Tuesday - June 01, 2004

Category Image What will become of the Navy?



USSNewJerseyBroadside.pngWe don't have total and absolute control of the seas, but it is 
difficult to imagine our mastery of the oceans to be any more complete that it currently is. This is not only because we are so powerful, but it is also because none of the nations with strong navies are interested in opposing us at sea.

This is all good news. But it never fails that once a nation is no longer challenged, it stops doing what it takes to remain unchallenged. Today I read in my copy of the latest edition of the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings a recommendation by a Captain John Byron that the US Navy drastically downsize its fleet and concentrate almost exclusively on supporting land warfare.

This seems to be a dangerous idea.

Captain Byron makes some interesting points about breaking the political power within the navy of the different warfare communities, and makes a few other suggestions that are all premised on the assumption that our naval supremacy cannot be challenged. It's interesting that he insists on silencing the professionals that are most knowledgeable about naval matters, and that he does so by a scandalous method of argument. By pre-emptively accusing anyone with the necessary knowledge to intelligently counter his argument of being part of a vast naval professional conspiracy, he is trying to make his argument equally unchallengeable.

The gist of his proposal is to completely abandon everything we've done that has created our powerful position on the world's oceans and reduce our naval requirements to support only two missions.

Mission One: Maintain a sufficient fleet-in-being as hedge against potential threats to freedom of the seas, retaining enough industrial, technological, and training infrastructure to remain superior to any nation that might pose a blue-water threat. The Navy must drastically downsize its capital ship inventory . . .

Mission Two: Support land warfare.

Of course, he doesn't come up with any clear explanation as to how we are to maintain sufficient power on the high seas and reduce the already small fleet at the same time. I won't say it isn't possible, but let's just say I'm skeptical without a more in depth analysis. Who is qualified to do that analysis? Why the professionals in the Navy, of course, who have made it their life's mission to study this very question.

But Captain Byron wants no one who can do such an analysis to question his vision. He demands that they be silenced.

Here's what he said. In a list of requirements for his vision to succeed he includes this doozy:

Break the backs of the three dominant warfare communities to stop perpetuating a blue-water navy frozen in the Cold War. As long as they call the tune, the surface, submarine, and aviation communities will starve Mission Two.

What vision! What brilliance! What rot!

This is like saying, let's cut the number of fire stations by two thirds, but don't ask the fire department's opinion on the matter, they might disagree.

Captain Byron is insulting every professional naval officer with his cockamamie ideas and he knows it. He proves his intent to insult them with his a priori assumption that they won't like his ideas and must be pre-emptively silenced.

With all due respect, Captain Byron needs to be challenged vigorously and immediately.

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