Lt. Col. Robert Bateman, Why A Larger Navy And A Smaller Army Just Isn’t A Good Idea:
We have recently seen a spate of news over the past two to three weeks talking about how the United States Army will soon shrink down to its lowest level since the beginning of World War Two. Now we are starting to see op-eds proposing an even more profound emasculation of the United States Army on the basis that ground forces will not be needed in the future.
This is not a good idea.
Yes, I am a part of that institution and you might call me a partisan. But I am also a strategist, and I understand the how dangerously delusional it is to put all your eggs in one basket. I also know that this opinion came from not only an airpower enthusiast but a serious defense technology journalist, so his words cannot just be swept away.
Unless Congress steps in with something to block this trend, beginning in 2015 most of the money in the Pentagon’s budget will go to the Navy and the Air Force. This is because of the strategic concept generally known as the “Asian Pivot.” For that, it is explained, what we really need is a big Air Force and Navy and not so much an Army, or so the reasoning goes. The Navy, in particular, insists that they need at least 11 aircraft carriers, the biggest and most expensive warships ever built. But the reality is that those carriers are really vulnerable, and against a first-line opponent, would probably be nearly useless.
I was reminded of their vulnerability just the other day when I saw this story from 2007 about how a Chinese submarine came to the surface within firing range of one of our massive aircraft carriers, despite the fact that it was surrounded by our best ships. This is about the equivalent of a trump card, laid down early. In other words, the Chinese were deliberately demonstrating that not only do they have submarines (everybody already knew that of course), but that they apparently have demonstrated that they can penetrate our screen line and get up nice and close to one of our supercarriers. The Chinese submarine came to the surface as sort of an intellectual and military “screw you, you ain’t so bad” statement.
This was a “Song” class submarine that is fairly small and nothing like our own nuclear-powered attack submarines. Even so, they carry some punch. Apparently they are also quiet, which is how they managed to get next to one of our aircraft carriers, our most preciously defended ships, without having been detected, let alone pursued. It is not an illegal act, but it is a ballsy one. The people who take care of things like defending our precious aircraft carriers see to it that they are surrounded by belt upon belt of the best technology to protect the golden egg. The carrier battlegroup has ships devoted to protecting it against air attack, and sea attack. Here was the write-up:
“American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk – a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board. … According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy. The Americans had no idea China’s fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.”
Actually, that last line is incorrect. Back in 2006, pretty much exactly the same thing happened when a Chinese Song-class submarine surfaced near the USS Kitty Hawk, the same ship as this time. Curiously, even in the wake of that incident, some commentators wanted to pooh-pooh the fact that the Chinese could do this to our most sophisticated combat fleets.
Here is the bottom line: The Chinese are demonstrating that, at sea at least, they can match us when we are fairly close to their waters. Not offensively, of course. That is beyond many nations. But in their ability to defend, they might have our number because those carriers have to get fairly close to shore to launch attacks inland in China. That means moving into the waters that are well within the capability of the Chinese submarines. But the submarines are not the only threat that puts our carriers further out to sea. In the past couple of years China has fielded a ballistic missile with an anti-ship capability, the DF-21.
The DF-21 has a range of about 900 miles. It is not actually designed, we think, to sink a carrier outright. Rather, and again this is what we think is going on, not far above the carrier itself the warhead splits into a dozen or so submunitions that spread out in a circular pattern with the intention of ensuring that at least 2 or 3 of these then hit the deck of a carrier, thereby disabling it. An aircraft carrier with a bunch of holes in its flight deck is now about as useful as a cargo ship.
So you see, putting our eggs in the Navy basket may be a bad idea since apparently as highly touted as our technology may be, it is demonstrably not good enough. The Chinese have demonstrated that they can get inside our most alert and capable screening force and come to the surface as a sort of international military signal for “Gotcha!” The practical implication is that they could sink that ship if they wanted to, even if the DF-21s did not get there first. What we need is a lot of little carriers, if we must have carriers at all, so that the loss of any one is not catastrophic. As my friend Jerry Hendrix says, “Buy Fords, not Ferraris,” and he is spot on with that assessment.
As for the idea that ground wars are a thing of the past and that we really don’t need a large Army, well, the last guy to hype that line was Donald Rumsfeld back in the summer of 2001.
And there’s “Why the Air Force wants to keep Global Hawks and retire U-2s“. I know that “If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.” isn’t always the most constructive attitude. I also understand the declaration
…costs per flying hour of the Global Hawk across all variants dropping to about $24,000 in fiscal 2013. The Block 30 variant, which the Air Force originally wanted to send directly from the factory to the boneyard, flew 58 percent of the total fiscal 2013 RQ-4 flying hours.
The U-2’s cost per flying hour has “remained fairly stable” at about $32,000, according to the Air Force.
But I’m still not sold. The claim above sounds great. (In addition to “If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.” see also “If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.”) You have to admit that’s a remarkable change in position from a year ago:
“Last year, we were going to keep the U-2s and retire or shrink- wrap the Global Hawks,’’ Defense Undersecretary Robert Hale said. Now, “the operating costs on the Global Hawk Block 30 have come down. It was always a close call. Now it comes down in favor of the Global Hawk. We’ll keep them and gradually retire the U-2s.”
Bully for the GH. But hold on a sec… is that $24k/hour figure with or without U-2 equivalent sensor payloads?
… the goal now is not to put the Global Hawk completely on par with the U-2, rather to have the Global Hawk meet requirements set by combatant commanders, [Lt. Gen Charles Davis, the military deputy in the office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition] said.
“It has to be ‘What do we need to get to the COCOM requirements,’ and that will be different,” Davis said. “The COCOMs said ‘I really like what I’m getting off the U-2, I’m going to need the Air Force to preserve that.’ ”
Hmm, I’m still struggling to reconcile the first and last sentences from that paragraph. The goal is not to put the GH completely on par with the U-2 but COCOMs like what they’re getting off the U-2 and they’re going to have to preserve it… Huh? Either $24k/hr vs $32k/hr is an apples-to-apples comparison or it’s not. Sure sounds to me like it’s not, i.e., GH is cheaper and you’ll get what you pay for. Set aside for a moment the merits of degrading current capability, one wonders what the cost/hr would be if GH were to carry payloads to match current capability. Guess we’re gonna have to wonder because the article provides no insight. I probably should be so cynical though. Like the man says, it must be lower cost per flight hour – current and anticipated – which motivated the 180 deg turnaround from a year ago. Northrup-Grumman’s lobbyists couldn’t possibly have swung the decision.