That assessment was dead wrong.
Now, I'm seeing such claims again in relation to how the US Navy could mass quickly to crush any Chinese attempted invasion of Taiwan, citing the exercise that demonstrates the Fleet Response Plan (FRP).
The assumption that we can quickly mass seven carriers is still wrong.
The FRP has a goal:
Under the FRP construct, the Navy can provide six CSGs in less than 30 days to support contingency operations around the globe, and two more CSGs can be ready in three months to reinforce or rotate with initially responding forces, to continue presence operations in other parts of the world, or to support military action in another crisis. “Summer Pulse 04” will exercise the logistics and shore infrastructure necessary to execute a large scale surge operation, stress the operational concepts in the Navy’s Sea Power 21 strategy, and improve Navy interoperability with numerous allies and coalition partners as well as other U.S. military forces.
This is what we did in Summer Pulse '04:
The seven aircraft carriers involved in “Summer Pulse 04” will include: the Norfolk-based USS George Washington CSG and the San Diego-based USS John C. Stennis CSG, both currently deployed, and Yokosuka, Japan-based USS Kitty Hawk. The Mayport, Fla.-based USS John F Kennedy CSG will begin a combined and joint exercise early this month, followed by a scheduled overseas deployment. The Norfolk-based USS Harry S. Truman CSG will conduct a scheduled training exercise followed by overseas pulse operations with the Norfolk-based USS Enterprise CSG, beginning early this month. USS Ronald Reagan will conduct operations in the U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command theaters during the ship’s interfleet transfer from Norfolk, Va., to its Pacific Fleet homeport of San Diego.
Notice all those home ports and where they exercised? If this isn't clear that the carriers were spread around the globe, this story is a little clearer:
"Summer Pulse 04" continues through August, with seven carriers conducting joint exercises and international exercises with allies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia, officials said.
"The ability to push that kind of military capability to the four corners of the world is quite remarkable," Navy Secretary Gordon R. England said when he announced plans for the demonstration last week in Washington. "Several years ago, we could deploy only two" carriers at the same time.
Of course, John Pike's statement in the article could lead you astray:
"If anybody anywhere gets any ideas - if North Korea gets frisky or the Red Chinese get too risky- they might have a half-dozen carriers show up on short notice."
Pike has a point. If we can surge seven carriers in 30 days or so from their homeports, within another month we could have seven carriers anywhere on the globe.
But if you are talking about having this kind of firepower off of Taiwan in a week, forget it. In the short run we are talking one or at best two carrier strike groups plus a wing of fighters from Japan and whatever Marine aircraft are on Okinawa. Five years ago this would have been enough for us to win. Maybe it is today. In a few years it may not be enough to win control of the air.
If the Chinese are willing to give us a warning and then hold off attacking Taiwan, then hey, a couple months will be fine to mass our naval power. But the Chinese may have figured out that they need to strike and win quickly. And if they do that, Chinese defeat relies on how quickly we can get significant power to the Taiwan area to take them on.
This speed of intervention relies on two things--our decision to promptly intervene and then get our power there. And the ability of the Taiwanese to hold off the Chinese until we get there in strength.
In regard to speed of intervention, I hope we could decide to intervene quickly rather than sit around and await developments. Because even a prompt decision to intervene might not allow us to surge naval power in time. A delay culd be fatal.
And why could a delay be fatal? Because I have little confidence that the Taiwanese could hold alone in the face of a really massive attack. The Taiwanese are simply not Far Eastern versions of the Israelis. The Taiwanese have many deficiencies in their training and equipment and I'm not at all sure that the Taiwanese have the morale to hold fast until we arrive. We need to be there fast just to keep Taiwan fighting, in my opinion.
So remember that we did not surge seven carriers off of Taiwan last summer. We could put seven carriers to sea, but it will take quite a while to get them all in one spot.
