A Nautical Pax Americana
The U.S. Navy shipbuilding program has run aground, high tides are not projected and heavy winds are blowing ashore. Sound bad? It is. And the situation is particularly disturbing for those who believe that a nautical pax Americana best serves world peace and stability.
During the Cold War, NATO naval forces provided the assurance that Western Europe could not be cut off from the United States by submarine activity, that seaborne air forces could project power to long ranges, and the strategic deterrent could not be eliminated by a strike on land based missile sites. Naval forces were a wild card in the international military balance. A very large part of these forces were supplied by the United States. As the Cold War ended, world navies on both sides were reduced. The United States Navy fell from 594 ships in 1989 to about 280 today. Some would say that this is a reasonable reflection of the world situation, given that the Islamist threat is almost entirely on land. What they didn't count on was the confusion and chaos that a few pirates using outboard-powered skiffs - supported by stolen fishing ships - would bring to international commerce. This is just one of several new challenges facing the world's naval powers in the new century.
The Navy doesn't get much attention above the fold these days, but it serves an integral part in the national security apparatus of the United States. We mustn't forget that fourteen Trident missile submarines provide a large portion of America's strategic deterrent so that no other country will feel safe in attacking the U.S.
There are currently about 111 surface combatant cruisers and destroyers in the American arsenal, of which 30 provide a proven anti-ballistic missile capability against short and medium range ballistic missiles. This capability, developed cooperatively with the Japanese, has 16 of 18 successful shots. These and other surface combatant ships also provide the capability to launch long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles against point targets and air defense of large areas or conduct antisubmarine operations. About fifty-four attack and guided missile submarines provide assurance that no other submarine or surface fleet will deny the surface to U.S. ships as well as clandestine launch of Tomahawk missiles.
Eleven aircraft carriers provide long range attack forces or close air support for ground forces, and they do not require status of forces agreements. For decades, carriers have been the instrument of force called for when the president wants to make a military statement in a political or exhausted diplomatic situation.
Amphibious forces are the final element of force projection. About thirty-one ships constitute this force, supporting Marine ground and air units, disaster recovery teams and civil support units. Two hospital ships also help and often show up following a natural disaster.
In addition to that, there are approximately thirty-one supply ships used to provide seaborne resupply, or 'prepositioned sealift,' for ground force contingencies.
Fourteen mine warfare ships and seventeen support ship (tugs, surveillance and others) round out the fleet.
So why do I say this Navy has run aground? Because American leadership has been unable to develop and maintain a consensus about the future force level with an affordable plan at any point in the last twenty years. Inadequate ship acquisition management has also been a major contributor, allowing cost overruns, which in turn, caused ships to be canceled to pay the bills. There has been an obvious loss of confidence in the Congress about Navy programs.
There have been numerous force level plans since the end of the Cold War. None have been implemented. The current plan for 313 ships has been presented to the Defense Department and Congress. It has been labeled dead by one of the most ardent and vocal Navy supporters in the country, who is also an Armed Services subcommittee chairman. The reason? It costs too much. Implementing this plan would require a consistent level of funding, comparable to the peak of the Reagan buildup years, for three decades. Since there is no large scale nautical threat facing the U.S. and none developing on the horizon, long term, high funding levels are not likely to be maintained. Hence the Navy is aground in its own failed planning.
In a recent article published by Foreign Affairs, subtitled "Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates observed that the U.S. Navy battle fleet, in terms of tonnage, is larger than the next thirteen navies combined, and eleven of those thirteen are U.S. allies or partners. In this article, he goes on to question the government's current procurement philosophy:
When it comes to procurement, for the better part of five decades, the trend has gone toward lower numbers as technology gains have made each system more capable. In recent years, these platforms have grown ever more baroque, have become ever more costly, are taking longer to build, and are being fielded in ever-dwindling quantities. Given that resources are not unlimited, the dynamic of exchanging numbers for capability is perhaps reaching a point of diminishing returns. A given ship or aircraft, no matter how capable or well equipped, can only be in one place at one time.
The shipbuilding tides are definitely not incoming, but flowing out in a rip tide. A new plan is needed if anything close to a 300 ship Navy is to survive.
Navy acquisition management has not created confidence. The most egregious example begins with carrier force levels. After decades of hassling within the Executive Branch and the Congress about carrier force levels, a law evolved that required Navy to have at least eleven carriers. That was a win for the Navy. Rather than planing how to achieve that desired goal, soon afterward, Navy management requested relief because replacement carriers would not be available in the interval of 2012 until 2015. Instead, a plan was developed to build an entirely new carrier design, loaded with unproven systems that are not threat driven. This new design will cost about twice the previous ship class, take longer to build and probably reduce carrier force levels—just as Mr. Gates projects.
In the meantime, three older carriers will be deactivated. Many believe one of these could provide the required 11th carrier.
The carrier development program is yet to be a proven disaster. Navy estimates that the first ship will cost $13.7 billion, with subsequent ships costing $7.5 billion. The contractor estimate is 20% over the Navy's, and the Navy acknowledges low confidence in its estimate. Cost risks are not known on equipment not supplied by the shipbuilding contractor. According to a GAO study, the ship contains only five of fifteen systems classified as fully mature. The one posing the highest risk is the new electromagnetic catapult system designed to replace the proven steam system. The shipboard configuration has yet to be tested, but has a huge impact on ship design, ranging from power, to structure and electromagnetic interference. All these risks taken together are enough to generate high design instability and consequent cost growth due to changes and rip-out. In a budget constrained environment, there is no need to build this ship as currently configured.
One option is to change the configuration using only proven technologies, or to delay the construction until the technologies are proven (which may be never). Given this design status, it would be better to build additional Nimitz class ships. The last of the current series has been completed. It cost $6 billion with a cost growth of 10%, as it is the ninth of its class, but included evolutionary changes. Experience from the 1980s demonstrated that efficient carrier production processes will save much money. This was accomplished by buying carriers in pairs, allowing equipment producers to avoid multiple setup costs, thus generating production savings. It is possible that Navy could get three Nimitz class carriers for the price of two of the new design even allowing for sunk costs. No combat capability would be lost on a ship-to-ship comparison basis.
Navy tried to implement a replacement small combatant ship called the Littoral Combat Ship. It is already a proven disaster. The original concept called for two contractors to build three ships each, which would be compared and finally selected for serial production. That would have been a conservative and sensible approach, but partway through the design and production, Navy changed the survivability specification forcing major redesign. After a year or more of contract haggling, Navy agreed to accept one ship from each builder and pay full cost for six ships. The two ships are about to be delivered. Hopefully something can be salvaged, because the force plan now calls for 66 of these ships (reduced from 82). These ships would be useful in anti-piracy work now.
An ongoing disaster is the DDG-1000 program. Originally conceived as a complement for the successful DDG-51, it was a program of seven ships. Recent Navy testimony indicates that the Navy wants to stop this program at two ships and instead continue to build the less expensive and more capable DDG-51. The DDG-51 has anti-ballistic missile equipment; the new ship costs more and does not. Based on projected costs, five DDG-51 ships could be purchased for the cost of the two DDG-1000 ships. In a budget constrained environment, these two ships should be canceled and replaced by five DDG-51 ships with continuing production and evolving upgrades over the next decade. A two ship class will not do.
On the positive side is the SSN-774 program. Several ships have been produced without significant overrun, and I'm pleased to report, they work.
One amphibious ship procurement program has received criticism for poor quality. This is the LPD-17. That is a reflection of inadequate Navy contractor oversight and a shipyard rollup program by defense contractors. Without adequate Navy oversight, the contractor did not perform properly. Navy had to accept the ship in an incomplete status and welding quality problems were discovered while the ship was deployed resulting in emergency repairs.
A supply ship contract was recently modified to pay for overruns, causing the cancellation of another ship of the same class. This does not bring confidence in shipbuilding management.
Finding High Tide, Fair Winds and Following Seas for Navy Ship Acquisition
Step one is to define a Long Term Building Program for Navy which allows production of 10-14 ships per year within a budget of about $11-12 billion per year (excluding overhauls, service life extension programs and similar programs). This is the replacement number of ships required to build and maintain the 313 ship fleet currently agreed upon. Set and manage cost ceilings for each ship class, and control technological lust except when proven threat drives performance.
Step two is to stop work on the DDG-1000 and CVN-78 using remaining funds to buy groups of DDG-51 guided missile destroyers and CVN-77 Nimitz class carriers. We should continue to produce these ships with evolutionary upgrades for the next two decades.
Step three is to try and recover something from the ill-fated LCS program because the Navy needs some smaller multipurpose ships so that billion dollar ships are not placed at unnecessary risk.
Step four is to review plans for new classes of ships. A planned nuclear cruiser seems particularly unaffordable in this budgetary environment. Replacements for the ballistic missile submarines will be needed in about ten years. Now is the time to start sorting out alternatives if low costs are to be achieved. An obvious answer is to follow the approach of the original Polaris program and use the attack submarine as the basic vehicle, rather than design a whole new ship.
Step five is to make the Navy more relevant in today’s conflicts. For example, establish a pirate control force using small boats based on a easily-deployed heavy lift ship. It is crazy having billion dollar major combatants chasing outboard powered skiffs. A single shot from a skiff borne RPG could cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Include in this force airborne surveillance, either by drones or blimp, so the skiffs can be tracked before and after any encounter.
Defeating the Gulf of Aden pirates is important for two reasons. First, pirates are forbidden by the Law of the Sea. Secondly, and of most practical importance, ransoms collected by pirates can generate a lot of money that could support terrorist activity. Pirates have reportedly collected between $30 and $100 million dollars. Most of this money is unaccounted for by their capital investment in outboard powered skiffs, stolen mother ships and extravagant villas on the coast. The close affiliation with Yemen and the Yemeni inclination to look the other way has to be related to terrorists. The USS Cole was attacked in Yemen while in port. Pirates do not pay a lot of attention to UN resolutions and must be treated forcibly. The U.S. Navy is the only Navy capable of providing surveillance and coordinating the activities of multinational ships now moving to the Gulf of Aden. It is time to lead.
Step six is to resolve the issues regarding naval fire support for Marines. Part of the design compromises made in the DDG-1000 program were caused by the inclusion of two gun mounts for gunfire support. The second mount is not needed for naval missions and makes the ship much larger than it ought to be. Gunfire support studies have been conducted ever since Korea. Nothing has happened, except for taking battleships out of mothballs twice for short periods. There is a philosophical military debate about the need for naval gunfire. One view holds that there is enough air-power to sustain land operations, the other says that is inadequate. The Navy and Marines need to resolve this issue now. If dedicated fire support is needed, than a special purpose ship should be built taking advantage of a current hull form, precision guided ordnance, long range Tomahawk capability and remote drone spotting. In today’s environment, these ships are more likely to be needed than many other classes of ships. Build at least four ships, if needed.
Step seven - and the most important of all - is to increase the experience levels and staff levels of acquisition planners, program managers, procurement personnel, engineers, cost estimators, lawyers and associated personnel so history is not forgotten again and programs are properly executed. Management staff reductions under the guise of deregulation have been particularly damaging as shown in the LPD-17 program, cost overruns in other programs and the complete disintegration of the LCS program. Program managers and contracting personnel are relearning the mistakes of the 60s and 70s regarding ship contracting and contractor management. It takes experience, knowledge and wisdom to guide some of the most complicated projects known to man through all the potential difficulties. Project management is a profession, not a part-time job.
Navy supporters in the Executive and Congressional branches will then have something they can be sure of and support will return. Force levels are more important than individual ship capability, and this plan offers evolutionary change of each ship class. As for completed ships, capability backfits can be incorporated during the life of the ship if there is a hull to work with. This is the essence of the current successful Aegis class improvement project.
In short, if Navy management is serious about rebuilding the Navy, the key is affordability in the long run, design stability, serial production at efficient levels making full use of learning curve cost reductions and sensible business practices based on fixed price incentive contracts. Pick an affordable, proven design, contract for it on a fixed price basis, assure you get what you contracted for and demand no design changes during production. Hold changes for an upcoming class package. New ship classes have to be minimized in this budget and threat environment. They have to be especially well planned and not driven by false schedules, but by design progress. Building must be delayed until designs are ready. That is a major lesson from the DDG-51 program where fabrication was delayed a year until the design stabilized despite pressures to hurry into construction.
If these actions are not taken, the upcoming fiscal environment will only assure continued decline in Navy force levels. I project a fleet of about 200 ships by 2018 considering lost production and retirements. If these actions are taken, the 313 ship plan is achievable and will assure a nautical pax Americana for the next two decades.
