Small surface ships will struggle in high seas

The sea is a tough place, and, given that stormy seas often damage ships and endanger sailors, the U.S. Navy has habitually worked to keep vessels out of harms way since 1944. But over the past 30 years the Navy became so risk-averse that it has kept surface ships out of several strategic-but-stormy seas for decades.

That retreatand the general loss of sustained heavy-weather experience by the cost-conscious post-Cold War U.S. Navyhas had real consequences. As the memory of sustained, stormy weather operations faded under the weight of a tough anti-terror operational tempo, the number of U.S. sailors and other naval tastemakers who understood that battle in high seas demanded ships with particular sea-keeping features dwindled away.

A troubling indication of that can be seen in Secretary of Defense Mark T. Espers February 27 letter to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, in which he argued for more smaller surface combatants; greater reliance on lightly and optionally-manned ships. Do he and other similarly minded policymakers understand that they may be arguing for a fleet that will be more effective fighting from a pier than out in the contested seas the future Navy is meant to secure?

Sea States Mattered:

Up until a little more than 18 months ago, almost an entire generation of U.S. sailors lacked experience sailing in the rough seas north of the Arctic Circle. In late 2018, Carrier Strike Group Eight was the first U.S. aircraft carrier battle group to operate in the Norwegian Sea in 27 years. The experiencealong with several othersshowed that the Navy had lost a lot of old operational secrets and practices needed to project power in stormy weather.

The same can be said for design. Back in the Cold War, naval designers grew surface combatants to, in part, better prosecute combat in the high seas. The enormous displacement of an old Cold War mainstay, the Spruance class destroyer, was controversial. At over 8,000 tons, the Spruance was twice that of Americas previous front-line destroyer, the Charles F. Adams class.

But back in the early 1980s, when the U.S. Navy was a bit more concerned about the impact of storms and high seas upon the operational capability of U.S. Navy ships, studies cautioned that even the Spruance Class destroyers were only fully operable 80 percent of the time at Sea State 5 and barely operable 20 percent of the time at Sea State 6.

Cold War naval designers had super-sized the destroyer, to, in part, fight better in high sea states. But while Americas giant nuclear carriers were barely affected by heavy seas, their escortseven the big new Spruance class destroyersstill struggled to remain effective.

Smaller ships have plenty of opportunities to struggle in high seas; in the open ocean of the Northern Hemisphere, Navy studies from 1982 estimated that the probability of seas of Sea State 6 or higher was almost 27 percent. The probability of Sea State 5 or higher was almost 50 percent. This was reflected in choices the Navy made as the Cold War wound down. The Navy shed frigates and other small ships at an enormous rate while retaining the Arleigh Burke class, a destroyer even larger than the Spruance class.

Sea States Still Matter:

Thanks to the end of the Cold War and comprehensive meteorological guidance, Navy ships couldand didset their courses for the best weather possible. With no threat, such risk avoidance made sense. And as China and Russia emerge, the Navy can no longer plan on operating in calm seas. The Navy must go to where the war isand today, as storms are becoming stronger and more frequent, the chances of a fight in higher, rougher seas will only increase.

Meanwhile, Pentagon technologists like Secretary of Defense Mark Esperan Army veteran, who, as Secretary of the Army, urged the a-strategic dismantling of the Armys sea transport wingis extolling the virtues of the low-cost, small ship Navy. Does the Secretary of Defenseor the Deputy Secretary of Defense, David L. Norquist, who has been charged to lead a comprehensive review and analysis of the Navys proposed future fleet force structure, actually understand the tradeoff between vessel size and high-seas effectiveness?

Certainly, frigates and small ships are usefulthe Navy needs a far wider variety of vessels to supplement Americas large-ship Navy. But fundamental systems engineering questions risk being overlooked in the rush to propose exciting and fundable small-ship concepts. Right now, Washington think tanks are proposing fun-sounding baubles like 2,000 ton minimally manned vessels to serve as floating arsenals for carrier strike groups without really digging into the nitty-gritty operational feasibility of such new schemes.

The question is simple. If an 8,000 ton destroyer is unable to fully operate in Sea State 5 or higher, how well will a far more sophisticated and delicate 2,000 ton optionally-manned missile boat be ready to fight? How will these small vessels keep up with the carrier strike groups they are charged to defend? Have the sensitive technologies necessary for these small ships to fight actually been developed, optimized and tested in real-world sea conditions that a small ship will experience?

Theres a reason why U.S. Navy surface combatants have gotten so bigits because they need to do a lot of complex warfighting-oriented things. They must keep up with the carriers they defend and they need to be operational at high seas. Small ships can do lots of similar things too, but they cannot do as well at keeping up with an aircraft carrier in high seas and will have a hard time being operational in even ubiquitous mid-sized seas.

Small vessels are finebut they are no panacea. When the seas are big, the lighter, smaller and cheaper fleets favored by budget-minded technocrats risk becoming ineffective. For navies under threat, high seas are an immutable and unavoidable fact of life that must be sailed through no matter what. But, for the past thirty years, the U.S. Navy has avoided high seas and forgotten a lot. And even worse, now that a former Army paratrooper and a Certified Government Financial Manager are poised to fundamentally reshape the U.S. Navy, the Navy itself is poorly positioned to even try to express the deep operational risks posed by dramatic changes in naval composition.

In this headlong rush to leverage new technologies and hot new concepts, the fancy powerpoint slides that point the Pentagon towards a cheap, pint-sized and optionally-manned fleet still has a long way to go before being converted into operational reality. In particular, the Navy needs to explain these operational challenges to David Norquist. If they dont, David Norquist will do what his brother, Grover Norquist, could not. While Grover Norquist has failed in his quest to reduce the U.S. Government to the size where he can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub, Grovers highly-regarded brotherif allowed to make decisions based largely on accounting principles and exciting powerpoint conceptsmay be set to do just that very thing to the U.S. Navy.

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The U.S. Navys Future Fleet May Run Aground In Heavy Weather - Forbes