Risk-averse navy = gold-plated ships

POST: Risk Averse Political Policy Requires High End Focus, USNI Blog30 March 2009

Galrahn's huge post mentions Tom's recent HASC appearance. Here's part of it:

I was struck this week when I sat in the House Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee hearing on Thursday discussing the requirements for the future capabilities of the United States maritime forces. During the hearing, Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett was discussing the Littoral Combat Ship, and as a former member of Cebrowski's staff, he was reviewing with the committee his own experience regarding some of the idea discussions regarding the driving strategic concept the ship was attempting to inject into the fleet constitution discussion. Part of Cebrowski's intent, according to Barnett, was to get the Navy to think about surface combatants in a different way, a move away from traditional platforms and towards new strategic paradigms that would encourage the Navy to think about how fleet forces operated. In his explanation, Dr. Barnett used an example of ejection seats as a way for a crew to survive a hit.

At that moment Dr. Loren Thompson jumped into the discussion, capitalizing on Barnett's example as a form of fleet expendibility. I had been waiting, hoping actually, for exactly this kind of confrontation between Dr. Thompson and Dr. Barnett in the hearing, and was looking forward to seeing the two bloody the other a bit for the audience.

But inexplicably, Gene Taylor is sucked into Dr. Thompson's distraction technique and chides Dr. Barnett about expendable crews, making the argument that if ships were expendable then it implied that crews are expendable; the irony being Dr. Thompson's spin job is so effective Gene Taylor forgets the purpose of an ejection seat. Gene Taylor should have asked Dr. Barnett to respond to Dr. Thompson, and had the men beat up the arguments, because the results of Gene Taylor snipe at Barnett is very troubling, and probably undercut the intent of the entire hearing in the first place.

If the Chairman of the House Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee is unwilling to even consider a fleet survivability discussion within the context of a future capabilities discussion for US maritime forces, then he has established a policy that insures only the highest future capabilities should be considered by the US Navy when developing warships. If war at sea is historically, and by definition, a war of attrition, and political policy is established that no ships at all are expendable, even low intensity fighting forces, the only translation and conclusion one can make under such a policy is that no losses at sea are acceptable.

Policy drives strategy, so Gene Taylor's policy would therefore drive fleet constitution strategy, and if we accept policy and align strategy to it, I honestly cannot think of any valid reason Gene Taylor's policy shouldn't inform the Navy the way ahead. Gene Taylor's policy of unacceptable losses means under no condition can the Navy even consider a National Security Frigate based on the National Security Cutter, regardless of Gene Taylor's support for it, because that ship has an even lower survivability standard than the Littoral Combat Ship, which already has the lowest allowable survivability standard of any "warship" the US Navy has built since WWII. It is a great irony that Gene Taylor probably felt satisfied beating up Dr. Barnett with his comment, but his comment was a political miscalculation with enormous consequences, because if the Navy has anyone intelligent in NAVSEA, that quote will be the primary quote used by the Navy to sink Gene Taylor's own National Security Frigate idea because he laid down a policy that prohibits risk. Gene Taylor thought he was smacking Dr. Barnett, but he got played by Dr. Thompson's mind games and shot his own leg off instead. I'm sure Northrop Grumman was impressed.

Tom's comment:

That is one seriously deep blog post.

This is why Galrahn is taken so seriously.

The muddling-through option in China is not to be misunderestimated

FEATURE: "Interesting Times," by James Fallows, The Atlantic, April 2009.

Nice piece by Fallows. Everybody right now seems of two minds about China: it's going to rule all or it's going to ruin all.

Fallows strikes a very nice balance here.

Best bit:

Observers outside China often compare its difficulties to Japan's a generation earlier. Few people inside China think the two economies have much in common . . .

Instead, the Chinese leadership obsesses far more over repeating the mistakes--as they perceive them--of Soviet Russia, meaning they will do whatever it takes to retain economic stability.

Those who love to ponder the Taiwan scenario hate this logic. They want you to believe that China will willingly go off a cliff over Taiwan, but the only country that could really trigger that insanity would be us, and we're simply not willing, growing--as we are even at our top leadership--more and more aware of our intertwined economic fates.

Beyond that, Fallows' piece speaks to China's ambition toward, and possibilities for, using this crisis to actually improve its long-term competitive prospects.

I know, I know, another trend to fear!!!!!

But frankly, our sense of confidence going forward can't be based on wanting everyone else to fail. That's simply childish and economically backasswards.

Afghanistan SysAdmin 2.0

ARTICLE: U.S. readies civilian 'surge' in Afghanistan, AP, March. 18, 2009

Shows the difference between Afghanistan now and 2003 in Iraq.

Obama's team so far showing real brains, but then again, it's commanding a far smarter military than Bush did, because failure is an excellent teacher.

Those who say we'll fight more wars because we develop such capacity are truly misguided, because having such capacity actually makes our threats and warnings far more powerful, thus enhancing our ability to deter bad behavior.

(Thanks: Tom Mull)