From the Editors

It is becoming increasingly clear that the prolonged financial crisis in which the United States currently finds itself will not be without significant consequences for the size and shape of American military forces in the coming decades. While the present administration has so far been careful to avoid linkage of the defense budget with the domestic economic situation, it is difficult to believe that this state of affairs is politically sustainable for the indefinite future. In recent months, the secretary of defense himself has signaled unmistakably that the Pentagon needs to rethink in fundamental ways how it spends public funds and to identify areas of significant savings. Very recently, Secretary Gates for the first time turned his gaze specifically on the U.S. Navy. In a speech in May to the Navy League Sea-Air-Space exposition, reprinted in its entirety at the beginning of this issue, the secretary called attention to the erosion of the U.S. monopoly of precision-strike long-range missiles and the consequent developing threat to our major naval combatants; also, he specifically questioned whether the current carrier force and large-deck amphibious ships will retain their utility for the Navy in relation to their escalating cost. The secretary’s words should be carefully pondered by anyone concerned at the future direction of the sea services. In this connection, we also offer our readers a current snapshot of the Navy’s long-range budget situation and its implications for Navy shipbuilding by analyst Ronald O’Rourke of the Congressional Budget Office. O’Rourke’s paper, “Programs vs. Resources: Some Options for the Navy,” was originally presented at a workshop sponsored by the Ruger Chair of National Security Economics at the Naval War College and held in Newport in May of this year.

 

Any effort to rethink the force structure of the Navy over the coming decades needs to revisit the issue of sea control, especially, though not only, in the context of China’s growing antiaccess challenge to the U.S. Pacific Fleet. In “Talking about Sea Control,” Robert C. Rubel provides a historically grounded overview of the sea-control mission of naval forces, which he argues has been substantially forgotten by the U.S. Navy since that service’s achievement of undisputed maritime dominance following the end of the Cold War. Rubel suggests that the loss of such dominance in the western Pacific today requires a fundamental rethinking of the operational roles of aircraft carriers and other large “high-value units” and a rededication to the sea-control mission of submarines and smaller surface combatants. Robert Rubel is dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College.

 

In this issue we continue our focus on allied navies. In “The Canadian Navy and Canada’s Interests in This Maritime Century,” Vice Admiral Dean McFadden, Chief of the Maritime Staff and Commander of the Canadian Navy, sets out a broad vision of the importance of the maritime domain for Canada, arguing that Canada has a continuing and growing interest in the application of naval power in cooperation with the United States and other powers in defense of the global maritime system. A complementary perspective on Canada’s recent contributions to maritime security in the policing of Somali piracy in the Indian Ocean is provided by Christopher Spearin in “A Private Security Solution to Somali Piracy? The U.S. Call for Private Security Engagement and the Implications for Canada.” Spearin, a professor at the Royal Military College of Canada in Toronto, focuses on the controversial issue of the use of private security companies in countering piracy and suggests that Canada may want to consider taking a leading role in resolving the various international legal and regulatory challenges involved in such a move.

 

The seemingly intractable problem of dealing with the piracy threat off the Horn of Africa is the theme of “Taming the Outlaw Sea,” by Admiral James G. Stavridis and Lieutenant Commander Richard E. LeBron, USN. The authors advocate a comprehensive approach to countering piracy, one that focuses on a broad range of issues including deterring and disrupting piratical activity at sea, capturing pirates and bringing them to justice, developing regional and international agreements to prosecute suspected pirates effectively and punish them humanely and legally when found guilty, enabling Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government to extend and enforce the rule of law, and encouraging the economic development of Somalia over the long term. Countering piracy off the Horn of Africa is an effort that must reflect international will, must focus on building the capacity of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government and that of neighboring countries, and be centrally and skillfully led to achieve a holistic effect. Admiral Stavridis is Commander, U.S. European Command, and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.

 

The Navy continues to digest the implications of the advent of large numbers of Chinese precision-strike conventional ballistic missiles for the American military posture in the western Pacific. Marshall Hoyler, in “Chinese ‘Antiaccess’ Ballistic Missiles and U.S. Active Defense,” builds on recent work by Naval War College analysts and other observers to present a detailed picture—to the extent this can be done from open sources—of the dimensions of the current Chinese conventional missile threat to U.S. land and sea-based assets in the western Pacific and to the ability of American active defenses (principally, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System) to counter them. He concludes that active defenses by themselves will not be sufficient to cope with the likely threat and recommends serious exploration of alternative defensive approaches. Hoyler was until recently a professor in the Wargaming Department of the Naval War College.

 

Finally, two articles explore the naval past for lessons for today. In “The Most Daring Act of the Age: Principles of Naval Irregular Warfare,” Lieutenant Command Benjamin Armstrong, USN, discusses the successful American raid leading to the destruction of the captured frigate Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor in 1804 as an exemplary illustration of principles of irregular naval warfare that remain valid today. In “Four Lessons That the U.S. Navy Must Learn from the Dreadnought Revolution,” Angus K. Ross offers a novel interpretation of the complicated and obscure history of the evolution of British naval strategic thinking in the critical decade leading up to the First World War. Among his lessons learned is the importance of professional military education as a counterweight to the imperatives of bureaucracy and technology. Formerly an officer in the Royal Navy, Angus Ross is a professor in the Joint Military Operations Department of the Naval War College.

 

The eighteenth in our Historical Monograph series—To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems, 1923–1940, by Albert A. Nofi—will soon be delivered by the printer and available for sale by the Government Printing Office’s online bookstore, at bookstore.gpo.gov/. In this book, which is based especially on the Naval War College archives, Dr. Nofi, an American military historian, examines in detail each of the U.S. Navy’s twenty-one “fleet problems” conducted between World Wars I and II, elucidating the patterns that emerged, finding a range of enduring lessons, and suggesting their applicability for future naval warfare.

 

 

The severe budgetary pressures that will begin to affect the Naval War College in the coming fiscal year make will it impossible hereafter to mail free copies of Newport Papers to individual subscribers. Beginning with the next title in the series (number 36, Defeating the U-boat: Inventing Antisubmarine Warfare, by Jan S. Breemer, to appear this fall), print copies will be mailed or available free only to a limited number of naval staff subscribers selected by the editor, a small list of historical associations selected by the College’s Ernest J. King Chair of Maritime History, and the College’s leadership. For all other readers, print copies of Newport Paper 36—and future titles, on a case basis—will be available by purchase from the Government Printing Office’s online bookstore, linked from our website. Electronic copies (pdf) of all titles in the series will continue to be posted online on our site. Print copies of earlier titles (Newport Papers 1–35) remain available on request while stocks last.

 

 

This issue marks our farewell to Founders Hall and the Naval War College Museum, after having occupied since 2003 what had been exhibition space for temporary shows on the second floor. The museum restored the former West Gallery to its original use just in time for the Wilma Parker’s Naval Art Show, which opened Wednesday, 4 August 2010, to run through November. That marked the culmination of a series of dramatic remodelings and renovations at the Museum over the past year. The familiar exhibits on the history of the U.S. Navy in Narragansett and the Torpedo Station remain, in new locations, as do selections from the Museum’s impressive ship-model collection. They are joined now by a new “Navy in Art” gallery (on the first floor, next to the relocated Museum Store; an extensively redecorated second-floor exhibit, lecture, and function space in the Center Gallery; and new electronic and Web-based media throughout. In addition, exterior repairs to the porches on the east and west ends are about to begin as this issue goes to press. Our editorial offices are now in Pringle Hall (rooms 141 and 143). Our Web and e-mail addresses and telephone and fax numbers remain unchanged.