This article is part of a series of thought pieces published alongside our report, Maritime Security in an Age of Uncertainty.
The Commission on the National Strategy of the United States has published a report of its deliberations, noting that burgeoning national security threats have not been adequately met. Among the concerns in the report is the size and capability of the U.S. Navy, suggesting that the Navy, as a highly capital-intensive force and a key element of the nation’s forward posture, should carefully examine its force structure and capability
The Planning Framework
The Department of Defense (DoD) applies a time-based construct to guide resource and force planning: force employment (the immediate future out to five years); force development (two to seven years); and force design (five to fifteen years). This construct recognizes that there are both short-term demands and long-term investment decisions that organizations within DoD must make.
Force employment refers to decisions made with respect to posturing the force to meet immediate challenges. The formal process for force employment is Global Force Management (GFM). Force development refers to actions taken to make a force ready to respond to contingencies, which are best captured in operational plans.
Our focus is on the “force design” phase. This phase refers to the long-term shape of the force, including its long lead-time technology development, capital purchases, and personnel posture. Force design actions reside largely in long-term plans reflecting service investment priorities and assessments of technological progress. Although the design phase can seem detached from immediate warfighting action, “next-war-itis,” many of the discrepancies identified in the commission report relate to the long-term suitability of the force structure for facing threats and the ability of the nation to support this structure.
The Navy’s Structure and Posture
Within the planning phases, the Navy goes to great lengths to meet force employment timelines and indeed prioritizes current force demands over its ability to meet future contingencies. It routinely deploys forces around the globe, including responding to actual uses of force, as it has done recently in the Red Sea and elsewhere. Within the force development timeframe, it has programs intended to meet even the most stressing scenarios.
The Navy has recently increased efforts to meet force development goals, with an aim to increase surge ready forces to 80 percent of the force being ready to surge by 2027, which the chief of naval operations admits is a “stretch goal.” This effort includes a decision to extend the service life of older surface combatants to as long as 45 years. In the force design timeframe, the Navy has established offices both within the secretariat and on the chief of naval operations staffs to address this phase. The Navy’s Force Design 2045 plan calls for a 373-ship fleet supported by 150 unmanned vessels.
Clearly, the Navy is trying to meet demands and does what it can with the capabilities and force structure that it has. However, the Navy’s record of delivering capability has been problematic. Nearly all its major defense acquisition programs have been late and over budget, severely straining its legacy force. The Navy still meets its missions, but its ability to deal with missions beyond the DoD’s five-year Future Years Defense Plan is in question.
Looking just at ships, the Navy has focused on expensive and complicated systems at the expense of capacity, has not successfully executed shipbuilding programs without delay or cost growth, and has neglected to consider sustainment in its programs and budgets. Over time, the numbers of ships have declined and planned replacements have not arrived. Indeed, the 80 percent surge ready stretch goal and extension of ship service life reflect that the force structure potentially needed now is not available. All this takes place in the context of manpower shortages, not just on ships and submarines but also in essential ship construction and maintenance facilities.
The Near-Term Reasons for Worrying About the Longer Term
These force employment and force development shortfalls are likely due to poor force design decisions, some made decades ago, that failed to align demands with force structure and readiness requirements. These demands deal with the Navy’s ability to react to crisis situations and possible wartime needs. Given the urgency, there might be a temptation to correct these as expediently as possible rather than focus on the longer-term needs. By this line of thought, force design, and the investments it implies, can—perhaps must—wait for resolution of immediate crises.
Reacting to immediate need is understandable, but there are real drawbacks to this approach. Failing to consider long-term requirements can, in fact, have more immediate impacts. Rushing to fill near-term missions might create temporary solutions that than require remediation, creating a spiral of crisis and remediation.
For example, if ships are delayed completing maintenance periods due to unexpected gaps, ships already deployed can be extended on station. This could result in the extended ships being in worse material shape and thus needing more maintenance when they finally do arrive. Similar solutions with similar problems arise for nearly all elements of readiness, creating a spiral that becomes increasingly difficult to reverse. The impacts can rapidly cascade into persistent problems for force development, threatening the Navy’s ability to meet projected war-time surge needs.
The Value of Force Design: A Vision and a Sense of Purpose
Force design is oriented towards the long term but there is a near-term impact. Force design implies that a service has attempted to develop a force structure and capability set consistent with the missions assigned in U.S. Code Title 10. The design provides plans that could support investments and inform decisions about platforms and capabilities.
Short-term decisions will still be necessary, but the tradeoffs could be more clearly understood and put in the context of future requirements. Force design does not offer relief from capability tradeoffs, but it does provide structure and context.
A Better Alignment with New Threats and Missions
In two generations, which is the expected service life of many Navy combatants, the threat environment has shifted from the Cold War to the Global War on Terror and back again to Great Power Competition. Although forces in the Cold War were relatively well aligned to need, since then the needs have changed repeatedly. Force design has, in some cases, tried to react to the immediate need and has in the process become locked into capability development requirements that were very specific to a particular period.
Examples include the sortie generation rate key performance parameter for the Ford-class carrier and the various missile modules for the Littoral Combat Ship, both of which were specific to a particular kind of conflict, which passed well before the platforms were delivered. In these cases, force design was based on transitory needs and the result was wasteful spending on systems that were no longer needed by the time they were delivered. Force design can specifically state that capabilities should be adaptable to avoid such scenarios. The point of looking ahead is not to predict the future but to provide a means to adapt to possible uncertainties.
A Better Awareness of Necessary Sustainment
New platforms and technologies carry with them requirements for maintenance, personnel, training, and technology upgrades, which require identification and programming years before delivery. The advantage in the immediate term is that things identified for future use—such as trained personnel—can be brought into the force before a projected capability might be expected to arrive. If the Navy knows it will need a certain set of capabilities, then it could seek to make them complementary to future needs.
Better Alignment with Broader Technological and Industrial Trends
The Navy is burdened with legacy technology that no one else uses. Examples range from communications networks to water purification. This is beyond inefficient. Effective force development can allow immediate identification of better and more readily accessible technology. The main point is that force design is not just a mechanism for far-term planning, but it can also improve outcomes today and in the immediate future. Having a design as guidance can clarify a whole range of issues across many different time periods.
