The Pentagon has taken the job of planning the composition of the great power competition-era Navy away from the Navy.
Adapting to a sea control mission after the quiet sea days of projecting power ashore in the post-Cold War era will take time and the Navy wasn't planning fast enough or realistically enough to reach a 355-ship Navy:
The proposal, which will chart the course for a fleet of more than 355 ships, has been eagerly awaited by lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who have vowed to withhold operations and maintenance funding from the DoD until Esper delivers the plan. ...
[Secretary of Defense] Esper took control of the force planning project from the Navy in January after rejecting the Navy’s work, finding it too conservative, too slow and untethered from the budgetary realities expected in coming years.
The overall thrust of what Esper is looking for has been clear for some time: more ships, particularly small, fast ships that can avoid Chinese precision missiles while packing some serious punch, in addition to several new classes of unmanned ships to act as surveillance nodes, and afloat missile launchers.
The Dignified Rant has long advocated this theory of ship planning:
I have another idea. Set a number of platforms that we need to perform the missions we need to protect ourselves. Then build ships to reach that number.
Oh, they don't all have to be Ford super carriers or high end Aegis cruisers/destroyers. We really can build some less capable and cheaper ships for many missions. Remember, our fleet is composed primarily of high end ships, unlike the past when we had a core of capable ships and then cheaper, less capable, and more numerous escorts. In a version of grade inflation, our destroyers are no longer the cheap tin cans of World War II but high end ships that are amongst our most capable.
Further, a lot of missions in more sensitive areas (that is, sensitive to US military presence) but low threat levels, or humanitarian missions, can be carried out by modularized auxiliary cruisers.
If numbers really are important--and I think they are--we can get the numbers. Yes, because of geography we have to build larger ships capable of sailing long distances, so we can't just build small corvettes the way many nations do, who just need to sail out of their port to reach their patrol area. But we could have a real high-low mix with a low end based on basic ships with decent weapons systems that could be augmented with mission packages, which we are building for our littoral combat ships (LCS) class, if the balloon goes up for a bigger war against a more capable foe. We already use neutered Perry frigates that no longer have their missile launchers. Why not build new, cheap, frigates designed to accomodate mission packages that turn them into potent warships in war time?
We can't go on the way we are with shipbuilding. There won't be more money for the high-end ships we build (and no, the LCS are no longer low-cost ships). And we shouldn't reduce our deployments and missions to match reduced numbers that will result from our shipbuilding plans.
There is an odd hole in the shipbuilding plan article: aircraft carriers. I don't think we can afford as many carriers if 355 ships is a real objective. Will there be a real debate about the worth of carriers?
Their survivability and value are longstanding concerns of mine.
I have concerns about the small ships planned. How will they deploy from the continental United States to overseas deployment stations? Or will the small ships, possibly unmanned, be permanently deployed overseas? If so, how do we protect them from being hit in an overseas Pearl Harbor attack when an enemy initiates a war and attempts to gut American forward deployed forces?
Still, it's nice to have a plan to actually start.
