A follow up to my post from yesterday on the Navy’s incredibly hellish OPTEMPO.
An article appeared on the US Naval Institute Web site by a LTJG who is currently “living the dream” that is the Navy’s nightmare deployment schedule. I know a person who knows him and describes him as “an absolute wizard” while also noting that the current operational tempo on his ship will drive him to “likely exit the navy at his first opportunity. He’ll be making more money than all of us in two years.”
Please go over the USNI website and read it for yourself.
Yet U.S. naval power does not deter Iranian power projection, which is primarily manifested in international terrorism and through Middle East proxies. Carrier air power has limited effectiveness against irregular forces. Even more to the point, if the United States identified Russia and China as its key strategic competitors, the Indo-Pacific as the primary theater for competition, and the Middle East, in Clausewitzian terms, as a “secondary front” or “lesser objective,” why is it sending the bulk of its combat power to the Persian Gulf?
On the other side of the country, the Theodore Roosevelt strike group recently returned from the Western Pacific. Though Western Pacific deployments make more strategic sense than sending the Dwight D. Eisenhower to the Persian Gulf, simply adding more carriers to the Indo-Pacific is not the answer to deterring China. The reality of the missions the Navy is being asked to perform, and the carriers’ perceived vulnerability against China’s sensor-to-shooter networks, suggest now is a good time to rethink the Navy’s carrier fleet and deployment concepts of operations. During my own time operating with CSGs in the Western Pacific, the carrier provided limited utility to regional missions, such as ballistic missile defense and sanctions enforcement against North Korea.
His closing paragraph is a masterpiece.
Above all else, not deploying the Dwight D. Eisenhower or Theodore Roosevelt strike groups would show sailors and Congress that the Navy recognizes its shortcomings and is making a course correction. But until the Navy understands why it should not deploy them, it will remain a fleet without a rudder.
Too bad no one will listen to him – and in a few months, he will be back on cruise burning dead dinosaurs for no useful purpose.