Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

CHAPTER 6the navyWilliam S. LindTo understand what military reform means for the Navy, it is necessary to proceedfrom two facts. The first is that America’s geography, with two long seacoasts, requiresus to be a maritime power. That geographic requirement is reinforced by an economicrequirement. Our economy, including our energy supply, depends on large volumes ofseaborne imports and exports. Put together, these two requirements generate a third:the United States Navy must be able to dominate the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans andcontrol portions of other seas (such as the Strait of Hormuz, through which much ofour imported oil passes) against any opponent.Reforming the Navy cannot and does not mean weakening American naval power.Reformers know that when the United States tried a policy of abandoning the highseas in favor of coastal defense under President Thomas Jefferson, it was an abjectfailure. The Jefferson administration sold off many of the U.S. Navy’s frigates, refusedto build ships of the line, and created instead flotillas of gunboats for harbor defense.When war came in 1812, the gunboats proved useless, American commerce was sweptfrom the seas (causing an economic depression in New England that almost led tosecession) and the United States was invaded at several points by seaborne Britishforces. Only the fact that we had retained our few large frigates enabled us to emergefrom that war without complete humiliation.The second reality from which reform of the Navy must proceed is that unlike theU.S. Army and Air Force, the U.S. Navy today is not designed for a Cold War confrontationwith the Soviet Union. That sounds like better news than it is. The U.S. Navyis not designed to fight the Soviet navy because it never was. The Soviets recognizedthat the submarine is the modern capital ship, and throughout the Cold War the Sovietnavy outnumbered the U.S. Navy in submarines by a ratio of about 3-1.Rather, the U.S. Navy was, and is, structured to fight the imperial Japanese Navy.That navy’s main strength was its aircraft carriers, and aircraft-carrier task forces or“battle groups” remained the focus of the U.S. Navy throughout the Cold War andinto the present. From the Soviet navy’s perspective, American aircraft carriers werelittle more than targets for submarine attack. When Adm. Hyman Rickover, a fierceproponent of building nuclear-powered carriers, was asked in a Senate hearing howlong those carriers would survive in a war with the Soviet Union, he replied, “Abouttwo days.”When the last trumpet sounds and the Japanese carriers sunk at Midway – Akagi