Tuesday - June 01, 2004
What will become of the Navy?
We
don't have total and absolute control of the seas, but it is difficult to
imagine our mastery of the oceans to be any more complete that it currently is.
This is not only because we are so powerful, but it is also because none of the
nations with strong navies are interested in opposing us at
sea.
This is all good news. But it
never fails that once a nation is no longer challenged, it stops doing what it
takes to remain unchallenged. Today I read in my copy of the latest edition of
the U.S. Naval Institute's
Proceedings
a recommendation by a Captain John Byron that the US Navy drastically downsize
its fleet and concentrate almost exclusively on supporting land
warfare. This seems to be a
dangerous idea.
Captain Byron makes some interesting points about
breaking the political power within the navy of the different warfare
communities, and makes a few other suggestions that are all premised on the
assumption that our naval supremacy cannot be challenged. It's interesting that
he insists on silencing the professionals that are most knowledgeable about
naval matters, and that he does so by a scandalous method of argument. By
pre-emptively accusing anyone with the necessary knowledge to intelligently
counter his argument of being part of a vast naval professional conspiracy, he
is trying to make his argument equally unchallengeable.
The gist of his proposal is to
completely abandon everything we've done that has created our powerful position
on the world's oceans and reduce our naval requirements to support only two
missions.
Mission One:
Maintain a sufficient fleet-in-being as hedge against potential threats to
freedom of the seas, retaining enough industrial, technological, and training
infrastructure to remain superior to any nation that might pose a blue-water
threat. The Navy must drastically downsize its capital ship inventory . .
.
Mission Two: Support
land warfare.
Of course, he doesn't
come up with any clear explanation as to how we are to maintain sufficient power
on the high seas and reduce the already small fleet at the same time. I won't
say it isn't possible, but let's just say I'm skeptical without a more in depth
analysis. Who is qualified to do that analysis? Why the professionals in the
Navy, of course, who have made it their life's mission to study this very
question.
But Captain Byron wants no
one who can do such an analysis to question his vision. He demands that they be
silenced.
Here's what he said. In a
list of requirements for his vision to succeed he includes this
doozy:
Break the backs of the
three dominant warfare communities to stop perpetuating a blue-water navy frozen
in the Cold War. As long as they call the tune, the surface, submarine, and
aviation communities will starve Mission
Two.
What vision! What brilliance!
What rot!
This is like saying, let's
cut the number of fire stations by two thirds, but don't ask the fire
department's opinion on the matter, they might
disagree.
Captain Byron is insulting
every professional naval officer with his cockamamie ideas and he knows it. He
proves his intent to insult them with his a priori assumption that they won't
like his ideas and must be pre-emptively
silenced.
With all due respect, Captain
Byron needs to be challenged vigorously and immediately.
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