Dr. Esper’s roll out of Battleforce 2045 is pretty flawed because they don’t have the ability to be more specific about it because of OMB and the White House’s constraints. But I would argue that it is affordable. We did our own study independently and in concert with them [OSD CAPE] and found that you can affordably have more than 500 ships — approximately the size and shape of the fleet he’s talking about — without some of the elements like submarines that he added on at the end. That fleet could be affordable.
I think the problem has been talking about the fleet size rather than the mix of ships, what they’re intended to do, and the capabilities they provide. Going back to the original point: if we don’t think confrontation with China is likely in the next ten years or so, then we should come up with a better approach to introduce these weapons than just slapping them onto the first ships we find that are available.
That was Bryan Clark on the Defense & Aerospace podcast. A lot of interesting discussion of the fleet and hypersonics. I think Bryan is of the opinions that lower cost and distributed systems can be more effective at a similar budget requirement. Here is perhaps an alternative view from TX Hammes (HT: John K.)
While CRS does not take a position on affordability, it notes that in 2019 navy leaders stated that the best they could achieve without a major budget increase was a fleet of 305-310. The CRS report noted that while the current budget is among the highest in history, it can only support a fleet of about 300 ships.
… This plan seems to ignore the budget in the same way the plan for the 355-ship fleet did. The 355-ship navy plan was more of a political statement of aspiration than an actual plan. The old but very true saying that a strategy without resources is a fantasy applies. Achieving this plan would require not only maintaining the record high DoD budgets but also reallocating major resources from other services to provide the funds the Navy needs to execute this plan. The record of DoD budgets post-Eisenhower indicates our system is extremely unlikely to reapportion major budgets between services. Compounding the problem, the U.S. federal budget will be under increasing pressure from increasing interest payments on the national debt, increasing costs of current medical programs, infrastructure needs, and social security costs.
The first step is to design a fleet within fiscal constraints that recognizes the emergence of long-range, precision missiles as a potentially dominant weapon in naval warfare. This means shifting from a building program based on platforms to one based on the weapons systems they carry. These weapons will have to be autonomous and with much longer ranges to be strategically and operationally relevant.
Vested interests will make this an extremely difficult task. Many will object due to a sincere belief that current platforms can be upgraded to thrive in the emerging environment. Others will object because shifting to new concepts means older systems will have to be phased out. Many of these systems – particularly carriers and their aircraft – have aggressive Congressional and industry support. This is an inherent part of the system since Congresspersons are bound to represent their constituents and CEOs have responsibilities to their shareholders. But to make the plan a reality, and to increases the Navy’s contribution to strategic competition, the shifts discussed here need to be pursued.
I think those political realities are going to be perhaps more challenging than technology and costs. It’s unfortunate that the Navy can’t experiment at scale with unmanned and other concepts in distributed maritime operations, which will provide the hard data to make decisions whether to go for 500 ships.
But there will definitely be pressure from those that think time with the Chinese is short, and efforts like SLEPing DDG-51 flight IIs to add hypersonic missiles. Bryan seems to be against that, because you’ll only get 10 more years of a high maintenance hull.
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