Sponsored by:

Navigation Brief

This is an e-newsletter first published Dec. 24

ALEXANDRIA – Good evening and Merry Christmas (to those observing),

For those who follow me on Twitter, you know I’ve been spun up about the tri-service maritime strategy. It’s 37 pages of writing for 15 pages of substance. The sad part is the substance is quite good. It’s like a lovely flower hidden in the overgrowth of an untended garden of bloviation.

Journalism professors teach first-year students to “kill your darlings.” The idea is that the writer may be in love with his or her own writing, but the question is whether that clever turn of phrase or witty quote adds anything to the story. Does it make clearer the ideas you are trying to communicate?

Often a writer can’t see past his or her own genius, which is why everyone needs an editor.

Even Thomas Jefferson, who authored that masterpiece of American letters The Declaration of Independence, needed editors. (He had good ones in John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.)

Contrast the rough draft of the declaration with the final product:

Rough Draft

Excerpt: “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, & to assume among the powers of the earth the equal & independant station to which the laws of nature & of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change.

“We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles & organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.”

Final Copy

Excerpt: When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Gosh, the final draft is so much better. See how “it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained” becomes so much more punchy and clear with “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.”

In the original draft, Jefferson packs too many words into a very straight forward idea: “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent.”

And, and and, and and.

Stand up and deliver, TJ: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…”

Notice also how both uses of the word “Independant” were removed. I believe that must have been deliberate. “The document is called the Declaration of Independence, Tom, I don’t think we need to beat King George over the head with it,” I imagine Benjamin Franklin telling him.

Kill your darlings.

To his death he felt like his first draft was better. That’s why everyone need an editor.

In the spirit of 1776, I decided to take a hack at the new tri-service maritime strategy. It’s down from 36 pages to 15. Nothing here is official. I rewrote large sections of the document for brevity and clarity. I’ve also killed as much jargon as possible, eliminated a lengthy discussion on desired capabilities – this belongs in separate document – and removed much repetition.

If you’d like to contrast with the original, here it is:

Advantage at Sea: Prevailing with Integrated, All-Domain Naval Power

And now, without further ado, here is my entirely unofficial Drift Cut of the Tri-Service Maritime Strategy:

Advantage at Sea: Prevailing with Naval Power

Before I leave you to have a very merry holiday with your families, I want to share one more thing.

A friend of mine shared with me a letter from Rear Adm. John Kirby sent to the Public Affairs Community. It gets to the heart of the issue we are discussing here today.

So, as a stocking stuffer: A 2013 email from Rear Adm. John Kirby, former Navy Chief of Information.

Merry Christmas!

-DBL

From: RDML John Kirby

Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2013 11:07 AM

To: ALL PA

Subject: TEAM PA — Killing English 

All,

You’ve heard me talk about good storytelling. Today, I want to spend a little time on good writing and speaking.

“Adm. Jim Stavridis once said that all military officers should learn a second language. I think he’s right. I think that language should be English.”

That’s the way Mary Walsh, Pentagon producer for CBS News, kicked off a talk recently to students at Defense Information School. The line drew chuckles, but it also hit home with me. 

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard Adm. Greenert urge Navy leaders to “say it in plain English,” well, let’s just say I’d have a pot full of nickels. And yet I’m amazed at how often we continue to ignore him. 

I don’t think it’s intentional, this butchering of our own language. It’s more a crime of neglect. I think many of us have simply forgotten what it is to write well and speak well. We know good writing when we see it. We know a good speech when we hear it. But for some reason, or maybe lots of reasons, we can’t measure up to the task ourselves.

For one thing, we’ve never met an adjective or adverb we didn’t like. We don’t “exploit operations in the electromagnetic spectrum.” We fully exploit them. We don’t integrate functions; we seamlessly integrate them. And it’s not sufficient to make investments. We need to remind you they are “essential, long-term” investments, because, hey, some of our other investments aren’t really all that important. 

According to this year’s Navy program guide, the world isn’t a dangerous place. It’s a “dynamic and complex international environment.” And the Navy’s “most pressing challenge” in coming years “will be sustaining Fleet capacity while maintaining relevant capability.”

I guess I just assumed all our capabilities were relevant. 

And why can’t we talk about problems? When did that word become so bad? Everybody has problems. Problems are real. Problems are what we get paid to solve. But no, we in the military have challenges to meet, face, overcome, deter, or defeat.

Jargon and gibberish always win out.

We didn’t tell people we were reducing to one the number of carriers in the Middle East. We told them we were responding to a “1.0 carrier presence requirement in the CENTCOM AOR.” We aren’t defending America at sea. We’re “delivering offshore options.” And we do not sustain troops through supply routes. We do it through “lines of communication.”

I once heard a general say — no kidding — that he was worried about a “kinetic provocation” on the Korean peninsula. I’m pretty sure he meant attack. 

We do not withdraw from Afghanistan. We retrograde. 

We do not come home. We redeploy. 

We do not muster out. We reintegrate. 

And when we do reintegrate, it’s to places INCONUS rather than just plain old stateside. 

If you’re not stateside, well, you’re OCONUS … not simply overseas.

Let’s be honest. It’s just a lot easier to complicate things — to rely on fancy words and acronyms — than it is to be clear and concise. Being clear and concise might get you quoted. Fancy words might convince people you are smarter than they are. And then, maybe, they’ll leave you alone. 

I call it the Prego Proof. I named it after that television commercial, the one for Prego spaghetti sauce. “It’s in there!” says the announcer, making sure customers know every possible ingredient they need to make good spaghetti sauce is in that jar.

We do the same thing in our writing. We cram as much information as possible into every paragraph and power-point bullet so that, should any Hill staffer dare ask about this or that, we can say with a straight face, “You bet, it’s in there!” 

Here’s another example from the program guide, this one about the Zumwalt-class destroyer:

“This advanced warship will provide offensive, distributed, and precision fires in support of forces ashore and will provide a credible forward naval presence while operating independently or as an integral part of naval, joint or combined expeditionary strike forces.”

I count 14 adjectives in that sentence, maybe three of which are necessary. If you remove the 11 others, you come up with this:

“This warship will provide fires in support of forces ashore and will provide a naval presence while operating independently or as a part of expeditionary forces.”

That’s still a bit stodgy, but it’s a whole lot easier to understand. And it gives the reader a better sense of what the ship can actually do, which is what I think we were trying to accomplish in the first place.

Editing out the adjectives reveals something else: a weakness in verbs. “Provide” is used twice, and the word doesn’t exactly instill confidence. Warships don’t provide. They fight. They destroy. They defend. They chase, shoot, engage, transport and steam. 

My insurance company provides. 

My doctor provides. 

My mother provides.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, we grew scared of verbs. That’s a shame, because the English language boasts plenty of verbs that convey action and purpose. And the American military, perhaps above all professions, has reason to use them. Action and purpose is what we’re all about. 

To be fair, I’m guilty of butchery myself. A reporter asked me last year about the development of an East Coast missile defense system. This was my response:

“Well, we always look very seriously at the broad scope of our missile defense capabilities and how to make them more robust and to improve them. But the general also said … that we don’t believe we need that kind of a capability right now. It’s not programmed for in the budget we just submitted back in February. But just as a matter of course, we constantly look at ways to improve our capabilities, particularly in a field as dynamic and technologically challenging as missile defense.”

Well, isn’t that a flash of brilliance … 

I killed a lot of words right there saying a lot of nothing. The second sentence was all I needed, and it could have been made more crisp. Indeed, I’m sure people will find other mistakes and missteps in this email.

But here’s the thing. We can no longer afford to say nothing. Each word must count. Each word must work as hard as we do. With resources declining and the gap growing between the military and the American people, we must at least try to communicate better and more clearly.

I am reminded of a story that illustrates the point. I found it in Max Miller’s book, “The Far Shore.” Miller wrote about the Navy in World War II, but this particular story is about a U.S. Army officer trying to get information from a British outpost near his location.

“You say the Germans are coming,” the colonel said into the phone. “But you don’t tell me how many. Tell me how many.”

“Considerable,” replied the Brit in a heavy accent. “Considerable.”

“No, for God’s sake,” the colonel begged, “tell me how many!”

Again, the answer came back: Considerable.

“Say,” said the colonel, “you’ve got an American corporal up there with you. Put him on the line.”

The corporal came to the phone.

“Now,” said the colonel to the G.I., “tell me how many Germans are coming.”

“A whole piss-pot full of ‘em, colonel!”

“Thanks. That’s all I wanted to know.”

Whether it’s a pot full of nickels or a pot full of German soldiers, we need to remember it’s not merely what we say that matters. It’s how we say it. It’s about the words we choose … or don’t choose. It’s about the sentences we build, the stories we tell. Frankly, it’s about how we practice — yes, practice — our own language.

That doesn’t just apply to the people who write the program guide or other policy wonks. It applies to PA professionals and the bosses we advise, too. 

Mary Walsh had it right. When it comes to English, we have met the enemy. And they are us. 

It’s time to put down the adjectives and back away.

————–

Here are 10 tips to help us improve, inspired by William Zinsser’s “On Writing Well:”

1) When in doubt, leave the clarifier out. Use adjectives and adverbs sparingly. If it’s easier, go ahead and write them in. Then walk away from the document for an hour. Come back and take a fresh look. See if you really need them. 

2) Run, Forrest, run. Active verbs lend momentum to your lines. They propel your ideas forward. And if you’re smart about the ones you choose, you won’t need many adverbs anyway.

3) Short words win. We get enamored of long, fancy words … like enamor. They make us sound smart. Shorter is better. Of the 701 words in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, 505 are words of one syllable and 122 words contain two syllables.

4) Short sentences sing. Long sentences, though necessary at times, are also tough to plod through. Give the reader a break every now and then. Mix in some short ones. 

5) … so do short paragraphs. Again, it’s about giving the reader a break. Long paragraphs are cumbersome, daunting things. Keep them short and punchy; limit them to one idea. There’s nothing wrong with a little white space.

6) Acronyms are lazy and cheap. They may help us abbreviate the long and complex names we assign things, but they suck the life right out of a sentence. Avoid them ASAP.

7) Read well, write well. Spend a little time with Austen and Hemingway and Twain and Shakespeare. Read the speeches of Kennedy, Churchill and Lincoln. Read poetry. The best way to write and speak well is to study those who perfected those skills.

8) Lend me your ear. Readers read with the eye, but they actually “hear” the words in their head. Write for the ear. Read your stuff out loud before you turn it in. How does it sound?

9) Whose line is it anyway? Write in your own “voice,” exactly the way you would say it if you were talking to friends and family. When you put on airs in your writing, you come off haughty and distant. Write it — or have it written — like you would say it. 

10) Lighten up, Francis. I’m not suggesting we throw out all the rules, but every now and then it’s OK to write a sentence fragment, or end a sentence with a preposition, or even throw in some slang. If it’s how you would say it best, and it strengthens your message, go ahead. Say it.

–30–

Sponsored by:

Navigation Brief

ALEXANDRIA — Good Evening, Drifters

In journalism we have a thing called “the nut graf.” I always try to have one in every story. It’s the “so what” paragraph of your story.

Here’s one I wrote about a request for information about a sub-launched drone for aerial surveillance:

“The Navy has been interested in sub-launched drones for some time and has been testing prototypes, but the RFI shows the service is getting serious about the idea as it adds longer-range torpedoes and anti-ship cruise missiles to the arsenal of its attack submarines.”

I mean, it’s not Shakespeare, and it’s not even a particularly good nut graf, but it gives the reader high up in the story what the takeaway should be.

It is not often you get a really good bit of writing from the U.S. Military, but props to whoever drafted this paragraph which is the nut graf (referred to as “The Problem Statement”) of the Navy’s newly released Tri-Service Maritime Strategy:

“China’s and Russia’s revisionist approaches in the maritime environment threaten U.S. interests, undermine alliances and partnerships, and degrade the free and open international order. Moreover, China’s and Russia’s aggressive naval growth and modernization are eroding U.S. military advantages. Unchecked, these trends will leave the Naval Service unprepared to ensure our advantage at sea and protect national interests within the next decade.”

A couple things I would have changed but, all told, it gets the point across: this is an emergency.

So, let’s dive into this strategy tonight, shall we?

Let’s Drift.

-DBL

Strategy Drift Notes

In the first paragraph of the forward, we get a reference to long-range precision fires. That should give you a clue about what they are interested in.

Excerpt: Significant technological developments and aggressive military modernization by our rivals are eroding our military advantages. The proliferation of long-range precision missiles means the United States can no longer presume unfettered access to the world’s oceans in times of conflict.

Then in the second graf, Russia and China.

Excerpt:Since the beginning of the 21st century, our three Sea Services have watched with alarm the growing naval power of the People’s Republic of China and the increasingly aggressive behavior of the Russian Federation. Our globally deployed naval forces interact with Chinese and Russian warships and aircraft daily. We witness firsthand their increasing sophistication and growing aggressiveness. Optimism that China and Russia might become responsible leaders contributing to global security has given way to recognition that they are determined rivals. The People’s Republic of China represents the most pressing, long-term strategic threat.

Getting to the point:

Excerpt:“America’s Naval Service defends our Nation by preserving freedom of the seas, deterring aggression, and winning wars. For generations, we have underwritten security and prosperity and preserved the values our Nation holds dear. However, China’s behavior and accelerated military growth place it on a trajectory that will challenge our ability to continue to do so.”

Banging long-beat drum, the strategy raises the alarm about China’s intent to dominate its regional waters and remake the world order in its favor. It also cites China’s rapid growth, calling it “alarming.”

Exceprt:Already commanding the world’s largest naval force, the PRC is building modern surface combatants, submarines, aircraft carriers, fighter jets, amphibious assault ships, ballistic nuclear missile submarines, large coast guard cutters, and polar icebreakers at alarming speed. China’s navy battle force has more than tripled in size in only two decades.

This rapid growth is enabled by a robust shipbuilding infrastructure, including multiple shipyards that exceed those in the United States in both size and throughput. In conflict, excess PRC industrial capacity, including additional commercial shipyards, could quickly be turned toward military production and repair, further increasing China’s ability to generate new military forces.

So, the brass tacks here are the ways the Navy plans to counter the problem it sets up. This is laid out in a section called: Employing Naval Forces.

Prevailing in the Long-Term Strategic Competition

The Navy plans to give the Chinese threat primacy and focus its efforts on countering it globally.

Key paragraph: “Deterring and contesting incrementalism requires firm and persuasive operations to confront malign behavior. Ready, forward-deployed naval forces will accept calculated tactical risks and adopt a more assertive posture in our day-to-day operations.”

This is the Navy saying it is going to start taking the gloves off. This could mean challenging China in ways that could provoke a confrontation, maybe even shouldering.

Operating Across the Competition Continuum

The Navy is going to continue to operate with allies and partners and strengthen international partnerships like always.

Here’s a key paragraph: Together with whole-of-government partners, we will deny the obscurity that our rivals exploit, holding them accountable to the same standards by which others abide. Exposing and attributing malign behavior imposes reputational costs, diminishes the effectiveness of propaganda, and galvanizes international resistance.

This is naming and shaming. It is also perhaps hard to pull off as this would be an interagency thing. So, unless the Biden State Department throws its weight behind this, it will be hard to do without stepping on toes.

There are a few other sections here but I find them less compelling.

Ok, so under “In Conflict,” I have to point something out:

Excerpt:“In combat, naval forces will leverage the concepts of Distributed Maritime Operations, Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment, and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations to support Joint Force Commander objectives. Nested under the emerging Joint Warfighting Concept, our operations will mass the effects of joint, sea-based, and land-based kinetic and nonkinetic fires.”

This is an odious paragraph. It is a word salad; a morass of undefined terms and ill-defined concepts that mean nothing to most readers. The paragraph even acknowledges that there is no defined “Joint Warfighting Concept,” only promises that it is “emerging.” How could one know that the other undefined concepts fit with something that has yet to fully emerge?

I follow this stuff and have seen all these terms and read all the related material so I get it.. kind of. But honestly who is this document for? I shouldn’t read a 36 page document and finish it, only to realize I’m going to need another 80 pages of word-salad to understand one paragraph. The glossary isn’t helpful either, it’s just more jargon.

Contrast the problem statement with the above paragraph. You know what the difference is? Clarity. Don’t waste your reader’s time and attention by throwing a bunch of technical-sounding junk at them. If your reader does not know what you are talking about, they may draw the conclusion that you don’t know what you are talking about.

Moving on.

Developing Naval Forces

Key paragraph: Consistent with the findings of recent force structure assessments, we will generate a balanced, hybrid fleet that includes undersea, surface, air power, aircraft carriers, and expeditionary land forces. Cost-effective platforms and manned-unmanned teaming will increase the capacity of the fleet and expand our ability to distribute our forces. We will leverage the lethality of submarines in sea denial and focus on enhancing long-range fires, including aircraft and missile ranges, and manned-unmanned teaming in all domains.

Marine Littoral Regiments, as part of Marine Air Ground Task Forces and Marine Expeditionary Forces, will bring additional ISR, C2, and long-range fires capabilities. A modernized Coast Guard fleet will enhance global deployability and provide expanded options across the competition continuum. We will resource integrated force generation, with both funding and time, to ensure deploying forces are prepared for a global, all-domain fight. Finally, we will ensure we have the necessary capacity and capability for sealift and logistics to sustain our forces in contested battlespaces.

One point on this: Should the Coast Guard, at its current size, be focused on deploying globally? Or might we want to maybe invest in them a bit more if we want them to further increase their commitments outside of the Western Hemisphere?

Anyway, according to the strategy the naval force will emphasize the “sea control” mission over all others.

Excerpt:The maritime domain can no longer be considered a permissive environment. Establishing sea control is a critical enabler for all other naval missions that support the Joint Force, including power projection and sealift.

The other thing to pull out from here is that the services will emphasize more distribution over exquisite platforms. “We will design our future naval force to support distributed operating concepts that rely on lower signature, highly maneuverable forces,” the strategy reads.

Networks

CNO has, to his credit, hammered this during his time in the chair: This all depends of a network that doesn’t exist.

Key paragraph:The Naval Service will accelerate delivery of the next-generation Naval Operational Architecture, composed of the Naval Tactical Grid, battle management aids, data structures and infrastructure that underpin distributed operations. This network will be fully interoperable with Joint All-Domain Command and Control systems and will combine inputs into an actionable common operational picture. Leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, we will give our warfighters enhanced situational awareness and facilitate decision making at tactically relevant speeds.

And that’s basically it!

On to The Hotwash.

The Hotwash

This seems like it could be bad: US Navy investigates potential LCS class-wide design flaw

CNO encourages fleet to get COVID-19 vaccine

Congress OKs new Arctic icebreakers for Coast Guard

Navy unveils warrant officer specialty to operate MQ-25 Stingray refueling drones

Beijing Upgrading Naval Bases To Strengthen Grip On South China Sea

The World’s Most Important Body of Water

Sponsored by:

Navigation Brief

ALEXANDRIA — Good evening, Drifters

Well, we finally got it: The 30-year shipbuilding plan. Isn’t it wonderful?

I’m not going to bore you again with the whole twisted, tortured tale of how this shipbuilding plan came to be. It’s a long an winding road that dates back more than two years at this point. But it is worth recalling that this is really the product of a long-delayed force structure assessment, that turned into an “Integrated Naval Force Structure Assessment,” which then in turn became the “Future Naval Force Study,” which was ultimately turned into the 30-year shipbuilding plan.

We’ll dive in and see what’s what in this plan. I will walk you through the main takeaways in a Streamlined Drift.

Let’s do it.

-DBL

The Plan for Now

As I intimated last week, let’s not get too terribly excited about this plan or about the Defense Department’s new-found love of seapower. We need to see what the next guy has to say first. The 355-ship plan was practically dead on arrival, if you’ll recall, with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and his Navy Secretary Richard Spencer soft-pedaling it from the moment they crossed the threshold of the Pentagon.

By March of 2018, the Navy was already talking about a new force structure assessment, with the old one barely out of the cradle. In fact, the Navy has conducted no fewer than four force structure assessments in the past six years: 306 ships, 308 ships, 355 ships and now the magic number is 405 ships by the end of the plan.

Cool. Looking forward to the new FSA kicking up in 40 days.

Now, the Administration believes this FSA is different: assuming that there will be flat budgets and finds money elsewhere in the DoD Budget. It also does a classic military accounting trick: Betting on the come. It’s betting that the reduced OCO budget from the drawdown of troops overseas. Now, both Biden and Trump have talked about the need to end overseas conflicts, so maybe that’s not a bad assumption. But as we all know, starting a war is easier than getting out of one. But if their assumptions hold, here’s what the plan would do:

• Accelerate the Constellation-class frigate: The Navy is planning to add five more FFG(X) over its last 30-year shipbuilding plan and add a second shipyard for construction, for a total of 15 over the next five years. The FFG(X) has not even completed detailed design yet.
• Fields new Light Amphibious Warships: The new LAW would start being procured one per year in FY22 and in FY23, then ramp up to three, with 10 in the FYDP. The requirements for LAW are as yet a mystery, but we know it is supposed to be able to beach itself and won’t operate from the well decks of any of our enormous fleet of amphibious ships.
• It continues EPF construction, even though it’s not clear what the mission would be just yet. They have talked about making it a hospital ship and plan to convert one into an unmanned surface vessel to test the concept. In all, six are planned in the FYDP, none of which were planned for previously.
• It adds three more Virginia-class attack subs over the FYDP for a total of 12, though it is unclear if Electric Boat would be able to ramp up to that effectively.
• It also begins buying a next generation logistics ship, as well as the first Common Hull Auxiliary Multi-Mission Platform (CHAMP) in 2024.
• It buys 21 large, medium unmanned surface vessels and extra-large unmanned undersea vehicles,
• The plan will also procure two cable ships and 16 used Roll-On/Roll-Off ships for sealift, which has been the preferred solution to save procurement dollars, but it is likely to raise maintenance costs for a diverse set of platforms all for performing the same mission.

The FYDP will also see lots of ships start to leave the fleet, including the carrier Nimitz in 2025. But in FY22, we’re going to see those 22 remaining cruisers leave service, starting with San Jacinto, Hue City, Anzio, Vela Gulf and Port Royal leaving that year. Another key departure in the FYDP? The Ohio in 2026 will go away, the lead boat of the Ohio class and the first of the Guided Missile Submarines.

Oh, and last but not least, the frigates Rodney M. Davis, Vandegrift and Ingraham are all destined for Davey Jones’ Locker.

That’s it, let’s go the The Hotwash.

The Hotwash

Straight to links once again.

More Reading

Marine Kit: The US Marine Corps wants grunts packing deadly swarming drones

Looks legit: Macron kicks off French race to build a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier

Submariner Kit: The US Navy wants to find ships to kill using aerial drones launched from submarines

Navy submarine used as a target vessel in the 1930s found off Maryland coast

Better Send 3 Carriers! US troop pullouts in Mideast raise fears of Iranian attacks

Speaking of: Theodore Roosevelt quietly leaves San Diego for second deployment of the year

MQ-25A Stingray Prototype Makes First Flight With Aerial Refueling Stores

Sponsored by:

Navigation Brief

This is an e-newsletter first published Dec. 3

WASHINGTON – Good Evening, Drifters

Well, we have finally seen it: An Army chairman of the joint chiefs saying what we’ve always known to be true: “We’re a maritime nation. We are, and the defense of the United States depends on air power and sea power primarily. People can say what they want and argue what they want, but that’s a reality.”

Those were Gen. Mark Milley’s comments today at the USNI Defense Forum. And my but that’s fun to hear. His remarks seemed to indicate that the Army would be expected to pay for Navy and Air Force priorities in the forthcoming FY2022 budget.

You can read my colleague on the Navy beat Paul McLeary’s work on this right here, as a primer:

CJCS Milley Predicts DoD Budget ‘Bloodletting’ To Fund Navy

I think we need to take a wee step back and just remind ourselves of the context of those comments and why we maybe should pump the brakes on celebrating the big Navy plus-up on the backs of the U.S. Army that navalists have long dreamed of.

As Paul points out in the piece, we need to be real cautious about this talking point. And that’s what I want to chat about tonight.

Let’s Drift!

-DBL

Take a Deep Breath

Let’s go back to the week before the election: I was on a plane, flying out to Bath Iron Works with National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and his staff, talking about his ideas about seapower. The result of that trip was me interviewing the NSA over pizza outside the shipyard where he made very clear the Administration was going to make seapower a priority in the upcoming budget.

I pieced together a bunch of reporting that showed the highest levels of the Trump Administration were plotting a major naval expansion, hence the headline:

As its term winds down, Trump’s White House plots a major naval expansion

This came in the wake of Esper’s kind of weird rollout of the 500-ship Navy plan, the major goal of which was to greatly expand the size of the fleet while keeping the cost of operating it steady: Seapower on the cheap. Now, as I was driving home from the White House, outside of which my car was illegally parked all day without a ticket (!), my colleagues Mallory Shelbourne and Sam LaGrone posted this on USNI, saying that the White House hadn’t signed off on Esper’s plan yet.

SECDEF Esper’s ‘Battle Force 2045’ Plan Still Awaiting White House Approval

That story tracked with some weird vibes I got on that trip from the White House staff around Esper’s Navy plan. Things got even weirder when O’Brien went to Wisconsin and told Marinette he wanted to build three or four frigates a year, well outside what any of the Force Structure Assessments called for. McLeary again:

NSA O’Brien’s Latest Audible on Navy Plans: Calls For More Frigates, Faster

Now, the point you must realize here is that Trump was never interested in Seapower on the cheap. As his and O’Brien’s trips to Marinette highlight: The Administration was always interested in the jobs aspect of Seapower. Now, there’s nothing wrong with that: so were the Founding Fathers. And it makes good sense if you want a maritime strategy such as the one O’Brien talked to me about to pump up your shipbuilding industrial base as much as possible. But in a time of flat budgets, as my story discusses, that means someone was going to have to pay the piper. And it was ALWAYS going to be the Army.

Now, fast forward to November 10. Washington Post reports that the Trump Administration is rushing to get its FY22 budget submitted.

White House tells federal agencies to proceed with plans for Trump’s February budget in latest sign of election defiance

Make no mistake about it: This move is in no small way influenced by the Trump Administration’s desire to realign the Defense Department around sea and air power. Now, we have Milley espousing the virtues of sea and air power at the USNI Defense Forum and letting on that the Army is going to pay for major investments in the air and sea domains. 

Look: The Trump Administration worked hard on this budget, and it was in no small way about aligning defense priorities to their vision for the world. And it is probably crushing that they won’t get to see it through. But they lost. They can submit this budget, but beyond making a political statement, I’m not sure I’d bank on any major realignments inside the Defense Budget.

Typically, what happens during an incoming administration is that the outgoing administration presents them a budget that is pretty much done. Then the incoming will make a few changes to reflect new priorities, but the outgoing administration does leave a mark on that first-year budget. However, it’s unlikely that Biden would want to see a major realignment in any agency before his team has a chance to look at it. So, while the Trump Budget will have weight, my best read on this is that Biden will want to have a chop on whatever Trump’s team put together. And any major shift toward seapower will likely have to survive the incoming team’s fine-tooth comb.

We can all appreciate seeing an Army 4-star preaching the gospel of seapower, but for now let’s be patient for now and see 

On to The Hotwash!

The Hotwash

PACFLT Commander Aquilino Formally Nominated to Lead INDO-PACOM

CNO: Navy Will Have to Convince Biden Administration to Invest in Larger, Lethal Fleet

Pilots, maintainers are worn out and under-trained, aviation safety commission says

Is Trump ‘foolish enough’ to veto the defense bill?

Navy bringing back US Atlantic Fleet

Payroll tax deferral bill fails unanimous Senate hurdle 

Navy Grounds New Fire Scout Helicopter Drone After Back-to-Back Mishaps

Navigation Brief

This is an e-newsletter first published Nov. 26

ALEXANDRIA – Good Afternoon, Drifters

As the aroma of sage, onion and celery begins to fill my home from the stuffing in the oven and I sip a nice midday dram of Glenmorangie 12 Lasanta (the official single malt of COVID-19, at least in this household), I am assembling something fun for you, my faithful readers here at The Drift.

If you’ve been following The Drift for a while, I tend to do silly or off-the-wall things on holidays. Who could forget the 2019 Year in Review in the style of a New Years’ new day entry:

New Year’s Eve is a day when we often look back,

So, let’s see if our service is proceeding on track,

For our beloved Navy, 2019 has been hard,

I propose we review, in the style of a bard.

And so on and so forth, it was very silly.

The Navy’s Wild Year … In Verse: The Drift, S. II, Vol. VIII

So, anyway, in keeping with the Drift Holiday Tradition, we’re doing something a little different, if a little less silly. I thought I’d make this Drift a little like that “Our Daily Bread” tract they had in the ship’s library, only for seapower. So, without further ado, here is your Thanksgiving Seapower Devotional, with select quotes from a great seapower thinker, Sir Walter Raleigh.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and thank you for continuing to read and put up with me.

-DBL

Selected Readings by Sir Walter Raleigh on Seapower

I have, of late, gone down a very deep rabbit hole of medieval and early modern English seapower in an attempt to better understand the ideas that helped form our society’s understanding of the importance of the seas. One of the foremost thinkers on seapower in the age of Queen Elizabeth was one of our own nation’s forefathers, Sir Walter Raleigh, an early pioneer of the colony system that evolved into the United States.

He was born into petty nobility and rose – according to Elizabeth’s famously catty courtiers – well above his station. With his flare for swashbuckling adventures, he enchanted the feisty Queen of England and quickly became a favorite hers. This is to our immense benefit as a nation because Raleigh’s stature gave him the clout to pursue crazy ideas like setting up permanent colonies in the New World. It was perhaps Raleigh who gave the fair Commonwealth from whence this email emanates its noble name: Virginia. And he was certainly the first Englishman to try and settle a permanent colony, the ill-fated Roanoke. I thought it would be fun to share with you some of my favorite passages from Raleigh on seapower and on the operation of a Navy.

On Owning the Best Navy

Raleigh’s writings are varied and fascinating. Here’s one of my favorite passages, and it’s from his “Discourse on the Invention of Ships, Anchors, the Compass, Etc.,” a dry name for some very fun writing. In this passage, he is discussing the necessity for the English Navy to field the best, most sophisticated ships in the world.

Excerpt: And to say the truth, a miserable shame and dishonour it were for our shipwrights if they did not exceed all others in the setting up of our royal ships, the errors of other nations being far more excusable than ours. For the kings of England have for many years been at the charge to build and furnish a navy of powerful ships for their own defence, and for the wars only; whereas the French, the Spaniards, the Portugals, and the Hollanders (till of late) have had no proper fleet belonging to their princes or states.

Only the Venetians, for a long time, have maintained their arsenal of galleys, and the kings of Denmark and Sweden have had good ships for these last fifty years; I say, that the fore named kings, especially the Spaniards and Portugals, have ships of great bulk , but fitter for the merchant than for the man of war, for burden than for battle . But as Popelinire well observeth, the forces of princes by sea are marks of the greatness of [a state], for whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.

How’s that for a turn of phrase, eh?

***

On Officer Selection

This next passages come from Raleigh’s essay “Observations Concerning the Royal Navy and Sea Service,” and it is a gem. From that same essay, Raleigh has some words about the who should make up the officer corps on Navy ships. In a society where patronage and family names meant a great deal, Raleigh was a passionate advocate for a professional force, and argued forcefully against commission granted on the basis of favoritism.

Excerpt: First, the chief officers under the lord admiral (as vice – admiral, treasurer, comptroller, surveyor, and the rest) should be men of the best experience in sea-service, as well as of judgment and practice in the utensils and necessaries belonging to shipping, even from [top of the mast to the keel]. And that no kind of people should be preferred to any of these offices but such as have been thoroughly practiced and be very judicial in either kind of the above-named services.

But we see it oftentimes to fall out otherwise: for sometimes, by the special favor of princes, (and many times by the mediation of great men for the preferment of their servants,) and now and then by virtue of the purse, and such like means, some people , very raw and ignorant, are very unworthily and unfitly nominated to those places when [skilled and deserving men] are held back and unpreferrerd to the great hinderance of his majesty ‘s service, to the prejudice of the navy, and to the no little discouragement of ancient and noble able servitors, when favour or partiality shall thus eat out knowledge and sufficiency in matters so nearly concerning the service and safety of the kingdom.

***

On Command

Similar to his ideas on officer selection, Raleigh felt strongly that commanders needed likewise to be the best men for the job, and not men elevated to their station through patronage. But I think what’s profound here is the emphasis on commanders who are loyal to the sovereign and who can be trusted tell the truth to the sovereign when truth needs to be told.

What Raleigh is warning against, it appears, is elevating commanders who are “other men’s men,” and who might fear that passing along bad news will bring disfavor on the one who got them the job in the first place.

Excerpt: At all such times as his majesty’s ships are employed in service, it were very convenient that such gentlemen as are his majesty’s own sworn servants should be preferred to the charge of his majesty’s ships, choice being made of men of valour and capacity, rather than to employ other men’s men; and that other of his majesty’s servants should be dispersed privately in those services to gain experience, and to make themselves able to take charge. By the which means his majesty should ever have gentlemen of good account his own servants, captains of his own ships, instead of petty companions and other men’s servants, who are often employed, being, indeed, a great indignity to his majesty, to his shipping, and to his own gentlemen.

For that in times past, it hath been reputed a great grace to any man of the best sort to have the charge of the prince’s ship committed unto him; and by this means there would ever be true report made unto the prince what proceedings are used in the service, which these meaner sort of captains dare not do, for fear of displeasing the lords their masters by whom they are preferred or being of an inferior quality have no good access to the presence of the prince, whereby to have fit opportunity to make relation accordingly.

This may seem like an era far gone, with talk of princes and “his majesty,” but I think we can, today, understand the necessity of elevating a commanders who will speak truth to power rather than telling power what they want to hear.

(By the way, you should incorporate the phrase “other men’s men” in your lexicon, because it’s a good one.)

***

On the Need for a Navy in Peacetime

After the victory over the Spanish Armada, it appears there were those who were seeking a peace dividend and to save the royal treasury some coin by drawing down the Navy. Raleigh was having none of it, and closes his essay with a passionate defense of naval expenditures in a foreshadowing of Teddy Roosevelt’s classic quote: “A good Navy is not a provocation to war It is the surest guaranty of peace.”

Excerpt: But now, forasmuch as I doubt not but that some contrary spirits may … say unto me, why should his majesty and the state be

troubled with this needless charge of keeping and maintaining so great a navy in such exquisite perfection and readiness, the times being now peaceable, and little use of arms or ships of war either at home or abroad, but all safe and secure? To this I answer, that this , indeed, may stand (at the first sight) for a pretty superficial argument to blear our eyes, and lull us asleep in security, and make us [negligent] and careless of those causes from whence the effects of peace grow, and by the virtue whereof it must be maintained.

But we must not flatter and deceive ourselves, to think that this calm and concord proceeds either from a settled immutable tranquility in the world, (which is full of alterations and various humours,) or from the good affections of our late enemies, who have tasted too many disgraces, repulses, and losses, by our forces and shipping, to wish our state so much felicity as a happy and peaceable government, if otherwise they had power to hinder it. And therefore though the sword be put into the sheath, we must not suffer it there to rust, or stick so fast, as that we shall not be able to draw it readily, when need requires. For albeit our enemies have of late years sought peace with us, yet hath it proceeded out of the former trial of our forces in times of war and enmity. … And well we may be assured, that if those powerful means, whereby we reduced them to that modesty and courtesy as to seek us, were utterly laid aside and neglected, so as we could not again, upon occasion, readily assume the use and benefit of them as we have done; those proud mastering spirits, finding us at such advantage, would be more ready and willing to shake us by the ears as enemies, than to take us by the hands as friends. And therefore far be it from our hearts to trust more to that friend ship of strangers, that is but dissembled upon policy and necessity, than to the strength of our own forces, which hath been experienced with so happy success.

I confess, that peace is a great blessing of God, and blessed are the peacemakers; and therefore, doubtless, blessed are those means whereby peace is gained and maintained. For well we know that God worketh all things here amongst us mediately by a secondary means, the which means of our defence and safety being shipping and sea-forces are to be esteemed as his gifts, and then only available and beneficial when he sees fit to grant his grace to use them aright.

And to that, we all say “Amen.”

***

And that’s it! Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Sponsored by:

Navigation Brief

This is an e-newsletter, originally published Nov. 19

ALEXANDRIA – Good Evening, Drifters

I suppose, at first, I found virtual conferences depressing. Conferences generally are always a little depressing. It usually involves travel, so you are coming off a flight and a night in a hotel off the bat. Some people really enjoy business travel but for me, to paraphrase the Athenians: organizations hold conferences where they can and the reporter travels where he must. But anymore I’m starting to enjoy the virtual conference thing.

At a virtual conference, there is no expectation that I mingle or attend a happy hour. There is no glad-handing or bad wine shared over plastic model representations of weapons of war. It’s all right there on my computer, in the comfort of my own home.

But for as annoying as conferences can be, be they virtual or live, there’s one that I always look forward to: Sub League. It’s the only time you hear anything about what’s going on with submarines. It’s always a news-rich environment, so much so that you can really only write about a third of the stuff you hear that strikes you as interesting.

We’re going remedy that right here and now, however.

Those of you who have followed The Drift for a while will remember the Show Roundup feature. Well, it’s back. So, welcome to The Drift: Sub League 2020 edition. Time for a show round-up of all the things I found interesting but didn’t write about (yet).

Let’s Drift!

-DBL

Sub League 2020

Sub League is the day the submariners have their picnic. It’s the one time when the submariners put their head above water, so to speak, and tell us all what’s going on in their world. So, without further ado, here’s a quick round-up of interesting things they said.

Adm. Frank Caldwell, Nuclear Reactors

Ah, the fabled NR: The House that Rickover Built.

Some interesting things that Caldwell talked about: Well, there was an interesting update on the Columbia’s electric drive.

The Quote: “In August, we completed full scale testing of the prototypical Columbia electric drive components. We call it the integrated power system. Think of it in terms of power generation switchboards, distribution controllers, and a full-size electric motor. During a full power run, the fully integrated system was operated under the most stressing conditions that we think we would encounter. And I’m proud to say that the system performed flawlessly. It exceeded all of our design expectations. Now this is a huge milestone for the submarine force. And it’s a huge milestone in our efforts to deliver Columbia on time or early. It proves out over a decade of effort and proves that our systems can be integrated and deliver and electric drive for Columbia.”

Caldwell went on to take a victory lap for prototyping, and the kind of deliberate testing process that is a “hallmark” of the submarine force. Funnily enough, this is exactly the kind of rigor that some in Congress believe is missing in the Navy’s other efforts, including unmanned systems.

The Submarine force is heading for a dip in force structure, as we all know. We’re heading down to an attack sub force of about 42 boats from today’s 50, but the Navy is trying to push that curve up a little by extending the lives of some LA-class attack boats. The latest from Caldwell:

The Quote: “We are progressing on refueling select 688-class submarines. The first will be Cheyenne starting in February 2022. Currently there are six 688s which will be refueled. This will help with our upcoming SSN for structure dip, and we will extend these boats out for another operating cycle to get after this.

Over the last two years we’ve been making the required investments in cranes equipment and facilities to support these refuelings at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. This is a big effort. And I have to say there’s a lot of work going on. And that too is very impressive if you got the chance to see it.”

Caldwell also addressed something we’ve discussed here on The Drift: The public shipyards modernization plan. Using that age-old metaphor of building the airplane in fight, he acknowledged it was going to be a challenge but said it will be a worthy effort.

The Quote: “We must recapitalize vital facilities and infrastructure on our public yards. A great example of this is what we’re working on at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard that I discussed earlier. Here is a case where infrastructure upgrades are tightly connected to executing deep submarine maintenance. It’s absolutely like the analogy of building an airplane in flight.0

The outcome of this effort will be terrific. We will go in one area of the shipyard from one dock to three docks. And overall the yard will go from three docks to a total of five docks with a much more efficient layout, with margin to our requirements. And we will also remove dependency on the tides, for bringing ships in and out of drydock by the inclusion of a super flood base. And these facilities will provide decades more of repair much needed repair capacity.

And finally, Caldwell threw some cold water on the idea that the Navy has any real idea what it’s moving toward with the next-generation Fast-attack submarine. Here’s what he had to say:

The Quote: “What happens after Columbia? Is it continuing to build additional Virginia blocks? Can we build on the Virginia hull form for future needs? What about building on the Columbia hull form? Or does it require an entirely new hull form? I want you to know that we are considering all of these alternatives. Key in all of this will be our focus on speed, warfighting capability, greater energy, lethality, and sensors. And, yes, the next level of stealth. I want you to know that we are working on this very actively as an enterprise.”

***

Vice Admiral Daryl Caudle, Commander, Naval Submarine Forces

The most interesting thing SUBFOR talked about was an initiative to increase the means by which submarines and unmanned undersea vehicles can communicate, an effort to make it so that submarines never have to break the surface of the water again.

The Quote: “We’re improving our ability to communicate at speed and depth. That’s always been the holy grail of submarine forces: never having to break the air/water interface – the initiative to never go to periscope depth again. And we’re really making great strides in that. We’re doing that through things we call non-traditional acoustic communication systems.

We’re doing it through special buoys that we can actually launch. We’re doing it through all sorts of different ways that are different classification levels. But all of those ways will eventually utilize and leverage the undersea constellation. And the undersea constellation … will be critical in our long-term ability to communicate undersea. It will be critical to get targeting from; it will be critical to actually track adversary submarines; it will be critical to power UUVs from. So, this undersea constellation is really something we’re putting a lot of energy in.”

More on that in the future.

***

Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwait

Oh, man, did SECNAV ever make a stir. You probably saw this first but I thought it was worth rehashing.

So, SECNAV believes that the Navy needs a new numbered fleet to focus on the area that runs from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, perhaps out of Singapore. Here’s what he said:

The Quote: “We want to stand up a new numbered fleet. And we want to put that numbered fleet in the crossroads between the Indian and the Pacific oceans, and we’re really going to have an Indo-PACOM footprint. We can’t just rely on the 7th Fleet in Japan. We have to look to our other allies and partners like Singapore, like India, and actually put a numbered fleet where it would be extremely relevant if, god forbid, we were to ever to get in any kind of a dust-up.

More importantly, it can provide a much more formidable deterrence. So, we’re going to create the First Fleet, and we’re going to put it, if not Singapore right out of the chocks. We’re going to look to make it more expeditionary-oriented and move it across the Pacific until it is where our allies and partners see that it could best assist them as well as to assist us.”

So, an unnamed Defense official told USNI that U.S. 1^st Fleet was an idea he had discussed with Mark Esper, who has now been fired by tweet, but it was not cleared yet with the new acting Secretary of Defense whose name I’m not sure I need to learn.

Two additional pieces of information popped today on this.

One was this statement from the Secretary of the Navy’s office:

“No decisions have been made on timing or location for the establishment of an additional numbered fleet in the Indo Pacific. The Navy continues to review our organizational structure and force posture, in coordination with combatant commanders and our allies, to ensure we can most effectively meet the maritime challenges we face around the world.

And the other was this statement from Singapore, which isn’t very subtle:

“As agreed and announced in 2012, by the Minister for Defence (Singapore) and Secretary of Defense (US), MINDEF had agreed to the US’ request to deploy up to four Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) to Singapore on a rotational basis. This remains the standing arrangement with no further requests from or discussions with the US Department of Defense (DOD) on additional deployment of US ships in Singapore.”

SECNAV perhaps got over his skis a bit. We’ll wait to see on 1^st Fleet.

***

On to The Hotwash!

The Hotwash

Just the links this week.

More Reading

French Navy puts fresh focus on high-intensity combat training

So many new frigates! Japan launches first ship of new frigate class

Mission Creep Alert: US Navy destroyer shoots down an ICBM in milestone test

We’ll see about this one: Navy Officials Reveal Details of New $100M Light Amphibious Warship Concept

Unexpected present: U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson Pledges $32B Military Build-Up

Navy Makes Major JADC2 Push, Linking Sensors & Shooters

Sponsored by:

Navigation Brief

This is an e-newsletter first published Nov. 12

ALEXANDRIA – Good Evening, Drifters

Those of you who have followed my work for some time may recall my quixotic quest to get the military to pay attention to the issues with our surge sealift fleet. Well, I have a new one for you: Fisheries. Fishing accounts for 20 percent of the protein in about half the world population’s diet. And, if you’ve not noticed, there are a ton of us.

When the Chinese Fishing Fleet descended on the Galapagos Islands two months ago, clearing out a natural wonder of its fish stocks, it hit me all at once: Fishing is on the fringes of my beat all the time. Many of the clashes between China and its neighbors in the South China Sea have to do with fishing. When, at the end of the Obama Administration, we looked very close to coming to blows with China, it was over Chinese incursions into Scarborough Shoal.

The Chinese were threatening to begin land reclamation on the feature that is used by Filipino fishers but has been under constant patrol by the Chinese Coast Guard since a 2012 standoff with Manilla over fishing rights there. And while China’s seeking to create facts on the ground that benefit its absurd nine-dash-line claims, at the center of the issue for the Philippines was fishing. You may recall, the late Sen. John McCain penned a dire op-ed warning the China could be preparing to move on Scarborough Shoal, something he would occasionally do when he had pretty good information something might be about to happen.

This is an issue we need to pay closer attention to. Luckily, the Coast Guard is way ahead of me. In September, the service released an Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing Strategic Outlook document. I appreciate if you read to this point once you realized I was talking about commercial fishing tonight. I’ll try and make this guided tour of the Coast Guard’s plan to address the issue pretty quick!

Let’s Drift!

-DBL

IUU Matters to I and U

Let’s do this in bullet-point format to keep it breezy.

Here is the full report for your reading enjoyment if you want to circle back. Or you could just read my summary here!

The United States Coast Guard Vision to Combat Global IUU Fishing

What’s the problem?

• About 1 in 5 fish in the world is illegally caught, which drives down the cost of fish and hurts those who play by the rules.
• 93 percent of the fish in the world are classified as fully exploited, over exploited or significantly depleted. We are losing the world’s fish.
• About 80 percent of the fish we consume hear in the US are not easily traceable, meaning that we are almost certainly eating illegally caught fish among the lawful catch.
• And most importantly, illegal fishing is raising tensions all over the globe, increasing the possibility of conflict that will drag in the United States. In the worlds of Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz’s opening letter: “IUU fishing has replaced piracy as the leading global maritime security threat. If IUU fishing continues unchecked, we can expect deterioration of fragile coastal States and increased tension among foreign-fishing Nations, threatening geo-political stability around the world.”
• Left uncheck, declining fish stocks will drive poor fishers to crime, a cycle we saw play out in Somalia in the 1990s and 2000s. “These practices destroy not only the resource today, but also its ability to be sustainably harvested for years and decades to come. Left without alternatives, these conditions entice more and more fishers to seek alternative sources of income such as piracy, drug trafficking, and human trafficking, creating a dangerous downward cycle furthering regional instability,” the Coast Guard report reads.

What can we do about it?

• The Coast Guard see’s this as a global mission where it has global responsibilities.
• “Today, the world’s oceans require a global approach to preserve territorial integrity and international norms, maintain an unimpeded flow of commerce, and uphold freedom of use and access to shared resources,” the report reads. “U.S. Coast Guard efforts to counter IUU fishing contribute directly to broader efforts in the National Security and National Defense Strategies to ensure rules-based order is upheld in the maritime domain. These same efforts also uphold free and open systems of governance that enable legal access to fisheries. In the face of increasing challenges to global food security and the growing demand for marine resources, the U.S. Coast Guard will advance global efforts to confront IUU fishing to preserve the long-term strategic and economic viability of global fish stocks”

Lines of Effort

• Promote Targeted, Effective, Intelligence-Driven Enforcement Operations: Essentially what this effort means is twofold. The first part is that the Coast Guard is going to use its intelligence assets to help document illegal fishing and help other nations do enforcement and be able to confront lawbreakers through official channels. It also calls for the USCG to “coordinate across the U.S. Government to target areas susceptible to IUU fishing and otherwise increase our law enforcement presence on the high seas and in the EEZs of partner nations.”
• The USCG is planning to push “intelligence information to the widest audience, prioritizing unclassified information in order to uncover vessel beneficial ownership, criminal organizations, and flag States that are actively undermining global fisheries management.”
• Expanding multilateral fisheries enforcement: Basically the Coast Guard wants allies to devote more assets to this. But beyond that, the service wants to secure agreements from at-risk countries to allow them to enforce their laws. “Adding counter-IUU fishing to existing U.S. bilateral enforcement agreements and pursuing new agreements with flag States and countries in priority regions,” the document calls for.
• Include counter-IUU training into joint Navy and Coast Guard exercises.

And that’s it! Told you I’d make it quick.

On to The Hotwash.

The Hotwash

Straight to the links tonight.

More Reading

Good read from Megan at USNI on carrier use: No Margin Left: Overworked Carrier Force Struggles to Maintain Deployments After Decades of Overuse

NAVSEA: Cruiser Modernization Delays Biggest Hurdle to On-Time Maintenance

More 9-month deployments: Guided-missile cruiser Antietam wraps up 260-day deployment

A tug with a conscience: Navy debuts cleaner-burning tugboats in Washington state

Italy plans new destroyers for 2028 delivery

Sponsored by:

Navigation Brief

This is an e-newsletter first published Nov. 5

ALEXANDRIA – Good Evening, Drifters

Well it has been a momentous week. Why? Well, I wrote my first editorial. As an exercise in writing, it was a new thing. The Drift can be opinionated at times, but I like to think that most of what I do here is just raise questions and try and answer them as best I can with the available data.

An editorial is something of a different beast: There’s a level of internal logic you need to achieve that we in no way strive for here at The Drift. You must make an argument.

But since you all are near and dear to my heart, I thought I’d give you an advanced look. It’s about submarine building and what’s required to meet the kind of goals laid out by Secretary Esper, who in September called for the Navy to begin building three Virginia-class attack submarines per year “as soon as possible.”

We’ve talked previously in The Drift about how it is confusing to me why we would have a substantially different 30-year shipbuilding plan every POM cycle. Part of the reason is that we seem to be in a never-ending cycle of force structure assessments that continually move the goal post.

It seems to defeat the purpose of long-term planning if your plan changes all the time. That was the subject of the piece. Hope you dig it.

Let’s Drift!

DBL

Ever-Changing Plans

Here’s a quick guided tour of what I wanted to argue and why I said what I said.

The crux of the argument I’m trying to make is that with the ever-shifting plans for building ships, industry can’t adequately plan for hiring and facilities expansion. This applies across the board for the Navy but submarine building is an especially fragile industrial base. I wanted to make a larger point about the challenges inherent in expanding the fleet by keying in on Esper’s push for three attack subs per year:

Excerpt:But the companies that build the submarines — General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries — as well as the multitude of smaller businesses that supply niche, highly specified parts to assemble nuclear reactors or missile launch tubes, have every reason to ignore Esper’s latest grand designs.

Industry well remembers the 1990s when costs drove the Navy to slash the Seawolf-class sub order from 29 hulls to just three, with no immediate replacement vessel ready to keep the lines hot.

Seawolf was ultimately replaced with the cheaper but capable Virginia class, but the break in production hit the submarine industrial base hard. It drove parts suppliers out of business and forced skilled workers into other fields — skills that can take years to recoup through training a new workforce.

With those memories in mind, Esper’s plan seems unlikely to persuade companies to expand their production capacity. This especially applies when the Navy seems unable to stick to a shipbuilding plan for more than a single budget cycle.

One reason the industry shouldn’t bank on three subs per year is the mismatch between the Fy21 shipbuilding request that, if we recall, also shorted a Virginia-class submarine from the request, but also was $4 billion less than what Congress appropriated in 2020. If you use the Fy21 budget as a guide, three SSNs plus a Columbia per year starting in 2026 would be a huge percentage of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget.

Excerpt:Three Virginia-class submarines per year (with the Block V costing $3.5 billion per hull, according to Navy leaders) and a $7.5 billion Columbia-class submarine every year starting in 2026 would mean $18 billion in submarines each year in today’s dollars, representing roughly 85 percent of the 2021 shipbuilding budget request.

For context, the Navy requested around $20 billion for shipbuilding in 2021, meaning more than 85 percent of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget request from this year would be consumed by submarines.

Few, if any, analysts believe this would be a sustainable shipbuilding budget going forward, given the Navy also needs to buy surface combatants, amphibious ships and of course a revitalized logistics system vital for sustaining any potential maritime conflict with a rival great power.

At the same time, few analysts are predicting a large boost to defense spending, with most predicting essentially flat budgets with inflation.

So, we come down to the brass tax. Much like I laid out in my article from my trip with Robert O’Brien, the math doesn’t work to grow the Navy unless you get more money in the budget or you cut other services to pay for it.

Recent plans studied by OSD called for growing the fleet but leaning heavily on unmanned and smaller ships to cut down on operations and sustainment costs. That’s one solution, I’m sure there are other ways to go about fixing the Navy’s China problems. But ultimately, what’s needed is a plan, and one that Congress and DoD are on board with.

Excerpt: In the coming months, defense planners at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill should converge on what kind of Navy they want and devise a plan to get there. Because until there is a steady, reasonable and workable plan, industry seems unlikely to invest in expansions to meet the latest here-today, gone-tomorrow shipbuilding plan.

***

On to The Hotwash!

The Hotwash

Our new Israel correspondent in Jerusalem filed a really fun piece on Israel’s new corvettes just delivered from Germany. I know Drifters will enjoy it, here’s and excerpt:

Excerpt: Israel will receive the first of four Sa’ar 6 ships in December as part of a broad shift in naval doctrine that will see the country defend more areas at sea at a longer distance for a longer period of time, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

The coming shift in maritime activity comes in the wake of Israel signing a pipeline deal with Cyprus and Greece in the summer, and joining an Eastern Mediterranean gas forum with Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. It also comes amid new investments in Israeli’s Haifa Port that could involve the United Arab Emirates; the two countries recently agreed to improve relations.

A Nov. 11 ceremony will see the Israeli flag replace the German flag on the ship, which was made in Kiel, Germany, by Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems. The IDF expects the Sa’ar 6 to defend offshore infrastructure — making up an area over twice the size of Israel’s land territory. The discovery of natural gas reserves and Israel’s desire to protect its exclusive economic zone were the main motivations behind the 2013 decision to order the ships.

Read the whole piece here: Israel shifts naval doctrine with new Sa’ar 6 warships

More Reading

Update to the build schedule: Here’s the latest on the next US supercarrier

‘The Quad’ Kicks Off Malabar 2020 Exercise in Bay of Bengal

US forces participate in UNITAS exercise with Ecuadorian navy, other regional allies

Coalition aircraft launched almost 35,000 strikes on ISIS targets over six years

BWXT CEO: Navy’s Next-Generation SSN(X) Attack Boat Will Build Off Columbia Class

Sponsored by:

Navigation Brief

This is an e-newsletter originally published Oct. 29

ALEXANRIA – Good evening, Drifters

Somewhere in Florida, an amphibian former naval officer and commentator is opening this email with his blood pressure rising.

Yes, CDR Salamander has lots and lots of receipts on the littoral combat ship. And, to be fair, the Navy hasn’t exactly been able to prove him wrong just yet. The latest data point that the LCS may have some significant problems is the unfortunate deployment of the LCS Detroit, which ended with Detroit limping its way back to Mayport this week with a broken combining gear.

Let me explain what that is: The LCS is a combined diesel and gas propulsion train. It has two lower-power diesel engines that run the ship at lower speeds, then it has two gas turbines that COMBINE the power of the diesels with the power of two gigantic gas turbine engines in what’s called the combining gear.

It’s a complex transmission that connects power from the two large gas turbine engines and two main propulsion diesel engines to the ship’s propulsion shafts, which transmits to water jets that propel the ship through the water. That’s how the LCS goes zoom. Or is supposed to.

Read my story on that here:

Another littoral combat ship breaks down on deployment

One of the real joys of being a reporter is you get to be a kind of knowledge vampire, where you take people who have dedicated their lives to a certain subject, drain them of their knowledge and use it for your work.

This is what I’ve done here in the latest in the Drift Conversations Series. Tonight, we welcome Associate Professor Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Matthew Collette to The Drift, to chat about what he knows best.

With that, let’s Drift!

-DBL

The Thing About CODAG

The Drift: This combined diesel and gas propulsion train, is it fundamentally unreliable? Was this just never going to work?

Matthew Collette: We’ve had combined diesel or gas, and diesel and gas, plants for a long time. The Germans did the design work for the first combining gear plant in the late 1950s. But it hasn’t won out because of its complexity. Most navies offer another approach. There’s been a handful of ships built with this technology. The national security cutter, its goal is to split one gas turbine amongst two shaft, as opposed to combining a gas turbine and diesel on each draft.

So, it’s something that should work. If a student did it, I wouldn’t tell them they were wrong. But it’s like everything else on LCS: It was driven by the speed requirement. Because the diesels are about 20% of the power of the gas turbine, you don’t want to leave them out when you’re trying to hit that sprint speed. It’s such a demanding requirement.

And, yeah, 42 megawatts is big. It’s certainly up there in terms of the size of combining gearboxes we’ve seen. And, so, my guess – and I have no inside scoop on this – is it just is right on the edge of not working. Or it works if it can be maintained perfectly but reality happens at sea and then we get a shut down or another problem.

So, it is not a technology that strikes me as inherently problematic. But like a lot of the LCS decisions, we were kind of trying to get every little last ounce of performance out of the vessel. And you stack up a whole bunch of those decisions that the ship is not as reliable as you would like.

TD: Is this a fixable problem?

MC: Fixing LCS now is a huge problem, because we generally don’t design gearboxes to be replaced during the ship’s service life. Could you switch it out with an either/or gearbox instead of an combining gearbox? I mean, I think you can on the whiteboard and it would drop the top speed a little, but we’re trying to prove the reliability. I’m not sure you could do that in the confines of the ship, however.

TD: Why is that? Is it because the ship was designed with a certain propulsion train in mind?

MC: I think is mainly because we don’t assume the gearboxes have to be replaced during the ship’s service life. With a gas turbine, we leave room so it can be pulled out and exchanged. The diesel engines, we leave room so you can pull off the cylinder heads, take off the cylinder liners and everything else. The gearbox is normally assumed to be functional for the ship’s whole service life. So, other than routine inspection and maintenance, we’re not assuming you have to get in there and swap it out. If you do, now you’re talking a major dry dock experience where you might have to cut into the bottom shell or the side shell to get it out of the vessel. And you’d be very limited in what you can get in its place, because there’s not a lot of extra room left around it. It’s a difficult problem to get around that.

TD: So, is the solution just to never engage the gas turbines if that is what breaks the combining gear?

MC: Operating in that way really kind of hurts my heart as a naval architect, because you have a high-speed vessel, that’s going to be driven around 11-12 knots for the rest of its life. I could do that and probably increase the reliability. Without the details of how the gears failing, it’s much harder to say how easy it is going to be to fix this.

If it’s filters, or the lube oil system is not strong enough for certain operating conditions? You could upgrade those parts of the gearbox. If there’s a fundamental design flaw, then it gets much harder to figure out how you’re going to fix this issue cost effectively.

TD: Okay, so we’ve got about 11 more of these to come off the lines between 2021 and 2024, between both classes. Would it be feasible to just say, hey, stop the presses? Let’s redesign the propulsion train, even if it takes two years?

MC: In theory, you would think so because the gearbox should be simpler and potentially smaller. Without seeing the plans of the ship, it’s hard to know exactly if that’s possible. But that would certainly be something that if I were on the staff at NAVSEA, I bring to the CNO as an option.

If we don’t really think we need 40+ knots and we’re happy to live in the high 30s this is an option. The Navy has been kind of hot and cold about how critical this high-speed requirement really is for their operations. You may be, in effect, giving up nothing to get rid of it. Or if they’ve decided it is critical, then maybe that’s not acceptable. So, it really comes down to how important they think getting every knot of speed of that platform is.

TD: If the Navy came to you and said, “Matthew, we just want pickup trucks now. We want something we can drive around that’s reliable and all you really need to worry about is changing the oil.” What would the go-to configurations be?

MC: On surface ships today, I think the two biggest ones are the diesel or gas turbine engines, where you don’t try to combine them in the same gearbox. It’s an either/or switch. So, you either clutch in the diesel, or you clutch the gas turbine. And that’s simpler, because there’s two power paths to the gearbox, but they’re never on at the same time so they are both design independent of each other. Or diesel electric that we’re seeing a lot of other ships.

Or. if you look at what the Danish did with their recent frigates, they’ve just given up on the higher speed altogether and they’re accepting mid-20s on a pure diesel propulsion, which is pretty easy to pull off.

—

Our sincerest thanks to Mathew for joining The Drift tonight. I have a feeling he’ll be back on this forum if he cares to be.

On to The Hotwash!

The Hotwash

Straight to the links tonight, I reckon.

More Reading

Still a Thing: Ford sailors test positive for COVID-19

Navy, Marines Eyeing Further Integration In Unit-Level Tactics, Budgetary Decisions

Everyone wants to sell their frigate these days: SECNAV Braithwaite Calls for Light Carrier, ‘Joint Strike Frigate’ ; Sounds Alarm Over Chinese Naval Expansion

Good information: Sen. Jack Reed is a quiet professional. If Democrats win the Senate, he’ll be front and center.

Dems Likely To War Over Defense After Election; Navy A Big Target: HASC Chair Smith

Sponsored by:

Our Mission, Your Success. Telephonics – globally recognized for our maritime surveillance & weather avoidance radar systems which are designed to meet the rigorous mission demands of our customers for littoral and overland surveillance. Today we are developing the next generation of radar technology with the introduction our MOSAIC® Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar.
Visit https://www.telephonics.com/product/mosaic to learn more.

Sponsored by:

Navigation Brief

This is an e-newsletter originally published Oct. 22

ALEXANDRIA – Good Evening, Drifters

Welcome to The Drift Variety Show! I don’t have any one thing on the agenda for tonight. Instead I have a few items to run through in a rapid-fire kind of way. I had a fun trip yesterday to Bath Iron Works and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine with National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien to discuss his quest to build Trump’s promised 355-ship Navy. We’ll talk a little bit about that.

I also want to chat about the destroyer Stout, which came back from a record-breaking 215 consecutive days underway in really rough shape. (CHECK IT OUT, RARE DRIFT IMAGERY!)

We’ll also talk about the Royal Navy and US Navy’s recent agreement to merge their tech futures and talk about what issues may arise there.

So, we should get this show on the road

Let’s Drift!

DBL

Various & Sundry

O’Brien’s Navy

For a National Security Advisor, O’Brien has taken an unusual interest in Navy force structure, down to the kinds of ship alterations the Navy should perform to field hypersonic missiles.

In his speech at Portsmouth he told the assembled workers that the Navy would put hypersonic missiles on all three flights of Arleigh Burke DDGs, which is a debatable move.

You can read my story on that here:

All US Navy destroyers will get hypersonic missiles, says Trump’s national security adviser

My friend Vago Muradian had an interesting conversation with friends of The Drift Jerry Hendrix and Bryan Clark about the positives and negatives of such a maneuver. Click here to listen to the podcast.

On the subject of why he’s been so involved, I’m going to write something longer about it. But here’s part of the answer he gave when I asked.

The Quote: “I don’t think there’s anything that falls more firmly within the role of the National Security Advisor than then focusing on our defense and making sure that we have the proper platforms, and proper mix of platforms, to protect this country.

“And, so, I’ve been focused on a number of things. Clearly the President made a commitment to the 355-ship Navy. The United States of maritime power, we have been since the foundation of our Republic, and we won the Cold War in large part because Ronald Reagan built the 600-ship Navy. We’re now facing a generational challenge with the Chinese and its rising navy.”

Rusty Stout

That would be a good name for a beer. Poor Stout. Two-hundred and fifteen days at sea. Holy crow, I can’t even imagine how much that sucked.

My friend Tyler Rogoway over at The Warzone called me for my thoughts on the picture, recalling my Rust Dialogues from Season 1 of The Drift. You can read my thoughts here:

Check Out How Rusty And Battered USS Stout Looks After Spending A Record 215 Days At Sea

Look, as I told Tyler, Stout gets a pass. You can’t effectively do topside preservation while you are at sea. And according to the ship’s commanding officer in the Navy’s press release, they had to stretch their food supplies, dealt with parts shortages and got low on fuel on a few occasions. Here’s what I would say on Stout:

• What are we even doing? I recognize we’re only ever one sick sailor away from a bloody plague ship like we had on Theodore Roosevelt earlier this year, but what we’re doing to sailors now borders on abuse. These ships aren’t supposed to run for 215 days straight. It’s poor husbandry to send these ships on full deployments for one continuous underway. On my deployment in 2005, I distinctly remember at least two “working ports” where we did topside preservation, maintenance, flew in tech reps to help us fix gear in a hurry and took deliveries of lots of toilet paper and cleaning supplies. The ships need care. And more importantly, the sailors need breaks. They need a night in a hotel. They need to go get a few drinks, get a meal not made in the galley and they need a break from the endless grind of watch rotations. We can’t keep this up into 2021. The Navy needs to fix this.

• I’m genuinely concerned for the mental health of these crews. I think of myself as pretty resilient. I held up well on deployments. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve never been more aware of my mental wellbeing and what I needed to do to maintain it as I was on my 2005 cruise. It isn’t easy. I’ve spoken with officers from some of these long deployments of 2020 and they are at once very proud of their sailors for putting up with this bullshit, but also very concerned about where the breaking point is.

• I covered why I think the appearance of our ships is of utmost importance in peacetime: If our ship’s look beat to shit, America’s adversaries (or worse, her allies) might assume that the outward appearance matches the condition of the systems on board. Worse still, they may assume the appearance matches the condition of the crew. In the case of Stout, her sailors didn’t do that to her, the Navy did. And the Combatant Commanders did. And the Secretary of Defense did.

If we’re not at war, we need to find a way to balance our need to be forward with our need to take care of our equipment and our sailors. If we don’t, we’re going to find that when the crisis comes we’re not going to have as much readiness as we need. And won’t the country be disappointed.

The Royal We

The U.S. and Royal navies are signing a compact to develop technologically as a unit, working toward the standard of not just interoperability but interchangeability. That was the talking point this week, anyway, and it has increasingly been the message from the services.

Two things stood out to me in the Statement of Intent: The sub-heading “Digital Transformation” and “Assured C2 and Integrated Fires.”

From those respective sub-heds, a couple excerpts.

Excerpt: From the strategic level to the tactical-level of sharing application interfaces, cooperation on digitization is essential for the desired interchangeability of our increasingly data-centric platforms and systems.

Excerpt: Resilient and assured C2 capabilities designed to communicate between our navies are critical enablers for future interchangeability. these efforts include … non-SATCOM bearers and solutions to the challenges of operating in a denied and contested environment.

If you’ll recall last week’s “The Dark Tower” discussion, you’ll recall that what the Navy’s trying to do requires some cutting-edge technology such as edge processing and artificial intelligence to make this work. And on top of that, what the Navy and Royal Navy are discussing probably requires both navies to share a common data architecture.

Last year I had the privilege of sitting in with BAE in a discussion of a move the Royal Navy was making away from a hardware defined combat system and toward a software defined system. What does that mean? Well, that means that when you buy a combat system, really you are buying software that can run it on any computer with the specs to run it. Back in the old days, you’d buy “Aegis,” for example, and you’d buy not just the SPY-1 radar, but the old-school computers, the wave guides, the consoles, the displays: the whole nine yards. Most of the new stuff runs on commercial, off-the-shelf tech that is much cheaper. And the software, well that used to be kind of an extra that came with the equipment to tie it all together. Anymore, the software is the crown jewels.

The issue is that upends the model that BAE and Lockheed and Raytheon have made money on for years: making their margins on the hardware. Now they’re going to have to convince the services that the software is worth what the hardware once cost.

Anyway, I wrote about this in an article in January 2019 for Surface Navy Association. Check it out:

The future of the US surface fleet: One combat system to rule them all

If the RN and USN want to be “interchangeable,” they are going to have to consider going to a common combat system. That may not be as far-fetched as it once appeared, not that things are more software defined than hardware defined. But it would be a remarkable shift.

***

And that’s our show! On to The Hotwash.

The Hotwash

Hudson Institute crack analysts Tim Walton and Bryan Clark followed up their future naval force study, done at the behest of the Defense Department as part of Mark Esper’s Battle Force 2045, with a commentary in Defense News today. I think it is worth your time to check it out.

The basic premise? The Navy will need to step up its game and control its appetites if it wants the kind of fleet it thinks it needs to counter China.

Excerpt: U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper is sprinting. With less than four months left in the administration’s term, he unveiled a new vision for the Navy that would grow the fleet to more than 500 manned and unmanned vessels from today’s 296 ships. Although some dismiss Esper’s Battle Force 2045 concept as a political ploy shortly before an election, it could lead to a more effective and affordable future fleet — as long as Navy and Department of Defense leaders can avoid loading it down with expensive options.

Read the rest here: Battle Force 2045 could work — if defense leaders show some discipline

More Reading

Elta Systems, Hensoldt partner on system to consolidate submarine capabilities

Referenced Earlier: US and UK navies prepare to sign agreement to merge future tech work

US pitches Greece on a frigate co-production deal

Love is in the Air: Russian Navy Seen Escorting Iranian Tankers Bound for Syria

Watch a Navy drone resupply a ballistic missile submarine at sea

US, Japan, Australia team up for naval exercises in South China Sea

Marine Corps, Navy Ready to Hone Naval Integration in 2021 Joint Force Exercise

Sponsored by:

Our Mission, Your Success. Telephonics – globally recognized for our maritime surveillance & weather avoidance radar systems which are designed to meet the rigorous mission demands of our customers for littoral and overland surveillance. Today we are developing the next generation of radar technology with the introduction our MOSAIC® Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar.
Visit https://www.telephonics.com/product/mosaic to learn more.