Today is All About the Navy

This mid-week reads look to the sea, which our entire history as a nation has been our highway and a great barrier that has kept the foreign wars of the past two centuries from spilling onto our shores. In that vein I turn to look at the Navy and the indispensible branch of the Marine Corps. The past nine years of ground war has cost over 40,000 killed and wounded and cost $800 billion dollars. In the age of austerity, paying for the war means taking money away from other defense projects in order to maintain the field force and fund innovations in IED protection in the form of new mine resistant vehicles and detection instruments.

I am no expert on naval strategy or procurement but several of the blogs I follow have been in the forefront of the absolutely critical topic of maintaining our presence as a naval power. Currently, we field the strongest Naval presence in the world, but will that be the kind of fleet we will need in 5, 10 or 20 years? To help wrap your minds around what is changing, check out this post and the photos of  swarm tactics used to harrass a Chinese convoy in the Gulf of Aden. Then read this from Andrew Erickson and this from War is Boring and tell me if the fleet we have is what we need in this back to the future world of a hybrid assmetrical naval warfare envoirnment.

As noted, a few blogs have been in the forefront of thinking ahead and posing the really tough questions the fly in the face of those who are protecting their version of the early 20th century dreadnaughts. To get up to speed I would refer everyone to make Information Dissemination, United State Naval Institute Blog, CDR Salamander and this recent addition to my blog links, New Wars. These blogs are the tip of the spear in discussing and keeping Americans informed on the present and future of America's first line of defense it's Navy.

Here is a taste of what Mike Burleson of New Wars has to say about the The Navy's New Look Part 1 and Part 2.

Here is just a taste of how he sees the Navy in ten years in 2020.

Giant aircraft carriers as the mainstay of the fleet will begin to disappear. There will probably be only solitary examples in European and Asian fleets, but the mighty US Navy will only possess a handful, none likely in full service or with complete aircraft complements. They will be brought out for the occasional brush-fire wars, but their huge expense in crew and operating costs, plus vulnerability will see their day end as surely as the dreadnoughts which they preceded.

Their place will be taken by much smaller multipurpose assault carriers, which can carry V/STOL planes, UAVs, and helicopters, plus armed Marines and their equipment. Even these will not be needed in huge numbers and will be used only in benign threat areas because of the missiles.

The Marines will be busier than ever, only their “second army”, heavy brigade status will be over. They will act as small raider teams in littoral operations, plus serve as armed guards and manned riverine craft such as CB90 boats. For larger operations, they can land from submarines, joint high speed vessels, or even larger sea lift ships like T-AKE, which can carry more troops while being less costly than an amphibious warship.

Conventional submarines (SSKs) will return to USN service, the amazing abilities of the nuclear attack boat outweighed by its immense cost, advanced skills and construction complications, plus declining numbers. By 2030 at least and for the first time since the 1960s, the SSK’s will outnumber nuclear boats in the American fleet.

The surface fleet will begin to grow enormously with the return of the flotilla. With the Navy seeing its need to be in the littorals, logically they will turn to shallow water warships, such as corvettes, patrol craft, fast attack craft and dedicated anti-mine warships. The attempt to pack all these capabilities in a Blue Water frigate, the mediocre but gold-plate littoral combat ship, will be recognized as the failure it is. Likely only 15-20 of the LCS will be built, used only in an underarmed mothership role for small craft, or perhaps as an assault transport for Marines.

Production of large destroyers will likely cease, only because we already possess so many with no peer adversary having any one ship comparable as the 60-70 Arleigh Burke class. So these ships will linger around for sometime in various guises and with successive rebuildings. Because they are so capable, with Tomahawk cruise missiles, Aegis, and soon unmanned vehicles, they will be able to project power as no other warship since the aircraft carrier, only in a vastly less costly and visible package.

And here is a suggestion to counter those pesky swarming fast attack boats.LCS Alternative.

Finally, I pass along this most excellent post about the on-going mission by the USS Mercy to South East Asia. This post from The USNI Blog begin:

While most of the defense community’s attention is firmly fixed on McChrystal-gate, my focus is on the softer and often overlooked side of US Navy operations. Pacific Partnership 2010 is the fifth in an annual series of humanitarian and civic assistance operations projecting US soft power in the Pacific Rim. This year, USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) is visiting six nations, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste. To give these servicemen the credit they deserve, below is a series of photos from Pacific Partnership 2010. Enjoy.

Pacific Partnership 2010

"I hate newspaper men." General William T Sherman, 1863

General William T Sherman

The title of this post will become apparent as you read down further and absorb all the facts swirling around this last week as our military regroups after losing its field commander in Afghanistan. General McChrystal is not the first general taken from the field. During the Civil War we lost general officers as they were fired or shot down in battle. The Army survived and went on to win, actually coming out stronger whether the loss was intentional or the fortunes of war.

Amid the focus on Afghanistan, and the blizzard of analysis of how General Petreaus will turn the tide of war; is the continued back wash of what was McChrystal thinking? This post from Andrew Exum AKA, Abu Muqawama generated a bloom of over 70 comments that as Abu notes, are worth the price of admission.

Now that Gen. McChrystal is gone and consensus has formed that Preisdent Obama was well within his rights to have fired him, it's worth going back and looking anew at the Rolling Stone piece that got him fired. On the one hand, David Brooks in today's New York Times and Schumpter in the Economist lament the fact that public figures are now all the less likely to actually open up in front of journalists and speak freely. I don't think this excuses the mistake of thinking you could speak freely to a reporter from Rolling freaking Stone whose opposition to your strategy had already been established, but I take their points. On the other hand, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald and others seized on a comment in the Politico that this would likely not have happened had Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone reporter, not been a free-lance. The logic is that a reporter from the New York Times or the Washington Post would have been more servile to the people they cover because they do not want to burn their sources. After enduring some members of the White House press corps who do, frankly, seem to exchange favorable coverage of the administration for access, I can understand their complaint.

Read more:
Beers on the table, Journalist and the public figures they cover

This fine follow up over at Zenpundit calls attention to the rogue pachyderm in the basement of the White House.

Miss P. bangs pots and pans, shoots off fireworks, uses her knee to pound a bass drum while blowing a vuvuzela in an effort to draw attention to the Elephant in the policy room no one wishes to address.

It won’t work until a Pakistani-sponsored terrorist pulls off an act of catastrophic terrorism inside the United States and kills a large number of elite Americans in Manhattan or the Beltway. After that point, we’ll get serious and these views will become conventional wisdom.

I just hope the terrorists don’t succeed in Arizona or Kansas - the story will only make page 2, then and policy will stay the course:

Read More:
Pundita on Pakistan

Finally, comes a post from excellent blog friend Lexington Green, who offers this musing on a possible motive behind McChrystal's supposedly lasp in judgement in letting his subordinates pound back beers with the folks that General William T Sherman had this to say about:

"I hate newspaper men.They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.”

Lex offers this to begin his analysis of what might have been on McChrystal's mind that night in Paris.

… I think I would find that he set himself up intentionally to let the Rolling Stone guy get quotes that would end his tenure.

Gen. McChrystal is anything but a stupid or careless man. He is a cold and calculating strategist, both against the enemy, and in terms of his career and his rise to three star rank. He was also a warrior who would expend lives as needed to destroy the enemy and to win. And he was willing to take personal physical risks as well. Sacrifice was something he was willing and able to demand from himself and others.

The article tellingly notes that, over his career, he had a genius for knowing exactly where the lines are, and how much he could get away with. Yet, here, he stepped firmly over that line. We are supposed to believe this was inadvertent? That is not plausible. I cannot conceive of Gen. McChrystal making the Homer Simpson “d’oh!” noise.

He had to know he was doing that.

But why?

Read more:
If I could read Stanley McChrystal’s mind …

Hasta La Vista! General McChrystal?

General Stanley McChrystal

General George Patton

Truman and MacArthur at Wake Island

American Generals have shot their mouths off before, General Douglas MacArthur being the most referred too. But in World War II, George Patton, continued to prove that aside from being the best tactical general his mouth almost cost him his job more than once for mis-stated and ill thought out comments.

The growing conflagration that was set off this week by the publication of the  The Runaway General, in Rolling Stone Magazine has managed to push the BP oil spill off  the front pages. Now that this story is out, it looks like the only person who might have been on top of this was Michael Yon who of late has been catching serious flak from many mil-bloggers for calling out the leadership in Afghanistan without solid evidence. One thing that this may do far beyond costing General Stanly McChrystal his job and reputation is that it will put the discussion of the strategy of Afghanistan in the face of the American public.

Driving home today, the local talk radio stations were abuzz with discussions about Afghanistan, and had suddenly discovered COIN, and how much it will cost to try and build a functioning country from scratch. I can say from the conversations on a major talk radio station in Southern California, that the callers sounded alot like Col Gian Gentile in their opposition in what most, felt was a massive waste of treasury and lives in trying to build a nation that was viewed as totally outside the strategic circle of importance to American security. Gut feeling tells me this could become a tipping point, or a strategic opportunity for Obama to foster public support for cutting our losses and adopting the strategy that George Will suggested a few months back Time to Get Out of Afghanistan. I think as this story keeps it's legs, the flustration of wasting money and time in what for most people in the developed world, is an excercise if futility will begin to bear fruit and the clamor to bring the boys home and leave the Afghanis to their own devices will prevail. The only mistake AQ can do to stop this, is pull off some successful terrorist attack and begin the cycle of reaction.

When I read beyond the hubris demontrated in the first few paragraphs, and delve into the meat of  the article, the real relevation is how disjointed, counter-productive, estranged and clueless the branches of government appear when developing and following a strategy that meets the strategic goals of the United States. Let's face it folks, we supposedly went to Afghanistan after 9/11/01 to destroy the Taliban, Al-Qaida and capture or kill Osama Bin Ladin. So far, nine years later we are still trying to destroy the Taliban and AQ and have for all pratical purposes, resorted to Hellfire missile strikes to try and get lucky in the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan in ending OBL's tenure on earth.

Here is a rundown on the latest bad news coming this past month from Afghanistan that leads and finally over takes the McChrystal implosion brought courtesy of Yahoo News.

Here's a review of the parade of horribles emanating from Afghanistan in the weeks preceding McChrystal's outburst:


May 25, 2010: The Army launches an investigation of 10 soldiers near Kandahar for the murder of three Afghan civilians and illegal drug use. One soldier is eventually charged; five remain under investigation.

May 28, 2010: A roadside bombing kills the 1,000th American in Afghanistan.


May 29, 2010: McChrystal calls Marjah, the subject of a massive NATO offensive last spring to oust the Taliban and prop up civilian institutions, a "bleeding ulcer" at a gathering of Afghan officials and civilian strategists. The Marjah campaign was the first prong of the surge strategy McChrystal advocated, and he has essentially acknowledged that it didn't succeed: "I think that we've done well, but I think that the pace of security has been slower. I'm thinking that, had we put more force in there, we could have locked that place down better."

June 2, 2010: A peace summit called by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and attended by McCrystal is attacked by Taliban mortar and small-arms fire. McChrystal has to be evacuated as Karzai offers peace terms to the Taliban over the noise of Taliban rockets. Karzai would later blame the attack on American forces.


June 7, 2010: After 104 months of combat, the Afghanistan conflict becomes the longest war in U.S. history.


June 10, 2010: McChrystal tells reporters at a meeting of NATO defense ministers that a long-planned operation to pacify the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar this summer — designed to serve as a follow-up blow to the bungled Marjah campaign — will be delayed. "I do think it will happen more slowly than we had originally anticipated," McChrystal said.


June 11, 2010: The New York Times reports that, according to two former senior advisers to the Afghan president, Karzai has lost faith in America's capacity to prevail in Afghanistan and is seeking a separate peace with the Taliban without informing NATO. "The president has lost his confidence in the capability of either the coalition or his own government to protect this country," one of the advisers told the Times. "President Karzai has never announced that NATO will lose, but the way that he does not proudly own the campaign shows that he doesn't trust it is working."


June 13, 2010: The New York Times reports that the U.S. military has "discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan," in a story that U.S. officials cooperated with. The story contained little new information about Afghanistan's deposits, which Karzai himself had claimed to be worth between $1 trillion and $3 trillion in February; it is widely viewed as a transparent attempt by the U.S. to fight back against the growing tide of negative press.


June 16, 2010: WikiLeaks announces that it will soon release leaked military video of a U.S. gunship attack near Garani, Afghanistan, that killed nearly 150 civilians, including women and children, in May 2009.


June 22, 2010: A congressional report finds that the U.S. is paying millions of dollars in protection money to Afghan warlords — and potentially to the Taliban — to provide security for convoys. The U.S. practice of outsourcing supply transports has "fueled a vast protection racket run by a shadowy network of warlords, strongmen, commanders, corrupt Afghan officials," and provided "a significant potential source of funding for the Taliban," the report said.

Here is how the other blogs see this story.

Thomas Barnett Blog

The Zenpundit

Information Dissemination

Small Wars Journal

Tom Ricks Best Defense

Schmedlap

Abu Muqawama

United States Naval Institute Blog

New Roundtable: Defeat in Afghanistan? The View from 2050

Marines protecting Afghan father and son

Forward thinking blog friend Lexington Green, contributor to the Chicago Boyz Blog has announced an important upcoming blog roundtable this summer that will discuss a topic that for several months has been lurking in the minds of many people. Here is Lex's proposal for Defeat in Afghanistan? The View from 2050.

Voices from many quarters are saying dire things about the American-led campaign in Afghanistan. The prospect of defeat, whatever that may mean in practice, is real. But we are so close to the events, it is hard to know what is and is not critical. And the facts which trickle out allow people who are not insiders to only have a sketchy, pointillist impression of the state of play. There is a lot of noise around a weak signal.

ChicagoBoyz will be convening a group of contributors to look back on the American campaign in Afghanistan from a forty year distance, from 2050.

40 years is the period from Fort Sumter to the Death of Victoria, from the Death of Victoria to Pearl Harbor, from Pearl Harbor to the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. It is a big chunk of history. It is enough time to gain perspective.

This exercise in informed and educated imagination is meant to help us gain intellectual distance from the drumbeat of day to day events, to understand the current situation in Afghanistan more clearly, to think-through the potential outcomes, and to consider the stakes which are in play in the longer run of history for America, for its military, for the region, and for the rest of the world.

The Roundtable contributors will publish their posts and responses during the third and fourth weeks of August, 2010.

The ChicagoBoyz blog is a place where we can think about the unthinkable.

Stand by for further details, including a list of our contributors.

Cross posted at zenpundit


Many of those already signed on; represent a broad range of thinkers who will be bringing a convergence of ideas from all political, diplomatic and military points of view. One might question what a group of bloggers without political or military power can do that would influence policy or drive the discussion. That friends, is the power of this medium, to drive public discourse, something the mainstream media and the halls of Congress and the White House seems ill prepared to conduct.

Two For a Tuesday Night

To Make Men Free 1943

Norman Rockwell

Two Posts share the stage today. The first is by way of Thomas Rick's The Best Defense Blog. In this post Ricks posted a note from guest bloggers, Maj. Michael Burgoyne and former Army lieutenant Shelly Burgoyne. Ten Ways to Support the War Effort. Click on the post for the suggestions on how to contribute to each suggestion below.

1. Join the military.

2. Ask Congress to pass a "War or Patriot Tax" à la Thomas Friedman.

3. Ask Congress to pass a real and meaningful national service act.

4. If you have a special skill, see number 1 or join the Civilian Response Corps.

5. Support a non-governmental aid agency working to better the lives of others in potentially dangerous regions.

6. Don't do drugs.

7. Donate your time or money.

8. Send letters and packages to deployed service members and units.

9. Learn more about the military. Take a military science class if you're in college.

10. Support veterans and parents of service members running for office.

Next, is this from Michael Yon who posted this while taking a break from reporting the war in Afghanistan to file this thought provoking piece that touches on energy, conservation and a way to gleen fertlizer all from the same source. All I will say is GOBAR!

GOBAR!

Among the more interesting coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan are the legendary Nepalese Gurkhas. Trained and fielded by the British, as they have been since colonial days, Gurkhas are a fascinating admixture: today many are British soldiers used to traveling the world. Many of them grew up barefoot and poor in remote and primitive mountain villages in the high Himalayas: places that closely resemble parts of Afghanistan, geographically and culturally. They understand impoverished life in a harsh environment personally, though Nepal has enjoyed some material progress in the last few decades. That combination of background and experience makes Gurkhas helpful at generating useful approaches to Afghan development. They know what is possible, and they’ve seen experiments succeed or fail.

A Gurkha veteran named Lalit whom I met, deep in the jungles of Borneo, at a British Army man-tracking school, came with good ideas. Lalit began a conversation by announcing that many of Afghanistan's energy, land restoration and fuel needs could be solved if the Afghans would immediately adopt "Gobar Gas" production. This mysterious substance could improve the lives of Afghans as it had that of the Nepalese, he said, as, with great enthusiasm, he began to explain.

I returned to Afghanistan, this time to areas of Ghor, Helmand and Kandahar Provinces. No Afghan along the way had heard of Gobar Gas. I flew to Nepal to talk with Gobar Gas experts and users.

Read it and see if merits more study>
GOBAR GAS

A Trumpet Hearlds the Need for the Return of History

The trumpet is a metaphor for a call from a military officer urging the return of the study of history to add another avenue of ideas to sound out a clear strategy about the conduct of current and future wars. Army Special Forces Major Grant Martin, who is currently serving in Afghanistan penned an essay posted by the editors of Small Wars Journal. Major Martin, begs the indulgence of David Brooks upon whose March 25 New York Times op-ed he builds his thesis.

As I was reading David Brooks’ March 25 New York Times op-ed, The Return of History, I couldn’t help but play a game I have come to enjoy ever since reading Eric D. Beinhocker’s book The Origin of Wealth. What I do is every time I come to the word “economist” when reading a work on economics, I substitute the words “military theorist” in my mind, and every time I come to the word “economics” I replace it with the words “the study of warfare”. Since the switch seemed to fit so well with Beinhocker’s book, I was not too surprised when it seemed to fit Brooks’ article as well.

At the risk of appearing to plagiarize and with apologies to Mr. Brooks, I have replaced most of the words in his article below that dealt with economics with a word or words that had more to do with warfare. I have left his words in italics, except for the title of books, and put my words in regular font.

Read More:
The Need for the Return of History:Why Studying History and Human Motivations is the Key to the Future of Warfare.

Major Martin's independent voice, joins the voices of many who have questioned the logic of marginalizing history both at the secondary, post secondary, and graduate level institutions, as well as in the service academies where management and systems management has trumped the focus of history and particularly military history. The fact that many voices have been raised in the past two years holds merit that the pendulum is finally beginning to gradually swing back, pushed along by the concerted efforts of many whom have come to realize that it is time for the return of history. This blog and its author, and many of my blog friends, have been active in promoting the importance of history and understanding it's consequences and lessons.

The warning also sounds from the direction of West Point, courtesy of Tom Ricks Foreign Policy Blog who posted this, a  West Point faculty member worries it is failing to prepare tomorrow’s officers . This officer is defining the total systems managment approach of cover your A-hole and keep your Pie-hole shut to avoid rocking the boat. That makes another officer at West Point who has the guts to speak his mind.

Recently Thomas Barnett called attention to why he wrote an 85 page of history of America supporting the thesis of his book Great Powers: America and the World After Bush, during a recent book review. For
anyone interested, this is one of the most concise one chapter histories of the U.S. describing the really important themes and characters that made our world today possible. I wish Barnett would consider writing a more extensive history of the United State for his next endeavor, given his ability to gin up themes and link them altogether in a seamless narrative.

The drums and trumpets across the blogs, have been sounding a clarion call to academics to heed the warning before we march over a another cliff, blinded by our hubris or self loathing naval gazing. We must stop and counsel with the historians and teach our young the value of knowing the road traveled, before charging blindly ahead. We must measure our progress by looking to our past with its glories and it's warts, then re-energizing ourselves in the fields of business, economics, war and diplomacy, so the security of the institutions and the nation is not blind to the folly of not being aware of the past.

Taking Note of Two Knights of the Keyboad

This week has produced a bonanza of quality reads among the blogs that I read as regularly as a 19th century mountain man  runs his traps. Part of this rich bonanza of brain food can be traced to two individuals who over the past few weeks have posted an abundence of rich treatises on a broad range of subects from security, to business, social and politics.

As I noted last month, Thomas Barnett has moved into high gear producing up to a half score posts each weekday that distills the main thesis of the articles he gleens from a variety of media sources. The only way to pay his due is to take a moment and look back at yesterday, June 3, when he produced his normal ten posts ranging from nuclear armed subs to Dams to Sweet Potatoes and long term unemployment in America among six other outstanding reads that will provide a mornings worth of pondering more deftly and concisely than any of the MSM outlets. Click on his name above to read his latest posts.

And the other intrepid blogger who contributed to this week being a banner week for reads was Galrahn who returned to announce that he "has the bridge" at his must read, naval centric blog Information Dissemination . Without fanfare his byline appeared this past week to offer his astute observations about all things naval. Here is a couple of his posts that blow away some of the coastal fog surrounding stories about the sea. Here's two Hezbollah Threatens Unrestricted Naval Warfare Against Israel and Bloggers and Battleships that illustrate his depth of understanding of naval strategy. Galrahn's crew of felllow bloggers, Feng, Brian McGrath, Chris Rawley and GvG make up a strong crew able to steer you to the important issue of naval interest.