Everyone who reads political blogs on the left hand side of the dial has some idea that Paul Wolfowitz was Donald Rumsfeld's deputy at the OSD. Who Gordon England is and what job he's currently doing is more a trivial pursuits, sailor edition, than part of the generic journo-blogo repitoire of political literacy.
But he is interesting and he is the nominee for Donald Rumsfeld's deputy at the OSD. From his biobraphy at SECNAV
Prior to joining the administration of President George W. Bush, Mr. England served as executive vice president of General Dynamics Corporation from 1997 until 2001. In that position he was responsible for two major sectors of the corporation: Information Systems and International. Previously, he served as executive vice president of the Combat Systems Group, president of General Dynamics Fort Worth aircraft company (later Lockheed), president of General Dynamics Land Systems Company and as the principal of a mergers and acquisition consulting company.That makes him an Iron Triangle arbitrager who made it into the boardroom of General Dynamics and is now doing the revolving door at pseudo-Defense -- first in the chaos that isn't getting any better in Joe Lieberman's and George Bush's colosal blunder -- the Department of Homeland Security, and now at the Navy Department.
Yesterday's piece on the Base Closure and Reallignment Commission made the point that at least two of the uniformed services -- the Air Force and the Navy, are institutions lacking strategic missions. The problem for the Air Force goes even deeper than the end of parity with the Soviets, but I haven't yet written the piece on strategic bombing of electrical infrastructure (which I expect only VJ will read anyway, but writing is for writing), so I'll leave the strategic (non-nuclear) bombing value proposition as an assumed truth.
He made news recently by putting his mark on a bit of procurement policy paper approving the closure of General Dynamics' yard in Maine, making the economic vaporware arguement that the Navy would save $300 mil per unit if all future Destroyers were built at the Litton Industry's yard in Mississippi. The DD(X) procurements are currently split, one hull in three at the Maine yard (Bath Iron Works), two hulls in three at the Mississippi yard (Ingalls at Pascagoula). Fortunately for the Republican majority in the Senate, and several thousand Mainers, and possibly most tax payers if single-source and non-competitive government contracts is a bigger failure of process than 300 million hypothetical "economies of scale and efficiency saved" green stamps in a system that loses billions of dollars on well-known bogosities every year, someone at the OSD, or more likely, someone in politics who cares about the Republican majority in the Senate, scotched Gordon England's clever plan.
But that's ordinary administrative venality, playing with pretend money and sacking an entire town somewhere "out there" in fly-over land. There's worse.
As Secretary of the Navy England should have been figuring how to de-couple the Navy from an obsoleted or vastly down-scaled mission -- being the third leg of America's Strategic Nuclear Deterrence. There's not a lot left to deter, whether what's being "deterred" is run out of Moscow or Beijing. Getting at least half of the SSBN fleet off the operational budget and onto a lower cost maintenance and life-extended budget, and getting more than two crew shifts per boat to maintain manpower should have been his first priority. Instead, like several SECNAVs before him, he's left the SSN and SSBN fleets drift downward with few accelerated retirements. In effect, the only "signal" from the Navy's portion of the "deterence trident" that the Soviet Union, and China, no longer present a credible threat of initiating an intercontinental nuclear exchange, is the fact that no new SSBNs are entering the fleet. Everything is riding down its 30 year plus or minus life-time operating cost curve, mostly undisturbed by policy oversight.
It is the SECNAV's job to notice things like that.
However, if the SECDEF is keen to transform the Army from a stable institution composed of stable commands in Europe and Korea, into an unstable institution composed of ad hoc situational commands, anywhere on a moment's notice, the "agile spear", and the SECNAV's loyalties are ... not to the Navy's permanent mission of bi-coastal blue water defense, then the SECNAV's job is replacing the blue water navy with a brown water navy -- one Rumsfeld can take with him into the littoral combat sphere of operations.
There are some real problems with the littoral combat sphere of operations theory. First, it assumes that the unfortunate recipients of the brown water navy's attentions lack the means to pot shallow-draft, fast, unarmored boats shooting up their shores. Its 100 kg of commodity explosives, a commodity rocket moter, and a guidance system of choice, from joy-stick and wireline to active sensors and integrated, or standoff illuminators. Rinse and repeat.
But lack of surface-to-surface artillary capability in the littoral combat zone as an article of faith is not the only problem with the littoral combat sphere of operations theory. Not only must the natives be passive recipients of the attentions of the brown water navy, but they must lack the means deny use of the littoral zone to vessels other than those shallow-draft, fast, unarmored boats. Its 1,000 kg of commodity explosives or a dozen commodity RPGs, a commodity fast boat, from Zodiac inflatables to Cigarette boats, and a guidance system of choice, from hand-on-wheel to auto-pilot. Rinse and repeat.
But lack of water-born denial capability in the littoral zone of the area of operations, the inability to repeat the War of the Tankers as an article of faith, is not the last problem with the littoral combat sphere of operations theory. These two articles of faith posit littoral combat operations without cause. I'm getting tired of beating around the bush. The "brown water" isn't the Orinocco or the Amazon, its the coast of West Asia, the Persian and Arab and Omani Gulfs.
The littoral combat was for the control of indefensible oil embarcation points, and associated sealift landings for the logistical tail of the on-shore portion of the operation, and the unrestricted transit to and from those indefensible oil embarcation points and sealift landings, and the "reach back" to the ports where forces were "surged out" from, and where tankers and containerships go to and come from to sustain the purpose of the original US vs Other State military conflict.
The last article of faith of the littoral combat sphere of operations theory is that no other blue water navy, either regional or global in nature, will engage the brown water navy in blue water, or otherwise compromise the strategic exercise of sea power confined to brown waters.
With those three articles of faith, the Litorial Combat Ship (LCS) program at the expense off the Next Generation Destroyer (DD(X)) program isn't criminally insane, If those articles of faith are just someone's wishful thinking, and there is a lot of that in the current crop of Cabinet and sub-Cabinet political appointees in the Pentagon, then its a trillion-dollar fiasco, as if it was the Wasp, Hornet and Lexington that went down on December 7th, 1941, leaving the US to fight out the rest of the Pacific naval war with the Arizona, the Idaho, and the California -- ships of the line circa 1914.
That's why Rumsfeld wants England bumped up from SECNAV to DSECDEF. Rumsfeld has a lot more "modernizing" to do. He's got the whole dump-the-armor-for-Intel for the Army program to sell to Congress, That's "Intel" as in "Intelligence" and "Intel" as in laptops-as-a-substitute-for-armor. He needs someone who has the "agile spear" vision, and England appears to have that, and not a lot else. Except for one little detail.
The top three corporations in the defense industry account for 25 cents out of every defense budget dollar, and as MB pointed out last December 7th, is lobbying to both drive the defense budget up to 4% of GNP, and to capture as much of the Defense budget as it can for high margin "missile defense" and exotic and/or space-based or space-expoloiting products, where those top three capture much more than 25 cents on every dollar.
Gordon England is both from GD, one of the big three, he's also from the zoomie / exotics / tech side of GD. SECNAV and stepping on the toes of the black shoes in the fleets was just a step up to the big-time -- SECDEF after SECDEF.
Not my choice for a senior staffer at the OSD, but then again, I count how many attack boats India's got or is buying off the Russians, and how many attack boats the PRC is on-schedule for, all of these are blue water sea-denial assets, and tastes vary.
Posted by EBW at April 22, 2005 06:45 AM | TrackBackI must admit I don't understand your complaint entirely. He's part of the Republican-industrial-prowar mix who doesn't cut funding enough: agreed.
But as head of base closures, he tried to close a base in Maine he believed to be inefficient? Then he's a mean centralizer ignoring how it is "sacking an entire town somewhere "out there" in fly-over land". Uh, besides that Maine is hardly flyover land or whatever that reverse-epithet means, isn't the entire problem with our defense spending that we are unwilling to remove popular local bases? I don't think he had the cojones to do it, and benefitting MS at the same time is fishy, but dammit, we need to stop this absurd gov't waste.
Posted by: Tony at April 22, 2005 12:38 PMTony,
Gordon England isn't head of the Base Closure and Rallignment Commission (please see my prior post for details on who is), he's the Secretary of the Navy, and he made a fairly dubious recommendation concerning hypothetical savings for a Destroyer procurement.
No, the entire problem isn't popular local bases, its missions that no longer exist. The cost to maintain the SSBN fleet, the B-52 wings, and the ICBM silos is vastly greater than one or two bases doing outlier missions, like Maine, or anywhere, so an all-bases-are-equal approach misses the point that some are wicked more expensive, and wicked less "useful", than others.
You can "stop this absurd gov't waste" shutting down anything. There is a post office on Peaks Island that "would save the taxpayer dollar if closed", but that isn't quite as big a savings as shutting down 2/3rds of the strategic deterrent.
Look at it this way. If Peace Action Maine manages to shutdown/convert/whatever BIW so it no longer makes warships, but leaves the Tridents, the Minutemen III/IV/MX, and W80 inventories and the launch platforms intact, is that a win?
Alternatively, if Mainers are responsible for shutting down Bath Iron Works, are the cows of Montana responsible for shutting down the 341st Space Wing? Is the 2nd Fleet's SSBN inventory the "property" of the State of Georgia, to keep as long as it sees fit, or is it federal "property", and subject to federal oversight?
Now, is England a very good SecNav? IMO, No. Would he be a very good DSecDef? If agreement with Rumsfeld is the measure of "good", then yes.
If you lived in Maine you'd know it is a "fly over". Thanks for commenting though.
Posted by: Eric at April 22, 2005 03:15 PMI did read the previous post, which is why I felt confident assuming you also want the government to stop spending so much pork in this area. I think even Sec of Navy has a lot to say about base closures (and part of the problem has been making a commission with no power and then referring all problems to there.
My problem with "fly over" is it's one of those insults I've never heard anyone use, but have heard much more people claim was used against them. As such it's part of a victim mentality where 70% of the nation acts like they're disdained and oppressed by 3 or 4 cities. Such victim-hood spurred on is part of why we lost this election - and then seeing you mention it in a case where the already absurd term is clearly meaningless, was disappointing.
And certainly defending the existence of a base because the town needs it (and thus, its Senator) is part of the problem with base-closing. No, not part really, but IS the problem. If Olympia Snowe convinces the GOP that they close this base and lose Maine, well that kinda explains half of our bloated industrial complex right there.
Anyway yeah England looks like the horrible type of guy you see out of this administration. But as such, I'd rather a guy that thinks modernization is "save the government money from parochial politics" than "take over another country they all said we couldn't", which seems to be the choices we get these days.
Posted by: Tony Vila at April 22, 2005 06:05 PMTony,
I'm probably doing a poor job of it, but I think some weapons systems, and some doctrines that cause those weapons systems to be, and remain funded, are not as defensible -- in my critical framework -- as others. If the Maine bases made useless widgets, I'd still look to the vastly more expensive, and dangerous, and obsoleted for want of Soviet Strategic Missile Forces, American Strategic Bomber, Missile, and Submarine Forces.
Several hundred flights go over Maine every day. There are two or three flights to WDC, about the same to Albany and Chicago, and the half dozen puddle jumpers down to Boston and New York. Bangor doesn't get much more than that. I used to fly, now I don't keep track of the regular commercial flights, but Maine, state-wide, has about as many as Monterey California.
I'm sorry we differ on how to analyse the Brunswick NAS and the Portsmouth yard, and their missions, in the presented context of the BCR Commission, or in the context of a Congress exercising oversight of Defense Appropriations and advice and consent over Cabinet and sub-Cabinet nominations to the OSD.
I don't think I'm a Maine Partisan. I'm fairly sure that having grown up at the NPGS, and at one point in time a rather poor Midshipman, I'm a conservative or cautious naval analyist of the unpaid and highly incompetent variety, but fundamentally, indifferent to Maine's boosterism.
It wasn't local bases that started the Iraq war, it was the Executive Branch, with the cooperation of the OSD.
Fundamentally a Blue Water Navy exists to ensure that maritime nation states resort to diplomacy.
Fundamentally a Brown Water Navy exists to end diplomacy, to embark in colonialism.
The stakes are a lot bigger than an unproven claim of pork or efficiency.
Posted by: Eric at April 22, 2005 07:17 PMEric,
Fundamentally a Blue Water Navy exists to ensure that maritime nation states resort to diplomacy.
Fundamentally a Brown Water Navy exists to end diplomacy, to embark in colonialism.
I understand the first sentence, it's a new way of thinking about it for me; I'm enriched. I don't quite understand the second sentence, however. What is the brown water navy? is that the marines? I'm not readily seeing the link to colonialism.
Posted by: Peatey at April 22, 2005 08:12 PMThe LCS (Littoreal Combat Ship) is the core of the Brown Water vision. Small, fast, gun/missile platforms. They're mission is not to be a barrier to force, hence a means to ensure that states resort to diplomacy, but to penetrate the legal barrier of the coastal extention of geographic sovereignty, either for area denial, or for force projection.
Its gun boats. Not useful against First World maritime defenses, or Second World (ex-Sov, PRC) maritime defenses either. They have no value when held in reserve over the horizon, only in on-shore blockade and raiding or "peace-keeping".
Swift boats on steroids. Its 2010. You've downsized your major ship fleet to buy a super-sized bucket of Super-Sized Swift Boats. What are you going to do with them? Raid the Potomac???
Posted by: Eric at April 22, 2005 08:57 PMoh, duh, you only discussed brown water navy and LCS in the POST, I should READ before asking my stupid questions, sorry about that.
Posted by: Peatey at April 23, 2005 01:24 AMEric, if India/PRC are buying Russian subs, shouldn't we be getting more subs for ASW? or is the LCS good for antisub purposes?
Posted by: Peatey at April 23, 2005 01:37 AMSo far its one boat by India, but India's building boats and is growing a blue water navy. Does the US need more subs for ASW? No, but the life-extension of the existing ASW sub fleet is the core of the Portsmouth yard evaluation issue. If you assume, as Rumsfeld's group does, that the USSR is gone and isn't coming back, then no life-extension for the Los Angeles class boats is useful, nor is Portsmouth. If you don't make that assumption, if you reason that other states will acquire by purchase or build subs, then you reach another evaluation of the present and future sub ASW value.
Is the LCS good for ASW? No. Shallow, narrow waters is as attractive for submarine operations as it is for tank operations. The LCS isn't intended to operate for extended periods under all-weather conditions on the high seas, which is where the subs are (but not the tanks).
Posted by: Eric at April 23, 2005 04:44 AMCouple of points:
>You need to sep. NASB as a basing facility from the P3's it supports. P3's have needed to be redeloyed elsewhere since the dissolution of the USSR...S. U.S., Mid East, etc. Checking on right whale migration and doing other fish counts is nice, but a very expensive waste of military resources.
>As long as the US has carrier task forces, you will see challengers like IRAN and CHINA buying diesel/electric stealth subs to lay in wait and attack any carrier. They are relatively cheap and a very real threat w/hypersonic torpedos that blew up the Karsk...Get a sub to JANES and read all about these highly efficient, underseas weapons.
>BIW is stuck with the skills to build an obsolete blue water Navy. There is now talk that the Navy will totally scrap the next gen. of destroyers, etc. Rapid deployment to hot spots can be nicely done via plane these days, and guided missiles. It's usefullness to the next generation Navy is highly questionable.
Posted by: fjh at April 24, 2005 10:37 AMOK. So you buy the whole reconfiguration mantra. Now do you want to close the obsoleted-by-mantra Maine DoD bases, and leave open the SAC/ICBM/SSBN bases and fund their associated missions and systems?
Since a P3 is just a long-range capable engineering space, I don't think its tasking is limited to ASW, and there are non-ASW threats to assets on the mid-Atlantic coast.
I've made the technical and policy case against the light / rapid navy in the article and prior comments. But thanks for the comment.
Posted by: Eric at April 24, 2005 11:54 AM