The Navy constantly
complains that it is underfunded and cannot meet the combatant commander’s
requests. As a result, Navy operations
tempo (OpTemp) is far too high and critical ship maintenance is being deferred,
training is being neglected, and readiness is degrading. It seems obvious, doesn’t it, that if the
combatant commander’s requests can’t be met then the Navy needs more
funding? Well, before we ship additional
barges of money to the Navy, let’s think about this system a bit more.
Who or what are the
combatant commanders (CC)? You can
readily find all the information you want on them on the Internet so I’m not
going to bother providing any more than the bare bones highlights.
The US Department of
Defense has organized its command and control of the armed forces via regional
or functional commands with a high ranking General or Admiral in charge of each
command. Here are the commands.
- United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)
- United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM)
- United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM)
Simplistically, the
commanders assess the military needs of their area of responsibility and
request the forces they feel are needed to meet those needs. Pretty straightforward, right? In order to continue this discussion, let’s
recognize that none of us has any access to the combatant commander’s requests
or the process of prioritizing and filling those needs. Thus, any further discussion is pure
speculation. So, with that said, let’s
speculate, apply some logic, and see what we come up with!
Let’s start by seeing
what data and logic we have to work with, given that we just stated that we
have no insight into the actual requests or process.
- Here’s a truism:
You need more military assets to fight a war than you do to simply
“patrol” a region.
- Here’s a data point: The only region in the world that is
actively engaged in combat is the Middle East (USCENTCOM) and even that is
limited and sporadic.
- Here’s a fact:
The Navy’s primary objective is to maintain or expand their budget
share.
- Here’s a fact:
The Navy’s resources and assets are fixed and finite.
Well, that’s not a lot
to work with but let’s see what we can come up with.
Requests. A reasonable person would assume that the
CC’s only request those assets that are absolutely vital to meeting their
responsibilities and our national security interests. A reasonable person would be wrong. The CC’s have no incentive to reign in their
requests. For example, we can request a
policeman on every corner but we cannot afford to pay the taxes to make that
happen. Therefore, we don’t make the
request. The CC’s, however, simply make
requests and do not have to directly deal with budget or resource issues. If a CC wants a ship to patrol his area, he
does not have to pay to build it and operate it. Therefore, from the CC’s perspective, why not
request a policeman on every corner?
In fact, there is a
perverse, reverse incentive to ask for more than you need. The more you request, the more likely you are
to get at least something. If you really
only need one ship, why not request ten?
Who knows, you might get two which is one more than you really need!
What’s the penalty for
requesting, and receiving, more assets than you need? There is none. Again, there’s a perverse, reverse
incentive. The more assets you get, the more
stability your region should have and the more “presence” you can demonstrate
(presence accomplishes nothing but it is the Navy’s coin of the realm,
currently). The more stable the region, the
better the CC looks. So, it is in the
best interest of the CC to request as many assets as he possibly can.
We noted that only a
single region has any combat occurring and that is only a limited, sporadic
combat. So, why are the CC’s even
requesting any assets? Presumably, they
want them for presence which we have repeatedly shown is a worthless mission
and deterrence which is a questionable mission, at best.
As I noted, I have no
access to the annual lists of CC requests so I can’t analyze their worth. However, here is a list of “major”
deployments as cited in a 2017 Bipartisan Policy Center
- The war in
- The continuing
- The fight against
- Various movements and operations in Cameroon,
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jordan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Liberia,
Libya, Niger, Poland, Senegal, Somalia, South Korea, South Sudan, Ukraine,
and Uganda
- The Ebola epidemic
- Various disaster-relief missions
- New force presence in
Note that of the listed
deployments, only two involve any degree of actual combat (Afghanistan ISIS ).
Two are 100% non-combat related (Ebola epidemic and disaster
relief). The remainder are presence
missions which we’ve already established are worthless. So, of the 7 listed deployments, 2 are
completely non-combat and should not even be military missions. Thus, right off the top, around 30% of the
deployments shouldn’t be done! This is
an example of how many CC requests may be militarily worthless and accomplish
nothing militarily other than to artificially and needlessly increase OpTempo
and decrease maintenance and readiness.
Budget. The Navy tells us that they just don’t have
the assets to fulfill all the CC requests.
A reasonable person would assume, then, that the Navy must prioritize
the CC requests and balance them against the maintenance, training, and
readiness needs of the Navy when determining which CC requests to fill and
which to ignore. A reasonable person
would be wrong.
The Navy views the CC
requests as a godsend because every request is viewed as justification for more
budget, more ships, and more aircraft.
It doesn’t matter to the Navy whether the requests are worthwhile or
trivial. All requests are equal when it
comes to justifying budget.
In fact, the perverse,
reverse incentive rears its ugly head, yet again, when it comes to
requests. The more requests the Navy
fills, the faster the ships and aircraft wear out which means more budget,
sooner, for new construction. Thus, the
Navy would rather fill CC requests, no matter how worthless, by extending
deployments and deferring maintenance in order to be able to retire ships earlier
due to lack of maintenance, thereby strengthening their case to Congress for
increased funding.
The entire Combatant
Commander setup is geared towards inflated requests, reverse incentives, and
leads to premature wear and tear on the military. There is nothing wrong with having a CC as a
regional subject matter expert but having them divorced from the budgetary,
maintenance, and readiness ramifications of their asset requests is a flawed
system.
__________________________________
(1)Bipartisan Policy Center
If our Navy magically had a 600 ship fleet this year, the FY2018 budget would demand more, citing shortages and demands from the combatant commanders. I remember once when our Navy complained that due to shortages, it was unable to keep sending nuclear attack subs on counter drug ops.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I can see, a large chunk of CC requests are for TSC / partnership exercises such as Balikatan, Cobra Gold, and Bright Star. There is value in this training, but it takes up a lot of forces in the idea that we are building a relationship with the partner country. We have a very tight relationship with Canadians and British but we don't do these large scale exercises and prefer staff exchanges and school exchanges. If we are looking to cut the demands on the fleet, can we follow a similar route of schooling and staff exchanges instead of exercises with Live Fire units?
ReplyDeleteOne should not forget the anti drug operations performed by SOUTHCOM. Someone would say they are not war operations, but they do affect American people wellness directly.
ReplyDeleteSOUTHCOM requires 23 ships according to https://news.usni.org/2017/04/10/southcom-tidd-russia-iran-and-china-expanding-influence-in-central-south-america?utm_source=USNI+News&utm_campaign=f2f2907549-USNI_NEWS_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0dd4a1450b-f2f2907549-230459137&mc_cid=f2f2907549&mc_eid=71cec7830c
Maybe that is a mission that could be performed by some of the Freedom-class LCS (The rest should replace the PCs at CENTCOM area of operations.)