My old man, now in his 90s, is a World War II naval veteran and recalls a steel navy, flush with a hundred aircraft carriers of all sizes, rows of battleships, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, anti-aircraft cruisers, destroyers, destroyer escorts, PT-boats, submarines, to say nothing of the hundreds of auxiliaries and literally thousands of aircraft--patrol bombers, dive bombers, scout bombers, fighters, sea planes--an incredible panoply of stout military power that filled two oceans and drove the Axis from the above and below the seas.
And I, per force, through reminiscences, scrap books, the gifts of other books, the study of history and the occasional attendance at his reunions, came to understand that Navy quite well. Our admirals, both the fighters and the administrators--Leahy, King, Nimitz, Halsey, Spruance, Mitscher, Turner, the Spragues, and their inheritors, A. A. Burke, Jerauld Wright-- had, arguably, no equals afloat or behind the desks in Tokyo or Berlin.
I think that some of today's problems can be directly associated with that tremendous victory and the millions of photos showing the hundreds of naval vessels, the books of photos compiled by the likes of Edward Steichen and the professional art of the US Navy combat artists--Dwight Shepler, Griffith Baily Coale, William F. Draper, Mitchell Jamieson and Albert K. Murray--whose works are visible today at Annapolis and the Naval Historical Center.
Among the photos are those that show the six or eight fleet carriers lined up at Majuro or Ulithi--invariably titled Murderer's Row. Or the long line of fast battleships exiting Pearl Harbor bound for the Philippines. And the even more improbable number of ships lying off Okinawa, an amphibious assault larger than D-Day's, remind us of an invincible Navy at peak flood--flush with victory. Of course, the finale brings us to Tokyo Bay, with the hundreds of ships, the towering USS Missouri, the table set for the surrender under her massive guns, and the thousands of carrier planes, the enormous bombers, flying over head in the endless V of V's.
These countless black and white vignettes, and their color companions, set the stage for today's belief that our Navy is huge and omnipresent--which it decidedly is not. Just as it explains why we always believe that there's some little bit of fat which remains to be cut from the rich tenderloin of the US Navy--which there is isn't any more. We moved into the bone and sinew long ago, and we're sawing through muscle and arteries today.
One of the primary reasons--despite the long held and deeply cherished liberal belief that it was Gorbachev's embrace of Perestroika that led to the decline in Soviet fortunes, at the Democrat's behest, no doubt as well--for the collapse of the former Soviet Union, was President Reagan's rebuilding of the US fleet to its 600-ship roster, and a temporary restoration of a modicum of sea power lost to Jimmy Carter's white hot budget knife.
Though this formidable task featured a bit of smoke and the use of the occasional mirror, predicated partly on the refurbishment of two battleships as the centerpiece of battle groups, and a lot of US treasure, it became prohibitively expensive for the flagging Soviet dictatorship to keep pace with the resurgence of America on the high seas. The US Navy--along with the production of the B-1 bomber, the deployment of the Pershing II missiles to Europe, the beginning of the Star Wars program and the rise of Solidarity on Poland--clearly contributed to the decline and fall of the Soviet Empire and to freedom of the enslaved peoples in her satellites.
But following Reagan, with the elections of George H. W. Bush and especially Bill Clinton, the famed and infamous “peace dividend” began to be collected, with a great deal of the interest drawn from the Navy's account --in monies, leadership and in vessels. Warships were large, visible, costly and the first to go. And once gone, are prohibitively expensive to replace
Currently the US Navy is slated to have somewhere around 300 ships in service throughout the course of this decade, the fewest number afloat since Hoover was President. And the ships, when they are constructed, are far more expensive than they were a few years ago, adding to their scarcity. Where we once had naval bases in many cities, they have become scarce, and with their scarcity, the chance to see the shrinking Navy has become a fleeting memory. My father's ship was built in the Boston Navy Yard, which vanished long ago. Today only one shipyard can build aircraft carriers.
While the fleet is credited with 12 carriers, there are, in reality, only 11, since one of the complement is always undergoing yard work, upgrades and overhaul. The navy now operates just 11 air wings and one reserve air wing, with the Marine air wings being tasked to make up for any short falls. The carriers are stretched thin, so dangerously thin that during the Clinton's Kosovo excitement, there was no carrier available in the Western Pacific for 86 days, necessitating that the US Air Force move combat aircraft to South Korea from their bases in the continental United States. It has been reported that this shortfall in major combatant ships prevents the US from being able to successfully engage in the two Major Regional Conflicts called for in current US defense strategy--a red light for those with any sense in Congress, those who are charged with naval oversight and a green light to those countries, like Iran and North Korea, with madmen at their helms.
During the 1990s, we were only able to afford the approval of just four nuclear attack submarines, while currently we're only building about one a year--which is just about enough to keep 30 boats ready for sea. While during World War II, we had upwards of a hundred submarines in the Pacific alone, with many making double-barreled cruises, with two separate crews. Today, technological superiority alone allows us to exercise sea control from the periscope and the towed sonar array.
If the breaks fall the right way, if we don't have any major hiccups along the way, if the Democrats don't seize Congress and extract any more of the peace dividend from the disappearing Naval budget and the magic of the invisible fleet, we may be able to keep a surface combat force level of some 116 to 120 ships ready to do battle. And they won't be at sea all at once, either, just like the carriers.
And, in the near future, due to budgetary constraints, we are scheduled to begin scrapping the Arleigh Burke class destroyers, the most advanced and mission capable ships of their class in the world, in favor the DDX-21, an untried and supposedly more “stealthy” vessel, manned with a smaller crew. This ship will feature a turbo-electric drive, similar to that employed on the early aircraft carriers, the USS Lexington (CV-2) and the USS Saratoga (CV-3), which were launched in the late 1920s. Hopefully, these new ships will provide all the hopped up electronic features, the lower operating costs and the smaller crews they are planned to introduce. And it will be interesting to see if their propulsion systems are as efficient as Lady Lex's and Sara's were.
Interestingly, beginning on December 17, 1929, and for the following 30 days, Lady Lex delivered an average of 12,000 kW for 12 hours every day to the City of Tacoma, Washington, because a drought had reduced the water flow to the city's hydro-electric power system. This activity, on behalf of the Navy and the Lexington, allowed the reservoir to refill to an acceptable level to resume power regeneration, and garnered a good deal of positive public relations for the US Navy. It also demonstrated an unknown positive effect of this type of propulsion. We'll see if a DDX can perform the same task in a drought stricken port of call if called upon.
And again, hopefully, despite the enormous costs of the Air Force's F-22 Raptor fighter plane, and the slowdown in the procurement of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter for the Navy and the Marine Corps due to the combined budgetary impacts, it is hoped that the problematic F/A-18 Hornet, with its shorter legs and limited payload, which is attempting to perform the bombing tasks of the old A-6 Intruder, the electronic warfare tasks of the EA-6B Prowler and the air-to-air refueling tasks of the S-3 Viking, will successfully hold the line in the meantime, as it performs each task fairly darn well. Our air wings are getting smaller, the planes are more expensive, each aircraft must do more, and the complexity grows for the pilot.
And things are only going to get worse. In FY 2003, in order to afford the increased costs of fuel, the greater pay and benefit costs due personnel and a hurried write down of expected savings, the Navy had to cancel a nuclear submarine, an Aegis destroyer and an auxiliary support ship--to the tune of about a billion dollars. The cost of ongoing operations is impacting our ability to put ships in the water and that is reducing our ability to protect ourselves and our national interests and to adequately project effective military power where and when we need to.
We are currently wandering around yammering endlessly about impacts of entitlements on our national budget, the dangers existing in our ports, the astronomical costs of illegal aliens, the impact of Hurricane Katrina, the high cost of pork and bacon, the missing body armor, the usurious fees extracted on ATM transactions, fears of a tax on the internet, global warming, the increased costs of a cab ride, school tuitions, the spiraling costs of cable TV, increased real estate taxes, county sales taxes, the whiskey tax and the problems with health care and its cost escalation--while our Navy, our first line of defense, is withering on the vine and dying from a lack of funds.
Naval leadership was also spotty in the 1990s, and culminated in the short tenure and eventual suicide of CNO Mike Boorda, following the flap over his medals and the problem with a “V” device. Although Boorda was a known as a sailor's sailor and an innovator, his sudden loss tossed another wrench into the flawed process the naval leadership was using to carve a nitch for itself in the post-Cold War world. That is until al-Qaeda's attack on America commenced on 9/11 and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could exert a more positive influence in goal setting, management, streamlining and the realignments necessary for the asymmetrical warfare to be encountered for the near future. Still, the Navy remains conflicted over balancing the resources needed for the terrorist conflict and the concerns about warfare with a militarized state, like Cuba or North Korea.
We've come a long way from Nelson's storm tossed 700 ships that were forever England and Reagan's 600 ships of the line, no matter how you count them. Yet their global responsibilities remain the same--keep the seaways open for the transit of free trade and to project American military power, anywhere, at any time, in any kind of weather--and to save American lives and property across the waves Britannia no longer rules.
In the middle of the night, when the call comes in to the President of the United States, regardless of his party or affiliation, from a far away land, from a besieged consul or an embattled ambassador, or even from kids in a medical school besieged by rebels, and he hears their painful cries for help, his first thought is to always pick the red phone up and to ask the duty officer in the situation room, “Where are the carriers? How soon can they get there?”
Today the US Navy and the US Marines are fighting world wide terror across the seven seas, al-Qaeda wherever they might appear, the SEALs are in Afghanistan, the Marines are in Iraq, controlling piracy, they're performing armed drug interdictions, protecting and serving on the high seas, performing search and rescue missions, showing the flag in foreign ports of call and escorting damaged foreign flagged vessels to safety.
As the Navy fights for budgets, manpower and to complete its many tasks, we need to recognize that today's US Navy is not the Navy of World War II, or Korea, or even Vietnam. It does not have the numbers of ships it had ten years ago and you won't see photographs of a hundred fighting ships at a forward base preparing for an assault--because today that would mean our entire Navy and, due of maintenance and other duties, we'd just never find them all in one small place together. And while Democratic political leaders decry our economy and liken it to that found during the administration of Herbert Hoover, it is the US Navy that must actually live in those benighted and penurious times today, every day, making do, in ever longer and more dangerous deployments as the number of ships decrease and as the war on terror continues.
We, all of us, owe the senior service much. And for our protection, they must be given the tools to save us, protect us and to go in harm's way. A first rate Navy must be maintained--at the expense of other programs if we must. They must have the strength to stay on station, the power to land anywhere, the aircraft to rule the skies, enough Marines to seize the ground and to free the oppressed, the technology to prevail in any theater, to be backed by the political and the moral will and the logistics to perform these vital tasks as long as there is an America.
The US Navy has been our fire brigade, from the Continental Congress, the first Letters of Marque and the first Enterprise's brave forays in the English Channel, to the men and women who will man the George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), when she's completed in 2008 and joins the US Fleet.
It is time again to think of the US Navy, how big the seas are and how small the ships, how important the mission, and not because of a holiday or a birthday, but because the Navy has always been there, “For those in peril on the sea!”
They've been protecting us since October 13, 1775.
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