Hughes Constant of Peacetime Command

We've previously discussed that the Navy has taken on a peacetime mentality, is not prepared for war, and, worst of all, is no longer producing warrior leaders.  In broader terms, we've discussed the personal and administrative failings of Navy leadership. 

I just came across a passage from Capt. Hughes (1) wherein he describes his single constant of peacetime command, to use his phrase.  It is the one characteristic he considers most important - the single responsibility that peacetime commanders should hold most dear.  Here is his thought,

"... I would argue that nothing takes precedence over the peacetime commander's job of finding combat leaders.  Let him do his best to find them, send them to sea, and keep them at sea, longer than the U.S. Navy does now.  Let the first aim of every seagoing commander be to find two officers better than himself and help in every way to prepare them for war.  That done, everything else will follow."

  In this simple passage, Hughes has recognized the purpose of a navy - to fight - and the means to ensure its ability to do so - by finding combat leaders.  So simple in concept and yet so difficult in practice.  As I've stated repeatedly, we are promoting based on the wrong criteria.  We are training based on cost savings and safety rather than combat.  We are manning based on spreadsheets rather than the reality of damage control and combat casualties.  We are designing ships based on ease of construction rather than strength in combat.  And so on ...

There are, undoubtedly, warriors in the Navy but they are not among the leaders.  We must find them.

The Navy still has time to wake up and be about its real duties but the snooze alarm has already gone off and the Navy is in danger of oversleeping. 


(1) "Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat", Capt. Wayne Hughes, USN (Ret.), Naval Institute Press, 2000, ISBN-13: 978-1-55750-392-3, p.224 

Darwinian Naval Evolution

For those whose biology education may be a bit rusty, Charles Darwin was the man credited with developing the theory of evolution.  Summarizing, evolution is the development of an organism in response to survival pressures.  The mechanism of evolution is genetic mutation.  Spontaneous changes in genetic code cause new characteristics in the organism.  Those characteristics which prove beneficial to the organism’s survival are retained and passed on to future generations.  Those that do not aid in survival or actively hinder survival are not passed on because the organism does not live long enough to breed. 

The key point from the above is that successful change is a response to pressure.  For example, a new predator moves into an area and it is highly attracted to red colored birds as a food source.  Over time, some red birds are, instead, born blue due to genetic mutations.  Being blue and less noticeable to the predator, the mutated birds are more likely to survive and eventually all the birds are blue.  That’s a simplistic example but it illustrates the role that pressure plays on evolution.

How does this apply to naval development?  Well, much like an organism, the Navy is constantly changing or mutating and exhibiting new characteristics.  Some of those changes may be beneficial and are propagated to the future fleet and some are not beneficial and are eliminated from the future fleet.  To complete the analogy, we have to recognize what constitutes the pressure on the naval organism that determines which characteristics are good or bad.  Do you see what the pressure is?  It’s combat, of course!



Is the Navy Evolving in the Right Direction?



During WWII, many different ship types, weapons, tactics, etc. were tried and the pressure of combat determined which were beneficial and would be passed on to future ships.  By the end of the evolutionary period (the end of the war), the naval organism had evolved to as near a perfect fit for its environment (WWII) as possible.



Once the war ended the selective pressure of combat ceased.  Naval characteristics continued to change, however, there was no longer anything to measure them against and really determine their usefulness.  Oh sure, for a while the veterans of WWII remembered the lessons and tried their best to evaluate the new characteristics against the pressures of combat that they had experienced.  With time, though, the veterans retired and the Navy was left without even the memory of combat.

So what happened as a result?  One has only to look at the current fleet for a litany of questionable characteristics that have taken hold without the pressure of combat to weed them out.  Consider,

• the Navy has abandoned armor except for shrapnel protection
• the stunning decrease in size and number of naval guns
• the almost debilitating dependency on GPS
• the unstated assumption that our satellite (and other) communications will not be challenged
• the extensive use of aluminum (and now wood!) in ship construction despite several examples of the tragic consequences using this material
• the Navy has forgotten that excess manning is the most important aspect of damage control
• the Navy has forgotten that men will be killed in combat and excess manning is the only way to replace them during combat
• the Navy has forgotten that ships will be lost in combat and that speed of construction and affordability are the means to replace ships during war
• the Navy has forgotten the lessons of redundancy and separation of vital equipment
• the Navy has forgotten that simplicity ensures operability, reliability, and repairability

The Navy has not been engaged in combat since WWII.  Yes, there have been moments of low level conflict but not combat with a peer.  There has been no pressure on the Navy to force development of combat-desirable characteristics.  As a result, the Navy has lost its way with respect to developing combat-capable warships, effective weapon systems, and effective doctrine and tactics.  Today’s ships, weapons, and tactics are evaluated by criteria other than combat effectiveness.  Instead, affordability, comfort, public relations, social imperatives, politics, political correctness, ease of construction, desire to maintain work for shipyards, etc. have become the primary criteria.  While some of these criteria may be desirable at a secondary level, most have nothing to do with combat effectiveness and yet, absent the pressure of combat, have become the means by which we design, build, and evaluate ships, weapons, and tactics.  Is it any wonder we have problems?  Do you have any doubt that our next war will reveal how poorly the Navy has directed its own evolution?

Consider the example of the Viet Nam war.  That conflict was strictly an aviation combat affair but it revealed the fallacy of the assumption that dogfighting was dead.  It revealed the weakness (bordering on utter failure) of the Sparrow weapon system.  It revealed the weakness of a jet engine in the Phantom that left a giant smoke trail.  It revealed the total lack of effective air combat tactics that was rectified only with the advent of Top Gun.  And so on …

This does not mean that none of the Navy’s developments are successes.  Aegis, for example, may well be an effective weapon system but it has not been proven under the pressure of combat.  It may succeed brilliantly or it may fail miserably.  More likely, it will need further changes to be truly effective – changes which will be revealed only under pressure.

The Navy needs to recognize that they have not been under pressure for quite some time and that many flawed ships, systems, and tactics have taken hold.  Short of intentionally starting a war just to evaluate equipment, what other options are there to subject new characteristics to pressure?  Far and away the best option would be to conduct as realistic training as possible.  We’ve discussed this in previous posts.  This would be the closest thing to combat and would go a long way towards providing the pressure that would allow the Navy to evolve in the proper direction.  Can the USS Darwin pass on its characteristics or will it be an evolutionary dead end?

Weapons Don't Matter!

Firepower without a targeting solution is useless.  That’s obvious but what does it really mean for today’s Navy?

The caveman sighted his target over the end of his spear or club.  This eventually progressed to sighting over the barrel of a gun and, essentially, held until WWII.  WWII, with the advent of aircraft carriers and radar target acquisition allowed attacks on unseen enemies.  This inflection point also allowed for a new phenomenon:  the ability to strike an enemy and remain undetected.  Sure, the possibility existed previously that a sniper, for example, could fire on an enemy while remaining undetected but even in that case the enemy had an equal chance of detecting the sniper (if he could see you, you could see him) and could return blind fire in the general direction of the sniper with some degree of success (suppression, if nothing else).  Somewhat similarly, the submarine was the sniper of the ocean. 

With the advent of radar, especially aircraft mounted radar, it was possible to target and strike an enemy without him knowing where the firing (launch) platforms were.  The development of long range missiles further enhanced this possibility.  A strike could arrive seemingly out of nowhere leaving the enemy with no target upon which to return fire.

While reconnaissance (or intelligence or surveillance or scouting or whatever word you want to use) has historically always been vital, it has taken on an even greater level of importance in the modern radar/missile age.  In fact, given the lethality of modern cruise and ballistic missiles, the old adage about firing effectively first becomes even more critical and the only way to fire first is to have superior reconnaissance ability.  Thus, modern naval warfare is all about recon – the ability to find the enemy and the ability to prevent him from finding you.

Once upon a time, “finding” (or detection) implied the ability to strike.  If the pilot of a WWII dive bomber could find the enemy, he could strike because his weapons were short ranged (the bomb carried on his plane) and the enemy’s position (the targeting solution) could not change significantly before the strike could occur.  However, with long range missiles the time lag between finding the enemy and striking becomes great enough that finding no longer guarantees a targeting solution.



BAMS - More Important Than Weapons



Consider the situation of a carrier group in an A2/AD scenario.  The group is detected at a range of 1000 miles from the launching location, a land based intermediate range ballistic missile, in this case..  Allowing for a bit of command and control delays and an effective speed of, say, Mach 3 (a Mach 5 missile slowly arcs upward  so that the actual distance traveled is greater than the linear distance and the apparent speed is less than the missile’s max), we might imagine the missile arriving anywhere from an hour, optimistically, to several hours or more, realistically.  During that time the carrier, moving at 30 kts, let’s say, would have covered 30 – 200+ miles giving a possible target area (to allow for course changes in the interim) of 2800 sq miles – 125,000+ sq miles – hardly a firing solution!  Remember that the detection window of radars or other sensors carried onboard attacking missiles is extremely small compared to the possible area. 

In these kinds of scenarios it’s not enough to simply detect the enemy.  Detection will have to be maintained until the strike arrives, assuming the strike is capable of mid-course guidance and assuming that the enemy isn’t obliging enough to maintain a constant course and speed.

The modern, long distance battle will be less a question of weapons and more a question of detection and targeting.  The side that “wins” the targeting battle will probably win the actual battle.

What does this mean for the Navy today?  It means that significant resources should be applied to longer range, more effective scouting platforms and methods, in addition to better weapons.  Along this line, the Navy is developing the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) UAV among other efforts. 

While there is little definitive public information about the Navy’s long range detection and targeting capabilities, I don’t believe we currently have the ability to effectively perform this function.  At the moment, that’s not a severe issue because we don’t have long range anti-surface weapons, anyway.  Even with BAMS, I don’t see this being an effective capability in a wartime environment.  BAMS is not particularly stealthy, as far as I know, in either its physical presence or its radiating signature.  In other words, in peacetime it will be effective but in war it will be easily targeted and destroyed or forced so far outside its desired operating area for survival that it will be ineffective.  While it may provide some measure of detection, I don’t think it will be able to generate firing solutions.

Of course, there are other means of targeting such as satellite, submarine, and extreme long range passive detection.  I have no idea whether those are capable of going beyond dectection and achieving firing solutions under wartime conditions.

Suffice it to say that targeting is going to be the challenge for future naval combat.

As an extension of this discussion, one can easily imagine the role that counter-targeting should play in modern combat.  This is more than just stealth – it can include speed, location changes, decoys, deception, etc. and incorporates tactics as well as equipment.  Being detected by the enemy is not necessarily a fatal failing if the enemy can be prevented from achieving a valid firing solution.  I leave it to the reader to ponder this aspect in greater depth.

Who's In Charge?

Navy Times website just announced two more commanding officer firings.  Here's the totals for last year and this year (so far!).

            CO     XO     Senior Enlisted
2012     24       5         13
2011     22       5         12

Some readers have criticized ComNavOps for being too harsh in judging Navy leadership.  I unabashedly admit to being highly critical of the leadership and I've documented the reasons.  In fact, my belief that the Navy and the country are being ill served by Navy (and civilian - but that's largely outside the scope of this blog) leadership was one of the main motivations for starting this blog.

The Navy has fired 46 commanding officers in less than two years.  Something's wrong.  Something's very wrong.  It's painfully evident that our selection process for CO and above is broken.  Well, at least the rest of the commanding officers, the majority to be sure, are good, honest, decent leaders of the highest moral character, right?  I doubt it.  They just haven't been caught yet or their failings are insufficient to actually get them fired.

I assume you're all familiar with the "tip of the iceberg" principle?  For those who may not be, the concept is that what you can see represents only a small fraction (usually cited as 10%) of the total, hence the analogy to the tip of the iceberg where the vast majority of the iceberg is hidden beneath the water relative to what's visible.  For instance, in industrial safety matters, visible and documented safety violations are assumed to represent only 10% of the total safety violations that are actually occurring. 

Likewise, I assume that for every CO whose behavior is egregious and visible enough to warrant firing, many others are guilty of the same behavior but have not been caught.  Does this unfairly paint all leaders with the same broad brush?  Certainly, and that's unfortunate but the evidence suggests a systematic and endemic failure of the selection process which strongly suggests many other flawed leaders are currently serving.

Consider the recent posting about Adm. Harvey's mea culpa.  That's a perfect example of a leader who lacked the fortitude to stand up for what was right while serving and only spoke up as he was retiring.  That's a flawed leader.  While he didn't do anything that qualified as a firing offense, he also didn't serve the Navy or the country well.

Remember that flawed leadership isn't just about firing offenses.  It's also about the lack of courage to take a stand in the face of bad decisions and flawed policy.  It's the weakness of character that allows a leader to go along with a program he knows is wrong because he wants to protect his career.  That's why minimal manning programs occurred which anybody could see would be disasters.  It's why LPDs were accepted by the Navy with thousands of hours of uncompleted work.  It's why the LCS continues to move forward despite being an abject failure.  And so on ...

So, what's going on?  Are all these leaders suddenly becoming drunks or sex offenders or thieves or whatever after they become leaders?  Of course not!  Their behaviors were there before promotion and remained after promotion.  Why isn't our selection/screening process finding this?  -because we're not looking at the right criteria, obviously.  Now, I can't begin to suggest what the right criteria are.  Navy leadership will have to do that.  Unfortunately, that's like asking the fox to guard the chicken coop.  Flawed leadership is unlikely to come up with better selection criteria.  We can only hope that the good leaders (and there must be some) will stand up and loudly and publicly insist on meaningful changes.  Come on Navy leadership, stand up and demand change!  Save my Navy!

LCS - What Would You Do With It?

As ComNavOps was reading and replying to comments, he couldn't help but notice that some topics generate a lot of interest and some less so.  Not surprisingly, the LCS is one that generates a lot of interest.  Everyone has an opinion - most of them tending to the negative. 

Well, for better or worse the LCS is here and will almost certainly be built through the current contract options, resulting in a buy of 22 ships, half of each version.  The obvious question, then, is what to do with them given that they will have fairly limited capabilities for the foreseeable future.  This is your chance to tell me and the Navy what should be done with the LCS.  Just to save time, let's eliminate the "terminate it" answer.  As I said, the LCS is here and the Navy has to do something with it and it would be nice if we could actually get some level of use out of it.  Let's also eliminate the total, and generally unrealistic, rebuilds.  In other words, no 16" gun turrets with a squadron of JSF jump jets.  So, realistically, what can be done with the LCS? 

To help you out, here a few factors that any realistic alterations must take into account.

• LCS-1 class has severe weight issues.  There are no margins for growth.  If you want to add a 5" gun, you have to remove something of equal weight.  That goes for anything you want to add - it's a zero sum game.
• LCS-2 class has limited volume forward.  Authoritative reports state that a 5" gun almost certainly can't be placed forward.  The same probably goes for a VLS, plus that's a lot of weight forward.
• Neither class has the berthing, mess, food storage, heads, etc. to support much of an increase in crew.  So, before you start listing ninety eight new weapons you want to add, consider the impact on crew size and the limited support for crew.
• Neither class has a particularly strong flight deck.  In other words, two helos is the limit due to structural weight limitations.

This is your chance.  Pretend you're the Navy and you've got to do something with the LCS.  What do you realistically suggest?

LCS - Mass or Disperse?

In his book, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat (1), Capt. Hughes discusses the concept of dispersion/massing as applied to surface ships and, particularly, to smaller ships.  He notes,

“When dispersion is an important means of defense, small ships and distributed firepower are an important advantage.  Much of the modern debate over the size of warships concerns the comparative merits of dispersal in small ships (to complicate enemy targeting) and of concentration of force in large ships (to fight off the enemy).  …  Today if a commander’s fleet comprises large ships with strong defenses he masses and fights the enemy off.  If he has small ships or weak defenses he must disperse.  In either case he is buying time to carry out his mission, which is not to steam around waiting to be sunk.  If the defense cannot buy time for the offense to perform, then the fleet ought to be somewhere else.”

 

Hughes brings up two good points in this short paragraph which are highly relevant to the Navy’s LCS.  Remember, the LCS was built before a coherent concept of operations was developed (we’ll set aside the lunacy of that sequence, for the moment) and they are now trying to develop one.  Let’s see what Capt. Hughes has to offer in the way of guidance for the LCS.

Hughes’ first point is that the purpose of a ship/fleet/Navy is to conduct offensive operations.  While a Navy may occasionally be forced into defensive operations (protecting a base or defending sea lanes, for example) they would still, ultimately, be linked to offensive operations - for instance, defending a base from which future offensive operations may be launched.  So, offense is the purpose of a Navy.  Herein lies the initial problem for the LCS.  Currently, it has no offensive capability.  The Navy is working to develop modules which will give it some offensive capability but that appears to be a long ways down the road.  Nonetheless, let’s assume that the LCS acquires offensive anti-submarine, anti-surface, or land strike (either direct via munitions or indirect via Marine/SOF land forces) capability.



LCS Operations - Mass or Disperse?

The small size of the LCS precludes applying a significant strike capability from a single ship.  Thus, multiple LCSs will need to mass to apply a significant strike of whatever form.  This leads directly to Hughes’ second point concerning the balance between massing and dispersion.  Massing creates an efficient target for the enemy.  As Hughes points out, if massing creates a defense strong enough to compensate for the easy target the mass makes, then massing is desirable.  If not, dispersion is the better tactic. 

The LCS was not designed to be able to provide area anti-air defense nor to have a significant anti-surface defense.  Thus, massing provides no enhancement in defense.  One LCS cannot “cover” another so LCSs derive no defensive benefit from being grouped.  This leads to the conclusion that the LCS should operate dispersed to maximize the chance of surviving long enough to carry out offensive operations.

But wait …  If the LCS should operate dispersed and no single LCS can generate a significant strike, how then can the LCS be effective?  Well, we may well have uncovered a flaw in the LCS concept.  However, bear in mind that massing for a strike does not necessarily mean that the massing must occur at the point of origin of the strike.  Massing can be at the destination of the strike.  In other words, ten ships, each with a single missile, don’t have to be near each other at launch time in order to conduct a massed strike of ten missiles – they can be dispersed and simply time their individual missiles to arrive at the target together to achieve the massed strike.  So, it is possible for LCSs to operate dispersed and still provide massed strike, under the right conditions.

The preceding discussion has enormous implications for the development of the LCS.  As the Navy attempts to develop a concept of operations for the LCS and continues to develop modules, the concept of physical dispersion for defense and massing for offense should be the guiding light.  The LCS needs weapons and offensive capabilities that are capable of destination point massing.  This implies a level of range and targeting capability that the LCS not only doesn’t have currently but is not even being discussed, as far as I know.  The dispersion aspect also suggests that a certain amount of attrition of individual units will occur which should dictate that the ships be small, cheap, and expendable.  Unfortunately, that ship has already sailed.  The LCS is neither small nor cheap nor expendable (given its cost).  Since the desired characteristics of a dispersed unit are not achievable, additional emphasis should be placed on self-defense, meaning a better anti-air (more CIWS/RAM) and anti-surface (bigger/more guns) fit.



Griffon - The Right Weapons Development Path?



If the Navy would think this through, direct the module development along these lines, and consider modifying the core capabilities to increase self-defense, we might be able to someday have a moderately useful LCS.  Of course, it’s equally possible that a rational analysis of the above might lead to the conclusion that the LCS was incorrectly designed, can’t be sufficiently modified, and should be terminated.  Either approach would be better than the floundering that’s occurring now with the Navy desperately searching for a mission for the LCS.  This is why a concept of operations should come before construction, not after!

(1) Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, 2^nd Ed., Capt. Wayne Hughes, Naval Institute Press, 2000, ISBN-13: 978-1-55750-392-3, p.191

Burke Fails INSURV

A Burke class destroyer, the USS McCain (DDG-56), failed an INSURV inspection conducted  in June, according to a Navy Times report just released.  I have no other information about this.  I had been hoping that Navy maintenance and training issues were being addressed and showing improvement but this makes me wonder anew.  Admittedly, a single INSURV failure proves nothing.  Still, it's disturbing that the Navy's backbone ship type would fail. 

This is the first failure I've heard about in some time which had led me to hope things were improving.  Of course, given that the Navy went to the length of classifying these inspections due to the poor PR and resultant public criticism and pressure who knows how many inspections have been conducted over the last year and whether there were other failures?