets
You are on the right track, but its not like we haven't missed the tea leaves before. iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba...... They might hide their action during our election chaos, for instance. Good article just out on CIMSEC talking through one potential scenario of how CCP might invade Taiwan. Remember, they will think about what would Sun Tzu do while we sit around and think of Mahan, Corbett, and Clausewitz.
Like for unconventional thinking. Hell, they just need to drop the 24,000 containers off one ship and we have a huge problem somewhere. Or just opportunely scuttle the ship.
I wouldn't be optimistic about any old maritime strategy getting re-purposed or any getting ginned up anew by good competent people getting a stamp of approval from whatever constitutes Biden Admin in some basement in Delaware. Any worthwhile new plan would be harder to get into print and into action than an upgrade to the 1611 King James version of the Bible at a Southern Baptist Convention. The citizenry has to embrace legal Constitutional regime change before anything happens in this regard. Which is not to say that our Navy can't come up with a sound strategy even if it's probably going to get monkey-wrenched by those with another agenda. Time might be better spent planning a delaying action at the Rockies and Appalachians. My own plan involves a fortress I've been working on since 1986 and some SKS's, MRE's an canned goods.
What is it that we actually want to do? Is our goal just to keep the SLOC open to our partners, allies and friends? Are we proposing to push our enemies back? Maybe we are content just to blockade chokepoints to crash our foe's economies? What exactly do we have on hand to do these things? I suspect that we are going to burn through a lot of material and manpower very quickly in the event of a world war - and we do not have a lot of backstops to prop up our forces. Is it going to be like the war in the Pacific after the campaign in the Solomons (a holding action while we were waiting for a new and improved fleet to come online)? We had better hope that our potential enemies don't have the capabilities to reequip faster than we do - otherwise it is going to be a long, painful slog. Maybe our strategy needs to be something that exceeds our current abilities, and that gives us a goal to shoot for? If we are waiting for our political class to wake up and start rearming, I fear we are going to be disappointed. The next world conflict is going to be truly global (from the poles to every corner of the planet). Airlift is not going to ultimately win this type of war. We need more imagination and less dogmatic thinking here.
I wouldn't disagree with that observation. I sometimes joke that if I get a third NDSM then I did something wrong (that being the idea that we might be so desperate as to drag old-ish people like me in to fill the gaps). But seriously, we have to look at the lessons on WW1 and WW2 concerning manpower requirements. We had the foresight to implement a pre-war draft in 1940 - and it was those reservists and National Guardsmen who provided the initial trained backbone to supplement the Regulars. Our Navy and Marine Corps need to start shaking off the peace-time rust and developing programs to entice young people to choose the Sea Services, and to build up an effective reserve. I have seen members here discuss similar ideas. This is the way forward.
I'm too old to be a Grunt again LOL My son is of the age and was a SSgt in a very required field the military would draft him fast even at 46 years old.
The services are too focused on diversity and inclusion.
That alone turns off the majority of men who seek military jobs.
Like Bud light, the Military has failed to attract it's needed best troops and sailors.
Reserves, mid career entry to service, specialization, removal of up or out. Absolutely don't drop standards. Talented people loath being pulled down in a least common denominator situation.
NWC prof John Hattendorf and 1980’s Maritime Strategy writer CAPT Peter Swartz take you through the iconic 1980’s series here: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/newport-papers/21/ and https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/zhukov/files/19.pdf Definitive accounts, and along with John Lehman’s “Ocean’s Ventured” required ready if interested in the 1980’s. Too bad 1986 Second Fleet fighting instructions of VADM Hank Mustin remain classified.
I think the Navy knows how to fight. It's the politicians that will gum up the works. Politicians are feckless and spend too much time worrying about what other people think.
A carrier won't fit in the fjords, you'll need smaller frigates and cutters.
The Potomac Propaganda Pashas tell us that seventy is the new fifty. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/70-is-the-new-50/
Some days I agree with that. Some days. :)
Pining for the fjords?
Good places to hide ships. 😈
Look how well the Germans did...
Kept a fleet-in-being that tied up a number of Allied ships and shipping for over two years. Requiring the RN to keep a significant capital ship and cruiser force to cover the Murmansk Convoys, until the Battle of the North Cape (Needs more attention. A sea battle in a full gale in the Polar night).
Sea battles in the High North and the sub-Roaring Twenties, what a challenge.
Of course, part of the problem was a lack of vision on the part of the RN, in not understanding that a much smaller fleet would have done the same.
But after losing Singapore, understandable.
The best part of the strategy is that it talked about what the plan would be at the end of hospitalities to stabilize the European continent… Reassure allies but on ready footing. I don’t see that type of forward thinking from our public strategies. They actively avoid saying conflict is a strong possibility.
Might work. Then again, lots of people at the time thought it was a dumb idea to "antagonize" the opposition, and their numbers have increased.
I'd say, especially in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine, there has been a renewed bipartisan consensus for the protection of Taiwan. It is just about the only issue that both parties seem to largely agree on, frankly.
I want to see stronger evidence, in word and deed, by the Taiwanese that they would defend their island from an attack by the CCP before I would risk American lives and treasure going against the CCP.
Taiwan already does business in and with China both CCP and Taiwan have people employed in each others areas.
What will happen is a Naval and air blockade, Taiwan makes a stand either verbally or in action folds up fast and surrenders to the Mainland.
OR, Taiwan seeing the events of Ukraine decides to make a covert negotiated settlement with CCP to join the mainland.
I don't see a fight that would leave Taiwan as a smoking, crater full of dead Taiwanese, resembling Iwo Jima and their industry destroyed, neither CCP or Taiwan wants that.
My impression, from Taiwanese and other sources, is that Taiwan is not committed to go to war to keep their independence. Many in Taiwan seem to think that the mainland will treat the Taiwanese differently than they did Hong Kong, or Tibet, or Nepal, or... I spent two weeks R&R in Taiwan back in 1973. I had asked many people what they thought of the Commies. The response was 1/3- We hate them and are going to take back (though they never had it) the mainland. 1/3- were not against combining the two countries because of family, friends on the mainland, and 1/3- was ambivalent. My prior assumption was that they would all hate the Commies (because we did)- I was in error. I think that the 1/3,1/3, 1/3 might still hold true. That is my soda straw view of the situation.
Of all the pundits out there, I think that Elbridge Colby is the most eloquent, professional, informed, rational, objective commenter of them all.
I was reading that at best 73% of the Taiwanese would be willing to fight if invaded.
I truly think that is probably 50/50. They are after all Chinese.
I would hesitated to go against a superior force, with no actually declaration that my largest ally would intervene. Why turn their nation into a war zone.
How many actual Ukrainians are willing to fight in their war?
73% with one response to any question is really high. Their only way to heighten that is engagement with their people. Make sure they serve a tour see it, and constantly learn something aside from what the CCP is spewing.
What I hope the Taiwanese realize, as they should with area history, is the real pain of capitulation comes from the iron fist purging their society while enforcing CCP structure.
I think they watched Hong Kong and dread that with a passion.
Taiwan would become a Chinese Vassal and have all it's leaders and businesses not already on the payroll taken over by Politically reliable Leaders, and go to Sheesh.
Bring back Lehman. America needs a committed Navalist in the OSD. Since GN reduced the power of the services to design and develop grand strategy, it’s all gone down the tubes.
I have increasingly come to wonder whether centralization under the DoD was a mistake and maintaining a cabinet level Secretary of the Navy would not be worth it, if only to increase public visibility and the bully pulpit; Americans seem to be out of touch with the fact the United States is still fundamentally a naval power.
Americans seem to be out of touch.....
Half of us are, in many areas.
We, the willing
Led by the unknowing
Are doing the impossible
For the ungrateful
We have done so much
For so long
With so little
We are now qualified
To do anything
With nothing
National Defense Reorganization Act - Eliminates CIA & DOD, makes Army & Navy cabinet level departments, Air Force & Space force rolled under the Army, closes the Air Force Academy.
It doesn't take a Cabinet Level position to increase public visibility and to serve as a bully pulpit, it takes the right people.
Recycling prior lessons relearned:
Agree w/ CDR-Sal’s Rx:
“No need to reinvent the wheel.
People are busy, policy makers even busier.
No need for complicated graphics.”
Now called #SeaBlindness
It is unclear that the US can compete with China in terms of naval production. As CDR Salamander has well explained, we lack the industrial base even to support the present US fleet, never mind to build a bigger one that could compete with larger Chinese naval forces (which include grey hulled naval vessels, white hulled coast guard vessels, and blue hulled maritime militia vessels). We also appear to lack the political will to fund a larger force, and indeed, inflation means we are in fact funding a shrinking one, in spite of nominally growing funding. Worse, we appear not to grasp the significance of modern detection systems, and that they imply for easily detected, gigantic surface ships. Considerable thought in studies of future ship designs appear not to have much impact on actual planning processes. As well, calls for conventional submarines from the Special Operations community in particular, are being totally ignored. Only miniscule funding is going into minor surface combatants, even if it is fairly clear they are the only viable surface forces going forward. It will take a significant intellectual effort to conceive a force that can compete in the near and medium term. Until that is done, no one is going to present a plan of the sort called for.
We could expand quickly if we bought used FSVs and OPVs and modified them. Could also ramp newbuilds of some useful smaller ships. We need little navy as a competitor to big navy. Since we have no shipbuilding surveys any more I've been working on my own with some guiding the way from Tim Colton's site. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vGXRBmAkCuZfMZf-B16O565gF9V1tkFUaNlOsQ3Ir94/edit?usp=sharing
I agree.
Excellent and timely reminder that we do not have to keep re-creating the proverbial wheel. What is needed is an OPNAV agency dedicated to studying past strategies, overlay with the realities of global priorities that use near and future term analyses and wargame the shit out of them. Current non-DOD entities such as the Navy League and other maritime-focused organizations and think-tanks need to assist in developing a maritime strategy that is not only inclusive of future requirements but can be consistently modified as variables change. And finally involve congressional bodies that will introduce legislation that is non-parochial and holistic in ensuring we have the industrial base needed to produce, modernize and repair those warships, manned and unmanned, in peace and wartime.
Focusing ship, etc. production on non-coastal America would also help drum up support for a naval expansion in corners that typically wouldn't be concerned with the issue, in the classic sense of Rickover's "fish don't vote" quip. Military manufacturing, particularly maritime manufacturing, used to comprise a far larger sector of our economy in the Midwest, etc.
The war in Ukraine while not a naval war may be showing the Squints that a large Navy is just more ducks for the punt gun.
Perhaps hopefully someone is thinking in terms of a future war Naval using Ukraine's example of drones and guided by drone warship killing weapons.
We may be at the edge of the way it became after the Monitor and Merrimac showed wood was a loser.
The same fight between the Battleship fanbois and the Carrier Fanbois maybe the new Navy war is submarines and long range drones to target and launch vert launch systems Homed all the way to a kill.
But, maybe it's just incompetence.
Since the North Atlantic was mentioned., and for those haven't seen it, the whole FIXEDIT Red Storm Rising series on YouTube has some great visualizations using DCS.
At its core, it appears to this non-naval type that the Chicoms are a mercantilist nation, and as such, we should threaten their merchant ships and in particular the tankers. In the run up to a Taiwan invasion, I assume that there will be a plethora of differing PR/Info War campaigns designed either to defuse or heighten tensions. We should put the world on notice that we are prepared to lay "defensive Naval Mines" near ports that are being used to support the invasion. Further, we should now be mapping the CCP Great Underwater Wall of SOSUS gear in the SCS and placing both taps and demo now. Lastly, our naval academics should write articles on "Unrestricted Submarine Warfare". My thinking is that the Indonesian and Malayan straits ae the best choke points. Far from CCP SOSUS, and dangerous for CCP anti-sub air assets
You are on the right track, but its not like we haven't missed the tea leaves before. iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba...... They might hide their action during our election chaos, for instance. Good article just out on CIMSEC talking through one potential scenario of how CCP might invade Taiwan. Remember, they will think about what would Sun Tzu do while we sit around and think of Mahan, Corbett, and Clausewitz.
https://cimsec.org/island-blitz-a-campaign-analysis-of-a-taiwan-takeover-by-the-pla/?unapproved=198520&moderation-hash=80611f7f43282dff35af45c79a8660bd#comment-198520
Good Intel/Info and thought provoking.
The CCP would lay it's own mines off our ports, back to square one.
In this case we should be building mine sweepers.
Like for unconventional thinking. Hell, they just need to drop the 24,000 containers off one ship and we have a huge problem somewhere. Or just opportunely scuttle the ship.
Or put a big bomb in several.
The Bombs may already be here in warehouses own by the CCP.
I suspect the Pacific is going to look very similar to Plan Orange.
All we need now is 1986's Navy.
And, while we're talking about ideas from the 80's, four words: Six Hundred Ship Navy.
Real ships, FFGs, DDGs, CGs
Not those damned LCSs
And it's time to build four replacements for the two Mercy class hospital ships
Still need diversity...in the air wing. F-18E is a poor substitute for A-6 & F-14s, nor MH-60R for S-3s.
Phantom 2000's FTW.
I wouldn't be optimistic about any old maritime strategy getting re-purposed or any getting ginned up anew by good competent people getting a stamp of approval from whatever constitutes Biden Admin in some basement in Delaware. Any worthwhile new plan would be harder to get into print and into action than an upgrade to the 1611 King James version of the Bible at a Southern Baptist Convention. The citizenry has to embrace legal Constitutional regime change before anything happens in this regard. Which is not to say that our Navy can't come up with a sound strategy even if it's probably going to get monkey-wrenched by those with another agenda. Time might be better spent planning a delaying action at the Rockies and Appalachians. My own plan involves a fortress I've been working on since 1986 and some SKS's, MRE's an canned goods.
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/777x580q70/r/924/BZVIpV.jpg
What is it that we actually want to do? Is our goal just to keep the SLOC open to our partners, allies and friends? Are we proposing to push our enemies back? Maybe we are content just to blockade chokepoints to crash our foe's economies? What exactly do we have on hand to do these things? I suspect that we are going to burn through a lot of material and manpower very quickly in the event of a world war - and we do not have a lot of backstops to prop up our forces. Is it going to be like the war in the Pacific after the campaign in the Solomons (a holding action while we were waiting for a new and improved fleet to come online)? We had better hope that our potential enemies don't have the capabilities to reequip faster than we do - otherwise it is going to be a long, painful slog. Maybe our strategy needs to be something that exceeds our current abilities, and that gives us a goal to shoot for? If we are waiting for our political class to wake up and start rearming, I fear we are going to be disappointed. The next world conflict is going to be truly global (from the poles to every corner of the planet). Airlift is not going to ultimately win this type of war. We need more imagination and less dogmatic thinking here.
Word to the wise, "Do not expect our youth to answer their draft calls."
I have asked and most of my Grandkids say they would not go.
They gave the example of the twenty years losing war in OEF.
War and draft riots will make Anti-fa look like a Mormon choir.
I wouldn't disagree with that observation. I sometimes joke that if I get a third NDSM then I did something wrong (that being the idea that we might be so desperate as to drag old-ish people like me in to fill the gaps). But seriously, we have to look at the lessons on WW1 and WW2 concerning manpower requirements. We had the foresight to implement a pre-war draft in 1940 - and it was those reservists and National Guardsmen who provided the initial trained backbone to supplement the Regulars. Our Navy and Marine Corps need to start shaking off the peace-time rust and developing programs to entice young people to choose the Sea Services, and to build up an effective reserve. I have seen members here discuss similar ideas. This is the way forward.
I'm too old to be a Grunt again LOL My son is of the age and was a SSgt in a very required field the military would draft him fast even at 46 years old.
The services are too focused on diversity and inclusion.
That alone turns off the majority of men who seek military jobs.
Like Bud light, the Military has failed to attract it's needed best troops and sailors.
Reserves, mid career entry to service, specialization, removal of up or out. Absolutely don't drop standards. Talented people loath being pulled down in a least common denominator situation.
Some days I worry more about the Mormon Choir.
NWC prof John Hattendorf and 1980’s Maritime Strategy writer CAPT Peter Swartz take you through the iconic 1980’s series here: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/newport-papers/21/ and https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/zhukov/files/19.pdf Definitive accounts, and along with John Lehman’s “Ocean’s Ventured” required ready if interested in the 1980’s. Too bad 1986 Second Fleet fighting instructions of VADM Hank Mustin remain classified.
I can't imagine there is another up-and-coming VADM Mustin in the Navy today. His 2001 series of interviews with the Naval Historical Foundation are excellent. https://www.navyhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Mustin-Oral-History.pdf
VADM Mustin was pretty cool indeed! I had a chance to interview him for my dissertation before he passed.
Not so much up and coming, but his grandson is also a vice admiral. He was in my company at the trade school
I think the Navy knows how to fight. It's the politicians that will gum up the works. Politicians are feckless and spend too much time worrying about what other people think.
A carrier won't fit in the fjords, you'll need smaller frigates and cutters.