Is the U.S. Navy being marginalized?

Naval War College Review, Summer, 2003 by Stansfield Turner

The fourth option, doing more with what the Navy has, brings up the network-centric concept of making information more universally available, thus optimizing the usefulness of the forces that can be brought to bear. The Navy has been netting ships together for combat effectiveness for decades. The issue today is to take maximum advantage of the ever-growing capabilities of information technology.

The demand for transformation of the Navy is urgent, because of the pace of both technological and geopolitical change. Military professionals are often accused of resisting change, and there is considerable evidence to support that charge. Today it is vital to prove that adage wrong. Battleships dominated naval warfare for about sixty years, and carriers for about the same. Our existing carriers will have plenty to do for the remainder of their operating lives, but a Navy built around these ships will not carry us into the emerging era of warfare any better than did the USS Arizona into World War II. To procure more large carriers today and expect them to be useful into midcentury is to be blind to reality.

Finally, today, much more than ever before, it is incumbent upon military professionals to promote transformation. The nature of the military-industrial complex, plus the breadth of congressional constituent interest in military procurement, bases, etc., will by themselves make forsaking the tried and true extremely difficult. Only if military professionals stand up and place the weight of their expertise and prestige behind radical change will there be a change.

NOTES

(1.) See the author's "The Dilemma of Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-first Century," Naval War College Review 54, no. 2 (Spring 2001), pp. 13-23.

(2.) First publicly introduced by Adm. Vernon Clark, USN, "Sea Power 21: Operational Concepts for a New Era," remarks delivered at the Current Strategy Forum, Naval War College, Newport, R.I., 12 June 2002.

Admiral Turner attended Amherst College and then the U.S. Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1946; thereafter he earned a master's degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and studied at the Harvard Business School. Before promotion to flag rank in 1970, he served in destroyers (including off Korea and Vietnam) and in share assignments including duty as executive assistant and naval aide to two Secretaries of the Navy. As a rear admiral he commanded a Sixth Fleet carrier task group; from 1972 to 1974, as a vice admiral, he was President of the Naval War College, where he instituted fundamental and enduring curriculum changes. Thereafter he commanded the Second Fleet/NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic and, upon promotion to full admiral, was Commander in Chief NATO Forces in Southern Europe. In 1977 President Carter appointed Admiral Turner as the Director of Central Intelligence, a post he held until 1981. Since then he has taught at the U.S. Military Academy, Yale University, and the University of Maryland. Admiral Turner served as the Raymond A. Spruance Distinguished Fellow at the Naval War College in the fall academic term of 2000. His books include: Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition (1985), Terrorism and Democracy (1991), Caging the Nuclear Genie: An American Challenge for Global Security (1997, winner of the 1998 Foreign Policy Association Medal), and Caging the Genies: A Workable Solution for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Weapons (1999). His most recent article in this journal was "The Dilemma of Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-first Century," in the Spring 2001 issue.