Since the end of the Cold War, the Navy has not had to pay attention to the sea control mission for a quarter century. The accumulated consequences of that sudden change causes problems now. Despite time to see the Chinese threat coming. As the post-Cold War environment of total American naval dominance ends, the Navy must reconsider its missions and structure with a sense of urgency.
This is a nice summary of the three illustrated Navy missions:
Sea control is primarily a wartime mission gauged towards denying the enemy and upholding one’s own use of the sea. Projection of power emanates from access to the sea, allowing the exertion of influence back onto land.
In contrast, the presence mission is the peacetime operation of the Navy, denoting the deployment of naval forces abroad and what they do whilst there. It holds the dual value of dissuading adversaries and demonstrating commitment to partners, yielding international political capital.
I've always focused on the distinction between power projection and sea control. Forward "presence" has different value depending on the mission. Presence enables timely power projection, But presence can derail sea control if we face capable enemies.
The Navy is still unbalanced from the emphasis on forward presence to project power ashore (back to the initial article):
As the Department of Defense began reorienting itself for a post-USSR world, it validated presence oriented towards regional response as the naval mission through then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell’s Base Force, Secretary Les Aspin’s inaugural Bottom-Up Review, and repeatedly in successive Quadrennial Defense Reviews. The Navy embraced presence as its capstone concept through its first post-Cold War strategy documents …From the Sea and Forward…From the Sea, and has continued to do so in its three tri-service maritime documents of the twenty-first century.
Maintaining forward presence despite massive fleet shrinkage did some serious damage to fleet readiness.
I worry that forward presence with high-value ships, whether in the western Pacific or the Persian Gulf, just tempts an enemy in a crisis to initiate war to get in an early successful blow against forward-deployed multi-mission ships that represent the core of the Navy's power.
Not mentioned is that when forward presence and power projection against minor foes was the norm, having a smaller Navy with more high-value, multi-mission ships was encouraged. So we got rid of the smaller vessels that provided numbers and that could be lost in naval campaigns to control the seas without crippling the Navy.
My advice has always been to pick a number of ships and submarines we need and then build types of ships accordingly to get than number given the realistic expectations of Congressional budget appropriations. The article picks 500. Build accordingly.
And in the short run, we can always build Modularized Auxiliary Cruisers for numbers. Especially with a networked Navy.
The Navy needs numbers created by frankly expendable warships for a presence mission overseas. They would enable diplomatic and crisis response missions. But they would be too few and weak to tempt an enemy that otherwise might not go to war because it sees an opportunity to gain an edge by striking the Navy first. That Navy could shrug off the first blows, gather its forces from out of the theater of war, fight back, endure the necessary losses, and win control of the seas.
Of course, the size of the Navy isn't the only obstacle to sea control.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
