When contemplating fighting a peer power for control of the seas, the U.S. Navy must be able to suffer losses without crippling its ability to win the campaign.
One of the conclusions of this paper on Navy composition is that the Navy's warship balance is too top heavy with multi-mission warships. Actually cheaper and more focused warships are needed to get numbers. Although the balance of the entire fleet is given a higher priority so it can be deployed and sustained in a sea control campaign:
Indeed, this effort [to recommend a force structure for the Navy] is supported by the idea, contained in the most recent National Security Strategy (NSS), that the U.S. has returned to an era of great power competition with China and Russia. The last time the U.S. – and the U.S. Navy – found itself in this position was late in the Cold War. The premise of this effort is that what was good enough for the Cold War great power competition era, in terms of U.S. Navy force structure, is probably a pretty good basis for what the force structure should be in today’s era. ...
If we assume that the force structure of 1989 was built to compete “over there” against a near-peer competitor in an era of great power competition, then it follows that a similar force structure, extrapolated from the Cold War force structure, would be ideal for serving the same purpose today. Note that the emphasis is on “structure” and not “numbers”: there is a fiscal reality to ship acquisition, and the basis of any future Fleet numbers will be based on the Congressionally mandated number of aircraft carriers (11). The numbers for each type of ship in Column <4> were derived by multiplying the number of ships of that type from 1989 by the ratio of present-day capital ships (21xCVNs and LHD/LHAs) to the number of 1989 capital ships (33xBBs, CV/CVNs, and Large Deck Amphibs), and rounding to the nearest integer. The rationale for this approach is that, in rough terms, the number of escort combatant and fleet support vessels is related to the ability of the Navy to escort and supply capital ship strike groups while also being able to conduct ancillary operations. [emphasis in original]
I've noted how top heavy our fleet is. It was a rational response to the sudden collapse of the Soviet naval threat combined with the still nascent Chinese naval threat. The Navy reduced numbers of vessels and focused on fewer multi-role larger ships. These ships are the most time-consuming and expensive to build, so in an emergency it could more easily build the cheaper bulk ships the Navy shed over time.
As China has risen as a naval threat, the Navy has telegraphed an intent to abandon the top-heavy force structure. As I've long opined, the Navy needs to pick a number for how many warships it needs and build as many cheaper ships as it takes to get that number:
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?Okay, 13 years ago I had hope that the LCS concept had promise rather than being an expensive failure best used to test our weapons effectiveness. But it's still a good idea.
Still, the Navy has limitations that our allies in Eurasia don't have. As I noted, our ships have to be large enough to cross an ocean and fight. Allies--and enemies--often just have to leave port to get to their patrol stations:
But there are limits to trading size for numbers. Remember that we aren't a European power of the Cold War era--or even China or Japan today--whose ships mostly need to leave port and then prepare to fire. They can build small ships heavy on weaponry. We need a ship capable of cruising long distances across oceans, in potentially rough seas, even before we put a single weapon on it. That requires tonnage. That affects the theoretical trade off I'd like with some practical minimum sizes.
And of course, there's the issue of projecting the Navy overseas that the report addresses. That part of the report was part of my post on power projection more generally.
We don't want our ships defending our ports from direct attack, right? Let's create a Navy that can sail across the globe, sustain losses, keep fighting, and win control of the seas over there.
[Oops. Noticed title typo. Fixed.]
NOTE: Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
