Observing The Pentagon's Wasting Assets

If you have subscription to Foreign Affairs, this article goes down as a must read. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. is doing what he always does, staying two steps ahead of the pack and about two years ahead of everyone else. Most of what he is calling for is not new, indeed if you don't have a Foreign Affairs subscription, you can get the gist of the article by reading his testimony in the Senate Armed Services Committee (PDF) back on April 30, 2009.

But what makes the article very interesting to me is how the Foreign Affairs article is a shot right across the bow of the Navy, indeed I get the impression he is channeling his friend Bob Work, and sending a message to Navy leadership. On point after point Dr. Krepinevich channels a Navy example.

First he starts with Millennium Challenge 2002 and retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper's wargame effort that resulted in half the US Navy sinking after entering the Persian Gulf.

The Millennium Challenge exercise was a harbinger of the growing problems of power projection -- especially in coastal zones, maritime chokepoints (such as the Strait of Hormuz), and constricted waters (such as the Persian Gulf). As the initial success of Van Riper's "Iranian" forces demonstrated, the risks in such areas are becoming progressively greater, especially when the United States is facing a clever adversary. In the real world, Iran and other states can buy high-speed, sea-skimming ASCMs in quantity. In confined waters near shore, U.S. warships would have little warning time to defend against these weapons. The same can be said of high-speed suicide boats packed with explosives, which can hide among commercial vessels. Widely available modern sea mines are far more difficult to detect than were those plaguing the U.S. fleet during the 1991 Gulf War. Quiet diesel submarines operating in noisy waters, such as the Strait of Hormuz, are very difficult to detect. Iran's possession of all of these weapons and vessels suggests that the Persian Gulf -- the jugular of the world's oil supply -- could become a no-go zone for the U.S. Navy.

Then he follows up with the China scenario, and breaks down numerous options of concern, particularly how China's strategy is clearly to push the US Navy out in an effort to turn the military balance of the region in China's favor, to be utilized how they see fit. Not a good thing considering the way China has begun promoting influence over territorial areas in dispute with regional nations.

Area-denial capabilities are aimed at restricting the U.S. Navy's freedom of action from China's coast out to "the second island chain" -- a line of islands that extends roughly from the southeastern edge of Japan to Guam. The PLA is constructing over-the-horizon radars, fielding unmanned aerial vehicles, and deploying reconnaissance satellites to detect U.S. surface warships at progressively greater distances. It is acquiring a large number of submarines armed with advanced torpedoes and high-speed, sea-skimming ASCMs to stalk U.S. carriers and their escorts. (In 2006, a Chinese submarine surfaced in the midst of a U.S. carrier strike group, much to the U.S. Navy's embarrassment.) And it is procuring aircraft equipped with high-speed ASCMs and fielding antiship ballistic missiles that can strike U.S. carriers at extended ranges. Advanced antiship mines may constrain U.S. naval operations even further in coastal areas.

Then he hits again, invoking yet another Naval example, on the irregular warfare issue. After calling for an institutionalization of the doctrines and lessons developed from the wars this decade, he notes that we cannot turn back the clock on sophisticated technologies falling into the hands of non-state actors, and it is time to face this reality of the 21st century with our eyes wide open.

The growing range of RAMMs available to irregular forces is not the only, or even the deadliest, problem. The U.S. military has long enjoyed a near monopoly on the use of guided, or "smart," munitions, which offer the enormous benefit of high accuracy independent of a weapon's range. But now guided RAMMs (or "G-RAMMs") are proliferating from powers such as China and Russia. Once these are in the hands of irregular forces, those forces will be able to hit targets with great precision and reliability. Moreover, such weapons do not require a high degree of operator training. As a harbinger, during the Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah irregulars hit an Israeli warship with an Iranian-made guided ASCM and destroyed or disabled over 50 Israeli tanks with sophisticated Russian-made guided antitank missiles. The ability of irregular forces to precisely hit critical points, such as airfields, harbor facilities, and logistics depots, will pose serious problems for the U.S. military's way of operating.

Is anyone seeing the pattern I see? Looks to me like Dr. Krepinevich is talking to the Navy. While this section was specific to addressing the emerging challenges of cyberspace, only a fool can't see how this directly relates to Navy doctrine today.

The United States' armed forces also rely heavily on military and commercial satellites. In recent years, the Chinese military has shown that it can neutralize or destroy satellites in low-earth orbit (where most satellites are located) by launching antisatellite ballistic missiles or firing ground-based lasers. As China's lunar exploration program matures, the PLA will likely acquire the ability to destroy the Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation, which is essential for guiding many "smart" weapons to their targets. If China continues to develop and field antisatellite capabilities, the U.S. satellite architecture may also become a wasting asset, one highly dependent on Chinese sufferance for its effective operation.

Now we get to the point where it is time to ask tough questions.

This raises troubling questions. For example, will the United States accept that several areas of vital interest are becoming no-go zones for its military, or will it take steps to address the challenge? Will the United States accept a posture of vulnerability in regard to its satellite architecture and cyberinfrastructure, or are alternatives available to redress the problem? How must U.S. strategy adapt in a world of rising powers and spreading technologies? Are there cost-effective alternatives to accepting growing vulnerability, or must the United States adopt a more modest strategy?

Obviously he couldn't be talking to the Navy, I mean come on, we are building a fleet to fight China but have a policy of avoiding 25nms out from shore, because of Hezbollah...

Read that sentence out loud and tell me how 1) brilliant or 2) realistic it sounds, and then please ask the Navy if they have a new idea for the QDR before someone becomes the next example of the Secretary of Defense exercise of power to end a career.

Then just a few solutions.

Maintaining the United States' ability to project power in an A2/AD environment will require multifaceted responses. The growing threat to U.S. forward air bases from Chinese assassin's mace capabilities might be handled in several possible ways. Bases could be hardened against attack by missiles with conventional warheads, perhaps combined with missile defenses. An excessive reliance on vulnerable bases could be reduced by developing long-range reconnaissance and strike systems. To offset the growing vulnerability of its major surface ships, the U.S. Navy could acquire more large submarines armed with conventional cruise missiles. To avoid operational irrelevance, carriers should reduce their reliance on short-range manned aircraft in favor of much longer-range unmanned aircraft, some of which are now in development. Advances in missile and air defenses could also play a key role in protecting the fleet. Since primacy in undersea warfare is a prerequisite for other naval operations, priority must be given to expanding the navy's edge in antisubmarine warfare. The current plans to increase submarine production must be sustained, and design work on unmanned underwater vehicles and a new class of submarines should also be initiated.

SSGNs, UCAS-N, and ASW... which amounts to innovation under and over the sea. If we count lasers as the innovation in defense, the question remains what the innovations at sea will be on the surface. Somehow I don't think DDG-51 is the answer, but DDG-1000 never was.

I actually quoted a lot in this article, but as a Foreign Affairs gem it is much longer than I could ever hope to quote in full. Get a subscription, read it, and ask yourself how long before this becomes what everyone is calling for.

Because I'm going to wager that with the Obama administration focused on domestic issues, and the progressive base not really concerned about what happens when the US doesn't take its role as the worlds primary military superpower seriously, this is going to be what everyone in the think tanks is saying in two years, as the global economy is recovering and we see a different world than we have been used to since the end of the cold war emerging.