Naval Reserve Association

S E A S C A P ELittoral Combat Ships (LCS). Where is the threat that justifiesdestroyers that will cost 3.75 billion? What littoral navies do theJihadists present as threats? By the way, the LCS, too, is nowexceeding allowable expense ceilings. (In case you missed it, on12 January, Navy Secretary Donald Winter issued an unprecedentedstop work order to Lockheed Martin. His order actually senthome shipyard workers busy constructing LCS hull numberthree. The CNO cannot allow LCS to escalate beyond the average220 million ship cost or Congress will kill it.) 2 Again, Iunderstand our desire to field a Navy that cannot be deniedaccess to any waterway. That is smart. We shouldn’t cede any waterto anyone. But, given the threat, at what size and at what price?Some of you are saying, what about China? Current Navythinking is that China is not a belligerent threat today and thatthere is time to react to China. China’s growing blue watercapability is seen as a normal outgrowth of her emerging powerstatus and need to control her sea lanes of commerce to protect herability to get oil. 3 Right or wrong, using China as the main reasonto justify a large U.S. Navy is not playing well in Congress.Let’s frame this another way. Assume that you are aCongressman/woman in the new Democrat-led 110 th Congresswho has never served in the military and you are looking at theDefense Appropriation Bill. The Governor’s office of your stateis calling to complain about the large amounts of National Guardequipment being left in the desert – the Governor wants his/herstuff replaced! (Do not underestimate the power of the 50 governorsor the $ size of this problem.) As we discussed earlier, you havebeen briefed on what types of forces we must have to continuethis war. And, now, you see the bill for the 313 ship Navy. Youalso see the bill from the Air Force for F-22’s and F-35’s. (And,are we ever going to buy new tankers?) Where are you going tomake the cuts? You don’t want to appear as not supporting thetroops. That is why the Navy, over the next several budget cycles, isin serious trouble (and so is the Air Force).By the way, as a new Congressman/woman, you have heard alot about “transformation” and the fact that our military isstuck in the paradigm of the Cold War. You have been told thatwe need a new military for the unconventional and asymmetric“War on Terror.” What is it that the Navy wants? New carriers, newdestroyers, new submarines, and some other corvette-sized ships?That sounds like the Cold War Navy! Uh-oh, the Governor is onthe phone again.This touches on the second issue at work against our Navy –relevance. Relevance equates to funding in Washington. If youare relevant to what must be done, you get money. If you aren’trelevant, you don’t. Simple problem; not so simple solution. Whyis the Navy proudly advertising that we have ten thousand Sailorson the ground in Afghanistan and the Iraqi theater? In fact, whyis the Navy doing that at all? Why are Reservist operationsspecialists (OS), read that radar operators, serving in countryteams in Afghanistan? Why are what we now call individualaugmentees (IA), Active and Reserve, doing customs work inKuwait and elsewhere around the theater? Of course you wouldhave to ask the CNO to get the top line answer, but I believe thatthere are two reasons: The first is that the work needs to be doneand that our Navy wants to do its share. Navy people are needed; theywill go. Anyone who doesn’t know that, in spite of DoD speechesMembers of the Navy ETT unit located in Khowst, Afghanistan.(Top Row: L to R) BMC Ates and LT Critch; (Bottom Row: L to R)CDR Daniel, LCDR Chatman, LT Soss, LCDR Freer, CDR Downey,and LT Kinnisongiven before Secretary Rumsfeld departed, the Army and theCorps are reaching exhaustion, is smoking something strange.The second reason is RELEVANCE. Financially speaking,the Navy cannot afford to sit on the sidelines in “the longwar.” If we’re not in the fight, we’re not in the funding.Unfortunately, there is a double-edged sword to fall on here: If theNavy can spare all these IAs, perhaps the Navy is overmanned?Ouch.Actually, I don’t believe that the Navy can spare all these officersand enlisted from the assignments that they are supposed to befilling. Certainly, the personnel programs that VADM Harvey(CNP) is building will be greatly affected by pulling people outfor unplanned missions. He is on record saying that the Navy weare building does not have an excess manpower pool from whichto draw. 4 Except for the Reservists whose job it is to be a surgeforce, the Active Component IAs create a burden on the commandsfrom whence they came. There are always trade-offs andunintended consequences for every action taken. In order to berelevant, the Navy is stretching itself thin. Any businessman cantell you that it is not easy to know whether you are cutting fat ormuscle until it’s too late.Let me back up historically for just a moment. For those of youwho remember CNO Clark’s five priorities, he left reconstitutingour surface hardware till the end and that is the one piece that hedid not get finished. CNO Mullen is now the second surfacewarfare CNO in a row, and he has set out to finish that task andcreate the 313 ship Navy. Because of the timing of this war thatwe are in, relevance, etc., I believe that he is going to have anuphill struggle of huge proportions. Budget numbers are alwayselusive in Washington, but there seems to be reasonable consensusbetween the Congressional Budget Office and the Navy that the313 program will require about fifteen billion ($15B) more peryear than the Navy has recently had in its shipbuilding accounts –and that needs to be sustained until 2018. The Navy seems to feelthat the money will come because it is instituting “enterprise”practices in the shipbuilding programs and because we are at warand Congress will recognize the need. This is certainlyoptimistic, in the least. Today, the Zumwalt is at the center ofthe funding arguments so let’s look more closely at the DD 1000.16 NRA NEWS/APRIL 2007