24 May 2011
Of the three services, the navy is the hardest one to develop a future operational concept for. What follows is not the elaboration of a program, or even a recommendation. It is thinking out loud.
The earlier two perspectives in this series, on the future of air power and the army of tomorrow, relied upon a concept of the future of expeditionary conflict that was sketched by outgoing US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In Gates’s view, the Air Force and the Navy, operating jointly, will provide most of the force projected by the United States in Africa and Asia. Large, mechanized armies, “boots on the ground” in those places, are not something a future Secretary of Defense should recommend without “having his head read,” in Gates’ view.
So the question then, to be answered, is what can Canada’s navy contribute to a joint air-naval enterprise? At the moment, HMCS Charlottetown is in the Mediterranean Sea in support of NATO operations over Libya. At the risk of offending the sailors, what, other than signifying Canada’s political commitment to the NATO operations against the Gadhafi regime, is the Charlottetown able to do? The ship lacks the missiles and guns to bring effective fire against Gadhafi forces on the ground. Lacking a navy to oppose her, the Charlottetown has nothing afloat to attack or to defend against. Neither the Charlottetown, nor anything else in Canada’s navy, nuclear submarines included, has the means of making the Gadhafi regime feel directly the wroth of NATO and Canada.
In EdC Vol 16.9, the future of the naval shipbuilding in Canada was broadly reviewed. The tenor of the policy of shipbuilding at that time seemed to be to find employment for Canada’s shipyards for a prolonged period of time. They would construct numerous small vessels suitable for minor naval operations. In fact, the dominant aim seemed to be construction per se, and operational naval requirements would be found for the vessels. So starved is the navy for vessels and so numerous are the potential tasks that this order of priority, ‘find uses for what we can make’, is not completely without merit. And many nations, particularly the United States and Great Britain, have used the government spending power simply to keep strategic industries in being.
But a really fundamental review of naval acquisitions should ask and answer fundamental questions. One important question that should be asked and answered is what is the navy able to do that would enable it to operate jointly with Canada’s air and land power? Sure, the navy can contribute vessels to a US or NATO fleet, and can undertake tasks such as anti-submarine warfare and minesweeping. Yes, it can undertake anti-piracy and contraband interdiction patrols. But what can it do to strike a blow the government of Canada wants delivered?
A Canadian flagged Aegis class missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf, for example, might make an Ahmadinejad think twice about abducting, raping, and murdering a Canadian citizen. A vessel bearing guns which can hurl 2,000 pounds of steel 40,000 yards down range - 70 year old technology - is still a force to be reckoned with on land. But, I digress.
An anchor which can tether this blue-sky thinking to reality is money. Naval units, even small ones, are extremely expensive. And herein lies the problem. Economy has to be balanced against strategic purpose.
The acquisition of a few capital ships would consume all the money and would not keep Canada’s shipyards humming, if they could even build them. On the other hand, large numbers of small vessels keeps the shipyards humming, but provides the navy with nothing in the way of strategic punch. Does something in between risk falling between two stools?
Littoral type vessels, such as those being developed at Lockheed-Martin, would enable the navy to operate jointly with land or special operations forces. Perhaps these are part of a mix of vessels the navy might acquire; the component that offers the strategic punch albeit as part of an amphibious force.
Great strategic benefit often comes by the taking of risks. The safe solution is to craft a navy which is strategically harmless, consisting of small vessels that perform small, needful, politically defensible tasks, and built by Canadian shipyards as a kind of workfare project.
But are there strategic thinkers in the navy and in government who are prepared to take a risk and demand for Canada a capital ship as well as all the other ships the navy needs to be a navy? And find the money and provide the vision too?
- XXX –
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