Naval Supremacy Cannot be "Piggybacked" on Small Ships

Visby Class Swedish Corvette

The pages of the September 2013 issue of the United States Naval Institute Proceedings were filled with articles extolling the potential political-military influence and combat effectiveness of the 600-800 ton littoral missile corvette. The distinguished authors are well known and highly respected naval experts such as former U.S. Fleet Forces Commander Admiral John Harvey Jr., Fleet Tactics author Captain Wayne Hughes, and U.S. Naval War College Center for Naval Warfare Studies Dean Captain Robert C. Rubel. Collectively in two articles, the authors recommend the U.S. adopt flotillas of small, missile-armed surface combatants, such as the Swedish Visby class as a principle combat component of the U.S. surface fleet. The authors believe these small craft will play a crucial role in peacetime as ambassadors of political/military interest and in war as expendable patrol combatants, commerce raiders and attack platforms of choice in littoral waters.   While compelling in scope and vision, the authors’ analysis leaves out crucial aspects of history, geography, strategy and logistics. Historically the small combatant has been a persistent underachiever in the fleet structures of many navies; the geography of potential future battlefields like the Indo-Pacific region demands high-endurance, more capable platforms than the small warships the authors advocate; the strategic needs of the U.S. in “big” spaces like the Pacific are better served by larger platforms and aviation assets than by surface ship flotillas; and finally the logistics limitations of small combatants will outweigh their potential effectiveness. The combination of these factors should lead U.S. civilian and naval leaders to reject both the small combatant and the attendant operational concepts advocated by these experts.

Late 19th Century Torpedo Boat

     The small combatant armed with capital ship-killing weapons is a familiar figure from the naval history of the 120 years. The torpedo boat, the submarine, the destroyer, and the missile patrol craft were all touted from their inception as the bane of larger navies’ capital ships and possible equalizer for nations with smaller, financially-challenged navies. While British naval theorist Sir Julian Corbett was correct in that the threat from these craft upended many long-held notions of naval combat, only the submarine threat has evolved into a persistent and regular threat. The others have never met the expectations of designers and theorists. The torpedo boat was matched by changes in armament of capital ships and by the addition of the “torpedo-boat” destroyer to their escort before the First World War. While the torpedo boat was a persistent threat that concerned commanders from 1914 to 1918, it scored few operational successes. Those that did involved single units operating at night or in stealth conditions such as the successful attack on the British pre-dreadnought HMS Goliath by the Turkish Navy’s torpedo boat Muavenet-i Milliye during the 1915 Dardanelles campaign.  The torpedo-armed destroyer evolved into a general- purpose warship in its own right before World War 2. Torpedoes too evolved and became much longer ranged weapons that the Japanese Navy in particular employed from both cruisers and destroyers. These changes, including a nearly 50% increase in weight and firepower made the destroyer a much more conventional weapon. Whole flotillas of destroyers were sometimes deployed in the Second World War, but primarily as a defensive screen rather than offensive formation. They got “assist” credit in the sinking of battleships such as the German Scharnhorst and the Japanese Hiei, and a British destroyer flotilla sank the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro in the waning days of the war, but these victories by no means constitute a strong advocacy in favor of the flotilla as a combat organization.

Cold War-era Soviet OSA II Missile Boat

      The anti-ship cruise missile-armed small combatant gained a similar feared status in the Cold War after Egyptian missile boats sank the Israeli destroyer Eilat in October 1967 and after successful Indian Navy missile boat attacks on Pakistani naval units in December 1971. While the surface-launched cruise missile is a growing and significant threat to surface warships, the “missile corvette’s” promise remains unfulfilled. Argentine missile corvettes never threatened the British Royal Navy task force that recaptured the Falkland Islands in 1982. Libyan missile corvettes were sunk by U.S. Navy aircraft before they could threaten U.S. warships executing strikes against Libya in 1986. The Iranian missile corvette Joshan was able to launch a harpoon surface to surface missile against the cruiser USS Wainwright, but the weapon either failed to arm or was decoyed by passive means. Saddam Hussein’s missile boats were destroyed by aircraft and helicopters before they launched a single missile in 1991. The only U.S. recent U.S. entries have been the 1970s-era PHM class hydrofoil missile combatants and the Cyclone class patrol coastal (PC). The PHM’s were intended to be a deployed force in the Mediterranean and perhaps the Persian Gulf, but high maintenance and fuel costs as compared with conventional combatants ensured their retirement in the post Cold War budget cuts of the 1990s. The PC’s remain today, but are lightly built and have a current armament insufficient for offensive combat operation.

         Past failings of small combatants to live up to expectations should not alone deter the U.S. from embracing flotillas. The relative casualties suffered by these ships however provide numerous examples of why not to adopt corvette-sized combatants. Twentieth century naval battles from Jutland to more recent actions in the Persian Gulf are replete with small ships suffering heavy casualties when sunk. A big ship can suffer a catastrophic sinking with heavy loss of life, but when small ships sink they inevitably take more of their crews with them. In his policy paper “Aircraft Carriers, the Real Choices” from 1978 John Lehman stated that the larger the carrier, the less vulnerable to attack it is. That law can also be applied to surface combatants and while all ships are vulnerable to loss, missile corvettes as those advocated by the authors of the Proceedings articles are more likely to be sunk if attacked than larger more capable warships. The example of the October 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole is a good example of the survivability of larger ships. Many experts have commented that the Navy’s new littoral combatant ships (LCS), a warship smaller and less robust than the Cole would not have survived such an attack. A corvette-sized ship even smaller than the LCS would have likely been completely destroyed with all hands. Senior civilian and naval leadership has frequently stated that people are the Navy’s most valuable resource. How does this maxim apply to corvette sized ships are more likely to be sunk and suffer higher casualties in the process than larger ships? Napoleon was reputed to have said “God is on the side of the big battalions.” History would seem to indicate that maxim is true for larger ships as well.

     Geography and logistics issues also favor larger, high endurance vessels over numerous smaller ones if the operator’s force is deployed away from home. A nation that employs numerous small warships for defense of its coastal waters has the advantage of interior lines of communication and logistics in both operating and supporting this force. Those factors have made small combatants the choice of many states from late 19^th century France to present day Iran to defend their coastal waters against the deployed forces of maritime powers such as Great Britain in the 19^th century and the United States today. The authors of the flotilla pieces have eschewed the long lines of communication necessary to support their forward-deployed flotillas from home, preferring to support them from advanced bases in friendly states. That would have made sense in the 1990’s and early 2000’s when potential U.S. opponents lacked the modern weapons necessary to effectively attack those forward bases. That is not the case now, and action by an enemy could cut off those forward bases from U.S. support or render them incapable of supporting deployed U.S. flotillas. The case of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet of 1941 is illustrative of this problem. This U.S. fleet was a forward deployed element based in the Philippines with the mission of being a deterrent or at least a “tripwire” against potential Japanese aggression. Its surface ship assets were either small or outmoded, but it possessed a substantial fleet of submarines that were expected to be very effective in attacking Japanese ships. When the Japanese destroyed or overran their bases however, the Asiatic fleet submarines were forced to withdraw to Australia and Hawaii. Professor James Holmes from the Naval War College pointed out in a 17 September piece in The Naval Diplomat that the failure of the torpedo boats of the Asiatic fleet to perform effectively negatively influenced future U.S. attempts to develop small war fighting craft. It wasn’t just the PT boats; the whole Asiatic fleet of light, forward deployed ships and submarines failed to significantly impact the Japanese Pacific advance in the early part of the Second World War. The loss of their base in the Philippines greatly hampered their ability to conduct effective combat operations. Loss of a significant forward base such as Singapore or Guam due to ballistic missile or air attack could force U.S. surface flotillas, like the Asiatic fleet in 1941, to also withdraw. Unlike even World War 2 submarines, these surface ships would be extremely vulnerable to attack, especially if completely cut off from U.S. logistics elements. A deployed tender for these ships as advocated by the authors would be even more at risk. The Asiatic submarine fleet had to abandon its tender USS Canopus after it suffered damage from Japanese air attacks. A modern tender would be an equally vulnerable, high value target for attackers. Lack of endurance outside the area supported by a vulnerable land base or tender is still a significant drawback to flotilla combatants today.

     Finally, the strategic situation of today does not support a large force of deployed corvette flotillas. These ships might have been useful in the previous two decades when the U.S. was more supportive of intervention against rouge states or in support of nations on the verge of collapse. While useful perhaps in conducting coast guard style operations that support these missions, corvette-sized ships are more vulnerable to attack in an increased threat environment. Combat in the littorals is best left to carrier or land-based aviation assets that are less vulnerable to attack, faster, re-targetable and re-useable over a longer period than a small surface ship that must depart the area to replenish its missile magazines in port. While the current carrier air wing is deficient in the long range assets necessary to that mission, it should not be replaced by a more vulnerable surface platform. As for the influence mission potential, why is smaller somehow better, especially in the Indo-Pacific basin? As demonstrated by the photo of the USS Freedom operating with a comparable Malaysian frigate used by the authors in their article, the nations of the Western Pacific have an abundance of larger warships and do not need a smaller U.S. Navy vessel executing a port call to make them feel better about military to military cooperation. While a missile corvette might be a good choice for a port visit to a West African nation, current U.S. surface combatants do not dwarf their Asian contemporaries and LCS is actually smaller and less capable than many Asian frigate designs.

     The study by LT Schwartz on small boat flotilla operations cited by the authors seems to geographically place their commerce raiding activities directly within the envelope of Chinese air and missile attack capability. If U.S. carrier or shore-based aviation assets were available to provide cover for the missile corvettes, they would remain reasonably safe from Chinese air and surface ship threats. What happens however if those U.S. assets are not available or repressed? The authors have previously stated in other works that they believe the current U.S. carrier strike group is unable to defend itself within range of Chinese air and missile attack. What also happens if the Chinese eliminate U.S. land-based aviation assets in the Western Pacific as part of an initial attack?  The concept of surface ships without aviation support as effective commerce raiders has been defunct since the Second World War. Re-introducing it without addressing these caveats does not represent an effective analysis. In any case, a distant blockade of China at a maritime choke point by local allied forces and supported by larger U.S. Navy units would play more to current fleet capabilities.

Israeli Saar 5 class Hanit after missile hit

     The current and potential proliferation of advanced cruise and even targetable ballistic missiles has made the threat environment more dangerous than the halcyon days of the 1990s. Even network-supported small combatants are at risk from attacks like the one that damaged the Israeli missile corvette Hanit in 2006. The crew of the Hanit was lucky in that the probable C-802 missile hit an aft area crane and nor the hull of the ship. A number of experts including naval analyst and war game designer Chris Carlson believe that had the Hanit taken a direct hit, there was a good chance she would have been severely damaged or sunk. At over 1200 tons full load displacement, the Saar 5 class Hanit is nearly double the size of the craft the authors propose. Such a craft would most likely been destroyed by a similar attack. In the process of designing the U.S. LCS class vessels, former Undersecretary of the Navy Robert Work noted in his January 2013 Naval War College monograph on the history of the LCS that in 2001 Navy leaders considered the 600-800 ton ship the Proceedings authors recommended in, but decided instead on the 3100 ton LCS as a more robust and capable platform than the missile corvette. Since the threat level in the form of new cruise and ballistic missiles such as the Chinese DF-21 has increased, why should the Navy now adopt a less secure platform in large numbers?

     U.S. Navy leadership was correct a decade ago in deciding that the LCS was the smallest warship concept it would accept. The vast space of the Indo-Pacific basin is very different from the relatively confined waters of the authors’ favorite Mediterranean Sea scenario. No war fleet expecting to operate in this large space can afford to be too closely tied to land-based support or even deployed tenders. The example of the first several months of the Second World War in the Pacific ought to be a strong caution against relying too much on fixed installations. Singapore fell to the Japanese long before any British analysis ever expected. The global scope of potential U.S. operations demands a fleet of larger, high endurance warships, supported by a well-defended logistics train that swiftly move to gain sea control where required. Missile corvettes that relay on forward bases and tenders for support are only the latest in a long line of small craft that have not lived up to their advertised potential. While perhaps useful in a geographically constrained space like the Mediterranean Sea or Persian Gulf, they are very vulnerable to attack by advanced cruise missiles, submarine torpedoes without coverage from land based aviation or the larger surface force units they are intended to replace. If their fixed bases are compromised or overrun, they do not have the endurance or logistics support to make a fighting retreat to the safety of other U.S. forces.

     The operational environment has changed since these craft were first proposed in the early 1990s. Bereft of significant opponents with capable naval forces since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States in now confronted with a peer/near peer naval competitor in the form of the Chinese Navy and a growing threat from the Iranian fleets (Regular and Revolutionary Guard Corps). The North Korean Navy has demonstrated its willingness to attack without warning as the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan demonstrated. This is not an environment for small corvettes. While U.S. warships may now be more vulnerable than in the last 20 years, that condition is no reason to reject capable, high endurance ships out of fear for their loss. This author has the highest respect and admiration for the authors and their many years of sterling service to the United States Navy, but he respectfully disagrees with their belief that the missile corvette should represent a large part of the future U.S. Navy surface combatant force. This concept should be rejected in favor of a balanced fleet that boasts a mix of large ships like the DDG and smaller ships like the LCS. Only a balanced fleet can really hedge all bets against future threats. A balanced fleet, rather than one of corvettes is the correct course for the future U.S. surface combatant fleet.