Discipline

No serious observer of US military forces can have failed to see the decline in training and readiness over the last few decades.  The following news article is testament to that decline by the fact that it is even newsworthy.
 

U.S. Army Gen. Christopher LaNeve, a commander known for enforcing strict discipline and later winning praise from President Donald Trump, is expected to become the Army's next top officer, according to U.S. officials.[1]

Isn’t enforcing strict discipline simply a given in a trained and ready military?  It should be!
 

Two years before joining War Secretary Pete Hegseth's inner circle, LaNeve built a reputation at the 82nd Airborne Division for rigidly enforcing rules, including banning cellphones during physical training and requiring troops to use only military-issued gear.[1]

Banning cell phones and insisting soldiers use military gear?!  What kind of nutcase is this guy?  More to the point, how far has discipline fallen if this is even a story? 
 
As you would expect,
 

The approach did not make him popular with many rank-and-file troops. Current and former members of the division said some soldiers booed LaNeve during All-American Week events in his final year commanding the unit.[1]

Anyone who booed should be instantly dishonorably discharged.  That they weren’t,  proves the depths to which discipline had fallen.
 
Fortunately, not all have bought into the fad of non-existent discipline.
 

However, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, a former 82nd Airborne commander who later recommended LaNeve for a senior Pentagon role, said the general restored discipline and traditional military values to the division.
 
"What he did, which I admired, he brought the 82nd — it had drifted away a bit — back to traditional training and traditional values," Kellogg said. "I think the Army had gotten away from the idea of traditionalism and what it means to fight and how to fight."[1]

Here’s where I fault SecDef Hegseth.  If the unit had “drifted away” from training and discipline, which is to say they drifted away from combat readiness, then the previous commander(s) should be promptly court-martialed for dereliction of duty and dishonorably discharged.  This is the kind of house-cleaning I had hoped Hegseth would implement and has not.  Very disappointing.
 
Please note that this post is not about Gen. LaNeve, specifically, but about discipline and training.  Indeed, LaNeve has some questionable actions he needs to be held accountable for.  For example,
 

In June 2023, LaNeve signed a Pride Month memo recognizing LGBTQ+ troops.[1]

The larger, main point is that military discipline has clearly deteriorated, badly, and needs to be reestablished immediately and forcefully.

 

__________________________________

 
[1]Newsmax website, “Gen. LaNeve Poised to Be Army's Next Top Officer”, Sandy Fitzgerald, 28-May-2026,
https://www.newsmax.com/us/christopher-laneve-army-pete-hegseth/2026/05/28/id/1257791/

Exercise Nonsense

The US participated in an island defense exercise as part of ‘Balikatan 2026’.  The following statement from a USNI News article on the exercise demonstrates why this kind of exercise is worse than useless.
 

At this point in the Littoral Deep Battle plan, an overwhelming torrent of fires ripped apart any notional enemies that made it to the beach.[1]

“Overwhelming torrent of fires” ????
“ripped apart any notional enemies”  ????
 
Who wrote this article … Steven Spielberg?
 
Where was the intelligent, free acting, well equipped enemy force with their own “overwhelming torrent of fires” ripping apart any notional defenders after having pounded the defenses with an overwhelming torrent of missiles, rockets, and drones?  Where was the attacker’s Gen. Van Riper?
 
One might be tempted to say, yeah, this wasn’t a perfect exercise but it was a start and better than nothing, right?  Wrong.  

First, it’s not a “start” on anything.  We should have been practicing assault defense for decades.  We should be well past the “starting” point.  

Second, and worse, we now have a group of officers and men who think this is how reality will be and they’ll have no idea what to do when the perfect, scripted actions they're used to are demolished by the enemy’s vote.  An NBA basketball team wouldn’t practice against a high school team and believe that would somehow prepare them for a championship game.  Why would we practice against a ludicrously simplistic “assault force” and believe for a second that it was in any way realistic or helpful?  All this did was establish and reinforce bad habits in our doctrine and our people.
 
I guess we learned our lesson from Millennium Challenge 2002.  You avoid controversy by making the exercise ridiculously easy.
 
 
 
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[1]USNI News website, “‘Littoral Deep Battle’ - The Army’s Plan to Defeat an Amphibious Invasion in the Indo-Pacific”, Aaron-Matthew Lariiosa, 5-May-2026,
https://news.usni.org/2026/05/05/littoral-deep-battle

This is Why You Don’t Depend on Allies

In my ongoing theme about the extremely questionable usefulness of training with, and depending on, allies, we get this:
 

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has demanded about seven countries send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, but his appeals have brought no commitments as oil prices soar during the Iran war.[1]

Any country that complains about increased oil prices has to explain why it won’t send military forces to ensure the uninterrupted flow of oil.
 
Any commentator who criticizes the US military for not keeping the strait open and shipping moving has to explain why they aren’t also asking why the affected countries aren’t providing military forces to ensure the uninterrupted flow of oil.
 
Each country has their own agenda but when those agendas frequently conflict with US interests, one has to wonder why we waste time, money, and resources training with countries that we can’t rely on.  Devoting resources to unreliable allies is illogical in the extreme..
 
The US is once again shouldering the burden of protecting the Middle East from terrorism, nuclear threats, and evil regimes with only Israel to aid us.  The rest of the world is content to stand off and reap the benefits without offering any support. 
 
Japan is bracing for potential gas shortages and increased prices.  Yeah?  Where are their military forces ensuring the safe passage of shipping through the strait?  Don’t complain if you’re not willing to do something about it.
 
This is entering into political commentary so I’ll leave it at that.
 
 
 
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[1]Navy Times website, “Trump asks ‘about 7′ countries for help to open the Strait of Hormuz”, Sam Metz, Will Weissert, Julia Frankel and Cara Anna, 16-Mar-2026,
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/03/16/trump-asks-about-7-countries-for-help-to-open-the-strait-of-hormuz/

AI Hacked – How Would We Know?

Since the age of sail, sailors have mastered the skill of navigation on the open seas using the stars and a sextant.  What happened when we introduced the miracle of GPS?  We completely lost our navigating skills.  Aside from a few individual throwbacks who enjoy using a sextant as a hobby, no one in the Navy can navigate without GPS.  Unbelievably, in some of the recent spate of collisions and groundings, it was discovered that bridge navigation teams had even lost the skill of fixing a position by taking bearings on known landmarks.
 
Since time immemorial, explorers have traversed the land using the stars, a map, and dead reckoning.  Our overland navigational skills increased even further with the advent of the compass.  Today, the Army has lost the ability to navigate overland without GPS.
 
Pilots used to be able to navigate cross country and hit a time on target to the second with nothing more than a map, bearings, and a stopwatch.  Today, that’s a lost skill.
 
GPS, the miracle of technology, caused us to lose our navigational skills and has made us weaker and less competent.  We have become dependent on GPS.  When our GPS systems fail or are degraded or eliminated by the enemy, we have nothing to fall back on.  Exactly like a drug addict, we have become addicted to GPS and unable to function without it.
 
What’s the next miracle of technology that we’re working so hard to acquire?  Yes, artificial intelligence (AI).  Does anyone have the slightest doubt that we’ll become utterly dependent on AI?
 
Ask a college student to write a report without using AI.  He’ll produce gibberish.  He’s lost his ability (or never developed it) to conduct research, assemble a cogent thesis, and present an intelligible, written document.  Heck, forget AI;  ask a student to write a paper without the Grammarly app and see what results.  Even simpler, ask any young adult who’s gone to public school to calculate change for a purchase in his head, without a calculator, and watch the deer in the headlights, frozen response.  We’ve become dependent on calculators and can’t even do simple arithmetic in our heads anymore.
 
Does anyone have the slightest doubt that we’ll become utterly dependent on AI?
 
The military, by the way, is attempting to make AI the foundation of our entire command and control systems.  We believe, mistakenly, that AI will give us the advantage we need to beat China.  AI, we believe, will analyze all our data, make sense of the fog of war, tell us exactly what the enemy is going to do even before he knows, and will tell us how to counter and defeat the enemy.  AI.  Magic.  One and the same.
 
Those of us who grew up during the introduction of computers are all too familiar with the well known computer programming adage, Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO).  Bad data in, bad results out.  AI is not immune to this phenomenon.
 
Be honest.  Does anyone seriously question what they find on the Internet?  Sure, we’ll make jokes about the Internet but does anyone actually question what they read?  Of course not.
 
Does anyone have the slightest doubt that we’ll become utterly dependent on AI?
 
Where are we going with this?  Hang in there.  We’re almost at the point of the post.  One more tidbit to assimilate.
 
Does a week go by without hearing about high level computer systems and programs, both in the military and civilian worlds, being hacked?  Nope.  And those are just the incidents that are made public.  The military and government computers and programs are hacked on a daily basis but for security reasons the incidents are kept quiet.  Despite our best efforts, various state and criminal actors routinely hack our most secure systems.  For all practical purposes, they’re unstoppable.
 
So, now put those two bits together:  absolute dependency on new technology and unstoppable hacking, and ask yourself what the result will be? 
 
The answer is easy to predict.  China will routinely hack and compromise our AI-based systems and we’ll by absolutely paralyzed because of our dependency.
 
But wait, it gets worse.  What if China hacks our AI-based systems subtly and we don’t even know it?  What if they simply manipulate the AI to give us results that give them the advantage?  We’d blindly accept the results (that’s what dependency is), never questioning them and never knowing we were being mislead and manipulated.  In fact, it would never even occur to us to ask whether the AI output was valid.
 
But wait, it gets still worse.  Even if someone was inclined to question AI results, we have no one competent enough to know what a valid result should be.  You have to have subject matter knowledge and expertise to even have an idea that something might not be right and our so-called professional warriors have no expertise (you built a ship without galvanic corrosion protection!).  So, even someone who was inclined to question a result wouldn’t have the slightest idea whether the result was or was not valid.
 
A calculator is a great tool for someone who has been trained in classical math and can recognize a garbage out result.  It is a terrible tool for someone who has no useful math skills and is unable to recognize a garbage out result.  So too, an AI command and control program could be a useful tool to a thoroughly trained and experienced professional warrior who can recognize a garbage out result.  It is a terrible tool for someone who has no useful warfighting skills and is unable to recognize a garbage out result … such as entire current flag officer corps.
 
We all recognize that networked computers are a vulnerability because if one is hacked, they’re all hacked.  We aren’t doing much to address that vulnerability but we do recognize it.  Similarly, we must recognize that AI is a vulnerability, especially when it’s being used as the basis of our highest level command and control programs.
 
Right now, just like drug dealers, we’re being given a free taste of AI to get us hooked.  We need to halt the process before we become totally addicted and helplessly dependent.  We need to regain our unaided warfighting expertise.  We do that by eliminating all non-war education (diversity, equity, gender sensitivity, climate, etc.) at the service academies, eliminating diversity crap from the leadership and ranks, ruthlessly eliminating paperwork from the daily lives of officers, eliminating deployments, bringing the fleet home for maintenance and training, start promoting a culture of acceptance of aggressiveness and ‘good’ mistakes, and start conducting daily realistic warfighting exercises and force our incompetent leadership to learn their profession.
 

A Realistic Exercise?

As you know, ComNavOps has often criticized Navy exercises as being absurdly unrealistic but does anyone do it better?  Well, the French have conducted  what they feel is a realistic combat exercise, Polaris 25, involving air, sea, and land forces.  How realistic was it?
 
Before we go any further, note that the details of the exercise were few and sketchy for obvious reasons.  Still, we’ll do the best we can with what we have to work with.
 
The French claim it was realistic and unscripted in terms of the actions of the participants.
 

… the POLARIS exercises seek to make naval combat as realistic as possible, … where almost any move is permitted within the constraints previously indicated.[1]
 
The two forces were ‘free’ in their tactical choices. The exercise therefore unfolded according to the decisions made.[2]

The exercise included electronic warfare, cyber, social, and other domains to an unknown degree.[2]
 
Okay, that sounds good but what public relations blurb doesn’t?  Let’s look closer.
 
The French blue force consisted of,
 

• 5 frigates
• 5 LHDs
• ATL2 Maritime Patrol Aircraft
• Rafales Marine from the French Navy and the French Air and Space Force
• Special forces from the French Navy
• Helicopters and infantry from the French Army

 
The opposing red force consisted of,
 

• 6 ships reinforced by a French Suffren-class submarine

 
 
Hmm … does that sound like equal, balanced forces offering realistic capabilities and fostering a realistic free play exercise or does it begin to sound like a fairly one-sided, pre-ordained setpiece?  Let’s keep going.
 

If a ship was hit, its damaged systems remained out of service until the end of the exercise, or until it was repaired if possible. Similarly, if a vessel was sunk, it was permanently out of the exercise.[2]
 
In the scenario, ships sailed with their theoretical ammunition levels and other logistics. There were no “magic” reloads. The ship had to withdraw to reload with food or ammunition, either by refueling at sea or by reaching support points.[2]

Okay, that’s outstanding, if they actually held to that.
 

Aquitaine Class FREMM

 
Results
 
Little was offered publicly in the way of results but let’s look at what we do have.
 

During the second phase – phase of the naval combat, the officers suggested that a great deal of damage had been caused on both sides with water leaks, loss of communications, etc. More importantly, “several ships were sunk or torpedoed”,[1]

Given the extremely limited number of ships in the exercise, if several ships were sunk, what was left to carry out the mission/exercise?  This is where one begins to wonder about the realism of the exercise.  Were sunken ships really removed from the exercise or did they continue on?
 
What did losing several ships teach the French?  What was the major lesson learned?
 

… firepower is everything. When lethal weapons are used, which was the case for both forces, the damage is rapid and significant.[1]

Firepower is important??!!  Really?  You needed an exercise to tell you that?  If so, you’ve forgotten everything about warfare and naval combat … which, like the US Navy, you probably have.  Sad.
 
The landing portion of the exercise was decidedly unrealistic.
 

It should be pointed out that the coastal threats were relatively low, with only a few ‘red force’ air defence units in the way.[1]

So … no opposed landing.  That’s optimistic in the extreme and offers no potential for lessons learned.  At that point, it’s just an administrative unloading of troops.
 
More on the landing portion.
 

… the LHDs simulated the landing of US Marine units with their HIMARS on islands off the landing zone in order to create a A2/AD area and secure the operation … [1][emphasis added]

So, simulated HIMARS operations?  So much for realism.
 
And,
 

Another first was that the image stream captured by the S-100 could be transmitted directly to land units disembarking, enabling them to adapt their manoeuvres.[1]

So, unhindered broad bandwidth streaming data?  I guess electronic and cyber warfare wasn’t included in the realism, after all?
 
 
Conclusion
 
Well, without more actual information it’s impossible to draw much in the way of valid conclusions but it sounds like aspects of the exercise were conducted with more realism than US Navy exercises (admittedly, a pretty low bar) but there are suggestions that they did not hold to the degree of realism they claimed.
 
The finding that firepower is paramount was absurdly hilarious.  What has this entire blog emphasized?  For that matter, what did WWII emphasize?  Do we really have to conduct exercises to learn the patently obvious?
 
All in all, it sounds like a better exercise than the US Navy conducts but still far short of being realistic and useful.
 
 
 
_________________________________

 
[1]Naval News website, “POLARIS 25 – Feedback on the French Navy’s largest exercise – Part 2”, Martin Manaranche, 4-Aug-2025,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/08/polaris-25-feedback-on-the-french-navys-largest-exercise-part-2/
 
[2]Naval News website, “POLARIS 25 – Feedback on the French Navy’s largest exercise – Part 1”, Martin Manaranche, 16-Jul-2025,
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/07/polaris-25-feedback-on-the-french-navys-largest-exercise-part-1/

Joke of an Amphibious Exercise

Japan and the US just recently conducted an amphibious assault exercise, Iron Fist 2025. 
 
“Iron Fist” !!!  Yeah!  Visions of crushing, overwhelming, amphibious firepower swarming ashore from dozens of amphibious ships loaded with troops and equipment.  Aircraft carpet bombing the assault site.  Naval guns roaring.  Stunned defenders, shell-shocked, cowering and watching in disbelief.  Explosions, devastation, domination!  “Iron Fist” !!!
 
The exercise lasted one hour. 

… hourlong amphibious landing exercise carried out by the Marines and Japan’s Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade … [1]

One hour … to master amphibious assault.  Wow.  That’s some serious dedication to training, isn’t it?
 
What did the exercise consist of? 

200 U.S. Marines and sailors along with 200 Japanese soldiers executed four waves of beach assaults. Equipment utilized therein included: combat rubber reconnaissance craft in the first wave; six Japanese amphibious assault vehicles (presumably the AAV7A1) in the second wave; followed by a Japanese air-cushioned landing craft (presumably the Landing Craft, Air Cushion built by Textron Systems) in the third wave. Meanwhile, two USMC AH-1Z Viper helicopter gunships (the successor to the legendary AH-1W Whiskey Cobra chopper) provided aerial reconnaissance and firepower.[1]

Let’s total up the immense amounts of amphibious equipment used in this exercise:
 

• Some rubber boats
• 6x Japanese AAV
• 1x Japanese LCAC
• 2x US helos

 
If that didn’t prepare the US Marines for amphibious operations, I don’t know what could.  The ground must have shaken under the weight of that kind of force.  The Chinese had to be quaking in their boots (or peeing their pants laughing), witnessing that exercise.  Seriously, is this the best we can do with our training time?
 

Amphibious Assault Force

This is an April Fool’s post, right?  Sadly, no.  This is what passes for a major exercise today.
 
 
 
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[1]The National Interest website, “Iron Fist 2025: USMC and JSDF Troops Train for Amphibious Warfare”, Christian D. Orr, 9-Mar-2025,
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/iron-fist-2025-usmc-and-jsdf-troops-train-for-amphibious-warfare

This is Why I Provide References

I wouldn’t believe this stuff if I didn’t read it myself.  This is a bit of news I pulled from my own research archives and, no, it’s not an April Fool’s joke.  It’s real.
 
The Marine’s 3^rd Littoral Regiment [MLR] conducted a major exercise in late 2021 and early 2022 called Spartan Trident.  Okay, that sounds mildly aggressive and slightly belligerent.  Might be interesting.  Ought to involve some combat skills.  Let’s see what they did.
 
From the official Marine website, Spartan Trident was a three part exercise.[1]
 
Part 1
 

The first part of Spartan Trident consisted of a series of interactive discussions … This portion of the exercise took place from Dec. 6 to Dec. 10, 2021[1] [emphasis added]

Yes, you read that right.  Part 1 of the exercise consisted of discussions.  That’s not really an exercise, is it?
 
 
Part 2
 

The second part of the Spartan Trident Continuum took place from Jan. 11 to Feb. 11, 2022 and consisted of one week of planning … [1] [emphasis added]

Yes, you read that right.  Part 2 of the exercise consisted of planning.  Again, that’s not really an exercise, is it?
 
 
Part 3
 

The third and final part of the Spartan Trident Continuum took place from Sept. 12 to Sept. 30, 2022. This phase was focused on refining standard operating procedures … [1] [emphasis added]
 
During the scenario, the 3rd MLR organized into three command and control elements displaced across Marine Corps Base Hawaii to rehearse sustaining expeditionary sites, enabling fires, supporting maritime domain awareness, and supporting the joint campaign across the competition continuum.[1]

Apparently, some people ‘rehearsed’ procedures that supported the “joint campaign across the competition continuum”.  Seriously?  The ‘competition continuum’?  What is this, the rhythmic gymnastics event in the Olympics?
 
Did you also note that the activities were confined to the Marine base in Hawaii as opposed to out in the field?
 
I have no further details but this sounds suspiciously like a nine to five working day with some table top work to ‘rehearse’ procedures.  Don’t you ‘rehearse’ procedures out in the field, under enemy attack, for days on end as if you were … you know … in combat?

Conclusion
 
There you have it.  A major, 3-part exercise that consisted of talking and, apparently, some paperwork about standards.  You probably thought a major exercise required some degree of field work and combat simulations but you’d be wrong.  A little talking and a little paperwork is all we need.
 
How valuable was the exercise?  Incredibly so … according to the Marines.
 

… the unit has redesignated as an MLR and has proven its value as a joint force enabler. The progress is incredible.[1]

That’s all it takes to prove a unit’s value as a ‘joint force enabler’:  some discussions, some planning, and some standard operating procedures!  Do that and you’ll be incredible!
 
If I didn’t provide references for this stuff, you wouldn’t believe me, would you?
 
 
 
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[1]https://www.marines.mil/News/News-Display/Article/3180415/3rd-marine-littoral-regiment-concludes-spartan-trident/

Bringing Home the Fleet

In a recent post, a reader, referencing the current ‘3 ships to keep one deployed (3:1)’ model, asked this, 

Can we alter or change the maintenance, training, and deployable cycle we have into something better? Obviously with the shipyard logjam, we couldn't have all ships "up" at once, but could we somehow tinker, and maybe flip that to 2/3 ready, or more?[1]

My initial reaction was slight irritation and disbelief that after all the time I’ve spent advocating ending deployments and bringing the fleet home, people still didn’t understand the concept.  A few more seconds thought and I realized that the question was perfectly apropos because I’d failed to adequately explain the concept.  Yes, I’d talked endlessly about bringing the fleet home and some of the gross benefits that would derive from that (improved readiness, enhanced training, better maintenance, etc.) but I’d never bothered to explain exactly how all these benefits would come about.  What procedures would change to allow this?  What circumstances would change?  How, exactly, would these benefits occur?
 
I’d like to apologize to that reader and rectify my oversight, now, and explain how and why this would work.
 
 
Circumstances
 
Let’s look, first, at the change in circumstances that would result from a switch to home basing the fleet.
 
Miles – The most obvious change in circumstance would be that the ships wouldn’t deploy.  They’d be home based.  Okay, so how does this help?  Well, the home basing means that the ships wouldn’t be racking up endless miles which is another way of saying wear and tear.  A ship at home simply doesn’t wear out as fast as one on a 6-12 month deployment.
 
Support – Being home based means that every ship is within arm’s length of ready maintenance support.  That support takes the form of a ready supply of parts, repair technicians, machine shops, skilled trades, cranes, etc.  There would be no more delayed/deferred maintenance that piles up during an extended, many-month deployment.
 
It’s embarrassing for the Navy to even have to say this but the support would include corrosion control so that our ships don’t look like rusted out garbage scows.
 
Training – Did you know that a deploying group loses capability and readiness as the cruise goes on?  That’s because they don’t do what they’re trained to do while on a cruise.  They aren’t attacking or defending.  Instead, they’re just showing the flag and dozens of other utterly useless tasks.  A deployed group is less combat capable when they return from deployment than when they started.  How backward and unproductive – indeed, counterproductive! – is that!  A group that goes out should come back more combat capable than when they began.  After all, they were at sea and sea time should be all about high intensity, realistic training, not scut work (to borrow a medical term for pointless tasks).
 
The home base circumstance eliminates deployments and the associated, unavoidable degradation of readiness and, instead, allows continuous training.
 

Method
 
This is the key part.  Unless executing an actual mission, every home based ship is constantly doing one of only two things:
 

• Training
• Maintaining

 
That’s it.  Just those two things.  There are no other activities. 
 
In fact, even during maintenance, the bulk of the crew will still be training.  While a ship is in dry dock or tied up pier side for maintenance, the crew is still training (simulators, walkthroughs, courses, etc.)
 
So, what does this mean?  This is what I’ve failed to convey.  Every ship is always ready to surge to a real mission because there is no maintenance backlog because every maintenance item is attended to immediately.  If you haven’t deployed and developed a backlog of hundreds of maintenance items, there won’t be dry dock and pier side maintenance scheduling issues.  Every issue is addressed immediately.  Thus, at any given moment, no ship can have more than a single open maintenance item because every maintenance item is dealt with immediately.  That makes every ship continuously ‘ready’ and readiness is always 100% of the fleet.
 
Relax.  I know there are scheduled – and occasionally unscheduled! – major repairs or overhauls that are required and that results in a certain percentage of the fleet being hard down and unavailable.  We have something like twenty dry docks of various types so say twenty ships are always unavailable.  As of this writing, there are 296 ships in the Navy (includes various logistic and support ships that are active but not commissioned).  So, that leaves around 276 ships that should always be classified as ready and available.   That’s 93% of the fleet in a constant state of readiness. 
 
In contrast, currently, the Navy is attempting to achieve a state of around 75 deployable ships.  Out of a fleet of 296, that’s just 25% readiness and despite having been trying to achieve that for some time now, they’ve failed.  Fifty ships is the current readiness level and that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon.  Fifty ships represents just 17% readiness of the fleet.  No wonder Lincoln only got three escorts!
 
Even ships that are undergoing some kind of pier side maintenance (tear down of a piece of equipment, for example) can be made ready almost instantly with a quick restoration of the affected equipment.  At most, the ship would have a single item in a degraded state which would still classify the ship as ready.
 
Today, ships routinely sail with long laundry lists of down or degraded equipment.  The Port Royal grounding, for example, saw that the ship’s navigation systems and many other systems were down or degraded despite having just come out of maintenance!  Every deployed ship has a long list of down or degraded equipment (casualties, as the Navy calls them).  A deployment is the worst possible thing you can do to a ship as regards readiness and maintenance and the longer the deployment, the worse the situation becomes.
 
With home basing, here’s what a typical ship’s month might look like:
 

• A week spent training for an upcoming exercise and/or general training.
• A week at sea in an exercise which includes 24 hour, intensive training leaving the crew exhausted each night and with no desire or energy to even think about video games, lounges, haircuts, weight lifting, movies, or any other crew comfort activity.
• A week spent debriefing and re-training the just completed exercise.
• A week spent performing preventive/routine maintenance.
• An occasional day sprinkled in addressing any emergent, unscheduled maintenance need.

 
Individual crew members might be sent to a shore training course at any time, subject to instant recall, if needed.
 
 
We see, then, that the keys to making this work are:
 

• Address maintenance issues instantly, as they arise.  No deferred maintenance.
• Constant training.
• Regular, short episodes of sea time conducting realistic exercises.  The short time frames eliminate the need for all but the most basic and necessary crew comforts.  Toilets? – squat over the stern!  Berthing? – hang a hammock somewhere!

 
 
Maintenance

Hand in hand with home basing is the requirement to return to ship-supplied maintenance instead of depending on contractors and shore support.  Yes, there will always be things that require a contractor (Aegis software or hardware support, for example) or shore support (specialized repair equipment, for example) but we need to return the majority of the maintenance responsibility back to the ship’s crew.  What better training is there for a crew than to maintain and repair their own equipment?
 
We need to include much more extensive machine shop facilities, electronic shop facilities, welding shops and equipment, etc. in our ship designs.  Let’s remove the now unneeded crew comfort spaces and replace them with ship maintenance and repair shops.  The crew can collect their mail, get a haircut, visit the bank, and watch a movie on shore since they’ll only typically be at sea for a few days or a week at a time.
 
Returning ship maintenance to the ship will also alleviate the burden on the shore maintenance support resources.  We shouldn’t need shore support to rebuild a pump, tear down a valve, replace seals, etc.  Those skills and capabilities should be inherent within the ship.
 
 
Benefits
 
So, to sum up, what do we gain from home basing the fleet?
 

• Constant training instead of just occasional pre-deployment training every year or so
• Constant maintenance instead of delayed/deferred maintenance at the end of a deployment
• 93% fleet readiness instead of 17% readiness
• No forward exposure offering an enemy a free ‘Pearl Harbor’ opportunity
• Maximum flexibility;  if all the ships are ready and available, our mission options are unlimited

 
 
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[1]Jjabatie, “Lincoln Escorts”, August 20, 2024 at 2:17 PM,
https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2024/08/lincoln-escorts.html?showComment=1724188632892#c8797956642859824661

Train Like You Fight

The Captain set the message down after reading it to the officers assembled in the wardroom.  Setting aside all the navalese language, it directed him and his Burke class destroyer to divert from their current assignment, take aboard some observers, which they had already done, and transit to the Navy’s new live fire training area located well off the west coast of the United States and engage with live weapons – he had read that part to his officers with an incredulous voice - any valid target detected.  The Captain and his ship were about to be subjected to the Navy’s newest training exercise.  His would be only the second ship to undergo the training and he knew nothing about it;  scuttlebutt was non-existent.  Still, one Navy training exercise was like the next, he was sure.  He assumed he would be given detailed instructions – Navy training exercises were nothing if not highly scripted.  Oddly, though, he had been directed to choose his own course, time and speed to enter the training area and been told only to enter the area by a certain date/time and remain in the area until specifically notified that training was over.  He had no idea how long the training would last.  He assumed that it would be a few hours based on previous exercises.
 
“All right, gentlemen, here’s what we’re going to do.  We’ll be entering the training area in about one hour.  I want to complete this exercise in a timely fashion and set the standard for the ships that follow.  We’ll go to General Quarters when we enter the area.  I expect we’ll receive detailed instructions at that point.  Let’s make sure all our systems are ready and let’s have our best people in place. Questions?”
 
“Captain, that’s not a lot of time to run system checks,” the XO pointed out.
 
“I know it, XO.  Make it happen anyway!”
 
Acknowledging the Captain, the XO grimaced inwardly.  No amount of desire or enthusiasm was going to get some of those Aegis computer system spare parts installed that the ship didn’t have on board and had been on order for almost six months.  Similarly, the CIWS which had been spontaneously resetting on occasion during checks wasn’t going to be miraculously fixed in the next hour.  Still, he’d do everything he could.
 
Unnoticed, or rather ignored, the observer in the back of the room made a quick note on his clipboard of documents.  The Captain thought the training exercise wouldn’t begin for another hour but it had actually begun the moment he had received the notification message and, so far, the Captain wasn’t doing well.
 
An hour later, the ship entered the training area.  The ship was at GQ and the best sailors were in place at each critical post.  The Captain waited impatiently in CIC for his instructions.  The observer simply stood quietly in the background, making an occasional note.  As time passed with no additional instructions forthcoming, the Captain’s impatience grew.  After an hour, the Captain radioed for instructions.  The reply was short and succinct – “continue training”.  What training, the Captain wondered sarcastically?
 
All right, the Captain thought, someone is trying to screw with the normal training procedures.  Well, he wasn’t about to be caught flatfooted.
 
“Listen up, people.  We’re going to stay at GQ until whoever’s running this exercise gets their act together.  We’re not going to relax and get caught by surprise.  Let’s stay on top of things.”
 
Nine hours later, the Captain and crew were exhausted and frustrated by the complete lack of activity.  Nothing had happened.  True, sonar had generated their usual litany of non-specific contacts that had been aggressively pursued only to vanish – biologics, probably.  The ship’s helo was now down for maintenance after spending the last several hours chasing spurious contact reports.  Utterly disgusted at the wasted time, the Captain finally decided to call it quits for the day.  Whoever was running this exercise had obviously screwed up badly and he’d attempt to sort things out tomorrow.  With that, the ship secured from General Quarters. 
 
“XO”, the Captain called out, “get that CIWS torn down tonight and figure out what’s wrong before we try this exercise again tomorrow.”
 
Again, unseen, the observer’s mouth twitched in what might have been a small grin.
 
Three hours later, with most of the crew having just settled in for some much needed rest and with the ‘third string’ manning the watch stations, the ship was ripped awake by the sound of the General Quarters call.  Staggering to his feet, the Captain ran to CIC.
 
“Report,” he yelled as he entered.
 
“We’ve got an unidentified contact inbound bearing 265 relative, 20 miles out, speed Mach 1.3.  It’s right down on the waves.  Collision course.  Impact in just over 1 minute.”
 
“ESM indicates it’s a Russian SS-N-22 Sunburn.”
 
A target drone, the Captain assumed.  “Put the CIWS on it,” he shouted.
 
“CIWS is down for repairs per your orders, sir.”
 
“Well, get it back up”, the Captain yelled, frantically!
 
Unfortunately, there was no time.  The missile was approaching at over 16 miles per minute and impact was now less than 30 seconds.
 
“What’s going on?”, the Captain yelled to no one in particular.  “This is supposed to be training but that thing is going to hit us!”
 
At that moment, 1 mile out, the drone missile pulled up, angled just over the top of the destroyer, and passed overhead with a shattering boom.  The CIC watchstanders were shaken while cups, papers, tools, and other items were knocked onto the deck.
 
“What the hell was that?”, the Captain again asked of no one.  “That wasn’t training.  That was a reckless safety violation!  Someone’s going to pay for that.”
 
The Captain immediately sent out an urgent message demanding to know who had screwed up a simple training exercise.  The instant reply was, “Continue training.”
 
The Captain had no time to wonder before his thoughts were again rudely interrupted.
 
“Multiple airborne contacts bearing 135 relative, 78 miles, speed 480 kts.  They’ll pass about 10 miles off our starboard side if they continue on course.  No emissions but they’re squawking civilian.”
 
“Let ‘em come”, the Captain replied.  “This is a test and I’m not going to Vincennes them.”
 
The Captain was all too aware of the Vincennes incident where an Aegis cruiser had badly misinterpreted its sensor data and shot down a civilian airliner in the belief that it was an attacking aircraft.  That incident had become part of Navy institutional memory and it was ingrained in every Captain never to repeat that event.
 
In the background, the observer frowned slightly and made more notes.
 
Minutes passed as the aircraft got closer and then came the half-expected announcement.
 
“Surface contact, bearing 334 relative, 21 miles, speed 24 kts.  Contact is coming straight at us.”
 
“There”, the Captain said, a note of triumph in his voice, “That’s the real target.  They were hoping we’d focus on the aircraft and miss the real threat coming from the surface.”
 
“Weapons, put a couple SM-6 missiles on that surface ship.”
 
Lacking Harpoons or the recently canceled LRASM, Standard missiles were the only anti-ship weapon available.
 
“Captain, we don’t have a positive ID on the target, yet.  There are no emissions and we don’t have a visual.”
 
“It’s the real threat”, the Captain answered. “They tried to fool us.  Designate and launch.”
 
Unprepared for the command, inexperienced, and inadequately trained, the ‘third string’ operators took over two minutes to designate the target, prep the launch cycle, and execute the launch.  Moments after the two missiles launched, the EO sensor operator announced that he had a visual on the target.
 
“Sir, it appears to be a civilian yacht of some sort!”
 
The Captain blanched.  Had he just executed a Vincennes on a civilian yacht that had wandered into the training area?
 
“Direct hit.  The target is gone.”
 
“Stand down”, the Captain frantically yelled.  “Secure all weapons.”
 
The observer shook his head minutely and made another note.
 
Suddenly, the Captain heard another announcement. 
 
“New targets inbound.  Bearing 110 degrees relative, speed Mach 0.8, altitude 20 meters.  They appear to be missiles launched from the civilian aircraft.”
 
The Captain was dumbfounded and froze.  He had been certain the aircraft were civilian, trying to fool him into doing a Vincennes.  Instead, it appeared that they were the real threat and had been from the start.  All the ship’s weapons were in standby and there was nothing available to defend.
 
Even more stunning, the incoming missiles (target drones, he assumed) did not turn away.  Instead, at the last moment, each elevated slightly, separated a small, inert, frangible ‘warhead’, and passed closely directly over the ship.  As they did, he felt several thuds as the inert ‘warheads’ impacted the ship. 
 
“What was that?”, he called frantically.  “Did we just get hit by a target drone?”
 
Before he could get an answer, another contact report came.
 
“Torpedoes inbound.  Range one mile.  Speed 55 kts.”
 
“What?!  How did torpedoes get so close without being detected?”, he yelled.
 
The third string sonar operator, who was still trying to get qualified, was unable to answer before more reports started flooding in.
 
“Damage Control reports several fires.  Smoke spreading throughout the ship.”
 
The various observers scattered throughout the ship had designated areas as hit and on fire and, in addition, had ignited multiple smoke bombs.  They couldn’t start actual fires but they could replicate the smoke that would be filling the ship if this had been real.
 
“Aircraft are turning and re-engaging.”
 
“Turn to unmask the CIWS”, the Captain yelled, forgetting that the CIWS was down and coughing as smoke from an adjoining compartment began filling the space.
 
The ship began to turn to bring the single CIWS to bear on the aircraft’s threat vector but part way through the turn the Captain corrected himself.
 
“No, wait.  We need to run from the torpedoes.  They’re the bigger threat!  Put us on the same course as the torpedoes.”
 
Part way through the turn, the Captain again corrected himself.  “Wait, it’s too late.  We can’t outrun the torpedoes.  They’re already too close.  Unmask the CIWS!”, he yelled, his voice rising in pitch.  It was too much.  He was being overwhelmed with information and threats.
 
Moments later he felt the impact as four inert torpedoes slammed into the hull.
 
“Radar is down.”  An observer had directed the operator to shut down the radar to simulate damage.
 
“Damage Control reports at least four underwater impacts and one leak from a cracked hull plate.”
 
The leak was substantial and real.  The torpedo warheads were inert but the lightly built Burkes could not absorb even an inert warhead impacting at 55 kts.  The damage control reports were confused, panicked, inaccurate, and real.
 
With that, the power flickered and cut out.  One emergency light came on and two others did not.  An observer had disabled them prior to the exercise to see if anyone could repair them.  As it turned out, no one even tried.
 
And so the exercise continued with the ship’s condition and the crew’s performance rapidly deteriorating.  The scheduled debrief was going to be brutal.  The Admiral in charge of this training program had directed the observers to be unfailingly objective and to spare no feelings.  No one had expected the exercise to go well but this was poor even by that standard.  Still, considering that the Navy had not conducted realistic training for decades, it wasn’t surprising. 
 
The ship now had several dents from the various inert ‘warhead’ impacts and a handful of minor damage to repair but that was an acceptable part of achieving combat readiness and the forced drydocking would be used to accomplish various equipment undates and long deferred maintenance.
 
Painful as it might be, this was the first step in returning the Navy to an actual warfighting organization.
 
Forty eight hours later, after a continuing series of very realistic events and with an exhausted crew staggering through actual damage control efforts, the exercise concluded and the lead observer completed his final on-board paperwork;  a full report would come later.  The last two questions on his checklist were the most important.  The first concerned the ship’s combat readiness, which the observer unhesitatingly checked as ‘Not Ready’.  The second asked for his recommendation on the Captain’s fitness for continued command.  The observer sadly shook his head slightly and checked ‘Unfit’.  The current Captain would take the ship into drydock but someone else would be taking it back out.  As much as this exercise had been a training and readiness test, it had also been a combat mentality assessment of the Captain and he had failed, badly.
 
 
 
Discussion Points
 
-We need to allow a mild degree of risk and physical damage In our training through the use of inert or frangible warheads.  Military service does not come with a guarantee of safety.  As a point of historical interest, pre-WWII training saw the use of bags of flour dropped on ships as surrogates for bombs.  Once upon a time, Infantry training used live machine gun fire as an incentive to keep one’s head down.
 
-Training needs to be unscripted.
 
-Training needs to be continuous and prolonged.
 
-Training needs to be realistic.
 
-There needs to be negative consequences for poor performance in training while recognizing that training is the time to make mistakes and must be consequence free.  In other words, we need to distinguish between correctable mistakes and uncorrectable poor performance (lack of combat mentality).

Don’t Train With Allies – More Proof

ComNavOps has long stated that we shouldn’t be wasting time cross-training with allies (see, “This Is Why You Don’tTrain With Allies”) since, far too often, they have their own agendas and won’t support us when needed.  That being the case, it is a pointless waste of time and resources to cross train.  Needless to say, this is not a universally popular position.  It is, however, supremely correct.  The latest example is the US attempt to form an alliance to protect shipping off Yemen from Houthi missile and drone attacks.
 
The concept of a naval coalition, while strongly indicating that the US lacks the will and courage to take unilateral action to defend itself and others, seems simple enough.  Various countries with shipping interests in the area band together to provide for the common defense. 
 
Unfortunately, even this simple, if weak, response appears to be beyond the capabilities of the US Navy and the administration.  Redstate website has an excellent summary article describing the failure of the coalition.  

The final box score shows that the 20 coalition members will contribute a total of two surface combatants.[1]

France and Spain have refused to participate under US leadership and most other countries have opted to limit their participation to sending staff officers.  Redstate reports that the 20 nominal participating countries are sending just two ships but are contributing 27 staff officers. 
 
Without debating the merits of the attempted naval coalition, this vividly demonstrates ComNavOps’ contention that allies simply can’t be counted on and it is, therefore, a waste of time cross training with them.
 
By the way, the two countries that agreed to send a ship were the UK and Italy.
 
 
 
_________________________________

 
[1]Redstate website, “Red Sea Security Coalition Melts Down As Member Nations Refuse to Accept US Leadership”, Streiff, 23-Dec-2023,
https://redstate.com/streiff/2023/12/23/red-sea-security-coalition-melts-down-as-member-nations-refuse-to-accept-us-leadership-n2167876

This is NOT How You Prepare for War

The Independence variant LCS-18, USS Charleston, just completed a 26 month overseas deployment.  That’s incredible!  More than two years at the tip of the spear.  They must have done lots of realistic exercises and live fire events to demonstrate their readiness and maintain the honed edge of readiness. 

… the ship successfully launched a Rolling Airframe Missile (SeaRAM) during an at-sea, live-fire exercise … [1]

While deployed, Charleston was embarked with the Naval Strike Missile …  “We do have a typical load-out that we maintain throughout the deployment,” Knuth [Cmdr. Matthew Knuth, gold crew commanding officer] said of the NSM. “That said, we did not do any live fire testing of the missile.”[1]

Let’s add up the live fire testing of the various weapon systems over the 26 month period.  This involves high level math and large numbers so, don’t worry, I’ll do it for you.

 

1 RAM + 0 NSM = 1 launch

 

That’s the raw data.  Let’s do some analysis and calculate the average weapon firings per year.

 

1 launch / 2.2 years = 0.4 launches per year

 

There’s your Navy.  Prepared for anything and, why not?  They did enough live fire exercises to be supremely proficient at combat launches and utterly confident that their equipment and systems would work under any of the 1 or 0 conditions that were tested.

 

The LCS, as you know, operates with a 2-crew, Blue-Gold, manning system wherein the crews rotate on and off the ship.  Just out of curiosity, I wonder which of the two crews got to do the 1 RAM launch?  The other crew, of course, would have spent two years with the ship and never fired a weapon.  How’s that for readiness and training?!

 

At the end of the 26 month deployment, this ship and its crews were the epitome of trained maritime warriors based on all the live fire exercises they did.

 

Idle thought:  Did anyone even look inside the NSM canisters to see if there were actually missiles there?  They didn’t do any test launches so one can’t help but wonder …  German soldiers have trained with broomsticks instead of rifles so is it really that much of a stretch to wonder if we really have missiles on board the LCS?  Just saying …

 

On a seemingly unrelated note … WWII US torpedoes …  Am I the only one who can see the parallels?

 

 

____________________________

 

[1]USNI News website, “Littoral Combat Ship USS Charleston Completes 26-Month Deployment to Western Pacific”, Gidget Fuentes, 21-Jun-2023,

https://news.usni.org/2023/06/21/littoral-combat-ship-uss-charleston-completes-26-month-deployment-to-western-pacific

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Here’s another Air Force issue that is highly relevant to the Navy and the military, in general.
 
Boeing’s T-7A Red Hawk is years behind schedule.  This is not a highly complex, F-22/35 type stealth combat aircraft;  it’s a simple trainer intended to replace the Air Force’s T-38 Talon.  As a Drive website article notes, the T-7A was going to revolutionize aircraft design and construction by using computers and digital models. 

Advertised by the Air Force and Boeing as the service’s first "digitally designed and engineered" aircraft, T-7A was lauded as a poster child for developmental speed.[1]
 
The Red Hawk was expected to begin a new era in rapid design and engineering with iterative development carried out in the virtual world via modeling and simulation without having to bend metal or conduct extensive real-world testing. Systems integration would be accelerated and the time from the first flight to production significantly compressed.
 
It hasn’t worked out that way.[1]

Foolishly, we assign an aura of infallibility, bordering on a religious faith, to everything digital.  The reality, however, is that everything in the digital world  …  everything  … let me repeat that  …  everything  …  is governed by the ancient computer programming adage, GIGO which stands for,
 
Garbage In, Garbage Out
 
It doesn’t matter how brilliant your program is, if you feed it garbage input, you get garbage output. 

“A funny thing happens when you move out of digits to reality,” Teal Group analyst J.J. Gertler said.  “Digital engineering has the capability to rapidly iterate but it’s only as good as the information you put into it. It may also help you get to a wrong answer faster which you then have to back out of.”[1][emphasis added]

 
There you have it.  GIGO. 

“Digital engineering isn’t going to make issues go away,” he [Dr. Will Roper, former assistant secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics] noted. “It’s going to create a new issue which is – do you trust the underlying models and simulation upon which your performance predictions are based?”[1][emphasis added]

 
When hand held calculators were introduced, teachers noted that they all too often helped students get the wrong answer faster.  The calculator was electronically correct but the students were too ignorant to input the correct data.  GIGO.  The same phenomenon is prevalent in industry. 
 
Closely related, students lost the ability to recognize obvious incorrect results caused by mistaken inputs (accidentally pushed the wrong button) because they lost the ability to quickly estimate expected results and be able to recognize that an answer was patently incorrect.  I can instantly estimate 18x20 by rounding it to 20x20=400.  Therefore, I can recognize that an answer of 3600 is an order of magnitude off.  Students no longer have the ability to do that and cannot recognize obvious errors - the calculator said it so it must be right.
 
We’ve become so caught up in our blind worship of technology that we’ve completely ignored the constant presence of the GIGO phenomenon.  Digital results are accorded unquestioned faith.  Whether it’s artificial intelligence, computer aided design, pilot or ship driver training via simulation, or command and control networks, they’re all plagued by the constant presence of garbage input. 
 
Every Navy and Air Force design and acquisition program for the last two decades has claimed to be computer designed and computer aided and yet none have been what anyone would judge a success.
 
We had far more successful ship and aircraft design results from people using paper, pencil, and a slide rule then we do now using computers.  Common sense is screaming lessons at us but we’re too busy worshipping at the altar of technology to hear them.
 
How’s that simple, straightforward Air Force KC-46 tanker coming along?  It’s been well over a decade and still counting! 
 
Remember the Ford?  Computer modeled and computer designed?  How’d that turn out?
 
The F-35’s ALIS logistics, maintenance, and mission planning program was going to solve all our problems and yet it’s been abandoned and nothing has yet taken its place.
 
And so on.
 
The problem is that the people inputting the information are all too often incompetent idiots who can’t even rattle off their multiplication tables without consulting a calculator.  Have you ever tried to get change from a cashier who hasn’t got access to the register’s computer output?  They can’t calculate simple change in their head.  Why would we expect such people to be able to recognize garbage input and avoid it?  They can’t.  We’ve crippled ourselves, as a society, by allowing calculators in schools.  But, I digress …
 
We now have military leaders who are inputting idiotic data into wargames, computer models, and simulations and are unable to even recognize the idiotic results.
 
This isn’t just about arithmetic errors.  In the military, the idiotic inputs are things such as
 

• Assuming the enemy won’t respond in any harmful way to us.
• Assuming everything we do will work and nothing the enemy does will work.
• Assuming that we have capabilities the enemy doesn’t.
• Assuming our systems will work flawlessly.  Does any wargame factor in, oh, say, Ford EMALS breakdowns?  We have hard data but we’re hand waving away the reality.
• Assuming our surveillance assets will be allowed to conduct their missions without hindrance.
• Assuming we’ll have no problem working around the enemy’s electronic warfare even though any attempt at introducing even a modicum of EW into a real exercise has ended in the complete collapse of the exercise.
• Assuming our networks will work flawlessly even though we’re being successfully attacked and penetrated by enemy cyber forces on a daily basis.

 
This is the kind of idiotic, garbage inputs that are producing garbage outputs.  Unfortunately, we’re too stupid to recognize the garbage nature of either our inputs or outputs and so we blindly follow our technology down ever more incorrect paths.
 
 
Garbage In, Garbage Out
 
 
___________________________

 
[1]The Drive website, “T-7A Delays Compound Pilot Shortage, Expose Digital Engineering Pitfalls”, Jan Tegler, 12-May-2023,
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/t-7a-delays-compound-pilot-shortage-expose-digital-engineering-pitfalls
 

Fight the Way You Train

We’ve all heard this adage,
 

Train the way you fight, fight the way you train.

 
Truer words could not be spoken and yet we ignore them.  We do not train the way we’ll fight although, to be fair, lacking a strategy, we have no idea how we’ll fight (China) so it’s a little tough to train for it. 
 
In contrast, China has a very clear military strategy and are training diligently to execute it.  From a Newsmax website article, 

China's military simulated precision strikes against Taiwan in a second day of drills around the island … 

Chinese state television reported that the combat readiness patrols and drills around Taiwan were continuing. 

"Under the unified command of the theater joint operations command center, multiple types of units carried out simulated joint precision strikes on key targets on Taiwan island and the surrounding sea areas, and continue to maintain an offensive posture around the island," it said.
 
Taiwan's defense ministry said that as of Sunday midday (0400 GMT) they had spotted 58 Chinese aircraft, including Su-30 fighters and H-6 bombers, as well as nine ships, around Taiwan.[1] 

We hesitate to even name China as an enemy.  The Biden administration refused to contest China at any level.  Our training, to the extent we do any, is non-specific, generic, set-piece, checkbox type training rather than anything aimed at any actual enemy or realistic scenario.  Contrast this with the Fleet Problems we ran every year prior to WWII (see, “Fleet Problems”).
 
It’s difficult to see how we’ll win a war we refuse to train for.
 
 
 
________________________________

 
[1]Newsmax website, “China Simulates Striking Taiwan on Second Day of Drills”, 9-Apr-2023,
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/china-taiwan-drills/2023/04/09/id/1115519/