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| Sa' ar 5 Corvettes |
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| Arleigh Burke Class Destroyers |
CDR Phillip Pournelle’s 4 November response to my 30 September 2024 information dissemination.net
article is thought provoking and a very useful addition to the ongoing
discussion of future naval force structure. His academic and operational
background brings an interesting dimension to the argument. I do however stand
by my initial essay and would offer a response to some of CDR Pournelle’s
“Balanced Fleet” criticisms. He is correct in his statement that antiship
cruise missile (ASCM) and automation technologies improved in favor of small
combatants over the course of the Cold War, but defensive systems have equally
matured over the same period and allow larger ships a greater margin of safety.
The data CDR Pournelle offers, notably the Schulte study is biased against
defending units and is nearly 20 years old. U.S. Navy warships do not usually
fight as single units except in “bolt from the blue” situations, but CDR
Pournelle limits his analysis to just that scenario and does not postulate for
a more robust force of surface ships such as seen off the coast in Syria is
recent months. CDR Pournelle deploys CAPT Wayne Hughes’ New Navy Fighting Machine study from 2009
as another crucial reference to his argument, but it relies on a complex
“family of ships” concept that has not often historically survived operational
or professional scrutiny. Politics, geography and logistical concerns will work
against the use of forward deployed, isolated squadrons of small combatants.
Finally, the addition of over 50 corvettes to the surface naval force structure should only be
considered after a serious review of what future naval strategy the U.S. will
employ. The United States has too
often substituted a combination of budget proposals and technological
capabilities for real strategy, both during the Cold War and especially in the
last 20 years. Current financial limitations demand that any significant change
in U.S. naval force structure be rigorously evaluated before acceptance. A
complex family of surface warfare corvettes would not be a prudent addition the
surface fleet force structure, especially at the expense of larger, more
capable combatants.
Evolution of Defense Systems
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| Talos Missile Test 1961 |
Cruise missile
technology has come a long way since the Soviet Union fielded the arguably
first identifiable anti ship cruise missile (ASCM), the P-15 Permit (NATO classification: SS-N-2
Styx) missile in 1960. Current designs feature subsonic and supersonic weapons
with a multiplicity of warheads, guidance systems and countermeasures
capabilities. Hypersonic cruise missiles are under development. While no one
would deny that the problems associated with effective ASCM defense are
multiplying and that these systems represent a serious risk to surface ships,
defense systems have also grown in capability. The introduction of the Naval
Tactical Data System (NTDS) in the early 1960s allowed for correlation of both on
board and external sensors in order to produce a shared tactical picture among
warship groups. The first group of operational U.S. surface to air missiles,
collectively known as the “T-birds” comprised the Terrier, Tarter, and the
telephone pole-sized Talos missile. They were not notably accurate and their
fire control systems, which worked well enough on land at test facilities like
Dam Neck, VA, frequently malfunctioned in the damp, electrically erratic,
rolling environment of seagoing operations. Smaller solid state components
enhanced equipment reliability and improved weapon launchers like the Mk 41
vertical launch system (VLS) allowed for more rapid rates of fire. Each new
advance in cruise missile technology and attacker ability to saturate defenses
has spawned better protective systems such as the U.S. SPY-1 radar and associated
AEGIS integrated weapon system. Potential future shipboard defense systems
include directed energy weapons and more advanced decoy systems. While this
sort of competition is costly, it has allowed defensive systems to meet many of
the challenges posed by their offensive counterparts. The documents cited by
CDR Pournelle largely ignore these advancements in favor of very general equations based on the size of
offensive missile salvo. These equations do not effectively account for either
a single unit or collective group’s defensive ability in that a Perry class frigate and an Arleigh
Burke
class DDG are judged not on their (very unequal) defensive abilities against
ASCM’s but rather on their ability to launch a first strike ASCM attack. The first point of failure in this
train of analysis however is in the dogged adherence to the dated and
incomplete Schulte study by small combatant enthusiasts.
The Shulte Thesis
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| Israeli Destroyer Eilat |
The Shulte thesis is frequently offered up as an exhibit for the vulnerability of
surface ships to cruise missile attack. It is however nearly 20 years old, and
has a number of examples that should be discarded due to their lack of
relevance. Early ASCM victims such as the Israeli destroyer Eilat, and the Pakistani Navy
ships sunk by Indian cruise missile attacks in 1971 were World War 2 vintage
destroyers with little or no capability to shoot down a cruise missile. The
same is true of the Argentine patrol craft sunk by British Royal navy
helicopters at the outset of the 1982 Falklands conflict. The numerous examples
from the Syrian/Israeli conflict might indicate that the SS-N-2 Styx missile
was especially vulnerable to passive countermeasures; the Syrians did not
appropriately maintain their cruise missiles inventory, Syrian naval personnel
were poorly trained, or a combination of these factors. The most useful
examples within the Shulte document are the actions taken by Royal Naval
warships in defense against Argentine cruise missile attacks in the
intermediate stages of the Falklands war. The British ships targeted by
Argentine ASCM’s in that conflict however represent a much earlier generation
of air defense capability. They lacked secondary “hard kill” anti-missile/air
system such as close in weapons (CIWS) and were not support by effective airborne
early warning (AEW) units that are integral to U.S. military operations.
As to the problems of
“hard kill” systems in engaging ASCM’s, the Schulte thesis concedes on page xi
that,
“Softkill
measures employed against anti-ship missiles were extremely successful,
seducing
or decoying every missile they were used against. In every engagement where a
defender was alert and deployed softkill measures, every missile salvo was
entirely defeated. Hardkill measures were not as successful, with only one case
confirmed. This is understandable since hardkill measures used to date have
primarily consisted of manual firing systems. More data is needed to assess
the combat capabilities of modern hardkill systems.”
Deployment and Survivability
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| ex USS Buchanan SINKEX |
CDR
Pournelle frequently states that a force of smaller combatants is more
survivable than one made up of larger ships and that the size of individual
surface combatants (cruisers, destroyers, frigates and littoral combatant
ships) is irrelevant in their overall survivability. His “cost equivalent”
example constitutes of four Ambassador III ( Soliman Ezzat in Egyptian service)
class missile patrol craft versus one Arleigh Burke class destroyer. That
comparison may be financially and mathematically useful, but it is not
operationally accurate. The U.S. may deploy single surface combatants for
peacetime missions, but not for operations potentially involving combat,
especially against near peer competitors.
A more reliable formation is the recent U.S. naval force constituted off
Syria in support of potential cruise missile strikes. That force comprised 5 Burke’s to include Barry,
Gravely, Mahan, Ramage and Stout. Together that is a total of 462 vertical
launch missile cells. If the Evolved Sea Sparrow missile (ESSM), of which 4 can
be “quad packed” into an individual VLS cell is considered, the number of
available weapons significantly increases. If a force of missile patrol craft
were instead deployed to the troubled waters off Syria, it would need to have a
full strength of 20 vessels to stay within CDR Pournelle’s mathematical
equivalency. That would be nearly 1/3 of the 64 missile combatants proposed by
their supporters. That force would still need escort by air defense warships in
order to operate in littoral waters and be dependent on vulnerable data
networks to supplement their own organic sensor.
Recent live
weapon sinking exercises (SINKEX) as part of operational exercises have
demonstrated that modern warships are more resilient to attack than CDR
Pournelle and his compatriots contend. The ex-USS Buchanan (DDG 14) survived 5
Hellfire missiles, 2 Harpoon missile strikes and a laser-guided bomb hit before
sinking. While it is true that ships do not gain
staying power, or damage resiliency, as a linear function of size, larger ships
will most definitely take more damage than smaller ships, and with larger
crews, can better combat casualties. I agree that the cost is also not linear
and larger ships do cost a lot more than smaller ones.
The New Navy Fighting Machine
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| SC 21 Family of Ships |
Captain
Hughes and his Naval Postgraduate School colleagues’ New Navy Fighting Machine
is another reference deployed by CDR Pournelle in defense of his opinion. The large system of
different specialized ships recommended by the New Navy Fighting Machine authors is unlikely to
survive professional, operational, and public review. As seen frequently in naval history and as recently as the
demise of the Surface Combatant 21st Century (SC-21) “Family of
Ships” in the last decade, such broad concepts seldom emerge intact from the Planning Programming and Budgetary system. At best, parts of the system
will survive, as the littoral combatant ship (LCS) and 3 DDG-1000’s remain from
the SC-21. The “high/low” mix of warships proposed by then Chief of Naval
Operations ADM Elmo Zumwalt in the 1970s was equally dissected by critics and
while the patrol frigate concept survived as the Oliver Hazard Perry class (FFG 07), the
small carrier “sea control ship” and the high-end “nuclear strike cruiser” did
not. Pieces of a future “New Navy Fighting Machine” that survive review would
not be as effective as the whole system, and like the LCS might engender serious
criticism of their employment, especially when outside of the ship’s original
operational concept.
Hidden Costs and Limitations in Deployed Small Combatants
A
large number of small combatants would need to be assigned to the Western Pacific
in order to counter Chinese aggression as their advocates describe. To get the
full benefit of the “New Navy Fighting Machine”, upwards of 64 such craft would
need to be deployed to advanced operating bases. The nations bordering the
South China Sea today may not be in favor in China’s bullying tactics and
attempts to seize parts of oil and natural gas rich archipelagos, but they may
be equally hesitant to host a large U.S. naval force structure. There have been
calls for over a decade for the U.S. to reduce its military footprint in Japan.
Singapore hosts U.S. ships in small numbers and U.S. bases in the Philippines
once hosted dozens of ships, but would such large forces now be welcome? The
U.S. does not have official ties with the Taiwanese government, so officially
basing units there in a peacetime status would require naval planners to
overcome a diplomatic obstacle course in order to base the small combatant
force structure as advertised.  |
| USNS Pecos refuels a small combatant |
Basing such craft in Guam or
other locations would require additional infrastructure and security costs not
identified by small combatant advocates. Such bases are also vulnerable to air
attack and blockade, especially if the environment is too dangerous, as small
combatant advocates contend, for an aircraft carrier strike group to provide
the dedicated aviation support vital to the success of small combatant
operations. The relatively short operational ranges of these craft will demand
a very innovative and dynamic distributed logistics structure that would likely
include vulnerable forward-deployed tenders and replenishment ships. To date,
no such clear logistics plan has been offered.
Strategy Before Force Structure
Most importantly, the U.S. Navy must determine what
naval strategy it will employ, both in the Pacific and throughout the world,
before another keel is laid or operational concept is employed. To paraphrase a
recent Microsoft advertising campaign, the U.S. must ask, “Where does it want
its naval forces to go today, tomorrow, and 20 to 30 years hence”. If the
answer to that question is into the littoral spaces of the Western Pacific and
the Persian Gulf to conduct extensive operations, then the small combatant
battle force as proposed by CDR Pournelle and others
might be the correct answer. On the other hand, if the U.S. decides, as
seapower theorist Seth Cropsey states in his recent book Mayday, “to not signal an
important retreat from the powerful trans-oceanic presence, deterrence, and war
fighting missions that U.S. seapower has performed since World War 2”, it
should not conduct a radical “strategic re-casting of American seapower away
from the form in which it currently exists.” A force structure that embraces a
complex system of over 50 short-range mission-specific corvettes at even a
small expense away from the current globally deployable surface fleet to of
high (CG/DDG) and low end (LCS) surface combatants would constitute such an
alteration. Flotillas of small combatants have often been employed in nations’
home waters for defensive purpose. Their deployment however as an offensive
force without direct support from more capable surface and aviation units is a
new and potentially dangerous operational concept without historical precedent.
The weapons the of the current generation of small combatants are more
formidable than in even the recent past, but their low endurance, dependence on
forward bases or tenders, and general lack of air defense capability leaves
them vulnerable to enemy counterattack once they have expended their first
strike. In any case, more realistic experimentation and strategic analysis is
in order before the U.S. Navy commits to another complicated family of ships
for its future architecture.
