The Navy has a problem preparing for war. I've counted on our training being superior to the Chinese despite some recent doubts hovering around me. My doubts just burst into my home carrying a pizza and making themselves right at home. But I have some hope, too.
The Navy is only now committing to naval exercises that really test the Navy's ability to fight across the domains. Up until now, the process has been a sham:
The structure of combat exercises in the Navy usually took the form of focusing on individual skillsets and warfare areas—anti-surface warfare and anti-air warfare, and so on. But these things were not often combined in a true, multi-domain way. Instead, exercise and training certification regimes often took the form of a linear progression of individual areas. The opposition forces were made to behave in such a way as to facilitate these events. However, a more realistic and thinking adversary would probably employ the multi-domain tactics and operations that are the mainstay of war at sea. But instead, the opposition often acted more as facilitators for simpler target practice it seems, which is why very high kill ratios were the norm. But more importantly, a steady theme that kept reappearing was that the opposition pretty much never won.
Good. I'd worried we forgot how to fight. That worry was before I read our training has been one-dimensional and scripted. And contrary to our assumptions, the Chinese are exercising more realistically than we have been until very recently:
Now when it comes to the Chinese Navy, those public reports the Office of Naval Intelligence puts out paint a very different picture from what the U.S. Navy was doing.8 The Chinese Navy often trains multiple skillsets at a time, they do not always know the composition and the disposition of the forces they are facing off against, and they do not always know exactly what will happen when the event is about to go down. And not only did Chinese Navy combat exercises become increasingly intense, they were willing to impose on themselves certain warfighting fundamentals of friction that the U.S. Navy was unwilling to do.
So the new exercises over time could begin to correct the faulty structure of the Navy's combat exercises. That article notes, however, that "the Navy doesn’t have a major, multi-domain standing formation to act as full-time opposition for the high-end fight." That author worries about maintaining this late commitment to difficult exercises.
Maybe a Navy OPFOR could be made with modularized auxiliary cruisers to institutionalize tough training with a core force of ships and crews that simulate the People's Liberation Army Navy both afloat and simulated land positions.
Otherwise we may wonder what's wrong with our bloody fleet one day.
Do read that linked article. And see if your doubts don't camp out on your sofa, too.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 continues here.
