Despite all the blowback from folks in certain circles and the continued whining of the surgeaholics, I remain firm in my conviction that getting the hell out of Afghanistan was the right thing to do. Most of the objections to the policy decision have no factual basis anyways – and very much continue to ignore the opportunity cost we paid as a nation for 20 years wasted on a conflict that was never going to come to a good end.
But that said – the removal of forces, whether you agreed with it or not – allows the Navy, at least, and hopefully the other services to “reset” and get back to the actual business for which they were created. The question is whether they will learn those lessons. I tend to doubt it.
For the Navy, there are a whole host of mistakes it made that can now be corrected. Here’s just a short and not all-inclusive list:
This is a great opportunity to put the 5th fleet on a starvation diet.
For too, long the Navy has had to ignore other theaters and commitments while it rotated CVBG’s to and from the Gulf. When I was in Europe, I would watch ships sail past great places to both see and operate solely so they could pass through the canal and do nothing but service the AFCENT ATO. The Navy does not need to do that anymore. There is no need for a continuous carrier presence in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Given that the USAF still has basing rights in several Middle Eastern countries and DGAR let them deploy and operate their TACAIR out of there. And bombers too. The Navy, in the meantime, can work on doing other missions and get back to learning how to operate a battle group as a battle group.
Shorten deployment lengths and get back to a more sane rotation of ships. 6 months portal to portal was meant for a reason.
For the last 20 years, the Navy made a train wreck out of its operational schedule – and it paid a heavy price for bad decisions made early on. As a result, the last 5 years have been brutal for both the surface fleet and carrier aviation. A lot of folks are disgruntled and, thanks to the new retirement system that incentivizes getting out at 10-12 years, if the Navy doesn’t do something to get to a more sane deployment schedule, it will lose a LOT of people. Along the same lines, there has to be some effort to get ships liberty in overseas ports of call. I don’t know how to do that with the spread of the COVID Delta variant, but it has to be done.
The Navy needs to develop a messaging campaign that drives home the point that the Naval Mission is ongoing. Just because the so-called “War on Terror” was primarily a large land war did not mean that the Navy was not doing anything. Actually, it was quite the contrary. And it’s worth remembering that a “war on terror did not burden the real adversaries,” so they got to build and experiment while we trashed our equipment and people. There is no more putting off some recapitalization.
The Navy needs to fix its reserves and bring back reserve hardware outfits. ( And SAU’s).
When I was in Japan, I got to watch the Navy make some truly boneheaded decisions about reserve manpower. Here is one example: The Navy did away with Intermediate Maintenance Augment units – which in the initial months of the Afghanistan fracas allowed the forward-deployed IAMD’s to go to three shifts and increase engine production. Then in 2003, the Reserves trashed them to pay a manpower bill. It was a big mistake. Many of those guys had “day jobs” in aviation, bringing expertise to the table.
By the same token – the Navy’s Active-Reserve Integration (ARI) plan was not what was needed, and getting rid of CVWR-20 ( and perhaps 30) was a mistake. Now that F-35’s are coming into the fleet, it might be possible to reconstitute it. At a minimum, a CVW of Hornets and E-2’s would be a big boost and could possibly help alleviate the over-reliance on contract aviation. Certainly, it might prevent back-to-back deployments that so many squadrons had to do.
I’d also make the same argument for some of the surface assets being decommissioned, but that is a harder argument to make given what I am sure is their material condition. But it could be a stopgap till the Navy gets its shipbuilding act together.
All the services need to look at the idea of individual augmentation and revamp it and scale it down.
Look through the archives here. I’ve been quite vocal about what an abomination the Navy’s IA program was, especially during the early years of Iraq. It cost a good number of people their careers and, sadly, a few their lives. There was no excuse for taking people coming off three deployments in three years and then sending them off to Iraq or Afghanistan for another year – yet still expect them to complete all their career wickets in the same amount of time.
Especially when many of the billets were not needed or should have been given to the Army .
Those people were needed for the Navy’s business. The Navy needs to work to fix both the doctrine that says they are necessary and the manning documents that create the requirement.
This also is in line with the restructuring of the reserves mentioned above.
And then there is this item that the Navy needs to deal with. I’ll just put this out there without comment.
I could write multiple paragraphs about each of these items. But I’ll keep this post short. The bottom line is that the Navy paid a fearful price for the mistaken idea that large land wars were somehow acceptable again ( news flash – they weren’t) when in fact, the Navy needed a maritime strategy to deal with a world that needs naval forward presence. As a result, the Navy could be better and different than it currently is.
That’s water under the bridge now. It’s time not to squander another 20 years, forgetting that the fundamental role of THE Navy and Navies, in general, has not changed since 1945.
Whether the Navy can do it or not – that is still to be determined.