General Prize Essay Contest—First Prize, Sponsored by Andrew and Barbara Taylor.
The Navy should procure weapons to manage near-term risks, while revitalizing civilian shipyards to ready for long-term competition.
By First Lieutenant David Alman, Alabama Air National Guard
A growing quasi-consensus has emerged in Washington on the potential threat posed by the People’s Republic of China to U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific.1 In particular, many analysts are concerned with the defense of Taiwan.2 In March 2021, Admiral Phil Davidson, the now former commander of U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific, stated, “I think the threat [to Taiwan] is manifest during this decade, in fact in the next six years.”3 Recent battles over the fiscal year 2022 budget have highlighted the unease many feel toward the U.S. military’s ability to meet wartime demands against a capable adversary.4
Nowhere does this seem truer than in the U.S. Navy. Specifically, many cite a combination of two factors contributing to this unease: declining ship numbers and the lack of a discernible strategy.5 During a 15 June 2021 House Armed Services Committee meeting, Representative Elaine Luria expressed her frustration, stating, “We’re continuing to shrink, and we’re continuing to divest-to-invest with strategies and capabilities that are just a hope for the future.”6 All arguments seem to point toward the need for a naval shipbuilding program of some magnitude.
Unfortunately, a large naval shipbuilding program will do little immediately to improve the U.S. position for two reasons. First, if China desires to maintain an advantage in numbers in the Indo-Pacific, then it has the money, industrial base, and lack of other operational commitments to easily do so.7 Thus, even if the United States decided to double its naval shipbuilding program (a significant challenge given industrial base constraints), China could simply match the new numbers. The second flaw in this argument is time. Quite simply, it takes time to build warships.8 Again, even a doubled shipbuilding budget would yield no appreciable impact on major U.S. combatant vessel numbers over the next five years. Thus, to Admiral Davidson’s point on the threat to Taiwan in the next six years, the naval shipbuilding budget will have little ability to reduce risk over that time horizon. Taken together, it is unlikely a near-term increase in naval shipbuilding would change the risk to U.S. objectives.
Instead of anchoring on ship numbers and ship building, the United States should pursue a strategy that manages risk in the near term (over the next 5 to 10 years), while developing foundations for an extended maritime competition in the mid to long term (10 to 20 years).
The raison d’etre of navies is sea control. As Bernard Brodie wrote in his Layman’s Guide to Naval Strategy, “Sea power has never meant merely warships.” Instead, sea power is the “set of circumstances which enable a nation to control transportation over the seas during wartime.”9 Sea control does not necessarily mean the Navy needs more ships to launch missiles at adversaries or adversary warships. Sea control means ensuring the United States can move cargo ships over the ocean while denying that capability to adversaries.
It is unclear how China’s naval construction program is challenging the U.S. Navy’s ability to exert sea control. Chinese vessels currently are geographically contained within the first island chain. In wartime, U.S. submarines, aircraft, and mines could—with effort—keep the Chinese fleet bottled up within that geography, minimizing the threat to U.S. sea control efforts. Any Chinese ships venturing beyond the first island chain likely would meet a fate such as that of the German East Asia Squadron during World War I or the Admiral Graf Spee during World War II: possibly tactically successful but strategically irrelevant. Practically speaking, allied air power could hunt down and destroy any Chinese vessels outside their protective umbrella.
China likely understands this dynamic.10 As such, the value of its massive growth in surface combatants primarily is for escorting amphibious ships in a Taiwan invasion scenario. In addition, its antiair-capable ships could form part of the integrated air defense network protecting the mainland. Of course, these ships also have peacetime utility—they can exert Chinese influence abroad, although it is unclear if this is cost-effective.
If China’s surface combatants are being built to protect an invasion force, it makes little sense for the U.S. Navy to build more surface ships in response; the Navy is not trying to protect an equivalent invasion force. Similarly, more warships are not necessarily the best tool to stop a Chinese invasion force. If the best counter to ships is torpedoes or guided missiles, it would make more sense to procure the assets capable of best delivering those weapons: submarines, land-based missile systems, and aircraft—not surface ships.
Besides the dubious strategy of building more warships to match China, there is the practical matter: It is near impossible. China produces some 35 percent of the world’s global merchant shipping.11 It has numerous civil-military shipyards and a large and relatively cheap workforce. Merchant ship orders help subsidize the military production cost, further reducing costs to the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). In addition, the majority of Chinese warships are based in the Pacific, while the U.S. Navy deploys all over the world. It is bordering on hubris to think the United States will be able to achieve a numerical advantage over China in China’s backyard.
Many U.S. shipyards, such as the Boston Naval Shipyard shown here in 1960, were instrumental during World War II but have long since closed. In the long-term, the Navy must revitalize both civilian and military shipyards to subsidize future naval shipbuilding and expand the Merchant Marine. Credit: U.S. Navy
The U.S. Navy will be unable to match the PLAN in numbers in the near term, but that is not an overwhelming problem. The United States should instead think about the problem over two separate time horizons: managing near-term risk while developing the foundations for extended competition or conflict.
Reducing Near-Term Risk
Near-term risk reduction through weapon procurement will provide a significant cost advantage to U.S. and allied forces. An Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile destroyer costs approximately $2 billion to build, not including its weapons or operating costs.12 It could be damaged, disabled, or sunk by a range of Chinese antiship cruise missiles or ballistic missiles. Conversely, a Chinese Type 52 or Type 55 destroyer could be disabled or sunk by a U.S. Long-Range Antiship Missile (LRASM) or a Naval Strike Missile costing approximately $2 million. The math for mines and torpedoes is of the same order of magnitude. While delivering these weapons requires costly assets, surface vessels are among the most cost-ineffective options.13