A Review of CNO NAVPLAN 2022

https://news.usni.org/2022/07/26/2022-chief-of-naval-operations-navigation-plan-update

CNO

The top uniformed officer in the Navy, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday, released his “Navigation Plan 2022Navigation Plan 2022” today, and this post gathers my thoughts on the document.

Jerry Maguire composing his NAVPLAN Mission Statement

Chiefs of Armed Services occasionally issue statements of purpose, mission statements if you will, designed to ensure their priorities are promulgated and well-understood. Chief of Naval Operations ADM Mike Gilday released one today, an update some 18 months after his previous NAVPLAN 2021. The document is accessible to a wide span of readers (lots of pictures, text boxes, white space), but is topical enough that grizzled know-it-alls like me will find plenty of interest and some with which to quibble.

CNO felt it necessary to update the 2021 document as a result of three “key developments”:

First, the 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) clarified America’s national security objectives, emphasizing the need to address long-term competition with China and sustain military advantage against Russia. It also introduced integrated deterrence as a unifying principle for the Department of Defense and supporting U.S. Government agencies.

Second, the development of the Joint Warfighting Concept aligned complementary capabilities and missions across all U.S. military services.

Third, through a rigorous campaign of learning, we recognized that the Navy needs a more continuous, iterative Force Design process to focus our modernization efforts and accelerate the capabilities we need to maintain our edge in this critical decade and beyond. (p.1)

I will not summarize the document here, assuming my discerning readers will have digested it on their own. Instead, I’ll dive directly into my assessment, using the approach favored by Naval Aviators of covering the “goods” and the “others”. The bottom line for me is that there is much to like here, and it is a very strong statement of purpose and priority issued by a naval officer desperately trying to do the right thing in a system that tends to work against officers desperately trying to do the right thing. Now for the Goods:

GOODS

Gilday Makes A Holistic Argument

Everyone knows we need a Navy to help kill bad guys. We’ve seen the movies. We get that fighters shoot missiles and guns, submarines shoot torpedoes and missiles, and ships shoot lots of things. Though much of the Navy has not seen close combat in decades, the American public remains familiar with what the Navy does when the nation is at war. That same nation—whose labors fund the platforms mentioned above—is considerably less well-informed as to the critical and unique role the Navy plays in peacetime. Both the trigger pulling and the peacetime activities require platforms, sensors, weapons, and people, and the Navy must be postured and supplied to do both broad functions. As I mentioned here recently, the LAW (Title 10) governing what the Navy is for and what the Navy does explicitly, virtually ignores the peacetime functions, a fact that Navy force planners are reminded of CONSTANTLY by the other Services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) when in the throes of budget machinations. This document puts those peacetime duties front and center, and it serves to buttress the House Armed Services Committee’s desire to codify those duties in public law. Some selections from NAVPLAN 2022 illustrate:

America remains a global leader with global interests. Households and businesses throughout the United States benefit from the steady flow of resources and goods across the oceans. Our modern economy depends on access to the internet, which rides upon undersea fiber-optic cables. As we look to the future, our economic and national security will continue to rely upon unrestricted seaborne trade, unimpeded access to markets, and a free and open rules-based order. (p.2)

Maintaining the world’s best Navy is an investment in the security and prosperity of the United States, as well as the stability of our world. Since our Nation’s founding, through peace, war, and every challenge in between, the U.S. Navy has stood the watch to protect America’s economic vitality, sustain our influence, support our allies and partners, deter conflict, and when called upon, win in combat… The U.S. Navy will build, maintain, train, and equip a combat-credible, dominant, naval force to keep the sea lanes open and free, deter conflict (p.3).

Decisive naval power is essential in this environment. America cannot cede the competition for influence. This is a uniquely naval mission. A combat-credible U.S. Navy— forward-deployed and integrated with all elements of national power—remains our Nation’s most potent, flexible, and versatile instrument of military influence.

Pay close attention to that third quote. “America cannot cede the competition for influence. This is a uniquely naval mission.” We can perform a Talmudic reading of the Title 10 mission of the Navy (as is done by the other services and OSD) and find NOWHERE any reference or inference to this critical and unique mission, and this is EXACTLY why the Navy is too small. It is because this “influencing” happens during peacetime, and it happens with forward deployed, powerful, networked, naval forces. Presidents have understood this since our founding, and Congress occasionally resources the Navy to do it. The bottom line is that today’s Navy—at the direction of the Department of Defense—under-resources the influencing function, and putting it in this document reminds us of its importance. This tug-of-war between war fighting and war avoiding is at the heart of an important Politico article from the weekend. OSD (in the guise of Deputy Secretary Kath Hicks) wants the Navy to do less influencing (and thereby be less expensive, freeing up resources for use elsewhere in the Administration’s domestic agenda) and focus more on what happens after the shooting starts, proffering a new, whole of government approach to influencing known as “integrated deterrence” (more on this later) as the means to make up the difference in peacetime

War Termination Makes An Appearance

National security types spend a good bit of time talking about deterrence and war-fighting, and precious little talking about “war termination”. This is particularly important in Force Design/Force Structure, as accounting for the “how do we end this?” question ought to be considered before the fighting starts. I was excited to see a reference to compelling “…war termination…” on page 7, something I’ve written about before.

The Navy’s force structure planning must become more comfortable with including war termination forces and capacity.

Forward Presence is Defended

The link between naval forward presence, conventional deterrence, and influence is explicit in the NAVPLAN, although it is wrapped up in Joint-Speak (actually USMC-Speak) in the admonition to “Campaign Forward”. Here is some of the language making this case:

Naval forces provide the United States strategic advantages in position, influence, and flexibility, independent of access to overseas land bases. Our forward posture guarantees our Nation the ability to respond to crisis, blunt gray-zone activities, and preserve a stable and secure global maritime order. The Navy’s global maneuverability supports diplomacy, reassures our allies, and generates favorable influence and access in key regions.

Our alliances and partnerships remain our key strategic advantage. Every day, the Navy operates forward alongside allies and partners through combined operations, theater security cooperation, and capacity building initiatives. These activities strengthen our strategic partnerships, increasing interoperability, information sharing, and capacity for resilient, integrated logistics. Working together, we strengthen our ability to prevail in conflict and further bolster integrated deterrence by demonstrating a united front against potential adversaries.

This approach is necessary and important, as there are influential voices on the scene who occasionally put forward the straw-man that the Navy loves forward presence because it likes to have lots of ships, and that the Navy could get by with fewer ships because after all, what are all those ships doing out there anyway? The Joint nomenklaturists have goosed this view by choosing the phrase “campaign forward”, as if to remind the Navy and the regional combatant commanders that those ships ought to be engaged in proper activity, not just “being” there.

Force Design 2045

At just under 300 ships, today’s Navy is too small for what is being asked of it, and this document does not shy from saying that, several times in fact. Handily, it provides a sense of how MUCH bigger the CNO wishes it to become, and to his credit, he continues to go where the analysis has taken him across the past three years—a force of some 500 ships, 350 of which would be manned (or “crewed” as is becoming fashionable in some quarters) and 150 unmanned. Highlights include a goal of 12 ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), 12 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVN), 66 fast-attack submarines (SSN), 96 large surface combatants (LSC), 56 small surface combatants (SSC), and 82 combat logistics and auxiliary vessels.

The plan calls for 31 amphibious assault ships and 18 Light Amphibious Warships, which I believe is too few and will handle in “others”. Notable is the assignment of the “Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfighting Development (OPNAV N7)” as the “supported commander for developing and maintaining the Navy’s Force Design vision (p. 11).

Priorities and Assignments

The CNO does not equivocate when it comes to how he will proceed in achieving his priorities. “To simultaneously modernize and grow the capacity of our fleet, the Navy will require 3-5% sustained budget growth above actual inflation. Short of that, we will prioritize modernization over preserving force structure.” (p.12). This is notable, as with 9% inflation, the 12-14% increases in Navy topline needed to simultaneously modernize and grow do not appear in the FY23 Defense Budget, nor are they likely to appear in budgets submitted by this Administration. Therefore, the tussle between a CNO who prioritizes readiness over force structure and a Congress who (rightly) wishes to see both—will continue to play out. CNO’s priorities (readiness, capabilities, capacity, and Sailors) are laid out in pages 16-23 and include (for each) a section called “Where We Are Going” in which discrete elements of each priority are assigned to Flag Officers reporting to the CNO. Along with assigning Force Design 2045 to OPNAV N7, this explicit assignment of responsibility resonates with my (perhaps archaic) sense of how things are supposed to work in the Navy. These assignments are notable because one of my primary criticisms of the previous NAVPLAN was its failure to assign responsibility for achieving the plan’s priorities.

OTHERS

Integrated Deterrence

The Biden Defense Team has come up with a notion of “integrated deterrence” which in theory (and as pieced together by this author from countless references to and speeches about) purports to create a new fabric of deterrence woven from “whole of government” strands, as opposed to their view of the previous approach to deterrence that too heavily relied on those knuckle-draggers with guns and not enough on our diplomats, bankers, technology, etc. I challenge the reader to provide an authoritative definition of the term “integrated deterrence”, because I suspect if there WERE one, it would have appeared in the CNO’s NAVPLAN as a text box or somewhere else. Because that definition DOES NOT exist (at least in unclassified form), one is not provided. The document alludes to it and takes as one of its reasons for being, the existence of it (integrated deterrence), but it does not define it.

In practice, integrated deterrence is a means to “leverage” less expensive (than brute force) modalities of peacetime competition in order to rely less on MORE expensive (see: Navy, Force Structure) means of deterrence. The bet here is that we can constrain the Pentagon, get other agencies to step up, and then use those saved DoD resources to feed other domestic priorities. Promoting American security and prosperity forward is expensive, and if we can JUST cut down on this, we can harvest billions for the environment, education, inequality, and climate.

Now—it is unfair to saddle the CNO or the Navy with this baggage, as he is a good Sailor and is executing the direction of his civilian leadership. Had he produced a document that did not associate itself with integrated deterrence, he would have raised eyebrows on the Third Deck and made more trouble for himself than is worthwhile. But there cannot be any mistake that this ill-defined notion of integrated deterrence is and has been a smokescreen behind which to cut the size of the Navy by chipping away at the importance of conventional deterrence as provided by forward deployed naval forces.

I could easily have placed this in the “Goods” section as a means of praising the CNO for artfully threading the bureaucratic needle, but the very fact that he has to do so with something as central as American Seapower demands its placement here.

Amphibious Ships

Force Design 2045 provides for an insufficient number of amphibious ships. For YEARS, the Marine Corps has told us that a force of 38 amphibious ships was the minimum necessary to meet their requirements, but upon taking over in 2019, the current Commandant of the Marine Corps (General David Berger) began to publicly question “legacy” platforms including large amphibious ships, and while he has softened that line in the ensuing three years, his words were gobbled up by a hungry OSD and turned into a drop in that requirement to 31 ships. Supporters of the Commandant’s Force Design point to the construction of some 18 “Light Amphibious Warships” (LAW) as a sign of not only the new direction the USMC is taking, but of the benefits to the shipbuilding industrial base of the new thinking. This, even as the USMC continues to toe the line that the LAW does not “replace” amphibious assault ships. Were the requirement to have stayed at 38—with a new, operationally driven requirement for 18 LAW then codified—I would be supportive. But the plain truth is that the Commandant opened the door to harvesting force structure to finance his agenda, and he has been obliged.

Not that this bothers the Navy terribly, as big amphibious ships are not cheap, and having to buy seven fewer of them takes some financial heat off, as the cost of the 18 LAW is likely at least 1/5 the cost of the seven ships harvested. I wrote about this issue here.

Disappearing Overmatch

While I completely understand (and support) the desire to deny adversaries information about our plans and programs, Task Force/Project Overmatch—once prominently promoted and mentioned in the previous NAVPLAN—is notably absent. This is not an academic criticism; the Navy is often slagged for “counting ships” as its measure of effectiveness, and while it has always worked for me, it leaves others unsatisfied as a holistic measure of fleet strength. One of the primary factors NOT bound up in ship count is the degree to which the force can operate as a system, rather than as a conglomeration of independently operating subsystems. Overmatch—at least as I understand it—is all about creating this systemic force. The fact that the Navy is pouring money into it attests to its centrality. The Navy missed an opportunity to promote Overmatch in this document.

CONCLUSION

The Trump Administration talked and talked and talked about a bigger Navy and then did nothing to achieve it (two consecutive Secretaries of the Navy beclowning themselves—along with two horrible and preventable collisions in the summer of 2017 did not help things). The Biden Administration does not even talk about the Navy, except as a bill-payer for other priorities. We are entering a very dangerous period, one in which China’s might and temperament combine in unpredictable ways, and where our interests and those of our friends and allies are increasingly pressured. Additionally, with each passing day, I believe that the U.S. and its NATO allies are likely to be more “present” in the ongoing Ukraine war, and that presence is likely to come from naval power. The document released today is a solid statement of purpose and priority, and it lays bare the terrible choices being forced upon the CNO by under-investment.

Winter is coming.