Compass Points - 600 Ship Navy
Rebuild the fleet for deterrence
Compass Points - 600 Ship Navy
Rebuild the fleet for deterrence
August 27, 2024
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More Navy ships are needed now.
To meet the challenge of constant worldwide crises and contingencies, the US needs more Marines on global patrol. The Marine Corps needs more Navy amphibs. But the lack of ships in the Navy is not only about amphibs. The larger problem is the US fleet is falling behind China. A recent Defense One article quoted Senator Dan Sullivan.
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China’s Navy has 79 more ships than the U.S., said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, including 30 it added in the past year—half of which were large surface vessels.
China’s “rapid naval buildup has highlighted our own shipbuilding deficiencies,” Sullivan said. “Numerically, they now have a larger Navy, roughly 370 ships to our 291 ships. Last year, they added 30 ships to their fleet; 15 were large surface combatants including cruisers, destroyers and another aircraft carrier. We added two.”
-- Defense One
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How can China's shipyards out-build the US? In total defense spending, the US defense budget is four times China's defense budget, roughly $800 billion to $200 billion. Among the top 10 defense budgets in the world, the US spends more than the next 9 countries combined.
Despite the large US defense budget, US commercial and military ship building has declined for decades. A recent McKinsey study tracked some of the decline.
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. . . overall shipbuilding production has fallen to historic lows largely because of the decline in commercial production: US shipbuilding output has decreased by more than 85 percent since the 1950s, while the number of American shipyards capable of building large vessels has fallen by more than 80 percent.3
Shipyards, once the backbone of flourishing communities, now face myriad challenges—from talent gaps to outdated operating models—that threaten their ability to grow and thrive. The US has gone from building 5.0 percent of the world’s ocean-going commercial ships in the 1970s to building about 0.2 percent today, as measured by gross tonnage. Conversely, China, Japan, and South Korea now combine for more than 90 percent of global commercial shipbuilding.4
-- McKinsey
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The recent CRS report to Congress "Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans" summarized the issues with the Navy fleet:
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The current and future size and composition of the Navy, the annual rate of Navy ship procurement, the prospective affordability of the Navy’s shipbuilding plans, the capacity of the U.S. shipbuilding industry to execute the Navy’s shipbuilding plans, and Navy proposals for retiring existing ships have been oversight matters for the congressional defense committees for many years. Congressional focus on these matters has been heightened over the past decade by the increasing size and capabilities of China’s navy, and by the capacity of China’s shipbuilding industry compared with the capacity of the U.S. shipbuilding industry.
The Navy fell below 300 battle force ships (the types of ships that count toward the quoted size of the Navy) in August 2003 and has generally remained between 270 and 300 battle force ships since then. As of May 28, 2024, the Navy included 296 battle force ships.
-- CRS, Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans
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The number of ships in the US Navy fleet is at a low level, most likely at a dangerously low level. The US is facing a peer competitor which in many ways has pushed beyond the US both in shipbuilding and in sea power. While the US situation today is critical, it is not unprecedented. Only a few decades ago, in the 1980s, the US faced a similar critical situation.
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The U.S. Navy of the 1980s provides a reminder what serious peer competition in the naval sphere looks like and the resources and human willpower that it requires. E. B. Potter describes the 1980s buildup to counter the Soviet Union as the “most expensive peacetime military buildup in the nation’s history, to cost $1.5 trillion in five years . . . the Navy would be built up from 456 to 600 ships, including 15 carrier-centered battle groups.”1
The 1980s maritime strategy and naval buildup was advocated by senior officers in uniform, approved by civilian leadership, and then laboriously implemented across all levels. Growing pains were worked out, and complex exercises in frigid environments executed. The renaissance of naval strategic thought in the late 1970s and subsequent buildup of the 1980s should provide a source of strength and inspiration to today’s sailors and civilian defense officials. Lessons in strategy, fleet exercises, and force structure remain directly relevant.
-- USNI, "Lessons from the 600-Ship Navy"
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Among many challenges in the 1980s not only did the Navy need to rapidly rebuild the fleet, but the Navy had to learn new ways to counter increased dangers from satellites and precision munitions.
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Taking “great-power competition” as more than just a buzzword requires robust naval exercises so that the Navy can practice like it would fight when confronting a peer adversary. Exercises of such magnitude require depth in the force structure.
Penetrating deep into areas where Soviets had significant assets required electronic deception and emissions control. Admiral Lyons explained how central these concepts were to his fleet exercises in the Norwegian Sea and High North:
"The first thing I did after taking command was to tear up the old canned Ocean Venture OPORD [operation order] . . . They were still using World War II carrier formations . . . such a formation was easily tracked by Soviet satellites. What we did was plot out Soviet satellite area footprints and time of exposure. We then went to dispersed dispositions. We used a number of cover and deception decoys and tactics.12
Lehman describes one exercise where Lyons endeavored to make “his entire strike group disappear” through emissions control and foul weather, then reappearing in the Norwegian Sea to the Soviets’ surprise.13 Utilizing military deception and emissions control effectively is a skill that requires practice and risk management, but is necessary when operating within a peer adversary’s weapon’s release range.14
-- USNI, "Lessons from the 600-Ship Navy"
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Former Navy Secretary and US Senator James Webb once said, "The 600-ship Navy is in reality a rather modest comeback from a period of very serious neglect. When I was commissioned in 1968, the Navy had 930 ships, and no Indian Ocean commitment."
A Navy fleet of 900 ships?
A Navy fleet of 600 ships?
It may not be clear exactly what number is the right number of ships.
But if history and current events are a guide, any number below 300 is certainly the wrong number.
To continue to serve the Nation as an always ready, global, combined arms, crisis response force, the Marine Corps needs more Navy amphibs. The Marine Corps cannot get healthy in amphibs and in maritime pre-positioning ships unless the Navy fleet gets healthy.
What should be done today about the challenge of a dangerous peer competitor? In the 1980s the US expanded the Navy fleet and sent it out on a series of large, complex, global exercises to deter a dangerous peer competitor, the Soviet Union. No one knew for sure what the outcome would be. Over time, the Navy buildup, the strategy of strength, and the massive global exercises worked. The global peer competitor was deterred. The Soviet Union never attacked. World War III never happened. Peace was preserved.
Today the US is facing another peer competitor. Once again, the Navy fleet is at dangerously low levels. Can an expanded Navy fleet help deter World War III? A larger fleet, including more Marines on constant patrol around the globe, is always a better deterrent than a smaller fleet and fewer Marines on patrol. To both deter China and deal with constant worldwide crises and contingencies, the US needs more Navy ships and more Marines. The choice is simple -- not easy to accomplish -- but simple to choose. Expand the fleet now to deter a war or expand the fleet later to fight a war.
To expand the Navy support and warfighting fleet — including the amphib fleet — requires an expansion of US shipyards and the US shipyard workforce, One author estimates that the expansion of the fleet in the 1980s was the “most expensive peacetime military buildup in the nation’s history, to cost $1.5 trillion in five years.” No matter how expensive, the spending worked. The Soviet Union was deterred. World War III never happened. The US today is facing an aggressive, expansionist China that wants to take over all of the Pacific and influence much of the rest of the globe. Just as in the 1980s the US must decide: pay now or pay later.
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Defense One - 02/02/2024
China is winning the shipbuilding numbers game—and that’s a problem, INDOPACOM nom says
“We are not overmatched, but I don't like the pace of the trajectory,” said Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Pacific Fleet.
By Lauren C. Williams
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Global Firepower
Defense Budget by Country (2024)
Ranking total annual defense spending budget capability by country, from highest to lowest.
https://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.php
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McKinsey - 06/05/2024
Charting a new course: The untapped potential of American shipyards
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Naval History Magazine - August 2022
Lessons from the 600-Ship Navy
The 1980s proved that great-power competition requires clear naval strategy and advocacy.
By Lieutenant Joseph Sims, U.S. Navy
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2022/august/lessons-600-ship-navy
Time and apathy are our biggest enemies. Let’s be clear: war could erupt at any time and we are not prepared.
1. We do not have the infrastructure to build enough warships. We do not have the workers with the skills to build those ships. For now focus on building carriers and submarines and slowly transition to all ship’s types.
2. We have no plan or idea of how to recreate a commercial fleet. We can’t build it, can’t maintain it, can’t man it or operate it.
3. If the Navy were suddenly handed 600 ships it could not man them. It could not recruit and train the crews fast enough. It could not maintain those 600 ships.
How we got here is immaterial. We are there.
Solutions require some cold blooded decisions:
1. Buy ships from foreign sources while we build up shipyards, facilities and hire and train skilled work forces to build our own.
2. Ditto for a U.S. manned and flagged commercial fleet.
3. Expand US Navy recruiting to select, highly qualified individuals from foreign countries. I have estimated that up to 10% of the Navy’s end strength could be recruited with US citizenship offered after six years of service.
4. Manpower for the shipyards could also be manned by recruited immigrants. Shipyard production and maintenance must be long term contracts to prevent the feast or famine yo-yo effect.
5. Current Navy Operating bases cannot home port 600 ships. Open more ports and homeport a higher percentage overseas.
This needs to be a three phased plan stretching over the next 20 years.
Let me add that this is the tip of the iceberg. We do have the largest defense budget in the world but that does not translate to trained, equipped, deployable and ready operational units. Why?
The USNavy has over 220 admirals, or about one for every two ships, (Naval Vessel Report= 490 ships-active and reserve fleet)if the computer has the numbers right. About a third of those ships are in rehab of some manner. We are almost to the point of one flag rank per ship. Joke to follow: We need more “rowers” and fewer “steerers” it seems. Perhaps one of the admirals should be the one to keep his/her foot on the accelerator to ensure replacement/modification is keeping pace with world events, knowing that the lag time between concept and sea trails is a looong time! Our current situation has caught someone asleep at the switch or perhaps we weren’t loud enough at the table!