I am done a great honor by the Under Secretary of the Navy
in his thoughtful response to my earlier blog post. I thank him for it, and like the rest of the
readers of this blog, I remain grateful to a public servant who takes the time
to discuss important matters such as this.
I also appreciate that he has added texture to the remark he made to the
New York Times, useful information that one hopes will be accounted for when
those who would seek to slash the defense budget even further raise his
original point.
The Secretary has—as he always does—crafted a strong argument
in support of his view, but one that deserves a response nonetheless, one that
raises issues of logic and argumentation.
I will cut and paste large portions of Mr. Work’s piece, and then
respond in turn:
“I have never said that numbers are irrelevant. What I have long said
is that numbers alone no longer give an adequate measure of the true combat
capability of today’s networked battle fleets, and that comparing the size of
today’s fleet with the fleet of 1917 (or 1945 or pick a date) is irrelevant.
When you compare one US fleet with a past US fleet, you must compare all
things—numbers of ships, overall capabilities, and relative naval standings.”
Recognizing of course, the possibility of a misquote, I do
feel it necessary to point out that my post did not address what Secretary Work
has “..long said…” I simply sought to
address what he DID say, to the nation’s newspaper of record on a subject of
importance to many readers of this blog.
Here is a reminder of what the New York Times printed in response to a
reporter’s question about GOP Candidate Mitt Romney’s often repeated assertion
that the Navy was as small as it has been since 1917: "An accurate observation that is
totally irrelevant...we didn't have any airplanes in the fleet. We didn't
have any unmanned systems. We didn't have Tomahawk cruise
missiles." To some extent, I anticipated
the tenor of Mr. Work’s response, though I did not imagine it would come from
him. I wrote: “Now, Mr. Work's defenders may say
"that's not what he is saying. He is saying that the strength and
power of our Navy should be measured by so much more than just hulls, that one
has to take into account our networked force and precision guided
munitions." But that's not what he said. He said "totally
irrelevant". But
which part of the statement is irrelevant—the selection of the date, or the
quality of being “smaller”? Or
both? By my estimation, Mr. Work’s
choice of the modifier “totally” means that he sees both as “irrelevant”. That is—to take his thinking to its logical
conclusion—that the very fact that the Navy is smaller in terms of ship numbers
has no relevance because of the networks and precision weapons which
today link them. Taking this logic to
its ridiculous extreme (as was done with Mr. Work’s understanding of mine),
then clearly, as few as two networked ships would be sufficient. Mr. Work cannot possibly mean this and this
is the essence of my objection. Put
another way, there MUST be a minimum number of ships required to carry out the
missions of the US Navy, even in a heavily networked environment. I believe we need more than we are planning,
Mr. Work does not. In either case,
the number is hardly irrelevant.
The fact is that we don’t build a battle force to
fight past US fleets, and comparing our current fleet numbers to those of past
US fleets is a complete waste of time. We build a fleet to accomplish
contemporary national goals, and to prevail against contemporary potential
adversaries.
Mr. Work is correct in this statement, to a point. We do not in fact, build our fleets to fight
past US fleets, and we do build a fleet to accomplish contemporary national
goals. It is interesting however, that
Mr. Work dismisses the logic of comparisons to past US fleets, but embraces
comparisons to other world fleets—as if the job of the US Navy was solely to
seek out enemy fleets and destroy them.
This is indeed, part of the job, but only part of it. The modern US Navy is built —when it
fights—to fight NATIONS, not just navies.
It is also built to protect the interests of the world’s most powerful
and influential nation and to assure its allies. The presence of overwhelming US Navy power in
the Arabian Gulf today is not a sign of our respect for the Iranian Navy—it is
a sign of the extent to which Navy forces are the primary enablers of the
deterrence of a NATION. Should that
fail, those forces would then put to work defeating that NATION in detail, as
part of a joint force. Again, to put
things another way, comparing THIS US Navy to other world Navies (which the Secretary does in his post) is itself,
logically flawed, in that no other nation on earth asks of its Navy what we ask
of ours.
So let’s play his thinking out. Today’s battle force
must provide a secure nuclear deterrent; operate forward to preserve the peace;
project American power; and prevail in any potential combat scenario. A formal
Force Structure Assessment determines the size of the battle force inventory
necessary to accomplish these four basic tasks. The driving factor behind these
assessments is the force-sizing construct dictated by OSD…Our
new force-sizing construct requires the Navy’s battle force to help decisively
defeat one adversary in one theater, and to prevent an opportunistic aggressor
from accomplishing his goals in another (“defeat-deny”)… Now Bryan may think—and I
believe he does—that the battle force should be even larger than 300 ships. If
so, then what Bryan is really saying is either that our Force Structure
Assessment process is faulty, or that he thinks the Navy should be given more
missions than those now assigned, which would require more ships. Which one is
it?
I do not accept the Secretary’s terms, as he has presented
only two of (at least) three possible alternatives. The one he failed to provide is possibility
that the “driving factor” of the OSD dictated force sizing construct is
insufficiently weighted in the direction of strategically vital American
Seapower, and that it is furthermore unduly influenced by short-sighted
attempts to reduce discretionary spending through cuts to the defense
budget. The most perfect Force Structure
Assessment process is only as good as its strategic guidance, and the strategic
guidance in this case is suspect.
I will close by repeating what I have “long said”. Bob Work is a great American, and he is doing
great, outsized, things for the Navy.
But he and I have disagreed for years on the extent to which fleet size
is dependent upon factors other than war-fighting, and I am not sure we will
settle it here.
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