Canary In The Coal Mine: The US Navy’s Dilemmas As An Indication Of A Culminating Point In National Grand Strategy
Posted on April 10, 2020 by admin
Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 8, No. 4, April 2020
By Captain Robert C. Rubel USN (Ret)
From a resource point of view, the US Navy has not been doing well lately, its program to expand fleet size to 355 ships, a number that seems to be accepted by the Administration and Congress, has been suffering a series of setbacks. Whether being raided for money to build a border wall, forced to fund the replacement ballistic missile submarine program or constricted due to the need to bolster current readiness, the Navy’s shipbuilding budget is under tremendous pressure, and Congress, despite a desire for a bigger fleet, has not increased the Navy’s top line sufficiently to accelerate ship construction. Moreover, and perhaps worse, the Navy has been unable to produce a fleet structure assessment (FSA) that passes muster with the Secretary of Defense, who doubts the validity of a key assumption that underpins the study.[1]
Many, including a number of my colleagues, feel that the answer is a significantly increased Navy budget, as if the only problem is money. While there is no doubt that a bigger budget would lubricate shipbuilding, it would not necessarily solve the bigger problem of fleet structure analysis and fleet design; how many of what kinds of ships should the Navy have in the future and the uses of each kind. But more money does not seem to be in the cards, and correcting assumptions about the effectiveness of the Navy’s principal force generation process, the Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP) does not bode well for what an adjusted FSA would reveal. The Navy is facing a no-win situation, and to find a way out, we have to engage in a deeper strategic diagnosis of the problem.
https://www.jpolrisk.com/canary-in-the-coal-mine-the-us-navys-dilemmas-as-an-indication-of-a-culminating-point-in-national-grand-strategy
