The 100-ship Navy
Contents
Outline
- Naval officers always want more ships
- View decline in fleet strength to 297 ships @ end of Cold War as an aberration
- See return to great power rivalry with China as a reason to cheer - another great power across the Indo-Pacific means more reason to invest in the Navy
- Russia, likewise has been investing in its navy, especially with new submarines that are more modern and quieter than the ones it fielded during the Cold War
- The standard "navalist" response to these threats is not to look at the responsibilities of the US Navy, but to add more ships
- But can we be confident that the public will support more ships?
- What happens if a shift in public opinion, along with changing budgetary priorities, forces a drastic reduction in the number of ships?
- How would we limit our ambitions in the Pacific and Middle East while still preserving homeland defense and offshore balancing?
- Scenario: 100-ship Navy
- Intentionally restrictive -- intended to represent a "worst case"
- Preserve nuclear deterrence and multi-mission surface combatants at the expense of expeditionary capabilities and carrier strike groups
Generational Gaps and Budget Priorities
- Younger Americans' preferences bode poorly for increased military spending in the future
- Few young people think America is "exceptional"
- Future generations are more likely to care about environmental and social issues than geopolitics
- This is combined with increasing deficits due to economic stimulus spending
- It will be easier to cut discretionary spending than it will be to cut mandatory spending, and the defense budget is the largest share of discretionary spending
- The defense budget is composed of two major categories
- Operations includes funding for military pay and ongoing operations
- Pay cuts for the troops are probably out of the question, in this scenario
- Reducing procurement reduces both current procurement costs and future operations costs -> less stuff bought today means less stuff to maintain and crew tomorrow
- The Navy's ship budget is the single largest procurement line-item
Reducing Ambitions In Two Theaters
- In US Central Command, the Navy has the following missions
- Protect the seaborne transport of hydrocarbons
- Support the US Army, Marine Corps and Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan
- Deter Iran
- Defend allies from Iranian ballistic missiles
- Some of these missions are already declining in importance
- With the US as a net energy exporter, do we really need to protect oil traffic in the Gulf?
- Repeat after me, children: oil is a global market
- If there's a significant reduction in supply anywhere, prices go up everywhere
- Saying that hydrocarbon traffic in the Gulf doesn't need to be protected any more just because the US is a net oil exporter is like saying you don't have to worry about a leak in the deep end of the swimming pool because all you use is the shallow end
- Moreover, energy usage is shifting towards natural gas and renewables, further dampening the importance of oil traffic in the Gulf
- US missile defense is becoming less urgent as allies build up their own missile defense capabilities
- Israel has exo-atmospheric ballistic missile defense with its Arrow 3 system
- Saudi Arabia is deploying a THAAD system
- Increasing allied capabilities should allow the US to reduce the number of ships it keeps on station in the Middle East, allowing it to re-deploy platforms elsewhere or retire them
- US will have to rely more on the Air Force's Global Strike capability to respond to urgent crises
- In the Indo-Pacific Command, the US Navy's primary goal is to ensure a stable balance of power that dissuades China from making revisionist territorial claims
- Freedom of navigation operations
- Ballistic missile defense of allies
- Theater security cooperation
- However, China often uses non-military means to undermine US influence in the region
- China uses non-military means because it knows that, right now, if it were to use military means, the US Navy would obliterate it
- Tanner Greer makes a compelling argument that if China felt like it could get away with using military force, it would
- Trade agreements with security implications
- Using economic pressure to get countries to break diplomatic relations with Taiwan
- Allowing China to reunify with Taiwan would not just be a disaster because of Taiwan's strategic location, but it would also make a mockery of other US security commitments in the region
- If the US stands by while China reconquers Taiwan, Japan and Korea would both begin rearmament, further destabilizing the region
- However, a majority of Americans across party lines are opposed to further US support for Taiwan
- In a 100-ship-Navy world, the US will not have the requisite amphibious warfare ships to provide air and ground support for Taiwan
- In order to deter China, the US must raise the costs of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in other ways
- Invest in upgrading Taiwan's own self-defense capabilities
- Invest in A2/AD capabilities of our own to prevent the Taiwan Strait from becoming safe for Chinese amphibious landing vessels
- In addition, we can invest more in on-shore ballistic missile defense in Japan and Korea to deter North Korea
- Secondary missions, such as humanitarian aid and anti-piracy efforts will have to be taken up by regional partners, such as India or Australia
The Road to 100
- If the Navy were ordered to reduce its strength to 100 ships, the authors recommend the following strategy
- Reduce ballistic missile defense and deterrence strike forces in Central Command
- Preserve minimal multi-mission capability for responding to oil-shipment disruption
- Redeploy ex-Central Command to Indo-Pacific command to meet ballistic missile defense requirements there
- Replace sea-control as a goal with sea-denial
- In order to do this, the Navy should
- Freeze essential capabilities in place
- Eliminate the platforms underlying the most politically unpopular mission sets
- Proportionally shrink the remaining force
- The problem here is that what's important isn't what's always politically popular, and what's politically popular isn't always what's important
- First, let's consider what would be not be cut
- Nuclear deterrence -- even the strongest of isolationists admit that the US needs to maintain a sea-based nuclear deterrent
- This means that the nuclear-industrial base must also be maintained, because it would be the most difficult to rebuild if it were allowed to atrophy
- Preserving nuclear-powered vessels is advantageous also because they require less support infrastructure
- Thus ballistic missile submarines will not be cut, and just like the current 355-ship plan, the authors would have 10 of them in the 100-ship navy
- Then consider the cost-effectiveness of platforms
- Ticonderoga-class cruisers are aging and maintenance intensive
- Eliminating them would result in large cost savings
- Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are far more cost effective, and the 100-ship Navy would standardize on them as the primary surface combatant
- Third, don't look at ships in isolation, look at ships as part of fleets
- Surface ships in the US Navy often operate as part of carrier battle groups
- Eliminating a single carrier means that most or even all of its escorts can be cut
- A 100-ship Navy would imply an America that is not as interested in projecting power overseas
- An aircraft carrier's primary role is to project power
- As such, a 100-ship Navy would see the number of aircraft carriers reduced to 6
- This would allow the Navy to retire the Ticonderoga class completely
- Would also allow retirements of many older Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, allowing the fleet to standardize on the Block-III variant which has reduced maintenance requirements
- Finally, drastically cut amphibious warfare ships
- Expeditionary missions are increasingly unpopular
- Reducing amphibious warfare ships to parity with the number of aircraft carriers would allow similar training, maintenance, and deployment rotations
- Moreover, the Marine Corps already acknowledges that amphibious warfare ships are largely obsolete in the current mission environment
- Final tally
- 6 carriers
- 10 ballistic missile submarines
- 18 attack submarines to provide sea denial capabilities
- 28 large surface combatants
- 10 small surface combatants
- 6 amphibious warfare ships
- 12 logistics ships
- 10 support ships
- The 100-ship Navy is an ugly scenario, but not an unprecedented one
- In the 1960s, the Royal Navy had over 500 surface combatants
- By the Falklands War in the 1980s, the Royal Navy had 115 ships, with three fixed-wing capable carriers
- By 2016, it had 89 ships, with no fixed-wing capable carriers
- However, that's about to change -- the RN is going to be fielding the F-35 from its Queen Elizabeth-class carriers
- This was described by many RN officers as "mortgaging everything"
Recommendations
- In order to forestall a similar disaster for the US Navy, the authors offer two recommendations
- First, encourage allies to increase their land and sea-based intercept capabilities
- Collaboration with Israel on the Arrow system
- Deploying THAAD in South Korea and Saudi Arabia
- Deploying Aegis Ashore in Japan (though that program has recently encountered difficulties with local concerns)
- Second work to resolve differences among US allies to facilitate more efficient burden sharing among themselves
- Encourage further rapprochement between Israel and the Arab states to balance against Iran
- Work to prevent the Japan-South Korea relationship from deteriorating, so those allies can help balance against North Korea and China
- While we consider what to do with a 355 ship Navy, we should take time to thoughtfully consider what we would do with a much reduced Navy
- Having a clear set of priorities allows us to ensure that we can do as much as we can with the resources that we have
