Over the last few decades, the US has meandered through a
variety of military capability plans such as the original ‘2-1/2 wars’ plan[2]
which was successively downgraded over the years and through various stages to
the current ‘1 regional conflict and hold in another’[3]. The main factor in the successive downgrades
was the recognition that the US was steadily losing military capability and,
quite simply, couldn’t achieve the previous goals. In other words, the strategic situations and
absolute requirements didn’t change but the US military capability did and the
downgrades were simple rationalizations of the reality that our military was
growing steadily less capable. This rationalization
is absolute nonsense, of course. If you
believe that your national security depends on being able to win 2 wars and
hold in another, you don’t downgrade the requirement just because you haven’t
got the ability to achieve it – you keep the requirement and figure out how to
achieve it. You don’t rationalize away
the requirement. But, I digress …
What all those plans (and planners) failed to recognize is
that they were all fundamentally flawed.
What was the fundamental flaw that rendered every plan invalid? It was – and still is ! – wartime production. It was the failure to recognize the
fundamental truth that you don’t win a war with the capability you start with;
you win a war with the capability you build during the war. We won WWII with a 6,000 ship Navy but we
started with just 233 carriers and surface ships and most of those were old,
obsolete, and unfit for modern (at the time) combat.
Yes, you might win a small, single state conflict against a
hapless foe, as happened in Desert Storm, with just existing forces (note,
however, that we could not assemble the Desert Storm force today !) but not a
war or even a real regional conflict. Even
existing forces may not be available. For
example, the 22 Marine MEU/ARG was unable to deploy in response to an urgent
request early in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.[4] The Marines, our crisis response force, was
unable to respond to a crisis.
If you want to be able to win a full war, you need the
capability to produce what you need in a very short time frame during the war …
while the need is still relevant.
Thus, the previous goals stating a desire to be able to win
X number of wars should have been a goal to be able to produce enough to win X number of wars.
Here’s a truism that planners fail to recognize:
The equipment you start the war with is, by definition, largely obsolete.
You need the ability to quickly produce modern, relevant,
combat effective equipment. Again, those
Pennsylvania class battleships that we were so proud of the day before the war
were already obsolete on December 7th. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get
some temporary, desperate service out of the existing equipment … you’ll likely
have to! But, it means that the
equipment you win the war with won’t be what you start the war with.
In WWII, the United States was not the ‘Existing Army of
Democracy’, it was the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’, in recognition of the country’s
vast industrial capacity which is what actually won WWII.
Frankly, our unceasing efforts to build large standing
fleets of aircraft and ships are somewhat silly and ill-directed. A mindless pursuit of larger fleets is
counterproductive beyond a point. We
could have built 50 Pennsylvania battleships prior to the war but that would
have just given us 50 obsolete BBs instead of the 15 or so we had and we would
have had a lot less cash for the war. Every ship you build before a war is one
more obsolete ship to start the war.
Existing equipment serves only to buy time for industry to
gear up. Thus, we should be sizing our
existing military not for winning a war(s) but for buying adequate time to
allow industry to gear up. Of course,
hand-in-hand with that is that we should be producing viable wartime production
plans. It’s pointless to buy time if you
still can’t produce what you need.
As we contemplate wartime production, consider this: today, we totally lack the rare earths needed
for all of our sensors. We won't be able to make ANY sensors when war comes.
Our computer chip supply is severely limited and we won't be able to make ...
well ... anything when war comes because almost everything depends on chips. And so on.
Worse, war inevitably brings on additional raw material shortages. I have severe doubts that we can build much
of anything during a war. We simply lack
too many critical items and raw materials.
If we'll need 6000 ships to win a war, the answer is not to
build them before the war, it's to build our supply lines and industrial
capacities while developing simple, easily produced, ready to go, ship/aircraft
designs. We need F6F Hellcat designs ready to go, not some complex hybrid
battlecruiser-helicopter ships with COGASDIESELWARP infinitely cross-connected
propulsion drive that will fail every ten feet and that are going to soak up
all our funding that should be going to supply line development.
Think I’m being overly dramatic about this? Consider this current example of wartime
production problems (and we’re not even in a war!): having supplied a quarter of the US Stinger
air-to-air missile inventory to Ukraine[5], we are now finding out that we
can’t produce any replacements.[1]
Raytheon
Technologies this week announced that it will take multiple years before the
company is able to manufacture new Stinger missiles due to "a very limited
stock of material.[1]
You don’t win a war with the Stingers you have on hand, you
win with the tens of thousands of Stingers you produce during the war. Unfortunately, having no wartime production
plan, we now have no capability to produce more Stingers.
Similarly, for Javelins,
The
U.S. already has provided at least 7,000 Javelins, about one-third of its
stockpile, to Ukraine, according to an analysis by Mark Cancian, a senior
adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies international
security program.[5]
And these are just partial supplies to an ally (Ukraine is
not really an ally, they’re more an enemy of my enemy). We’re not even in a war!
The Navy, and many naval observers, are focused on ever
bigger and more multi-function ships such as the Burke flight 27 or whatever it’s
at now, Ford, and Zumwalt. Aside from
all the problems inherent in those programs, the worst characteristic, arguably,
is that they cannot be produced during a war in any useful time frame. Even if they all worked perfectly, they’re
unbuildable in any useful time frame.
Throw in the inevitable shortages of rare earths, computer chips, etc.
that would occur during war, and it’s quite likely that we can’t produce any
new ships.
In contrast, recall that we produced 157 Fletchers during
WWII (laid down and commissioned during the war). By comparison, it takes an average of about 4
years to produce one Burke.
One of the issues that we’ve all identified is the lack of
shipyards in the US. Without a doubt,
that’s a problem and we need more.
However, the number of shipyards is a much lesser problem compared to
raw materials, rare earths, computer chips, and other supply issues. We could have a hundred shipyards but without
large, assured supplies of raw materials, rare earths, computer chips, etc.
those shipyards couldn’t produce a single ship.
Summary
We need to stop our obsession with quantifying how many wars
we want to win and how big we can make our fleet and armies and start planning
for how we’ll produce our way to victory.
We lack many critical raw materials and, worse, have no coherent plan to
secure our raw material supply lines.
Now, during peace, is when we should be building our industrial capacity
and supply lines. We need to end our
dependence on China for rare earths. It’s
beyond insane to depend on your number one enemy for your number one raw
material !
Hand in hand with production capacity is the need for
simple, basic ship and aircraft designs that have been prototyped, proven, and
are ready to go. All the raw materials
and industrial capacity in the world is pointless if it takes us five years or
more to produce a single ship due to its complexity. We need Hellcats and Liberty ships, not Fords,
Zumwalts, Burke Flt 27s, and next-generation-warp-capable-invisible-drones.
Yes, we need a standing fleet, and a highly capable one, but
its purpose is not to win a war but to hold the line until production can gear
up.
____________________________________
[1]Newsmax website, “'Years' Before New Stingers Made”,
Theodore Bunker, 27-Apr-2022,
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/raytheon-stinger-missiles-supply-defense/2022/04/27/id/1067459/
[2]This set as an objective the ability for the US military
to simultaneously win two wars and while holding in another, smaller, regional
conflict.
[3] This set as an objective the ability for the US military
to win a single smaller, regional conflict while holding in another regional
conflict.
[4]Defense One website, “‘We Should Have Been There’: Marine
General Laments the State of the Amphib Navy”, Caitlin M. Kenney, 29-Apr-2022,
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2022/04/we-should-have-been-there-marine-general-laments-state-amphib-navy/366314/
[5]Newsmax website, “Push to Arm Ukraine Putting Strain on
US Weapons Stockpile”, 2-May-2022,
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/russian-ukraine-war-biden/2022/05/02/id/1068140/
