USS Ford just returned from a post-Vietnam record deployment
of 320 days. ComNavOps has repeatedly
stated that deployments are of no value and the fleet should be kept home,
undergoing continuous, intensive training and maintenance. The only exception is to perform specific
missions and then immediately return.
So, what value (worthiness) did we get from Ford’s record setting
deployment? How much of the deployment
was justified?
To review, here’s a timeline of Ford’s deployment
activities, as best I can reconstruct it. As you scan it, ask yourself
if the activities are worthwhile.
24-Jun-2025 began deployment to European Command area of
responsibility.
19-Jul-2025 arrived Mediterranean
17-Aug-2025 North Sea for joint exercises in the Arctic
Circle with the Royal Norwegian Navy's HNoMS Thor Heyerdahl (frigate) and HNoMS
Maud (tanker), Germany's Hamburg (frigate), and France's Aquitaine (frigate)
and Somme (tanker)
12-Sep-2025 Oslo, Norway port visit
22-26-Sep-2025 NATO Neptune Strike 25-3 exercise
24-Oct-2025 Caribbean
11-Dec-2025 assisted seizure of a tanker off the coast of
Venezuela
3-Jan-2026 provided support for Operation Absolute Resolve
off Venezuela
9-Jan-2026 provided support for Operation Southern Spear in
Caribbean
27-Feb-2026 off coast of Israel
28-Feb-2026 began strikes as part of Operation Epic Fury
12-Mar-2026 laundry room fire
23-Mar-2026 Souda Bay, Greece, maintenance and repairs
28-Mar-2026 Split, Croatia for repairs
2-Apr-2026 left Croatia
Let’s analyze the worthiness (value) of Ford’s deployment. There were two worthwhile activities that
could be classified as justifiable missions:
Even that’s misleading.
The only aspect of the Caribbean operations that was actually necessary
as far as requiring a carrier was Operation Absolute Resolve, the capture of
Maduro so the 3 month deployment to the area only required a carrier for one
day. Let’s be generous and say 3 weeks
were required for the operation to account for transit times and a short period
on station prior to the actual execution of the operation.
This gives us a maximum of 3.5 months of worthwhile, mission
type activity out of an 11 month deployment and, more realistically, 5 weeks of
worthwhile, mission type activity out of an 11 month deployment.
The rest was useless.
The rest was pointless.
The rest was a waste.
The 11 month deployment got us two worthwhile missions (5
weeks) and resulted in a carrier with significant burn damage and burned out
sailors, a worn out air wing, and 11 months of deferred maintenance which will
cause problems down the road. Ford will
now likely be unavailable for deployment for a year or more. In contrast, with a home port model, Ford
would be continuously mission ready, year round, less the occasional scheduled
dry docking every few years.
How many of Ford’s sailors will re-up knowing another year
long deployment could well be in their future?
Home porting (Norfolk) would have allowed the Ford to reach
the Caribbean/Venezuela quickly and reached Israel for Epic Fury much
quicker. With constant home port
training and maintenance, Ford would have been better prepared for both
missions and, debatably, the laundry fire might not have occurred. Perhaps the persistent toilet problems would
also have been resolved although that one sounds like an idiotic design that is
never going to work.
I don’t think the uselessness of deployments is even
debatable, at this point. Each
deployment simply proves my contention.
Each carrier laid up for months or years suffering the effects of
deferred maintenance simply proves my contention. Let’s bring the fleet home and get it back
into fighting shape.
Thank you, USS Ford, for demonstrating the uselessness of
deployments.
- Operation Southern Spear/Absolute Resolve in the Caribbean for the Venezuela confrontation (3 months)
- Operating Epic Fury (Iran strikes) (2 weeks)
It's coherent with one of your previous post stating that exercises with allies were useless. One could deduct that allies are useless - and by extension NATO is useless. And it's exactly what the US government is thinking. Of course it's too bad for the hopeful allies, or the "clients" states, but then they don't hold the cards. Latest exemple is Taiwan.
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify, I've not stated that all exercises with allies are useless ... just cross-training or integrated training where we (or they) fall under the other's command structure. Separate but cooperative exercises may have some benefit. For example, ASW training against an ally's diesel sub which we, inexplicably, don't have, would be quite beneficial.
DeleteBy no means do I believe that allies are useless. What I believe is that allies should be providing for their own defense and we should not be basing forces with them. NATO is the prime example of this. Europe can more than adequately defend itself and, as we've seen, our basing of forces in Europe is fraught with unreliability and is a waste of time.
"Of course it's too bad for the hopeful allies"
NO, No, no! This approach is for the GOOD of allies. Our allies have become dependent on us and this has weakened, rather than strengthened, them. It's the old, give a man a fish versus teach him how to fish scenario. Forcing our allies to provide 100% of their own defense makes them stronger which, in the long run, makes us and them stronger.
#ComNavOps
Delete"Our allies have become dependent on us and this has weakened, rather than strengthened, them."
yes, the current system is working exactly as it is expected from it.
in case of NATO, Military command is always under US, deputy command is always from UK (Germans were given this position for few years)
allied countries may expand spending and capabilities, but that does not automatically equal
1) independent strategic command
2) autonomous warfighting
3) sovereign coalition leadership.
European Allies have no motivation to strengthen themselves as during conflict, whatever Military strength they have built, will be handed over to People outside Continent Europe.
same goes for other Allies in Pacific like Japan, South Korea, etc.
I suppose the obvious question is how many of the crew will decide the record is not worth it and call an end to their naval careers.
ReplyDeleteSerious question: What's your military background? Sorry if you posted it here before and I missed it.
ReplyDeleteFor obvious reasons, I don't divulge any personal information on the Internet. Sorry.
DeleteAs this article notes, planned maintenance for the Ford was delayed for months thus disrupting plans for other carriers. I expect the Ford to be in a one year maintenance period now, not ready for anything.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2026-05-16/ford-return-repair-maintenance-cost-21688339.html
The next DOT&E on the Ford will be bestseller around here. First sustained test of the Ford's traps, cats and elevators.
DeleteToo bad they're all classified and we don't get any real numbers anymore...
DeleteThe Navy has declined to provide DOT&E with EMALS and AAG data for well over a year now. We won't see any Ford data.
DeleteSurely, with regards to retention, some of those "pointless" trips will make "Jack" a lot happier? No one wants to join the Navy and see their Baseport.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to throw something out here for consideration that might be a little bit controversial.
ReplyDeleteConditions:
We need a lot of carriers during a peer war, (for example a Chinese invasion of Taiwan).
Ships take a long time to build.
Ships are massive machines which need a lot of maintenance attention.
Ships' natural environment is floating in a corrosive salt water environment.
Sailors need to do a lot of training to keep up with all of the knowledge and tasks that they need to accomplish their jobs.
Ships are expensive to crew and maintain.
We don't need all ships available at all times during peacetime, but need to be able to surge to maximum capacity in time of war.
So, why not rotate carriers in the active fleet?
How could that be accomplished?
Say that you have a group of 5 aircraft carriers.
Two could be active in the fleet, performing CNO-style training missions.
Three would be in port, in a flooded drydock.
Every year a ship comes out of the maintenance pool, and then spends two years in the active fleet.
Also every year, a ship comes out of the active fleet and goes into maintenance status.
That provides the rotation of ships.
Those five aircraft carriers would have three full active duty crews assigned to them.
Two would, of course, be assigned to the active ships.
The third would be coming off of two years in the active fleet and put their carrier into maintenance status.
They would then shift to the next ship in the rotation and begin doing workups on it to get it ready for its two year active stint.
Since we want to be able to surge all five ships when needed, there would also be two fully staffed reservist crews.
Those reservists would spend their weekend drills doing training classes and performing maintenance on the ships.
Their two-week annual training duty would be staggered throughout the year.
During that AT, they would serve on board one of the active ships.
This would accomplish a couple of things.
First, it would help to incorporate the reservists into the active crews.
Secondly, it would allow sailors to take leave and have a qualified, experienced replacement available to fill in.
During full mobilization, the five crews (3 active and 2 reserve) would be blended to achieve 5 competent full crews for the 5 carriers.
The Carrier Air Wings would function the same way as the crews.
Three active wings and two reservists.
Three of these 5-carrier groups should exist in the Navy.
One on the east coast, one on the west coast, and one out of Hawaii.
The Hawaii group would differ in that three of the ships would be on active status, and all three would spend their years active homeported in Japan, to include PCS and families.
This rotation strategy would give the Navy a surge capacity of 15 carriers with full crews and air wings.
It would provide predictable , scheduled downtime for maintenance and training.
And it would cost substantially less than trying to have all of the ships active at any one time.
Lutefisk
So, in your system, at any given moment, only 2/5 of the carrier fleet is ready for war? The other three are not only crewless but physically constrained in drydocks (setting aside the question of where you're going to find 9 carrier sized drydocks!). You don't surge straight out of a drydock and into battle. A ship in drydock is presumably gutted and torn down. It would take months, or more, to get a drydocked ship ready to sail. In your system, that would be 9 carriers physically unable to surge for many months.
DeleteYou may be seriously overestimating the amount of maintenance needed. Having 9 carriers simultaneously undergoing three years of continuous maintenance is hugely excessive. If we need that much maintenance then we're building them wrong. On the other side, if a carrier goes two years without maintenance we're going to have seriously shortened lifespans. A great deal of maintenance simply can't be put off for two years. Ford has been on deployment for 11 months and is going to suffer badly for it for the rest of her life.
Far worse is the idea that six carriers would have no dedicated crew. The idea that we could maintain six reserve carrier crews able to step in an operate a carrier in combat is optimistic in the extreme. Carrier operations are the most complex, dangerous operation in the world and it requires months or years of training to become proficient. Perhaps reservists can seamlessly step into Army units but that's not the case on an aircraft carrier.
What about carrier commanders? Where will 15 highly trained and EXPERIENCED captains come from? People who have spent a lifetime actually doing not just the mechanics of daily carrier operations but the strategy and tactics of carrier ops? I've stated repeatedly that combat carrier ops require 4 carriers. If each group of your 5 carriers only has two active, how will they ever learn to fight as they would in combat, in task forces of four carriers?
Where will the air wings (and their aircraft!) come from? We already have a problem with only 9 air wings and 11 nominal carriers. We also have a problem with getting aviators enough flight hours and you're proposing taking 9 carriers out of circulation? Where will we get training carriers for landing qualifications?
We've discussed the folly of home porting in Japan. That's just conceding sunk carriers at the start of a conflict.
I would urge you to give this some more thought.
Just to begin, I understand that this is out of the box.
DeleteBut what the Navy does sure as heck doesn't work.
" at any given moment, only 2/5 of the carrier fleet is ready for war?"
Actually 7/15 to be exact about it.
"where you're going to find 9 carrier sized drydocks!"
Three on the east coast, three on the west coast, two in Hawaii. That doesn't seem insurmountable.
"A ship in drydock is presumably gutted and torn down."
These ships would not be, unless they had a specific reason to be.
"Having 9 carriers simultaneously undergoing three years of continuous maintenance is hugely excessive. If we need that much maintenance then we're building them wrong. On the other side, if a carrier goes two years without maintenance we're going to have seriously shortened lifespans."
They don't need continuous maintenance.
Eight of 15 carriers would be in a standby status. Not torn down, but being maintained.
Floating in a flooded drydock to keep the hull in the proper shape.
The reserve crews do routine maintenance during their drill weekends and annual training.
Checklists, flushing toilets, running equipment, doing run-ups on turbine engines, chipping, scraping, painting, etc, etc.
"Far worse is the idea that six carriers would have no dedicated crew. The idea that we could maintain six reserve carrier crews able to step in an operate a carrier in combat is optimistic"
Five reserve crews, but who's counting.
Ships that are waiting don't need a dedicated crew fully manning them.
And the workup prior to the ship going into the active fleet gives the crew several months to know the ship.
"Carrier operations are the most complex, dangerous operation in the world and it requires months or years of training to become proficient. Perhaps reservists can seamlessly step into Army units but that's not the case on an aircraft carrier.
What about carrier commanders? Where will 15 highly trained and EXPERIENCED captains come from? People who have spent a lifetime actually doing not just the mechanics of daily carrier operations but the strategy and tactics of carrier ops?"
Considering we went from 7 aircraft carriers in 1941 to over 100 in 1945, with 24 of them fleet carriers, this doesn't seem like an impossibility.
In fact, taking 10 active duty crews and blending them with 5 well trained reserve crews seems pretty reasonable in comparison.
"I've stated repeatedly that combat carrier ops require 4 carriers. If each group of your 5 carriers only has two active, how will they ever learn to fight as they would in combat, in task forces of four carriers?"
With 7 carriers always on active service, I'm sure it can be made to happen...just not at all times.
"Where will the air wings (and their aircraft!) come from? We already have a problem with only 9 air wings and 11 nominal carriers. We also have a problem with getting aviators enough flight hours and you're proposing taking 9 carriers out of circulation? Where will we get training carriers for landing qualifications?"
The Navy needs to figure out their naval aviation problems.
This plan is not the problem.
Lutefisk
"We've discussed the folly of home porting in Japan. That's just conceding sunk carriers at the start of a conflict."
DeleteThis is a pair of posts I made on a thread here a few months ago.
I don't think my logic is unsound here....
....The second thing is where to position our ships during peacetime.
I agree strongly in CNO's concept that the navy should end deployments and train for combat by sending task forces on simulated wartime types of missions. CNO also feels that a carrier battle group should be 4 full sized carriers. I would settle for three, but the point is that they shouldn't be working singly during wartime.
But if that is the practice, where do you station your fighting ships?
The safest place would be away from the western Pacific.
But if you homeport them in Hawaii, that's 3800 miles from Tokyo (just to pick a destination). That is a week of sailing at 20 knots simply to get across the Pacific.
If it's San Diego instead, that is 5600 miles, or a week and a half at 20 knots.
That is spending a lot of precious training time simply plowing furrows in the ocean.
So where to put them?
Guam appears to be too small to homeport significant naval forces.
I wouldn't mind having a naval base on Mindanao, but that would require a LOT of infrastructure build out to keep a quantity of capital ships and their escorts.
Australia? They might as well be at Pearl Harbor.
Japan is the obvious choice.
They are one of our closest allies and they have phenomenal ship maintenance infrastructure. The Japanese also have a deep seated tradition of despising the Chinese, and the Chinese reciprocate.
If diplomatically possible, I would station three aircraft carriers and their escorts in Japan.
Of course they wouldn't be sitting in 'aircraft carrier row' like 1941 Pearl Harbor battleships. They would be in separate locations, places like Yokosuka, Osaka, Nagoya and Sendai.
This kind of forward deployment is not unprecedented to meet a threat.
We seem to forget that in the 1980s we had approximately 300,000 troops stationed in West Germany right across the border from the Warsaw Pact forces, and their families were PCS'd there as well.
The three aircraft carriers would be well positioned to do mission style training in the area of operations without wasting enormous amounts of time transiting the breadth of the Pacific Ocean.
It would also be beneficial to cementing our alliance and training with the Japanese forces and specifically their navy.
Lutefisk
So what about war with China?
DeleteA good peace time practice would be to have at least one of the carriers on a training mission the majority of the time. The forward deployed forces should be on a higher state of readiness, just like our forces were that were stationed in cold war West Germany.
That would take away some of the risk of all three of the carriers getting caught in port.
The far and away most likely scenario that we would face in a naval war with China would be an invasion of Taiwan.
The analysis that I've seen estimate that it would take 30 days for the Chinese to pull together their assets for an amphibious assault on Taiwan.
To me that seems a little bit short. A cross-strait invasion would be on a scale very similar to Normandy. Think about the size of that operation, 30 days would be a herculean logistical accomplishment to stage an operation of that size.
But suppose the 30 days number is accurate. That is plenty of lead-time for the carriers in Japan to assume a wartime footing.
What if the Chinese launch a surprise attack, a ballistic missile Pearl Harbor, against our carriers in Japan?
Well, the first consequence is that they will have launched a surprise attack against three separate Japanese cities. That is all-out war, and they are not likely to get an sympathetic response from the rest of the world (which they need to support their export driven economy).
But what if they hit a grand-slam homerun and knock out three American aircraft carriers in Japanese ports?
Well, then they can possibly break out of the first island chain and then....and then....what?
I suppose they could start putting together their Taiwan invasion without the nuisance of any local American aircraft carriers.
Maybe seize the Philippines? Okinawa? Singapore? None of those seem all that plausible.
But losing those three aircraft carriers, while it would hurt mightily, would not cripple our military or those of our allies.
And the surprise nature of the attack would galvanize both the American people and the world at large against China in the upcoming war.
It would be the very definition of a pyrrhic victory for the CCP.
Lutefisk
"I understand that this is out of the box"
DeleteLet me say that, regardless of any comments I might offer, your concept is world's better than the Navy's so ... well done!
"drydocks! ... Three on the east coast ..."
Currently, the Navy has only one drydock (Norfolk #8, built 1942) that can theoretically support a Ford class carrier and #8 would require utility enhancements in order to do so. Yes, it is theoretically possible that the Navy could build seven or eight new drydocks but that is unlikely, bordering on impossible. Your concept would require the Navy to build several new drydocks and add several new air wings. All theoretically possible but with zero chance of happening in the real world. Nothing wrong with speculating about what SHOULD happen but you might also try to come up with a concept that actually COULD happen without requiring enormous leaps of unlikely events. For example, my concept can be implemented with no new construction and no new air wings although it could certainly benefit from both!
"They don't need continuous maintenance."
Then why have them inactive? Unless moved to fresh water, they would still corrode, seals would dry out, tanks would corrode, and so on. Put 'em to use!
"The reserve crews do routine maintenance during their drill weekends and annual training.
Checklists, flushing toilets, running equipment, doing run-ups on turbine engines, chipping, scraping, painting, etc, etc."
Good luck getting anyone to sign up for perpetual maintenance duty! Join the reserves and flush toilets?!
"Considering we went from 7 aircraft carriers in 1941 to over... "
That was when we had hundreds/thousands of ships for officers to learn on and we were fighting an actual war so each carrier commander had actual warfighting experience. Today, we don't even run realistic exercises. Not a single officer in today's Navy has ever commanded a multi-carrier task force in combat ops or exercises.
"4 carriers ... With 7 carriers always on active service, I'm sure it can be made to happen...just not at all times."
With only 2 active carriers in three locations (E & W coast and Hawaii), there won't be any 4-carrier assemblies. The east coast would never be involved and the west coast and Hawaii might combine once every few years. We need intense, realistic carrier task force training on a continuous basis. We need four+ active carriers operating out each homeport so we can learn how to fight proper carrier task forces. You don't learn that with an occasional exercise.
"The Navy needs to figure out their naval aviation problems."
Yep. For your concept, we would need five more air wings to have one air wing per carrier. There's no point surging a carrier without an air wing.
Your concept also illustrates one of my points about building non-nuclear carriers. Given that we are only capable of building one carrier every 5-7 years, even if your plan was implemented, it would be impossible to build four additional carriers in any useful time span. This emphasizes the need for a non-nuclear carrier class that can be built at additional yards.
Delete"Japan is the obvious choice."
DeleteI think it's a near certainty that Japan would be involved in any war with China which makes the likelihood of a first strike on any Japan based carriers a near certainty. Thus, in your concept, on the first day (first hour?) of war we would lose 3 carriers (and their escorts and their air wings). The tide of WWII turned against Japan when they lost their carriers at Midway. This could well be our Midway on day one.
"We seem to forget that in the 1980s we had approximately 300,000 troops stationed in West Germany right across the border from the Warsaw Pact forces,"
It would have taken untold thousands of strikes to suddenly and significantly attrit those 300,000 troops. In contrast, a handful of unstoppable ballistic missiles is all that's required to sink three carriers in port. If they're at sea, China will know exactly where they are and they will be in close range of overwhelming attacks from China. They're just not survivable. Carriers survive by staying at a very long arm's length not by operating in the enemy's back yard. Ask Force Z (Prince of Wales and Repulse) how that worked out.
"losing those three aircraft carriers, while it would hurt mightily, would not cripple our military"
I beg to differ. For a China war that would be primarily a naval aviation and Air Force war, losing three carriers and their air wings is crippling. We do not have the industrial capacity to replace any of that in any useful time frame. The Japanese discovered this when they lost a significant chuck of their experienced pilots at Midway. Even if you could replace aircraft, you can't easily replace trained, experienced pilots and this is even more true with today's advanced jets.
I'd be interested to read ConOpsNav view about a conflict with China. Will it about defending Taiwan from a PLA invasion - or asserting freedom of navigation inside the whatever dash line, or ... ? What would be the role of the US carriers and their air wings ? Where would they be located, how far away from mainland China ?
Delete"I'd be interested to read ConOpsNav view about a conflict with China."
DeleteMuch of this blog is about that. Everything you want to know is in the archives. Feel free to make use of them.
Lutefisk, I'm confused about something. You've stated that the reserve carriers would be kept in "flooded drydocks" but wouldn't actually be undergoing deep "gutting or tearing apart" maintenance inside those dry docks (at least most of the time).
DeleteWhy? If it's in a flooded drydock, that means it's floating. If it's floating, why does it need to be in a drydock? It can float just as well at a pier, and piers are much cheaper and more common than dry docks!
I agree with you (CNO) about the likelihood of losing the carrier(s) (and the big amphibious assault ships) very early on in any military conflict with China.
DeleteBut is this not the dilemma we face in forward deploying the Seventh Fleet: risk losing the carrier(s) or leave the Navy dependent on the limited range of ground based air cover (JASDF, or USAF operating out of Okinawa or Korea).
What to do?
"is this not the dilemma we face in forward deploying the Seventh Fleet: risk losing the carrier(s) or"
DeleteTo be clear, the risk of losing carriers applies ONLY to the Japan basing issue. Properly used, carriers should be fairly safe otherwise.
To address your question, as in WWII, carriers operate and strike from a distance, keeping them out of range of most enemy weapons and sensors. The enemy must be rolled back and, as they are, the carriers can operate further forward.
Our airbases on Guam and Okinawa will be blasted and useless within week should war with China occur. Recall this happened to our Persian Gulf bases. Hopefully, most aircraft can flee before they are destroyed on the ground. This short video explains this reality:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAZUNUH0duA
@ Bob Nagele
Delete" If it's floating, why does it need to be in a drydock?"
Since I'm slow getting back to you, I'll give the long answer, haha.
A few Christmases ago, I was given a superb book, Ian Toll's 'Six Frigates' about the founding of the US Navy.
In it I read that since the US couldn't afford to man and provision many ships during peacetime, the frigates were put in a form of craptastic storage until needed.
It occurred to me that the navy could do something similar with the Iowa class ships, except better than craptastic.
The US doesn't need more than one of those Iowa class ships at a time during peacetime, but could put to use all four during time of war.
Why not rotate them, and use a mixture of active duty and reserve crews to man them?
And since the Iowas could use several cycles worth of upgrades, just keep them in drydocks during their downtime; flooded to keep the hulls from becoming misshapen.
And you can fill the drydock with whatever fluid you want to best maintain the hull; fresh water, DOT 3 brake fluid, lime jell-o....whatever is best.
Similarly, we need more aircraft carriers during time of war than we can afford to man and operate during peace time.
So, why not apply the same concept to the carriers?
Have three pods of five with active duty crews and air wings for the active ships and well-trained reserve crews and reserve air wings for when the full slate is needed.
And keep the idled carriers in drydock berthings so that maintenance can easily be performed on them whenever needed.
I am not a navy person, so the lack of drydocks was something I was not completely aware of. And frankly speaking, the Navy seems derelict in not having adequate drydocks for a class of ship that has taken years to build.
I truly do not understand this drydock shortage.
These things don't look very complicated; just a metric butt-ton of concrete, lock-like doors, and utilities.
Am I missing something here?
These are multi-billion dollar ships and we can't allocate some concrete?
Lutefisk
Thank you - yes I see what you mean, although, based on publicly available information, it seems unlikely that the carrier-based Super Hornets and F35Cs would be able to ‘strike from a distance’ while keeping the carrier itself out of the range of Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles.
ReplyDeleteIn the event of a military conflict with the United States over Taiwan, would the Chinese not be looking to keep the fight close to home, rather than seek a Midway style fleet-to-fleet engagement in the middle of the Pacific?
If that were the case, then if the Navy’s focus was on keeping the carriers safe, they probably wouldn’t be very useful, and if the Navy wanted them to be useful, it would be very hard to keep them safe.
Either way, without carrier-based air cover, the Seventh Fleet is going to have to hug the coast pretty tightly, even if we disregard the lessons of the Gulf war, and assume that land-based aircraft can still operate, and that our airfields don’t get knocked out in the first day of the conflict by Chinese missiles and drones.
That seems to me to be the dilemma.
" it seems unlikely that the carrier-based Super Hornets and F35Cs would be able to ‘strike from a distance’"
DeleteTomahawks are the long range strike weapon. The carrier air wing exists to protect the Tomahawk shooters - a reversal of WWII where the escorts existed to protect the carrier air wing strikers.
"would the Chinese not be looking to keep the fight close to home, rather than seek a Midway"
It depends on what the Chinese objectives are but, yes, that's likely. China prefers to "nibble" its conquests rather than bite off too large a chunk.
"Navy’s focus was on keeping the carriers safe, they probably wouldn’t be very useful,"
You clearly are new to the blog, so welcome. We've discussed all of this at length. Please make use of the archives. To be brief, the carriers would be very useful for protecting the Tomahawk missiles and the Air Force flights as well as establishing local air superiority over Taiwan and resupply convoys. This can be done from hundreds to a thousand miles away (which is why I've called for a carrier long range air superiority fighter).
"That seems to me to be the dilemma."
It may seem that way to you but, if so, it's only because you don't yet grasp the strategy of modern naval warfare. Again, this is all spelled out throughout the blog. You've got your homework assignment: read the archives!
Thank you for taking the time to respond - I’ll start working my way through your archived posts, although that’s likely to take me some time!
DeleteI hope you’ll excuse a further question in the meantime:
You suggested that our naval response to a Chinese attack on Taiwan would likely be centered around the Burkes launching their Tomahawks from the open ocean hundreds of miles from their targets while remaining - relatively - safe, and protected by the air wings of the carriers.
If avoiding the loss of these scarce and costly platforms is a high priority, why are we basing the Seventh Fleet in China’s backyard, where both the ships and their logistic support chains are so vulnerable to a Chinese first strike?
Thank you.
"likely to take me some time!"
DeleteNo better use of time!
"If avoiding the loss of these scarce and costly platforms is a high priority"
Avoiding loss is not the priority. Ensuring a worthwhile combat return on the carrier investment is the priority. We could tuck our carriers in mainland US ports and they'd be safe, if survival was the priority, but it's not. The priority is ensuring that we get the maximum combat usefulness out of them. That means exposing them in combat when there is the prospect of sufficient infliction of damage on the enemy to justify the risk.
Prior to Midway, Nimitz sent the following order to Spruance:
"... you will be governed by the principle of calculated risk which you shall interpret to mean the avoidance of exposure of your force to attack by superior enemy forces without good prospect of inflicting, as a result of such exposure, greater damage to the enemy."
This illustrates the priority of calculated risk and the balance between damage inflicted and suffered.
"why are we basing the Seventh Fleet in China’s backyard"
Why have we abandoned armor? Why have we abandoned large caliber naval guns? Why have we deferred maintenance to the point of hollowing the fleet? Why did we implement minimal manning knowing full well it would hurt the fleet? Why ... You get the idea. As documented in this blog, for the last several decades, the Navy has made one baffling, unwise decision after another. Forward basing a carrier in Japan is yet another of those unfathomable decisions. Why did we have our battleships lined up at Pearl Harbor despite knowing almost to the day and hour when the Japanese would attack?
Thank you for your reply.
DeleteSome of these decisions are very difficult to understand, although at Pearl Harbor I suppose there may have been some valid operational or logistical reasons for lining up the battleships in a neat row and making them such easy targets.
More generally, in 1940 we moved the Pacific Fleet from San Pedro to Hawaii because we thought that Japan, faced with this demonstration of US resolve, together with tough financial sanctions, asset freezes, and restrictions on its trade in oil and raw materials, would be forced to accede to the demands we were making on them.
There is a parallel of sorts with our policies today towards China, Iran and Russia (and Cuba and Venezuela), where we are using much the same toolkit, although hopefully with better outcomes.
Thank you again for posting so many interesting and insightful articles.
"may have been some valid operational or logistical reasons for lining up the battleships in a neat row and making them such easy targets."
DeleteThere is no reason that overrides combat survival. We screwed up at Pearl Harbor, pure and simple.
" where we are using much the same toolkit, although hopefully with better outcomes."
Of course, the definition of insanity is performing the same set of actions and expecting a different result!
This is a busy time of the year for me, so I'm a little slow responding...and doing an incomplete job of it.
DeleteSo I am going to just generally discuss the 7th Fleet forward deployed in Japan, as that is the basis of much of the angst.
Two different, although related, situations are involved here.
The first time is peacetime basing of ships.
I think that most of us would agree that we must have a more assertive posture against the PLAN in the Western Pacific and South China Sea. We need to be sure that we are supporting our allies in the region against Chinese encroachment of their territories.
We should also implement CNO's mission style training rather than endless deployment cruises.
But that makes it really tough to project power into the Western Pacific from San Diego.
Twenty days of a mission are spent commuting to and from work across the breadth of the Pacific Ocean.
The obvious peacetime location for the 7th Fleet is Japan.
Lutefisk
During war with China, Japan is pretty close to China and vulnerable to attack.
DeleteThe consensus that has developed on this blog is that any US ships stationed in Japan are going to be almost immediately destroyed by the Chinese when the balloon goes up.
I don't think that assumption stands up to closer scrutiny.
The far and away most likely total-war-with-China scenario is their attempted invasion of Taiwan. Everything else is some version of bullying and intimidation to get what they want a bit at a time through incremental appeasement by ourselves and our allies.
And even a Taiwan invasion by China is extremely unlikely. There is just too much downside for China from doing this. The only reason it might actually happen is if Xi gets himself in such a domestic problem that he needs a common cause to unite the Chinese public to stave off internal chaos.
An actual Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a monumental undertaking across a 100 mile strait.
An operation like that would be on a scale very similar to Normandy.
Estimates are that the Chinese would need 30 days to pull that thing together....although I am a bit skeptical that they could do that in such a short time.
The most likely scenario would be escalating tensions while the invasion force and its logistical tail are assembled.
During that lead-up, the 7th Fleet will have time to start operation on a war footing, leaving their Japanese ports. If they need to return for some reason, they would do it a few ships at a time, with no critical mass entering Japanese waters. But realistically they should be utilizing wartime supply practices, whatever the Navy has figured out for that. (I personally would like to see a logistical hub at Truk.)
The scenario that has everyone's panties in a wad is the chance that China will launch a preemptive strike against the 7th Fleet while it sits in Japanese ports in a peacetime posture.
We shouldn't get caught with our pants down like that, but even if we did, that China pulls off a ballistic missile Pearl Harbor....then what happens?
It would need to be a truly massive strike.
The consensus here seems to be that we would lose all three carriers (in my deployment plan), the escorts, and the air wings.
That is A LOT of targets when you consider that the ships would be dispersed in multiple ports and the air wings would be at land air bases.
And the consensus is that Guam and Okinawa will also be destroyed.
Japan's 154 ships? The 60-odd airfields in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines?
That is an enormous number of targets that they Chinese would need to service...and if they produce that number of ballistic missiles, then they aren't making other things (opportunity cost and all that).
But from a Chinese standpoint, what is the result of a surprise strike against the 7th Fleet?
They would then need to assemble their invasion force during an active war.
Those forces would be trying to assemble in known locations and subject to air and missile attack from the US and our allies.
That doesn't make any sense for them at all.
The probability of losing all three carriers is also very slim, even in that scenario, but if it happened we would still be fine. It would hurt, but it wouldn't take away all our other (more capable, honestly) assets like B-2, B-21, F-22, cruise missiles from various launchers, etc.
But China would have lost any possibility of playing the "we're the good guys" card in world opinion.
That is not viable for a country that depends on full-employment to keep a lid on internal dissent, and needs exports to maintain those employment levels, and needs the American and European markets to export into.
Those markets would be shut down for the foreseeable future, and possibly permanently, if the Chinese took these actions.
None of this adds up.
Lutefisk
"most of us would agree that we must have a more assertive posture against the PLAN"
DeleteWhat is your vision of "more assertive"? Protests with stronger wording? An added tariff? Sailing a US ship near the Chinese as they violate someone's territorial waters so that we can watch disapprovingly? Bumping hulls to force them out of areas they shouldn't be? Blowing up illegal islands (as defined by UNCLOS)? Firing on Chinese ships and aircraft that violate territorial air and water? Nuking Chinese bases and cities in retaliation for incidents?
You see, there's a wide range of "more assertive" actions. The point is the most of the options do NOT involve any great deal of military force. Hence, three Japan-based carriers is a vast over-resourcing that will never be used. We aren't going to ever launch strikes in peacetime against Chinese assets so what's the point of more carriers. We could base all of our carriers in Japan and it wouldn't alter China's behavior one bit because they know we won't use them.
We can be "more assertive" with patrol boats or, upper end, a Burke with a sleepy crew. We just aren't going to engage with China.
So, what is your vision of "more assertive"? What assertive actions require a carrier, let alone three carriers?
"Twenty days of a mission are spent commuting to and from work across the breadth of the Pacific Ocean."
DeleteSo? Does it matter how long it takes to transit? We can profitably use the transit time to conduct underway, intense training. Are you familiar with WWII practices in this regard?
In WWII, ships would transit from mainland US and do exactly what I said: they would train intensely while underway as preparation for whatever mission they were slated to undertake.
If we were to find that we have sufficient number of missions in the first island chain region, we could simply rotate groups of ships to the area for a set, limited, number of days of active training - say, a month on station and then RTB.
Just out of curiosity, what are these missions you envision being so numerous as to demand a continual US Navy presence? Honestly, I can't think of a single worthwhile mission the Navy has conducted in the Chinese region in the last five years? Can you? Switch from speaking in generalities and cite some specific, worthwhile missions we did or could have done.
"I don't think that assumption stands up to closer scrutiny."
DeleteFirst, let me say that I love that you're giving this some thought and applying some reasoning and I enjoyed reading your comment. That said, your thinking is misguided and I'll lay out the problems for you. Please take this as an enjoyable discussion rather than a criticism or argument.
"And even a Taiwan invasion by China is extremely unlikely. There is just too much downside for China from doing this."
This is fundamentally incorrect because you're viewing this from a US/Western perspective instead of a Chinese one. I'll explain.
First, however, recall that your entire analysis would have applied almost identically to pre-WWII Japan. Japan had way too much to lose in a war with the US. They needed, more than anything, to keep foreign oil flowing into their country and simply could not risk the disruption that war would cause. Further, Japan would have needed months of pre-war planning and assembly of forces to initiate a war (not just attacking Pearl Harbor but also Guam, Wake, Philippines, etc.) and would have had no chance to surprise the US. We would have simply pulled our fleet out of Pearl Harbor, beefed up our forces on the various Pacific islands, and otherwise prepared for war. In point of fact, the US knew almost to the day and time when Pearl Harbor would occur. Worse, if Japan initiated war, they would lose access to the entire world's markets for both imports and exports. Even worse, they would lose any possibility of playing the "good guy" card. Even worse, worse, Japan, by any measure, was dwarfed by the US industrial might and had no hope of winning a war. Finally, by various means, the Japanese had already secured the oil sources they needed. They had no need to attack the US which was happily and appeasingly sitting out world affairs and showed no great interest in entering any war.
Based on this analysis, there is no chance that Japan will go to war with the US. To quote a famous naval observer, "None of this adds up."
Despite all of the logical and reasonable points cited, Japan still opted to start a war with the US. Why? because Japan didn't think the same way the US/West did. Japan went to war because of cultural beliefs, misunderstanding of US resolve, ingrained fear of future US encroachments, and various other reasons. War rarely follows US sensibilities and often seems illogical to us.
China does not think the way we do. Seizing Taiwan is a cultural (and governmental !) imperative. The short term downside of war with the US is more then offset, in their view, by the long term gains. We think and act based on the short term whereas China thinks and acts based on the hundred/thousands year long term. If devastating their economy and killing millions of their people is required to secure their standing as the only world power, that's a perfectly reasonable choice in their minds whereas we would be horrified by the mere thought.
So, you have fundamentally misunderstood the Chinese perspective and, hence, their likely actions. The conquest of Taiwan is mandatory. The only variables are when and how, not if.
"We shouldn't get caught with our pants down like that"
DeleteAny yet all of history proves that we will. Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the rise of China, downing of our EP-3, and on and on. We continually get caught with our pants down. In fact, it's a constant characteristic of our political and military behavior!
I've got more comments but I'll let you digest these, first! Again, an enjoyable discussion.
Delete320 day deployment? The toll on that crew is the real hit to the Navy. I'm sure the retention rate amongst that crew will be noticeably lower than the fleet at large.
ReplyDeleteHow many marriages would/will have ended due to the length of that deployment? How many kids will now grow up in a broken home?
Your typical six-month Westpacs used to put a sizable dent in a lot of relationships, I cannot imagine the damage done with this one
"The toll on that crew is the real hit to the Navy. I'm sure the retention rate amongst that crew will be noticeably lower than the fleet at large."
DeleteYou are undoubtedly correct, however, you're only seeing part of the impact. Every one of those sailors will now become a negative recruiting inducement. They will tell friends and children not to join the Navy and those friends and children will spread that message among their friends.
Retention will be negatively impacted not just among the immediate crew but among the entire Navy. What carrier sailor is going to re-up knowing his carrier could be the next to vanish on a year long deployment?