There are two regular topics I cover here, on Midrats, and over at my homeblog;
1. We need to tell the Navy-Marine Corps story. Our senior uniformed and civilian leaders need to stop talking to each other, and instead talk to the American public in a clear, consistent, and persistent way about how we ensure national security in peace and war.
2. We need advocates in the House of Representatives and the Senate who don’t just understand the maritime nature of our national security requirements, but outside their constituent related connections, advocate for the Navy we need to execute what the nation requires us to do.
Earlier today at the Surface Naval Association Symposium, Congressman Mike Gallaher (R-WI) provided a masterclass on just how to do it.
There is a template to do this, and it needs to be done over and over again. You can read the text of the speech here, but the outline he uses is straight forward; sets up the argument by outlining joint vulnerabilities and how USN/USMC help address that vulnerability with capabilities either already here or just a POM or two away. It offers a change in thinking with evolved concepts, vice vaporware with promises. He is clear in outlining actionable shortfalls and provides a constructive way to correct the shortfalls.
Here are a few examples;
… the NDS (National Defense Strategy) … shifts our posture from one of deterrence by punishment to deterrence by denial. … Deterrence by denial hinges upon having forward forces. No matter how lethal, forces stationed CONUS are too far away to deny adversary aggression in real time, or to bolster allied resolve in the face of peacetime coercion. We need forces positioned forward to constantly signal to our enemies that we and our allies stand in between them and their objectives.
… our new defense strategy prioritizes forward forces … Yet recent history … suggests these forward forces are increasingly vulnerable in large, concentrated ports and bases. Under these circumstances, our current forward posture in the Indo-Pacific is less a deterrent and more an invitation to aggression. If anyone thinks we can successfully implement the NDS and therefore do deterrence by denial under these circumstances, they are in a state of denial.
That is exactly the critical vulnerability with our legacy thinking in WESTPAC, that our land based forces, especially airfields, will be there to use on Day-2. That planning assumption is no longer valid, and that emerging reality plays in to what we bring to the table;
…the Department of the Navy offers the nation a unique capability to operate forward in the strategically decisive first island chain and its surrounding seas and littorals.
That right there is the core of our argument. You can hang a lot on, under, and around this core. Our comparative advantage, geographically and technologically, is as a maritime and aerospace power.
As he further outlines, recent efforts by the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Chief of Naval Operations, and the acting Secretary of the Navy are intertwined with and logically fit in to an evolved construct;
… this integrated force must be persistently present and dispersed throughout the first island chain … . In peacetime, the goal would be to reassure our allies and create so many potential aim points that the Chinese could not guarantee a successful first strike—and therefore deter one from happening in the first place. In wartime, these missiles would form a picket line that would deny the enemy control of the sea around the first island chain and buy time for the blunt force to arrive while we still held critical geography.
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Every ship forward should be expected to be able to destroy enemy surface targets at long ranges, from the smallest surface combatant to amphibious transports. If it floats, it fights. At long range.
That message of “return to range” is absolutely critical. It must be at the front of every argument. Range and endurance, range and endurance, range and endurance. We will need these in spades on the far end of the very wide Pacific.
… denial of the adversary’s objectives will largely rest on the backs of the forward-deployed surface fleet. It’s the surface fleet that in concert with Marines ashore and in the littorals, will be our first and foremost line of defense. It’s up to us to ensure they have the range and capacity to be effective.
Another refreshingly important part about his speech are his solutions. All are doable. No vaporware, no PPT programs, no “transformational” pixie dust.
First, we must develop intermediate range conventional missiles as rapidly as possible.
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Second, we’re going to have to develop new ships to support, resupply, and maneuver Marines around the first island chain’s littorals. In a high threat environment where speed and mobility serve as the primary defense, hulking L-class amphibs do not make sense for every situation.
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And third, in what may be the hardest of all these steps, we’re going to have to make structural changes to Navy organization in order to move Navy-Marine integration from concept to reality.
I would offer that part of the third needs to be a thorough replacement of Goldwater-Nichols, but to get there we need to sustain something we mentioned earlier and must be done.
We have to tell our story. We have to sell our value. No one owes us the fleet our nation needs.
… we need to do more than call for more resources to get to 355—we have to tell a story about seapower and the value of an integrated naval force that Congress and the American people can understand.
We have to get this right, and I don’t think of any serious person who thinks so far this century we have been doing “it” right.
We have a rising power who is looking to regain her position in the world. This power sees us as something she may need to confront to achieve her goal. It’s OK to name names;
China is already the largest naval force in the Pacific. China’s missiles won’t fail. We won’t be able to sanction China’s economy to the point of collapse. Therefore, we have to up our game. We’ll have to make big changes to our concepts of operations, our programming, our budgets, and our bureaucracy. I wish I could tell you failure is not an option. But it is. History is full of navies that have failed to adapt to changing circumstances and thereby fatally weakened their countries.
That, my friends, is how it is done.
Congressman Gallagher just provided a master-class in how to do it, and a template on what to say.
More of this.
