In a conflict with China, the United States will be pressed for time, personnel, and especially ships. U.S. industrial capacity struggles to produce a 355-ship Navy even in peacetime. In a hot war where the Navy is contested on the high seas, losses will be taken. New ships will need be needed to fill the gaps left by bloody battles of attrition. If the industrial base has difficulty meeting the needs of a peacetime Navy, one can only speculate that the strain after the opening salvos of a conflict. Between 1975 and 2000, the U.S. shipbuilding industry declined from 80 ships a year to just eight. The lack of industrial surge capacity shows a serious weakness in U.S. military capability, especially for the Navy.
The Industrial Base
The destruction of U.S. shipbuilding was caused by the failure to counter protectionist policies and subsidies implemented by China, Japan, and South Korea. As of 2018, 83 percent of the world’s ship construction is produced by these three nations. South Korea is the largest producer sitting at 40 percent of global ship construction. What the U.S. government could have done to combat these practices or protect its own industry is of little consequence now. The industry is decimated and, under normal free-market conditions, could never come back.
The issue is not just warships. The infrastructure necessitated by the U.S. Sealift Command would come under immense strain as vessels attrite. As seen in the first Gulf War, reliance on foreign or allied shipping in wartime is untenable. Mark H. Buzby, the Maritime Administrator for the U.S. Department of Transportation, recalls, “Thirteen of the 177 foreign vessels carrying essential supplies hesitated or refused to enter the area of operations, resulting in a loss of 34 transit days for ships carrying cargo for U.S. troops [in the first Gulf War].” While this issue was corrected for the second Gulf War, the sheer logistical strain of a peer conflict would overwhelm the current inventory of shipping and the capacity to replace losses. In recent stress tests of sealift capability, the present number of hulls fell short of performance goals. Entering into a contested maritime space would decimate this capability without the ability to replace losses. The challenge is to discern what options are on the table given this handicap on both warship construction and sealift capability.
As mentioned before, the shipping industry has not returned to the United States under regular free-market conditions because of the government subsidized advantage in rival economies. As this is a matter of national security, the U.S. government should weigh its options on this matter. The first remedy to the lack of U.S. capacity would be to create parallel protections and subsidies to the struggling industry to raise it to an even playing field. However, this would create a number of political conflicts over the sovereignty of the free market. Suffice it to say, subsidizing and protecting the U.S. shipping industry could lead to a dangerous politicization of the Navy’s surge capability.
To engage in such a drastic departure from this system might generate secondary and tertiary effects that would negate the overall benefit of regenerating the shipbuilding industry. It may open a Pandora’s Box of a worldwide economic protectionism arms race. Conversely, the U.S. could place economic, diplomatic, and political pressure on these nations to remove their own protections in the interest of making U.S. companies competitive again. However, a war with China requires extensive cooperation from regional allies, both militarily and economically. Economically pressuring South Korea and Japan would bruise the already tenuous security network holding the patchwork of U.S. partners in the Western Pacific together. Moreover, China would flatly refuse U.S. demands as evidenced by the present trade war. Despite these challenges, the first priority of naval strategists should be determining a way to replace lost ships.
Meeting China’s Capacity
Assuming that the industrial base cannot be rebuilt, U.S. military minds will have to think unconventionally to meet the demands of China’s robust capacity. The strategy in the past has been to make fewer ships more capable, as evidenced by platforms such as the Gerald R. Ford–class carriers and Zumwalt–class destroyers. The defense establishment elected to circumvent the replacement problem by making ships bigger, better armed, better defended, and more costly. In contrast, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Gilday recognizes that raw numbers will play a strong role in a future conflict. The constant truth in warfare is that personnel and material get destroyed. There will be no hedging against this fact.
These new platforms may hold off attack longer than their competitors, but ships ultimately will be lost and need to be replaced. These valuable and scarce ships will make commanders hesitant to commit their assets when it is most critical. One need only look to the conduct of Japanese commanders in the Guadalcanal campaign who kept their irreplaceable heavy cruisers and battleships in reserve at Truk while the U.S. Navy slowly eroded its piecemeal destroyer sorties. In that campaign of attrition, the Japanese were handicapped by their inability to replace losses and the necessity to inflict disproportionate casualties. They failed in both regards. Even in scoring several victories, Japanese losses remained comparable to ours and they suffered the fate of Pyrrhus.
Seventy-nine years after Pearl Harbor, the United States faces a precariously similar situation to that of Japan at the outset of World War II. Either Japan could knock out the U.S. military before its massive industrial capability came online or not at all. In 2020, the United States is in the same scenario. In a war with China, the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet would have to deliver a decisive blow before Chinese industrial capabilities were fully mobilized. Without the return of the shipbuilding industry, the Navy would be going to war where the victory condition was a gamble.
In this context, the United States will have to rely on unconventional tactics in the absence of a crushing blow against China. The Navy retains its reserve “mothball” fleet, but this is a finite resource. With the new frigate platform and improved littoral combat ships (LCSs) coming online, the issue of distributed capability is temporarily deferred. These ships give commanders the option of more expendable assets, but the LCS’s survivability and lethality remains a question mark. As losses mount, new ships still need to be manufactured. The asymmetric advantage of U.S. submarines would be subject to the same aforementioned forces. Submarines also exaggerate the difficulty in surge production because of their nuclear propulsion plants and high levels of sophistication. If the present loadout of ships and surge capability cannot be remediated, a reiteration of doctrine and affirmation of regional partnerships is necessary.
With the ultimate goal of revitalizing the industrial base, U.S. surface commanders will need to be aggressive and resilient in the meantime. Ships of all classes must be used to defeat the enemy in detail by massing where they do not expect, and striking at isolated groups of vessels. As Admiral William Halsey said after replacing the indecisive Admiral Robert Ghormley, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You can’t fight a war safely or without losing ships.” Losses will be taken, but losses must be dealt against the enemy to a greater degree.
As an extension of this principle, the U.S. Navy should examine contingency plans to arm repurposed civilian ships. The untapped wealth of prebuilt vessels perhaps provides a stopgap for surge capability. A precedent comes from how battleships were brought back into service in the 1980s. Launching these aging hulls into the missile age, Mk-143 Armored Box Launchers were fitted as a modular addition. With the necessary accompanying radars and fire-control systems, any ship with sufficient displacement could be converted. These would be area-denial ships used to free the actual warships to take the fight to the enemy. A modular version of the vertical launch system (VLS) could be used in this role as well. As discussed in the 2019 Proceeding article, “Converting Merchant Ships to Missile Ships for the Win,” arming existing hulls can supplement fleet numbers during wartime. Brian Wang, the author of the online science blog NextBigFuture, estimates that a container warship could be six times more cost effective than a traditional warship. He measures this capability by the number of missiles a vessel can bring to a fight versus the cost. There are myriad other considerations, such as manning, damage control, and radars, but the general concept remains for surge capability.
Arming merchants is not without precedent in naval history. During World War II, the United Kingdom converted merchant ships to be used as carriers before dedicated hulls could be put to sea. These vessels filled an immediate gap in fleet numbers to sustain operations and remained in service for the remainder of the war. Russia has already developed the capability to arm civilian ships via the Club-K container missile system. This unit can make any vessel lethal in a missile-saturated battlefield with 16 missiles in each shipping container. The United States should develop a parallel weapons system to at least have the option of surging its numbers with civilian hulls. Regardless of how the Navy copes with a lack of industrial base, the deciding factor will be the actions of unit commanders at sea.
An Assertive Strategy
The worst course of action U.S. ships in the Pacific can take is to do nothing. Counterintuitively, limited U.S. resources must be used assertively rather than conservatively. At present, China is limited by its lack of long-range naval capabilities. Its navy will be at its most vulnerable when at the outer limits of this range. While the U.S. Navy will be operating at an extended range, it has decades of experience and a network of bases to make this possible. Drawing Chinese assets outside the protective umbrella established by their shore batteries creates the chance for a series of decisive engagements leveraged by local U.S. superiority. Baiting significant numbers of Chinese ships outside of this umbrella remains an obstacle.
If this cannot be accomplished, the U.S. surface force must closely coordinate with electronic-attack, cyber elements, and bombing campaigns to create temporary bubbles of relative safety from shore batteries. In these bubbles, the surface force could sortie and attempt to engage a critical mass of Chinese ships and bases. This necessitates an agile, determined, and interconnected surface force. This fact is explored further in the joint doctrine, “The Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons.” The U.S. Navy must do the best it can with what it has. To gain mass in the Pacific, the surface force must leverage its interservice partners and the potential capability of unmanned systems. The underlying principle is undeniable; indecision creates more time for the Chinese industrial base to come online and must be punished most severely.
To ensure victory over China and bolster against future maritime threats, the United States must place a priority on reviving its shipbuilding capability. In the meantime, the surface Navy will have to become accustomed to fighting under adverse scenarios and against the odds. Moreover, strategists must attempt to create temporary if not permanent local superiorities and exploit them to their highest potential before the envelope closes. As a temporary measure, the U.S. Navy should explore the concept of repurposed civilian vessels. In addition, the Military Sealift Command must avoid indecision despite the deficit in replacement capacity. By no means should commanders be reckless, but one must err on the side of action. The ultimate goal of the defense establishment with regards to surface capabilities should be the violent resuscitation of the shipbuilding base as a matter of national security. In the meantime and in the words of Admiral Nelson, the United States, “expects that every man will do his duty”.
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