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Monday, July 1, 2019

More Offense, Please

Here’s a partial list of some recent Navy exercises.  Provided is a brief description of the type of training with the wording being lifted from the various official public relations announcements.  I’ve not bothered providing references, in most cases, because they’re readily available on line.

Citadel Pacific 2019 – anti-terrorism force protection

Northern Edge 2019command, control and communication relationships, develop interoperable plans and program between allies

Pacific Vanguard (Guam) – “strengthen practical cooperation at sea”; defensive anti-air, ASW, combined maneuvers, replenishment at sea

Rim of the Pacific – static SinkEx, disaster relief and maritime security operations, sea control, amphibious operations, ASW, air defense, counter-piracy operations, mine clearance, explosive ordnance disposal, and diving and salvage operations

La Perouse - formation sailing, live fires, communications, search and rescue, damage control, and personnel transfers

Sea Dragon 2019 – ASW

Talisman Sabre – crisis response and humanitarian assistance

Cobra Gold 2019 - field training exercise (FTX), humanitarian civic assistance (HCA) to communities, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief

Dawn Blitz – command and control concept test, airfield repair, mine countermeasures, HIMARS test, medical support, amphibious landing

CARAT – symposia, explosive ordnance disposal, live-fire gunnery, search and rescue, humanitarian assistance, disaster response, professional exchanges, sports and social events, community service projects, band concerts

Keen Sword - logistics exchanges, replenishment-at-sea, senior leadership engagements, air-defense, anti-submarine warfare, three day war-at-sea exercise (no details available).

Pacific Bond - anti-submarine warfare, anti-air warfare, helicopter visit, board, search and seizure exercise, and liaison officer exchanges

Bold Alligator Series – focus on medium-threat scenarios and interoperability with other countries (1), ground forces live fire practice, staff planning


Note that ‘amphibious landing’, which is listed as a component in a few exercises, is a misnomer as we will never conduct an assault the way we exercise it.




What is noteworthy about these exercises is the near total absence of any offensive aspect.  They’re mainly humanitarian and interoperability and what actual combat training there is, is defensive in nature.  Where’s the training to conduct inland strikes from a carrier?  Where’s the training to conduct an assault on an enemy port?  Where’s the training to conduct a contested air strike?  Where’s the training to conduct offensive carrier operations with four carriers operating as a group?  Where’s the training to seize a peer-defended island?  Where’s, you know, … training for the stuff we’ll actually do to win a war, not just defensively hold our ground?

These exercises have very little combat value at a time when everything should be run through the filter of, “will this improve our combat capability?”.  Unfortunately, few or none of these exercises can answer, “yes”.

Setting aside the worthless humanitarian and interoperability aspects, this is symptomatic of the Navy’s defensive focus for the last few decades.  The Navy has almost totally abandoned offensive warfare training, focus, acquisition, and tactical thinking. 

Think about it …

  • What’s the Navy’s current focus? – ballistic missile defense
  • What’s the Navy’s intentions for the F-35?  - sensor node, not offensive strike
  • What’s the Navy’s current improvement for the Burke class? – a bigger radar for better defensive BMD and AAW


Even the offense that the Navy is engaged in is an afterthought.

  • The Navy’s idea of offense is to put a few anti-ship missiles on logistics ships. 
  • The Navy’s new anti-ship cruise missiles (LRASM and NSM) are a reluctant response to the Harpoons exceeding their shelf life and being left with no missile and to the abject failure of the LCS.  Neither was an enthusiastic embrace of offensive warfare.
  • The Navy’s new carriers will put to sea (assuming they ever do) with even smaller air wings than the current Nimitz air wings which are the smallest the Nimitzes have ever carried.


Offense wins wars, not defense.  Defense is what you do while you’re preparing the next offensive.

We need to drop our useless exercises and start focusing on offensive warfare.




_____________________________

(1)Seapower website, “Big Plans For Bold Alligator”, Daniel P. Taylor, Apr 2018,
http://www.seapower-digital.com/seapower/april_2018/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1367759#articleId1367759

35 comments:

  1. Spot on CNO!

    I would also like to see much more training with the USCG, USAF and US Army.

    Not just rock drills, but actual problems.

    GAB

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  2. There is no national strategy, likewise there is no Naval strategy. We buy crap (mostly), train for crap, and refuse to tell the truth.
    INSURV's are kept quiet, Fat Leonard, McCain and Fitzgerald are locked away in the back office, and our ships use "rust brown" as a new paint scheme.
    We are punching tickets to zeroland.

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  3. What bothers me is the number of exercises (2018/2019) that really make you wonder: is the USN just running around pretending to train? sounds like a lot of "nothing" going on....I would prefer 3 to 4 times (tops!) a year, hard training, very focused exercises than all these "exercises" all over the world doing "something" til we can go back to port....

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    1. Cobra Gold and CARAT I'd consider more of that whole politics by other means thing, because it's basically an avenue for the USN to flex at ASEAN nations and go "see this is what we can do and how we can do the stuff you do in a better way, keep us as your friend instead of China." It's more trying to keep ASEAN away from militarily tilting towards China (well, the members of ASEAN that aren't already Chinese client states like Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar).

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  4. Well it seems at least some in Congress want to see some ideal if the navy can really deal with small boats given the Iran situation.

    https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/06/26/congress-wants-navy-prove-it-can-fight-enemy-drone-boat-swarms.html

    I have to say I would feel better if I had the sense that the langue demanded more than just think tank talk but some real demonstrations in high seas against randomly appearing targets (and no like go time just go though this contested water and see what develops) also with the innocent fishing/civilian boats thrown in.

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    1. " just go though this contested water and see what develops) also with the innocent fishing/civilian boats thrown in."

      To be fair to the Navy, this is not a realistic or representative scenario. If you're at war, you have a declared exclusion zone and you destroy anything entering it. If it's peacetime, then fishing boats can get as near to you as they want. Thus, someone with an RPG, hiding on a fishing boat, is unstoppable. HOWEVER, this is a one time only, free shot you get to take. After that first shot, you assume you're at war and destroy everything you can see (the war scenario, again).

      This is where intel comes in. You monitor as closely as you can and hope you see the signs of a sneak attack being planned and developing.

      This is also why you don't send high value warships into areas where they literally are not allowed to defend themselves because it's peacetime. This is what a small, expendable patrol vessel is for. This is one of the purposes the LCS was built for but they're now around $600M and they're neither small nor expendable. A Cyclone size vessel is what's needed.

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    2. I agree on the exclusion zone but for example right now we have a lot ships operating in the Persian gulf and surrounds w/o that luxury. Even in a real war the under sized crew drive will I think be a problem in terms of making an appropriate deck watch impossible. That might come out in training with real swarms as well. But I can't see anything really altering the USNs commitment to too small of a crew size for damage control and deck watch and maintenance anytime soon sans a real war where ships get sunk.

      On that there is an interesting read here the LCS figures in it (the middle or so)but its not all navy:

      https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/future-of-work-expertise-navy/590647/

      "There have been other incidents. Because of a design flaw, the LCS engines started to corrode not long after the fleet’s launch, but for a long time nobody on board noticed, which led to costly delays and repairs. When a congressional oversight committee found out about the problem in 2011, it called the ships’ crews to task. Who was in charge of checking the engines? The answer was … nobody. The engine rooms were unmanned by design."

      So that is it designed not to survive any combat at all

      If I recall that was one of the Smart Ship things from the 90s that I have multiple horrified papers from various US war colleges decrying as well insane. Same thinking that got damage control and fire fighting teams cut. Since you could prove that 2 guys with lighter hoses or such could fight the fire cut the required team by half or more, but the USN never bothered to consider what those 2 guys are trapped in a flooding berth or tossed of the ship or dead. No redundancy.


      "This is one of the purposes the LCS was built for but they're now around $600M and they're neither small nor expendable. A Cyclone size vessel is what's needed."

      Well the faster we talk the House of Saud into buying them in return for ignoring the Yemen war and funding radical mosques the faster we can build some functioning cheap ships to play games in the Gulf.

      "Cyclone"

      Up gun the Sentinel class and paint them grey. They manged to bolt on a lot kit to the original Cyclones and ditch some of the USCG rescue stuff and you might even jam on some NSMs if you cut into comfort.

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    3. "but … right now we have a lot ships operating in the Persian gulf"

      And that illustrates how our naval force distribution and the deployment concept is flawed. We're putting high value ships into high risk settings without giving them the means and ROE to properly defend themselves. Insane!

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  5. "What’s the Navy’s current focus? – ballistic missile defense"

    I think this one is really seeing the Navy get side tracked. I really don't think the quite well fed leaders of NK or Iran are looking to be incinerated. I also don't see China's ballistic CV killer as more than vapor ware right now nor that they would risk misinterpretation and end up in nuclear war they would loose absolutely).

    The USN needs to really seriously test its ability - aggressively (not staged) - to handle conventional attacks, I can see anyone from China to Russia to Iran figuring it can get away with a conventional indecent if they think an easy shot is on the table.

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  6. Large scale offensive exercises are expensive.
    Interoperability and Command post exercises are cheap and free up funds for buying new stuff.

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    1. "Large scale offensive exercises are expensive."

      And being unprepared for war is, ultimately, many, many, many, many, many, many times more expensive.

      We need to move away from an accounting mentality in the military and towards a mission mentality. It's the job of the military to be prepared. It's the job of Congress to fund that.

      Just off the top of my head, how about we cancel all the worthless exercises and deployments that are nothing but glorified cruise ship excursions? That should pay for massive large scale exercises with plenty left over. It's all about priorities and ours are picnics with other countries and humanitarian response instead of preparing for war.

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    2. @SurfGW

      But they should happen that's why (see below) I had to rely on friends in Universities (for beer)to do Intrusion testing for me because CFO types are always that looks expensive I thought you and so and so were in charge of security why waste money.

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  7. "We need to move away from an accounting mentality in the military and towards a mission mentality."

    Its more of Business School analysis. Cut people all the time and assume minimal testing is OK and minimal staff in the optimal situation is all you need to consider. In IT getting the budget to say hire somebody to to real intrusion attacks and get the time to do it is like pulling teeth (you can say no the point is we can't do it because it pointless unless we are surprised by what we missed that is the point to figure out what's not working and yes it costs money but less money than Pfizer hacking our server). Congress loves buying stuff - its simple, but hiring people not so much and the Pentagon more so except apparently for staff at the Pentagon.

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  8. ASW is mentioned four times. Are you thinking that is not offensive?

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    1. Broad scale ASW - including prosecuting targets - to degrade an enemy's SSK/SSN (or SSBN!) force is offensive. Screening your own fleet is defensive, though it can be done to support an offensive action by the fleet. We're not engaging in offensive ASW to any significant degree, though there are indications we are preparing the WestPac battlespace for offensive and defensive ASW.

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    2. ANTI-submarine warfare is defensive. It says it right in the name, "anti". Yes, it can allow one to conduct an offensive but it is not, in itself, offensive. I'm not going to debate semantics.

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    3. Which does bring up a certain point with regard to USN mindset in that the surface fleet does seem to have a somewhat reactive, defensive culture (ASW, ASuW, AAW), and this is something that's been going back decades.

      Add that to the list of things that will need to change in the USN...

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    4. You're just repeating the post. Is there some new aspect you want to comment on?

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    5. "I was going to use that to open a discussion on the USN's posture"

      You're still just stating the obvious and repeating things I've said. Give me something new and original.

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    6. When I disagree with you, you're not happpy, when I agree with you, you're not happy. You're a hard man to please. :P

      My intent was to try and provoke a discussion among the commentators, and that post was to set the stage to try and lure people in to start discussing and talking about the matter, starting with the historical observation - and to provoke some thought with a little controversy, because I was going to argue that 1945 was the year that the Navy started its defensive focus (the Big Blue Blanket as a response to the kamikaze attacks) and gave the offensive mission away to the air wing (no thanks to Mitscher sending his aircraft to attack Yamato because he wanted to be damn sure that people knew naval air was the future, not battleships - Spruance originally was going to let his battleships service Yamato.)

      Once people started biting, I'd then raise the following discussion points to keep the conversation going:

      - offensive missions have been essentially the purview of submarine force and air wing for decades. Distributed Lethality and OASuW Increment 1 missile an attempt to get the surface fleet back into the offensive game. What more can be done?

      - No defects mentality - is this a contributing factor? Refer to blogpost https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2019/07/fired-another-one.html - no defects mentality, undertrained SWOs, Navy quick to fire captains to "encourage" and "set an example." Setting up officers to fail? If no room to learn from mistakes, with insufficient preparation, and Navy no confidence in SWOs, what sort of officer is being created from this culture? How to reverse this issue?

      - Timeline to fix this issue? Defensive focus entrenched since 1945? How long to affect necessary change? Is there enough time to change? What areas can change be accelerated in?

      Basically something like that. *shrug*

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    7. "When I disagree with you, you're not happpy, when I agree with you, you're not happy. You're a hard man to please"

      I have no interest in anyone's agreement or disagreement - only facts and logic. I'm easy to please - just write fact based, logical comments that contribute something new and I'll be very pleased and say so - as I often do to those who meet that criteria.

      "My intent was to try and provoke a discussion among the commentators, and that post was to set the stage to try and lure people in"

      Comments are not a blog and this blog is not yours. If you want to "lure" people in, start your own blog - and I say that sincerely. If you have topics you want to explore in a big way you should start a blog.

      The reality is that using comments to conduct a pseudo-blog is simply not going to work or be allowed.

      "I was going to argue that 1945 was the year that the Navy started its defensive focus"

      Then skip the preamble and get to the point. It's a character-limited comment, not a thesis. Also, you really need to refrain from stating the obvious. This isn't navy 101. I state in the Comment Policy page that readers are expected to have a fundamental grasp of naval history, operations, technology, and tactics. You're wasting everyone's time stating well known basics.

      Take it from here but make it original and lose the obvious.

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    8. Viewing all antisubmarine warfare (ASW) as defensive is a bit simplistic. It really depends on the objectives.

      Are you trying to prevent an enemy submarine from attacking a Strike Group (defensive)? Or are you trying to seek our and kill enemy subs (offensive)?

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    9. "Viewing all antisubmarine warfare (ASW) as defensive is a bit simplistic."

      All ASW is, in the immediate situation, defensive. Whether you choose to view it as purely defensive or supporting a larger offensive effort is a semantic and pedantic distinction.

      For example, the ASW that defends a convoy is defensive as regards the convoy. Whether you choose to view the convoy as enabling some larger offensive effort is, again, semantic and pedantic and not worth the discussion. It doesn't change the thrust of the post in the slightest. The post is concerned with the lack of training for large scale, purely offensive operations. 'Nuff said.

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  9. You mention the new carriers (Ford class, I assume) as having a smaller airwing. It's probably a moot point. I don't think the Fords will ever put out to sea operationally. Even if they get the cats to work as reliably as the steam cats, they still have to deal with electrical distribution/ management system, i.e. lack of isolation. They will probably have to tear out the most of the guts on the Ford to fix it. If they even can.

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  10. Assault on an enemy port, after Dieppe that has been a no-no. In the Falklands that was the case.
    I suspect that Inchon was the last time but that was so far behind the line that an overextended force could not defend it.

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    1. The reality is that we can't sustain an assault with over-the-beach supply. We have to have a port. We can get lucky and have a friendly port in a neighboring country, as in Desert Storm, or, failing that, we'll have to seize one from the enemy. You'll recall that D-Day Normandy was a port seizure operation. We just didn't attack the ports directly; we seized them indirectly by seizing the area around them.

      Whatever the operational method, we have to have a port seizure capability if we want to be able to initiate and sustain assaults in unfriendly territory.

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. I don't understand why you hate interoperability so much. Perhaps some exercises with 4th rate allies like Portugal or Malaysia are a bit excessive, but the lessons of history seem to point towards interoperability as a good thing. If we had done more interoperability training with the Brits/Dutch/Australians before WW2, perhaps our disastrous ASW efforts in the Atlantic and our ASuW efforts in the Pacific during the first few months of the war wouldn't have been as bad.

      Had Ernest King adopted the Royal Navy's hard learned best-practices of mandatory coastal blackouts, the convoy system, and regular coordinated air/naval patrols, we would have lost a lot fewer crucial merchant ships during Doenitz's 2nd Happy Time. Similarly, ABDACOM's failure at Java Sea was widely attributed to poor communication and coordination between the multinational allied fleet. These seem like problems that good, realistic interoperational drills between crucial allies in times of peace can help address.

      Comment was deleted and resubmitted to fix minor typo.

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    2. "I don't understand why you hate interoperability so much."

      Well, part of it is because you're misunderstanding what I'm talking about. The examples you cite of interoperability are actually mostly just technology transfer and I have problem with that, whatsoever. If we want to send a buy to the Royal Navy to see what their latest technology and practices are, that's great. What I have no use for is the sham of operating a few MV-22s from the RN QE carrier. We'll never do that in a war so it's pointless. Practicing formation sailing with a third world coast guard is pointless. It does nothing to enhance our combat capability. And so on.

      Don't you just hate that there's no after the fact comment editing capability? That get's me all the time!

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    3. Yeah, the lack of a comment editing feature is a little annoying, but we'll manage.

      I definitely agree that conducting seemingly pointless low stakes interoperability exercises like flying Ospreys off of the QE shouldn't be a high priority.

      My point was that if we had done realistic, peer-state war exercises with the Brits/Dutch/Australians we would have avoided some of the early war disasters. Sure, on paper we should have recognized that the Brits had figured out the best way to deal with U-Boats, but unless we train with them that institutional knowledge wouldn't permeate over to US officers and crews until they had a chance to learn it the hard way.

      Similarly, the ONI concluded in 1943 that a huge failure of ABDACOM was the inability of US, Dutch, British, and Australian surface/air assets to talk to each other in a meaningful way during battle. Only the British and Australians had adequate protocols for tactical communications because they had trained with each other during peacetime. That failure forced our surface warfare tactics to bog down into follow-the-leader, while the Japanese operated as a coherent whole, which was a huge reason for our defeats. Had we invited the Brits/Dutch/Australians into the 1930s Fleet Problems, we would have ran into those problems then, when Japanese torpedoes weren't already in the water and solved them at our leisure without losing ships and men.

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    4. You're almost, but not quite, getting it. I have no problem with actual combat training with another country for something we think we'll actually do in combat. That's highly productive. An example might be the RN's ASW methods although that would probably be best accomplished by sending observers who could learn and then return the US to teach. Another example is a US, Dutch, British, and Australian that intends to fight together. Of course they should train together.

      What I have no use for is a pointless 'amphibious co-landing' with Norwegian troops in little boats. We'll never do that in combat nor will they.

      What I have no use for is training with the Philippine navy (they don't have a navy in any useful combat sense).

      Do you see the distinction?

      Most (all?) of the exercises cited in the post are of the utterly worthless type that will never be used in combat (most are non-combat!) and we'll never fight integrated with most of those countries.

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  12. You've not accurately represented talisman sabre.
    It also involves brigade size manouver exercises, live fire naval gunnery, amphibious assault training and large scale combat exercises at shoalwater and townsville.

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    1. I'm sorry but I'm not seeing any definitive references to such activities, at least for the US. I do see some references to Australian battalion exercises and live fire but not for the US to any significant extent.

      The USS Bonhomme Richard amphibious strike group is noted on the Pacific fleet website as having performed 20 ship to shore movements of landing craft. 20 landing craft??? That's hardly an amphibious assault exercise! In fact, the website strongly suggests (but doesn't explicitly say) that the ship to shore landings were logistic exercises, not assault exercises.

      I would love to see any reference you have that better describes the exercise activities.

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    2. I mean there's got to be hundreds of articles online, I can post a few if you like.
      There's always at least an MEU of marines and then usually a battalion or two of US army (sometimes NG battalions join in).
      The two I took part in were very much focussed on amphibious insertion/assault followed by manoeuvre exercises across North Queensland (it's very big, very empty and reasonably flat up there, with lots of different terrain for ambushes).
      We (RAR) usually played the role of opposing force. We set up plenty of ambushes.
      There's usually a couple of battalions of Australian Army, with some taking part in the amphib/assault phase, and the rest serving as OPFOR.
      It all culminates in Townsville, at the urban ops training facility there where we took turns assaulting or defending.
      It's focussed on combat.

      The issue we have is the hippies up in North Queensland get upset because the exercise involves a lot of live fire, underwater demo, etc. It's the Great Barrier Reef and sub tropics up there - so the government tries to tell everyone it's all a lovely exercise that doesn't involve guns or something.

      If you're curious there's dozens of videos on youtube you can watch of combat training and stuff which is part of Talisman Sabre.

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    3. hey I did a quick google, and first thing I saw was an old article from an Australian defence force magazine from the 2007 Talisman Sabre. Might be worth a read if you are interested, it's only short:
      aussies in contact - CONTACT magazine
      www.contactairlandandsea.com/free_contact/2007/contact15.pdf

      I wasn't in that one, but it gives a bit of a feel for what goes on at these exercises.
      Page 38 of the PDF

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