Seablindness by Seth Cropsey

Author:Seth Cropsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594039164
Publisher: Encounter Books
Published: 2017-07-25T04:00:00+00:00

STRATEGIC IMPACT

The effects of the cuts to the naval budget have strategic implications beyond the current state of American seapower. The decreased presence caused by carrier gaps and the falling number of ships lessens the strategic influence of the United States around the globe, particularly in such regional hot spots as the Persian Gulf and East Asia. Combatant command operational requirements dictate that the Navy be able to “surge” three carrier strike groups and three amphibious readiness groups forward within thirty days in the event of a global crisis. However, current capabilities allow for only one carrier strike group and one amphibious readiness group to be forward deployed. Even if the additional two carriers were ready for deployment and entirely capable of conducting integrated operations with another one or two carriers, weeks would pass before they could arrive and begin combat operations.84

The long-term effects of maintenance backlogs and the increased workload on aging ships and aircraft will catch up with the fleet in the future. Canceling shipbuilding, too, will harm the future U.S. Navy. As then–Secretary of the Navy Raymond Mabus stated at a House Armed Services Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in 2015, “if you miss a ship . . . you never make that ship up.”85 CNO Admiral Greenert drew a more detailed picture:

Disruptions in naval ship design and construction plans are significant because of the long-lead time, specialized skills, and extent of integration needed to build military ships. Because ship construction can span up to nine years, program procurement cancelled in FY 2016 will not be felt by the Combatant Commanders until several years later when the size of the battle force begins to shrink as those ships are not delivered to the fleet at the planned time.86

Had the election of 2016 gone differently, the resulting decline of the U.S. combat fleet would have coincided with the rise of other international actors, including the reinvigoration of the Russian Federation and the rapid naval expansion of China. The budget cuts of the Obama administration, due to their long-lasting effects, will take years from which to recover. As Admiral Greenert put it, “we’ve been forced to slow our Navy modernization. We have lost our momentum in fielding emerging critical capabilities for future fights. We are losing our technical edge.”87 The future that the new U.S. administration must address contains shortfall gaps in the fleet due both to the sequester and to congressionally imposed spending levels that are insufficient to meet executive branch–directed global commitments.

Until positive changes are enacted, the Obama shipbuilding plan means shortfalls in large surface combatants from 2034 to 2037, and thereafter from 2041 to at least 2046. The same plan would have small surface combatants suffer a shortfall for the entire planned thirty-year period, in part due to the most recent cut of ten littoral combat ships from the plan. Rounding out the combatant craft shortfalls are deficits in attack submarines from 2025 to 2036 and amphibious assault ships from 2017 to 2021, in 2040, and from 2042 to at least 2046.

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