Military Technology 04/2021

US President Joe Biden and his administration have been in office more than 100 days, allowing them time to ‘hit the ground running’ and advance major legislative, strategic and policy programmes. The first-term president has had the benefit of support of a razor-thin congressional majority, enabling him to advance some early, bold domestic legislative victories. Curiously, the president and his Pentagon team continue to stumble on some basic defence matters. One glaring instance of a mismatch in budget, strategy and policy remains the US Navy’s shipbuilding programme. A few early disclaimers. This author, as a US taxpayer, is a proponent of well-focused and funded, research and development programmes, that will provide the US military services with cutting-edge technologies to decisively win across the 21st century battlespace. Further, as a US citizen, I hope and trust the US combatant commanders have the weapons platforms and other materiel today to meet the nation’s strategy and policy objectives, which trickle down to them in very specific tasks and orders. Yet, this issue of MilTech finds the Navy on a rocky, start-of-the-fiscal year trajectory – of trying to wring out savings from within its own budget lifelines to invest in future technologies. The stakes of not being able to adequately harmonise the quest for new and improved technology, with an appro- priately sized and capable fleet to meet current and near-term threats, have never been greater. At the strategic level, the US Navy finds itself continuing to pivot to an era of peer competition with Russia and China. In this contemporary era, the service is ahead of any current and prospective opponents in certain technology fields, including unmanned vehicles and artificial intelligence. At the same time, the Navy and, indeed, the other US services, are in a race to catch up with China in hypersonics, and with Russia, specifically, in cyber operations. So, let’s cut to the chase: The imperative for the US Navy to achieve and maintain a technical edge across its mission portfolio is mostly about adequate funding. And therein lies the rub. At the early points of the Biden administration’s future years’ defence programme and fiscal year 2022 Pentagon budget deliberations, service leaders are looking to find savings within the Navy’s budget from the early decommissioning of cruisers, amphibious ships and, as announced this May, littoral combat ships. This column does not argue for a specific DoD, or even Navy, budget top line, with inflation and other hedges considered to make analysts and crafters giddy, or a specific number of ships in the fleet. Rather, it is a call for a deliberate and logical process that does not include drastic actions like willy-nilly ship retirement decisions to solve short-, and more significant, long- term modernisation problems. It is up to the Navy’s senior civilian and military leaders in the Pentagon’s E-Ring to do their part, and make the fleet of 2025 as important and mission-ready as the future naval forces of 2035 and even 2045. As this issue was published, the winds of conflict were once again blowing around the world, in particu- lar in regions where the Biden administration declared the US has, and will have, vital interests well beyond this decade. In one instance, US government assessments have increasingly pointed to the possibility that China could attack Taiwan within the next decade. The Biden administration and, by extension, the Navy leadership, needs to decide whether the service will be ready to fight in this timeframe, if, in fact, various numbers of cruisers, LSD and LCS are decommissioned as currently envisioned. In one instance, if the Navy-Marine Corps proposal to reduce LSD is accepted, the amphibious forces will lose 25% of their ability to support missions, in particular, in the vast expanses of the increasingly vital Pacific region. And while the two LCS being eyed for early retirement may not be ready to join a high- end fight today against a near-peer or peer competitor, I defer to fleet commanders to respond to whether these ships could be dedicated to completing lower-end missions in US Southern Command or elsewhere – in essence, freeing up cruisers or destroyers from these duties. Further, the focus of having ships ready to fight a peer competitor in 2035 or even 2045 – with full magazines of hypersonic and other forward-leaning weap- ons, all acquired primarily through early ship retirements – is placing US security at risk during the 2021- and near-term eras. The Navy, with support from the Biden administration and Congress, would be well advised to develop a strategy to fund its modernisation without leaning heavily on early ship retirements. The 2025 fleet is as relevant and significant, as the nation’s naval force will be in 2035 or 2045. Marty Kauchak Let’s First Focus on the Fleet of 2025 52 · MT 4/2021 Letter from America After a 23-year career in the US Navy, from which he retired as a Captain, Marty Kauchak regularly covers a broad range of topics for Mönch and is MilTech ’s North American Bureau Chief.