A Three-Hub Navy, Again

Enough with the Strategy Already, Build Some Damn Ships

My apologies to faithful readers and subscribers who come here weekly for homespun philosophy and social commentary. That’s not what you’ll get today. Today’s offering is flat out “get it off my chest” advocacy for American Seapower, a Tourrett’s-like impulse I am prone to indulge. As with everything I write about Seapower, these thoughts are either my opinions or the revealed Truth of the giants upon whose shoulders I stand.

Additionally, this is not the first time I’ve written about a Three-Hub Navy. You can review other examples here, here, here, here, here, and here. My friend Mackenzie Eaglen also wrote an extended monograph on the Three Hub Navy.

Introduction

The U.S. Navy is too small for what the nation asks of it, and it has been that way for decades. The fall of the Soviet Union followed by the War on Terror led to a steady decline in the size of the Navy, as we reaped the “peace dividend,” and then resourced ground forces to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As America once again contends with other great powers, there is renewed discussion about the need to grow the Navy, and the Navy has put forward aspirational plans to do so since 2016, including one released two weeks ago that aims at a 381 ship Navy. As of 31 July 2023, the Total Battle Force Count was 299 ships (there were 275 ships in the Navy at the end of FY 2016).

Quite often, the question of how large a Navy the United States needs leads immediately to another question, which is “To do what?” This is a way of saying that the Navy needs a strategic document or narrative to guide decisions on force structure investment. Former Virginia Congresswoman Elaine Luria spent a good bit of her time in Congress making this very point, and the leaders of the Navy League’s “Center for Maritime Strategy” appear to agree. Recently, Naval War College strategy grandee Jim Holmes took to the interwebs to not only remind us how much we need a “true” maritime strategy, but to FURTHER remind us what is and isn’t a true maritime strategy (and who should be responsible for one). Jim Holmes knows this stuff better than most, and he says things in his piece that are worth repeating here to lay groundwork. I quote two here:

A navy cannot be in charge of maritime strategy at its highest level. It is an important but subordinate tool of maritime strategy.

and the big finish…

Maritime strategy is grand strategy for any nation that ventures across the brine. 

What Holmes has done in his pithy essay is to not only lay out arguments for a “true” maritime strategy, but to also (unknowingly) provide us with important intellectual and process-driven hints as to why waiting on such a product before moving forward on growing the Navy is imprudent. The nation no longer practices grand strategy. If it did, people like me (and Holmes, presumably) believe it would be abidingly maritime in nature given our geography, our widely dispersed economic and security interests, and our sense of our place in the world.

Because such a “true” maritime strategy does not exist, expecting the Navy to create force structures and fleet architectures consistent with one is illogical. And as Holmes reminds us, requiring the Navy to create one ignores the vast gaps that exist between naval and grand (maritime) strategy. Therefore, the Navy drifts along because the nation drifts along.

That said, waiting for a consensus grand (maritime) strategy to develop in our fractious nation before moving forward with force structure expansion is also not a good plan, for either the nation or the Navy. And since we don’t have a grand strategy from which to derive a naval strategy, I propose (again) the Three-Hub Navy as a general employment scheme to provide the President and the combatant commanders with maximal flexibility in peacetime crisis response, while providing for the most effective method of massing combat power quickly to support designated war plans. These seem like useful notions irrespective of likely grand strategy options.

What Is A “Hub”?

A “hub” is a theater-based posture of naval operating forces with its own logistics network. At the height of the Cold War, the Navy operated three hubs, one in Europe/Mediterranean Sea, one in the Middle East, and one in the Western Pacific. The 2007 Maritime Strategy (which is more properly considered a “naval” strategy) recognized the reality of the post-Cold War drawdown, and postulated a two-hub navy, with hubs in the Western Pacific and the Arabian Gulf/Indian Ocean. In a piece I wrote in 2015, it was clear that the Navy sized to meet the two hubs of the 2007 strategy had been insufficient, and 8 years later, it was just as clear that two hubs were insufficient.

The nature and platforms that make up a hub are theoretically flexible, but for our purposes (and for the purposes of estimating force structure), a hub is comprised of a Carrier Strike Group (CSG) built around an aircraft carrier, and an Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) built around an amphibious aviation assault platform (LHD, LHA). Additionally, the hub should contain sufficient logistics ships to service the everyday needs of the forces assigned. The number of submarines assigned to a hub are a function of the peacetime surveillance demands of the theater and other national tasking.

The force structure of the Navy must be capable of simultaneously and continuously filling hubs in the European Theater, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. Why is this? Because public law demands it (from Title 10 USC 8062):

The Navy shall be organized, trained, and equipped for the peacetime promotion of the national security interests and prosperity of the United States and for prompt and sustained combat incident to operations at sea. It is responsible for the preparation of naval forces necessary for the duties described in the preceding sentence except as otherwise assigned and, in accordance with integrated joint mobilization plans, for the expansion of the peacetime components of the Navy to meet the needs of war.

To promote American national security and prosperity during peacetime, the Navy must be where those interests are. To effectively wage prompt and sustained combat incident to operations at sea, the Navy must already be where that combat is most likely to occur. This mission infers the three hubs described above, and although it does not prescribe the forces the Navy must use, the Navy has built its current fleet architecture around the major combat formations of the CSG and ESG. Continuously and indefinitely filling three hubs each with an aircraft carrier and an amphibious assault platform would require 16 aircraft carriers and 15 amphibious assault platforms at historic fleet readiness levels. Nuclear plant core life drives the requirement for one carrier to be in a multi-year midlife overhaul, and therefore unavailable for tasking.

Adding in the other surface combatants (both large and small) and amphibious ships that operate with the CSG and ESG, along with a proportional rise in other elements of Total Battle Force, the Navy required to execute a three-hub strategy would be in excess of 430 ships, and the Department of the Navy budget to support that fleet would be in excess of $360B annually (the FY 2024 DoN budget is $255.8B). Note: there are no unmanned platforms considered in this proposal, not because they are not important and without a bright future in the architecture, but because they are not operating widely as part of the force posture as this essay is written. As unmanned vessels (surface and subsurface) come online, the force structure would change.

Unsatisfying Analysis

Because my readers are smart, and because my smart readers will pass this along to other smart people, it occurs to me that the history-major math I performed in the foregoing will not be satisfying. “Did you really estimate the total size of the fleet by just multiplying the current size by 1.45 (forty five percent being the increase in the number of carriers necessary for three hubs from 11 to 16)?” Yes. Yes, I did. “Did you really just estimate the cost of that fleet by taking the 2024 total DoN budget of $255.8B (which buys and supports a Navy of 299 ships) and raising it in proportion to the growth in the fleet described by your previous bogus calculation?” Yes. Yes, I did.

I did these things for two reasons. First, so that I could support the case that the Navy we employ to woefully support a two-hub posture (with 299 ships) is vastly undersized to support a three-hub Navy. Second, I did it this way to shock the reader into the cost associated with the Navy that we need, if you accept my holding that we should have three hubs continuously and indefinitely filled by a CSG and an ESG.

Not that the logic I used is as specious as my math. Trying to maintain 2 CSG’s and ESG’s in a forward deployed status continuously and indefinitely is ENTIRELY consistent with current practice and resourcing. I am suggesting that world events, our place in the world, and our security and economic interests—all of which are bound up in the Navy’s Title 10 mission—demand the addition of a third hub.

Benefits of a Three-Hub Navy

The primary benefit of a Three-Hub Navy is that the world’s most powerful and influential country would have the capability to protect and sustain its peacetime security and prosperity interests in the regions of the world where those interests are most threatened, continuously and indefinitely, as the law requires.

Another benefit, but certainly not secondary, is that if trouble does start in one of the three hubs—let’s say, oh, the Indo-Pacific hub—two entire additional hubs worth of fully combat-ready, ALREADY DEPLOYED naval force could be in the South China Sea within 27 days (15 knots from Gibraltar for one) or 16 days (15 knots from Dubai for the other).

This combination of everyday global forward operations transitioning to a massive striking force in a matter of weeks is something no other nation on earth could do (or might need to do). The Navy could task sustainment and surge forces not already deployed to fill in behind the abandoned operating hubs, or it could task them (when ready) to join the armada in the Pacific (or wherever the fight is).

But…But…But…The Industrial Base

I have laid out here a conceptual view of how the Navy might be best postured to support a generalized strategic approach to protecting our security and advancing our prosperity. To achieve it would require a considerable increase in resources and a massive increase in shipbuilding capacity that we do not currently have, either in industrial facilities or workforce.

But that is a different problem than the one I have been discussing.

I have been discussing what kind of Navy would best suit our strategic needs. I have not been discussing the size of a Navy that our current industrial base could support. The problem is that these problems have been conflated (especially by Navy leaders) as an excuse for not stating the requirement, as in “it would be nice to grow to that number at that speed, but our industrial base simply won’t support it, and so we will have to make due with less.”

These are separate issues; separate problems require separate consideration. Resources and industrial capacity are not the province of naval strategy. Force structure is. Resources and industrial capacity are the province of grand strategy, and I refer you back to Jim Holmes’ piece with one caveat. Jim is wrong about the whole “ends, ways, and means” thing. Here is how he puts it:

How should a national maritime strategy be pitched? At the highest level. I define strategy as the art and science of using power to fulfill purposes. Maritime strategy, then, is the art and science of using sea power to fulfill purposes relating to the sea. In other words, it is about devising ways to use the means of strategy — sea power in all its forms — to achieve political ends. Ways, means, and ends — relating the three is what a national strategy should do. 

Here is where I differ from Dr. Holmes. Ways, means, and ends are a fine way to audit strategies subordinate to grand/national strategy. But as I wrote in 2014 reviewing an essay on grand strategy (link not available) by the great Dr. Frank Hoffman:

While his essay claims to deal with grand strategy, this passage is one of a few places where it dips clearly into military strategy, an area in which the ends-ways-means construct adds rigor and structure to thinking. Grand strategy is different, because as Hoffman acknowledges, it “requires the conceptualization of all the elements of national power.” Therefore, a true grand strategy does not ignore resource constraints so much as it seeks to define (and redefine) them. I would go so far as to say that while grand strategy may not be resource “unconstrained” it must surely be the least constrained layer of strategic thinking, in that it can and should—as a product of its own logic—re-order a nation’s economy and resources in order to achieve the desired strategic ends.

The case I made then and am making now, is that if our grand strategy requires a Three-Hub Navy (which I think it does), it will allocate resources far differently than it does today. Back to 2014 Bryan:

I have come to the conclusion that in the realm of grand strategy, the strategist who enters the argument with a pre-conceived notion of what general portion of the GDP will be allocated to achieving desired ends is guilty either of delusional thinking or practicing something other than the making of grand strategy. More to the point, it is the job of the grand strategist to assess the total resources available to achieving the desired ends and suggest alternative proportions that re-allocate resources away from less critical uses to more critical uses. In other words, anyone making grand strategy who accepts current “…limits of means or resources…” has skipped the most important first step, which is to define or re-define those limits.

It occurs to me that any worthwhile grand strategy that could gain consensus in this country that was at least “maritime adjacent” would determine that the U.S. requires a massive buildup in shipbuilding. If politicians wished to do so, they would either reallocate current resources (perturb the defense budget, cut other “discretionary” programs, cut “non-discretionary” programs), or they would raise taxes, or they would do a combination of all those things. None of these things should constrain Navy leaders from stating the requirement.

What Can We Do Now?

Given that we live in a very divided country that is strategically adrift, what can we do now to move along the path I suggest, in the absence of the kind of economic redistribution available only as an output of grand strategy? We can stop kvetching about strategy and do things that will invariably be in service to a broad range of national or grand strategies.

• The Navy should work closely with industry to determine what would be required to get to 12 CVNs. And 13. And 14. And 15. And 16 (see final paragraph). What would the capital investment be? How long would it take? If we are talking decades, so be it. But understand the requirement. Once we know what is required, this knowledge gets added to the grand strategy discussion.

• The amphibious ship requirement for a Three-Hub Navy is 45. That means 15 LHD/LHA, 15 LPD 17, and 15 LPD 17 Flight II. Begin to plan and build to this. Immediately.

• Try to visualize Gulf Coast shipbuilding as a consortium, or a system. What could be done to treat this capacity systemically, rather than strictly as competitors? We do it with submarines, so why couldn’t we workshare across myriad yards on parts of ships?

• Begin now to identify a second source for building FFG’s. Put a number on the board. When will the competition be? When will the Navy christen the first, second source ship?

• Tugs, salvage, dry cargo, tenders, oilers. Now.

• Take a long, hard look at what the Army is doing to move troops around by water and then take a long, hard look at doing it for the Marines.

Most importantly, we should take a page from the Franklin Roosevelt administration and the deep planning efforts they made in the late 30’s and as WWII was beginning and consider what putting the nation on a war footing would look like in our modern context. Talking about war does not cause war. Planning for war does not cause war. Failure to prepare for war causes war.

One final thing. In December 2022, the President signed the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, and in that legislation was a provision creating the “National Commission on the Future of the Navy”. Congressional leaders of both parties in both chambers each were required to nominate Commissioners within 90 days of the legislation passing. That 90 day point was March 22, and the Commission was given until July 1, 2024 to deliver its results to Congress. Four Commissioners have been named (I am one of them), but four have not. Therefore, the Commission has yet to form. As of today, the Senate Majority Leader, the Chairman of the Senate Arms Services Committee, the Minority Leader of the House, and the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee have not made nominations. Of interest, the mandate of the Commission is to report on two separate and distinct issues: Navy fleet architecture/force structure and shipbuilding/industrial base issues. This is exactly how they should be treated.