5
Resource and Transition Planning
This chapter will address how strategic naval planning, budgeting, and policy impact the prioritization of risks and the mitigation options identified in the previous chapters, as well as budgeting and resourcing for a response. Several broad observations are offered on the limitations of the current programming, planning, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) system to ensure that naval forces are resilient, flexible, and responsive to capability surprise or, conversely, able to deliver it. These observations are followed by considerations for modifying policy to address these limitations. The committee urges a naval-forces-wide awareness of the following common negative responses to surprise in the e-commerce industry:
• First, denial that an event occurred;
• Second, a misunderstanding of the event’s effects; and
• Finally, embarrassment that the organization is surprised but not admitting to any mistakes.
An awareness of these responses is an important step to overcoming them.
The PPBE system is a requirements-based, rational decision-making process to determine cost-effective solutions in force structure that are sufficient to satisfy future defense-related scenarios and degradation of capability. The system’s characteristics, however, usually inhibit it from imparting enough resilience, flexibility, and responsiveness to allow the naval forces to respond to disruptive or tactical surprise. A requirements-based decision process identifies gaps or needed
capabilities in response to a known or projected need but will fail to invest in response to unknown, unanticipated surprise or surprises that only partially fall within the system’s mission. Even if aware of new threats that could emerge, the PPBE system might label them as “acceptable risk” owing to fiscal constraints. These acceptable risk items may later emerge as an intelligence-inferred surprise with much more serious effect than had been predicted.
Every year the PPBE system prepares scenarios modified only slightly to reflect current defense strategies and intelligence on new threats.1 This scenarios framework is susceptible to escalation of commitment, which can lead to continued investment in expensive technologies whose capability may have degraded or to potentially faulty courses of action. A frequent cause of escalation of commitment is making marginal trade-offs between platform capabilities, which may be cost-effective within a set of defense planning guidance scenarios and their concept of operations but creates a brittle force for unanticipated challenges. A historical example is the removal of guns from fighter aircraft in the early 1960s because it was assumed that missiles would reign supreme. Then, guns had to be reinstalled on fighter aircraft to conduct close-in dogfighting during the Vietnam War, when the missile technology proved inadequate and the concept of how air-to-air battles would play out proved faulty. A recent example is removing long-range surface-to-surface missiles from the Navy’s surface ship weapon inventories. This may be a rational decision in light of funding constraints and air power’s availability to cover long-range sea strikes in known scenarios, but it also makes the surface fleet less capable of independent offensive action if an unforeseen surface-only challenge or opportunity emerges.
The peacetime budgeting process allows no “wedge” of undesignated funds for rapid response. During both the Vietnam War and the recent Afghan and Iraqi campaigns, DOD benefitted from congressional supplemental budgets—some with the flexibility for secretary-level discretion on how to obligate funds in response to unanticipated events. During peacetime, however, these supplements do not exist and every last budget dollar is assigned to a specific line program. Therefore, any in-year response to a disruptive or tactical surprise must be funded from existing programs, creating an extra decision process on where to cut resources. Then, funds are identified to address a surprise, no entity is empowered to oversee an overall response to capability surprise.
MITIGATING RISK OF SURPRISE WITHIN THE PPBE PROCESS
A wholesale revamping of the PPBE system to address surprise mitigation is probably not possible. However, scanning discoveries and assessment and mitiga-
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1LTC Boyd Bankston and LTC Todd Key, USA. 2006. White Paper on Capabilities Based Planning, Draft, Presented at the MORS Conference, Capabilities-Based Planning II: Identifying, Classifying and Measuring Risk in a Post 9-11 World, McLean, Va., March 30. Available at http://www.mors.org/userfiles/file/meetings/06cbpii/bankston_key.pdf. Accessed May 30, 2013.
tion alternative analysis should be integrated into the PPBE cycle. One way of doing this is to have the red team’s results during the last budget cycle integrated into the directions for the next cycle. Another is end-of-cycle reviews that explicitly consider ways to increase the resiliency of the naval forces to anticipated and unanticipated surprise.
As an illustration, consider what could happen if there is a denial of access to space: forces might operate in a degraded electromagnetic environment owing to the loss of satellite information. Seizing individual command initiative to meet the well-understood intent of the commander could be one good way to respond to this anticipated surprise. Individual command initiative and innovation during wartime should be ingrained in the naval forces culture through training, education, evaluation, and reward. However, individual command initiative must also be supported by technical capability at the outset by ensuring, as much as possible, that each command level is self-reliant in executing its own weapon systems’ kill chains. For example, a cost-effective budgeting process would devalue individual ship or unit organic aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) as redundant and would favor shared resources to support search and detection among several ships or units. The shared resource, however, becomes a liability when it is lost because of communication failures or enemy fire. Likewise, a shared timing source needed to provide coherence between ships/units and weapon systems makes sense, but only until that timing source is lost. A local master timing clock for single and group ship/unit operations will add resiliency to locally controlled operations in a degraded electromagnetic environment. A dedicated step inside the naval forces PPBE cycle to increase force resiliency by enhancing an individual command’s ability to be self-reliant is warranted. Local ability to conduct a full kill chain with organic assets is a good litmus test for enabling command initiative.
A POLICY OF RESILIENCE TO MITIGATE
RISK AND ENHANCE RESPONSE
A considered policy to review weapon system rigidity resulting from decades of cost-effective planning, marginal trade-offs within set defense planning scenarios, and high-end platform design is warranted. There are three ways to build resilience into weapon systems that are subject to capability surprise:
• Enhance weapon system/platform design to include the capacity for quickly adding or modifying capability,2
• Increase the mix between high-cost multimission weapon systems/platforms and less expensive single-mission weapon systems/platforms, and
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2Defense Science Board. 2011. Report of the Defense Science Board 2010 Summer Study on Enhancing Adaptability of U.S. Military Forces, Part A: Main Report, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, Washington, D.C., January.
• Build redundancy into the weapon systems/platforms to accomplish required missions.
In the face of budget cutbacks, the last option will not be explored, because increasing weapon systems/platform redundancy is the most expensive option.
Designing weapon systems/platforms so their technical capability can be rapidly added to or modified (without identifying that capability) will provide options to deliver or respond to a disruptive surprise. A successful example of excess capability build into platforms is the Spruance-class destroyer family. When commissioned, USS Spruance was about 8,000 tons and described by a quote attributed to VADM Mustin: “I can walk a country mile on that ship without finding a single weapon system.” The last Spruance destroyer, the USS Cushing, when decommissioned displaced 9,800 tons, carried vertical-launched Tomahawk missiles, had a Kevlar-enforced superstructure, and possessed advanced active and passive antisubmarine warfare (ASW) systems not even envisioned during the original programmed buy. Extra space allows for needed capability growth, particularly in warships expected to stay in service for 25 or even 40 years.
Enhancing the capacity to add capability may also be extended to onboard weapon systems/platforms, sensors, and electronics. The Littoral Combat Ship class, although initially challenged with production issues, is exploring modularity for entire missions. If the platform and mission module integration issues are resolved, the committee views the flexibility to create new mission modules in response to unforeseen operational and technical challenges as an advantage for this program.
The issue of weapon system/fleet mix has led to continual debate among naval historians, academics, and professionals. In a cost-constrained environment, when envisioning a low-threat operating environment or scenarios where there is little risk of loss of life or ships being damaged, building fewer but more expensive weapon systems/multimission ships is economically rational. More capability can be provided at sea with fewer hulls, crew, logistics, and total lifecycle costs. When, however, there is a risk of that ship being damaged or sunk where there is a high probability of tactical surprise attack, the reverse is true—that is, cost-effectiveness becomes “too many eggs in one basket.” A damaging hit on a guided missile destroyer (DDG) hull is degradation not just of the fleet’s air and missile defense capacity but also of ASW; antisurface, maritime interdiction operations; support for Marines ashore; and helicopter-related-missions as well. Building more less-expensive, single-mission ships may increase fleet resilience, to absorb the impact of an unanticipated threat at sea, and provides more options for response through geographic dispersion as well as greater ship availability for quick modifications. The committee does not endorse a complete overhaul of fleet composition, but it encourages a review of the force mix with the added considerations of the surface fleet’s capability apart from high-value unit protection and ballistic missile defense (BMD), and resiliency to surprise as the determining factor.
OPERATIONAL SCENARIOS WITH ANTICIPATED
SURPRISES AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS
When the three surprise scenarios were selected for inclusion in this report, there was concern about several operations where issues were known to exist that could provide the catalyst for future anticipated surprise. Historical review and wargaming these scenarios might raise further concerns that should be addressed by aggressive policy action to mitigate the known issues. These scenarios include the following:
• Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) or a major U.S. government policy change,
• Global maritime security operations, and
• Maritime defense of the United States.
The issues related to contingency response by HA/DR primarily involve defining roles and coordinating efforts of a number of naval forces. For example, establishing formal lines of communication and coordination domestically between U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) districts and Navy regions and conducting exercises to develop contingency plans will foster a better command-and-control system to use during a domestic natural disaster. Internationally, USCG vessels are accepted much more readily than U.S. Navy ships by governments requiring assistance. For example, USCG ships were quickly granted entry into the Black Sea to assist the Georgians following the conflict between Russian and Georgian forces in the former Soviet republic. Fleet commanders should be encouraged to review their areas of responsibilities for regions where this is concern and to plan for USCG inclusion into the response. The responsiveness and flexibility naval forces have demonstrated in the past is recognized, such as using aircraft carriers as Army helicopter platforms in Haiti. In fact, the inherent excess capacity resident on an aircraft carrier without its air wing allowed for its use as an Army seabase and reinforces the argument in the previous section that excess capacity creates flexibility in response to unforeseen events.
An unanticipated major U.S. government policy change—one that deviates from long-established contingency or war plans and requires new or revised plans that have not been tested, wargamed, or practiced—was also raised as a possible surprise on naval forces. Although the fleet is well equipped and experienced in crisis action planning for operations, the operational commands do not have the ability to assess the implications of major strategic shifts in a timely manner. Here, naval educational assets like the Naval War College and Naval Postgraduate School could be tapped to lead policy change and fleet assessments using wargaming and campaign analysis.
The other two scenarios, where threats are known yet organizational response issues exist that require policy attention to avoid intelligence-inferred surprise, are related to maritime security, both globally and in defense of the homeland.
Globally, the United States is economically dependent on the free flow of goods and communications on and under the sea. Closure of a major shipping choke point or severance of an undersea cable terminal should be assessed for its impact on the economy and potential mitigating responses developed; at the same time, possible courses of action to deter the event from happening should be taken. A response will require coordination between the United States and regional governments, which will be accelerated if fleet commanders consider such events now and establish contacts within regional navies and coast guards of concern. Our nation’s ports and waterways at home are vast, challenging the USCG to provide sufficient federal coverage. Although the Coast Guard works closely with state and local law enforcement agencies on patrols and response, a major security event in a waterway or port might require the USCG to request Navy or Marine Corps assistance in addition to their support for the U.S. Northern Command through the Naval Component Commander. This is not a familiar operation for these forces and should be considered, gamed, and practiced.
ORGANIZATIONAL AND BUDGET IMPLICATIONS
As recognized in other areas of this report, capability surprise impacts missions, while the PPBE and acquisition programs are weapon-system- and platform-centric. Likewise, the combatant commanders are concerned about mission accomplishment, not platform delivery. This creates an inherent hurdle for the budget process to respond to a capability surprise. Because our defense budget is public knowledge, its constraints provide a transparent window onto our strategy formulation, which hostile countries may use to develop their own asymmetric naval strategies.
To overcome these shortcomings in the face of preparation for surprise, the naval forces need to define and develop a resource authority responsible for the prioritizing, decision processing, and resourcing the responses to capability surprise. This authority should be informed by the scanning, assessment, and mitigation analysis efforts. It should be concerned with force and fleet resilience to meet unanticipated surprise, communicate frequently with commanders, and have direct influence on the budgeting process. In addition it should oversee rapid prototyping, tactical development, and acquisition program adjustments and should be in a position to force the introduction of any capability to respond to or deliver a surprise. This authority must have influence to coordinate a naval-wide solution (USN, USMC, and USCG) and coherence among service platforms. It should have the benefit of funding with discretionary power to allocate quickly for rapid response. Outside of the past customary supplemental funding from Congress, this ability does not exist. Therefore, another role of the authority will be to determine the best options for ongoing funding of these activities. This would be the role of the committee’s recommended surprise mitigation office.
As an illustration for the surprise mitigation office’s role, the committee
uses Scenario 2—a social media crowd emergence. If scanning, assessment, and mitigation alternative analysis efforts show that an adversary has the ability to use social media to inspire a crowd to emerge in a location that would impede or embarrass the United States, the authority would review the current tactics, technologies, and procedures (TTPs); query intelligence-monitoring capabilities in social media; assess with the commanders the potential impact; and evaluate current and programmed programs to intrude, misdirect, and/or respond in the social media. If there is a funding shortfall, this threat would require prioritization against other potential vulnerabilities for resources. Once resources are assigned, the authority would oversee any technical prototyping, testing, and force introduction.
INTEGRATION AND INTEROPERABILITY
The committee learned that the Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO) is considering creation of interorganizational teams to set warfighting capability baselines (WCBs) in order to address system-of-systems integration and interoperability (I2) to enhance mission effects. This effort would be under the guidance of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) N9I and N2/N6. The committee applauds the proposal as an effective intermediate step toward creating the authority called for in the preceding section. An annual review in the form of WCBs of naval-forces-wide missions and prior to the program objective memorandum (POM) process allows a venue for an existing knowledgeable team to address short-term capability surprise through a range of responses, from change of tactics to resource allocation. Use of the systems commands’ technical authority to enforce interoperability requirements for platform program managers should be combined with an award structure for the program managers to inspire a more systems-oriented approach and mitigate self-imposed surprise—namely, mission degradation due to interoperability shortcomings. The I2 proposal should be a top priority for Navy leadership to immediately enhance warfighting at modest cost. Once implemented, I2 should be shared with USMC and USCG leadership for possible integration across the naval force structure.
A consistent theme is that the demand on the fleet’s time to conduct maintenance, complete basic individual training, and finish workups to meet deployment requirements leaves little time for systems and tactics training, red teaming, true experimentation, or time to think about reaction to unanticipated events. With a decreasing budget and fewer ships, this problem needs considerable attention. If the desire to maintain a high level of forward presence with a smaller fleet affects the preparation for a complex naval conflict, then how will new tactical and operational challenges be uncovered and addressed? A Center for Naval Analyses
(CNA) review of historical U.S. naval deployment strategies may provide alternatives to the current deployment pattern, which has remained basically unchanged since the Second World War.3 With a smaller fleet and fewer sailors, deployment cycles may have to be rebalanced, with more time for true preparation.
This section of the chapter reviews the current status of resourcing for preparation and response, including the difficulties of explicitly resourcing programs to prepare for, counter, and create surprise. Preparing naval forces to deal with capability surprise is implicit in many of the routine resourcing activities that shape the standing force.
The resourcing process is highly structured, at least in principle, to field a force capable of dealing with a range of missions or contingencies that flow from the National Security Strategy, as shaped by statutory mandates and service doctrine. These directed missions and contingencies define the capability envelope within which the adequacy of our naval forces’ capabilities is routinely assessed. However, the boundaries of this nonsurprise envelope are sufficiently imprecise and the assessment tools rudimentary and incomplete such that there is always some doubt that the risks of accomplishing the intended tasks are acceptably low.
Said another way, the pressures to further improve directed capabilities create a demand for such capabilities that usually exceeds available resources, leaving little room for the resourcing of preparations for surprise. But some such resourcing does exist. For example, the specifications for some types of military equipment include requirements for operations in environments and situations that are more demanding than found in the routine mainstream planning scenarios. Examples include provisions for operability in arctic conditions and in situations where nuclear weapons have been used or environments that contain chemical and biological hazards.
At the other end of the spectrum, some farsighted operational commanders do indeed use discretionary funding to conduct outside-the-box experiments and training exercises that provide a modicum of hedging against surprise. And some fraction of service science and technology funds is routinely allocated to investigating nontraditional approaches to potential but ill-defined future needs.
Overall, however, the resourcing of preparations for dealing with surprise, both self-imposed and external, is minimal. In the absence of explicit guidance, such preparations as may exist and be proposed are constantly threatened by mainstream demands. The result is a national maritime posture that is at excessive risk of being unprepared to deal with the types of surprises that have arisen in the
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3Peter M. Swartz with Karin Duggan. 2011. U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts (1970-2010): A Brief Summary, Center for Naval Analyses, Alexandria, Va., December.
past and will surely arise in the future or that is incapable of creating surprises that can be delivered to an opponent.
Members of the committee are well aware that design and payload margins are expected of mission platforms as part of the acquisition system. For example, even decades ago computing hardware was specified with a significant reserve, and ship centers of gravity and mast clearances were designed in anticipation of likely additional payloads. Further, as stated in the text, classes of ships such as Spruance and littoral combat ships anticipated modular changes as part of the design philosophy. Still, in recent years the need has arisen for platform life extensions that require additions never anticipated when the platforms were designed. For example, addition of the missile defense mission to the Burke-class Aegis destroyers is driving a need for radar aperture larger than can be accommodated. Further, the power and cooling required of a possible future addition for directed-energy weapons may be accommodated on the new DDG-1000 class but would be constrained on a Burke class. It therefore appears to the committee that the Navy should undertake a more comprehensive look at potential margin needs for the much longer planned lives of platforms. This is discussed further in Chapter 6.
Finding 5a: Management processes by which resourcing decisions are made and that potentially impact preparations for capability surprise among U.S. naval forces appear to be inadequate and to lack reserve capacity. In particular, there appears to be limited flexibility in the way of design margins for platforms and payloads to respond to a range of potential capability surprises, and it further appears that the Department of the Navy’s investment in science and technology is insufficient to provide a robust array of technology building blocks that allow a rapid response to a broad range of potential surprises.
Recommendation 5a: The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), the Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC), and the Commandant of the Coast Guard (CCG) should add to their respective program planning guidance an explicit provision(s) that allows them to resource unit considerations and equipment design specifications, such as adding some adequate design margins into platforms and payloads in response to potential capability surprise.
