We may finally be getting a seapower debate about how to best control the seas rather than the stale and fruitless debate we've had for decades about how super carriers can achieve that mission.
Since World War II, the Navy’s principal means of seizing command of the seas has been the carrier group. However, the service’s warfighting concept of Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) is fundamentally predicated on a different set of capabilities and force packages. The Tri-Service Maritime strategy – Advantage at Sea – defines DMO as “an operations concept that leverages the principles of distribution, integration, and maneuver to mass overwhelming combat power and effects at the time and place of our choosing.”2 To effectively win a war against a peer competitor, the Navy should transition to the decentralization and distribution inherent in DMO by empowering the surface fleet to take the lead in prosecuting sea control.
Kudos, Commander LaVopa. This is preaching to the TDR choir!
A quarter century ago the United States Naval Institute purchased an essay of mine urging the Navy to transition away from super carriers to DMO. We were embarking on the new Ford-class super carrier program and it seemed a good time to change course.
Carriers were platform-centric weapons while DMO was then called network-centric warfare. But the USNI never published my essay. I was so new to writing that I didn't know I should have been bugging them politely inquiring about the status. Anyway, I requested the rights back and they agreed. So I posted it here:
The end of the Cold War presents the United States with the opportunity and obligation to re-evaluate both strategy and forces. The debate over what the post-Cold War world means for American security and foreign policy has been vigorous. So too has the debate over the potential of the developing Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Adopting and implementing the naval application of the RMA, network-centric warfare (NCW), is a "fundamental shift from what we call platform-centric warfare[.]" Both the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and National Defense Panel (NDP) final report of 1997 endorsed NCW as the proper path for the Navy. Victory in warfare dominated by networks will in large measure depend on making strategic choices that fit with the new and changing system. After over forty years of optimizing our naval forces to fight the Soviets in a global war, taking a fresh look at the Navy is a daunting task.
The question of whether large aircraft carriers deserve to be the center of our future naval strategy is a fundamental question that has not been adequately explored. Network-centric warfare signals the beginning of the end for the United States Navy's large aircraft carriers. They will lose their value as an instrument of forward presence and become valuable targets that, if struck, will encourage an enemy at the outset of war by apparently demonstrating that American technological prowess can be nullified and beaten. In the long run, large aircraft carriers will add little to most offensive missions and will absorb scarce resources and assets simply evading attack rather than striking the enemy and contributing to victory.
As I've droned on about for years in returning to my argument again and again, we've never had a good seapower debate over the role of the carrier. As I wrote in the post introduction to the essay, each side seems to argue about different roles:
Suffice it to say that the problem of arguing the merits of power projection apples versus sea control oranges is continued to the detriment of a real seapower debate.
I think we're arguing the wrong question if this is what we are learning from the Red Sea Regatta flexing its muscles and grunting at the Houthi while failing to wage a campaign to crush their anti-ship capabilities:
Ike’s latest extended cruise and its replacement once again raises questions about the finite carrier fleet’s ability to respond to a seemingly relentless series of global events that require the uniquely American naval presence of a flattop.
The issue shouldn't be about adding carriers to meet the need for naval power in response to global events. The question should be how do we meet the need with seapower. The RAND analyst, while not dunking on the carrier, correctly says:
Martin said the service could reevaluate its force structure and identify ways to meet requirements that carriers provide through alternative means.
And so here we are with an argument about embracing the logic of network-centric operations--which is a term of art numerous iterations out of style, but the same concept. Which may help us meet requirements through alternative means that carriers are currently intended to achieve.
Huzzah.
Here's a CRS report on DMO, which is amazingly still the latest term of art.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.