Romeo Squared

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Article recommendation: The Status Quo Killed 17 US Sailors. The Navy Must Change.

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Jon Paris nails it in this piece for Defense One about the need for the U.S. Navy to change its surface warfare officer education system:

I was too polite in my original study. To be clear: our Surface Warfare Officer community killed those sailors. It is not that we should change – we must! It took 17 deaths to get the admirals’ attention. Was that the price of changing the status quo?

In the aftermath, I stayed quiet. Those of us who go to sea know that this is not a Seventh Fleet issue. It is not a forward-deployed issue. It is not a fluke, nor was it unexpected. These tragedies could have happened on any ship in any fleet at any time. The issue is a community built on a foundation of generalism and mediocracy, whose leadership manifests as an anti-body to change, and whose members’ lives depend too much on luck. There are good people in the community. Their success and competency comes from their own dogged determination and in spite of their community’s misplaced priorities. They are the exception, not the rule. Imagine if this was the case in the Naval Aviation or nuclear communities.

It is an old paradox that the U.S. Navy finds navigation so simple that no-one needs to study it thoroughly but at the same time so difficult that they have invented a labyrinth of superfluous workflows for the practice of navigation.

As I showed in my Critical review of lessons from US warship collisions, this leads to errors. Navigators are simply unable to read the signs around them to correctly decipher what is going on.

I sincerely hope that the U.S. Navy follows the advice of Jon Paris to introduce an educational model based on career tracks and specialties. Paris refers to this as the British model where officers have either an engineering or an operations specialty. I would refer to this as the universal model since it is pretty much the agreed upon standard.1

It was heartbreaking to read this report from the court-martial of Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock, Officer of the deck on USS Fitzgerald. Her actions contributed to the deaths of seven sailors on her ship.

Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock cried during her court-martial at the Washington Navy Yard. […] “Not a day goes by where I haven’t thought about what I could have done differently,” she said. “There is nothing I can do now but take responsibility.”

Coppock said her success as an officer of the Navy was through the support of her sailors. “And then, when it mattered, I failed them,” she said through tears. “I made some tremendously bad decisions and they had to pay the price for them.”

Sarah Coppock did not have the necessary education to bear the responsibility she was given. She was told that she was good enough, and how could she know differently. But why does the professional community not protect its members against this? It is a mystery that the Surface Warfare Officer community as a whole has not stood up and demanded a proper education system.

  1. I struggle to think of any other country that doesn’t have at least two specialized career paths for its naval officers, but there probably is someone out there. ↩

Lessons for Western armies from the war in Ukraine

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Liam Collins has an interesting look at the lessons armies can learn from the war in Ukraine on the website of The Association of the United States Army.

He describes the war in Ukraine as “World War I with technology” – a kind of frozen situation where the greatest threats facing a Ukrainian soldier are snipers and Russian artillery, but where modern technology is applied in that process.

Collins identifies several things that armies can learn about fighting a near-pear adversary. Some of these are lessons that need to be relearned after almost a generation of counter-insurgency operations, and others are truly new.

The list includes:

  • Electronic warfare: Russia has deployed a range of EW technologies. Armies need to relearn to minimize radio transmissions, and tactical operation centers must run their antennas hundreds of meters away to avoid artillery fire. This will make communications much more complicated, and commanders will have to get comfortable with not knowing the status of their units at all times. Soldiers need to rely less on GPS, so skills related to navigation with a map and a compass will be important again.
  • Information operations: The West needs to get used to information operations again. 1 The fact that Russia has targeted individual soldiers and their families creates a new challenge in information operations.
  • Air superiority: We can no longer expect undisputed air superiority.
  • Camouflage: With the proliferation of UAVs, camouflage is essential for survival. A unit may find itself in a rain of artillery shells just minutes after being spotted with a drone.
  • Cyber: Russian hackers have been extremely active in Ukraine. The list of networks and technologies that have been penetrated is impressive. This is a challenge for an army which is used to sharing a lot of information on many different networks.
  • UAVs: Developments in UAV and counter-UAV technology will push the boundaries of our understanding of the concept of air superiority.
  • Dense urban terrain: The West needs to get better at managing urban warfare.

The article is well worth reading. It is the first piece in a recurring column that the Modern War Institute at West Point will make where they examine the implications of “modern war”.

  1. Collins seems to be of the opinion that the West has not conducted information operations since The Cold War. I think this is a problematic assumption. But I do agree that we largely stopped preparing our own societies against the information operations of our adversaries. ↩

Leadership culture and a reckless instructor led to U.S. Navy plane crash

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The U.S. Navy has finished investigations of a plane crash with a T-45C Goshawk aircraft from the Training Squadron 7. The accident happened on 1 October in Tennessee. That reports Navy Times.

Investigators found that the crash happened as the result of recklessness on the part of the pilot-instructor. The instructor flat-hatted just before the crash, which means to fly low in an airplane in a reckless manner for the thrill of it.

The official report found that the instructor was overly confident, nonchalant, and aggressive at low altitude training with limited awareness of the performance capabilities of the aircraft.

At the time of the accident, the instructor had decided to deviate from the approved route and simply follow the terrain. 10 seconds before the crash he directed the student to perform a hard right turn at low altitude. Unfortunately the speed was too slow for the rising terrain in front of them, and the attempted recover maneuver was beyond the limitations of the aircraft which entered into a stall. Due to the low altitude there was not enough reaction time for the aircrew to eject safely.

I find it commendable that the report points to cultural explanations for the crash. The reckless instructor was himself a product of a leadership culture which allowed the safety standards to slip. Apparently it had become commonplace in the squadron that instructors lacked sufficient qualifications, and that students were challenged with techniques that were too advanced for them to handle.

Fear of missile defense traces back to World War II for Russia

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Austin Long has a thorough account of the Soviet and Russian fear of Western missile defense capabilities in War on the Rocks under the title “Red Glare: The Origin and Implications of Russia’s ‘New’ Nuclear Weapons”.

He explains Putin’s revelation of new nuclear weapons in his March 1st speech as grounded in an old Russian concern with Western missile defense technology. The experience of being unable to respond to the German air campaign during World War II caused Stalin to focus intensely on the ability to retaliate in case of a nuclear attack. Already at that time there was talk about the dangers of an American missile defense which would leave Russia vulnerable to a first strike.

So when the Russian leadership is determined not to let an American missile defense threaten the retaliatory power of Russia, it is in line with a long history of military thinking.

So what does this mean for the nuclear relationship? First, U.S. leaders should recognize that no amount of explaining of the technical limitations of present or even potential U.S. missile defense capability is likely to change long and deeply held Russian views about missile defense competition.

Second, and more importantly, there is probably no future for formal, treaty-based U.S.-Russian arms control if the negotiations do not cover missile defense. The Russians sought unsuccessfully to include missile defense in the last round of strategic arms control negotiations (2009-2010). Today, with their “new” systems, they have a stronger bargaining position.

On the scholarship-policy gap in foreign politics

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John Glaser has written an interesting commentary on War on the Rocks under the title “Truth, Power, and the Academy: A response to Hal Brands”. It is about the relationship between academic expertise and the political establishment in the United States.

Last fall, Hal Brands wrote an article in The American Interest in which he points out that there is a “scholarship-policy gap which is real and widening”. It seems that the scholars and politicians simply do not agree on any issues of importance, so there is little basis for the view that academia informs policy making. Hal Brands largely blames the scholars for this situation. Apparently academics work in a secluded universe where they don’t have to deal with the complex realities of the world and do not face any penalties for being wrong.

John Glaser agrees that there is a problem, but he very much disagrees with everything else in Hal Brands’ article.

“Most of Brands’ account, however, is just flat out wrong. The evidence repudiates the suggestion, for example, that policymakers are held accountable for their ideas. […] The scholarship-policy gap persists because the people and ideas that drive foreign policy in Washington are not held accountable for their failures, and instead are often rewarded with a lifetime of high-status revolving door positions in the policy and think tank worlds.”

I really enjoyed Glaser’s argument about a kind of perception bubble in the political establishment. If your views fall outside the established conventional truths, you are disregarded. This is a result of several factors such as government’s inherent resistance to challenges to the reigning doctrine, socialization and status quo bias, self-interests and palace politics, and the desire of think tanks to receive funding.

So if you want to remain in business in politics, it is much safer to work on how to operationalize the existing doctrine than to question the assumptions. But the trend is dangerous for the ability to make wise foreign policy decisions.

Podcast recommendation: WOTR – A big debate about a little nuke

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There is a great discussion about Russia and nuclear weapons in this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast.

The panel is terrific. Olga Oliker is brilliant, Frank Miller is wrong about most things concerning Russia but argues his case very well, and Vipin Narang has deep technical insights. Ryan and Usha do a fantastic job of moderating the discussion between the guests who clearly represent very different views.

The discussion follows up on the new U.S. Nuclear Posture Review which has some controversial assumptions about Russia’s nuclear doctrine and on Putin’s announcement of a new suite of nuclear weapons.

If the nuclear discussion interests you at all (and it should), this is a must-hear.

Predator retired

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Joe Chapa in War on the Rocks:

Today, the U.S. Air Force “sunsets” the Predator, permanently retiring it from service. Though individual squadrons have been transitioning from the Predator to the Reaper for some time, that transition is now complete. This provides a good opportunity to look back at the Predator to learn what we can of its impact on contemporary war and on future combat.

Few weapons have changed warfare the way the Predator drone has.

Comparison between U.S. and U.K. naval officer training

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There is an interesting comparison of U.S. Navy and Royal Navy Officer Training in the March edition of Proceedings. Dr. Anthony Wells has experience from both navies and insights into their training programs.

In short, Wells is not impressed by the U.S. seamanship education. He suggests the U.S. Navy can learn a lot from their British counterparts.

I wholeheartedly agree. My critical review of U.S. warship collisions was far from flattering for the U.S. Navy. It can only be described as irresponsible to have people in charge of large ships without proper education in seamanship and navigation.

My own anecdotal experience with the Royal Navy and the seamanship of British officers is that they are very competent.

U.S. Nuclear Posture Review misses the point on Russia

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Nuclear Posture Review cover pageThe Pentagon published its Nuclear Posture Review for 2018 (NPR) earlier in February. It dramatically changes some assumptions about nuclear weapons that were laid out in the previous NPR from 2010.

The new NPR concludes that there has been a deterioration in international relations with a return to great power competition and a more complex threat environment. This causes the Pentagon to advise an ambitious plan to enhance the nuclear capabilities of the United States.

Of special interest is the American focus on Russia’s so-called escalate-to-deescalate strategy. The idea is that Russia would escalate a conflict to intimidate the West into accepting peace on Russia’s terms. According to the NPR this has lowered the nuclear threshold because Russia will use non-strategic nuclear weapons to achieve this goal. The West does not have the same arsenal of non-strategic nuclear weapons as Russia, and according to the NPR this may lead Russia to believe that they could get away with a small scale nuclear attack. Therefore the NPR suggests an increased focus on establishing an American arsenal of non-strategic nuclear weapons.

…Continue reading

U.S. military budget for 2018 blows the boundaries of reason

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US military spending is an interesting topic. On the one hand there is a widespread conception among military personnel that the military is suffering under severe budget constraints. On the other hand the actual spending on the military is very high — and much higher than during the Cold War.

Now the 2018 budget is ready. William Hartung has a good comment on the agreement:

“Today the Senate reached a budget deal that would increase spending for the Pentagon and nuclear weapons to a mind-blowing $700 billion this year, while locking in an even higher figure for 2019. This would put the Pentagon budget at one of its highest levels since World War II, and many, many times as high as the military budget of any potential adversary. Do we really need these huge sums of money to defend the country?

The short answer is no.”

This reminded me of this episode from the War College podcast about the issue and myths of American defense spending. The essential point is that the budget is ridiculously high but the money is wasted on prestige weapons that are so expensive that they are impractical to use. Organizational infighting also contributes to the poor value that the United States gets from its defense Dollars. The tendency to oversell the features of new weapons and underestimate the production costs means that almost all procurement projects blow the budget.