Naval Procurement

Be sure to read this article from Tuesday’s NYT. It highlights a set of problems associated with naval procurement, although I think it misses one of the biggest ones, which is naval doctrine.

It has been a very long time since any kind of meaningful competition took place in the naval construction industry.

Military shipbuilding is a closed mechanism run by two contractors, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. Only they can produce the ships the Navy needs. Mr. Dur of Northrop Grumman calls military shipbuilding “a unique economy.”

Unique it is. Between them, the two contracting giants own the six remaining yards that can build American warships, in Maine, Connecticut, Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana and California. They receive unstinting support from members of Congress representing those states; in turn, the contractors support thousands of smaller suppliers that are often the sole sources for what they make.
Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics do not really compete in the traditional sense, officials say, but share the billions that Congress gives them to build ships, along with benefits like the power to put off paying federal taxes on the profits.

“I don’t think we really have competition today,” Admiral Clark told Congress. “I think we have apportionment. And I think all of the numbers are now clear that apportionment is costing us money.”

The shipbuilding system’s critics say it overlays aspects of 19th-century monopoly capitalism and 20th-century state socialism on top of 21st-century American politics.

“It’s prehistoric,” said Harlan K. Ullman, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group in Washington that focuses on national security issues. “It’s an unbelievably regulated socialist industry, dominated by politics, not rational judgment. Because there is no competition, it’s very difficult to get efficiencies. Admiral Clark is absolutely right. We cannot afford the ships we need because the system is so bloated. It’s a monstrosity.”

What you have here is essentially similar to the system that the Soviet Union used to build its navy. There is no competititon, and thus no incentive to keep costs in line. Producers continue to operate because of the political protection they gain from association with influential Congressmen. Procurement decisions are driven as much by political power as by any tactical or strategic need. In short, the entire system is a disaster. It is precisely what Dwight Eisenhower was talking about when he decried the growing power of the military-industrial complex. The Pentagon, powerful politicos, and industrial giants are tied together in an incestuous relationship that increases costs and decreases effectivness.

However, that’s not all the problem. Some of the fault with the Navy lies with the uniformed personnel and their inability to conceptualize a post-Cold War mission.

The Navy says it can make do with fewer big ships patrolling the oceans. It wants more fast boats and aircraft to fight offshore and upriver, a speedier force to counter terror. But Congress, seeking to sustain America’s shipyards, wants as many big ships as possible.

These approaches are both fundamentally flawed. A few exceptionally powerful ships are not going to solve the problems presented by the 21st century threat environment. The last goddamn thing we need is a concentration of force in a few hyper-capable destroyers, submarines, and aircraft carriers to the detriment of force size as a whole. The DD(X) procurement plans have now been reduced to five ships; while each destroyer will be remarkably powerful, only five will be available for deployment around the world.

This is very troubling. If your purpose is to destroy the High Seas Fleet as it emerges from Helgioland Bight, then it makes sense to have a few very powerful ships, and thus to concentrate more on size and individual capability. This is why you build a few dreadnoughts instead of lots of cruisers and destroyers. However, this Mahanian approach is fundamentally incompatible with the situation the Navy faces today. The Royal Navy of 1900 understood itself as having two missions; sea control and imperial maintenance. The modern US Navy has largely abandoned the latter mission in favor of the former, just as the former has become almost wholly irrelevant. Although a DD(X) may be really great, it’s no better at defending shipping lanes or establishing a local naval presence than an Arleigh Burke destroyer, a Coontz destroyer, or even a Knox class frigate. The capabilities of US ships are largely unmatched in the world; what we need is more ships, not more powerful ships.

So, the problem now is two-fold. First, the procurement strategy is utterly irrational. It provides ships we don’t need when we don’t need them while giving us the opportunity to dreadfully overpay. Second, the Navy has not yet embraced its post-Cold War mission, which should focus much more on imperial maintenance (call it economic maintenance if you prefer) than on sea domination. The former strategy calls for lots of ships that can do lots of things. The latter calls for a few very expensive ships that are really good at a very few things that we probably won’t have to do, anyway.

I think the problem is bigger even than I’ve outlined here. The United State Navy is incapable, physically or doctrinally, of protecting international shipping. As the problem of piracy increases, the nations of Southeast Asia will need to provide for maritime security in some fashion. They may look to the very large Japanese Maritime Defense Force, or they may look to an expanding Chinese Navy. In essence, the refusal by civilians and military personnel to adopt a reasonable approach to naval procurement will, eventually, result in ceding sea control to other countries. Since I’m not a neocon, it doesn’t bother me all that much, but it should bother some people.