In an attempt to bring order to the Navys problem-​​plagued lit­toral com­bat ship (LCS) pro­gram, the Navy has announced that it will “down select” a win­ner from the two LCS designs.  The selec­tion, in fis­cal year 2010, will deter­mine which design and hence which firms will be respon­si­ble for the con­struc­tion of a planned 51 addi­tional frigate-​​size warships. 

The LCS designs pro­vide for a “seaframe” plat­form that can be fit­ted with mod­u­lar mis­sion “pack­ages.”  The cur­rent pack­ages are for anti-​​submarine war­fare, mine coun­ter­mea­sures, and anti-​​surface craft. The pack­ages would be shifted from ship to ship as nec­es­sary.  Another set of mod­ules is being con­tem­plated; among the set are one to sup­port spe­cial forces oper­a­tions, a naval fire sup­port mod­ule, and a medical-​​disaster relief module. 

The first ship, the Lockheed Martin Freedom (LCS 1) built at Marinette Marine in Wisconsin, has been com­mis­sioned and the sec­ond, the General Dynamics Independence (LCS 2), is being fit­ted out at Mobile, Alabama.  Each LCS team was been awarded a con­tract for a sec­ond ship.  

The Navy had ear­lier can­celled con­tracts for the LCS 3 and 4 because of mas­sive cost over­runs and pro­gram delays with both designs.  The Navys orig­i­nal goal of $220 mil­lion per ship­with­out mod­u­lar pack­age­shas at least tripled.  And, both designs are sev­eral years behind schedule. 

Down-​​selecting to one design for the addi­tional ships of a planned 55-​​ship pro­gram will be dif­fi­cult and could be polit­i­cally explo­sive.  At down select, a sin­gle prime con­trac­tor and ship­yard will be awarded a fixed-​​price incen­tive con­tract for up to ten ships with two ships in fis­cal 2010 and options through fis­cal 2014.  

The LCS 1 has not yet been fully tested and is sev­eral months from her first oper­a­tional deploy­ment while the LCS 2 at this writ­ing has yet to com­plete her builder’s tri­als. Some observers believe that the selec­tion deci­sion will be “obvi­ous” — the LCS 2, with a tri­maran hull design, is much more com­plex and cost more than the LCS 1, a cur­rent esti­mate of more than $700 mil­lion com­pared to an esti­mate of $640 mil­lion for the LCS 1.  Further, the LCS 2 has an alu­minum hull and super­struc­ture that some marine archi­tects feel will not with­stand open-​​ocean tran­sits and high-​​speed oper­a­tions as well as the steel-​​hull LCS 1 design. 

The Navys announce­ment on 16 September of the down-​​select quoted Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus: “LCS is vital to our Navy’s future.  It must succeed.”

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The Russian defense indus­try may not have long to sur­vive. Long the provider of mas­sive amounts of weapons to the Soviet armed forces and those of satel­lite nations and much of the Third World, today some experts believe that only a mas­sive infu­sion of funds from the Russian gov­ern­ment can save the industry.

Further, the best show­case for new Russian aero­space prod­ucts has fiz­zled. Writing for the Military Periscope online data­base, Russian expert Reuben F. Johnson reported on the recent Russian aero­space exhibit (MAKS 2009) in the Moscow sub­urb of Zhukovsky:

The ever-​​multiplying lay­ers of secu­rity and clear­ance pro­ce­dures that the Russian gov­ern­ment now requires of its con­trac­tors helped to gen­er­ate a largely dis­ap­point­ing event. Various Russian indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives had been talk­ing for six months or more about 20 new
weapon sys­tems and other inno­va­tions that would appear at MAKS.

None saw the light of day.

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Amidst the Navy’s lead­er­ship attempt to explain — some would say ratio­nal­ize — the mas­sive cost increases and delays in sev­eral major ship­build­ing pro­grams, the Zumwalt (DDG 1000) pro­gram appears to be on cost and on sched­ule. Writing in Navy Times, Christopher P. Cavas observes, “Often over­looked in all the chat­ter is that, method­i­cally, steadily — and even qui­etly — major com­po­nents of the first ship are tak­ing shape all across the coun­try. When ready, the parts will be shipped largely by barge and rail to the General Dynamics Bath Iron Works ship­yard at Bath, Maine, where, since February, ship­builders are weld­ing together the steel that make up the ship’s 600-​​foot-​​long hull.“ 

Cavas inter­viewed DDG 1000 project man­ager Captain James Syring for his 17 August arti­cle, who ticked off progress on 13 major engi­neer­ing devel­op­ment mod­els crit­i­cal to the DDG 1000, all but three of which have begun pro­duc­tion. The sta­tus of these projects are highly sig­nif­i­cant because the DDG 1000 intro­duces many new sys­tems to the fleet. 

For exam­ple, devel­op­ment is com­plete on the ship’s 155-​​mm Advanced Gun System (AGS), which will be the largest ship­board gun in the fleet. Each DDG 1000 will have two of these weapons, devel­oped by BAE Systems, which will fire Lockheed Martin’s Long-​​Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP). That “bul­let” has a range goal of 83 nau­ti­cal miles and a rate of fire of ten rounds-​​per-​​minute. The 155-​​mm gun weapon will par­tially com­pen­sate for the Navy’s ignor­ing the sur­face fire sup­port require­ments. Cavas reported that in July the LRLAP was fired at a White Sands, New Mexico, test range to its thresh­old range of 63 nau­ti­cal miles; fur­ther “tweak­ing” of the rocket motor’s chem­istry should push the shell ten miles far­ther, Syring said. 

Another inno­v­a­tive fea­ture of the DDG 1000 will be the Peripheral Vertical Launch System (PVLS), now in pro­duc­tion at Raytheon, and seven of eight Peripheral VLS mod­ules are being welded together at Bath. The PVLS replaces the Mark 41 VLS sys­tems now found in U.S. missile-​​armed cruis­ers and destroy­ers. The Mark 41 has 25-​​inch VLS can­is­ters while the PVLS will have 28-​​inch can­is­ters that could per­mit the devel­op­ment of larger weapons for the DDG 1000. Reportedly, the PVLS also pro­vides enhanced sur­viv­abil­ity against a mis­sile hit. 

A third inno­v­a­tive fea­ture of the DDG 1000 will be its radar/​computer capa­bil­i­ties. The ship will intro­duce the AN/​SPY-​​3 Multi-​​Function Radar (MFR) and the AN/​SPY-​​4 Volume Search Radar (VSR), com­bined with the dual-​​band radar, the effort led by prime con­trac­tor Raytheon. The radars have been installed together since January 2009 at the Wallops Island Engineering Center on the Virginia coast. Cavas quoted Syring say­ing that the SPY-​​3, an X-​​band radar, com­pleted at-​​sea test­ing in the spring of 2008 off the California coast aboard the test ship Paul F. Foster (DD 964). The first two SPY-​​3 arrays for the DDG 1000 are being assem­bled; “Minor pro­duc­tion issues” on the MFR have been worked through, Syring said. “We’ve had no oper­a­tional issues.” The SPY-​​4, an S-​​band radar, devel­oped by Lockheed, is in pro­duc­tion, and six arrays — for the Zumwalt and also for the air­craft car­rier Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) — are under contract.

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Two Russian nuclear-​​propelled attack sub­marines have appeared off the U.S. East Coast.  American news­pa­pers and blogs have announced the deploy­ment with head­lines that ran from the words threat to ho, hum.  A few have even asked is this a return to the Cold War confrontations? 

The answer to the last is absolutely not.  The Cold War was an in-​​your-​​face con­fronta­tion between two super pow­er­s­the United States and the Soviet Union.  Both had nuclear strike forces that could absorb a sur­prise attack by their oppo­nent and still dev­as­tate the otherand most likely the rest of the world as well.
 
Today there is but one super power: the United States.  While per­haps half of the 14 U.S. Trident strate­gic mis­sile sub­marines (SSBN) are at sea at any given time, Russia has been unable to keep a sin­gle SSBN on con­tin­u­ous patrol.  And, while the two Akula-​​class sub­marines (Russian des­ig­na­tions Bars and Project 971) that were patrolling off the East Coast may be armed with land-​​attack cruise mis­siles in addi­tion to tor­pe­does, the threat from such craft at this time is neg­li­gi­ble.  Indeed, except for SSBNs no U.S. and prob­a­bly no Russian war­ships have nuclear weapons on board. 

The two Akula-​​class sub­marines appar­ently remained more than 200 miles from the coast.  And, one of them is reported to have con­tin­ued south­ward to Cuba for a port visit.  The 200-​​mile dis­tance may be sig­nif­i­cant as naval ships can legally oper­ate to within 12 miles of another nations coast­line in peace­time.  But the Chinese gov­ern­ment has recently implied that it claims the 200-​​mile Economic Exclusive Zone (EEZ) as its ter­ri­to­r­ial waters.  That action fol­lowed Chinese attempts to stop U.S. Navy sur­vey­ing and bottom-​​mapping oper­a­tions in inter­na­tional waters but less than 200 miles off the Chinese coast.  Could the Russian sub­ma­rine oper­a­tion be intended to sup­port this claim by remain­ing that dis­tance off the U.S. coast?  During the Cold War there were peri­odic incur­sions by Soviet sub­marines and, on occa­sion, intel­li­gence col­lec­tion ships much closer to the American coasts. 

Meanwhile, the two-​​sub oper­a­tion fol­lows last win­ters deploy­ment of small Russian task groups to the Caribbean and to the Mediterranean.  The Caribbean group was led by the nuclear-​​propelled cruiser Petr Velikiy (Peter the Great), with a dis­place­ment of 28,000 tons full load this is the worlds largest war­ship except for air­craft car­ri­ers.  The war­ship made a port call in Venezuela in con­junc­tion with the Russian pres­i­dents visit to that coun­try.  Also last win­ter, Russias only air­craft car­rier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, oper­ated in the Mediterranean. 

These war­ship deploy­mentsin­clud­ing the two Akula sub­marines off the U.S. East Coastalong with numer­ous Russian long-​​range air­craft flights off the coasts of Alaska, Great Britain, and other areas are intended pri­mar­ily to demon­strate that Russia is still a world power, albeit not a super power, and that it can project some mil­i­tary capa­bil­ity into for­ward areas.  

But the naval deploy­ments also appear to be a means for the Russian Navys lead­er­ship to argue for more funds for war­ship con­struc­tion and main­te­nance.  Since the end of the Cold War, marked by the fall of the Soviet regime in December 1991, the Russian Navy has dete­ri­o­rated rapidly in both size and oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties.  At the same time, new ship con­struc­tion and weapons pro­duc­tion have lagged far, far behind plans. 

Apparently, the Russian naval lead­ers hope that these long-​​range oper­a­tions, to areas where Russian mil­i­tary air­craft and ground forces can­not go, will con­firm their claims of the sig­nif­i­cance of mod­ern naval forces to sup­port national political-​​economicas well as war-​​fightinginterests.  Such recog­ni­tion could bring addi­tional funds for naval ship con­struc­tion and force modernization.

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Despite recent at-​​sea inci­dents off the coast of China — such as Chinese harass­ment of the U.S. research ships Impeccable (T-​​AGOS 23) and Victorious (T-​​AGOS 19), and alarmist press cov­er­age of the Chinese anti-​​ship bal­lis­tic mis­sile effort — the prob­a­bil­ity of con­flict involv­ing China is decreas­ing rapidly. The threat of a Chinese assault against the island of Taiwan, some 100 miles off­shore, has long been con­sid­ered a threat that could ignite a major con­flict in the Western Pacific. 

With lit­tle fan­fare, a passenger-​​cargo ship departed the Chinese main­land from the port of Mawei in Fujian Province on 13 July bound directly for Taiwan. The voy­age — of approx­i­mately ten hours — marked the inau­gu­ra­tion of reg­u­lar mer­chant ship ser­vice between the “two Chinas.” On board the New Golden Bridge II were 630 pas­sen­gers plus cargo bound for “Nationalist China.“ 

The voy­age fol­lows the mutual approval last December of direct air trans­port and postal ser­vices between China and Taiwan. These exchanges come as Taiwanese busi­ness­men are invest­ing large amounts in var­i­ous main­land busi­nesses and corporations.  

The gov­ern­ment in Beijing has claimed Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s com­mu­nist forces won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime fled to Taiwan. China has long vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if nec­es­sary, with the island being con­sid­ered a province of the main­land.  In the 1950s there were threats by the Nationalist regime to invade the main­land to defeat the com­mu­nists, and by Beijing to assault and con­quer Taiwan. Conflict, how­ever, was lim­ited to islands off the main­land coast, and some air engage­ments between Taiwanese and Chinese aircraft. 

Today there are rumors that “cross strait” polit­i­cal and pos­si­bly even mil­i­tary talks will occur soon. However, ear­lier in July, Taiwan’s senior China pol­icy coor­di­na­tor, Ms. Lai Shin-​​yuan, chair­woman of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), said while in New York that “Taiwan has no timetable” for start­ing polit­i­cal talks with China.   The MAC coor­di­nates Taiwan’s pol­icy toward China. 

Ms. Lai con­tin­ued, “Conditions for the lead­er­ships of the two sides to talk about polit­i­cal issues have not yet matured and we are in no hurry for that.”  Meanwhile, offi­cials from Taiwan and China have engaged in talks dur­ing the past year through the aus­pices of the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits. 

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The increased use of semi-​​submersibles to bring drugs into the United States has raised the specter of sim­i­lar craft being employed to trans­port ter­ror­ists, explo­sives, and elicit funds into the coun­try. But the like­li­hood of ter­ror­ists going that route is extremely unlikely. 

Writing in The Washington Post (6 June), William Booth and Juan Forero said, “U.S. law enforce­ment offi­cials say that more than a third of the cocaine smug­gled into the United States from Colombia trav­els in sub­mersibles.” These craft, manned by a crew of four or five, and car­ry­ing up to ten tons of cocaine, are being pro­duced in the jun­gles of Colombia. They tran­sit with their decks awash or just below the sur­face, employ­ing snorkel-​​like tubes for air for the crew and the diesel engines.  Habitability is spar­tan, with sim­ple bunks and stocks of food being pro­vided. There are no san­i­tary facilities. 

Employing GPS for nav­i­ga­tion, the craft sail northward-​​up to 3,000 miles-​​to ren­dezvous points off of the Central American coast to trans­fer their cargo to fish­ing craft or plea­sure boats, which will bring the drugs into the United States. Radios are pro­vided, but are used infre­quently and then for brief, coded trans­mis­sions. There are reports that unmanned, radio-​​controlled craft of this type are under devel­op­ment for use in cocaine smuggling. 

Up to 100 of these craft may have departed Colombian waters in 2008; about ten per­cent of the known or sus­pected semi-​​submersibles were inter­cepted that year. Some of their suc­cesses may have been due to being escorted by counter-​​surveillance vessels-​​fishing boats that sail with them to pro­vide warn­ing of the approach of U.S. or other search ships or air­craft. Upon warn­ing the semi-​​submersible will stop its engine and drift noise­lessly until the dan­ger is past. 

The con­struc­tion of the semi-​​submersibles — which are built in ones or twos at spe­cific sites — are changed after use to avoid detec­tion and are rel­a­tively expen­sive to build. Estimates are about one to two mil­lion dol­lars for con­struc­tion of a semi-​​submersible and to pay the crew. 

Writing in the Naval Institute Proceedings (October 2008), Navy Captain Wade F. Wilkenson observed: 

Experts con­ser­v­a­tively esti­mate that each [semi-​​submersible] costs roughly $1 to $2 mil­lion to build, equip, and crew, so a ten-​​metric ton [craft],   fully loaded, is a $20 mil­lion invest­ment. Deploy five ves­sels at a com­bined total lay out of $100 mil­lion, suc­cess­fully deliver one, and you dou­ble your invest­ment. Having all five suc­cess­fully reach their des­ti­na­tion nets a nine-​​fold return on investment.      

Yet, despite the suc­cess of these craft in smug­gling drugs into the United States, there is lit­tle like­li­hood that they will be used for ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties. Terrorist orga­ni­za­tions do not appear to have the funds to con­struct such craft. Faced with the increas­ing prob­a­bil­ity of detec­tion or even acci­den­tal loss in rough seas, would such orga­ni­za­tions be will­ing to risk car­ry­ing funds or oper­a­tives in semi-​​submersibles?

And, peo­ple or explo­sives that are sent by semi-​​submersible must first be trans­ported to Colombia or another start­ing point in South America. Also, arrange­ments must be made to pro­cure the semi-​​submersible and man it, and then to arrange trans­fer to another craft for the run into the United States, and pos­si­bly arrang­ing for an escort ves­sel for the semi-​​submersible. All of these actions would involve con­tacts with non-​​terrorist indi­vid­u­als, increas­ing the like­li­hood of a “leak” and pos­si­bly even black­mail in an effort to obtain more money from the ter­ror­ists for the arrange­ments even after a con­tract was made.

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John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1987, has addressed “What the Navy Should Look Like” in response to the service’s cur­rent array of prob­lems. Under Lehman’s guid­ance in the 1980s, the Navy almost reached his goal of 600 active ships, includ­ing 15 air­craft car­ri­ers and four bat­tle­ships. He reju­ve­nated Marine avi­a­tion with both the F/​A-​​18 Hornet and AV-​​8B Harrier, and pro­vided mod­ern air­craft and ships for the Naval Reserve.

Speaking at a Hudson Institute con­fer­ence in Washington, D.C. that addressed Navy ship­build­ing prob­lems, Secretary Lehman called for a three-​​phase pro­gram to rebuild the Navy, max­i­mize its capa­bil­i­ties, and boost its image.

First, the Navy “should look the same to every­one,” accord­ing to Lehman. He explained that every­one should real­ize that the U.S. Navy “can visit unac­cept­able vio­lence from the seas.” That image should com­fort actual and poten­tial friends, and should intim­i­date and restrain actual and poten­tial ene­mies.

As Lehman has indi­cated in the past, naval forces pro­vide per­sis­tent pres­ence, for sus­tained peri­ods, with­out the need for over­flight rights or for­eign bases. This is in sharp con­trast to those who pro­pose “vir­tual pres­ence” by long-​​range air­craft or mis­siles based in the United States.

Rating the Navy’s capa­bil­i­ties, Lehman gives the ser­vice high marks for strate­gic deter­rence (i.e., Trident mis­sile sub­marines). But at lower lev­els of warfight­ing, there are “lots of holes,” and “this is invit­ing poten­tial ene­mies to move into the vac­uum.“

Second, the for­mer Secretary of the Navy called for “com­pe­tence” in U.S. mil­i­tary and naval, strat­egy, and in devel­op­ing and build­ing ships, air­craft, and weapons. Problems in Navy hard­ware pro­grams, he con­tends, are due to a lack of com­pe­tence among pro­gram man­agers and engi­neers. “The Navy looks incom­pe­tent man­ag­ing (its) resources,” he said. Lehman, how­ever, is quick to point out that the other mil­i­tary ser­vices are worse.

The Navy should return to “sim­ple line man­age­ment and account­abil­ity,” cut­ting out lay­ers of bureau­cracy. And, he said, the ser­vice should con­cen­trate on cost analy­sis and engi­neer­ing, not sex­ual harass­ment coun­sel­ing.

Third, Secretary Lehman believes that the Navy must (again) become an “elite orga­ni­za­tion.” It must be viewed as a glam­orous ser­vice — “a call­ing,” and not sim­ply a trade. The Navy must attract inter­est­ing and cre­ative peo­ple. 

In dis­cussing the rea­sons this is not now being done, he cited the many uni­form issues that have brought crit­i­cism from Navy enlisted per­son­nel.  Lehman was stronger in his crit­i­cism of the Goldwater-​​Nichols leg­is­la­tion that forces offi­cers to have “joint” duty before they can screen for com­mand. This takes them away from impor­tant assign­ments and expe­ri­ence, and it adds to “the con­stant bureau­cratic growth” by increas­ing shore staffs.

In address­ing fleet size — the prin­ci­pal sub­ject of the Hudson con­fer­ence — Lehman said, “Numbers do count,” and called for a fleet of 350 ships. This, he said, is the min­i­mum needed to carry out the cur­rent and pre­dicted Navy mis­sions. But he believes that there will be con­tin­u­ing fleet reduc­tions unless the Navy can develop a real­is­tic ship­build­ing strat­egy as a start­ing point.

– Norman Polmar

The Navy’s ship­build­ing pro­gram is a mess. That was the con­sen­sus of sev­eral highly qual­i­fied speak­ers at a recent Washington sem­i­nar spon­sored by the Hudson Institute. And, it was agreed, the cur­rent Navy and con­gres­sional efforts will not rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion.

The fis­cal year 2010 pro­gram recently pre­sented to Congress calls for $14.9 bil­lion in ship­build­ing funds for eight ships:

1 SSN attack sub­ma­rine
1 DDG Arleigh Burke–class destroyer (a restart of that pro­gram)
3 LCS lit­toral com­bat ships
2 T-​​AKE replen­ish­ment ships
1 HSV high-​​speed ves­sel

With a planned aver­age ship ser­vice life of 30 years, this build­ing rate would sus­tain a fleet of 240 ships. This is less than the Navy’s cur­rent 283 ships and far short of the long-​​standing Navy “require­ment” for 313 ships.

The dis­tin­guished speak­ers at the Hudson con­fer­ence on 22 May made it clear that with­out a mas­sive increase in ship­build­ing funds a larger fleet was not achiev­able. Dr. Eric Labs, senior naval ana­lyst at the Congressional Budget Office said that about $25 bil­lion per year for new ships is needed to reach the Navy’s goal.

Now is the time for “hard choices,” Labs said. We “can­not fix prob­lems with sim­ple mea­sures.”  He observed that the ship pro­cure­ment dol­lars being dis­cussed do not include a new class of bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense cruis­ers, and “it is not unrea­son­able” for those ships — now des­ig­nated CG(X) or, if nuclear pro­pelled, CG(X)N, to cost $6 to $7 bil­lion per ship.

Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, under whose direc­tion the U.S. fleet had reached almost 600 ships in the 1980s, out­lined a “new look” for the Navy (which will be dis­cussed in a future com­men­tary). With respect to ship­build­ing prob­lems, Lehman blamed the con­stant bureau­cratic growth of the Defense Department, includ­ing the Naval Sea Systems Command, and the lack of “line deci­sion mak­ers” — peo­ple who have the author­ity and respon­si­bil­ity to make key deci­sions. Only then can the con­tin­ual flow of changes be made in ship require­ments and con­struc­tion be halted.

Lehman called for “freez­ing” designs and mak­ing only “block” changes in new con­struc­tion pro­grams.

Congressman Joe Sestak, a retired vice admi­ral, believes that the Navy could carry out its mis­sions with a 240– to 260-​​ship fleet if “we bought cyber­space.” Calling for the devel­op­ment of meth­ods for track­ing every sur­face ship — both mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial, an expan­sion of the Automated Identification System (AIS) now used for large mer­chant ships — and for the con­tin­u­ous loca­tion of sub­marines, he said that such infor­ma­tion could reduce the U.S. Navy’s ship require­ments. 

Still, “own­ing” cyber­space would be expen­sive. And, the only way to under­take such an achieve­ment would be to remove “cyber war” oper­a­tions from the ser­vice bud­gets and con­sol­i­date the effort under a Department of Defense exec­u­tive, accord­ing to Sestak. 

A con­sen­sus of the pre­sen­ta­tions and the ques­tions and com­ments from the audi­ence included the fol­low­ing points:

The Navy’s flip-​​flops on the Zumwalt (DDG 1000) and Burke (DDG 51) pro­grams have hurt the Navy’s image and cred­i­bil­ity of its ship­build­ing pro­gram.
The Navy’s 30-​​year ship­build­ing plan, required by Congress, is unre­al­is­tic and of lit­tle value.
Poor man­age­ment of the Navy’s ship­build­ing efforts have resulted in ship delays and cost over­runs
The Navy has failed to effec­tively “sell” itself as a key fac­tor in America’s political-​​military effec­tive­ness, in part because of the above fac­tors
Ship num­bers do count and the con­tro­ver­sial lit­toral com­bat ship (LCS) is the Navy’s only hope for increas­ing fleet size.
The Navy’s lead­er­ship can fix the pro­cure­ment mess, but must take bold and inno­v­a­tive action, includ­ing demand­ing firm fixed-​​price con­tracts and the use of second-​​tier ship­yards and con­trac­tors to spark competition.

– Norman Polmar

China’s Navy — offi­cially the Peoples Liberation Army’s Navy — held an impres­sive naval review in the his­toric port city of Qingdao on 23 April, the 60th anniver­sary of the found­ing of the PLA Navy. By any cri­te­ria, the event was a great suc­cess. Beyond a Chinese con­tin­gent of 2 nuclear and 2 diesel-​​electric sub­marines, 5 mis­sile destroy­ers, and 6 frigates, there were 21 ships rep­re­sent­ing 14 other nations at the review. The U.S. Navy’s con­tri­bu­tion to the anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion was the Aegis mis­sile destroyer Fitzgerald (DDG 62). 

By the cri­te­ria of many American news­pa­pers and, of course, blog­gers, the event revealed the increas­ing “threat” to Western inter­ests from China’s Navy. Indeed, a Time mag­a­zine blog showed an Associated Press (AP) photo of a Chinese war­ship with the cap­tion, “A Chinese navy sol­dier guards on a bat­tle­ship at Quingdao port…” The photo, how­ever, shows what is prob­a­bly a frigate. China does not have any bat­tle­ships; nor does any other nation. 

Other arti­cles — some cit­ing offi­cial Chinese state­ments indi­cat­ing that air­craft car­ri­ers will be con­structed “in the future” — tell how the Chinese Navy is about to over­take the U.S. Navy, although by which mea­sures is usu­ally ignored. Indeed, one AP arti­cle declares that Chinese nuclear-​​propelled sub­marines “are con­sid­ered just a notch below cutting-​​edge U.S. and Russian craft.“ 

Reality is quite dif­fer­ent. First, sim­plis­tic numer­i­cal com­par­isons are too often mis­lead­ing. But quan­tity does pro­vide a qual­ity. For example:

• Nuclear air­craft car­ri­ers (CVN)
  U.S. = 11 China = 0
• VSTOL/​helicopter car­ri­ers (LHA/​LHD)
  U.S. = 11 China = 0
• Guided mis­sile cruis­ers (CG)
  U.S. = 22 China = 0
• Destroyers (DDG/​DD)
  U.S. = 60 China = 27
• Frigates (FF/​FFG)
  U.S. = 30 China = 48
• Ballistic mis­sile sub­marines (nuclear)(SSBN)
  U.S. = 14 China = 3
• Attack/​cruiser mis­sile sub­marines (nuclear)
  (SSN/​SSGN)
  U.S. = 57 China = 6
• Attack sub­ma­rine (non-​​nuclear) (SS/​SSK)
  U.S. = 0 China = 55

Second, num­bers alone to not con­vey an ade­quate com­par­i­son. For exam­ple, each U.S. CVN-​​type car­rier can oper­ate 60 or more high-​​performance air­craft. All U.S. cruis­ers and destroy­ers have the Aegis advanced radar/​fire con­trol sys­tem; only a few Chinese ships have the equiv­a­lent. Similarly, all U.S. cruis­ers and destroy­ers have vertical-​​launch sys­tems for fir­ing long-​​range Tomahawk strike (land-​​attack) mis­siles as well as surface-​​to-​​air mis­siles. The Chinese have no ship-​​launched strike weapons and their surface-​​to-​​air mis­siles are inferior. 

Further, there is no pub­lic evi­dence that the Chinese SSBNs have an oper­a­tional mis­sile, and none is known to have under­taken a long-​​range patrol. No long-​​range patrols have been reported of nuclear torpedo-​​attack sub­marines (SSN), and rel­a­tively few are made by diesel-​​electric under­sea craft.

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One of the deci­sions not yet made by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is the future of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), the new “amtrac” being devel­oped for the Marine Corps. The EFV pro­gram was ini­ti­ated in 1996 as a “high-​​speed” com­bat vehi­cle to carry Marines from amphibi­ous ships off­shore to the beach and, once ashore, oper­ate as an armored per­son­nel carrier. 

But speak­ing at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, on 17 April, Secretary Gates said, “[W]e have to take a hard look at where it would be nec­es­sary or sen­si­ble to launch another major amphibi­ous action again. In the 21st cen­tury, how much amphibi­ous capa­bil­ity do we need?” The U.S. Marine Corps has not made an opposed amphibi­ous assault in more than half a cen­tury — since the land­ing at Inchon, Korea, in the fall of 1950. 

The Marine Corps has oper­ated “amtracs” — amphibi­ous trac­tors — since 1942. Production and the intro­duc­tion of new types of LVTs for land­ing vehi­cles, tracked (with those mount­ing heavy guns called LVT(A) for “armored”) con­tin­ued, with the last model being the LVTP-​​7 (the “P” for per­son­nel), intro­duced in 1967. The des­ig­na­tion was changed to Assault Amphibian Vehicle (AAV-​​7) and when its suc­ces­sor was ini­ti­ated it was des­ig­nated as the Advanced AAV. On 10 September 2003, the planned AAAV was changed to EFV, accord­ing to the offi­cial Marine Corps web site, “in keep­ing with the U.S. Marine Corps cul­tural shift from a 20th cen­tury force defined by amphibi­ous oper­a­tions to a 21st Century force focus­ing on a broad­ened range of employ­ment con­cepts and pos­si­bil­i­ties across a spec­trum of conflict.“ 

While the gob­bledy­gook explains lit­tle, the Marine lead­er­ship con­tin­ues to give the EFV a high pri­or­ity, say­ing that it is vital to pro­vide an amphibi­ous capa­bil­ity into the 21st Century. As recently as 12 March of this year, Lieutenant General George J. Flynn, the Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration, wrote that, “This nation requires the abil­ity to rapidly project com­bat power ashore from U.S. Navy ships to ensure our secu­rity against inter­na­tional threats. The Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle remains a vital capa­bil­ity to accom­plish that amphibi­ous mis­sion and is the commandant’s top ground com­bat priority.“ 

But after more than a decade of devel­op­ment and the expen­di­ture of many mil­lions of dol­lars, the prime con­trac­tor, General Dynamics, has not yet pro­duced an oper­a­tional vehi­cle. The prin­ci­pal dif­fi­culty is in mak­ing the EFV a high-​​speed water vehi­cle, that is capa­ble of trav­el­ing from ship to shore at just under 30 m.p.h., and upon climb­ing onto the beach become an armored fight­ing vehi­cle, capa­ble of 45 m.p.h. speeds on good roads. 

It has a com­plex con­fig­u­ra­tion to achieve those speeds in water and to then “trans­form” into a land vehi­cle. The vehicle’s diesel engine pro­duces 850 horse­power through a com­plex trans­mis­sion in land mode and an impres­sive 2,700 horse­power through twin pump-​​jets in the water mode. 

The EFV is intended to carry 17 combat-​​laden Marines and is oper­ated by a crew of three. It would be armed with a 30-​​mm Bushmaster II M242 can­non and a 7.62-mm M240 machine gun.

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