SSKs In... US Navy?

I stumbled on that through Yahoo News yesterday. As you may know I do not read The National Interest--it is a tabloid dumpster for fanboys and its military sections are 99% a masturbation to shiny military toys by people who have no clue. The OTHER 1%, however, is represented by such people of scale as Colonels Daniel Davies, Douglas Macgregor or Professor James Holmes. So, I saw James Holmes' name at Yahoo and I went for it.  Holmes opened with a broadside:

For the past five years or so these pixels have been arguing—nay, clamoring—for the U.S. Navy to build or buy a contingent of diesel attack submarines (SSKs) to fill out its undersea inventory. If anything the logic for going conventional is more compelling now than ever. It offers a way to add new hulls with dispatch, at manageable cost, and without imposing extra burdens on the few shipbuilders that specialize in naval nuclear propulsion. Best of all, a diesel contingent is an ideal implement for executing U.S. strategy in what the Pentagon terms its “priority theater,” bar none: the Indo-Pacific.

I never, obviously, served in US Navy and I know of its internal kitchen from open sources only, such as memoirs and other texts. But I always remember Elmo Zumwalt quoting Rickover that:"The United States Navy got used to traveling first class."(c) In Rick's words "first class" meant large and very large surface combatants and nuclear propulsion. That's the institutional culture--US Navy likes only nuclear-driven subs. And it kinda makes sense once one considers the fact that the United States is an imperial power and she likes to sail anywhere, everywhere to "project" herself. Nuclear powered subs are perfectly suited for this strategic and operational posture since they provide for long-duration, thus translating into very long distances, clandestine operations against enemies, which all, as we know, dream of denying America her freedoms. Yet, James Holmes calls for SSKs. Hm. Holmes speaks in the broadside yet again and pronounces this "M" word, which many in the US are reluctant to say when speaking about actual war (Holmes wants to fight both China and Russia):

...the nuclear mafia within the silent service—the dominant faction among submariners, it must be said—will produce statistics beyond counting to prove that nuclear-powered craft are superior to their conventional brethren. And they will be right—by every measure except what matters. Namely, winning. The SSK is the right tool for the job provided it’s deployed at the right place on the map in the right manner to achieve maximum effect. 

Ah, that's warmer. And should I have been American exceptionalist, which, of course, I am not, I would have taken this Holmes' argument to heart, especially since Holmes, almost verbatim, repeats Stansfield  Turner's operational truism brilliantly formulated by him in 1976 in his interview to Christian Science Monitor, titled Who has The Best Navy. I will help you to recall that:

Pay attention to Turner's succinct observation about the number of keels. He delivers it in the clearest way possible: It is the capacity to do what might be decisive in some particular situation. And the first issue with that, if to imagine some scenario of the battle, say, for Senkakus in which hypothetical American-built (or bought) SSKs will take part is this: what kind of weapons will they carry? Holmes describes his scenario in next terms:

Combining submarines with marine geography amplifies their efficacy at sea denial. Array diesel boats along, say, Asia’s first island chain in concert with unmanned combat vehicles, sea mines, surface patrol craft, warplanes, and missile-armed ground troops and you’ve erected a formidable barrier to passage between the China seas and Western Pacific. That’s a barrier that Beijing will think twice about flouting. You don’t need an SSN to stand picket duty, and in fact using it thus amounts to overkill. Nuclear attack boats have sea-control missions to perform on the open ocean. Used imaginatively, inexpensive diesel subs can reinforce conventional deterrence and free up precious SSNs for more important things, all without busting the shipbuilding budget. That’s the reciprocal of producing über-pricey SSBNs to reinforce nuclear deterrence. How’s that for cosmic balance? 

Well, it is all fine and dandy (on the paper), but even the brief look at the map (First Island Chain) reveals something significant:

You know what it is? Right--ranges, aka distances. First Island Chain is entirely within the range of a variety of Chinese deadly anti-shipping weapon systems which, in case of real war, God forbids, have a complete capability to shut down approaches to this very Island Chain and deny hypothetical US Navy SSKs what they would need desperately--forces supporting their operations. You may have guessed it already, such forces are US Navy's Carrier Battle Groups and their airwings. No support from them, any SSK operating at those ranges becomes a prey for ASW patrol aviation and surface groups which follow. This is, of course, not to mention the tempo of China buying those pesky S-400s and SU-35s from Russia. 

What are, then, the probabilities of hypothetical salvos of subsonic anti-shipping missiles launched from hypothetical US SSKs against PLAN's surface groups to provide a number of leakers is for a separate discussion but I doubt those to be effective against modern naval AD systems. While I totally understand where James Holmes is coming from and I know his bad feelings towards PLAN and namely Admiral Lou, I, honestly, do not see, from what little I know about US Navy, how the habit of "traveling first class" could be kicked, especially in the times of massive stock buybacks and strict bottom lines for CEOs and shareholders. After all, I think, Congress is also on it. But I repeat myself.       

Trash Talk, Pop-Corn, That's The Entertainment!

Boy, it is a shitstorm in media since one of PLAN's Admirals, Admiral Lou, started chest-thumping a week or so ago:

His speech, delivered on December 20 to the 2018 Military Industry List summit, declared that China’s new and highly capable anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles were more than capable of hitting US carriers, despite them being at the centre of a ‘bubble’ of defensive escorts. “What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” Admiral Lou declared. He said the loss of one super carrier would cost the US the lives of 5000 service men and women. Sinking two would double that toll. “We’ll see how frightened America is.”

I agree, this statement, which may or may not be true, comes across as rather rude and in many respects as a simple bravado. There are number of reasons, including purely ethical ones, that these kinds of statements should be made in a professional manner and not without accounting for the history of the issue. But Lou's statement didn't go unanswered and James Holmes today, in The National Interest (where else) returned the trash talk in a very emotional piece. Holmes exclaims:

Keep talking, admiral. Fighting words make it easier politically for us ‘Mercans to don our game face. Threats help us rally. The United States took a strategic holiday it never should have taken after the Cold War, letting its readiness for major combat slip. The armed forces are now scrambling to make up for lost time. But that’s a separate problem from political moxie. No one from any U.S. political party countenances an assault on American fighting men and women—let alone one that claims more lives in an afternoon than the combined figure from seventeen years of the Global War on Terror. 

But, while I totally get where Holmes is coming from, one is inevitably forced to remind him that the United States didn't encounter peer or even near peer military power in ages, namely since 1945. But realities of modern warfare, both naval and in other environments are such, that massive military casualties are not only possible--they are most likely. I don't know if former naval officer Dr. Holmes recalls it but other, US Army officer, Colonel Douglas Macgregor had no inhibitions in looking reality into the face in 2011:

“In 110 days of fighting the German army in France during 1918, the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force sustained 318,000 casualties, including 110,000 killed in action. That’s the kind of lethality waiting for U.S. forces in a future war with real armies, air forces, air defenses and naval power. Ignoring this reality is the road to future defeats and American decline. It’s time to look beyond the stirring images of infantrymen storming machine-gun nests created by Hollywood and to see war for what it is and will be in the future: the ruthless extermination of the enemy with accurate, devastating firepower from the sea, from the air, from space and from mobile, armored firepower on land.”

And Macgregor is absolutely correct in stating the case in, granted very approximate, numbers of casualties. I don't think Macgregor is well versed in Soviet/Russian military but he is correct in giving order of magnitude of losses when meeting a near peer or peer. 

Holmes, after some general political talk and rebuttal of Lou, goes on emotional defense, and you already guessed it, of US Navy's Aircraft Carriers. Some points Holmes makes are valid:

Whether the PLA could sink two carriers thus depends on its ability to detect, track, and engage vessels operating from opposite sides of the Pacific, and it depends on how U.S. carrier-group commanders handle fleet operations at sea. It remains to be seen (except perhaps in the spooky realm of classified intelligence) whether China’s array of satellites, sensors and other surveillance assets can find and track moving task forces in the vast emptiness that is the Pacific Ocean with any real precision.

True, nobody realistically knows how good Chinese reconnaissance and targeting systems are and if they are survivable in case of a conflict at all. In the end, how accurate realistically is Chinese DF-21, said to be the first ballistic anti-shipping missile in the world, nobody knows. And here is the deal, Chinese do tend to overstate own capability and the first proof of that is steady, continuous purchase of Russian military technology, including a rather substantial number of Russian-made anti-shipping missiles. So, how credible is Chinese anti-carrier threat? It is certainly not just a bluster, China does have at least some capability to inflict the damage or achieve at least mission kill--in case of the fairly short (granted it stays conventional) conflict in theater that is as good as sinking. One also cannot discount gigantic energies hyper-sonic missiles, even in the inert, that is without explosives, release upon the hit on a target. After all Rods from God was RAND's idea--it is as American as baseball (sorry, Canada) and apple pie (sorry, Germany), as is even more terrifying weapon such as a Gay Bomb or even a Fart Bomb--what an evil twisted mind would come up with such a weapon of mass fartification and well, the other one, you get the idea.    

I don't think Holmes' bringing up USS America's SINKEX applies here because if any CVN's ammo storage detonates or its nuclear reactor is damaged we may indeed talk about a complete kill of the ship with horrendous casualties to boot--a scenario which must be avoided. But Holmes still tries to make operational and tactical case for CBGs. 

Task forces can also operate in congested waters, mingling with other traffic to clutter an enemy’s tactical picture. They can operate near shore, using coastal terrain to mask their whereabouts. They can make foul weather their friend. And so on. Creative options exist for forestalling an America scenario and have for many years. U.S. naval commanders should harness familiar standards from World War II and the Cold War while devising new methods of operational concealment, guile and deception.  

I disagree with the argument of congested waters and traffic--this is precisely the environment which will provide good intelligence and targeting precisely for reasons Holmes invokes in his argumentation--other people also learn their lessons and any fishing vessel with basic radar and Beidou, GPS or GLONASS receiver can provide very good real time coordinates of CVN. James Holmes teaches in US Naval War College--he MUST know that salvos of ANY anti-shipping missiles are done, depending on type, as the tangents of a circle with the radius of, roughly, Vcarrier*tfrom detection, or with account of the obsolescence of the targeting data when the datum is a single identification. It is precisely in the cluttered waters where CBG and its heart--CVN are identified easiest and intelligence is provided. Here is the scheme of the salvo by anti-shipping missiles by three SSGNs with the coverage of the area of probable CBG location. 

A big arrow is a general course of CBG when intelligence is verified. That large circle is an area of the launch of ASMs by SSGNs, small one--is CBG's location probable at the launch time. And that brings us to a funny situation, with my piece at Colonel Lang's site few days ago stating, and I quote myself:

While diesel-electric or non-nuclear submarines of PLAN can play crucial role in defense of China's littoral, operations in the open ocean require nuclear-powered submarines. China has problems with this particular type. While PLAN's program of building surface combatants is extremely impressive, nuclear submarines remain its Achilles heel. As one Russian naval analyst observed in July 2018, citing also US Office of Naval Intelligence Report, modern Chinese nuclear powered submarines lag seriously even behind American and Russian third generation nuclear submarines, such as project 671 RTM (NATO Victor III-class)  in terms of quieting—a key, albeit not the only one, tactical and technical characteristic of a submarine.[4] Nobody can predict when and if China will be able to match its nuclear submarines' capability, and a surface force required for support of their operations, with that of the US Navy's but it is obvious that this issue must be high on a priority list of Chinese strategists. Lesson from Admiral Gorshkov can help. The lesson is simple—there is no modern powerful and balanced navy without powerful nuclear submarine component armed with modern weapon systems. 

And here is the news, PLAN, for now, doesn't have submarine force which is even remotely competitive both in numbers and quality with the US Navy's submarine force. All bravado on both sides apart, US submarines in the Pacific are overwhelmingly superior to PLAN's nuclear subs (SSKs are a separate issue). Currently the US Navy operates 32 Los Angeles-class + 3 Sea Wolf-class + 15 Virginia-class SSNs = 50 SSNs ALL of whom, including older L.A. class SSNs are superior to anything PLAN can deploy in terms of nukes, which is roughly 9 nuclear subs, only 6 of which could be considered relatively modern (Type 093). Period. Yes, PLAN does deploy a substantial number of conventional SSKs, but again, this fleet of subs is good only for a relatively short distance deployments in defense of own littoral. 

We are talking here about overwhelming advantage US Navy enjoys over any PLAN's surface or nuclear power submarine force beyond the First Island Chain. I am not even talking here about remote segments of SLOCs. Yes, Chinese are improving, yes, they are gaining both capability (such as destroying US aircraft carriers) and some operational experience, but it takes much more than that to command the seas. I will also avoid describing some info (very reliable one), I just mention it, that testifies against Chinese tactical and operational maturity, for now--I underscore that, for now. But namely for now PLAN, for all US Navy's huge institutional problems, is not a real competitor in one domain, which today defines command of the seas--underwater. US submarine force is simply better, much better and that's the reality, which Admiral Lou should have considered and James Holmes remembered when trying to respond to Chinese naval officer. As per carriers--you all know my attitude to these ships as being in the process of removal into the niche of pure power projection against weak powers, and at this stage one has to ask the question I raised several days ago while talking to Arctic Fox:

           CAN AVANGARD BE USED AS ASM?  

Something tells me that not only it can but it will be. Once this happens, we might as well forget about surface fleet as we know it today. That will be the entertainment.   

James Holmes On OODA.

As some of you may have noticed I don't take The National Interest magazine seriously--most of its publications are wet dreams of "professionals" from political pseudo-science and technophile amateurs who love those big guns and sexy planes. But once in a while even TNI publishes a very good piece which is worth paying attention to. Recently it was an excellent piece by Lieutenant Colonel Davies and now it is the piece by James Holmes, a Professor of Strategy from Naval War College:

       War at Sea: How to Win (And Lose) a Littoral Battle Royal  

I want to remind you all, that I started this blog by going into the nature of Colonel Boyd's OODA Loop and how it is being discarded by most US political and military "elites".  Holmes also goes into this issue and argues with late Admiral Cebrowski--the father of the Net Centric Warfare. While doing this, Holmes references one of the greatest contemporary naval minds, Captain Wayne Hughes (and others) with his Mesh Network In Littoral Operations.  

This is an extraordinarily important discussion, which may not generate much in terms of comments--people simply do not like math and fairly complex (not really, wink-wink) constructs but I want to stake this discussion for the future since view it as the most important issue of modern naval combat, which already is having a major strategic implications, with tectonic geopolitical ramifications. While discussing technological dimension of war is very important (and it is fun for many), its operational and human dimensions are no less, if not more, important. So, here it is. meanwhile, if someone wants to refresh some basic facts related to Boyd's OODA Loop--welcome to  Sand Castle Geopolitics, where I go in some depth into the OODA issue as applied to geopolitics. 

             

Admiral Gorshkov In Base