Is the U.S. Navy being marginalized?

Naval War College Review, Summer, 2003 by Stansfield Turner

All who have gone down to the sea appreciate the various roles that seapower plays in our nation's defense. Going back to Alfred Thayer Mahan's day, that role was sea control--the ability to use the oceans to one's advantage and to deny the use of them to opponents. Shortly after Mahan, the first rudimentary projection of power ashore by amphibious assault was added. During World War II, the projection of power ashore with aircraft and guns became another major mission of navies; this has since expanded to include guided missiles. With the advent of the nuclear age, navies also came to assure strategic nuclear retaliation as the cornerstone of nuclear deterrence. Today a new mission may be emerging, that of defending the homeland or other land areas against attacks by missiles through space.

Declining Missions

Setting aside homeland defense for the moment, the other four missions are today of lessening importance to our country's security.

Strategic Deterrence. At the peak we had forty-one strategic ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). We are now approaching eighteen and probably going to ten. In part that is true because of the demise of the Soviet Union. It is also in part because we are beginning to recognize that the prime virtue of the SSBN, its invulnerability, has never been as important as many of us who have written on this subject have contended. This change of mind results from a realization that the threat of even only a few retaliatory nuclear detonations is sufficient to deter anyone. That is because any would-be nuclear aggressor must assume the worst, which is that we would retaliate by attacking his cities. Would the Russians or even the Chinese, let alone ourselves, be willing to lose ten, or five, or even two major cities in the name of initiating and "winning" a nuclear war? Thus, even if we had only the more vulnerable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and no SSBNs at all in our nuclear arsenal, we would still ha ve an adequate strategic deterrent. That would be the case even were some other nuclear power to acquire many more nuclear weapons than we. No such power could assume that any preemptive first strike it undertook would be 100 percent successful--that is, that there would be no nuclear retaliation. There would always be errors of targeting, missiles that failed entirely, missiles that were inaccurate, and human errors in execution. It all adds up to what Clausewitz described as "friction" in war. So a U.S. strategic nuclear deterrent with only ICBMs should suffice. Thus, the Navy's role in this area is going to be looked at more critically, and this mission of the Navy will be seen as less critical to the country than it once was.

Sea Control. Sea control is the most fundamental mission of the Navy, because the country cannot thrive in peacetime without it and cannot fight overseas in wartime in any sustained way without it--and no other military service can perform it. Today, though, there is no challenge to our control of the seas. The once formidable sea-denial capabilities of the Soviet Navy have dried up. Starting from the low point they are at today, it is unlikely they could be rebuilt in less than two decades. The Chinese may have aspirations to challenge our use of the seas in their region of the world, but they also are several decades from being able to mount such a challenge. Smaller navies with diesel submarines, fast patrol craft, land-based aircraft, and land-based missiles may be able to make our use of littoral waters more costly than we would like, but not to deny it to us. In this atmosphere the Navy is going to have a difficult time obtaining funding for sea control in the foreseeable future. It is also going to be difficult to motivate personnel to train against a nonthreat.

Power Projection Ashore by Amphibious Assault. The last opposed amphibious assault was made in 1950 at Inchon. We planned one at Wonsan in 1951 and another at Kuwait in 1991; both came a cropper due to mines. Today it is difficult to imagine where the United States might want to conduct a major opposed amphibious assault in the next twenty years or so. China seems a possibility, but one has to wonder if the United States would ever risk placing a major force ashore in a country as vast as China and one with over a billion people, some three million of whom are under arms. After fifty-two years of nonuse, the mission of major amphibious assault is not going to draw a great deal of support or money. What can be justified is the capability to put troops ashore in remote areas reasonably quickly, either by helicopter assault or assault across a beach, in modest numbers and against modest opposition.

Power Projection Ashore by Bombardment. This is a mission of expanding capabilities. Guns already reach far inland and almost certainly can be made to go very much farther; precision-guided missiles can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles. All except guns played a role in Operation ENDURING FREEDOM in Afghanistan. All will almost certainly have roles to play in any future conflict. The Navy would do well today, though, to take note that the U.S. Air Force dropped a majority of the munitions in Afghanistan, though it had to go halfway around the world to do it because there were no good bases. In short, land-based airpower has demonstrated a very long reach and quite short response times under very taxing circumstances. In contrast, naval airpower may find its response time lengthened. Today the Navy has a fleet of about three hundred ships but is procuring only enough new ones each year to sustain a fleet of about 180 to two hundred. If the Navy does drop down that far, there will be insufficient ships to ensure that it can be quickly within range of unexpected trouble spots around the world. If the Navy cannot get there first, it will not be the instrument of first choice in such situations. Today, though, there are areas where only the Navy can bring shorter-range, tactical airpower to bear quickly, but the melding of long-range bombers with tactical missiles is creating competition even here. Recent reports indicate there are plans to upgrade the fleets of B-1, B-2, and B-52 bombers to reach targets almost anywhere in the world. This is certainly not to say that naval air, missile, and gun power will not be in demand for a long time to come. It is to say that the Navy's traditional advantages with these weapons are diminishing.