A Healthy Serving of Crow...

for the Defense Department

“Birds Away” USS CARNEY (DDG 64) (US Navy Photo)

The rock I have chosen to push up the hill is that of warning my fellow citizens of the considerable mismatch between the size and capability of our Navy and the things we ask of it. I am considered by some to be an alarmist and by others as lacking strategic acumen, but that is okay, because they don’t know what they are talking about. To the extent that the Defense Department considers me at all, it is as an irritant, a loud and prolific voice advocating for a Navy they consider to be a thing of the past, an expensive relic, and without much utility unless a hot war is in progress (and even then, only parts of it they consider to be useful).

This is of course, nonsense, and it born of the very basic difference in approach that I have to the powers that be. You see, I believe that we don’t spend enough on naval force structure, but that if we did, we would want to buy pretty much more of everything we already have AND capabilities we are working on and in need of. Our force would become larger AND more technologically advanced, both of which I believe to be essential to fact the security environment we face. Our force would become more precise and it would feature mass as a virtue. It would be more unmanned (or “uncrewed” as the cool kids fashion it), and it would have more Sailors in it.

And then there is the Biden DoD.

Because this administration and its DoD leadership came into office with little commitment to growing the Navy or the Defense Department in general (the truth is quite the opposite, if the writing of the Deputy Secretary of Defense is to be believed), their approach has been one of seeking technological silver-bullets that can achieve desired effects while shedding commitments to platforms and systems they believe to be past their prime, or worse, to be less survivable when the shooting starts. They have made a strategic choice, and that choice is to fund the elements of the defense budget that contribute meaningfully to war with another great power (China), while de-emphasizing those capabilities that are more at risk in a shooting war with a capable opponent, but which are essential to doing the things navies do when they are not shooting at each other or at each other’s land targets.

The Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Defense

There are good intentions at the heart of these decisions. As DepSecDef indicates in her pre-administration article above—the Biden Team had all manner of domestic policy preferences that needed resources, and the DoD budget was sitting there all bloated and inefficient, just waiting for the technocrats to finally bring efficiency to national security. Given the decision to limit the defense budget in order to channel anticipated economic growth into their policy choices, defense planners looked at what militaries do (and specifically what navies do) and decided that since choices had to be made, we would choose to privilege all the things that make a difference after the shooting starts, and by “shooting” I mean the bloodbath that would be an exchange with the People’s Republic of China.

We cannot forget where these people (and by “these people”, I mean the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense) came from. They came from the national security wing of the Democratic Party. They are smart and patriotic, and they have many good ideas about how to move the defense establishment forward (and have been excellent on Ukraine and Israel. Excellent). But those ideas are ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS, subordinate to the basic political instincts of the left. Butter will always trump guns, even among the left of center defense intelligentsia. They CAME INTO the Pentagon with the aim of restraining/constraining its growth to provide resources for Party’s domestic agenda. It is not as if they didn’t also come into the Pentagon with the goal of advancing American security—they did. But that advancement was ALWAYS going to be subordinate to broader social goals.

This emphasis has had an impact on the Navy, and it has not been a positive one. The Trump Administration made lots of noise about growing the Navy and then did very little to make it happen. The Biden Team has been lukewarm to the Navy from the get-go, believing that the Navy justifies its size by emphasizing non-warfighting missions and difficult to quantify peacetime security and prosperity benefits. And while the Secretary of the Navy helpfully advocates for a larger force, he is shouting into the abyss. I am unable to locate any statement from candidate Biden or President Biden that indicates his desire for a larger and more capable Navy, and the plain truth of American history is that the Navy ONLY grows when the President wants it to.

Congress—or at least that part of Congress that cares about national defense—was alarmed enough at administration inattention to things naval that it has increased the Navy’s topline above that requested with each new budget, in no small measure specifically to buy the things that this DoD thinks are obsolete. Additionally (and as I have carped on about here and elsewhere), Congress took the extraordinary steps of 1) changing the Navy’s LEGAL mission to include the protection and sustainment of American peacetime security and prosperity and 2) creating a National Commission on the Future of the Navy to make recommendations about force structure, readiness, and the industrial base.

Up until this very moment, the change to the Navy’s mission has been ignored by DoD after fighting hard to keep the Congress from doing so, and by ignored, I mean that the things that the Navy does to promote peacetime security and prosperity are specifically NOT permitted by OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) to justify force structure requests from the Navy. Additionally, while the Congress created a Commission, it has not appointed several of the required Commissioners, and it is difficult to see this oversight as anything other than the political influence of an administration that has no desire to grow the Navy working with Congressional allies to stymie the work of the Commission.

And Now…The Crow

Now that I’ve laid out the dysfunction, let’s get to the fun part. It seems that since the start of the war in Israel, the Defense Department has stumbled across the utility of Naval forces in tending to American national security interests short of great power war with China, first with the movement of aircraft carriers into the Mediterranean (and subsequently, the Arabian Gulf) as unmistakable signals to Iran (and its handler, Russia) and now with the positioning of destroyers in the Red Sea. Here is DoD’s announcement of the latter:

After nearly three years of ignoring the power and flexibility of forward deployed naval forces as a means to advance our economic and security interests, the administration has all of a sudden gotten religion. Look at that statement above. It’s right there in the second paragraph. What are they calling this operation? They’re calling it “Operation Prosperity Guardian”. They’re not calling it “Operation Shoot Down Stuff Heading at Israel”. They’re not calling it “Operation Keep The Russians/Iranians/Houthi’s from Creating a Wider Regional Conflict”. No. They are pointing at the very real economic impact that missiles and drones flying into commercial vessels in the Red Sea is causing, and they are discovering the joys of what powerful, networked, capable, flexible, and persistent US Navy forces do 365 days a year wherever America’s economic and security interests lie. In order to do so—thousands of miles from home port—they must be numerous (to allow for rotation of forces), they must provide from a ready fleet, they must be fully-manned, and they must be well equipped. It is on this these last few items where the DoD has fallen short, well short, and has allowed the Navy to grow deficient when measured against what is required of it.

People who do what I do and have lived the life that I’ve lived watch with true admiration as today’s destroyer crews swat down Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles and long range armed drones. But more importantly, we realize that the job cannot be done from Norfolk, Mayport, San Diego, or Pearl Harbor. It is a job (in this case, maritime security) that requires ready forces where the threat is, and that means the Navy must be forward, and large enough to be so continuously and indefinitely.

This is why the general approach of the Biden DoD is so frustrating. They are doing a good job on several fronts (working to get missile inventories up and space operations among them), but since they’ve made the choice to limit Pentagon growth to generate resources for the domestic agenda, they’ve de-emphasized the elements of the fleet that do the vast majority of the conventional deterrence, crisis response, and naval diplomacy around the world. I’m sure that some of you are reading these words and saying “limiting WHAT Pentagon growth?” as the defense budget has increased in each year of the Biden presidency. Much of the growth has come from Congress addressing the insufficiency of Biden budget submissions, and for several years, the growth of the Navy’s budget came nowhere near keeping up with inflation—meaning that its buying power was being eaten away.

I would like to think that a corner has been turned, and that we are all navalists now. But sadly, this is unlikely to be the case. “Operation Prosperity Guardian” is far more palatable to allies and domestic political audiences alike than “Operation Shoot These Things Down So Israel Doesn’t Really Kick Some Ass”, and so my guess is that whatever fascination DoD has these days with the Navy in a role that isn’t curb-stomping the Chinese will wane over time.

The failure of Congress to appoint the Commission on the Future of the Navy (which incidentally has already had 60% of its term expire) will aid in that waning, as will the upcoming Presidential election in which I expect the President will not announce any bold initiatives to grow the Navy. Instead, the Navy will continue to be smaller than the nation needs, and may even get smaller over time as force structure is cannibalized to fund shiny new toys. The force structure we have will become less ready over time out of overuse and under-maintenance, as even the whiz-kids haven’t found a better answer for tending our knitting at the edges of the empire than 10,000 tons of American steel and a few dozen guided missiles.

Winter is coming.