The Navy Is Too Damn Small...

...and Getting Smaller

I apologize once again to readers coming here for pithy social commentary or saccharine musings on life and death. We’ve got one topic today, and it is our ever-loving U.S. Navy.

Jimmy McMillan explains the state of New York rents….

It all started innocently enough this morning:

The next thing I knew, I was sitting here percolating another screed manifesto designed to poke SOME people in the chest and motivate others.

Mr. Dunbar sought my views in the Tweet (yes, Tweet) above, and I provided a few chained-Tweets in reply, but the subject requires a more in-depth treatment, not that I haven’t written about this MANY times in the past (my favorite being “You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat: Principles for Getting the U.S. Navy Right”). Or maybe “What I Believe”.

The proximate cause of Mr. Dunbar’s excellent question is that the USS EISENHOWER (CVN 69) has been extended YET AGAIN on duty in the CENTCOM area of responsibility. He reasonably asks why—if the US has an 11 carrier force, our closest ally (The Royal Navy) has two proper carriers, and the Navy has an additional number of aviation capable amphibious ships—EISENHOWER and her escorts must continue to be extended on station in the Red Sea. Where are the other carriers? What are the Brits doing? Why can’t an LHD or an LHA pick up the slack? What is going on here?

The Navy is Too Damn Small

We continue to be the world’s most powerful nation, and while there are those here and there who wish it were otherwise, Americans seem to want to stay on top. Staying on top means tending to one’s business around the world, and the means a powerful, globally deployed Navy. By globally deployed, I mean in those places where America has first order economic and security interests, namely the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and Europe, in addition to defending the homeland. To service these responsibilities, the Navy should be powerfully arrayed in those three overseas locations (henceforth “hubs”), and sufficient force structure should be provided to accomplish this. The Navy we have, however, is optimized for forward operations in only two hubs, a posture committed to in the wake of the Cold War, where operations in Europe were de-emphasized when peace broke out all over.

Interestingly, the size of the Navy derived of the “two hub” approach was fixed in the Obama Administration at 313 ships, a figure we did not reach then and have not reached in the interim (296 today). So not only do we not maintain sufficient naval force in the three areas where our interests are most threatened, we do not maintain a Navy large enough to look after our security and economic interests in the TWO areas we are supposed to be capable of.

The Carrier Force is Too Damn Small

The source of much of my thinking in this section is a 2015 report I wrote with Seth Cropsey and Tim Walton entitled “Sharpening the Spear: The Carrier, The Joint Force, and High End Conflict”. Above, Mr. Dunbar rightly points out that we have an 11-carrier force. But where did that number come from? Here is an extended pull:

The number of aircraft carriers operated and maintained by the U.S. Navy has changed over time based on warfighting and presence requirements, available resources, and public law. The practice of legislatively setting the number of required carriers was established by Section 126 of the FY2006 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which set the number at 12 carriers. That number was reduced to 11 in the 2007 John Warner National Defense Authorization Act.

Ok—so 11 carriers is the law of the land.

The 11-carrier requirement is contemporaneous with the 2007 release of the Navy’s maritime strategy document “A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower.” In that document, the Navy for the first time formally acknowledged what had begun in the 1990s, namely a post-Cold War shift from maintaining naval combat power forward in three regions (or hubs) to maintaining naval combat power forward in two regions. During the latter stages of the Cold War, the hubs from which naval combat power was employed included the Mediterranean Sea, the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean region, and the Western Pacific. The 2007 Strategy cited only the latter two hubs, with the Mediterranean having been largely de-emphasized as an area of U.S. naval interest since the mid-1990s.

And 11 carriers was determined to be responsive to the need to fill two operational hubs. But how was that determination made?

In a perfect world where ships require no maintenance, eight aircraft carriers would be required to maintain 365-day coverage at two forward employment hubs. This number is arrived at through fairly straightforward (though admittedly unsophisticated) math. One ship is required at each hub. One ship from each hub is engaged in the extensive CONUS-based training and workup operations necessary to achieve required combat readiness. Because of the great distances required for CONUS-based ships to reach their forward operating locations, one ship destined for each hub has completed its workups and is headed to replace the on-station carrier, and one ship from each hub has completed its deployment and is proceeding back to homeport. This architecture requires eight carriers to maintain indefinitely—in a maintenance-free perfect world.

Alas, we do not live in a maintenance-free perfect world:

But the world is not perfect, and ships do require maintenance. As discussed earlier, in order to achieve their planned fifty-year life cycles, aircraft carriers are taken offline for 3 to 4 years midway through that life for refueling of their nuclear reactors and for major overhauls to virtually every system fielded on the ship. At any one time, one aircraft carrier is in this extensive mid-life overhaul. Therefore, when only this extensive mid-life overhaul requirement is added to the theoretical minimum to maintain carrier coverage of two hubs, a force of nine carriers is required.

But the world is even less perfect than that, because ships require routine maintenance in excess of their extensive mid-life overhaul. In fact, in every cycle stretching from the beginning of one deployment to the beginning of the next, an aircraft carrier will enter a maintenance availability of several months in duration. In that time, it is not servicing a combat hub, it is not working up for its next deployment, nor is it in transit to or from a combat hub. Given two hubs that ultimately need to be serviced, this then creates a requirement for two more carriers to account for the requirement for periodic scheduled maintenance. Therefore, to maintain carrier coverage of two forward-deployed combat hubs indefinitely, eleven carriers are required. The symbiosis between the 2007 Strategy and the 2007 NDAA requirement for 11 carriers is manifest. It should be remembered though, that this straightforward analysis does not take into consideration either formal war-plan requirements or wholly foreseeable (and routinely encountered) contingencies in which one hub or the other requires more than one CVN to adequately service the requirement.

And so—the absolute minimum number of carriers required to maintain two forward indefinitely and continuously, is eleven. The problem is that absolute minimum number is (as is suggested above) subject to “…wholly foreseeable (and routinely encountered contingencies…”. Nowhere is this subject treated better than a 2020 story by the redoubtable Megan Eckstein where she laid out the logic underpinning carrier shortages that were being experienced at THAT time. I urge you to read Megan’s story closely— and learn about the pathologies she describes that were having a serious impact on carrier availability—and then remember that what she describes is a situation from over three and a half years ago. In the meantime, the nation has called on the Navy to employ carrier airpower at a rate that exceeds even what was apparent then. The bucket has a hole in the bottom.

So then, smarty-pants, how many carriers DO we need in order to maintain sufficient combat power forward in the THREE hubs we need it? Again, from the report cited earlier:

The simple answer to how many CVN’s are required to continuously and indefinitely maintain three combat hubs is 16, which would describe a carrier fleet 45% larger than that which is currently mandated by the Congress. Using the analytical framework suggested earlier in this section, this breaks down to three hubs, each of which must have four CVN’s to maintain coverage, with an additional CVN in each hub in some kind of routine maintenance period and one CVN in mid-life refueling and upgrade.

Keep in mind, the same pathologies attending to the carrier force (and the real world, to be quite honest) would apply to the 16-carrier fleet, although there would be more “float” in the system in that surge tasking from one hub to another could be accomplished without drawing on assets still working up.

So Why Not Just Build More Carriers?

Well, we are building more carriers, we just are not building them fast enough to replace the ones that are going out of service. I wrote about this recently (“The US is Not Serious About Aircraft Carriers—or Their Industrial Base”) in the context of the incredibly short-sighted DoD move to extend the time interval between starting CVN 82 from when CVN 81 was started. If the current DoD proposal is acted upon by Congress, there would be 7.5 years between the start of CVN 81 and CVN 82. And now for a little history major math.

If we assume that a modern US nuclear powered aircraft carrier has a 50-year life, a building rate of one every 7.5 years works out to a 6.67 carrier force, and since you can’t operate .67 of a carrier, let’s call it 6. We are currently on a glide slope to achieving (as existing carriers reach the end of service lives) a six carrier fleet over fifty years.

The law of the land tells us we need an 11-carrier fleet. How often must a carrier be started (also known as “acquired” or “purchased” in order to maintain an 11-carrier fleet? Every 4.5 years. The Navy has publicly asserted a desire to acquire carriers every four years, which would support the 11-carrier fleet it is required to maintain. However, their budget submissions do not reflect this desire, as the Navy is woefully underfunded as a function of what it is asked to do.

As for my pipe dream the force of 16 carriers I believe is necessary, we would need to build one every three years. As US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are built in only one place, doing so (laying down a new keel every three years) would be a near-term challenge given the workforce required to do so. We simply do not have enough skilled shipbuilders across the trades necessary to achieve this rate, but the Navy and its shipbuilding partners are aggressively after this critical labor shortage.

You know what isn’t going to solve the labor shortage? Increasing the amount of time between the purchase of new carriers. Quite the opposite; it will exacerbate it. And I have a slight (but increasing) suspicion that this is what decision-makers in the Office of the Secretary of Defense are looking for. Work with me for a minute.

Is OSD Trying to Kill the Aircraft Carrier?

Let’s face it—aircraft carrier critics have been around as long as there have been aircraft carriers, and they have a hundred-year, unbroken record of being wrong. A current crop of them happen to occupy key positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). and they view the aircraft carrier as a “legacy” platform, one with diminished utility in a fight with China. Their desire would be to spend less on aircraft carriers in order to finance capabilities (largely tech-related) that they prefer, capabilities like unmanned vehicles of all variety and AI enabled weapon systems.

I want everyone within the sound of my voice to know that I want those things too. And by “too” I mean both right alongside the folks in OSD, but then also “too” in the sense of right alongside continuing investments in aircraft carriers (and amphibious ships, and surface combatants). We need both, but it appears to me that OSD is making a choice. It is choosing to diminish resources for these antediluvian/legacy (sarcasm) platforms in order to fund projects and systems that they believe are better suited to future conflict. Never mind that in the process, their inattention to (and disdain for) the things we use every day to deter war make its occurrence more likely.

And because this team is part of an administration that came into office dedicated to achieving a number of non-defense policy goals, they recognize the unlikelihood of winning internal funding battles against green energy, student loans, and ever-popular “infrastructure” investments. So, in the absence of resources necessary to both bring new technology into creation and increase the numbers of existing platforms, they have chosen the former.

Pay no attention to the fact that the Secretary of Defense has become addicted to carrier air power over the last year. Do not confuse the necessary requirements of the moment with what is best for the future. Our friends at OSD believe that the world would be better with more drones and fewer aircraft carriers, and since they cannot (and will not) win a policy debate that says this (Capitol Hill having not yet completely lost the ability to judge such things), they are pursuing a strategically dangerous, passive aggressive version of what US political conservatives used to call the “starve the beast” approach. If you want fewer aircraft carriers, spread out the time in between when each is purchased, and over time, you not only have fewer of them, but you also wind up with a diminished capacity to build them. Eventually, no more get built.

Am I taking crazy pills? Maybe. But a Department of Defense that was interested in meeting the legal requirement for 11 carriers would not submit budgets for a six carrier force, knowing full well that the nuclear industrial base is already insufficient for what is being asked of it, and more vendors will leave the sector as a result of delaying the next hull.

About Those Two British Carriers

The Brits have two proper aircraft carriers (QUEEN ELIZABETH and PRINCE OF WALES), but both are in port UK. It is unclear what their future deployment plans are, and while these are excellent warships, their combat punch is less than that of a US CVN.

What About the Big Deck Amphibs?

US Naval Institute News Fleet Tracker for 3 June 2024

Mr. Dunbar mentions “…other big decks to boot…”, by which he means amphibious assault ships like the LHD and the LHA. A couple of things on that front.

First, LHD/LHA are not suitable substitutes for the aircraft carrier and its airwing. The Marine Corps airwing that deploys from these ships is smaller than that of the CVN, and it is optimized for supporting troops ashore. Additionally, the USMC airwing has no Airborne Early Warning (AEW) capability, and ordnance stowage on an LHA/LHD is a fraction of what it is on a modern nuclear carrier. This is not to say that 16-20 F-35’s operating from an LHD/LHA is not a solid gap-filler, but we have fewer LHD/LHA than we have CVN’s, and precious few of them have been modified to accommodate the F-35.

Amphibious force structure of 31 ships total (10 LHA/LHD 21 LPD/LSD) is insufficient as a result of short-sighted moves by the Marine Corps to trade “legacy” (there’s that word again) platforms for newly desired capabilities, and even that number is under assault from OSD (the same folks as above). Looking at the USNI graphic, one gets a good overview of where our big decks are, and out of a force of ten, it appears that one is servicing an operational hub (AMERICA in the Western Pacific), while the Middle East and Europe are uncovered. USS WASP left the East Coast a week ago headed east, and USS TRIPOLI is working up off the coast of San Diego.

The bottom line is that there does not appear from this publicly available information to be an aircraft carrier on the way to relieve EISENHOWER (although the HARRY S. TRUMAN Strike Group is reported to be next, it is unclear when she will deploy), while moving one from INDOPACOM would weaken the defense posture there. Given the mission EISENHOWER is currently carrying out, it is unlikely WASP would be sent to relieve her.

And so, Mr. Dunbar, this incredibly long-winded post comes down to three words. Supply and demand. We don’t have enough carriers to contend with a rising China, an aggressive Iran (because that’s who is pulling the strings in the Middle East) and a destabilized Europe. We don’t have enough because our strategy does not call for enough. We don’t have enough to meet the requirements of the insufficient strategy we are struggling to carry out. We don’t have enough because planners prefer to cannibalize carrier force structure in order to fund their priorities, and we don’t have enough because even those skewed priorities are not important enough within the portfolio of interests of the Administration. Bottom line: when you read in the newspaper reports of the USS HARRY S. TRUMAN deploying, EISENHOWER and its crew can begin to think about the trip home.