Of Battleships and Bayonets!

The mission of the Navy is to maintain, train and equip combat-ready Naval forces capable of winning wars, deterring aggression and maintaining freedom of the seas.
—Mission statement of the United States Navy




It is true that the US Navy is the largest Navy, by far, in the world.  It is estimated to be larger , with more vessels, than the next thirteen navies combined.  Our Navy has as many aircraft carriers, eleven, as all the other navies in the world combined, and most of those are in the hands of allies.  So why could we possibly need to enlarge the US Navy?

Well first of all, let’s note that the US Navy must carry out it’s mission on more than 139,000,000 square miles of ocean waters, this planet’s surface is  as we know from grammar school, almost 71% water.  There are nearly 223,000 miles of coastline in the world.  Something approaching half the seven billion humans alive today live within 100 kilometers of a coastline.  All this water and coastline must be covered with only 287 ships of the US Navy.

Iran, North Korea, China, Russia all have coastlines.  They all have large relatively modern air forces, of the kind that can make life difficult for US Naval forces off their coast.  They all have sophisticated anti-ship missiles, which can be launched from ships, planes or from land.  In the case of Russia and China, each has an aircraft carrier, which while no match for America’s forces could pose a significant obstacle to operations in contested seas should they choose to.

Eleven aircraft carriers may seem sufficient, and the President’s comment, in the third debate seemed to suggest that our carriers,  along with submarines (“boats that go underwater“) have rendered other vessels obsolete.  This is patently false as the president knows.  While WWII and post war developments indeed saw large battleships fade into history’s junkyard, our aircraft carrier supremacy depends on other vessels.

As noted, anti-ship missiles have proliferated throughout the world.  Compared to carriers and modern airplanes anti-ship missiles are cheap.  While these weapons do not allow the projection of power the way even a small carrier based naval force does, they do allow for  the denial of  access to a nation‘s coast.  In 1982 an Argentine air launched Exocet missile destroyed Britains HMS Sheffield, a modern destroyer.  Carriers operating alone would be extremely vulnerable to these types of missiles.

In the same conflict a British submarine sank the Argentine cruiser Belgrano.  Along with missiles all four of our most dangerous competitors abroad have a submarine fleet.  Like missiles, these vessels cannot dominate the seas, but they can deny the seas to unfriendly vessels.  Carriers are also vulnerable to submarines.

To combat the combined missile and submarine threat US Navy Carriers never travel alone.  They cruise the oceans in Task Forces of mixed vessels, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, frigates and smaller patrol and support vessels.  These vessels form a screen that use integrated technology and layers of weapons to protect the carriers from their greatest threats.

Our navy also has the mission,  in conjunction with the US Marines Corps of projecting power ashore.  “Boots on the Ground“, are sometimes a requirement to ensure sea power.  To this end we have ten  Amphipbious Assault Ships, which are like flexible small aircraft carriers, full of Marines.  They are in turn supported by another twenty or so amphibious support and docking ships.  Like carriers these vessels are vulnerable to attack and must be screened by surface vessels and submarines to be able to approach the shore and fulfill their mission.  These are organized into Amphibious Readiness Groups of three or more ships.

A typical Aircraft Carrier Strike Group (CSG) has about seven vessels altogether, depending on circumstances.  An Amphibious Readiness Group  (ARG) is often attached to a CSG.  So Carriers typically travel in Squadrons of eight to ten  ships.  This requires ninety five ships, just  to keep all eleven carriers and attached ARGs safely at sea.

The maximum range of  strike aircraft operating off of a carrier is about 550 nautical miles.  This limit’s the effective ocean footprint of a CSG to something less than 100,000 square miles of ocean.  With only eleven CSGs and 139 million square miles of ocean there’s simply too much  blue water to cover.  Even with all eleven carriers at sea we could only patrol 7-8% of the Ocean with aircraft carriers.

A few facts.  Some Hotspots in the world require more than on carrier, the Mid-East for instance.  Carriers can’t stay at sea indefinitely, nor can sailors.  US Navy Cruiser and other surface vessels cannot patrol alone, and none of them can stay at sea forever either.  A further sixty one of our naval vessels are Nuclear Missile submarines (SSBNs), which can patrol in an information gathering capacity but are not designed to secure a section of  ocean.

As mentioned,  neither sailors nor ships can remain at sea forever.  In fact the operational tempo of the last decade has exhausted the US Navy much as Iraq and Afghanistan have exhausted Army and Marines forces.  Cruises are getting longer, and in port turn around time is getting shorter.  Some task forces have spent more than a year at sea recently, a situation which stresses ships, sailors and families back home.  Typically, ships and crew are in port at least as long as they are at sea.

So let’s look at the Math.  We now have 287 ships in the US Navy.  Subtracting our 61 SSBNs leaves us with 226 surface vessels and attack submarines.  We have approximately 90 ships tied up in our Carrier based CSGs which if they work 50/50 tours, can ensure coverage of about 3-4% of the Oceans at any given time, and which are surely focused on China, North Korea and  Iran and the Mideast.  That leaves 136 vessels to patrol 95% of the world’s oceans.  Now they can’t stay at sea forever either , so they split 50-50 as well (and that is generous.)  That means 72 ships are available to patrol  the rest of the oceans.  They as stated must patrol in small task forces as well.  Say they average 3 ship task forces, we are then talking about 24 task forces, to patrol some remaining 132 million square miles of Ocean.  These units have even smaller footprints than carrier groups do, so some 125 to 130 million miles of Ocean is routinely un-patrolled by US naval forces.

So what happens in these un-patrolled oceans of Earth?  Why is it our problem?

Well aside from ensuring the best behavior of North Korea and Iran, which is in both the world’s and the US’s interest, likewise keeping a wary eye on China and Russia; the Navy secures the sea lanes for trade.
Piracy is still a huge issue in the world.  Piracy already costs the world economy an estimated 15 billion in losses every year.  Some of these losses are in oil, which causes a rise at the gas pump, and in all consumer goods.  Pirates also fund terror groups.  Some amount of piracy occurs as does terrorism, under the permissive eye of local navies.  Without the US Navy, piracy would be much more costly.

Drug smuggling is another social ill that would be worsened by a smaller navy.  Illicit drug trade continues to bleed dollars out of the legitimate economy.  In short the US Navy does the heavy lifting in today’s world, ensuring freedom of the seas for all nations.  This along with their role in defending our nation and pursuing our enemies are fundamentals of the navy’s mission.

We are asking them to do this, without enough tools.  President Obama can glibly compare ships to horses and bayonets (I still have an assigned bayonet as a soldier in the National Guard) but he is obfuscating.  His cuts have stressed our Navy’s ships and our sailors and endangered our economy and our national security.  They quite frankly have also risked the peace that we do have in many regions.  When hegemons are seen to be receding, war, rather than peace usually follows.