Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Jonathan Greenert has adopted the lingo of marine navigation to bring organization to his thinking about fleet priorities. His “Sailing Directions”provide top-line guidance, with occasional “Navigation Plans” to indicate programmatic implementation of the Sailing Directions. Then there are the periodic “Position Reports” to take stock of how well the Navy is doing in pursuing his priorities.
Recently, the Navy released his “Navigation Plan for 2015-2019” in order to “…describe how Navy’s budget submission for Fiscal Year (FY) 2015-2019 pursues the vision of CNO’s Sailing Directions.” Essentially a summary of priorities for the budget cycle currently in play, the document reveals the clear priorities of this CNO, and sends a message to the American people and their representatives about how the Navy will do its best to remain combat ready and forward deployed in the face of both fiscal austerity and uncertainty.
Read the rest at Real Clear Defense!
Bryan McGrath is the Managing Director of The FerryBridge Group LLC, a defense consultancy, and is the Assistant Director of Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower.
Image: U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Michael J. Fallon
John Harvey 
Bryan McGrath 
Bryan, as always, has written persuasively that the discussion, in this forum and elsewhere, regarding the correct balance between CAPABILITY and CAPACITY in our naval forces misses the far larger and much more important point that our Navy and Marine Corps team is fundamentally too small, with both capability and capacity insufficient to satisfactorily accomplish what the nation is currently asking and expecting it to do.
In this context, the term “satisfactorily accomplish” translates to not only meeting the mission requirements of current deployments, but doing so in a way that provides for the required maintenance, training and modernization necessary to both sustain the force and properly prepare platforms and people for future deployments. Currently, it appears that we are consuming naval readiness as rapidly as we produce it.
As much as I would like to see increased resources appropriated to properly sustain today’s Navy and Marine Corps, modernize the force while building tomorrow’s Fleet and lay a strong research and development foundation for the future Fleet, is it likely that we will see that happy possibility on the horizon any time soon?
As Bryan wrote, “That kind of plan can only come as a result of a consensus among the Executive and Legislative Branches that there is a serious problem to be solved, and that solving it is more important than other priorities the government seeks to address.”
However desirous we are that such a consensus be reached, I see very little evidence that either the Executive or Legislative branches will seek to do so any time soon or that the nation will demand it. Thus, it becomes imperative to have the capability vs capacity discussion to deal with a future characterized by shipbuilding, aircraft and weapons procurement budgets insufficient to either maintain the size of our current Navy or ensure we sustain the technological over-match against potential adversaries we have come to expect and rely upon.
Thus far, what capability and capacity discussions that have taken place has not been particularly satisfying, devolving rapidly into singular debates on whether or not to buy more Super-Hornets and less JSFs, or to keep building fewer big ships like the ones we already have or shift our focus to building more but smaller variants of current carriers and destroyers. Further, these discussions have generally taken place outside of a strategic context that would give them real coherency.
Two issues that don’t come up much in the capability vs capacity debate are logistical depth and attrition, issues I regard as fundamental to our ability to sustain the future Fleet, whatever its specific composition may be. And our approach to these fundamental issues must first be determined by the maritime strategy we choose to implement.
Currently, we are operating forward, to be “where it matters, when it matters,” and maintaining a high level of current operational readiness in our deployed forces. This posture confers a strategic “position of advantage” through which we reassure friends and allies, deter adversaries and respond to and (hopefully) contain crises early.
However, our forward operating posture also incurs certain costs that become of out-sized importance in a sustained, down-budget environment characterized by a profound lack of both political and strategic consensus and the particularly pernicious effects of sequestration.
These costs primarily impact our ability to surge and sustain a fight in any one area, or, in other words, our ability to account for the inevitable attrition sustained combat would bring bring and to provide the logistical depth necessary to support a maritime campaign of any significant length.
If we choose to rely upon a force structure and supporting conops that aim at defeating an adversary’s A2/AD capability, then the adversary’s strategy will likely devolve to stretching out the campaign until we present lucrative and vulnerable enough targets and incur costs we are unwilling to accept. The Battle of Britain offers an instructive example of the significant down-side to an A2/AD strategy undertaken against a resourceful and determined enemy.
So yes, I think we very much need to have an “eyes wide open” capability vs capacity discussion, but that must be preceded by an equally “eyes wide open” strategy discussion where policy objectives are aligned with the ways and means likely to be available to implement a strategy sufficient to either achieve those objectives or force a change to objectives that can be achieved with the resources we are willing too devote to the task.
If the current maritime strategy that is supporting our current national security objectives requires sustained investments the nation is unwilling, for whatever reason, to make, then it’s clear we must fundamentally re-think the strategy.
A sustainable maritime strategy will drive the capability vs capacity discussion, probably in ways that will make us very uncomfortable given the nature of the force structure we have maintained unchanged in its essence since the end of WW II (ie, a strong submarine force, very capable power projection forces built around aircraft carriers and amphibious ships and a multi-purpose surface fleet) and given how we have thus far employed that force pretty much with impunity wherever we have sailed.
I appreciate Bryan’s “unreasonable” approach (as articulated in his recent post on Information Dissemination) to the current dilemma our nation finds itself in with respect to the adequacy of our naval forces for the very real challenges they face today and will likely face tomorrow, but I think reason demands we face up to the dilemma and not simply decry it.
In my comment above, the last sentence in the paragraph that begins “If we choose to rely …” should read as follows:
“The Battle of Britain offers an instructive example of the significant down-side that could be attendant to attempting to counter an A2/AD strategy undertaken by a resourceful and determined enemy.”
Although the current capacity vs capability debate leaves ADM Harvey unsatisfied, his (‘re)”entry” into it makes the point I made in my Information Dissemination piece perfectly, and that is that the capacity vs capability debate already has many passionate and talented interlocutors. I have little to add that he and others haven’t already stated. I prefer to take on what he calls a dilemma, but whicI think we both would agree is largely self-imposed. So while he and others continue to debate capacity vs capability, I will do my work in asking more inconvenient questions about the wisdom of the boundary conditions within which they have their debates. I presume that if I am unsuccessful, their discussions will be unperturbed.