SC-21 Got It Right, But Got It Backwards

Defense Daily has a fascinating article in its Defense Watch feature that includes part of an interview with Admiral Roughead. The article was included in todays Navy Information Clips. It starts with something I can't praise Adm. Roughead enough for saying.

The Navy has put a great deal of time and effort into thinking about its future and how it can deliver on the maritime strategy, CNO Adm. Gary Roughead tells Defense Daily. "If we really believe that that is the best path ahead for our future, then those things that we buy we should be able to link to what I always refer to as the six capabilities. And I challenge folks that work for me that when they are working on a program they should be able to say 'I can support this capability," he says. "Ideally, I'd like to be able to say if I buy this thing I can support capabilities one through three, or whatever. But if they are saying I am going to buy this and I don't know how it fits into the capabilities we are espousing, it tells me two things: One, we shouldn't be buying it, and two, do we have a flaw in the strategy that needs to be examined?"

He goes on to describe an example.

Take, for example, LCS, and the capabilities that the Navy has. Roughead says the ship needs to link to the six capabilities: forward deployed, global presence, deterrence, sea control, power projection, maritime security, and disaster relief and humanitarian assistance. "I can make the case that LCS supports a forward global presence, a lot of interaction with other navies, and operating forward, which is our operational concept. Sea control, most definitely. Maritime security, absolutely. Humanitarian assistance-disaster relief, [we can] get there fast with a pretty good payload. I can say LCS blankets that pretty well," Roughead says. "Is it a deterrence platform? Probably tactically it could be, but strategically it doesn't quite fit [in]."

I may not agree with Adm. Roughead in this example, but it is a very good sign for the Navy that this is the message he is sending to the Navy. Fleet constitution needs to match strategy, and in a way I'm almost in agreement with Adm. Roughead on his assessment.

One aspect of strategy that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the process by which the Navy used to determine what form SC-21 would take for the fleet. It is our observation that within the evolutionary process that developed SC-21, only a single mistake was made, but the mistake was not obvious until it was fully understood what the final products would be. We note that the mistake was made due to a combination of process and pressures.

Ronald O'Rourke has written extensively about the war games processes at the turn of the century that substituted for the Analysis of Alternatives for the development of SC-21. This war game process was effective, it helped develop the right metrics for the future fleet. Unlike hte development process, the decision process however was conducted primarily under different conditions than it normally would have been conducted, because it was conducted primarily by the CNO and his staff, as opposed to a service level process within the context of strategy. A service level approach with the war games and other service level development processes the Navy used got the requirements for the future exactly right, but because the decision process was at the staff level, the Navy only got the application of the requirements to the fleet half right in our opinion.

The emerging requirements as outlined in Seapower 21 and expressed through the development of SC-21 called for a future fleet that included a future surface combatant including a Cruiser replacement, a mothership, an arsenal ship, and Sea Basing. This conceptual vision of Seapower 21 essentially became a list of desired metrics rather than a strategic vision of the concepts the metrics represented. In this regard we believe the process applied a set of packages with properties that reflect the desired metrics explained in Seapower 21 (stealth, speed, modularity, etc) for the future fleet, but we observe this process somehow became a tactical vision based on desired properties for ships rather than a strategic vision based on desired capabilities for the fleet.

Pressures mounted to define SC-21 due to an emerging gap observed in the future regarding numbers of surface combatants, so CNO Clark came under pressure to rapidly field surface combatants. Because the focus of surface combatants at the time was on the cruiser replacements, a process that was still years away, we believe the mistake was made within the CNO staff level process as they determined that the small mothership could substitute as a small combatant. What emerged from SC-21 was the DDG-1000 (surface combatant), the LCS (mothership), the SSGN (arsenal ship), and the Sea Basing concept still under development. As we look back we observe the CNO staff got it half right, the SSGN makes an excellent arsenal ship and the Sea Basing concept is very promising, however instead of a large surface combatant and a small mothership, we believe that had the Navy done a true Analysis of Alternatives or had not been rushed due to time, the Navy would have recognized that the way ahead was a large mothership and a small surface combatant which would have had the effect of applying the major technology upgrade of the era (motherships) and providing balance to the future surface combatant fleet (small combatants).

We observe that until the Navy recognizes this is where the mistake with SC-21 occurred, Adm Roughead will continue talking about the need for balance within the fleet. We note that even with the LCS coming online, the Navy is not by any realistic metric increasing the size of the surface combatant fleet. The LCS is an unrated ship, and specifically because it is not really a surface combatant at all (it is a mothership!) it is simply another contribution to the flotilla, and does not offer the balance that Adm Roughead continues to discuss.

The large mothership is not simply something we casually claim is important, rather we base our assessment on the application of the strategical and tactical ideas of our time, and support it with a historical basis matched with strategy.

We previously noted that as the LCS takes attrition in combat, the scouting capability of the total battle force is diminished, even as the high value units survive. This is counter to how historically the trends for scouting has been to bring the role of scouting back to the battle line, for example scout planes from cruisers and battleships in WWII, but also aircraft from aircraft carriers and more powerful electronic sensors used by surface combatants. Captain Hughes, who we consider one of the great strategists of our time, stresses continuously the importance of scouting in modern warfare, and in this regard many of the theories behind the streetfighter concept were primarily intended to enable the total scouting capacity of the battle fleet. We note that the trend the LCS changes in a major way is to push scouting back out to the flotilla, something that hasn't been done in wartime for the surface fleet since WWI, nearly 100 years ago. While we don't disagree this is possible, we observe that with the LCS it may not be possible to fully achieve this to the degree desired, because the LCS will require assistance to accomplish this role because the small LCS lacks the ability to maintain the maintenance upkeep of the deployable systems that contributes to this scouting role.

As I have discussed in the past, while the LCS is often attributed to Adm Cebrowski, I don't believe Adm Cebrowski would be a supporter of the LCS today, just the concept (unmanned mothership) behind it. One would think if Cebrowski was a LCS supporter, he would have included something even similar to it in his OFT fleet plan, but he didn't. In my study of the concepts promoted by Cebrowski and Hughes, it appears that they both concluded motherships should be big, because in application the size of the mothership determines the size of the deployable unmanned network it can support. We are already seeing hints that there will be problems down the road with the LCS, its small size prohibits the ship from being able to deploy the necessary equipment for the currently envisioned mission modules. More problematic is that the LCS offers almost no room for mission modules to grow, meaning the Navy is building a mothership too small to support the large enabling networks the mothership is designed to contribute as the key technology upgrade in 21st century naval warfare.

While we are highly critical of the Littoral Combat Ship on this blog, we still believe it is very important they get built. While we do not believe they will ultimately match strategy, just like we do not believe the DDG-1000 will match strategy, we support the Navy as it builds both the pair of LCS and a pair of DDG-1000s to move the technologies forward. We believe that while an Analysis of Alternatives can be useful, there is nothing better than the real thing for determining value of new technologies and new concepts, and among the critical technologies we see the modularity of the LCS and a number of critical technologies of the DDG-1000 as enabling for future ship classes.

Other than the CG(X) as a concept, and even as that concept appears to be less static than SC-21 first envisioned with emerging requirements like nuclear power, we believe that as the Navy continues to apply strategy and ask the questions that Adm. Roughead is asking regarding future fleet constitution the Navy will ultimately come to the conclusions that best support the future fleet. We have faith those conclusions will ultimately include a small combatant and a large mothership, based on the same metrics that the wargames and simulations early this century correctly identified as the metrics required for a 21st Century fleet.

While sometimes we give the impression otherwise, we believe the Navy has all of the metrics and concepts right, and unlike many we also believe the Navy has the strategy right, we are simply observing the application of those metrics and concepts to strategy as slightly flawed. We believe these flaws are exposing themselves as the platforms are developed under the conditions of the new strategy, and will eventually be corrected as the Navy forces itself to match fleet constitution to strategy.