Articles - Archived
Landing Field, Retired Carriers Aren't The Solution For The Navy's Search
Aircraft Carriers Are Crucial
A Pentagon Battle Over 'The Next War'
War Drums Becoming Deafening
Preparing The Battlefield
No Funds For The OLF?
The U.S. Navy Needs To Repair Its Reputation - Now
Navy And Air Force Need Renewal
Landing Field Aids Security
Why We Went To Iraq
Navy OLF: The Regional View
Navy Flight Plan Is A Terrible Noise
Aircraft Carriers Are A Liability
Editorial: Deeds, Not Words
Flattop Follies: Navy Cuts Back On Carriers
Maintaining A Double-Digit Carrier Fleet
Why Does China Need A Blue Water Navy?
Navy Moving Forward On Landing Strip
Upgrades Could Double H-53 Availability
Longer-Life F/A-18 Hornet Needed To Fill US Navy's Strike Fighter Gap
The Carrier Cold War
Record U.S. Defense Spending, But Future Budgets May Decline
Bluff And Bloodshed
Defensive On Navy's Needs
Opinion: Naval Strength Cannot Be Taken For Granted
Good Faith Fading In OLF Dispute
War At The Pentagon
Use JFK Carrier
Unnecessary OLF
SOS: Congress Must Save the Aircraft Carrier Fleet
Technology Widens Cockpit View of Iraq
Fallon Steps Down As Centcom Chief
Leaders Press For Nuclear Carriers
Landing Field
Retired Carriers Aren’t The Solution For The Navy’s Search
(NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS 04 AUG 08) ... Editorial
Every week or so, with almost clockwork regularity, a light bulb will go on for someone following the Navy's search for a new practice landing field within reach of Oceana Naval Air Station. That results in a letter to the editor sharing the idea that since the Navy needs a practice area, and since the five potential sites in rural southeastern Virginia and North Carolina all have their opponents, and since the Navy has mothballed aircraft carriers on its hands, why not use one of these carriers off the coast for pilot training? Problem solved.
Would it were so easy. The neatness of the solution has appeal, but it's one the Navy has considered –– and rejected for good reason. No, it's not the economics of putting a fully manned carrier to sea, though that case can be made. A sufficient answer, quite simply, is that pilots in training need a greater margin of error for their practice landings than a carrier at sea can supply. It would be something like putting a beginning automobile driver on Interstate 95 and telling them to negotiate the Beltway around Washington, D.C., during rush hour.
As Adm. David O. Anderson, vice commander of the U.S. Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, explained in these pages back in June: "Whether for the new pilot first learning or the senior pilot returning to carrier operations, a safety margin is required that wouldn't be possible on an offshore platform or ship. The very demanding task of landing an aircraft on the deck of a carrier must be practiced with an adequate margin for safety before attempting the task at sea. ... Those well-meaning individuals who suggest we don't truly need this facility don't understand the challenges of landing on an aircraft carrier."
There's no reason to doubt that pilot safety and proficiency are key components (along with the desire to keep Oceana operational) of the Navy's search for a new practice field. And, likewise, when the brass say that a carrier can't fill in for a land-based field, there's no reason to doubt their sincerity.
So, while plenty of arguments can be made for alternative locations, the "carrier-off-the-coast" scenario shouldn't be among them.
Aircraft Carriers Are Crucial
(HERITAGE FOUNDATION 31 JUL 08) ... Mackenzie Eaglen
On May 22, a serious fire broke out on the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier George Washington as it sailed to relieve the forward-deployed Kitty Hawk in the western Pacific Ocean.
It might take all summer to repair the ship, so the planned decommissioning of the Kitty Hawk is on hold. Instead, it's now one of 40 ships from the United States, Chile, Canada, South Korea, Australia and Japan taking part in this year's Rim of the Pacific exercise.
In an age of guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency operations, many U.S. officials appear content to overlook the importance of conventional weapons such as the aircraft carrier. That's a serious mistake.
For any U.S. president, the aircraft carrier embodies the ultimate crisis management tool. Continuously deployed throughout the globe, carrier-strike groups give our military unparalleled freedom of action to respond to a range of combat and non-combat missions. The recent George Washington incident only further emphasizes the significance of maintaining a robust carrier fleet, one large enough to meet all contingencies and "surge" in crises, no matter what may happen.
Carriers can move large contingents of forces and their support to distant theaters, respond rapidly to changing tactical situations, support several missions simultaneously, and, perhaps most importantly, guarantee access to any region in the world.
In a time when America's political relationships with other countries can shift almost overnight, aircraft carriers can reduce America's reliance on others -- often including suspect regimes -- for basing rights. A carrier's air wing can typically support 125 sorties a day at a distance up to 750 nautical miles. They also operate as a hub in the strike group's command, control, communications and intelligence network, playing an increasingly larger role in controlling the battlespace at sea.
Whether in a direct or support role, carriers have taken part in almost every major military operation the U.S. has undertaken since the Second World War. They also serve as first-rate diplomatic tools to either heighten or ease political pressure. When tensions with North Korea or Iran increase, a carrier, or sometimes two, is sent to patrol off their coast. And when an election takes place in a nascent democracy or country central to U.S. interests, a strike group typically is sailing offshore.
In March, when Taiwan held important presidential elections that will chart the future of that country's relationship with China, both the Kitty Hawk and Nimitz trolled nearby to ensure a smooth transition of events and deliver a psychological message of U.S. interest.
And at a time when policymakers expect to spend less on defense and where the services' lists of unfunded requirements continues to mount, we'll likely call on the aircraft carrier to perform an expanded array of duties, ranging from humanitarian relief to counterinsurgency support and temporary basing for Special Operations Forces.
As the Navy assumes responsibility for humanitarian missions in places such as Africa and South America, it will rely on aircraft carriers to provide immediate relief following natural disasters. During Operation Unified Assistance, following the December 2004 tsunami and during relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina, for instance, they placed a central role.
For these enduring reasons, both the Congress and the Navy must work to ensure that a sufficient number of aircraft carriers remain in operation. During the Reagan years, the Navy maintained 15 carriers. In FY 2006, Congress required the Navy maintain at least 12 carriers.
However officials allowed this number to drop to 11 -- the current number -- in the FY 2007 budget to accommodate the retirement of the John F. Kennedy. Although the Kitty Hawk is expected to begin decommissioning in the coming months, it will be replaced later this year by the George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), the last of the Nimitz-class line.
To maintain 11 carriers, the Navy will have to procure seven CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carriers between 2009 and 2038. Under current plans, however, a shortfall to 10 carriers is projected to occur between November 2012, when the Navy decommissions the Enterprise, and September 2015, when the Gerald R. Ford is expected to be commissioned.
In reality, this projected three-year gap will be longer, perhaps much longer. Not only will it take an additional 30 months for the Ford to become operationally ready to deploy after commissioning, but in all likelihood construction delays will push back the planned commissioning date even further. The result could be a five- or six-year period where the Navy has only 10 carriers.
Yet in the past half-century, carrier levels have never fallen below 12 ships. It's no surprise that a recent RAND report concluded that "this gap will severely strain the navy's ability to meet the forward-presence requirements of theatre commanders."
Nevertheless, this year the Navy again asked Congress to waive the legislative mandate of 11 carriers to accommodate the upcoming six-year gap. The House Armed Services Committee, already having acknowledged that "a reduction below 12 aircraft carriers puts the nation in a position of unacceptable risk," chose wisely to reject the Navy's request.
The committee further directed the Secretary of the Navy to submit a report by next February reviewing potential options, including either returning the retired John F. Kennedy to service or maintaining the Kitty Hawk until the completion of Gerald Ford. Officials should also consider accelerating the delivery of the Ford to the 2013-2014 timeframe.
In the meantime, the Navy should take two additional steps to help surge aircraft carrier capacity.
The Navy has structured its Fleet Response Plan to uphold its goal of a "6+1 fleet" -- in which at least six carriers are deployed (or able to deploy) within 30 days, and a seventh can be deployed within 90 days. Under the current plan, the Navy uses a 32-month operational cycle consisting of one six-month deployment.
Each carrier, then, is deployed for only a limited time within a cycle. Yet with fewer ships and more needs, aircraft carrier capacity is stretched to its limit. As the RAND report suggested, the Navy should consider extending the Fleet Response Plan to a 42-month/two-deployment cycle. This would allow the Navy to project power while also meeting the full requirements of the "6+1 fleet" plan.
The Navy also should look to homeport additional carriers in either Hawaii or Guam. For the past decade the only carrier home-ported outside the continental United States has been the Kitty Hawk in Yokosuka, Japan. From California, it can take two weeks for a carrier strike group to travel to East Asia and three weeks to reach the Persian Gulf. Shaving off this time by positioning a carrier in Guam, for example, would allow ships to respond more quickly to unforeseen crises.
It's time to give aircraft carriers their due. They're not weapons platforms from a bygone era, but rather flexible tools of national security that can offer a vast array of capabilities. Congress was correct to stop the Navy from reducing the carrier fleet below the already-low level of 11 carriers. Now it must be prepared to back up its foresightedness by funding whichever option the Navy determines best for managing the looming Enterprise/Ford shortfall. When the question is, "where are the carriers?" we need to ensure the answer is, "plentiful, and ready to serve."
Mackenzie Eaglen is Senior Policy Analyst for National Security at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org).
A Pentagon Battle Over 'The Next War'
Some resist Gates' focus on guerrilla, not large-scale, fighting.
(LOS ANGELES TIMES 21 JUL 08) ... Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel
WASHINGTON -- Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr. is not a fighter pilot, wing commander or war planner. But he is waging what many officers consider a crucial battle: ensuring that the U.S. military is ready for a major war.
Dunlap, like many officers across the military, believes the armed forces must prepare for a large-scale war against technologically sophisticated, well-equipped adversaries, rather than long-term ground conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan.
First, however, they face an adversary much closer to home -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
For more than 30 years, the Pentagon establishment considered it an essential duty to prepare for a war of national survival. But under Gates, that focus has fallen from favor.
In public speeches and private meetings, Gates has chastised many commanders as ignoring wars in Iraq and Afghanistan while they plan for speculative future conflicts.
"We should not starve the forces at war today to prepare for a war that may never come," Gates said in a stinging address last month, one of a series he has delivered. Gates even has coined a term for what he sees as a military disorder: "next-war-itis."
Spurred by Gates and sobered by setbacks in the Middle East, many commanders have signed on to the Defense secretary's view.
But Dunlap and others are pushing back. They believe that the Iraq war is beginning to wind down and that the United States, chastened by its experience there, is unlikely to ever again become embroiled in a long-term ground conflict where adversaries rely on irregular, "asymmetric" fighting methods.
"We need the bulk of the Army prepared to go toe-to-toe with the heaviest combat formations our adversaries can field," Dunlap said. "For what it is worth, I predict the next big war will be conventional, or I should say symmetrical. In my judgment, we are not going to get into the business of occupying a hostile country of millions of people."
Dunlap, a military lawyer, has emerged as the most outspoken advocate for what many once considered the military's core mission: preparing to fight and defeat countries determined to destroy the U.S. or its interests.
He is not alone. In military journals, midlevel officers' conferences and gatherings around the Pentagon, a growing number have expressed concern that the Defense Department's planning and resources are being trained disproportionately on small guerrilla wars.
At the same time, they fear that important military skills -- storming beaches, fighting tank battles, using air and land power in unison to attack enemy lines -- are beginning to atrophy.
"The military is almost always accused of preparing to fight the last war," said former Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne. "The most interesting part of 'next-war-itis' is that we are being accused of trying to fight the next war."
The military, Wynne said, has the responsibility to prepare for wars against competing nations even as it fights what he calls the war of "choice" in Iraq. "We shouldn't have to pick between this war and the next war," he said. "That is a bad deal."
Wynne and the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley, were fired by Gates last month after an investigation criticized Air Force oversight of the nation's nuclear arsenal. But Wynne believes his philosophical disagreement with Gates over future threats and the weapons needed to counter them played into his ouster.
Many veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan side squarely with Gates. They believe future conflicts will look like the current wars, and argue that the U.S. must not lose its newfound expertise in counterinsurgency warfare.
"I think that nation-state and conventional war is in a state of hibernation," said Marine Gen. James N. Mattis, who commanded U.S. forces in Fallouja in 2004. "I don't think it's gone away, but the most likely threats probably today are not going to be conventional or from another state."
Mattis argues that the current fight is not an interlude.
"I recognize some people want to say: 'Let's hold our breath. The irregular world will go away, then we can get back to good old soldiering again,' " he said. "Unfortunately, in war, the enemy gets a vote."
The debate has real-world implications. Air Force officials have been unable to buy more F-22 fighters, needed for future air power. Gates prefers to spend money on heavily armored ground vehicles to protect soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are many other ramifications. Marine Corps and Army training centers, for instance, now teach soldiers to fight among urban locals, track down insurgent cells and avoid roadside bombs.
Maxie L. McFarland, the deputy chief of staff for intelligence at the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, predicts the Army will be involved in regional conflicts -- over energy resources, extremist movements or environmental changes -- in places of growing strategic importance, such as Nigeria.
"The Army believes it has to prepare for warfare and conflict among local populations with unfamiliar cultures . . . in urban settings or harsh lawless areas," McFarland said. "We think this environment will require long-duration operations, at extended distances."
Army Lt. Gen. Carter F. Ham, who oversees operational planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was not convinced of the value of counterinsurgency operations until he served in Iraq. Now, he believes the Army needs a generation of leaders versed in counterinsurgency.
"When I joined the Army, it was clear there were good guys and bad guys and . . . they wore different uniforms. That is not reality anymore," Ham said. "There are folks who want to do away with our way of life, but they are not states."
But in a series of articles for military journals, Army Lt. Col. Gian P. Gentile, a former commander in Iraq who now teaches at West Point, argued that an excessive focus on counterinsurgency may "cloud our ability to see things as they actually are."
Within the Air Force, many officers believe that the costs of the current wars will discourage similar conflicts in the future.
"If we do another Iraq," said a senior Air Force official, "I think we will get in, do a specific task, and get out of there. We aren't going to stay and bleed." The officer spoke on condition of anonymity when criticizing Pentagon leaders.
Dunlap argues that commanders should fight wars in ways that take advantage of the U.S. military's technological advantages. He pointed to the first phase of the Afghanistan war, which toppled the Taliban through the use of special operations forces and precision bombs.
"We ought to be offering decision makers something more than just deploying massive numbers of young Americans to places where the enemy has a thousand ways to kill them," he said.
A conflict against a technologically advanced power may be in the distant future. But Dunlap argues that cutbacks in high-tech conventional weapons systems might embolden other countries to challenge the United States.
"If you want to avoid war, prepare for war," Dunlap said.
In the middle of the debate is Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Mullen has asserted that the military must find a balance between conventional and irregular wars.
Although largely behind the scenes, the debate within the department has been unusually frank, according to senior Pentagon officials. Unlike his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Gates is almost universally seen as willing to give all comers a fair shake in strategic discussions.
"Previous folks were confident they had the answer," said Ham. "And my sense is senior leadership, uniformed and civilian, is saying: 'I am not sure I have the answer, so let's have the discussion.' "
War Drums Becoming Deafening
(ARAB NEWS 01 JUL 08) ... By Linda Heard
The Americans and the Israelis are acting in concert vis-à-vis Iran. The unmistakable message they are putting out loud and clear is that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is on the cards in the event Tehran doesn’t cave into their demands. Are they bluffing as part of an arm-twisting strategy or are they seriously planning to transform this region into an inferno?
Pundits have been analyzing the probability of a US or Israeli attack on Iran for several years now. Some have even come up with likely dates but most of those have come and gone eroding the analysts’ credibility and dulling fears. There’s been so much chatter on the subject that we may reach the point when a “will they or won’t they?” discussion will turn into nothing more than an academic exercise on the basis it hasn’t happened so, therefore, it probably never will. The danger is Iran and the region could easily be lured into letting down its guard. Certainly, members of the Iranian leadership have indicated they don’t take the threat very seriously even though they are planning for every contingency and threatening to set the Middle East aflame if attacked.
In recent weeks, since the Israelis launched a supposed dry run in the eastern Mediterranean using 100 fighter planes and aerial tankers, the chatter has reached a crescendo. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has vowed, “Iran will not be nuclear”. Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz has termed a strike on Iran “unavoidable”.
Retired Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit warned that if Israel doesn’t destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities within a year, Israel would be vulnerable to nuclear incineration. He says that even if Israel doesn’t receive a green light from the US, it should be prepared to go it alone. Shavit believes there is a window of opportunity before the upcoming US election when the deed should be done in case of a win by Barack Obama, who has advocated jaw-jaw before war-war.
ARCH neoconservative and former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton says he believes Israel is poised to strike in November once the ballot has taken place.
Knesset member and retired Maj. Gen. Dani Yotom, who isn’t known for his hawkish views, says sanctions against Iran aren’t working and so “a military operation is needed”. Even the normally moderate Israeli historian Benny Morris recently said, “If the issue is whether Israel or Iran should perish, then Iran should perish”.
Suspicions that an attack might be in the pipeline were heightened after leaks supposedly forced the Israeli prime minister to admit he had secretly met with Aviam Sela, a brilliant military tactician said to be the architect of Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor. It is believed that Sela was asked to give his opinion on the feasibility of similarly putting Iran’s nuclear facilities out of action.
There is no doubt that Israelis genuinely fear a nuclear-armed Iran, which they believe would constitute an existential threat, but why are Israelis being so upfront about their intentions when history tells us they normally strike first and answer questions later?
Given that Iran is not Iraq circa the 1980s as far as airpower, weaponry, technology and sophisticated communications go and in light of the fact Iran’s main nuclear facilities are buried under layers of steel and concrete as much as 100 feet underground, eradicating Tehran’s nuclear capability would be challenging for any military unless it was prepared to unleash nuclear bunker-busters. Moreover, unlike the Osirak surprise strike, an attack on Iran would trigger serious military repercussions that could involve Syria, Hezbollah and pro-Iranian Shiite Iraqi groups. Such a pre-emptive move would probably result in a massive loss of life on all sides and would have a devastating effect on the global economy with oil prices reaching hitherto unimaginable heights.
Further, since neither Israel nor the US are in any position to launch a ground invasion without the complicity of anti-government Iranian surrogates, strikes on Iranian nuclear plants would probably result in Tehran not only reconstructing but setting their sights on developing nuclear weapons even if they’ve no plans to do so now. It’s worth mentioning that the Osirak reactor was for peaceful purposes and it was only after it was hit that Saddam Hussein actively sought a bomb.
According to the New Yorker’s veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in an article titled “Preparing the Battlefield”, President George W. Bush has sanctioned covert operations and requested $400 million designed to destabilize Iran outside the sphere of the US military. These will largely be carried out by Iranian dissidents rather than Americans in the field, he says. But, once again, Iran is not Iraq. It’s a far more cohesive country and although not all of its citizens support the government, most identify themselves as proud Iranians who harbor a historical aversion to neoimperialist plots. There is no doubt that Israel and the US would like the Iranian government to be wiped off the face of the earth along with its nuclear ambitions but both countries are divided on what to do. So far their joint and separate belligerency isn’t working. If their bellicose words and provocative actions are, indeed, a giant bluff they are ineffective. They are simply causing the Iranian leadership to dig its heels in further and assert its right under the NPT to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Even if this is a coordinated bluff, it could so easily reach the point of no return when to maintain strategic credibility, the players will have to make good on their threats. Certainly, one Iranian commander Brig. Gen. Mir-Faisal Baqerzadeh is taking these to heart already. According to Press TV, he has already got his troops digging more than 320,000 graves within Iran’s bordering provinces to provide any invading force with “the respect they deserve”
Preparing The Battlefield
The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.
(THE NEW YORKER 07 JUN 08) ... Seymour M. Hersh
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.
Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.
Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.
“The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money.” The Finding provided for a whole new range of activities in southern Iran and in the areas, in the east, where Baluchi political opposition is strong, he said.
Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding, and “there was a significant amount of high-level discussion” about it, according to the source familiar with it, the funding for the escalation was approved. In other words, some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.
The request for funding came in the same period in which the Administration was coming to terms with a National Intelligence Estimate, released in December, that concluded that Iran had halted its work on nuclear weapons in 2003. The Administration downplayed the significance of the N.I.E., and, while saying that it was committed to diplomacy, continued to emphasize that urgent action was essential to counter the Iranian nuclear threat. President Bush questioned the N.I.E.’s conclusions, and senior national-security officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, made similar statements. (So did Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee.) Meanwhile, the Administration also revived charges that the Iranian leadership has been involved in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq: both directly, by dispatching commando units into Iraq, and indirectly, by supplying materials used for roadside bombs and other lethal goods. (There have been questions about the accuracy of the claims; the Times, among others, has reported that “significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement.”)
Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House’s concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. Some Pentagon officials believe, as they have let Congress and the media know, that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue, and that more diplomacy is necessary.
A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.” (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization.)
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were “pushing back very hard” against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that “at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders”—the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world—“have weighed in on that issue.”
The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the “real objective” of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians’ behavior, and that “attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice.”
Admiral Fallon acknowledged, when I spoke to him in June, that he had heard that there were people in the White House who were upset by his public statements. “Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians,” he told me. “Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.”
When it came to the Iraq war, Fallon said, “Did I bitch about some of the things that were being proposed? You bet. Some of them were very stupid.”
The Democratic leadership’s agreement to commit hundreds of millions of dollars for more secret operations in Iran was remarkable, given the general concerns of officials like Gates, Fallon, and many others. “The oversight process has not kept pace—it’s been coöpted” by the Administration, the person familiar with the contents of the Finding said. “The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.”
Senior Democrats in Congress told me that they had concerns about the possibility that their understanding of what the new operations entail differs from the White House’s. One issue has to do with a reference in the Finding, the person familiar with it recalled, to potential defensive lethal action by U.S. operatives in Iran. (In early May, the journalist Andrew Cockburn published elements of the Finding in Counterpunch, a newsletter and online magazine.)
The language was inserted into the Finding at the urging of the C.I.A., a former senior intelligence official said. The covert operations set forth in the Finding essentially run parallel to those of a secret military task force, now operating in Iran, that is under the control of JSOC. Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference. But the borders between operations are not always clear: in Iran, C.I.A. agents and regional assets have the language skills and the local knowledge to make contacts for the JSOC operatives, and have been working with them to direct personnel, matériel, and money into Iran from an obscure base in western Afghanistan. As a result, Congress has been given only a partial view of how the money it authorized may be used. One of JSOC’s task-force missions, the pursuit of “high-value targets,” was not directly addressed in the Finding. There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.
“This is a big deal,” the person familiar with the Finding said. “The C.I.A. needed the Finding to do its traditional stuff, but the Finding does not apply to JSOC. The President signed an Executive Order after September 11th giving the Pentagon license to do things that it had never been able to do before without notifying Congress. The claim was that the military was ‘preparing the battle space,’ and by using that term they were able to circumvent congressional oversight. Everything is justified in terms of fighting the global war on terror.” He added, “The Administration has been fuzzing the lines; there used to be a shade of gray”—between operations that had to be briefed to the senior congressional leadership and those which did not—“but now it’s a shade of mush.”
“The agency says we’re not going to get in the position of helping to kill people without a Finding,” the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the legal threat confronting some agency operatives for their involvement in the rendition and alleged torture of suspects in the war on terror. “This drove the military people up the wall,” he said. As far as the C.I.A. was concerned, the former senior intelligence official said, “the over-all authorization includes killing, but it’s not as though that’s what they’re setting out to do. It’s about gathering information, enlisting support.” The Finding sent to Congress was a compromise, providing legal cover for the C.I.A. while referring to the use of lethal force in ambiguous terms.
The defensive-lethal language led some Democrats, according to congressional sources familiar with their views, to call in the director of the C.I.A., Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, for a special briefing. Hayden reassured the legislators that the language did nothing more than provide authority for Special Forces operatives on the ground in Iran to shoot their way out if they faced capture or harm.
The legislators were far from convinced. One congressman subsequently wrote a personal letter to President Bush insisting that “no lethal action, period” had been authorized within Iran’s borders. As of June, he had received no answer.
Members of Congress have expressed skepticism in the past about the information provided by the White House. On March 15, 2005, David Obey, then the ranking Democrat on the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee, announced that he was putting aside an amendment that he had intended to offer that day, and that would have cut off all funding for national-intelligence programs unless the President agreed to keep Congress fully informed about clandestine military activities undertaken in the war on terror. He had changed his mind, he said, because the White House promised better coöperation. “The Executive Branch understands that we are not trying to dictate what they do,” he said in a floor speech at the time. “We are simply trying to see to it that what they do is consistent with American values and will not get the country in trouble.”
Obey declined to comment on the specifics of the operations in Iran, but he did tell me that the White House reneged on its promise to consult more fully with Congress. He said, “I suspect there’s something going on, but I don’t know what to believe. Cheney has always wanted to go after Iran, and if he had more time he’d find a way to do it. We still don’t get enough information from the agencies, and I have very little confidence that they give us information on the edge.”
None of the four Democrats in the Gang of Eight—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes—would comment on the Finding, with some noting that it was highly classified. An aide to one member of the Democratic leadership responded, on his behalf, by pointing to the limitations of the Gang of Eight process. The notification of a Finding, the aide said, “is just that—notification, and not a sign-off on activities. Proper oversight of ongoing intelligence activities is done by fully briefing the members of the intelligence committee.” However, Congress does have the means to challenge the White House once it has been sent a Finding. It has the power to withhold funding for any government operation. The members of the House and Senate Democratic leadership who have access to the Finding can also, if they choose to do so, and if they have shared concerns, come up with ways to exert their influence on Administration policy. (A spokesman for the C.I.A. said, “As a rule, we don’t comment one way or the other on allegations of covert activities or purported findings.” The White House also declined to comment.)
A member of the House Appropriations Committee acknowledged that, even with a Democratic victory in November, “it will take another year before we get the intelligence activities under control.” He went on, “We control the money and they can’t do anything without the money. Money is what it’s all about. But I’m very leery of this Administration.” He added, “This Administration has been so secretive.”
One irony of Admiral Fallon’s departure is that he was, in many areas, in agreement with President Bush on the threat posed by Iran. They had a good working relationship, Fallon told me, and, when he ran CENTCOM, were in regular communication. On March 4th, a week before his resignation, Fallon testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying that he was “encouraged” about the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regarding the role played by Iran’s leaders, he said, “They’ve been absolutely unhelpful, very damaging, and I absolutely don’t condone any of their activities. And I have yet to see anything since I’ve been in this job in the way of a public action by Iran that’s been at all helpful in this region.”
Fallon made it clear in our conversations that he considered it inappropriate to comment publicly about the President, the Vice-President, or Special Operations. But he said he had heard that people in the White House had been “struggling” with his views on Iran. “When I arrived at CENTCOM, the Iranians were funding every entity inside Iraq. It was in their interest to get us out, and so they decided to kill as many Americans as they could. And why not? They didn’t know who’d come out ahead, but they wanted us out. I decided that I couldn’t resolve the situation in Iraq without the neighborhood. To get this problem in Iraq solved, we had to somehow involve Iran and Syria. I had to work the neighborhood.”
Fallon told me that his focus had been not on the Iranian nuclear issue, or on regime change there, but on “putting out the fires in Iraq.” There were constant discussions in Washington and in the field about how to engage Iran and, on the subject of the bombing option, Fallon said, he believed that “it would happen only if the Iranians did something stupid.”
Fallon’s early retirement, however, appears to have been provoked not only by his negative comments about bombing Iran but also by his strong belief in the chain of command and his insistence on being informed about Special Operations in his area of responsibility. One of Fallon’s defenders is retired Marine General John J. (Jack) Sheehan, whose last assignment was as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, where Fallon was a deputy. Last year, Sheehan rejected a White House offer to become the President’s “czar” for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “One of the reasons the White House selected Fallon for CENTCOM was that he’s known to be a strategic thinker and had demonstrated those skills in the Pacific,” Sheehan told me. (Fallon served as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific from 2005 to 2007.) “He was charged with coming up with an over-all coherent strategy for Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and, by law, the combatant commander is responsible for all military operations within his A.O.”—area of operations. “That was not happening,” Sheehan said. “When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.”
The law cited by Sheehan is the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act, known as Goldwater-Nichols, which defined the chain of command: from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.
“The coherence of military strategy is being eroded because of undue civilian influence and direction of nonconventional military operations,” Sheehan said. “If you have small groups planning and conducting military operations outside the knowledge and control of the combatant commander, by default you can’t have a coherent military strategy. You end up with a disaster, like the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.”
Admiral Fallon, who is known as Fox, was aware that he would face special difficulties as the first Navy officer to lead CENTCOM, which had always been headed by a ground commander, one of his military colleagues told me. He was also aware that the Special Operations community would be a concern. “Fox said that there’s a lot of strange stuff going on in Special Ops, and I told him he had to figure out what they were really doing,” Fallon’s colleague said. “The Special Ops guys eventually figured out they needed Fox, and so they began to talk to him. Fox would have won his fight with Special Ops but for Cheney.”
The Pentagon consultant said, “Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that.”
In recent months, according to the Iranian media, there has been a surge in violence in Iran; it is impossible at this early stage, however, to credit JSOC or C.I.A. activities, or to assess their impact on the Iranian leadership. The Iranian press reports are being carefully monitored by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who has taught strategy at the National War College and now conducts war games centered on Iran for the federal government, think tanks, and universities. The Iranian press “is very open in describing the killings going on inside the country,” Gardiner said. It is, he said, “a controlled press, which makes it more important that it publishes these things. We begin to see inside the government.” He added, “Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere. There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.”
Earlier this year, a militant Ahwazi group claimed to have assassinated a Revolutionary Guard colonel, and the Iranian government acknowledged that an explosion in a cultural center in Shiraz, in the southern part of the country, which killed at least twelve people and injured more than two hundred, had been a terrorist act and not, as it earlier insisted, an accident. It could not be learned whether there has been American involvement in any specific incident in Iran, but, according to Gardiner, the Iranians have begun publicly blaming the U.S., Great Britain, and, more recently, the C.I.A. for some incidents. The agency was involved in a coup in Iran in 1953, and its support for the unpopular regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi—who was overthrown in 1979—was condemned for years by the ruling mullahs in Tehran, to great effect. “This is the ultimate for the Iranians—to blame the C.I.A.,” Gardiner said. “This is new, and it’s an escalation—a ratcheting up of tensions. It rallies support for the regime and shows the people that there is a continuing threat from the ‘Great Satan.’ ” In Gardiner’s view, the violence, rather than weakening Iran’s religious government, may generate support for it.
Many of the activities may be being carried out by dissidents in Iran, and not by Americans in the field. One problem with “passing money” (to use the term of the person familiar with the Finding) in a covert setting is that it is hard to control where the money goes and whom it benefits. Nonetheless, the former senior intelligence official said, “We’ve got exposure, because of the transfer of our weapons and our communications gear. The Iranians will be able to make the argument that the opposition was inspired by the Americans. How many times have we tried this without asking the right questions? Is the risk worth it?” One possible consequence of these operations would be a violent Iranian crackdown on one of the dissident groups, which could give the Bush Administration a reason to intervene.
A strategy of using ethnic minorities to undermine Iran is flawed, according to Vali Nasr, who teaches international politics at Tufts University and is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Just because Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan have ethnic problems, it does not mean that Iran is suffering from the same issue,” Nasr told me. “Iran is an old country—like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic. The U.S. is overestimating ethnic tension in Iran.” The minority groups that the U.S. is reaching out to are either well integrated or small and marginal, without much influence on the government or much ability to present a political challenge, Nasr said. “You can always find some activist groups that will go and kill a policeman, but working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population.”
The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.
One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,” Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” The Jundallah took responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed. According to Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support.
The C.I.A. and Special Operations communities also have long-standing ties to two other dissident groups in Iran: the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K., and a Kurdish separatist group, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK.
The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”
The Kurdish party, PJAK, which has also been reported to be covertly supported by the United States, has been operating against Iran from bases in northern Iraq for at least three years. (Iran, like Iraq and Turkey, has a Kurdish minority, and PJAK and other groups have sought self-rule in territory that is now part of each of those countries.) In recent weeks, according to Sam Gardiner, the military strategist, there has been a marked increase in the number of PJAK armed engagements with Iranians and terrorist attacks on Iranian targets. In early June, the news agency Fars reported that a dozen PJAK members and four Iranian border guards were killed in a clash near the Iraq border; a similar attack in May killed three Revolutionary Guards and nine PJAK fighters. PJAK has also subjected Turkey, a member of NATO, to repeated terrorist attacks, and reports of American support for the group have been a source of friction between the two governments.
Gardiner also mentioned a trip that the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, made to Tehran in June. After his return, Maliki announced that his government would ban any contact between foreigners and the M.E.K.—a slap at the U.S.’s dealings with the group. Maliki declared that Iraq was not willing to be a staging ground for covert operations against other countries. This was a sign, Gardiner said, of “Maliki’s increasingly choosing the interests of Iraq over the interests of the United States.” In terms of U.S. allegations of Iranian involvement in the killing of American soldiers, he said, “Maliki was unwilling to play the blame-Iran game.” Gardiner added that Pakistan had just agreed to turn over a Jundallah leader to the Iranian government. America’s covert operations, he said, “seem to be harming relations with the governments of both Iraq and Pakistan and could well be strengthening the connection between Tehran and Baghdad.”
The White House’s reliance on questionable operatives, and on plans involving possible lethal action inside Iran, has created anger as well as anxiety within the Special Operations and intelligence communities. JSOC’s operations in Iran are believed to be modelled on a program that has, with some success, used surrogates to target the Taliban leadership in the tribal territories of Waziristan, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But the situations in Waziristan and Iran are not comparable.
In Waziristan, “the program works because it’s small and smart guys are running it,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “It’s being executed by professionals. The N.S.A., the C.I.A., and the D.I.A.”—the Defense Intelligence Agency—“are right in there with the Special Forces and Pakistani intelligence, and they’re dealing with serious bad guys.” He added, “We have to be really careful in calling in the missiles. We have to hit certain houses at certain times. The people on the ground are watching through binoculars a few hundred yards away and calling specific locations, in latitude and longitude. We keep the Predator loitering until the targets go into a house, and we have to make sure our guys are far enough away so they don’t get hit.” One of the most prominent victims of the program, the former official said, was Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior Taliban commander, who was killed on January 31st, reportedly in a missile strike that also killed eleven other people.
A dispatch published on March 26th by the Washington Post reported on the increasing number of successful strikes against Taliban and other insurgent units in Pakistan’s tribal areas. A follow-up article noted that, in response, the Taliban had killed “dozens of people” suspected of providing information to the United States and its allies on the whereabouts of Taliban leaders. Many of the victims were thought to be American spies, and their executions—a beheading, in one case—were videotaped and distributed by DVD as a warning to others.
It is not simple to replicate the program in Iran. “Everybody’s arguing about the high-value-target list,” the former senior intelligence official said. “The Special Ops guys are pissed off because Cheney’s office set up priorities for categories of targets, and now he’s getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.”
The Pentagon consultant told me, “We’ve had wonderful results in the Horn of Africa with the use of surrogates and false flags—basic counterintelligence and counter-insurgency tactics. And we’re beginning to tie them in knots in Afghanistan. But the White House is going to kill the program if they use it to go after Iran. It’s one thing to engage in selective strikes and assassinations in Waziristan and another in Iran. The White House believes that one size fits all, but the legal issues surrounding extrajudicial killings in Waziristan are less of a problem because Al Qaeda and the Taliban cross the border into Afghanistan and back again, often with U.S. and NATO forces in hot pursuit. The situation is not nearly as clear in the Iranian case. All the considerations—judicial, strategic, and political—are different in Iran.”
He added, “There is huge opposition inside the intelligence community to the idea of waging a covert war inside Iran, and using Baluchis and Ahwazis as surrogates. The leaders of our Special Operations community all have remarkable physical courage, but they are less likely to voice their opposition to policy. Iran is not Waziristan.”
A Gallup poll taken last November, before the N.I.E. was made public, found that seventy-three per cent of those surveyed thought that the United States should use economic action and diplomacy to stop Iran’s nuclear program, while only eighteen per cent favored direct military action. Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to endorse a military strike. Weariness with the war in Iraq has undoubtedly affected the public’s tolerance for an attack on Iran. This mood could change quickly, however. The potential for escalation became clear in early January, when five Iranian patrol boats, believed to be under the command of the Revolutionary Guard, made a series of aggressive moves toward three Navy warships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. Initial reports of the incident made public by the Pentagon press office said that the Iranians had transmitted threats, over ship-to-ship radio, to “explode” the American ships. At a White House news conference, the President, on the day he left for an eight-day trip to the Middle East, called the incident “provocative” and “dangerous,” and there was, very briefly, a sense of crisis and of outrage at Iran. “TWO MINUTES FROM WAR” was the headline in one British newspaper.
The crisis was quickly defused by Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the region. No warning shots were fired, the Admiral told the Pentagon press corps on January 7th, via teleconference from his headquarters, in Bahrain. “Yes, it’s more serious than we have seen, but, to put it in context, we do interact with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their Navy regularly,” Cosgriff said. “I didn’t get the sense from the reports I was receiving that there was a sense of being afraid of these five boats.”
Admiral Cosgriff’s caution was well founded: within a week, the Pentagon acknowledged that it could not positively identify the Iranian boats as the source of the ominous radio transmission, and press reports suggested that it had instead come from a prankster long known for sending fake messages in the region. Nonetheless, Cosgriff’s demeanor angered Cheney, according to the former senior intelligence official. But a lesson was learned in the incident: The public had supported the idea of retaliation, and was even asking why the U.S. didn’t do more. The former official said that, a few weeks later, a meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. “The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,” he said.
In June, President Bush went on a farewell tour of Europe. He had tea with Queen Elizabeth II and dinner with Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, the President and First Lady of France. The serious business was conducted out of sight, and involved a series of meetings on a new diplomatic effort to persuade the Iranians to halt their uranium-enrichment program. (Iran argues that its enrichment program is for civilian purposes and is legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.) Secretary of State Rice had been involved with developing a new package of incentives. But the Administration’s essential negotiating position seemed unchanged: talks could not take place until Iran halted the program. The Iranians have repeatedly and categorically rejected that precondition, leaving the diplomatic situation in a stalemate; they have not yet formally responded to the new incentives.
The continuing impasse alarms many observers. Joschka Fischer, the former German Foreign Minister, recently wrote in a syndicated column that it may not “be possible to freeze the Iranian nuclear program for the duration of the negotiations to avoid a military confrontation before they are completed. Should this newest attempt fail, things will soon get serious. Deadly serious.” When I spoke to him last week, Fischer, who has extensive contacts in the diplomatic community, said that the latest European approach includes a new element: the willingness of the U.S. and the Europeans to accept something less than a complete cessation of enrichment as an intermediate step. “The proposal says that the Iranians must stop manufacturing new centrifuges and the other side will stop all further sanction activities in the U.N. Security Council,” Fischer said, although Iran would still have to freeze its enrichment activities when formal negotiations begin. “This could be acceptable to the Iranians—if they have good will.”
The big question, Fischer added, is in Washington. “I think the Americans are deeply divided on the issue of what to do about Iran,” he said. “Some officials are concerned about the fallout from a military attack and others think an attack is unavoidable. I know the Europeans, but I have no idea where the Americans will end up on this issue.”
There is another complication: American Presidential politics. Barack Obama has said that, if elected, he would begin talks with Iran with no “self-defeating” preconditions (although only after diplomatic groundwork had been laid). That position has been vigorously criticized by John McCain. The Washington Post recently quoted Randy Scheunemann, the McCain campaign’s national-security director, as stating that McCain supports the White House’s position, and that the program be suspended before talks begin. What Obama is proposing, Scheunemann said, “is unilateral cowboy summitry.”
Scheunemann, who is known as a neoconservative, is also the McCain campaign’s most important channel of communication with the White House. He is a friend of David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. I have heard differing accounts of Scheunemann’s influence with McCain; though some close to the McCain campaign talk about him as a possible national-security adviser, others say he is someone who isn’t taken seriously while “telling Cheney and others what they want to hear,” as a senior McCain adviser put it.
It is not known whether McCain, who is the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been formally briefed on the operations in Iran. At the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in June, Obama repeated his plea for “tough and principled diplomacy.” But he also said, along with McCain, that he would keep the threat of military action against Iran on the table.
No Funds For The OLF?
(TIDEWATER NEWS (VA) 27 JUN 08) ... Editorial
We should have all learned by now that when we think we've heard all there is to hear about the Navy's study to find a location for a new outlying landing field, there's something else to be said.
U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes (R-4th) visited on Monday, meeting the members of the board of directors of the Franklin-Southampton Area Chamber of Commerce and their counterparts from the Isle of Wight-Smithfield-Windsor Chamber. Also on hand were local government leaders to ask questions of the congressman.
In these parts, those questions start with placement of the OLF.
But Forbes tossed a curve ball: He said the Navy might not be able to afford building a new field and the auxiliary components that go along with it.
"There's a real question over whether the Navy will have the money to build an OLF," Forbes said.
That's a new one on us. Opponents are gambling that saving the environment surrounding the site could stop the mighty Navy. Or perhaps old-fashioned lobbying could prevent the Navy from moving its loud jets here. Few, we suspect, ever thought the Navy might not be able to foot the bill.
The U.S. Navy Needs To Repair Its Reputation – Now
(DEFENSE NEWS 23 JUN 08) ... Alice E. Hunt
How is it possible that a service with such a strong history of strategic vision and analysis is being perceived on Capitol Hill as unable to explain its programs? And how can it be that a service so devoted to business-model management is seen as inefficient and lacking in results?
Yet, according to reports in this paper, that is just how the Navy is viewed on the Hill. In a series of recent pieces, congressional stakeholders conveyed their sense that the Navy is unable "to express a clear vision for what ships they need and why they need them," and that when it comes to some programs, the service is "curiously passive." The Navy appears to be suffering from a growing credibility gap on the Hill.
This is as unfortunate as it is curious. The decline in the Navy's credibility matters because it can create a vacuum into which Congress will be tempted to step and substitute its own judgment. In announcing the passage of his subcommittee's portion of the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act, Rep. Gene Taylor, chairman of the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee, suggested that he and his colleagues had to "provide the Navy with a road map to achieve their goal of a 313-ship fleet."
Such a scenario CAN lead to acquisition strategies bound by short-term interests rather than long-term needs. CONGRESSIONALLY imposed priorities take control out of the admirals' hands, abdicating service management to MORE constituency-centric legislators. Once the chief of naval operations loses control over Navy priorities, he loses control over the direction of his service.
Fortunately, the Navy already has in hand the raw material it needs to demonstrate to Congress that it has the intellectual and technical capacity to manage its own affairs. But the service needs to do a better job of connecting the dots. In order to shore up its credibility in the face of lingering questions on the Hill, the Navy should pursue a top-down, bottom-up strategy.
At the top, service leadership needs to link the Navy's programmatic requirements more clearly to its strategic priorities. A clear explanation of how the 313-ship Navy will support the Maritime Strategy would reinforce both the strategy and the 313 goal. The Navy should then couch the rationale for each individual shipbuilding program in that larger story, creating a streamlined message of the Navy's strategic priorities to lawmakers.
For example, how will the DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer contribute to sea control and power projection, which stand as bellwethers of U.S. national security? The good news is the Navy does not have to start from scratch to create this narrative - it simply has to link its currently decoupled (and thus seemingly unrelated) strategic and acquisitions goals.
Over the past two years, the Navy has produced a wealth of strategic documents, from the triservice Maritime Strategy to the Navy Strategic Plan. It has also articulated a 313-ship plan and a larger 1,000-ship partner Navy.
The missing piece is a compelling explanation of the relationships between its strategic ends and its ship-based means.
From the bottom, the Navy should take some meaningful steps toward improving the management of its shipbuilding initiatives. Demonstrating more results in this area would go a long way toward improving congressional faith in the service's budgets and priorities.
The Navy could begin by following the lead of John Young, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, by implementing his department wide initiatives to grow and retain more career acquisition personnel and tackle the problems of underestimated costs and changing requirements.
Additionally, the service must continue to absorb and apply sound business models. Business administration and financial management are critical skill sets for an organization working closely with industrial leaders such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and General Dynamics.
Here again, the Navy should not have to dig too deeply to reconstitute such core competencies. Navy professionals already embrace the values of best business practices. In fact, the surface Navy sends its most promising officers to elite business schools to complement their war-fighting skills. Service leaders should tap into their own reserves of knowledge to demonstrate to the Congress and the public that the Navy can be a good steward of the taxpayers' dollars.
In January 2009, no matter who occupies the Oval Office, the country will have new leadership and new priorities. Simultaneously, debts from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be past due. If the Navy more clearly connects its shipbuilding aspirations with its overarching strategy, it will be well-positioned to weather the coming storm.
Navy And Air Force Need Renewal
(WASHINGTON TIMES 17 JUN 08) ... Col. Charles Kengla, Army, Ret., Letter to Editor
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates is a tremendous improvement over his predecessor. His openness and obvious respect for those in uniform, his willingness to listen and his willingness to speak the truth are most welcome.
Nevertheless, I have a deep concern with his policy decisions about where the rebuilding of our military should go over the next few years. He has said plainly that he wants a much stronger ability to conduct the kind of warfare in which we are engaged in both Afghanistan and Iraq — light forces, special operations, more and better surveillance assets — with much less funding for building up our conventional capabilities — heavy armored large formations, highly sophisticated and numerous air assets. I believe your Monday Page One article “Hope for Boeing pact lies with GAO” is correct in saying that Air Force Gen. T. Michael Moseley was retired as chief of staff of the Air Force partly because he fought so hard to upset the limits on force structure set by Mr. Gates.
I believe it is a strategic mistake for us to downsize those heavy forces, betting that our future needs for military action won´t require the kind of absolute superiority in capabilities and numbers that we possess now. We shouldn´t bet the lives of future warriors who may have to face a militant and aggressive major power with modern, numerous and capable weapon systems. If we have downsized and weakened our military when the time comes to face that future threat, there will be no way to recover before we suffer tremendous losses. I don´t want to see the rebuilding of our military limited to just a strength increase of the Army and Marines but a failure to recapitalize the Air Force and Navy. We need to realize that the Navy and Air Force have been at war continuously for the past 17 years, and their systems urgently require renewal and upgrading in full strength not limited by fiscal restraints. The dollars saved by putting fiscal limits on what we spend for defense represent a terrible failure to recognize what is important. Mr. Gates needs to rethink his strategic objectives and refocus his policy guidance.
Landing Field Aids Security
(NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS 05 JUN 08) ... RADM David Anderson
I would like to once again relay to the public why the Navy requires an additional outlying landing field, or OLF, to support field carrier-landing practice and why this new facility is vital to our national security.
The OLF is needed to ensure we can meet our responsibility to defend our country. After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the Navy was directed to completely change the way it trains, maintains and deploys its forces. These changes — a truly revolutionary shift away from traditional rotational deployments — make the OLF a requirement due to a lack of adequate capacity at Fentress Airfield in Chesapeake.
Regardless of where the new OLF is located, it will enable the Navy to better accomplish its core mission of defending our nation and preventing future wars.
Some have suggested using a decommissioned carrier, an offshore training platform or more simulators for training. Whether for the new pilot first learning or the senior pilot returning to carrier operations, a safety margin is required that wouldn't be possible on an offshore platform or ship.
The very demanding task of landing an aircraft on the deck of a carrier must be practiced with an adequate margin for safety before attempting to perform that task at sea. We have learned over many years how much training can be accomplished in simulation and how much is required in land-based practice to achieve that proper safety margin. Those well-meaning individuals who suggest we don't truly need this facility don't understand the challenges of landing on an aircraft carrier.
Our goal is to create a win for the Navy, a win for the nation and a win for the community ultimately hosting this facility. The Navy will continue to work closely with state and local officials and residents to identify opportunities that will provide benefits to the Navy and the surrounding communities.
Other organizations are contributing to this process, including various environmental groups, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and a variety of state agencies in Virginia and North Carolina. This collaboration has resulted in a number of ideas to bring economic benefits to the localities, which include development of commercial distribution centers, industrial or office parks, or community forests.
Enacting these and other ideas could bring hundreds of jobs and other economic benefits to the local communities. They also offer tremendous environmental benefits for threatened and endangered species, as well as their habitats. The ensuing environmental impact statement process will continue to allow us to explore all options. We look forward to working with all concerned parties to achieve a mutually advantageous solution.
We all owe America's sons and daughters our best efforts to find this solution.
Anderson holds the rank of rear admiral. He is vice commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk.
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Wall Street Journal
June 4, 2008
Pg. 21
Why We Went To Iraq
By Fouad Ajami
Of all that has been written about the play of things in Iraq, nothing that I have seen approximates the truth of what our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, recently said of this war: "In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came."
It is odd, then, that critics have launched a new attack on the origins of the war at precisely the time a new order in Iraq is taking hold. But American liberal opinion is obsessive today. Scott McClellan can't be accused of strategic thinking, but he has been anointed a peer of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft. A witness and a presumed insider – a "Texas loyalist" – has "flipped."
Mr. McClellan wades into the deep question of whether this war was a war of "necessity" or a war of "choice." He does so in the sixth year of the war, at a time when many have forgotten what was thought and said before its onset. The nation was gripped by legitimate concern over gathering dangers in the aftermath of 9/11. Kabul and the war against the Taliban had not sufficed, for those were Arabs who struck America on 9/11. A war of deterrence had to be waged against Arab radicalism, and Saddam Hussein had drawn the short straw. He had not ducked, he had not scurried for cover. He openly mocked America's grief, taunted its power.
We don't need to overwork the stereotype that Arabs understand and respond to the logic of force, but this is a region sensitive to the wind, and to the will of outside powers. Before America struck into Iraq, a mere 18 months after 9/11, there had been glee in the Arab world, a sense that America had gotten its comeuppance. There were regimes hunkering down, feigning friendship with America while aiding and abetting the forces of terror.
Liberal opinion in America and Europe may have scoffed when President Bush drew a strict moral line between order and radicalism – he even inserted into the political vocabulary the unfashionable notion of evil – but this sort of clarity is in the nature of things in that Greater Middle East. It is in categories of good and evil that men and women in those lands describe their world. The unyielding campaign waged by this president made a deep impression on them.
Nowadays, we hear many who have never had a kind word to say about the Iraq War pronounce on the retreat of the jihadists. It is as though the Islamists had gone back to their texts and returned with second thoughts about their violent utopia. It is as though the financiers and the "charities" that aided the terror had reconsidered their loyalties and opted out of that sly, cynical trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Islamism is on the ropes, if the regimes in the saddle in key Arab states now show greater resolve in taking on the forces of radicalism, no small credit ought to be given to this American project in Iraq.
We should give the "theorists" of terror their due and read them with some discernment. To a man, they have told us that they have been bloodied in Iraq, that they have been surprised by the stoicism of the Americans, by the staying power of the Bush administration.
There is no way of convincing a certain segment of opinion that there are indeed wars of "necessity." A case can always be made that an aggressor ought to be given what he seeks, that the costs of war are prohibitively high when measured against the murky ways of peace and of daily life.
"Wars are not self-starting," the noted philosopher Michael Walzer wrote in his seminal book, "Just and Unjust Wars." "They may 'break out,' like an accidental fire, under conditions difficult to analyze and where the attribution of responsibility seems impossible. But usually they are more like arson than accident: war has human agents as well as human victims."
Fair enough. In the narrow sense of command and power, this war in Iraq is Mr. Bush's war. But it is an evasion of responsibility to leave this war at his doorstep. This was a war fought with congressional authorization, with the warrant of popular acceptance, and the sanction of United Nations resolutions which called for Iraq's disarmament. It is the political good fortune (in the world of Democratic Party activists) that Sen. Barack Obama was spared the burden of a vote in the United States Senate to authorize the war. By his telling, he would have us believe that he would have cast a vote against it. But there is no sure way of knowing whether he would have stood up to the wind.
With the luxury of hindsight, the critics of the war now depict the arguments made for it as a case of manipulation and deceit. This is odd and misplaced: The claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were to prove incorrect, but they were made in good faith.
It is also obtuse and willful to depict in dark colors the effort made to "sell" the war.
Wars can't be waged in stealth, and making the moral case for them is an obligation incumbent on the leaders who launch them. If anything, there were stretches of time, and critical turning points, when the administration abdicated the fight for public opinion.
Nor is there anything unprecedented, or particularly dishonest, about the way the rationale for the war shifted when the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had run aground. True, the goal of a democratic Iraq – and the broader agenda of the war as a spearhead of "reform" in Arab and Muslim lands – emerged a year or so after the onset of the war. But the aims of practically every war always shift with the course of combat, and with historical circumstances. Need we recall that the abolition of slavery had not been an "original" war aim, and that the Emancipation Proclamation was, by Lincoln's own admission, a product of circumstances? A war for the Union had become a victory for abolitionism.
America had not been prepared for nation-building in Iraq; we had not known Iraq and Iraqis or understood the depth of Iraq's breakdown. But there was nothing so startling or unusual about the connection George W. Bush made between American security and the "reform" of the Arab condition. As America's pact with the Arab autocrats had hatched a monster, it was logical and prudent to look for a new way.
"When a calf falls, a thousand knives flash," goes an Arabic proverb. The authority of this administration is ebbing away, the war in Iraq is unloved, and even the "loyalists" now see these years of panic and peril as a time of exaggerated fear.
It is not easy to tell people of threats and dangers they have been spared. The war put on notice regimes and conspirators who had harbored dark thoughts about America and who, in the course of the 1990s, were led to believe that terrible deeds against America would go unpunished. A different lesson was taught in Iraq. Nowadays, the burden of the war, in blood and treasure, is easy to see, while the gains, subtle and real, are harder to demonstrate. Last month, American casualties in Iraq were at their lowest since 2003.
The Sunnis also have broken with al Qaeda, and the Shiite-led government has taken the war to the Mahdi Army: Is it any wonder that the critics have returned to the origins of the war?
Five months from now, the American public will vote on this war, in the most dramatic and definitive of ways. There will be people who heed Ambassador Crocker's admonition. And there will be others keen on retelling how we made our way to Iraq.
Mr. Ajami, a Bradley Prize recipient, teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift" (Free Press, 2006).
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Navy OLF: The Regional View
(NORFOLK VIRGINIAN-PILOT 01 JUN 08) ... Editorial
The U.S. Navy is studying five sites for an additional outlying landing field to support field carrier landing practice training for pilots at Oceana naval air station and Norfolk naval station. This is of the utmost importance to Hampton roads and neighboring communities, the commonwealth, the navy and the country.
Landing an airplane aboard an aircraft carrier, particularly at night, is widely recognized as one of the most difficult tasks in the world, making it critical that naval aviators have access to landing strips that can provide practice for day and night carrier landings under safe conditions before actual operations occur.
While the navy has stated naval auxiliary landing field Fentress in Chesapeake will continue to operate, it has also identified the need for an additional facility to provide training that more closely replicates landing an aircraft on a carrier at sea.
To that end, the navy, working with the commonwealth and North Carolina, has identified five sites, three in southeastern Virginia, for further study.
Citizens in the counties identified as potential OLF sites have expressed concern over noise, loss of private property and reduced tax revenues as a result of land being owned by the federal government. Their local elected officials have responded by passing resolutions opposing an OLF. But any decision about the impact of an OLF is premature.
The navy has a really shown a willingness to identify additional benefits an OLF could bring to a community. This could include sharing airfield services such as fire and rescue, different land-use options that would allow for maximum agricultural use and timber harvesting, encouraging compatible economic development that would further support the local tax base and keep property on the tax rolls and con' currently create jobs and other benefits for the area. Some have suggested proposals such as a regional distribution center or a bio-fuel research and development center.
Working together, we believe that political, business and community leaders can find an approach that benefits everyone.
All Virginians have a vested interest in this happening. Without a new OLF, NAS Oceana and the tactical aircraft squadrons home-based there become vulnerable to any future base realignment and closure action.
Such vulnerability places other related assets at risk with the potential loss of thousands- perhaps tens of thousands of jobs that are directly or indirectly supported by navy payrolls, and would pull billions of dollars out of Virginia's economy and tax base.
The concerns of people who live near one of the potential OLF sites should be heard.
However, it is equally important that the interests of people whose livelihoods are dependent upon the navy be heard, too.
So offer your ideas and suggestions.
The OLF provides an opportunity to help the navy and our communities.
Mayor Paul D. Fraim, Norfolk
Mayor Joe D. Frank, Newport News
Mayor Ross A. Kearney II, Hampton
Mayor Meyera E. Oberndorf, Virginia Beach
Editor's note: the mayors form the executive committee of the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities Alliance.Navy Flight Plan Is A Terrible Noise
(VIRGINIA GAZETTE 28 MAY 08) ... Cortney Langley
Attorney Barry Steinberg of Washington leads the opposition to the Navy locating an Outlying Landing Field in southeastern Virginia. One site is in Surry County, across the James from greater Williamsburg. Steinberg earlier defended the Army against challenges to environmental impact statements. Last year the Town of Blackstone asked him to help fight an OLF at Fort Pickett.
What makes OLFs unique?
Military environmental issues are different. The United States (1) enjoys sovereign immunity, (2) has the power of condemnation, and (3) has in this case a Navy of lawyers to support them without regard for the financial implications. Communities are at a disadvantage when challenging the federal government.
How do OLFs hurt communities?
They (1) take real estate off the tax roles (because you cannot tax the federal government), (2) generate very little economic benefit for a community, (3) are noisy and disruptive, (4) depress adjacent and nearby property values, and (5) alter the quality of life of a rural, quiet community.
Other than that...
There is no real benefit, from a local community perspective.
And landowners?
An OLF results in loss of land, either by purchase or condemnation. It can alter road patterns, split property into two parts divided by the OLF, and produce excessive noise for adjacent and nearby property owners.
The Navy says it’s not so noisy.
The Navy’s metric is inadequate. It focuses on an “average” noise factor, as if a single event were spread out over a 24-hour period. That defies logic. If I hit you with a certain force, you are not likely to be receptive to the notion that the initial pain is lessened if it were spread over a 24-hour period.
The Navy cries distortions.
What would you expect them to say? The Navy does not dispute that the planes are noisy. It does not dispute that it will have to clear-cut thousands of acres of land. It does not dispute that if it cannot obtain the land by purchase, it will take it involuntarily.
Further, the Navy does not dispute that the land will come off the tax roles, and it does not dispute that NAS Oceana has serious encroachment. The reason the Navy does not dispute these is because the statements are unalterably true.
What communities are at risk?
Rural areas with low population density, mostly farming. If you wanted to purchase or condemn 30,000 acres, would you select an area where a senior senator on the Armed Services Committee lives?
What are the chances of winning?
Hard to say. This is a David vs. Goliath battle. But the affected communities are united and committed to preserve their way of life, which an OLF will destroy.
Anything you like?
There is no doubt that an OLF serves a legitimate public purpose. But it is hard to accept the notion that they can just grab more land, when they are already the largest single landowner in the United States and the Defense Department has been shuttering bases across the country.
Why can’t they go elsewhere?
The Navy tells us that the Delmarva Peninsula cannot accommodate their need, Cherry Point just won’t work, they cannot share with the Marines at their OLFs, Oceana is encroached, intensity of use renders Fentress inadequate, and on and on.
So all they can think of to solve their problem is to move into pristine, historic farmland, disrupt the lives of thousands of citizens and have surrogates lecture the affected communities about patriotism.
The Navy expects 500-600 jobs and $80 million during construction. Is that accurate?
$80 million is a gross understatement of the cost of constructing an OLF. Current estimates are that the Navy will spend in excess of $250 million. And “during construction” is not the long-term revenue stream that would warrant economic acceptance of such a serious alteration of the quality of life in a rural, historically rich environment.
What’s your best argument?
The Navy is using the OLF issue to fix the Oceana problem, and it doesn’t. The Navy needs to look at this problem over many years and identify what its needs will be in 25 years, not just tomorrow. Also, the simple fact is that these citizens are not for sale. Farms that have operated for over 100 years would be destroyed. Families that have been on the land for generations would be displaced. Folks who left Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to enjoy a bucolic pace would wake up to the “sound of freedom.” There is no price tag on what they have.
If not Surry, where?
This is the heart of the issue. Why does the Navy need anotherOLF? In 2003 the Navy studied this issue and concluded that it did not need another OLF to support Oceana.
What has changed since 2003?
The number of aircraft has not increased. The encroachment is as bad as it was then, and the training requirement has not changed.
So why build a new OLF?
Before taking private landowners’ property involuntarily, the Navy needs to examine the alternatives based on existing assets. But when you examine the Navy’s expressed need for an OLF, you find that it has limited itself to consideration of five sites and doing nothing. Such an obvious lack of perspective demonstrates that this is an effort to acquire real estate without serious examination of the alternatives.
Has the Navy looked elsewhere?
By law the Navy is required to consider the reasonable alternatives. It has failed to demonstrate such consideration. In essence, the Navy has indicated that either it will get more land or Navy pilots will not be properly trained. And the land is limited to five identified sites, which must be proximate to Oceana.
Sounds reasonable.
But the Navy is performing no evaluation of Oceana, with all of its well-identified defects and shortcomings. At one of the scoping meetings, a Navy pilot admitted that pilots must alter their patterns and operations at Oceana because of encroachment and noise concerns. The Navy refuses to examine the long-term viability of Oceana despite its current shortcomings.
The Navy promises to minimize noise. How’s the track record?
Ask the folks in Virginia Beach who sued the Navy for inverse condemnation. Perhaps the Navy intends to issue earplugs to residents. Seriously, if you train like you fight, what actions can you take that would make a real difference?
How far does the noise travel?
It depends on altitude, flight patterns, cloud cover, and weather conditions. The Navy has been unable to tell us the flight routes, so we have no way of knowing who will be most affected by noise. That is not misinformation. That is a lack of information.
What about greater Williamsburg?
That depends on the flight path. We do not know, and the Navy says that until it studies the issue, it will not know either.
And Surry nuclear power plant?
I expect the Navy will avoid the nuclear power plant, but whether flight patterns will go north or south is unknown.
Why should we care if the OLF is 10-15 miles away?
Because the Navy planes may have to fly over or near you to get there.
What’s the danger to historic sites?
Vibrations caused by aircraft can break windows and plaster. At historic sites, replacing a pane of glass is different when you are trying to maintain historical integrity. Until the Navy announces the selected site and the flight paths to it from Oceana and the return path, we do not know what the impacts at Jamestown Island will be.
What’s the best course to fight?
Organize, share input, present a common front, and do not hesitate to get your elected officials involved. Make this an election year issue. The closing date for submission of comments for scoping is June 7, so there is not a lot of time to identify the issues that are important that you think the Navy should consider.
Should Williamsburg and James City be involved in that fight?
I am surprised that they are not already involved.
What’s next?
After scoping closes on June 7, the Navy will prepare a draft environmental impact statement for public review and comment. We will probably see that document in early spring 2009. There will be public meetings where citizens will have an opportunity to comment on the document in public, and in writing. The Navy will take those inputs and produce a final environmental impact statement, probably next summer.
Aircraft Carriers Are A Liability
(OPINION EDITORIALS.COM 26 MAY 08) ... Mike Burleson
Back in March, the LA Times revealed how a stealthy US attack submarine fired a long-range Tomahawk missile into Somalia, killing a wanted terrorist. Once again the utility of America’s fleet of super-stealthy submersibles is proven by striking at her enemies at long range, in a role once the sole domain of the aircraft carrier. Yet, some like Peter Brookes at the New York Post claim we have too few flattops to fight the War on Terror. He says:
“After cutting the number of active aircraft carriers from 12 to 11 last year, the Navy is now requesting Congress' permission to go down from 11 flattops to 10 for the years 2012 to 2015...Scanning all the potential flashpoints around the world, it's not at all clear that we have enough flattops to meet current -and potential - wartime needs now.”
My own view is carriers are hurting, not helping our defense needs. Because they are so expensive, the newest Ford Class costing from $8-$11 billion each, plus hundreds of millions for annual upkeep not to mention many billions more for planes and escort ships, the rest of the fleet suffers accordingly. We are currently down to 279 warships with no end to this decline in sight realistically.
The high visibility of such massive warships are hurting our security, as every new deployment is followed closely by potential antagonists in this new Information Age. Rather than being a "reminder" to Iran, who is used to such ship movements, they seem to increase tensions wherever they go. A submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles would be more of a potential threat to Tehran because the Mad Mullahs would never know when the invisible attack boats would rain down fire and vengeance upon them.
Noted military analyst Bill Roggio in the Weekly Standard suggests that the Big Ships would be a liability in wartime:
“Iran should actually start to worry when there are no aircraft carriers in the Gulf, as the U.S. would seek to minimize exposure of its $9 billion capital ships during any conflict with Iran. The fact is that if the United States wanted to strike at Iranian terror camps in Khuzestan, it could do so without parking carriers in the gulf. The U.S. Navy has a wide array of submarines and cruisers equipped to launch
Tomahawk missiles, while U.S. Air Force bombers can strike Iran from bases inside the US.”
This is a loaded statement, and echoes what we often contend: that in a full scale blowup the carriers would have to flee for the safety of a nearby port. In a real shooting war at sea, imagine what happened during the submarine missile strike on the Somali terrorist camp, but on a far grander scale involving scores of warships and hundreds or thousands of missiles.
I know some of you will say that the submarine can't do close air support, only a carrier can. If the Army and Marines control the land, and the Air Force still has bombers, why do we need these increasingly vulnerable battleships to support the troops? They are quite handy, but who can afford them anymore?
Then, there is this oft repeated description of the flattops which irks me no end:
“Carriers are also handy tools of (gunboat) diplomacy.”
No, REAL GUNBOATS , small craft which can cruise into shallow waters where pirates tread are tools of gunboat diplomacy, not these "4.5 acres of floating, sovereign US territory ".
Finally, in his blog War is Boring, journalist David Axe asks concerning the supercarrier USS George Washington‘s recent trip to South America: “...is a lumbering, $15-billion aircraft carrier group, with more combined destructive power than most of the world’s militaries, the right choice for exercising alongside the tiny coastal navies of South America? That’s a mission that might best be performed by smaller, cheaper warships, right?”
It seems long overdue for the USN to freeze all construction on aircraft carriers for at least a decade or longer. Such an act is hardly unprecedented, as occurred soon after World War 1 when the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty halted all battleship construction until right before the next conflict. Such tremendous savings could go towards building up our escort fleet of frigates and patrol craft, thus producing a real brown water force capable of defeating the new pirates at their own game.
Mike Burleson is a regular columnist with Sea Classics magazine and an advocate of Military Reform. He resides in historic Charleston, SC.
Editorial: Deeds, Not Words
(NAVY TIMES 19 MAY 08)
At a time when at least two frontline warships are deemed unfit for combat, a growing credibility gap exists in Congress over whether the Navy can accurately manage its soaring shipbuilding costs and fleet leaders are fuming over a lack of military bearing on the waterfront, some Navy leaders are busy preparing a new “ethos” statement.
News flash: They’re focused on the wrong problem.
The Navy doesn’t need another written attempt to piece together what it stands for. It already has Core Values, a Sailor’s Creed, a Maritime Strategy and more.
What it needs is to start living up to the standards and traditions naval leaders have developed over generations.
The core values of honor, courage and commitment are a good start. Honor to the truth and to justice; courage to do what’s right and defend the nation even in the face of mortal danger; and commitment to getting the job done, and doing it well.
An ethos is innate. And this is what the Navy’s ethos is supposed to be.
So, the Navy doesn’t need a new ethos statement. It just needs to start living up to the high standards it already has set for itself.
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Flattop Follies: Navy Cuts Back On Carriers
(NEW YORK POST 02 MAY 08) ... Peter Brookes
Check this: After cutting the number of active aircraft carriers from 12 to 11 last year, the Navy is now requesting Congress' permission to go down from 11 flattops to 10 for the years 2012 to 2015.
It gets worse.
Maintenance required on nuclear-powered carriers means one ship is always in overhaul in the yards - so we'd actually only have nine carriers available for those years. And some fear that the drop to a 10-carrier force would wind up being permanent.
Look: Carriers are vital to our defense needs - the Navy deployed a second carrier this week to Iran's vicinity as what Defense Secretary Robert Gates called a "reminder." Scanning all the potential flashpoints around the world, it's not at all clear that we have enough flattops to meet current - and potential - wartime needs now.
How did we get to this point? Basically, the Navy brass are in a bind: The budget is tight, programs are behind schedule and they're trying to avoid sinking the fleet's total of battle-force ships below today's 279 hulls.
So the Navy asked Congress to waive current law, which requires 11 carriers to meet wartime needs. (And that minimum was 12 active carriers until last year.)
This dispensation would let the Navy retire CVN-65 Enterprise, which at age 50 is past its service life, three years before CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford joins the fleet.
The admirals want to prevent new shortfalls in their shipbuilding budget by avoiding a $2.2 billion price tag to keep Enterprise "operational" (on paper, anyway) to meet the letter of the law.
Fact is, we need balance in our armed forces to meet a range of challenges, from terrorism to major-power wars. The carrier's combat-strike capability is going to be a key element of that force.
And while the fights in Iraq and Afghanistan (and other anti-terror ops) don't always need the punch of a carrier group's ships, planes and submarines daily, other threats would.
It's troubling that, like our ground forces, the carrier fleet is also stretched thin. Navy brass already have difficulty meeting the need for carriers. What if another major crisis, such as a serious dust-up in the Taiwan Strait between powerhouse China and its rival Taiwan, comes across our bow?
Considering China's military buildup, you can bet that we'll need several (at least) carrier groups to deal with People's Liberation Army's navy and air force.
If the Korean peninsula goes up in flames and a million North Korean soldiers pour over the border, we'll need lots of carriers to support South Korea and the nearly 30,000 US GIs and airmen stationed there.
Not to mention Russia, another (re)emerging major power, which recently announced plans to build a carrier fleet of its own in support of its growing global interests.
Carriers are also handy tools of (gunboat) diplomacy. They provide US policymakers with 90,000 tons of deployable, difficult-to-ignore, cold-steel persuasion, as evidenced by the recent deployment near Iran.
Without firing a single shot, the presence of 4.5 acres of floating, sovereign US territory off the coast has given more than one foreign leader pause. At the onset of a crisis, the first words a president often utters are: "Where are the carriers?"
A failure to adequately maintain our carrier fleet will embolden potential adversaries. More than one historically great naval power became a shadow of its former self - much to its detriment.
Given the challenges we face, how can this nation not afford to maintain a fleet of at least 12 carriers? Remember: Even in a high-tech warfare world, quantity has a quality all its own.
Peter Brookes is Chung Ju Yung Fellow and Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs in the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies.
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Maintaining A Double-Digit Carrier Fleet
(HERITAGE FOUNDATION 01 MAY 08)
Last week, House Armed Services’ Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) affirmed that he does not plan to include language in the FY 2009 defense authorization bill that would allow the Navy to reduce the aircraft carrier fleet below the current legal requirement of 11 carriers. According to Taylor, the Navy has a “responsibility” to fund 11 ships. With the USS Gerald R. Ford joining the fleet in 2015, the Navy has argued that the $2.2 billion it would cost to keep the aging USS Enterprise operational from 2012-2015—thus maintaining the 11 career requirement—is not worth the cost.
Congressman Taylor and other members of his Committee are correct to hold the Navy to their carrier requirement. Last month, Heritage analyst Mackenzie Eaglen and James Dolbow laid the groundwork for this argument in their Web Memo, SOS: Congress must Save the Aircraft Carrier Fleet. Eaglen also took part in a Heritage Podcast on the issue. And just last week Ed Feulner, President of The Heritage Foundation, made a similar case in the pages of the Washington Times.
During the 1980’s, the U.S. Navy had 15 aircraft carriers available to meet its Cold War responsibilities. Today that number has dipped to 11, and 10 when you factor in that one Nimitz-class carrier is undergoing lengthy Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH) at all times. According to Eaglen and Dolbow, “Congress should carefully examine whether the Navy currently has enough carriers to meet the services global commitments.” After factoring in the increased operational tempo the Navy has undertaken during the Long War, its global commitment to protecting the world’s shipping lanes, and the unprecedented modernization rate of the Chinese Navy, it is clear that the current carrier fleet size is insufficient to meet the challenges at hand—much less a smaller carrier fleet.
What can be done? Eaglen, Dolbow and Feulner all argue that not only should Congress reject the Navy’s request, but they should also considering accelerating the delivery of the USS Gerald. F. Ford and hold the Navy leaders’ “feet to the fire” to ensure the goal of a 12-career fleet is met by 2019, if not sooner. Chairman Taylor is right to stand firm and maintain the size of our carrier fleet. Let’s hope that the Senate is just as committed to doing the same.
(The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institute whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies.)
Why Does China Need A Blue Water Navy?
(THE BRUSSELS JOURNAL 01 MAY 08) ... Michael Huntsman
Whilst the attention of the USA and the UK is distracted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our most likely enemy for the mid to long-term, Communist China, is beavering away at ramping up her military power. The objective becomes plainer by the day: to elevate herself to Super Power status with an Afro-Asian Empire to sustain her need for commodities.
Those naysayers who would stick their heads in the sand need look no further than all the signs: the ruthless exploitation of Darfur for its oil; the rapidly burgeoning presence of China in the business of minerals, oil and gems in Africa; its diversion of huge sums of money (though as yet not the sort of money the USA spends) to its defence budget; its hardline nationalist attitudes towards its neighbours such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.
Today the Daily Telegraph reports yet another sign of its development of a blue water navy with a global strategic reach capable of threatening American and British cities: a huge underground naval base on the well-placed island of Hainan that, with good reason, is believed to be the home of its latest class of nuclear submarines equipped with nuclear weapons. Particularly noteworthy is the ability of departing and incoming submarines to leave and enter the base underwater, thus significantly enhancing their ability to remain hidden from prying eyes.
The day must surely come when this potential threat becomes a real one and yet we continue to adopt a mealy-mouthed appeasement towards China. Concerning the military threat that China will represent no more than ten years hence, we do absolutely nothing. With oil already at US $ 115 (65% more expensive than a year ago), China's thirst for oil is likely to keep that price spiralling ever upward. How long can our economy continue to function properly in those circumstances and when will the struggle for access to oil lead to a nascent confrontation between the West and China? And will we be ready for it?
These are questions which our pusillanimous politicians will refuse to contemplate since to do so would involve a discussion of defence and what money we need to spend to place our armed forces in a position where we can play a serious part in any confrontation with China, something we may need to do in order to preserve our way of life and the long-term health and wealth of our nation. Since raising money for defence must necessarily impinge upon the pouring of cash into the Social Welfare cow, it is a question which neither Labour nor the neo-Butskellite Tories will be prepared to address. But if we do not start even thinking about it today, then when the inevitable confrontation comes we will be quite unprepared.
As always, the greatest threat to our freedom is if our politicians do nothing.
Navy Moving Forward On Landing Strip
(NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS 31 MAR 08)
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Navy's top officer said last week that the service will make its case for construction of a new practice landing strip in southeastern Virginia or northeastern North Carolina by emphasizing to nearby residents the importance of pilot training for night landings aboard aircraft carriers.
"We have to have a place where pilots can go fly that best replicates the environment that they're going to experience" at sea, Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, told reporters.
The Navy wants the landing strip placed in a remote area where pilots can fly in and out in near-total darkness, but still relatively close to Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, its East Coast master jet base.
Roughead acknowledged that the Navy is facing serious local opposition to the proposed outlying landing field but said the service intends to press ahead with environmental and other studies of five potential sites announced in January. All are within 65 miles of Oceana.
Those sites, three in Virginia and two in North Carolina, were announced after the Navy abandoned a three-year effort to place the $250 million facility in Washington County, N.C. Local opposition similar to that which derailed the Washington County plan has sprung up near the new sites, each of which is located on timberland or farmland.
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Upgrades Could Double H-53 Availability
(NAVY TIMES 29 MAR 08) ... Chris Amos
NAVAL AIR STATION PATUXENT RIVER, Md. — Navy officials are upgrading the fleet of H-53 Navy and Marine helicopters in hopes of doubling their average flight availability by 2013, according to a naval aviation spokeswoman.
The increases are made possible by a $150 million engine upgrade that includes installing titanium nitride-coated blades on helicopter engine compressors during repairs and overhauls. The hard coating protects the blades from sand abrasion, which reduced the average time on wing during the 1991 Persian Gulf War to just more than 100 hours, meaning some helicopters spent as much time having their engines overhauled as they did in the air.