https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1991/10/03/making-the-peace-dividend-a-reality/75d4ed2b-2f44-4830-ad87-3d1153913da6/
Rumsfeld was in office from 2001 to 2006. Yet the Peace Dividend is a "Bush thing" (which Wikipedia also credits to Magaret Thatcher for the British version.) It is the 1990s. An article I found discussing Rumsfeld actually claims the Peace Dividend ended when he came into office. Most of the cuts you go on about originated in the 1990s, at the end of the Cold War, and before Rumsfeld. That was the era of "no peer" thinking...because there weren't any.
So, you come out of the gate with your history wrong. Next, you credit poor acquisition to Rumsfeld, and refer to the Navy being forced to revolutionize. However, if you actually knew the Zumwalt program, you would know it was created in the 1990s. Again, before Rumsfeld's time in office. The same with the San Antonio LPDs. They originated in the 1990s. What did originate with the Rumsfeld term of office? In 2002, the Navy began to actively pursue the LCS program, with four experimental hulls. By the time he left office in 2006, USS Freedom had christened. It commissioned in 2008, after he had left office, and the decision to put them into production came even further along. So, you can legitimately blame Rumsfeld for creating an experimental ship program if you want, but nothing further.
If you look at the introduction of all new tech in the history of the Navy, none of it worked well--if at all--when first introduced. Radar was not highly regarded at its outset. Our torpedoes did not work at the outset of WWII. The Navy's AA missile program failed a demonstration in front of President Kennedy, who then directed secondary AA guns be installed on ships. Perry class hulls cracked and leaked like sieves. The Osprey still is considered a very dangerous aircraft. The F-35 has been labeled a "part time fighter." It runs about 35% of the time on average. ANY tech is fraught with issues. If you want to start cataloging tech issues, don't just confine yourself to such a limited list, or era. It could almost just as easily be claimed NOTHING works flawlessly, so anyone who ordered anything, especially anything new, is guilty of poor acquisition.
China started their new naval ambitions in 1996. They bought old Soviet ships at first. Their yards expanded. We could indeed see it. But, it would be a matter of time. Time is money. After 9/11, telling Congress and the American people that China was going to be a big threat in about a decade and a half would not have motivated anyone to invest more into the Navy. There were one, then two predominantly ground wars going on in the Middle East. Money went there.
And expensive technology gets cheaper only as it gets used. For a Zumwalt, LCS, drone, smart phone, whatever to drop in price they have to be put into production. It is clear "technology will get cheaper," but only the working stuff being produced. What will be successful and get produced is not at all clear at the outset. So, where was your prediction in 2002 that China would have working anti ship ballistic missiles cheap enough to sell export versions of to Iran and Houthis, which we would then need lasers to effectively counter? And could you have convinced anyone to heavily fund either such missiles of our own, or the lasers in 2002 when fuel-air bombs on Tora-Bora caves were in the headlines? Your argument "sounds clever." In reality it is unreal.
And you still have not laid out your vision of proper sea control force structure. You can criticize the existing one just fine. Let's see your better effort!
Yup Rumsfeld and his peace dividend was a stake in the heart of a sea control Navy. Unfortunately poor acquisition soon followed. Hulls that leak, combining gears that were worthless, propulsion systems that promised the energy needed but broke down.
Rumsfeld peace dividend forced The Navy to revolutionize and embrace technology that The Navy had no foundational plans how to integrate into training, maintain it or how to apply it at sea or in combat. So billions spent to labeled “technology demonstrator “ Today, it’s one of the reasons lasers, drones etc. Congress slows down. Have a plan then come back for funding otherwise here is enough funding to keep R&D.
No peer thinking went further cutting into skill sets such as ASW and legacy systems such as S-3, ES-3 and KA-6D which were sent to the boneyard stressing both carrier and air wing. Today Boeing reaps a tremendous revenue stream thanks to those cuts.
Cuts didn’t stop there. Support auxiliaries were sent to scrapping or mothballed along with the skill sets. Something breaks back to the yard except the yard wasn’t ready for the increase in maintenance and repair.
Now I would not lay everything at Rumsfeld’s feet , Congress is also to blame for they reaped savings in one hand and gave a blank check to the USN with the other hand. Always have to keep those home districts eating .
But let’s get back to USN mis -management. Nobody in USN Intelligence saw the western banks lending China huge sums of of money to expand its merchant marine, improve its ports and expand its ship building ? Nobody saw that once expensive technology was getting cheaper and becoming available to many bad players including those in the 3rd world? It took two years into President Obama’s first administration to pivot national attention to the Pacific (2011) . A little late.
I forget the name of the admiral and will paraphrase his quote . “We train and prepare for war everyday in The Navy”. Thanks to many contributors that was lost.
Acquisition reform is coming , a unified war fighting vision is not there yet.
I disagree that “40 years of Navy mismanagement … discarded a sea control strategy.” What happened to us was the “peace dividend.” At the end of the Cold War, those who were ignorant of 50 years of history (and the operational philosophy that underpinned the Maritime Strategy) concluded that we had a "blue water" Navy solely optimized for some sort of cataclysmic engagement with the Soviets somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. Without that "blue water" threat, what had to follow was a new "reality:" we would operate “from the sea” in support of operations ashore. “Littoral” quickly became a budget analyst’s weapon and marketing catchphrase. Pity the program that could not reinvent itself by inserting the word somewhere into its requirement. Notice how quickly AEGIS became theater missile defense.
Yes very well said but you missed the 40 years of Navy mismanagement that discarded a sea control strategy . Maybe a good face can be put on the lack of numbers and call it distributed lethality or something like that .
Well said (as usual!), Ralph. I would add that a naval strategy that is an element of a well-publicized overall national military strategy is essential before we talk about force levels and funding. A primary reason for the success of the Maritime Strategy of the 1980’s and the force structure it rationalized, besides the tenure of Navy Secretary Lehman, was that it was understood by those who would execute it (the Navy), by those who were paying for it (the American public), and by those who were the objects of it (the Soviet Union). Creating this environment today will be an all-hands effort, but as the Maritime Strategy showed, it can be done.
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