Monthly Archives: October 2012

The Weapons We Need

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Check out this article by Robert Haddick in Foreign Policy. Stealth technology may now be in doubt because of more advanced radars and computers, and so the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, favors larger ships and aircraft that can be adapted more easily because of their size. There is historical precedent for bigger weapons being easier to upgrade. The Royal Navy’s large Queen Elizabeth-class dreadnoughts were modernized between the world wars and remained first-class warships in the Second World War, but the smaller Royal Sovereign-class could not be refitted so easily, and were not as useful.

Make sure to take a look at the article itself by Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert mentioned in the Foreign Policy piece. Greenert makes some interesting points. He is also a supporter of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), which has been discussed at some length in previous posts on this site. I think that the idea of modularity is a very good one, but it is not a panacea. A weapon system, such as an aircraft, that can be employed in a wide variety of roles is fantastic, as long as it does well in all of those roles. A good example is the de Havilland Mosquito from the Second World War. The Mosquito turned out to be one of the best aircraft ever made, and was superb in all the missions given to it by the Royal Air Force.

A mediocre machine, by contrast, one that performed its multiple missions in only an acceptable fashion, would not be of much use, since what you really want is a warplane that is great in at least one area, such as dogfighting or dive bombing or reconnaissance. I think that the LCS, while fine in concept, may prove to be an all-around mediocre ship that does not stand out in any area. That is not a true cost-saving, since the Navy would have, in effect, purchased a sub-standard vessel that does not compare well with other, more narrowly-focused warships. The point made by Admiral Greenert is, however, well-taken. With the pace of technological change, every warplane, ship, or tank deployed by the U.S. armed forces must be capable of being upgraded over an extended period of time to keep it competitive.

 

Marc De Santis

Freedom’s Forge Book Review

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Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II

Arthur Herman

Random House

2012

413 pages

ISBN 978-1-4000-6964-4

Allied victory in the Second World War owed as much to America’s productive muscle as it did to the fighting skills of its soldiers and sailors. Arthur Herman, a visiting scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, attributes America’s astonishing feats of war production to the underlying know-how and drive of American businessmen. The heroes of Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II are industrial titans such as William Knudsen, an automobile production genius, and Henry Kaiser, who built countless Liberty cargo ships quickly and cheaply in simple yards on both coasts. The villains of the book are communist union bosses, who caused needless delays by striking, and incomprehending New Dealers in the Roosevelt Administration, who were convinced that big business was fleecing the taxpaying public.

The achievement of American business was undeniable. The productive surge was underway even before Pearl Harbor, spurred on by Britain’s dire situation, and this head start helped to speed America’s military response after it officially entered the war. America produced more airplanes than Germany and Japan combined. It equipped the air forces of its allies with thousands of warplanes and their armies with thousands of tanks.

The key was the allowance for the profit motive. In order for business to function effectively, it had to be operating of its own accord, and not commanded. Typically, war contractors received their costs back for making an item, along with a small profit. The entire system of war production organized itself. There was no way that a government agency, no matter how large, could have understood, let alone arranged, the vast web of assemblers and suppliers who built America’s war machines, such as the awesomely complex B-29. The industrial renaissance engendered by the war laid the foundation for the generation of prosperity that followed.

Marc G. De Santis

Roosevelt’s Navy Book Review

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ROOSEVELT’S NAVY: The Education of a Warrior President, 1882-1920

James Tertius de Kay

Pegasus Books

292 pages

2012

ISBN 978-1-60598-285-4

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920, a position tasked with overseeing the $143 million budget of the world’s third largest navy, representing 20% of annual federal spending.
Roosevelt faced a daunting task. The core of the fleet was still comprised mainly of obsolete battleships of limited use. Germany was busily increasing the size of its navy with modern ships, and Japan, the victor in the recent Russo-Japanese War, was casting covetous glances across the Pacific. Thirteen of the Navy’s battleships, Roosevelt would claim, were unfit for operations because Congress had not authorized sufficient manpower to crew them.
The outbreak of the First World War in Europe cast naval policy in an important light, and Roosevelt, a staunch supporter of Britain, was realistic about how the war would impact America. Roosevelt was a proponent of preparedness, and helped to shepherd through Congress the 1916 Navy Bill, a $600 million outlay representing the biggest single expenditure on naval armament in history.
FDR proved to be a savvy operator. When American shipowners requested guns to protect their vessels from German U-boats, they were prevented from purchasing the weapons from the Navy because of the determined opposition of anti-war senators. Roosevelt hit upon a clever solution – the Navy would simply “loan” the guns needed, thereby not requiring congressional approval since they were not actually being sold. This set the precedent for the famed Lend-Lease Act of the next war.
In Roosevelt’s Navy, author James Tertius de Kay provides a useful insight into the formation of FDR’s thinking about naval and political power, and how his tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy prepared him for the great conflict of his presidency.

 

Marc G. De Santis

Littoral Combat Ship a Literal Mess

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The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) was meant to be a small and inexpensive naval vessel able to operate close to enemy shores. It was meant to do things that would otherwise imperil a more expensive destroyer. In an earlier post, I questioned why we were building ships that were undeniably weaker than destroyers and yet expecting them to go close to enemy coastlines. Unfortunately, it looks like the LCS is an expensive flop. This Time article says that it is underarmed, not survivable in a hostile environment (isn’t that important for a warship?), and costs two times more than originally planned.

One thing about the Pentagon is that, while it almost always overpays for its equipment, it usually ensures that it has the best stuff on the block. The F-22 fighter jet may also be a super-expensive near-flop, but when it works, it is the most capable warplane ever built. The LCS, on the other hand, which is actually two separate classes of ship, neither of which appear to be worth anything, is less heavily armed than other comparably-sized foreign vessels. The USS Freedom, the lead ship of the Freedom-class LCS, has developed numerous cracks in its hull. That is not good in a boat meant to float in water. The USS Independence, the lead ship in the Independence-class LCS, has suffered from serious corrosion problems. Yet somehow, we are paying much more on each copy than other governments do on equivalent ships.  How does this happen?

Neither ship, apparently, is built to actual warship standards, only commercial grade standards. Both classes of ship have also suffered from quality control problems. Why is the Navy buying craft that are known to be weaker, less survivable, and more costly than any others that are similar to it? At root, it may be that too much money fails to to focus the mind, and that perhaps the Navy does not fear enough the very real possibility that it will be stuck with a large complement of substandard warships.

The U.S. Navy has lately shot back over the Time critique of the LCS found on the Time website last week.   Here is the response of an official U.S Navy spokesman taking on the points made in the first article .  From this response, it appears that the ships are now being built to a higher-than-commercial standard.  Originally, however, it had not been planned to build the LCS this way.  Read both of them and be then decide whether the case for the LCS is still viable.

My primary question is why U.S. equipment always seems to cost so much more than the equivalent item in foreign inventories.  If it is a matter of consistently pushing the technological envelope, then I can understand that.  But if it is because of wasteful spending practices, which is a known and longstanding problem for the Pentagon, then a serious and thoroughgoing revision of American procurement practices is needed.

Naval Warfare: Outer Space Edition

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At long last, someone has addressed the urgent question of naval warfare in space! I am not joking when I say this. Check out this article. I am a fan of science fiction, especially naval science fiction such as the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Most SF novels use a known historical analogue of water naval combat as the basis for how they depict space-based warfare. Typically, this involves super-humongous ships engaged in battle over thousands of kilometers behaving as if they were duking it out at some far future Trafalgar. This analogy is dubious, on the grounds that modern water naval combat is itself far removed from Nelson’s day, or even from the Jutland battle of 1916. Read about the Battle of Midway for just how different things were in the 1940’s! The American and Japanese fleets never sighted each other. Damage was inflicted, almost totally, by aircraft-delivered weapons.

The nature of space battles of the future can’t truly be predicted, because we don’t know what kinds of weaponry will exist or what it will do. My money is on missiles, because they can change direction to strike at targets after they have been fired. Presumably, a laser or plasma gun will only be able to fire in a single direction. If an enemy vessel is far enough away, it will likely evade. So direct fire weapons will probably only be useful at comparatively shorter ranges, unlike a missile.

The major trend of almost all weapons since the invention of gunpowder firearms several hundred years ago is for higher lethality at greater range. Even lower lethality at greater range is still a good bet because it allows the firer to stay outside the range of an opponent’s weapons. Therefore, I think that the longest range weapons that provide the best chance of hitting the target will be the primary weaponry deployed on a spacegoing warship. I don’t envision battleships like the Yamato (yeah, Starblazers!) or the Galactica. No Star Destroyers either. For that matter, I don’t foresee even the USS Enterprise. Instead, I think most space warships will be akin to missile boats or corvettes of some kind or another – fast, inexpensive, and relatively small.

For a much more near-future examination of the potential for war in space, more science fact than science fiction, read this Time magazine piece.