My first missions to support an aircraft carrier in 1983 were flown in the Gulf of Oman in an EP-3 ARIES I/ORION aircraft, providing coverage for a US aircraft carrier from a land base. Then, even then the slightest movements by Iran in the Persian Gulf would send the massive aircraft carrier stationed there scrambling for the wide open maneuver space of the North Arabian Sea. This has changed. The US has gone from fear of operating with big-deck aviation ships in the Persian Gulf to a casual “they have to be there” attitude today. It reflects a malaise in thinking when it comes to sea power today which places America’s Navy and its sailors in the Gulf at greater risk than is necessary. America should remove its carrier strike group from the Persian Gulf and station it in the Mediterranean Sea.
Easy to Operate
Why are they there? There is no shortage of land-based bases in the Middle East region. Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia allow the United States overflight rights. America has a NATO partner in Turkey and today has smaller bases throughout Africa from where it stages many of its unmanned strike and reconnaissance missions. America has enough land bases, capabilities and partners in the region and close by to conduct its operations without a carrier being permanently based in the Persian Gulf.
Carriers are currently used in the Central Command (CENTCOM) Area of Operations for several reasons. First, they are easy to use—they make the application of strategy easier. Stationing a carrier somewhere in international waters means there is no need for expensive Army or Air Force “bed down” in other peoples’ countries, such as Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or, Iraq. This leaves out the requirement for quid pro quo, messy diplomacy, and status of forces agreements (SOFA) which may take time and energy to negotiate.
Secondly, being needed for high-profile, media-attracting operations helps the Navy maintain the perception of its utility and its necessity to our national security. Navy leaders press home the strategic benefits of deploying aircraft carriers because it is much harder to make the case for big, expensive sea power using smaller, less-sexy missions such as fighting pirates, patrolling the sea lanes, and being ready for crises in the maritime domain. The result is that the Navy uses carriers to serve short-term parochial interests while sacrificing a chance to emphasize its much broader, long-term utility to the American public.
A third reason is that it has just become routine practice. This way of doing business has been around so long and the Navy has made it so easy to use its aviation assets in the land-locked deserts of the Middle East that our political and military leaders have overlooked the risks involved and forgotten to consider whether other, better options may exist. They are “stuck on carriers.”
80% of US combat losses to ships in naval warfare in the last 40 years have been in the Persian Gulf. That is a risk that should not be overlooked.
Forgotten Risks
What are the costs and risks? From a naval perspective, the Persian Gulf is an enclosed bath-tub with little “sea space” to maneuver. In all honesty, in a different naval era we would have considered a carrier in such a body of water a “sitting duck” for being bottled up in the Gulf as they are. Any ship’s biggest advantage, especially large hundred-thousand-ton ships like aircraft carriers, is its ability to maneuver. The Persian Gulf offers little opportunity to do that, especially its most northern portions, where shallow and shoal water abound. These self-same areas are easily mined or attacked from land bases by conventional or unconventional forces. Fifty percent of the “littoral” area—an area extending from a shoreline’s high-water line to its low-tide line—of the Gulf is bounded by the rather unfriendly coast of Iran. But because the United States has operated inside the Gulf for so long its political and military leaders have become complacent about those threats.
What was once considered a very big risk is now simply routine. The job in the Gulf has become to help CENTCOM commanders do whatever they require. Many have forgotten the USS Tripoli, USS Princeton,USS Roberts, and USS Stark. These were US Navy ships seriously damaged in the Persian Gulf by mines and air attack and were only saved by their heroic crews’ damage control efforts. The crews of these ships then were a lot bigger than today’s minimally-manned vessels with their automated damage control systems. 80% of US combat losses to ships in naval warfare in the last 40 years have been in the Persian Gulf. That is a risk that should not be overlooked.
Club Med: Closer to the Hotspots
What should America do instead? There are currently no US aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean. The anti-ISIS airstrikes currently being conducted from the Gulf can also be conducted from the Med and with a lot less restriction. I cruised on three different aircraft carriers in the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean and it is a much easier place for “freedom of maneuver” on a large warship, with a lot fewer shore-based threats around the cul-de-sac. A larger US presence there also makes more sense in light the ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine and increased Russian naval activity worldwide.
Having carriers in the Persian Gulf is convenient for working land-based air missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, but having carriers and amphibious ready groups (ARGS) with their Marines and aviation in the Mediterranean is just as strategically sound—allowing a forward presence for both the ISIS problem in Syria-Iraq as well as being convenient to all the other “hot spots” around the Mediterranean. Aside from aircraft carriers, which cannot transit the Bosporus, other, smaller US Navy ships would be made available to respond to events such as the Ukraine crisis. Most Navy ships carry tomahawk cruise missiles and most of these missions in all of these places can be covered by that capability—sub and surface-launched missiles—as the new “steady state” without continually tying ourselves down with metaphorical anchors in the dangerous bathtub that is the Persian Gulf.
Naval strategy has to adjust to events and we do have a full-time carrier in Japan and the Marines (and their “baby” carrier) in Okinawa. It is poor practice for the US to fret about the anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) to our ships, especially the big ones, in the South China Sea while at the same time we have left a carrier group exposed to danger in the Persian Gulf for the convenience of generating air sorties across the Middle East. We should position and train our forces as we plan to fight with them.
It is time to establish a new norm and learn how to break out of “the box” of the Persian Gulf paradigm of 24 years and counting. Deployments by carrier strike groups into the Persian Gulf should be the exception, not the rule. Placing a carrier group in the Mediterranean Sea would allow the US Navy to continue to provide the same capabilities it currently provides in the Middle East, while placing it closer to other potential hot spots in Southern Europe. Otherwise, we continue to provide our enemies sitting ducks in the Persian Gulf as a tempting target.
[Photo: Flickr CC: Expert Infantry]
I generally agree with Dr. Keuhn’s argument with respect to CSG deployment within the Persian Gulf. I would have added three other major points as reinforcement.
1. Modern optical, electro-optical, and imaging radar systems (ISAR’s) sited on high ground in Iranian territory can see, track, classify, and often identify large ships operating in the Persian Gulf. This capability eliminates any ambiguity that large merchant ships might have introduced. These ships operate under traffic control and AIS anyway. A good assumption is that any surface component of a CSG will be continually targeted when operating within line of sight of such sensors.
2. Any defensive and indeed offensive services needed to execute a US-Coalition counter-AA/AD campaign in the PG can be land based and a paid for by the allies using an Enhanced Aegis Ashore model – say 4 sites, 2 SPY-1D or eventually AMDR SPY+30 radars per site and 400 VLS cells per site. Each site would cost as much as 1 DDG. The USN would probably have to man the sites.
3. While the CSG’s in the GOO can be kept survivable and have provided support for the Afghanistan commitment, in retrospect they were probably unnecessary. In 2002, We could not be sure of that. However a large scale crisis response in an expeditionary theater until the coalition situation clarified did not have to develop into a 200%CSG presence requirement!
4. In recent years, the USN has provided 200% CSG presence in the IO/PG/GOO regions using typically 8 month deployments in a 27 month rotational cycle. This scheme provided 6 months on station but demanded 9.0 CSG’s in the force structure with 1 CSG forward deployed in Japan, ALL 10 deployable CSG’s were committed. While this policy can be seen as a great force structure justification, it was immensely costly on ship and aircraft maintenance and personnel – i.e. readiness for real war fighting.
Prof. Keuhn’s advocacy of treating the IO/PG/GOO as a developed coalition and joint theater in which CGS’s should make only an occasional contribution is sound BUT the same argument applies to the Mediterranean theater as well.
In the Mediterranean Theater there are only two Naval Force employment applications:
1. Peacetime presence and small scale crisis response in the presence of a pervasive light AA/AD potential threat along the North African coast and occasionally projecting into the South Atlantic to the Gulf of Guinea.
2. A Joint/Coalition war fighting application in the Eastern Mediterranean in a developed theater in the potential presence of medium threat Syrian AA/AD system. The US and and Israeli intelligence preparation of the battle space, the Syrian Civil War, and the current and probably sustained coalition air operation against ISIS have neutralized that threat for now and probably for the next decade. A CSG to complement the IAMD SAG current in the eastern MED as part of the PAA, would be operating in coalition and joint context. The CSG is currently providing only about 20% of the sortie generation capacity in the current air campaign over Iraq and Syria. Land based forces could supply that demand and will supply the demand of an expanded air campaign it that happens.
Supporting a CSG on a 27 month rotational readiness cycle in the Mediterranean Sea from CONUS-E bases with an ideal 6 month deployment period yielding 5 months on station requires 5.4 CSG’s in the force structure.
After 2020, the entire situation changes with the F-35B, LHA-6, DDG-1000, IADS at Sea, and the 2 UKCVF’s in service.
1. The US could choose to forward base a Light Carrier Strike Group in Rota, Spain. The LtCSG would consist of 1 LHA-6 (CVL role), 1 CG-52, 1DDG-1000, 2 DDG-79/110, 2 LCS-2’s, 1 SSN, and 1 T-AKE. The CVL air group would consist of 16 F-35B, 4 EF-35B capable of 80 strike sortie’s/day flying 5 days/week. The support air group of 4 E-2D , 4 KC-130 J’s, 4 Tritons, and 9 P-8A can be land based at Signella to provide complete capability for the African Coast peacetime presence and small scale crisis response employment application. It constitutes a 1/2 CSG 100% presence in a low threat environment.
2. The existence of 1 French CVN, 2 UK CVF’s, 1 Italian CVL, and 1 Spanish CVL promise the possibility of a coalition CSG equivalent presence in the Eastern Mediterranean with a US CSG providing occasional participation ( say 30%) presence ~ 2 CSG’s in the force structure. Remember, a US CSG in a developed Eastern Mediterranean Theater is a useful component in the combined force – BUT -only a component and a minority component at that.
Prof. Kuehn gives the mistaken impression that the US Navy and its complacent and arrogant culture drives the CSG presence within the Persian Gulf. I am sure that he is aware that the COCOM’s establish the force demand for their AOR’s, DOD decides the force allocation to COCOM’S, and DON and the other services advise on current force availability, readiness levels, and future force availability, capabilities, and readiness levels. This military-political process has many interested parties all of whom have agendas with malice aforethought.
Prof. Kuehn must also be aware that a COCOM is personally responsible for everything that happens or does not happen in his AOR. The COCOM approves the OPLANS and the proposed deployments to implement them. The Joint Force Maritime Component Commander ( an Admiral, USN) advises the COCOM on the effectiveness of the naval forces under his command and the threats to his forces in any given employment. The JFMCC implements the actual deployment of naval forces in his AOR and provides oversight to their operations. If a COCOM and JFMCC agree to a naval force employment, it happens and THEY BEAR THE RESPONSIBILITY for its safe and effective operations.
Prof. Kuehn rightly hints at a very important policy change. The Peacetime Presence and Small Scale crisis response employment has dominated US Navy force structure justification since 1990. The rise of the AA/AD threat and the rise of a Major Regional Rival in the WPAC/EA region that will eventually become a maritime peer competitor in deployed technology after about 2030 and a true peer competitor by 2050 demands a much better balance force structure justification policy. That policy should look upon the Joint/ Combined peacetime presence and small scale crisis response employment mode as one component of force structure justification with Joint/Coalition Expeditionary Power Projection as a second employment mode, and Coalition/Joint Warfighting in a developed theater as a third employment mode, and Joint War-at-Sea as a fourth employment mode. After applying resource constraints, the force design, force planning, force deployment, and force employment schemes will follow.
Very respectfully,
Jim O’Brasky