More Austere Forward Operating Base Nonsense

We’ve totally debunked the austere, forward operating base concept for the F-35 and yet there are still people who believe it’s viable.  Well, we’ll just keep beating it down.  Here’s the latest proof that it can’t work.  Defense News website reports that low observability (LO) features, meaning stealth, account for half of all production quality defects on the F-35. (1)

Examples of stealth related defects cited in the article include,

• Holes drilled too big
• Dings
• Small deviations in panel alignment
• Scratches to the LO coating
• LO coating overspray or misapplication

Do you understand what that list of defects means?  Those are incredibly minor problems that commonly occur, indeed, are almost unavoidable, when performing mechanical/maintenance work on machines and yet they’re enough to impact the stealth of the aircraft.

Do you understand what else that list means?  Those are defects that are occurring in a pristine, carefully controlled environment with highly trained technicians who have access to all the tools and parts they need.  It’s the best possible world for working on the aircraft and yet the defects are still occurring.  What’s going to happen when the aircraft is sitting out on some austere field with shrapnel flying around, insufficient parts, people under the gun (literally) to maintain and patch up aircraft?  When LO coatings are applied and before they can dry they’re covered in dirt, bugs, and debris?  When no one has the time or tools to align panels to micron accuracy?  When an aircraft has holes in it from shrapnel and someone has to rivet a patch on?

After a couple of days, that stealthy F-35 is going to look like a 747 airliner on radar!

Consider this telling and damning statement,

“Speaking to reporters at Lockheed’s media day on Monday, Jeff Babione acknowledged that low observability, or LO, capabilities in particular are posing a challenge to the company.”

If achieving LO is a challenge in the quiet, calm, pristine, factory with highly trained technicians equipped with all the tools and materials they need, it’s going to be impossible in muddy, humid, debris filled bases with clouds of dirt and debris kicked up every time an aircraft lands or takes off.

The Lockheed spokesman just basically said that the fantasy of an austere, forward operating base is just that: a fantasy. 

We are not going to be operating a couple of F-35’s, rising silently out of the jungle to wreak havoc.  The logistics are impossible.  Base defense is impossible.  Maintenance is impossible.  LO preservation is impossible.  Aircraft availability will be 25%.  And the list of impossibilities goes on.

Give up the fantasy or admit that you also believe in unicorns.

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(1)Defense News website, “Stealth features responsible for half of F-35 defects, Lockheed program head states”, Valerie Insinna, 6-Mar-2018,

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/03/06/stealth-features-responsible-for-half-of-f-35-defects-lockheed-program-head-states/

The Optimal Manning Experiment

Long ago, the Navy committed to minimal manning as a cost savings measure.  They later changed the phrase to “optimal manning” as a public relations measure, presumably believing that “optimal” sounds better than “minimal”.  Regardless of the terminology, it was an attempt by the Navy to operate ships as if they were business cases.  This was stupidity on a platter and most outside observers said so and have continued to say so.

The LCS was trumpeted as having a minimal, nearly non-existent, crew that could perform miracles, assisted by copious levels of automation.  The claim was that the LCS would have a far, far smaller crew than a Perry class frigate.  Even though the Navy denied that the LCS was a direct replacement for the Perry, they didn’t hesitate to draw direct comparisons between the two ships when it served their purpose.  But, I digress …  Of course, the LCS minimal manning failed miserably.  The core crew size has been increased.  The shore-side maintenance support crew has been significantly increased.  The degree of contractor support has been markedly higher than anticipated.  Overall, the LCS “crew” size is on par with the Perry or, most likely, larger.  Worse, because the LCS was sized and designed for minimal manning, the ability to add crew is severely limited.  The ship’s hotel services: food and water storage, berthing spaces, heads, galley space, showers, etc. are pretty much fixed and every additional crew member cuts into the ship’s endurance which was only two weeks to begin with.  Currently, the LCS is likely only good for around 10 days endurance, at best.  That’s not really a problem since most LCS’s break down in less than 10 days at sea – oh no, he didn’t just say that, did he?  Way to pile on the poor, hapless LCS!  I apologize, that was inappropriate.  Moving on …

The Zumwalt and Ford have been designed with minimal manning and it remains to be seen whether those crew sizes prove workable or not – spoiler alert: they won’t.

Earlier attempts at variations of minimal manning, in the form of crew sharing/swaps, ended in failure as the affected ships suffered from poor maintenance due, presumably, to the associated lack of bonding between ship and crew and the natural human tendency to put off dirty jobs knowing that the crew would be leaving shortly and the problem would be the next crew’s responsibility.  Unfortunately, the next crew had the same natural human tendencies and the ships suffered.

The Navy also implemented an intentional policy of routinely and systematically shorting fleet billets for many years.  Partly, this was simple incompetent personnel management and partly it was a desire to operate smaller crews even on ships that were not designed for minimal manning.  This could actually have worked had the Navy simultaneously increased funding for shore side support measures but they didn’t and the resulting poorly maintained ships were completely predictable.

And, finally, there’s the complete disconnect between the minimal manning to operate a ship during routine, peacetime sailing and the manning needs of a ship in combat.  Extra crew are needed for wartime combat stations, watchstanding, damage control, and casualty replacement.  These requirements did not make it into the Navy’s business case.

So, that’s a brief summary of the history and current situation regarding minimal manning.  Now, we have a GAO study of the practice and it’s fascinating.

Hey, just out of curiosity, how did the Navy think they were going to be able to reduce crew size and continue to operate ships with the same amount of work needing to be done but now with less people to do it?  It can’t be done, you say?  Well, the Navy found a way.  What they did was ingenious in an incredibly stupid way.  They merely and arbitrarily increased the theoretical amount of work an individual sailor could do – if each sailor can do more work then you need fewer sailors, so the Navy thought.

“To further drive down ship crew sizes, the Navy changed workload assumptions and the equation used to determine manpower requirements in 2002. For example, it increased the Navy standard workweek from 67 to 70 productive hours per sailor, which further reduced shipboard manning by up to 4 percent.”

There you have it – stupid beyond stupid.  The fact that sailors weren’t physically capable of the calculated increase in workload didn’t matter to the Navy.  All that mattered was that on paper they could justify reducing crew sizes.  The only puzzling aspect was why the Navy didn’t just increase the standard work week even higher.  Why not 90 hours, or 150?  If you’re doing something that stupid, you may as well go all the way!

The Navy claims that personnel costs are the major contributor to a ship’s operating costs.  Thus, the desire to reduce crew size is understandable, if ill advised.  Setting aside the negative effects on maintenance, readiness, and combat capability, did the Navy’s efforts to reduce crew size actually achieve its desired goal of decreasing operating costs?  According to the GAO report, the opposite occurred!

“Ship operating and support costs—the total cost of operating, maintaining, and supporting a ship, including personnel, operations, maintenance, sustainment, and modernization—increased during the optimal manning period and have continued to increase for most ship classes … “ [emphasis added]

What????  How could reducing crew size and, thus, personnel costs, increase overall operating costs?  I mean, the overall operating costs have to go down, right?  No.  Here’s GAO’s explanation.

“… increases in maintenance costs offset reductions in personnel costs.”

Well, there’s great big, “duh!”.  Everyone with an ounce of common sense could anticipate that.  If you take away crew and allow maintenance to suffer, you’re going to pay a heavier price down the road in increased maintenance – and that’s exactly what happened.  Worse than that, the policy resulted in many ships being retired early, decreasing the fleet size during a time when we’re desperately trying to increase the fleet size.

Even the Navy has belatedly acknowledged that its minimal manning efforts produced effects the opposite of what was desired.

“Navy officials acknowledged that the reduced crew sizes during the optimal manning period, along with reductions in shore support, may have yielded short-term cost savings, but also increased maintenance costs over the longer term, in part because reduced crew sizes resulted in maintenance being deferred, which developed into more costly issues that had to be addressed later.”

Again, a thoroughly predictable, common sense result that surprised no one but the Navy.

Okay, so the minimal manning experiment was an abject failure.  The Navy has restored at least some of the reduced manning so that should decrease the increased maintenance costs, right?  Again, no.

“In all cases, maintenance costs are above pre–optimal manning levels …”

This suggests that once you damage a ship by deferring maintenance, the damage is permanent and the increased maintenance costs are irreversible.  The Navy irreparably harmed the fleet with its idiotic minimal manning experiment.

The Navy also discovered, to no one’s surprise, that by reducing crew size they had to depend on contractor supplied maintenance to a greater extent.  Contractor costs are higher than captive Navy sailor costs so the result was higher overall ship operating costs due to the increased dependence on contractors.  Another resounding, “duh!”.  Everyone but the Navy could anticipate that one.

The GAO report goes on to cite example after example of the negative impact of minimal manning and one aspect after another that the Navy failed to realize and account for.  At this point, it would just be beating a dead horse for me to continue documenting all this.

The truly stunning aspect to this is the complete absence of common sense exhibited by the Navy in their minimal manning experiment.  You don’t have to be a Ph.D personnel and operations analyst to recognize simple, common sense cause and effect relationships.  That the Navy failed to do so, repeatedly, is a scathing indictment of Navy leadership that has continued to this day.  The recent Burke ship collisions and groundings were, in part, cause by shortages in crew size.  While the minimal manning experiment officially ended some time ago, the effects linger and the Navy is still trying to operate ships with too few crew even for basic safety during routine evolutions.

Minimal manning was an embarrassing failure of epic proportions and needs to be reversed.  Every ship in the fleet is undermanned and needs larger crews.  The theoretical cost savings from reduced crew sizes have been proven to be illusory and increased costs have actually resulted.  Crew shortages contributed to two Burke collisions which will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.  Where are savings?

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(1)Government Accountability Office, “NAVY FORCE STRUCTURE Actions Needed to Ensure Proper Size and Composition of Ship Crews”, May 2017, GAO-17-413,

https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/684771.pdf

The Industrial Base

Time and again, ComNavOps hears the argument that, yes, shipbuilding workmanship may be shoddy and overpriced but we have to keep building substandard products just to protect the industrial base.  In fact, on a related note, ComNavOps has proposed that shipbuilding undergo a several year hiatus so that the Navy and industry can “catch their breath”, in a sense, and design a good warship unpressured by artificial time constraints.  Many commenters, however, argue that we can’t stop building ships because that will endanger out industrial base and risk losing skilled designers and construction workers.  Of course, given the poor designs and poor construction quality we’re getting from industry, one can’t help but wonder just how big a loss of expertise we’re really risking … but, I digress.

The common theme in these arguments is the need to protect the industrial base.  In fact, some elevate protection of the industrial base to a national strategic imperative!  Indeed, there is an argument to be made along those lines.  When war comes, attrition replacement will require a robust industrial base.

Fair enough.  So, where is this going?  Well, consider the following comment by a reader in response to the recent post, “Diversity In The Air”. (1)

“Those US fighters came from 7 different makers.  Now you have two design teams that design 1 or 2 planes in their entire work career you get mediocrity, practice makes perfect etc.”

‘scottg’ brings up a great point that deserves further discussion.  In fact, the comment raises a couple of issues.

The point about designers who may only design one or two aircraft in their entire career is incredibly profound.  In the 1930s -1970s, an aircraft designer was likely involved in dozens of designs over the course of a career.  That’s a huge range of design experience.  What’s more, the designs covered all manner of aircraft so the designer could, with time, bring to bear experience from all facets of aircraft design to the next design effort.  Further, with all the designs, prototypes, and production experience, there was a nearly endless source of real world trials and lessons learned.

Today, as pointed out, a designer may only be involved in one or two designs over a career.  In fact, if the designer is unlucky enough to work for the losing design in a mega project, he may actually go an entire career without designing an aircraft that is actually produced.  What kind of experience base does that generate?  What kind of “lessons learned” can the designer draw on?  Not much!

The F-35 began around 20 years ago and serious designing for the next combat aircraft, the so called 6^th generation aircraft, won’t seriously begin for another five years or so.  That’s a 25 year time span.  Twenty five years is the better part of a career and, for the designers, results in one design.

The lack of designs leads us to the next point which is the impact of single, mega programs on the industrial base.  The F-35 is, of course, what we’re talking about.  Setting aside the merits, or lack thereof, of the aircraft itself, the F-35 program resulted in only a single manufacturer producing a final design and build.  How is a winner-take-all, mammoth, mega program benefiting the industrial base?  Clearly, it isn’t!  Manufacturer’s are dropping out of the business and even those that stay are losing their design and manufacturing expertise.

ComNavOps has previously proposed that instead of mega programs we build limited runs of, say, 200-500 aircraft on short cycles and do so with much greater frequency.  I’ve described exactly how to produce a state of the art aircraft in a 5 year period so this is eminently doable.  The greater frequency offers many advantages:

• Many more designs in a given period.
• The ability to incorporate known, existing technology without worrying about trying to design a “forever” aircraft with room for any imaginable future technology.  If a technology we design into an aircraft becomes suddenly obsolete we simply build a new aircraft with the new technology since we aren’t committed to a forever aircraft. 
• Multiple manufacturers can compete on a regular basis and, presumably, multiple manufacturers will actually produce aircraft thus maintaining a diverse stable of design philosophies and production facilities.
• Having a diverse range of alternatives provides greater resilience when combat reveals weaknesses in a particular design.

Clearly, mega programs such as the F-35 are damaging the industrial base.  Further, maintaining the F-35 in order to “protect” the industrial base is actually having the opposite effect.  We should terminate the F-35 for that reason alone!

The larger point is that we need to stop the practice of mega programs and return to smaller, more frequent programs.

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(1) Navy Matters blog comment, Username: scottg, posted 25-Feb-2018, 3:16 PM,

http://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2018/02/diversity-in-air.html?showComment=1519600601070#c2280372282341550918

Attrition Warfare - You Can't Avoid It

ComNavOps has frequently extolled the virtue of numbers, even over quality.  As the old adage says,

“Quantity has a quality all its own.”

When I advocate greater numbers, one of the common counter arguments is that we no longer engage in attrition warfare.  Supposedly, we now engage in maneuver warfare to paralyze our enemies and bring them to their knees with no casualties on either side.  Ahh …  the ideal war!  Or so the story goes.

The reality is that war is all about attrition.  We’ve just forgotten that.  You know, there’s another old adage,

“The enemy gets a vote.”

The enemy gets a vote, yes.  Sometimes, though, we can minimize or marginalize the enemy’s vote.  Iraq got a vote in Desert Storm but it didn’t amount to anything.  However, when it comes to attrition warfare, the enemy’s vote trumps ours.  Huh???  What does that mean?

It means that if an enemy is willing and determined to engage in attrition warfare, it’s almost impossible not to become inextricably involved in attrition warfare.  When the enemy sends a human wave attack at your troops, you ARE engaged in attrition warfare whether you want to be or not.  When the enemy is willing to send waves of aircraft at your ships to wear down your defenses and, eventually, sink your ships, you ARE engaged in attrition warfare whether you want to be or not.

Maneuver warfare will only work until you come into contact with the enemy and then, if the enemy so chooses, it becomes attrition warfare.  The hope is that your maneuvering put you into an advantageous position so that you’ll win the attrition phase of the battle but, barring Saddam Hussein type stupidity, you can’t avoid an attrition battle if the enemy wants it.  I don’t think China or Russia are going to be that obligingly stupid.

Speaking of China and Russia.  What are their single biggest military advantages?  That’s right … numbers. 

The biggest numbers advantage Russia and China have is manpower.  They have, literally, billions of people to throw at our forces and they have the required inhuman insensitivity to actually do it.  Such a tactic is abhorrent and almost unimaginable to us.  I say “almost” unimaginable because we actually saw the Chinese do it as recently as the Korean War and the Russians did it during WWII.  Given China’s uncaring attitudes towards human rights, as demonstrated repeatedly in modern times (recall the massacre of several hundred protesters in the Tiananmen Square incident), does anyone really believe that China wouldn’t hesitate to employ attrition tactics?  Given Russia’s uncaring attitude towards human rights as evidenced throughout their history (Stalin, KGB, Siberian camps, etc.), does anyone really believe that Putin wouldn’t hesitate to employ attrition tactics?

In fact, from a purely military perspective, China and Russia would be foolish not to employ attrition warfare.

For China, their numbers advantage will soon extend to aircraft and ships, if it doesn’t already.  And, unlike us, they tend not to early retire and throw away perfectly serviceable aircraft and ships.  For example, they have a very large contingent of second and third line aircraft that would work quite well as attrition fodder.  If they can throw early generation MiGs at us and destroy, say, a single F-22 for a loss of 10 second/third line aircraft, that’s a win for them.  Yeah, but that can’t happen, you say.  Even 10 MiG-21’s can’t match a single F-22.  Well, they don’t have to match the F-22, they just have to soak up the F-22’s missiles and distract the F-22 so that the first line Chinese aircraft can destroy the F-22.  Consider …  the Chinese have reportedly (Wiki) built 2400 MiG-21s and they are still operational.  That’s a LOT of aircraft to conduct attrition warfare with!  We have 150 or so combat-capable F-22s.

Warfare IS attrition.  We’ve just forgotten that in our desire to pursue clean, neat wars where everyone goes home at night, takes a hot shower, eats a good meal, watches some TV, and then gets up the next day and goes to work to conduct another neat, clean patrol or aerial strike while carefully avoiding collateral damage or casualties to either side.

Russia and China are going to come at us hard and attrition will be one of their major tactics.  We need to recognize this and begin preparing for it.  We need to stop pussyfooting around with networking, distributed lethality, jeep-based mobility, LCS, and the like and start developing massively effective cluster munitions, hugely increased artillery and self-propelled artillery, heavy armored personnel carriers, amphibious tanks, ships with serious AAW and ASuW capability and armor, and the like.  We need to start focusing on killing people in the most efficient manner possible.  We need to build up massive inventories of bombs, missiles, and rockets.  We need to prepare the framework to absorb hundreds of thousands of new soldiers (war draft) so that they can fight effectively without having to spend years learning the latest networking technology just to talk to the guy in the next foxhole over.  And so on and so on.

We need to start imagining what the next war will really be rather than what we wish it would be.  Brutal, ugly, and lethal.  That’s what it will be and that’s what we need to be.

Diversity In The Air

A comment was made in a post about the F-35 that has stuck with me and is worth some consideration.  Here’s the statement that caught my attention in the comment.

“The F-35 has monopoly in its sphere and we are led to believe that there is at least a reasonable chance that it will be outclassed by competitors. If air superiority turns out to be a decisive factor in the next war, I would argue that diversification is a sound choice. “ (1)

I believe the author is saying that our monolithic commitment to the F-35 to the exclusion of other fighter types may prove to be a mistake if our assumptions about future aerial combat are wrong and, if our assumptions are wrong, having other fighter types to choose from, each with their own strengths, would be very beneficial.

Consider the lesson of WWII.  From the outset of the war and as the war progressed, we had many fighter types to choose from:  Wildcat, Hellcat, P-40, Mustang, P-38 Lightning, Brewster Buffalo, Corsair, and P-47 Thunderbolt, among many others.  And those are just the U.S. fighters.  There were also dozens of bomber types and all manner of support aircraft as well as dozens of allied aircraft!  It is also important to recognize that the aircraft I’ve listed were just the ones that made it into substantial production.  For every aircraft that made it into production, several were proposed, designed, and possibly prototyped but were not produced.

Each aircraft had its strengths and weaknesses.  We were able to pick and choose which type was suited for which role.  Some aircraft failed at their intended role but were able to adapt and excel in other roles.  The Corsair was not entirely successful as the carrier aircraft it was intended to be but became an outstanding land based fighter.  Others, while not failing at their intended role, had strengths that allowed them to excel in unanticipated roles.  The P-47, for example, was intended as a high altitude fighter but eventually adapted to become a very effective low altitude ground attack aircraft.

As the war progressed, new missions arose.  Short range air-to-air combat gave way to long range escort missions.  Carrier fighter aircraft became reasonably effective bombers.  And so on.

The point is that as the needs of combat changed over the course of the war we had a wide selection of aircraft to choose from and could select the one best suited for the new roles. 

Today, our range of aircraft options is much more limited and, if the F-35 ever makes it into full production, we’ll quickly retire most of our other aircraft.  We’ll essentially be limited to a single aircraft.  If it should turn out that our view of future aerial combat is wrong and the F-35 is not the perfect fighting machine that the military would have us believe, we won’t have any other ready alternatives to choose from.  What if the Chinese figure out how to negate the F-35’s stealth and can detect it easily?  At that point the F-35 is just a mediocre fighter, at best, and we’ll have no other aircraft to turn to.

P-47 Thunderbolt - We Had Choices

While there was an inefficiency in having, supporting, and operating so many aircraft types in WWII, it provided a valuable flexibility and adaptability that we’ve lost today.

Instead of embarking on mega-dollar, once every 40 year, uber programs to produce one aircraft that replaces every aircraft in existence, maybe we should be producing much more frequent, smaller lots of aircraft, each a new design.  I’ve already discussed how that can be done in a very short time frame so I won’t bother describing it again.

War is not efficient.  War is not a business case.  If having multiple aircraft types is the price for flexibility and adaptability in war then it’s a price worth paying.  The only thing more expensive than waging a war with many different types of aircraft is losing a war due to lack of choices.

What would I suggest for some new aircraft types?  How about these?

• A very long range air superiority fighter for the Chinese theater
• A medium range, heavy weight fighter with very large missile capacity for the Russian theater
• A small, short range, very fast, very maneuverable, pure Boyd-like fighter for cheap export sales to allies – this would greatly boost total allied numbers and provide valuable support during war;  this would be aimed at European countries to counter Russia
• A very long range interdiction fighter for carriers – a modern F-14
• A very large, very long range missile “arsenal fighter”

Note:  I have no interest in debating the specifics of any particular proposed type.  The point is to have a more diverse inventory so that we have choices when the next war springs its inevitable surprises on us.

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(1)Navy Matters blog comment, “I Actually Hate The F-35”, Thursday, April 21, 2016, by username: Eric, April 22, 2016 at 6:50 AM,

http://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2016/04/i-actually-hate-f-35.html

Navy Manpower History

This is a companion piece to the previous post, “Naval Budget History”, in which we demonstrated that Navy budgets are at nearly record high levels despite the Navy’s dreaded bogeyman, sequestration.  In other words, the Navy is lying about the lack of money.

Moving on, the Navy whines incessantly about the lack of money, lack of manpower, and lack of money for manpower.  To hear the Navy tell it, we simply can’t afford large crews and that’s why the fleet is gapped to the tune of about 7000 billets.  In fact, one of the contributing causes of the recent collisions involving the Burkes was manpower shortages.  Along the same line, you’ll recall that one of the contributing factors in the Port Royal’s grounding a few years ago was manpower shortages that resulted in the lookouts working in the galley rather than standing lookout watch.

Is the Navy really that short of manpower?  Is it really impossible to pay for adequate numbers of sailors to man the ships?

As with the budget, let’s look at the Navy’s manpower history.  Below is a table of Navy personnel numbers presented by year with the fleet size also shown.  The Avg Crew column is the ratio of personnel to ships – the theoretical average crew size of the fleet.  Yes, it’s not an actual average crew size because not every person in the Navy is assigned to a ship – there are shore positions that have to be filled.  Still, it gives a consistent basis of comparison.  The last column shows some selected basic monthly pay salaries in FY18 dollars for an E-4 with 2+ years experience.  

Year   Manpower      Fleet Size   Avg Crew  Basic Pay

1960    616,987 (1)   812 ships     760

1965    669,985 (1)   880 ships     761       1621 (4)

1970    691,126 (1)   743 ships     930

1975    535,085 (1)   559 ships     957

1980    527,153 (1)   530 ships     994       2029 (4)

1985    570,705 (1)   571 ships     999

1990    579,417 (1)   570 ships    1016       1838 (4)

1995    435,617 (1)   392 ships    1111

2000    373,193 (2)   318 ships    1173       2016 (4)

2005    362,941 (2)   282 ships    1287

2010    328,303 (2)   288 ships    1140       2272 (4)

2015    323,600 (3)   271 ships    1194       2252 (4)

What jumps out is that the theoretical average crew size has actually INCREASED over the years rather than decreased as the Navy would have us believe.  In fact, theoretical average crew size is at nearly record high levels.  Compare the crew size today to the 1960’s, for example.  We have 57% more manpower per ship now than in the ‘60’s and yet we have 7000 gapped billets in the fleet.  Worse, the Navy is cutting crew size to dangerously low levels in an effort to minimally man ships and save some money.

Do I have to spell out what’s going on here?

The Navy has a larger proportion of non-ship-assigned personnel now than ever before.  That’s a manpower management issue, pure and simple, and yet the Navy wants to blame sequestration and budget limits for the lack of manpower instead of their own bloated bureaucracy.

Let’s look at affordability.  The Navy claims they can’t afford larger crews.  Of course, a quick glance at the table shows that Navy manpower levels were twice as high in the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s as now.  How did we afford a Navy with twice the manpower then – and more ships?  Simple – we budgeted for it because it was a priority.  Today, the Navy is sinking more and more of the budget into ship construction because ships cost more – a $15B+ carrier????  No wonder the Navy says they can’t afford manpower – it’s all going to pay for shiny new toys that are breaking the bank!

What about pay rates?  Maybe sailors earned far less in previous decades and today's sailors cost more?  The pay rate data shows that while pay in the '60's was significantly less, pay has been pretty constant since at least the '80's when we had far larger manpower and ship numbers so that's not the reason why we have manpower funding issues today.

Relative to the fleet size, the Navy has more manpower now than they ever have in the last several decades.  There is no excuse for gapped billets in the fleet.  There is also no shortage of money for manpower.  We’ve operated far larger fleets and manpower in the past with no problem.  What’s changed is the incredibly poor manpower management of today’s Navy.  This is just one more reason CNO Richardson needs to be fired.

Note:  This post was updated on 22-Feb-2018 to add a column and paragraph for historical pay rates.

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(1)http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Stats/US_Mil_Manpower_1789-1997.htm

(2)https://historyinpieces.com/research/us-military-personnel-1954-2014 

(3)Highlights of the Department of the Navy FY 2015 Budget

http://www.finance.hq.navy.mil/fmb/15pres/Highlights_book.pdf

(4)https://www.military.com/benefits/military-pay/2015-pay-charts.html

Force Multipliers

There is a growing consensus (heck, it’s an acknowledged fact!) that the U.S. military is overworked, poorly maintained, undertrained, and unready for combat – in other words, a hollow force.  People will debate the degree of that hollowness but rarely the reality of it.

The solution espoused by military leaders is, predictably, increased funding.  Lack of funding, they say, is at the root of maintenance issues and precludes modernization.  Of course, this flies in the face of all data and evidence.  Defense spending is at an all time high while readiness is at historic lows.  Thus, funding does not seem to be either the problem or the solution!

Civilian military leaders espouse networking as the solution.  In the broadest sense, this is the Third Offset Strategy which postulates battlefield superiority thanks to networking, data links, surveillance, and unmanned vehicles of all types.  Of course, the very foundation of this Strategy is suspect in the face of enemy electronic and cyber warfare activities as demonstrated in Ukraine and the pages of this blog.

Casual observers espouse bigger, longer range missiles as the solution.  Some see a large buy of frigates as the answer, at least for the Navy.

And so it goes.  The list of combat readiness solutions is long but they almost all share one common attribute: they’re all “things” that must be purchased which, again, leads back to funding as the solution.  However, as we just stated, funding is neither the problem nor the solution.

Okay, so if funding is not the solution, what is?

What can restore our combat readiness without requiring massive funding? 

The answer is simple:  fundamentals.  Fundamentals are not just a readiness solution, they’re actually force multipliers.

The Navy and, more generally, the military, talks about force multipliers such as the Third Offset Strategy which theorizes that vast networks of shared data will greatly enhance our military effectiveness over and above the mere capabilities of the individual ships, aircraft, and weapons.  You know what?  It would.  The Third Offset Strategy would be a force multiplier, and a potent one at that, IF it worked perfectly. 

Therein lies the rub.  It won’t work perfectly.  In fact, it will barely work at all.  It will fail for two broad reasons:

1. Inherent weaknesses
2. It can be taken away from us

The kind of vast networking that the Third Offset depends on is inherently unstable and unworkable.  We see this today in our day to day lives and we see this in the Navy’s day to day workings.  In our daily lives we see the inherent fragility of even simple networks.  We all experience network failures at home and at work.  Networks fail “spontaneously” on a regular basis.  In addition, they’re inherently too complex to maintain.  They require highly trained people to operate, maintain, and troubleshoot them.  These people are rare.  In war, networks will fail and we won’t have sufficient numbers of trained personnel to restore and maintain them.

Consider a microcosm example of the kind of network the Third Offset envisions, the ALIS software that is supposed to run the entire F-35 maintenance and operations.  You know that ALIS is supposed to monitor the aircraft, predict failures, and reduce maintenance but did you know that it is also supposed to manage the logistics for the entire F-35 fleet, manage spare parts inventory, and conduct mission planning, among other responsibilities?  How is that working out?  That’s right, it’s an abysmal failure and that’s just for one aircraft.  The Third Offset envisions scaling this up to the entire military.  How is that going to work if we can’t even get it to work for one aircraft?  The answer is obvious, it won’t work.

I can list example after example of current military mini-networks that are failing.  This simply proves that the kind of vast, all-encompassing network that the Third Offset Strategy depends on is inherently not viable.

Worse, the Third Offset Strategy can be taken away from us.  It can be taken away by the enemy and it can be taken away by ourselves.

The enemy can take away the Third Offset’s foundation – networks - via electronic countermeasures, jamming, signal disruption, cyber attacks, hacking, false signal generation, etc.  The Russians in Ukraine are giving us a field lesson in the power and impact of basic electronic warfare and it’s a lesson we should heed.  The susceptibility of a network to attack and disruption is fairly obvious and I won’t belabor it any further. 

The Third Offset can also be taken away from us by ourselves through our own incompetencies.  We see this every day.  We’ve lost our basic seamanship skills to the point that warships are colliding with other ships, basic anchoring evolutions are beyond us, and ships are running aground.  It does no good to have a Third Offset Strategy that produces an opportunity for military success if we don’t have the individual ship and personnel skills to execute the required actions.  Again, this is fairly obvious and I won’t belabor it.

More generally, it is folly to depend on a strategy that can be taken away from us.  What we need are capabilities and, even better, force multipliers that can’t be taken away no matter what the enemy does.

So, again, what are these magic force multipliers that enhance our capabilities and are immune to enemy actions?  Well, they’re easy, simple, and obvious.  They’re the fundamentals that a military and a Navy should have but that we have lost.  Here they are,

Training – We don’t’ know how to effectively use the equipment we already have and yet we think the solution is to acquire more advanced equipment.  It’s been reported that the officers entering the Navy’s new surface warfare “Top Gun” school are having to undergo remedial training on the basic capabilities of the very equipment they work with every day.  They are inadequately trained.  Our officers don’t even know how to get the maximum out of what we have.  We’ve lost the ability to even conduct basic seamanship exercises such as sailing, anchoring and determining our position. 

Aegis has become degraded fleet wide.  We no longer know how to maintain and operate Aegis to get the maximum out of it.

With sufficient training, we could instantly “double” our capabilities just by understanding the capabilities of what we have and fully utilizing them. 

The training issue goes back to focus (see below).  Our potential training time is being spent on non-warfighting activities. 

Tactics – Good tactics can make up for a lot of substandard equipment.  The F4F Wildcat of early WWII may be the classic example.  On paper, the Wildcat was badly outclassed by the Japanese Zero but the pilots developed tactics that allowed the Wildcat to succeed.  Similarly, we currently have ships, aircraft, sensors, and weapon systems that we don’t know how to use to their maximum effectiveness.  In large measure, this is because of our set-piece, scripted exercises that don’t allow the participants to exercise any creativity.  How can we find the best ways to use what we have if we can’t “play” with them?

We need to begin with an intensive historical study of tactics then move on to intensive study of our enemy’s equipment and tactics and, finally, create realistic, free form exercises to explore our current tactics.  Failure in exercises should be encouraged!  Failure defines the boundaries.  Does this sound a lot like the original Top Gun program?  It should!  They had the right idea. 

Hand in hand with this is the need to create standing opposing force training units (OpFor) whose only job is to study enemy technology and tactics and pass that information on to the fleet using the Top Gun model.  Further, we need a different OpFor for each potential opponent.  The Russians won’t fight like the Chinese so why would we have a single unit try to emulate both?  The cost of an OpFor is miniscule compared to the overall Navy budgt.  We can afford as many as we need.

The Top Gun Model Had The Right Idea

Effective tactics can enable us to get far more performance out of our equipment than is currently possible.

Focus – A world class athlete focuses 100% on his sport.  We need to focus on warfighting to the exclusion of all else.  We need to stop focusing on gender equality, sensitivity training, green energy, transgender assimilation, new uniforms every other year, zero-defect witchhunts, etc.  Every hour of the day must be spent on some aspect of warfighting.  To this end, we also need to stop treating the military as just another branch of the government, subject to the same social demands and laws/rights.  The military must be recognized as exempt from the usual social and legal requirements.  If women in combat is not efficient then women must be excluded from combat and the military must be excluded from gender equity laws and norms.  The military must be exempt from social and legal requirements.  A military governed by social requirements is a military that is sub-optimal.

Focus also includes running every decision Navy leadership makes through the filter of “will it enhance our combat effectiveness?”.  If it won’t, then we shouldn’t do it.  It really is that simple.

Pure, simple, warfighting focus can hugely increase our current effectiveness.

There you have it.  Training, tactics, and focus are the fundamentals that can act as huge force multipliers and at no cost, on a relative basis.  We need to return to these fundamentals.