Perception Is Reality

An anonymous reader (please, people, include a username at the end your comments so I can offer proper credit!) offered an interesting thought regarding lessons that could be learned from the Royal Navy (RN).  He observed,
 

… once naval forces stop generating usefulness and relevance to the countries [sic] population.... you soon stop having a navy big enough to matter..[1]

I understand this to mean that he believes that a citizenry will direct their resources (taxes and popular opinion) to those endeavors and organizations that it sees the greatest benefit from.  This is not terribly surprising, it’s just basic human nature and quite reasonable.  In this specific case, the population of the UK sees value in ‘things’ other than the RN or, at least, the RN ranks fairly low on the priority list in the minds of the citizens.
 
Most of the readers of this blog, almost by definition, would see a great value in a navy for their country, whatever country that is.  You wouldn’t be reading the blog if you didn’t, right?  So, how is it that the citizenry of the UK sees so little value in the RN?  Does the Royal Navy really offer no value to the people?
 
There are two factors at play, here.
 
1. True value
2. Perceived value
 
Among other purposes, a navy, any navy, ensures the security of its country’s shipping, provides persistent surveillance, presence, and confrontation against unfriendly encroachments, and stands as a ready force against enemy attack.  This ensures unhindered trade and enhanced economic fortune for the population.  This is the true value.
 
How could any population not see that as valuable and gladly provide resources for the establishment and maintenance of a naval force?
 
Well, that brings us to the perceived value.  There’s an old saying:  perception is reality.  That means that whatever someone believes to be real is what’s real to them.  If you believe that your navy isn’t doing anything worthwhile then that’s your reality regardless of the true reality.
 
Where does perception come from, if not from reality?  How is someone’s perception formed?  Well, it comes from many sources: one’s own experiences, media news sources (you can instantly see, here, the danger posed by a biased media that presents an altered reality as true reality, but, I digress), social networks, etc.  If those various sources are not constantly presenting and explaining the true value of a navy then the perception quickly becomes that the navy has no value.
 
I can’t address the UK situation specifically but I can note that the US Navy makes almost no effort to talk to the citizenry and present its accomplishments and value in terms that the average person can understand and relate to.  Instead, the Navy resorts to blocking the media, circling the wagons, hiding behind bogus classification labels, misleading Congress and, generally, looking down at the general population. 
 
The Navy’s actions off Yemen involving missile attacks and defense should be made into near-movie type adventures to be presented to the public.  The exploits of our fearless sailors, fighting off relentless missile attacks so that Americans can get their oil and goods should be the stuff of growing legend.  It almost doesn’t matter how precisely true the accounts are.  That’s not the point.  The point is to present the Navy’s value to the public.
 
Once upon a time, moviegoers were routinely treated to newsreel highlights of our armed forces.  We need to bring back the updated version of that on TV, streaming channels, social media, podcasts, influencers, etc.  We need to continuously show the public the value of the Navy.  If we do that, the Navy won’t have to beg Congress for ships, the people will do it for them.  If we do that, the recruiting problem will solve itself.
 
On the other hand, if we persist in hiding information, the people will have no idea what the value of the Navy is and the people’s attention and resources will be directed elsewhere … which is exactly what’s been happening for years, now.
 
On a related note, if the US is providing the security for global shipping, then what true value does the RN offer?  Why should the UK citizenry pay for a navy when the US is providing their security for free?  One could see this as a powerful argument for the US to stop providing global security which would, in turn force other countries to increase their naval forces to fill the gap and result in an increase in their true (and perceived?) value.  Thus, one could make the argument, it is in the UK’s best interest for the US to stop providing international shipping security.  Interesting perspective, huh?
 
 
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[1]https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2024/12/open-post.html?showComment=1735387686167#c4809056757800113041

MEU/ARG Issues

With the demise of informative DOT&E annual reports, we are left having to scratch around for breadcrumbs of information about the state of our military.  One such crumb is a Breaking Defense website article, undoubtedly intended as a praise-packed, puff piece, about the 2024 deployment of the 15^th MEU.  On the face of it, the deployment was a non-stop cascade of puppy dogs and kittens sliding down double rainbows and landing in pots of gold.  However, a careful reading between the lines reveals some surprising systemic problems that degraded the unit’s readiness and combat capability.  Let’s look closer.
 

Starting in January and spanning through most of 2024, the 15th MEU and Amphibious Squadron-5 completed nine major exercises; visited 11 foreign countries; responded to a typhoon that hit the Philippines; and completed 80 operations over the course of 10 months.

As an aside, why are we still doing 10 month deployments?  Does anyone remember the Navy’s Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP - 2014) of several years past that was going to optimize the deployment/training/maintenance cycle to ensure readiness and prevent extended deployments?  Yeah, that lasted about a day (see, “Deployments and OFRP”).
 
The deployment did not get off to a good start, losing one of its three amphibious ships, USS Boxer, almost immediately.
 

Just days after it initially deployed in April, the Boxer (LHD-4) was forced back to San Diego to fix a variety of maintenance issues.[1]

Even later in the deployment when Boxer eventually rejoined the ARG, ship maintenance issues continued.
 

But he [Capt. James Robinson, ARG commodore] did concede there was at least one “OAI” — an acronym short for “operations, activities and investments” — that was missed due to the ship’s maintenance problems.[1]

Ships were not the only equipment failures.  The ACV proved challenging, as well.
 

… MEU deployed with 12 ACVs in tow, and, he said, “it’s almost underwhelming to say that we learned a lot.”

There were challenges in understanding how to maintain the vehicles while deployed and concerns about corrosion prevention.[1]

This suggests that the Marine’s training with the ACV was significantly inadequate despite a decade or more of use and supposed thorough testing.  Corrosion prevention?  Seriously?  Aren’t these things designed to be immersed in salt water and be exposed to a salt-air environment for months on end?  How could corrosion possibly still be a problem and an unexpected problem, at that?
 

ACV - No one thought it would get wet or warm?

Another disturbing note was this,
 

The MEU also had to coordinate sending beach survey teams ahead of the ACVs to check that conditions were safe.[1]

The ACV is supposed to be able to handle less than perfect weather and physical conditions.  If not, if it can only be used in perfect conditions and hospitable locations then we have a nearly useless piece of equipment.  Combine this note with the history of ACV accidents and one can’t help but conclude that the vehicle is far less safe and effective than advertised.
 

At one point, even the water temperatures were cause for a concern. Dynan [Col. Sean Dynan, 15th MEU commanding officer] recalled that the waters in the Philippines were particularly hot, and there were questions about whether the vehicle’s cooling systems would cope.
 
“That was somewhat of a surprise,” he added.[1]

After all this time, water temperature effects were a surprise?  Really?  No one thought to test the vehicle in warm water?  The ACV’s first RFI dates back to 2011 and in the intervening 13 years no one thought to test the vehicle in warm water despite knowing that the Pacific would be a major area of employment?  What kind of geniuses were working on this program?
 
The ACV was not the only piece of equipment to experience challenges.
 

The MEU’s training and deployment also coincided with the Pentagon’s three-month-long grounding of the V-22 Osprey fleet, including the Marine Corps’ MV-22 variant.
 
… restrictions and intermittent V-22 Osprey groundings …
 
Due to where the MEU was operating, Dynan said the restrictions the Pentagon left in place after the Osprey fleets returned to flight didn’t affect operations. But the missed training time did mean that his flight crews had to work fast to regain qualifications and proficiency once the grounding was lifted in April.[1]

The MV-22 continues to be a problematic piece of equipment, useful only in very specific and restricted scenarios.  In any truly objective assessment, the MV-22 would have to be declared a very marginal success or an outright failure.
 
 
Discussion
 
As noted, we have no hard data to work with and must, instead, attempt to read between the lines and look for patterns.  Doing so reveals that the MEU/AGR have serious equipment and maintenance problems and that testing and training has been woefully inadequate.  This is true for both the Navy and Marines.  I suppose it’s good that the Marines have declared themselves out of the amphibious assault business (so why are they floating around on endless deployments?) because they seem to utterly lack the ability to execute a successful assault.
 
 
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[1]Breaking Defense website, “One deployment, three ships and a whole lot of challenges”, Justin Katz, 5-Feb-2025,
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/02/one-deployment-three-ships-and-a-whole-lot-of-challenges/

The Best Defense is a Good Offense

We’ve had repeated discussions about the defense of Guam (or any forward base) and everyone except the military seems to recognize that requires a layered defense which includes ships, planes, missiles, mines, etc.
 
However, there’s another layer to defense that never gets mentioned and that is offense. 
 
The best defense is a good offense.
 
This means that if you can destroy the source of attacks before they even launch, there’s nothing to defend and your defense is perfect.  Rather than shoot down missiles, find and destroyer the launchers (shoot archers not arrows).  Rather than try to intercept aircraft, destroy the aircraft’s bases.  Rather than search for submarines, destroy them pierside and destroy their shore support facilities.  And so on.
 
Offense is the first, best, defensive layer.
 
We just noted that the military is making little or no serious effort to build up Guam’s defenses and, indeed, may be reducing those defenses in response to environmental concerns (see, “BaseDefense is a Joke”).  As bad as that is, there has not even been the slightest thought given to incorporating an offensive layer into Guam’s defense.  The Air Force is not planning to conduct strikes against Chinese ballistic missile launch sites, airbases, or naval ports.  The Navy has no plans to launch cruise missiles at Chinese airbases and naval ports.  The Navy has no plan to attack Chinese submarines in their home ports or destroy their support facilities.
 
Some might attempt to make the argument, purely on faith, that the military does have plans but they just haven’t made them public.  That might seem like a reasonable proposition, on the face of it, but in our society there’s no such thing as a secret.  Further, if we did have such plans, we’d be practicing them and there have been no such exercises conducted … ever.  Recall the WWII War Plan Orange?  We had plans for fighting Japan and we conducted practice exercises in the form of Fleet Problems for years prior to the start of war.  There were no secrets even back then.  Besides, at least in a general sense, you’d like your potential enemy to know that you have plans to defeat them and that you’re diligently practicing so … no need to be overly concerned about secrecy.
 
The obvious conclusion is that we have no offensive plans to support Guam’s defensive efforts.  This must change.  We desperately need to get serious about the war with China and start planning, practicing, and engaging  …  offensively.

USAID Leadership Gutted

ComNavOps has often decried the use of the military in humanitarian and disaster relief (HA/DR) efforts, believing those should not be military missions as they detract from combat training and cause unproductive wear and tear on equipment and personnel.  Instead, ComNavOps has proposed funding and equipping an organization like the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to deal with HA/DR and to provide the forward ‘presence’ and ‘deterrence’ that so many want the military to do.
 
Here is a portion of the USAID mission statement from the organization’s web page,
 

… the U.S. Agency for International Development leads the U.S. Government's international development and disaster assistance through partnerships and investments that save lives, reduce poverty, strengthen democratic governance, and help people emerge from humanitarian crises and progress beyond assistance.

A seeming perfect fit for HA/DR, presence, and deterrence, right?  Without going into a lengthy documentation trail, suffice it to say that USAID had become a left-leaning, political tool that was ineffective at its job.
 
The Trump administration has just announced that it has placed 60 senior USAID bureaucrats on indefinite leave, presumably as a prelude to termination.
 

A memo from acting USAID administrator Jason Gray says, "We have identified several actions within USAID that appear to be designed to circumvent the president’s executive orders and the mandate from the American people.“[1]
 
The decision appears to affect nearly every career staffer who holds a top leadership role at the agency, at least in Washington — around 60 officials, the current and former officials said.[1]
 
This action effectively shuts down most of USAID's $22.6 billion in program support.[1]

This is an excellent first step towards refocusing USAID on its core mission.
 
How often do we justify programs and platforms as being good because they will ‘free up’ other units for more important work?  Well, USAID, taking on the HA/DR, presence, and deterrence missions can free up military units and resources to concentrate on their core mission of warfighting.  Perfect, right?  Exactly what everyone calls for, right?
 

There's your disaster relief, done efficiently

Buy USAID a couple of small to medium size cargo ships, load them with disaster relief supplies, and crew them with civilian mariners and there’s your disaster relief effort for free, relative to military costs. 
 
Get the military out of HA/DR and give it to USAID or some similar organization.
 
 
Note:  The FY2025 USAID budget is $42.8B.
 
 
 
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[1]Redstate website, “Trump Suspends As Many As 60 Senior Bureaucrats for Trying to Evade His Executive Orders”, streiff, 28-Jan-2025,
https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/01/28/trump-suspends-as-many-as-60-senior-bureaucrats-for-trying-to-evade-his-executive-orders-n2184896

Red Sea Weapon Expenditure

The War Zone website has an article offering the first glimpse into weapon expenditures in the Red Sea against the Houthis.  As stated by head of Naval Surface Forces, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, here are the weapon expenditures:
 

• 120 SM-2 missiles
• 80 SM-6 missiles
• 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) and SM-3 missiles (combined, for some unknown reason)
• 160 rounds from five-inch guns

 
Total = 220 missiles
Total = 160 shells
 
CIWS was not mentioned although at least one example of CIWS use has been documented and acknowledged by the Navy.
 
Against this expenditure, the Admiral claims “more than 400” targets were engaged.
 
 
Elementary arithmetic shows that if the Navy’s 380 total munitions fired destroyed “more than 400 targets”, that’s a kill ratio (pK) of greater than 1.0 !!!!!  In other words, every Navy munition killed its target and many killed more than one target.  That’s amazing.  That’s incredible.  That’s unbelievable.  No, seriously, that’s not believable.  In fact, it’s blatantly wrong.
 
The admiral continues his unbelievable statements with,
 

“We’ve done the analysis with what we used to shoot in World War II, and we’re at about two rounds per incoming missile,” McLane said.[1]

We didn’t engage missiles in WWII so I have no idea what he’s talking about.  Aerial targets in WWII required thousands of rounds per hit so, again, I have no idea what he’s referring to.
 
Further, the good admiral undoubtedly is not including 5” shells in his statement of analysis as 5” guns have a near-zero chance of hitting a missile.  So, subtracting out the 5” shells, that means the Navy’s 220 missiles destroyed more than 400 targets for a pK of 1.8 or almost two targets destroyed by each defensive missile fired.  That’s just totally absurd, of course.
 
Setting all that aside, the admiral claims that two ‘rounds’ (which I assume to mean missiles) were used per engagement which would conform to the Navy’s standard ‘shoot, shoot, look’ tactic.  That means that the 220 missiles could have engaged only a maximum of 110 targets not more than 400.  That also assumes that every engagement worked and that would so greatly fly in the face of all historical defensive missile performance as to be flat out unbelievable.  The pK’s throughout history have been uniformly in the 0.01-0.25 range not 1.0-2.0.
 
Now, to be fair, the admiral wasn’t offering a detailed engagement analysis;  he was just providing weapon expenditures and likely threw out a ballpark number of targets just to provide context.  I don’t think he was lying or even being intentionally misleading.
 
I can readily imagine that some of the 400 targets were engaged by aircraft whose weapons (Sidewinders, presumably) weren’t included in the Navy’s ship weapons expenditure although that would mean that even fewer targets were actually engaged by ship missiles and that would significantly lower the pK.
 
We know that 5” guns are notoriously inaccurate (recall the Vincennes incident where some one hundred rounds were fired with zero hits) so the 160 shells fired were probably directed at just a few targets.
 
Clearly, this scant bit of information the admiral provided is not useful in analyzing weapon performance, only total expenditure and even that has gaps in the information since Sidewinders, CIWS, and RAM, among others, were not mentioned.  While the presumed pathetically poor quality and performance of the attacking missiles would result in better pK’s than historically found, I’m certain that the pK is nowhere near 1.0 and, indeed, the admiral’s own claim of two rounds per engagement disproves the apparent pK.  Unfortunately, until the Navy provides some detailed performance data, we can only speculate.
 
The only valid conclusion from the admiral’s statements is that we are on the wrong side of the cost curve … big time!  We’re using $2M-$4M missiles (two at a time!) to shoot down thousand dollar drones and cheap missiles.
 
This simply reinforces the common sense conclusion that you deal with attacks not by defending but by destroying the source of the attacks.  Perhaps the new administration will take a different view of the Red Sea actions than the previous administration.  We’ll have to wait and see and, in the meantime, we’ll continue to bleed money, deplete our missile inventories, and risk our ships while waiting for the inevitable leaker that gets through.
 
 
 
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[1]The War Zone website, “Navy Just Revealed Tally Of Surface-To-Air Missiles Fired In Ongoing Red Sea Fight”, Geoff Ziezulewicz, 14-Jan-2025,
https://www.twz.com/news-features/navy-just-disclosed-how-many-of-each-of-its-surface-to-air-missiles-it-fired-during-red-sea-fight

2025 Shipbuilding Plan

China is building warships faster than we can keep track of them with dozens of new ships every year.  How is the US Navy doing, by comparison?  Let's take a look at the Navy's most recent 30-year shipbuilding plan and, more importantly, the five year portion of that plan (everything beyond five years is just made up guesses).

 
New Construction
 
According to the Navy’s most recent 2025 30 Year shipbuilding plan [1], over the next five years the Navy plans to build 33 combat ships (average 6.6 per year) which break down as follows:
 
Carriers CVN           0
Burke DDG            10
Constellation FFG   7
Virginia SSN            9
San Antonio LPD    3
Columbia SSBN      4
 
In comparison, China went from around 190 to 250 (+60) in the four years 2020-2023 inclusive for an average of 15 new ships per year which is twice the build rate of the US.
 
In addition, the Navy plans to build 24 assorted auxiliaries and logistics vessels.
 
 
Retirements
 
Balanced against the build plans, the Navy plans to decommission 64 ships as indicated below and broken down by year.
 
2025 19
2026 17
2027 12
2028   7
2029   9
 
2025 CG 4, SSN 3, LCS 2, LSD 1, other 9
2026 CVN 1, CG 3, LCS 1, SSN 3, SSGN 2, LSD 2, other 5
2027 CG 2, SSN 1, SSBN 1, other 8
2028 DDG 2, SSN 1, SSGN 2, SSBN 1, LSD 1
2029 DDG 3, SSN 1, LSD 1, LHD 1, other 3
 
Total retirements by type:
 
CVN     1
CG       9
DDG    5
SSN     9
SSGN  4
SSBN  2
LCS     3
LSD     5
LHD     1
other  25
 
 
Discussion
 
We see, then, that in the five year plan (beyond five years is just pure made up guesses), the Navy is planning to retire 39 combat ships and 25 auxiliaries while building 33 combat ships and 24 auxiliaries for a net decrease of 6 combat ships and 1 auxiliary … while we’re supposedly gearing up for a near term war with China.  What’s wrong with this picture?
 
Other notable findings:
 

• The entire MCM force will be retired
• All SSGNs will be retired
• Nimitz class retirements will begin
• Burke class retirements will begin
• No new carriers are scheduled in the period
• No Burke/Tico replacement is planned

 
The MCM capability is of major concern.  The entire current MCM force of Avenger class ships and MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters will be retired with only a half dozen or so Independence variant LCS-MCM to take over mine countermeasures for the entire world.  Worse, the LCS MCM module is not yet functional and is entirely ineffective.  For all practical purposes, we no longer have any mine countermeasure capability.
 
The SSGN is far and away our most stealthy and effective land attack naval asset and will be retired without direct replacement.  The Virginia class, even with the VPM, simply cannot equal the SSGN in effectiveness and operational usefulness.
 
The lack of a Burke/Tico replacement is a major weakness.  We’ll be losing VLS (strike and AAW) capacity from the fleet while replacing them, numerically, with small, unmanned vessels with a fraction of the VLS.  The Burke Flt III is obsolete even before the first joins the fleet and is emphatically not the solution to future naval warfare due to the lack of stealth, armor, firepower, weight/stability margins, combat resilience, effective damage control, and a sub-optimal radar system.
 
 
 
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[1]Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, ” Report to Congress on the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2025”, Mar 2024

MQ-8 Fire Scout Status

Remember when the Navy was claiming that the unmanned helicopter, the MQ-8 Fire Scout, was going to revolutionize naval warfare, providing area wide surveillance, total situational awareness, target detection and tracking, fire control for remote weapons, anti-surface capability, mine countermeasures, and … well … total battlefield dominance?  Let’s check in and see how that’s coming along.
 

The Future of Naval Warfare ... bye, bye

For starters, the Navy has all but abandoned the Fire Scout.

 

The current inventory is 36 aircraft with no additional procurement planned.[1]
 
President’s Budget 2023 included a significant divestment within the MQ-8 program, resulting in the removal of all MQ-8B AVs [ed. AV = Air Vehicle] from inventory and reduction of the MQ-8C AV active operational inventory. Currently there are 11 aircraft dedicated to operational employment with 3 allocated to test and training, an increase of 1 from last year’s Annual Report. Projections for FY24 will increase the operational employment number to 15. The remainder are in a preservation status and are planned to be used for maintenance parts as necessary to support the pool of operational aircraft.[1]

Budget documents from 2024 indicate that the Fire Scout is being phased out completely.
 

Operational employment of the MQ-8C will end in Q4 FY2024 and sundown will be completed by Q4 FY2026.[2]

Instead of having hundreds of Fire Scouts roaming the battlefield and dominating our enemies, as promised, the Navy is down to around a dozen, which are being phased out, and appears to have lost interest in the platform.
 
With the near abandonment of the Fire Scout as context, there are, nominally, three variations (increments, as the Navy terms it) of Fire Scout in the works:
 

• Endurance Baseline Increment – imaging EO/IR sensor and laser range finder and designator
• SUW Increment – maritime search radar
• Mine Countermeasure Increment – COBRA near shore mine detection

 
How is testing coming along?  DOT&E states,
 

The Navy has yet to complete land-based testing necessary to characterize radar performance against maritime targets.[1]

Conclusion
 
It seems that the Navy has all but abandoned the Fire Scout, presumably having realized that it has no effective use case in combat.  Of course, ComNavOps has been saying this since the first MQ-8 appeared.  Nice of the Navy to finally catch up.
 
Like the LCS, Zumwalt, and others, the Fire Scout platform has gone from being the future of naval warfare to an afterthought in a remarkably short period of time.
 
 
 
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[1]Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, FY2023 Annual Report, Jan 2024,
 
[2]Flight Global website, “US Navy’s MQ-8C Fire Scouts fly into retirement just two years after entering operational service”, Jan Tegler, 29-May-2024,
https://www.flightglobal.com/helicopters/us-navys-mq-8c-fire-scouts-fly-into-retirement-just-two-years-after-entering-operational-service/158500.article