The Navy in an Era of Great Power Competition
Contents
Event information
About Richard Spencer
- Secretary of the Navy
- USMC pilot
- Was also acting Secretary of Defense
Remarks by the Secretary
- Return of great power competition is testing our capabilities in ways that we have not seen for quite some time
- Goals of this discussion
- Raise awareness of US naval priorities
- Seek feedback and ideas from outside the Navy
- The US Navy and Marine Corps have to adapt, react and fight in an era of great power competition
- The US Navy and Marine Corps are the US's "forward deployed" forces in the Pacific
- They are the primary means of power projection for the country
- Achieve "peace through presence"
- Integrated naval force
- Go back to treating the US Navy and Marine Corps as a single unified service
- Marine Corps is a way for the Navy to do its job
- Strong recommendation to read Marine Corps Commandant's Planning Guidance
- Marine Corps will be trained and equipped to operate as a naval expeditionary force
- Marine Corps will be prepared to operate inside contested maritime spaces in support of fleet operations
- US Navy will be tied more closely to the Marine Corps at all levels
- The Marine Corps is the "natural partner" for the Navy
- Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and Marine Corps commandant are fully aligned on this goal
- This strategy is not just on paper — naval funding and Marine Corps funding will be shifted to focus on this priority
- To drive the innovation and adaptation needed for an era of great power conflict, the Navy and Marine Corps will prioritize the following
- Human Capital
- People are how you fight the ship
- Can no longer assume that the US Navy and US Marine Corps brands are sufficient to attract the right kinds of recruits
- Bring in technologies and best practices from the private sector
- Augment workforce with outside experts, temporary employees and even crowd-sourced solutions
- Greater career flexibility (at least on the civilian side)
- Prioritize learning as a strategic advantage
- Education for Seapower (E4S) initiative
- Adversaries are beginning to match the US in innovation
- We need to "invest in gray matter as well as gray hulls"
- John Kroger has been appointed as the Navy's first Chief Learning Officer
- Synchronize the higher learning institutions of the Navy and Marine Corps
- Naval Academy
- Naval Postgraduate School
- Naval War College
- Marine Corps University
- (New) Navy Community College
- Prioritize education for everyone from enlisted men to flag officers
- Import best practices from private sector and academia
- Modernize naval force structure
- Maximize interoperability with both other services and allied navies
- Better integration with supply chains
- Ensure lethal overmatch — the US Navy and Marine Corps should never be going into a "fair fight"
- 355 ship Navy is an aspirational goal
- Number of ships is less important than ensuring that the US Navy has the correct capabilities to meet its challenges
- Services must have appropriate level of resources in order to carry out their roles in the National Defense Strategy
- {$ \frac{1}{3} $}, {$ \frac{1}{3} $}, {$ \frac{1}{3} $} formula may no longer be appropriate
- US Navy needs outside ideas and feedback
Discussion with Michael O'Hanlon
- Michael O'Hanlon
- People & equipment
- Known issues with equipment and maintenance
- Retention challenges in a strong economy
- Richard Spencer
- People
- People are the Navy's most valuable and most expensive asset
- Navy and Marine Corps are both currently meeting their recruitment goals
- The US military is not an all-volunteer force, it is an all-recruited force
- Navy and Marine Corps both need to invest in education, despite turnover
- Even if people leave, it's important to ensure that they feel like they got something out of their military service
- Good/bad word of mouth overrides any advertising
- Focus on education should apply to both soldiers and civilian employees
- Ships and Equipment
- "For 18 years, we've flown the wings off our planes, and sailed the bottoms off our ships, and wrung our sailors and marines out to the nth degree"
- Now we're paying the price for that
- Congress has finally given the Navy a proper budget
- Should not be surprised at maintenance issues
- We have ships with maintenance hatches that haven't been opened for 5-7 years
- However, we are starting to get back onto an even keel with regards to maintenance
- New ships
- America made a bet 20 years ago that we could turn off our shipyards and then turn them on again at a later date as if nothing had happened
- As a result, we do not currently have the necessary workforce to build new ships
- We are paying a lot of money to spool that workforce back up
- What keeps Spencer up at night is worries about the supply chain
- The supply chain needs to become more resilient and sustainable
- Improvement will happen, but it will be a painful process
- Example: Ford-class carrier
- Yes, this platform has had its share of problems
- But today, disparaging comments against the Ford are misinformed
- EMALS works
- Automatic arresting gear works
- There are still problems with the elevators, but they're getting worked out
- Everything will be working when the ship reaches IOC
- 2024 date cited for deployability includes many steps past IOC
- Example: Navy sustainment program for the F-18
- Went from 47% readiness to more than 80% readiness
- Improved command and control of maintenance operations
- Looked to private sector for guidance on risk management and industrial processes
- Brought in maintenance executives from airlines in order to find ways of making maintenance more efficient
- "Maintenance is maintenance" — significant commonalities in maintenance between ships, aircraft and ground vehicles
- No silver bullets to improved readiness — instead it's just a bunch of small incremental improvements that add up
- Michael O'Hanlon
- Sharing readiness improvement stories helps make the case for continued funding
- The Navy should do more of that if it's able to
- Can and should the US become less predictable in its naval deployments?
- Richard Spencer
- the Navy is dedicated to becoming more dynamic and less predictable
- Dynamic Force Employment
- Today's practice of publishing sailing and deployment schedules is nuts
- Also need to mix up how we use ships
- "Lightning carrier" concept — put 20 F-35Bs on a LHA
- Exploring this and other ideas to make our forces more flexible
- Admiral Munsch — US Navy fighting development directorate
- Need to better understand where the threats are and how they intersect with sea lanes
- Invest in action/reaction probing
- USN Navy used to do this a lot in the Cold War
- Take actions with the goal of eliciting a reaction to learn about the adversary's practices and doctrine
- This was largely abandoned when the Navy's primary tasking became supporting COIN, and we need to relearn how to do that
- Michael O'Hanlon
- Are land-based missile-defenses easing the pressure on the Navy?
- Richard Spencer
- Cooperation on missile defense is a great example of "jointness"
- Land-based precision fires free the Navy from having to be tethered to a ballistic missile defense role
- Allows the Navy to focus on what it does best: maneuver
- Michael O'Hanlon
- 3 schools of thought on carrier survivability & utility in a future great power conflict
- Carriers are survivable
- Carriers can maneuver
- We can interfere with enemy ISR to reduce their ability to find and target carriers
- Carriers can be survivable with longer range platforms to mitigate their vulnerabilities
- Carriers are not survivable in an all-out fight, but still have importance for other missions
- Allow for the projection of power in the early (pre-kinetic) stages of a conflict
- Useful as a naval skirmishing unit
- Which, if any, of those schools of thought do you most agree with?
- Richard Spencer
- All three camps have a part of the truth
- The carrier is defensible in various environments (and the full discussion of this would have to be classified)
- We are building longer-range standoff capabilities for our carriers
- Longer range weapons
- Improved refueling capabilities
- Carriers are much less of a target than a fixed airfield
- Everyone knows the GPS coordinates of Kadena Air Base, but a carrier can maneuver 700 miles in a day
- A carrier has a large role to play after both sides have fired off their initial attacks, and fixed infrastructure has been degraded
- The next generation of carriers that we build will be even better suited for this environment, with better support for unmanned aircraft
- Existing aircraft carriers can be augmented with concepts like the "Lightning carrier", which may not have the same total capability as a fleet carrier but offer improvements in cost : capability ratio
- Michael O'Hanlon
- In the past few decades, the US Marine Corps has moved towards fewer larger transports
- This increases efficiency, but also raises vulnerability
- Commandant's guidance seems to indicate that we want smaller, more distributed platforms to take Marines into battle
- How far can we take this before issues of cost and physics become prohibitive?
- Richard Spencer
- The Navy is in the middle of its force structure assessment
- Force structure assessment was delayed in order to accommodate bureaucratic changes necessary for greater USN/USMC integration
- Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) concept
- Fan out assets
- Make assets smaller so they can be fanned out
- Use distributed platforms to have more seekers and shooters and complicate the adversary's targeting problem
- The problem with DMO is ensuring sufficient logistical support to serve smaller, more numerous assets
- DMO is a natural fit for the Marine Corps
- Marine Corps is a marine-oriented quick-reaction force integrated with Navy
- Smaller, more maneuverable and more deployable than the Army
- Expeditionary in orientation
- Unmanned systems for both logistics and delivery show a lot of promise in enabling DMO
- Michael O'Hanlon
- What is the Navy currently doing with unmanned systems?
- Where does the Navy see itself in 10-20 years with unmanned systems
- Richard Spencer
- Unmanned systems will be integral to the Navy in all three domains: in the air, on the ocean surface, and underwater
- Small unmanned undersea vessels are already in use
- Experimenting with medium and large undersea unmanned vehicles
- "Sea Hunter" has completed a full COLREGS compliant transit from Hawaii to San Diego
- Lots of R&D in unmanned systems but we can still go faster
- Specifically calling out China's President Xi Jinping remarks that China would "spill the blood and crush the bones" of those who would attempt to block Chinese unification
- That was a message to the US integrated naval forces
- Fundamentally, the role of the US Navy and Marine Corps is deterrence
- The US Navy and Marine Corps exist to give the State Department "one more day" to defuse a conflict
- Michael O'Hanlon
- How has the Western Pacific changed over the past 1-2 years?
- Are we in a "steady state" with regards to China, or are things continuing to escalate?
- Richard Spencer
- More concerned about the Western Pacific now than when he took the job, because he knows so much more about the region
- China has a place at the table if they acknowledge a rules-based international order
- Highlights intellectual property theft as a key source of ongoing tension
- US Navy is adapting to China's (and Russia's) strategy of operating just below the level of kinetic warfare
- China is a competitor that does not differentiate between military and civilian
- As a result the US needs to expand its notion of "jointness" beyond the Department of Defense
- DoD needs to be "joint" with Department of Commerce and Department of Treasury in responding to China
- Michael O'Hanlon
- Plans seem to depend on a budget that assumes that defense spending will increase by 3-5% in real terms
- However, there seems to be little appetite for that level of growth in Congress
- What will have to be cut if that growth in budget allocation does not occur?
- Richard Spencer
- We need to appropriately fund our strategies
- We cannot resource this year's plan with last year's budget
- CR's are absolutely toxic
- Congress is not living up to its Constitutional responsibilities in funding the government
- There is still more room for efficiency improvements at the Department of Defense, but the DoD has to be allowed to pursue those improvements
- Example: decision to retire the USS Harry Truman early
- In the private sector, assets are scrapped not when they reach their end-of-life but when there is a sufficiently better new alternative
- Petroleum industry scraps 2+ billion dollar refineries when they can build a new refinery that's ~25% more efficient
- A Ford-class carrier is at least 30% more efficient than a Nimitz class carrier
- 30% more sortie generation with EMALS
- 25% fewer crew required to run the ship
- Improved maintenance cycle
- The US Navy needs to have the freedom to scrap ships in order to save on maintenance and free up the money for modernization and other investments
- Scrapping the Harry Truman would free up $3.8 billion dollars for the ship alone and another $1.8 billion for the air wing
- That money can be invested in new ships, R&D or a whole host of other activities
- The US Navy needs a certain amount of latitude from Congress to spend the money that it has been given on innovation rather than obsolete systems
- Michael O'Hanlon
- Do CRs hurt existing maintenance in addition to investment?
- Richard Spencer
- One of the biggest problems with CRs is that the DoD's creative energy gets spent on financial engineering
- Last 9 CRs cost the US $4 billion in direct monetary costs
- That's not counting the non-monetary costs, such as skilled personnel leaving the defense industry due to the uncertainty of funding
- Hypocritical of Congress to blame the Navy for cost overruns when the costs of CRs drain even more money
- CRs are an "atrocity" and should not exist as a means for funding the government
Questions From the Audience
- Alex Sanchez — Jane's Defense
- Adm. Faller, Commander of SOUTHCOM is increasingly concerned about great power interference in Latin America and the Caribbean
- What is the US Navy's strategy for SOUTHCOM
- Richard Spencer
- While we focus on the Pacific Theater, it's important to note that the US faces threats and challenges everywhere
- The US needs a whole-of-government approach to deal with these challenges
- Rob Collerino — AIC Investments
- How does the US Navy view Brexit and NATO
- Richard Spencer
- 60-65% of attention is focused on the Pacific
- However, the US is making sure that it's NATO relationships are getting the attention they need
- US needs a robust constellation of friends and allies
- US is cultivating new and existing alliances
- Michael O'Hanlon
- Are there going to be any day-to-day consequences from Brexit
- Richard Spencer
- No day-to-day consequences anticipated
- The UK and the US share one of the strongest mil-to-mil relationships in the world
- US Marine Corps F-35Bs will be deploying aboard the HMS Queen Elizabeth in 2021
- US Navy and Royal Navy will continue to work in close coordination
- George Knuckleson — Washington liason of the Global Special Operations Foundation
- What is the future of AEW
- Can non-carrier assets, like Marine Corps amphibious ships provide AEW to the fleet, like how the British have retrofitted AEW aboard their Sea King helicopters
- Richard Spencer
- Every flying and sailing platform should also be a sensor platform
- The RQ-25 is already up there refueling, can we hang sensors off it too?
- We shouldn't think about assets being "Navy" or "Marine Corps" — it is a single integrated team
- We should think about forces in terms of capabilities rather than units; perhaps when a combatant commander asks for an aircraft carrier, the correct response is, "Here is a set of units that give you the same capabilities"
- Arthur Ackerman — Student at CSIS
- What is the current state of naval integration with our allies?
- What is the future of this integration?
- Richard Spencer
- US Navy is doing well where interop is concerned
- Maritime operations in the last RIMPAC exercise were handled by a Chilean
- P8s based out of Australia and New Zealand
- Ongoing maneuvers with Japan and South Korea
- Vietnam — US carrier conducts a port visit to Da Nang, something that would have been unimaginable even 10 years ago
- US wants to give partners and allies a chance to lead during joint exercises
- Michael O'Hanlon
- What is the state of the US Filipino alliance at the operational level where the Navy is concerned?
- Richard Spencer
- All of our services have great mil-to-mil relations with our allies
- These relationships continue to operate at some level, regardless of the broader political situation
- Philippines is a poster child for this
- Another example: Thailand
- US didn't recognize the Thai government after the military coup there
- However, the US still maintained mil-to-mil relations, and so when there was a government that the US recognized, the US was ready to resume coordination
- Christopher Woody — Business Insider
- What are the US Navy's plans for the Arctic
- Permanent basing
- Unmanned systems
- Richard Spencer
- The Arctic is a key zone for future naval competition
- US Navy has been in the Arctic since 1969 — under the ice
- Trident Juncture — first large military exercise north of the Arctic circle since 1996
- US Navy will continue to operate in the Arctic as part of its operations in the high North Atlantic and North Pacific
- While a naval base in the Arctic is unlikely, Secretary Spencer would like to see more logistics centers, which could be shared with civilian agencies and the Coast Guard
- Michael O'Hanlon
- Do you see Russia as a partner, competitor or both in the Arctic
- Richard Spencer
- Russia is treating the Arctic as its strategic backyard
- Reactivating Cold War airfields
- Moving large numbers of troops to the Arctic
- Charging vessels to use the Northern Passage
- As the ice recedes, the Far North will become more important
- US has to be present
- Jackson Richman — Jewish News Syndicate
- What would constitute an act of war by Iran, as far as the US Navy is concerned?
- Is the US Navy capable of defending itself in the Persian Gulf from Iran?
- Richard Spencer
- Congress defines what is and isn't an act of war
- US Navy is in a very defensible position for the current environment
- Lt. Col. Suzuki — Japan Ground Self Defense Force exchange officer at the Pentagon
- What are your thoughts on the future relationship between the Army and Navy?
- Richard Spencer
- US Navy is "all in" on joint operations with the Army, Air Force and Coast Guard
- Future scenario
- US Navy or US Marine Corps F-35s find and designate a target
- Target designation goes to an Air Force coordination center for prioritization and tasking
- Target is destroyed by US Army long range precision fires
- This scenario is currently doable, but not easy — more practice is needed
- Army long range precision fires are integral to the US Navy's Pacific strategy
- Michael O'Hanlon
- US Army and US Air Force are currently discussing "multi-domain" operations
- Where is the US Navy with this?
- Richard Spencer
- US Navy and Marine Corps have been conducting multi-domain operations since 1942
- Katrina Lago
- What are the ways the US Navy and US Marine Corps will integrate with the Space Force and Space Command
- Richard Spencer
- US Navy and Marine Corps are still figuring that out
- While the US Navy is capable of launching space assets (like MUOS), the US Navy would prefer to consume that capability from specialist providers
- The Space Force can act as a specialist provider that the US Navy "buys" services from
- Michael O'Hanlon
- While Space Command already exists, the current budget authorization is not enough to spin up a Space Force
- Do you think a Space Force will exist?
- Richard Spencer
- Confident that a Space Force will eventually come into being
- Jeong-Ho Lee — South China Morning Post
- What role do the Asian "middle-power" countries, like South Korea, Japan and the ASEAN nations, play in the US's Pacific strategy?
- Richard Spencer
- US wants to be a partner, rather than a leader
- Allies have more expertise in their regions than we do
- US Navy is "side-by-side" with its allies
- Ari Brown
- How is the Navy going to hold its suppliers accountable and prevent price gouging?
- Richard Spencer
- Need a resilient supply base, so competition will help prevent price gouging
- Ask private industry to take on more of the R&D risk that is currently borne almost entirely by the government
- In places where the USN has only one supplier, it needs to pay close attention to the entire supply chain
- Sometimes what we think is price gouging is really just how much it costs to make specialized equipment
- US Navy has to be a smarter client — not sufficient to simply agree on a price and walk away
- Share innovations and new tools with suppliers, and then insist that the savings those innovations and tools unlock be passed on to the Navy
- Investing in suppliers is not a widely understood concept in Congress
- US Navy supply situation is precarious because we didn't pay attention to our supply chain for decades
- Robert Kaminaris
- How does the Navy and the DoD do pro-active planning in the face of budgetary uncertainty
- Richard Spencer
- The fight over the non-refueling of the Truman is a failure here
- Could have better job of educating Congress on the benefits of scrapping the Truman
- The forthcoming Columbia-class submarines will be an important test
- Virginia-class acquisition program was an example of a long-term program that was executed well
- The US Navy has to keep track of these long-term programs while continuing to improve its ongoing maintenance and readiness
- It's absolutely insane that we're funding maintenance on a year-to-year basis
- No incentive for suppliers to invest in efficiency improvements when the funding for next year is not known
- Unidentified questioner
- Which areas of research is is the Navy strong in and which areas need more focus?
- Richard Spencer
- Continued budgetary uncertainty and austerity means that US Navy research programs are going to have to be focused and probably trimmed
- US Navy needs to do a better job of importing innovations and new technologies from the private sector
- Peter Humphrey — intelligence analyst and former diplomat
- Does the US just have FONOPs to constrain China in the South China Sea
- Does the US have standing rules of engagement in the South China Sea
- Richard Spencer
- The purpose of FONOPs is not to constrain China, it is to ensure the sea lanes stay open
- The Navy has ways of constraining China, but Richard Spencer doesn't want to discuss those here
- The Navy does have standing rules of engagement, on a ship-by-ship level, in the South China sea
- Unidentified questioner
- How is the US Navy dealing with cybersecurity?
- Richard Spencer
- 2 levels of cybersecurity
- Tactical
- Avoiding and responding to breaches
- US Navy is "woefully behind" here
- US Congress has created a Special Assistant for Cybersecurity position
- US Navy convened a committee bringing together leaders of organizations that have experienced significant cybersecurity breaches (both in the private sector and elsewhere in government) and is implementing that committee's recommendations
- Cybersecurity is important — in a future conflict, we have to win the cybersecurity fight to just our ships off the pier
- Strategic
- The US government needs to look at its overall investment strategy
- Why are US government pension funds investing in Chinese defense companies, like AVIC, which is a supplier for the DF-21?
- Caitlyn Kenney — Stars and Stripes
- Were the comments in the US congress about the Ford disparaging?
- Richard Spencer
- Comments in Congress were not constructive criticism
- A new carrier is enormously complex
- Congress-mandated price caps forced corner cutting which led to more delays in the long term
- Congress should also be holding the Navy's suppliers to account
