On Design Of A New Surface Force
AUTHOR LCDR Mark G. Fischer, USN
CSC 1991
SUBJECT AREA - National Military Strategy
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
TITLE: ON DESIGN OF A NEW SURFACE FORCE
I. Theme: To propose a new and more affordable SURFACE ACTION
GROUP (SAG) for near term U. S. maritime needs.
II. Thesis: Low mix surface action groups, fully connected
and augmented by enhanced capability replenishment ships can
perform a very broad range of tasks, and fill in the gaps
left by insufficient numbers of more capable units.
III. Discussion: A new surface force must be able to be
procured in sufficient numbers to provide the scope as well
as depth of coverage demanded by a diverse, global threat
characterizing the early 21st century. This imperitive for
numerical sufficiency tends to drive ship designs toward
economy, i.e. less cost. Since unit cost and capability are
more than not directly related, some manner of compromise
between quality and quantity will have to be made. To offset
the limitations of a low mix surface navy, robust and fully
integrated C3, coupled with an enhanced replenishment ship,
could be become powerful, mobile, flexible grids of warships
where individual units would be employed as weapons systems.
Similar to the individual gun systems of a battleship, these
seperate ships would be controlled centrally, operating
synergistically according to the mission at hand. A key
element of this new notional sag is the enhanced capability
replenishment ship serving all of the traditional
replenishment functions as well as a ready service locker
for remotely controlled ordnance. The immence capacities of
modern RORO/Cargoe ships affords a quantum leap in SAG
capability.
IV. Summary: New technology, particularly in C4I, have made
the distinctions between high and low mix surface naval
forces murky. Innovative mating of design and doctrine can
lessen our dependence on the few capital ships expected to
reside in our navy in the near term.
V. Conclusions: The United States Navy's need for powerful,
effective, and deployed SAGs is even more necessary as we
move into the 21st century. SAGs made of frigate squadrons
and an enhanced capability replenishment fit the bill both
operationally and economically.
ON DESIGN OF A NEW SURFACE FORCE
OUTLINE
Thesis Statement: Low mix surface action groups (SAG), fully
connected and augmented by enhanced capability replenishment
ships can perform a very broad range of tasks and fill in
the gaps left b insufficient numbers of more capable units.
I. INTRODUCTION
A.Global Change and Historical Perspective
B.Roles and Missions
II. CHALLENGES
A.Economic Considerations and Design
B.Form and Function Development
III.CLIMATE
A.Implications of the "New World Order" on Maritime
Strategy
B.Regionalism
C.Support for Deployed Surface Forces
IV.CAPABILITIES NEEDED AND SATISFIED
A.Spectrum of Near Term Maritime Roles and Missions
B.Support for Deployed Surface Forces
C.Measures of Maritime Power
D.New Technology and Doctrine
1.Hardware Design
2.Doctrine and Application
V. CONCLUSION
a.Wrap Up: Consolidate Argument
ON DESIGN OF A NEW SURFACE FORCE
By LCDR Mark G. Fischer, USN
With the fall of the eastern Bloc and the concommitant
rise of global regionalism with its complex multiple
dependencies, a "new world order" is evolving. Although its
nature has not been fully revealed there is little doubt
that international economic, political, and military
climates are in flux. As a result, the assumptions and
precepts used to formulate the roles and missions of today's
United States Navy and surface fleet specifically, may not
necessarily be appropriate for future U. S. Maritime
requirements.
The roles and missions of today's U. S. Navy are largely
based on a bipolar confrontation pitting the Soviet Union
with the Warsaw Pact and the United States with NATO. Our
Maritime Strategy focuses on this admittedly awesome threat
while neglecting other, perhaps more likely, scenarios.
"Third World" engagements, regional contingencies, and
coalition confrontations are simply not addressed in
sufficient detail. The simplistic, easily understood
construct, which characterized east west bipolarity, has
worked reasonably well up to now. But with the thawing of
the Cold War and the changes taking place globally, can we
be so sure of the future?
As much as this apparent thawing has outwardly reduced
Super Power tensions, it has also spawned or at least
revealed, the emergence of new power loci dispersed around
the globe. These changes, along with other associated
processes, have increased the opportunity for virilant
regional instability. Hence, a critical review of projected
naval requirements must be couched within this evolving
dynamic.
Tight budgets, revolutionary technical advancements,
competing national fiscal demands, as well as more dynamic
and less palpable global military threats have irreversibly
changed the capacities of naval warships as well as the
complexity of the military challenges they face. Funding
will no doubt be more difficult to acquire in the near term.
Understanding the implications of these changes is
difficult, responding to and shaping them often painful, but
America's Navy cannot rest on laurels nor build towards
yesterday's threat scenarios. In this context a critical
analysis of naval force structure and weapons systems design
is warranted to support the mating of form and function to
these still evolving requirements.
This paper reviews some of the evolving threat
challenges, roles and missions appropriate for our near term
navy, and offers support for the development of a new
surface action group (SAG) designed for the sophisticated
environment of the early 21st century.
CHALLENGES
Navy ships are not optimized systems, they are
conglomerations of compromises theoretically incorporating
the best mix of solutions for the problems they will face.
The extreme high cost of ships procurement and their long
service life are diametrically opposed forces. The immense
cost of building warships necessitates an economy of
investment based on a solid connection between "form and
function". The resulting effort to make "every dollar count"
can tend to reduce capability and increase specialization
for the sake of efficiency and economy. However, the long
service life expected of ships demands that they be able to
cope with a variety of circumstances and have enough reserve
potential to meet threats not yet known or conceived.
Therefore, it is imperative for naval leadership in
conjunction with national procurement authority to
understand not only what naval power is, but more what it
can be and how it could be employed in future geopolitical
competition. This understanding must be applied when
designing and procuring a fleet for tomorrow, yet that task
is immensely difficult, incumbered by the need to
prognosticate what will be needed and how it will be used.
It is a task demanding openmindedness, keen foresight and
inherent flexibility built in both ships and employment
doctrine.
Associated with the process of roles and missions
development matched to a ship design is how hardware
capabilty as much defines the end use of the ship as the
ship is a result of the defined roles and missions
statement. With this in mind, it is not enough to ponder how
today's ships fit the requirements of the year 2000 but
rather what nature of ships is needed to shape them? How can
alternative designs actually shape future doctrine and
coarses of action? Perhaps a different emphasis in force
structure and or a new design philosophy is called for. We
must move beyond a reactionary design context and embark on
creating the future fleet to mold maritime strategy as we
wish it to be.
CLIMATE
The much heralded end of the cold war and the world wide
change in demography and loci of power have resulted in a
world moving rapidly toward regionalism. This implies the
potential emergence of multiple, decentralized threats,
remote from the U. S. both politically and geographically.
Although the Soviets will continue, and given recent
examples of internal volatility, may become even more of a
threat, new regional powers will increasingly demand larger
measures of our attention. Our dependence on foreign
markets and raw materials will certainly deepen. These facts
alone strongly support the need to increase our naval
capability. The move toward global regionalism with its
resultant miriad of economic and military encumberances will
make unilateral U.S. intervention more risky and
challenging. In some areas where regional powers have
matured, the U.S. Navy may not be able to concentrate
superior forces in the initial stages of confrontation. This
trend towards multilateralism makes potential threats
diverse in character, and diffuse in location. The easy
access and plethora of sophisticated and potent weaponry
will assure that regional military powers will be
formidable. A disturbing fall out of this is that multiple
confrontations, at different locations, may occur and if by
chance or clevor design could render timely, and cost
effective U. S. intervention impossible. We must be on the
scene early and in strength to prevent our national
interests from being "overtaken by events".
Effective U.S. Naval intervention will thus be measured,
in part, by its ability to operate on parallel fronts as
opposed to the sequential, graduated responses which
characterized the U.S.-Soviet confrontations of the post WW
II era. Large numbers of ships at sea, dispersed around the
globe, will become more important if we are to continue to
play an active, integral global role.
A particularly disturbing aspect of this broadening of
military power includes the expansion of the number of
countries likely to possess nuclear weapons by the year
2000. This spector puts in doubt the deterance efficacy
previously enjoyed by remotely based strategic nuclear
weapons. The question of whether or not strategic nuclear
hegmony can ever again be assumed, by a single power, on a
global scale is a real one. Not only is strategic nuclear
supremacy irrelevent in a regional context, our continued
deemphasis of a credible Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)
further supports the need for strong conventional forces at
sea.
For instance India is in the process of building a very
capable navy which, in our absence, already dominates the
Indian ocean. In a recent article in the Naval War College
Review this assessment regarding the Indian Navy was made:
". . . according to current plans, its overarching strategy of
deterrence by denial will be permanently cemented into a
drastic alteration of the regional balance of power.
Implicitly, that will make India a power broker capable of
conditioning all regional political outcomes...". (11:53)
The operating environment our "near term" navy must be
capable of effectively performing in includes missions from
the political end of the spectrum all the way up to nuclear
war. Naval surface combatants are particularly well suited
for this. A new frigate must be flexible in terms of the
nature as well as the robustness of the threats it is
capable of prevailing over.
Quoting Rear Admiral Mahan, ". . . the backbone and real
power of any navy are the vessels which, by due proportion
of defensive and offensive powers, are capable of taking
and giving hard knocks." (13:132)
A new surface force must be able to be procured in
sufficient numbers to provide the scope as well as depth of
coverage demanded by a diverse, global threat. This
imperative for numerical sufficiency tends to drive ship
designs toward economy, i.e. less cost. Since unit cost and
capability are more than not directly related, some manner
of compromise between quality and quantity will have to be
made.
Sergei Gorshkov, Admiral Of Fleet Of The Soviet Union
stated: "The point is to concentrate in each ship the
maximum combat possibilities with the most economic
'expenditures' of size and displacement, and ensure the
effective solution of the tasks with minimum economic
outlay." (3:186)
Decisions which result in navies are compromises; the
task is to weight them in the best manner.
CAPABILITIES
Naval forces can exert influence by merely existing as
"fleets in being" if the threat of their use and the power
of their punch is sufficiently credible in the eyes of our
competitors. This is the most innocuous role assumable by a
fleet. On the other hand, missions for deployed surface
fleets run the gamut from showing the flag in foreign ports,
to the prosecution and destruction of an enemy's nuclear
ballistic missile submarines. The range of challenges posed
by today's threats is already staggering but the broadening
playing field posed by emerging regional powers forces us to
move ahead more boldly. High end verses low end force ratios
are no longer zero sum arguements. Innovative application of
existing concepts and capabilities can assure the continued
vitality of our navy well into the 21st century.
The conduct of at-sea exercises, both unilateral and
combined with other navies, provides much more than
training, it is a tangible display of capability and
national interest. Their impact can only be felt if they
are performed often and in theater. Flexible and robust
fleet dispositions must be able to effectively engage
threats across the full spectrum of modern naval warfare as
well as serve in the capacity of goodwill and deterrence;
missions for which a surface ship is uniqely qualified.
James Cables in his book, Gunboat Diplomacy, said: "Perhaps
the greatest weakness of the modern submarine . . . is
that it has no equivalent to the graduated ladder of
violence enjoyed by surface warships". (1:32)
The diversity and sophistication of the threat requires
that robustness be measured not only by offensive and
defensive capacities for ordnance delivery but also by the
ability to operate alone and removed from mutually
supporting fleet concentrations such as carrier battle
groups. Warships must be able to sail all of the world's
oceans and have the onstation endurance to exact a reaction.
However, firepower and mass remain principles of war and
low mix ships such as frigates have limited capabilities. So
what can be done when the punch of a Carrier Battle Group or
Battleship Surface Action Group is not available?
When circumstances demand, the oft used concept of
synergism should characterize the result of associating
individual units into squadrons of frigates. These deployed
frigate squadrons can serve as forward deployed strike
forces capable of substantial firepower whenever it is
needed in the maritime theaters of the world. The concept
requires they possess a very high level of interoperability
and access to capacities not resident in the individual
frigates.
Interoperability here means weapons, sensors, and C3
(Command, Control, and Communications) functions which are
significantly enhanced when individual units are combined to
form larger dispositions. This concept is not new; U.S. Navy
ships routinely practice this, albeit to a lesser extent, as
a matter of doctrine. The difference in this proposal is to
the degree with which individual ships could mutually
support each other.
Today's C3 capabilities can link ships so that data
available to one can be available to all. Ship positioning
data and weapons status as well as engagement orders all
make up the data stream now being shared by U.S. naval
ships. The challenge is to make all this C3 centrally
intelligible, robust, and fully integrated with command.
Doing this could result in a powerful, mobile, flexible grid
of warships where individual ships could be employed as
weapons systems, much like batteries of guns on a single
battleship. This can help to make the numbers verses quality
compromise less significant. Establishing grids of low mix
squadrons, perhaps made up of a new frigate class, also
decentralizes Battleforce combat power while not sacrificing
coordinated offensive and defensive operations.
Other important requirements include firepower and
sustainability. Both of these can be met with sufficient
numbers of frigates, as illustrated above, and if we use
replenishment ships for more than just floating fuel,
stores, and ammo depots. With todays capabilities these
ships could serve as ready magazines for the warships they
are tasked to support. There is no reason why cruise
missiles and surface to air missiles could not be launched
from the replenishment ship directly and guided to their
targets by the supported vessel. In other words ammunition
ships could transfer needed ordnance without ever having to
pass a line. This would be an electronic transfer of combat
power. This readily available capacity could help make up
for the limited rates of fire and magazine sizes
characteristic of smaller ships.
Fast sea lift capacity continues to be an orphan
stepchild which only gets attention when its need becomes
critical. This predicament is understandable when the
anticipated utility of these ships is limited to major
contingencies and war. But if they could be used for more
than this, if their immence capacities could be employed
across the range of naval missions, synergistic
cooperativity would result. Very large multi-use ships can
have the capability to handle containerized cargoe, role on
role off equipment, serve as fleet replenishment ships, and
serve as immense ready service magazines for anti-air, anti-
surface, and even shore bombardment in support of amphibious
operations, in the form of multiple launch rocket systems,
(MLRS). We continue to bemone the lack of effective naval
gunfire support yet this function could be well served if
MLRS capability was inherent in a fraction of the shipping
dedicated to amphibious operations. All of these functions
could be made up into modules which would be mated into
packages tailored for the mission assigned to the SAG. The
very large cargoe carrying capabilty of these ships would be
in excess of that which is normally needed for peacetime
operations. This reserve potential would serve as organic
surge capacity instantly available for sealift intensive
contingencies.
Click here to view image
CONCLUSION
The requirements for aircraft carriers, nuclear
submarines and other "high end" ships remains, but the need
for more numbers of ships is rising faster than our ability
to afford them. Peace dividends aside, a new and as yet
undetermined maritime strategy will certainly recognize the
expanded demand for forward deployed warships. Numbers do
count. Also some roles and missions do not lend themselves
to the economic use of Capital Ships. However, low mix
surface action groups, fully connected and augmented by
enhanced capability replenishment ships can perform a very
broad range of tasks, and fill in the gaps left by
insufficient numbers of more capable units.
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