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Home»News»RAND: What the U.S. Navy Really Needs, by Dr. Bradley Martin

USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78)
The first-in-class aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) steams
in the Atlantic Ocean, Nov. 7, 2022. Exercise Silent Wolverine is a
U.S.-led, combined training exercise that tests Ford-class aircraft
carrier capabilities through integrated high-end naval warfare scenarios
alongside participating allies in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. The Gerald
R. Ford Carrier Strike Group is conducting their first deployment in the
U.S. Naval Forces Europe area of operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass
Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jackson Adkins)
RAND: What The U.S. Navy Really Needs, By Dr. Bradley Martin
RAND Corporation’s Dr. Bradley Martin, a retired U.S. Navy captain, and
Director, Institute for Supply Chain Security, returns to answer a Naval
News question, “What does the U.S. Navy really need in the future?”
Peter Ong 19 Nov 2023

Dr. Bradley Martin has been featured in Naval News in his January 2023
RAND commentary on the “DDG(X) Next-Generation U.S. Navy Destroyer.”

The U.S. Navy in late 2023 faces many challenges with budgetary
Continuing Resolutions, the burden of demanding logistics, Readiness,
and requirements, missed recruitment goals, and peer nations’ military
buildups, pacing threats, and pressure. Furthermore, Admiral Michael
Gilday recently retired from his four-year term as the U.S. Navy’s Chief
of Naval Operations (CNO) and Admiral Lisa Franchetti was elected to CNO
in August 2023. Thus, I asked Dr. Martin what does he believe the U.S.
Navy really needs in the future. My question was open-ended and can
include anything from more amphibious ships to more shipyards to more
smart munitions, or newly designed warships, seaplanes and floatplanes,
to innovative technological concepts. What does the analyst suggest for
the U.S. Navy five, ten, and fifteen years into the future? Dr. Martin
responded with this exclusive insightful answer for Naval News.

What the US Navy Really Needs by Brad Martin
The US Navy is a worldwide force that carries out a variety of different
missions. It is in some ways a victim of its own success in that for
decades there has been no Navy comparable to it in terms of reach and
overall capability. The relative number of ships does not tell the
whole story. For example, a US Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier can
readily generate 100 to 120 strike sorties per day, which no other navy
could even begin to match. Similarly, while some competitors such as
Russia and China have capable submarine forces, no Navy comes close to
the US submarine force in terms of technological sophistication, giving
it major advantages in sea control, and power projection capability.

However, the US Navy does face challenges that require resolution in
next three years and then in the next decade, and many revolve around
the overall lack of ready force structure.

First, the US Navy has not overall developed a strategy to guide force
structure development and to a very large degree is effectively on
“auto-pilot” for force development and force planning. The Department
of the Navy identifies key missions in documents such as its “navigation
plan” SECNAV STRATEGIC GUIDANCE_100721.PDF (defense.gov), but these do
not suffice as guidance as to how the force might be used and the kinds
of threat it is likely to face.

So, to a degree, we on the outside are inferring things about what the
Navy might actually need and use rather than specifying what a strategic
vision might tell us. However, some things do appear to be clear.

The immediate term (0-3 years)
Building a bigger or more capable fleet is not done overnight. Ships
take years to construct and deliver. Aircraft have a shorter timeline
but they are still not equivalent to mass-produced vehicles. To a very
large degree, the Navy as it exists is the Navy that will be available
for the next five years at least. The biggest challenge with the current
Navy revolves around the readiness of the fleet to complete even simple
missions.

Our research over the last several years has found that surface ships
have consistently been delayed finishing shipyard maintenance periods
and almost always experience growth in the size and extent of
maintenance periods. Among the reasons for the recently publicized
failure of the Navy’s cruiser modification program is a lack of
industrial capacity for performing the work, as well as conditions that
were found on Ticonderoga-class ships as they were worked on.

USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000)
USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) arrived at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula MS
19 for a major 2-year modernization that will see large launch tubes for
hypersonic Conventional Prompt Strike missiles replace the two 155mm
Advanced Gun Systems. HII photo.
To a very large degree, the issue with surface ship maintenance, with
its knock-on effects on other readiness, revolves around simply not
following the plans that the Navy itself promulgated for conducting
essential maintenance. Part of doing better overall is to identify and
fully fund the ship repair requirement. This is neither glamorous nor
will it be inexpensive. But, the alternative is for ships to get older
and in worse repair at exactly the time that a robust fleet presence is
needed in multiple theaters.

Nuclear attack submarines have experienced maintenance delays also –
sometimes quite significant – but the causes are different from the
surface fleet. Here the issues are associated with a shortfall of
experienced personnel in government-owned naval shipyards. Through a
process that goes back to the 1990s, shipyards lost capacity and shed
personnel and only began adding them back in the last decade as it
became clear that the workforce was aging and not being replaced. The
Navy has been working to rectify this situation over time, but we are
again facing a situation where the current force might not be ready for
some very plausible near-term challenges.

Also in the immediate term, the Navy tries to maintain presence in areas
of interest, but the cycle of extended deployment, followed by deferred
maintenance, leads to more deployment extension, with predictable
impacts on material readiness. This cycle reached a level of
unsustainability during the COVID-19 pandemic, where ships were
sometimes underway continuously – as in not even stops in liberty ports
– for over eight months at a time. Naval presence can be an extremely
valuable addition toward the nation’s ability to deal with crises, but
presence without some clear purpose simply is not sustainable. The
Navy’s normal impulse is to “say yes” to demands for activity essential
to security. But, in doing so without clearly stating the overall
readiness impact, it may take forces away from more essential missions.

Finally, the Navy desperately needs to ensure that the nation has an
adequate industrial base to support a surge in munitions demand. We saw
from the war in Ukraine that the demand for some kinds of munitions may
be far beyond our existing inventory and indeed far beyond our ability
to refill that inventory. In the immediate term, the Navy must identify
its more critical munitions and parts and ensure that an adequate supply
is available to the deployed force. More importantly, the Navy has to
identify whether the suppliers even have the capacity to meet the
demand. Adding missing capacity is not something that can be done in
the short term, but it is possible to at least identify the scale of the
problem.

These all point to a need for investment in infrastructure, maintenance,
and whatever kinds of readiness-promoting activity that can be generated
without necessarily demanding time underway or out of homeport. Virtual
trainers [can help] for replicating events that might previously have
been covered in underway training periods.

The mid-term (2-7 years)
The Navy can provide unique value to the nation, but doing so requires
connection between national goals and the desired outcomes. The brings
us back around to the problem of the Navy not having formulated a clear
connection between its force structure and the nation’s strategic goals.
Establishing this connection will remain a priority in future years.

But, a few things can be inferred even without well-developed guidance.
First is that the challenges of operating in a contested environment
will not diminish but likely increase. In areas such as the East Asian
littoral, the People’s Liberation Army is likely to retain the
capability and capacity to track and engage almost any surface ship.
Submarines will be a key capability for operating in these kinds of
environments, and there will also be an increasing need to rely on
unmanned systems that can be generated in large quantity.

However, even as capability to track and engage targets will increase,
the need for world-wide presence likely will not decrease, and this
points toward a need for more ships that can operate in a variety of
environments, not just in the most heavily contested. These kinds of
vessels will, moreover, likely require crews to carry out events such as
engagement or potentially activities relating to ensuring – and possibly
restricting to adversaries – international commerce, such as visit,
board, search, and seizure.