Navy’s numbers far from the whole story

Nearly a century ago, during World War I, the US Navy had a fleet of about 245 ships. Today it is 282.

The relatively similar size of the fleet, traditionally a topic for naval buffs and military historians, is now a flashpoint in the presidential campaign, with Republican nominee Mitt Romney trumpeting the comparison as evidence that President Obama has allowed American naval strength to dangerously erode.

“Our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917,” the former Massachusetts governor repeated in the debate with Obama on Monday. “The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We’re now at under 285. We’re headed down to the low 200s if we go through [planned defense cuts]. That’s unacceptable to me.”

The current fleet is actually slightly larger than it was during the Bush administration, when ship numbers dropped to 278 in 2007. But any comparison of fleet sizes says little about their composition, according to data provided by the Navy. For example, nearly 100 years ago the service still had more than two dozen gunboats, 18 torpedo boats, and three dozen battleships. With new ship designs and more advanced weaponry, the first two classes were quickly phased out in the 1920s; battleships disappeared in the 1950s.

A century ago, there were no aircraft carriers, each with its own small air force, or warships and nuclear-powered submarines capable of launching dozens of cruise or ballistic missiles from hundreds of miles offshore. All are key components now.

Obama ridiculed Romney for the simplistic comparison.

“We also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed,” Obama said. “We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

“And so the question,” Obama added, “is not a game of ‘Battleship,’ where we’re counting ships. It’s what are our capabilities?”

A number of naval specialists agreed that the comparison Romney is making is analytically unhelpful.

“Any comparison of the Navy of 1917 to the Navy of today is nearly meaningless,” said Loren Thompson of Source Associates and a consultant to defense companies. “Naval technology barely progressed beyond the Steam Age.’’

But the Romney campaign insists that providing combat power on the high seas is not the Navy’s sole role — nor necessarily its most common one.

For example, Dov Zakheim, a former undersecretary of defense who advises the governor, said last week that the nation’s aircraft carriers also serve as a tool of diplomacy.

“The biggest supporter of aircraft carriers is not the Defense Department,” Zakheim told a conference sponsored by Military Reporters and Editors. “It’s the State Department. The reason is that carrier presence has an unbelievably effective deterrent effect.”

He cited, for example, the decision to dispatch a pair of carriers to the Taiwan Straits in 1996 in response to Chinese threats. China backed down.

Some former naval commanders insist that both the Obama and Romney camps are right: Equally important are the number of ships and what each of them can do.

“They both matter,” said retired Admiral William Fallon, who commanded an aircraft carrier group and the Second Fleet before retiring in 2007 as head of US forces in the Middle East. “You have to have numbers. We at least have to sustain the numbers we have.”

According to its 30-year shipbuilding plan, released in March, the Navy is set to grow to about 300 ships by 2019 and average about 298 ships each year through 2042. That assumes the defense budget remains at its current rate of growth and the second round of cuts passed by Congress and set to go into effect next year is overturned.

An increase in Navy orders would almost certainly benefit General Dynamics’ shipyard in Maine and its submarine plant in Connecticut, as well as the government-run Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. “This would be a windfall for New England,” Thompson said.

By staking out his position, Romney could also garner votes in other areas of the country that depend on ship manufacturing, especially the battleground state of Virginia.

At the height of World War II the Navy had a fleet of more than 6,000 warships and submarines before significantly dropping over the decades. In 1985, at the height of the Cold War and the so-called Reagan buildup, the number of ships was 571, according to the Navy Heritage Command.

Fallon said he believes the current fleet of aircraft carriers — 11 active and one reserve, with each assigned a flotilla of other vessels — is overextended. Others agreed. Retired Admiral Robert Natter, who served as commander of the Atlantic Fleet until 2003, cited as an example the recent decision to deploy two aircraft carriers to the Indian Ocean — one to support operations in Afghanistan and another to deter Iran.

To sustain that pace — while also being able to position one or more carriers in the Pacific, the Mediterranean, or elsewhere — crews will have to be at sea for nine to 12 months at a time, compared with six months a few years ago, Natter said. But Natter, who also had commanded the Seventh Fleet in the Pacific, noted that one consideration often gets left out of the comparisons.

“The Navy of 1917 had to contend with navies of relatively the same technology,” he said. “The Navy we have to today, and the technology we have today, is superior to our potential competitors.”

Navy Leans on Commercial Technology for Computing Upgrades

When the Navy finally boils down its sprawling information systems into two main networks, they will consist almost entirely of commercially available technology tweaked and retrofitted to meet military security standards.

The dramatic overhaul of the second-largest computing network in the world consists of three main efforts: building an ashore system; its afloat counterpart; and ensuring the two can communicate.

In the IT world, technology progresses at breakneck speeds, often outpacing the Defense Department’s best efforts at modernization. Basing its new network architecture on commercially available technology and rebidding on a cyclical basis for system upgrades is designed to tamp down the cost associated with the service-wide network overhaul.

“This is one of the most commercial-off-the-shelf programs in the Navy’s history,” said Capt. Shawn Hendricks, program manager for the service’s Next Generation Enterprise Network. “It’s all about keeping cost down by leveraging what’s out there and readily available.”

NGEN is the shore-based component of the Navy’s network upgrade strategy. Its shipboard counterpart, the Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Service, or CANES, is being developed in parallel. Together they will dramatically update and replace the current Navy-Marine Corps Intranet and 11 other networks at sea and ashore. NCMI represents about 80 percent of the Navy’s intranet infrastructure with a user base of about 800,000 personnel, Hendricks said.

While adequate for the service’s current needs, NCMI’s software and hardware components are becoming outdated and upgrades are becoming scarce as commercial technology progresses.

“We’re meeting requirements today, but we’re starting to face problems,” Hendricks said. “I’m running on systems they don’t even make any more. If you can’t get the parts for it, what do you do?”

NGEN will consolidate, upgrade and standardize all the Navy’s shore-based computing and data-storage systems across the United States and at bases and installations abroad. A request for proposals was issued in May. Prior to the July 18 deadline, Hendricks said about 150 responses to the RFP had been received, but wouldn’t elaborate on which companies had submitted proposals. The system is estimated to cost $4.5 billion over four years with full fielding scheduled to be completed sometime around 2016.

“We are still on track for a tentative award date of February next year, but as the circumstances on the ground change, that could change also,” Hendricks said.

NGEN eventually will consist of more than 400,000 computers at 2,500 Navy and Marine Corps installations throughout the world. In a first-of-a-kind move, the services’ command, control, communications and computing systems will be rendered as a secure cloud, hosted in distributed data centers. Many commercial and banking computer systems use the same infrastructure with portals accessing a web of data storage centers. CANES will work in much the same way, but each ship will have its own data center tied into the larger network and linked to shore-based computing facilities.

“That’s just computers,” Hendricks said. “I haven’t even talked about printers and fax machines and telephones. If I service my 800,000 users with 400,000 computers at $1,000 a pop, it’s already at $400 million. This is no small feat. But the idea is not to ask for a whole bunch of new money, because these systems will be upgraded organically with continually bid, commercially available technologies.”

The four-year contract has also been fragmented, allowing the Navy to rebid certain elements in future years. Plans are to schedule a cyclical four-year hardware “refresh” and two-year software refresh that will allow the Navy to keep pace with rapid technological developments. Hendricks said it was a way to keep costs down and an incentive for industry to remain competitive and innovative with their proposals.

“It’s like if you buy a new Ford F-150 and eventually you want to put new tires on it,” he said. “You don’t have to buy those tires from the Ford dealership if you can get better or cheaper ones from somewhere else. In the event we decided to look at another email provider, for instance, we can rebid it in the future and keep everything competitively priced and keep up with technological advancements.”

Competitors can bid on one or both of two segments for NGEN implementation. Within each segment are services the Navy plans to continuously rebid during each technology refresh cycle, Hendricks said. Though he wouldn’t elaborate on companies that have responded with proposals, a Hewlett-Packard/Northrop Grumman team is in the running. HP holds the contract for the current NCMI system.

Northrop Grumman was awarded the contract to develop and implement CANES earlier this year when Lockheed Martin Corp. withdrew a protest. It will soon be installed on an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and a unit is being developed for installation on an aircraft carrier, said Mike Twyman, vice president and general manager of Defense Systems for Northrop Grumman Information Systems.

Eventually, about 180 ships and submarines and two maritime operations centers will be outfitted with CANES equipment. Here, too, the focus is on commercially available technologies that can be periodically upgraded. CANES is estimated to cost at least $1.5 billion, not including software applications, according to a recent Rand Corp. study.

“CANES is 100 percent commercial-off-the-shelf,” Twyman said. “Using plug-and-play COTS components, for competitive reasons, is the best way to get the best price for the Navy and to allow future technology upgrades. What they really bought is kind of an open-architecture COTS-based design with network-defense technology built in.”

But installing computing equipment on a ship requires more considerations than setting up a data center on land. The environment can stress commercial components while the ship is under way, so technologies like server stacks had to be engineered to withstand heavy vibrations and shock, electromagnetic fields, temperature fluctuations and humidity.

“Those are challenges, but we know how to overcome them and we have,” Twyman said.

Moreover, each component system must be engineered or designed to meet Defense Department security standards. Significant aftermarket security features are built into the software and hardware components of each system to protect classified information.

CANES is nearing milestone-C production and deployment while NGEN is in the proposal stage.

Though CANES is slightly ahead of NGEN, the former may in fact take longer to implement because of ship schedules. Aircraft carriers, for instance, must be upgraded either during construction — as the CVN-78 Gerald R. Ford will be — or during a mid-life refueling overhaul.

“What we’re working on now is aligning ship availability so we can get these things installed,” Twyman said. “That’s proven to be a big logistical task, trying to schedule times when we can get in and do the work while the ships are not out on deployment.”

In development since 2007, NGEN has been criticized as a sprawling program that could result in unforeseen cost overruns. A March 2011 Government Accountability Office study of the program recommended the Navy put the brakes on the project.

“GAO is recommending that DoD limit further investment in NGEN until it conducts an interim review to reconsider the selected acquisition approach,” a summary of the report reads.

Furthermore, GAO found the Navy “does not have a reliable schedule for executing NGEN” and that “the program was approved in the face of known performance shortfalls and risks.”

The Navy “does not have a sufficient basis for knowing that it is pursuing the best approach for acquiring NGEN capabilities and the program’s cost and schedule performance is unlikely to track to estimates,” the GAO report concluded.

Since then, Hendricks and his team of more than 400 uniformed and civilian personnel have shored up some of the vulnerabilities brought up by the report, he said.

“We’ve clarified some areas with regard to software and application hosting and infrastructure and some of the other data requirements,” he said.

Eventually, the Navy’s computing networks will be consolidated into these two main systems, ideally eliminating redundancy and improving security oversight. When both are deployed, the afloat system will seamlessly mesh with the shore-based system. The programs will also standardize and upgrade the physical components of the network, including data centers, computers and telephones. That component will be particularly influential at sea, where some 640 legacy computing systems exist on 300-plus ships.

Some ships have up to 50 networks, each with its own training and support issues, according to the Rand study. Many of those legacy systems are stovepiped and unable to communicate with each other. The Navy has found it difficult to keep up with so many computing networks, allowing for little fiscal oversight and creating vulnerabilities in an age where cyber-attacks are an ever-present threat.

Heavily dependent on robust commercial technology, the new networks are specifically designed to address those issues while minimizing cost.

Commercial technology is also minimizing the risk that the two networks might not mesh as seamlessly as planned. Hendricks said his office is working closely with the CANES program office to ensure the two systems work together.

“We’ve tested interoperability with the shore and across the network,” Twyman said. “CANES design maximizes commonality of components across ship and submarine components. COTS equipment is generally interoperable. Sure, there will be a couple of minor things that could crop up, but there’s nothing huge or any major risks in getting those two networks to talk.”

USS Laboon deploys to make history

The USS Laboon is off and making history Wednesday when the guided missile destroyer left Norfolk with one of the most advanced weapons systems in the Navy.

The USS Laboon got underway early Wednesday morning, but the ship’s commanding officer has been preparing the crew for this deployment for at least 12 months.        

“This is a strategic, national mission,” Cmdr. James Storm told WAVY.com. “This is a priority of the President of the United States.”

That sense of urgency heightened by recent missile tests in Iran and intelligent reports that show sophisticated ballistic missile technology is more available than ever to nations hostile to the United States and our allies.

“Technology has kept pace with the proliferation of these threats and we have the capability to counter those threats,” Storm said.

That capability is the Ballistic Missile Defense System the ship was outfitted with last July. A number of Norfolk-based destroyers are equipped with the BMD system. Those vessels are the cornerstone of what is known as the president’s “Phased Adaptive Approach” to protect our European allies from the growing ballistic missile threat.

“The nature of war has changed dramatically since World War II,” Bill Morine said. His son, Grant, is a junior officer on the USS Laboon. “It’s great to see our son and this ship and all the people on board serving at the forefront, pioneering in new warfare on behalf of the defense of our nation.”

The opportunity to make history does not go unrecognized by the crew.

“To go out and actually do something for my country instead of sitting back and watching other people do it,” Thomas Taylor said.

Like many of his shipmates, this will be Seaman Taylor’s first deployment. Fir this mission, though, their youth may actually be an advantage.

“They’re more technologically savvy than I probably was when I first came in,” Storm said.

All are possessing the same devotion to duty.

Navy's new gender-neutral carriers won't have urinals

The U.S. Navy's new class of carriers will be the first to go without urinals, a decision made in part to give the service flexibility in accommodating female sailors, the Navy says.

The change heralded by the Gerald R. Ford class of carriers – starting with the namesake carrier due in late 2015 – is one of a number of new features meant to improve sailors' quality of life and reduce maintenance costs, Capt. Chris Meyer said Wednesday.

Omitting urinals lets the Navy easily switch the designation of any restroom – or head, in naval parlance – from male to female, or vice versa, helping the ship adapt to changing crew compositions over time, Meyer said.

The Navy could designate a urinal-fitted area to women, of course, but the urinals would be a waste of space. Making the areas more gender-neutral is a relatively new consideration for the service, with most of its current carriers commissioned before it began deploying women on non-submarine combat ships in 1994.

But it wasn't the only reason for the move.

Urinal drain pipes clog more than toilets and therefore can be smellier and costlier to maintain, Meyer said.

"There's a lot more at play in the design objectives than (making the toilet areas) gender-neutral. We're saving money in maintenance costs, and we’re improving quality of life," said Meyer, manager of the Future Aircraft Carriers Program for the Naval Sea Systems Command.

Other quality-of-life updates, according to Meyer:

– Sleeping areas, or berthings, generally will be smaller, designed for fewer people per room. On current carriers, some berthings have more than 100 sailors each. On the Ford carriers, the number will be closer to 30 to 50 each.

– Heads will be attached to berthing compartments. Currently, many sailors have to traverse a passageway between a berthing and a head, meaning sailors who’ve just woken up have to dress up more for a trip to the head than they would if it were adjacent.

The new Ford-class features were first reported by the Navy Times.

Some sailors said that they're happy to lose the urinals because they're hard to clean and maintain, the Navy Times reported this week.

The Ford class is the future replacement for the Nimitz class. The Ford carriers are designed to allow more aircraft sorties, but with about 660 fewer crew members, according to the Navy.

The first three Ford carriers are scheduled to debut between 2015 and 2027, at a total projected cost of $37 billion. That cost includes non-recurring engineering expenses and research and development costs for the first carrier, the Navy says.

Hometown boy lost aboard USS Thresher

Port City native youngest to perish on submarine

This is the next in a monthly series leading up to the 50th anniversary in 2013 of the loss of the submarine USS Thresher. - NOTE – Seacoastonline.com (see link at end of article)

The 1961 Portsmouth High School yearbook features a Page 6 photo of USS Thresher — described as "a new attack-type submarine" — being launched at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard the previous summer.

Page 42 of the same yearbook includes a portrait of graduating senior Peter Joseph DiBella, who is described as an award-winning bowler. His future plans are listed as attending the New Hampshire Institute of Technology and then joining the Navy.

His philosophy of life, the yearbook declares, is: "Try not to let little things bother you, for they usually turn up for the best."

In a cruel twist of irony, DiBella and the Thresher perished together two years later, along with 128 other men, in the worst submarine disaster in naval history.

Born and raised in the Port City, DiBella delivered the Portsmouth Herald as a boy and hung out at Moulton's soda and ice cream shop in Market Square as a teen, across the street from North Church. He was a local boy who fulfilled his lifelong dream by going to sea aboard a local vessel, only to die about 200 miles off the New England coast.

Just 19 years old at the time, DiBella also has the tragic distinction of being the youngest man lost in the Thresher disaster. After basic training at Great Lakes, Ill., and graduation from the Navy's submarine school in New London, Conn., he returned home to report for duty aboard the Thresher in January 1963.

The nuclear submarine went down less than three months later. Next April will mark the 50th anniversary of the tragedy.

'She was never the same after'

DiBella's younger brother Frank says Peter was thrilled to be stationed at home aboard the Thresher (SSN 593), the era's most advanced submarine. The first of its class, the Thresher was built to dive deeper and deadlier than its predecessors. She was a prime weapon of the Cold War, specifically designed to hunt and destroy Soviet submarines.

In a letter dated Oct. 1, 1962, announcing his assignment to his parents, DiBella wrote: "I don't want you to get to (sic) happy yet because anything could happen and my orders could be changed."

Like Peter, the Thresher entered the world here on the Seacoast. Her keel was laid at the Navy yard — across the river from where Peter grew up in Atlantic Heights — in 1958. Once construction was completed she was launched in 1960 and commissioned in 1961, the same year Peter graduated high school.

Like Peter, the submarine had returned home to the yard after extensive fine-tuning when she set out on her fatal voyage with 129 sailors and civilian workers on board for deep-dive trials.

And tragically, both Peter and the Thresher were on the very cusp of fulfilling their potential when they were lost on April 10, 1963.

His mother Barbara thought Peter would be safer on a submarine than on a surface vessel, Frank recalled in a recent telephone interview; she reasoned that the sub would be out of sight and a difficult target for enemy ships to track.

Frank was watching the old Western TV series "Wagon Train" when they learned about the Thresher disaster from a news report. The tragedy struck their mother especially hard.

"It destroyed her when it happened," Frank said. "She was never the same after that."

Their sister Elizabeth was playing up the street when her friend's mother told her she had just gotten a phone call asking Elizabeth to come home. When she got there her mother was so distraught Frank had to break the news to his little sister.

Her father was working in Connecticut at the time and rushed home upon hearing the news. A staff sergeant in the 82nd Airborne during World War II, John DiBella could not contain his grief. A photo of the stricken elder DiBella being consoled by a friend ran on the AP wire after the tragedy; Elizabeth recently bought the photo on eBay, disturbed that her father's anguish was being publicly auctioned.

"He would just break down and cry," she remembered. "I could feel there was a deal of great, great sadness within the family."

Five days later, tragedy struck again when Barbara's mother Annie Dawson died in a horrible car crash in the Seacoast en route to a bingo game in Dover.

Frank was 14 years old when the incidents occurred; Elizabeth was 11.

A city is devastated

The Thresher's loss was a terrible blow to the entire Seacoast community, where it seemed almost everyone knew someone touched by the tragedy, Frank remembered.

"It devastated the city when the Thresher went down," he said. "It rocked the naval shipyard. Everybody was affected one way or another."

But of course, the families were hit hardest of all. Frank, nearly 50 years later, believes the incident marked the end of his innocence. Five years younger than his brother, he regrets that they never got to hang out to drink beer and watch ball games together in their 20s and 30s, when the age difference would not have mattered. "It changed me forever," Frank said. "It's a huge loss that I'll never get over."

His siblings remember Peter as a happy, easygoing guy who served as a second father figure, especially for Frank. He had a box full of bowling trophies and was liked by all who knew him.

"He was the kind of person who would do anything for anybody," Elizabeth recalled.

They also describe their brother as a hometown boy to his core. He often fished in the Piscataqua River along the docks near Atlantic Heights, and played baseball on the Little League field across the street. He worked as a stock boy at Scott's jewelry store downtown, and he and his friends would stop off at Gilley's hot dog stand after seeing a movie.

Whereas Frank and Elizabeth both moved away to California, where they now reside, Frank is convinced Peter would have stayed in the area after his Navy service.

"He would've never moved from Portsmouth," Frank said. "He really loved Portsmouth."

The Navy totally revamped its safety procedures as a direct result of the Thresher disaster, resulting in its SUBSAFE program. Since its inception, no submarine passing through the program has suffered a similar fate.

Thresher Memorial

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic tragedy next year, Kittery officials and citizens have formed the Thresher Memorial Project Group to establish a permanent tribute. The site will be highlighted by a privately funded 129-foot flagpole erected at the local traffic circle, in recognition of the 129 men who died that day.

A separate group known as Thresher Base, a local chapter of U.S. Submarine Veterans Inc., will host surviving family members and guests at the Navy yard for the 50th annual remembrance service on April 6, 2013.

Elizabeth believes it's important to honor not only her brother and his shipmates but all who fall in service.

"We will never ever forget the sacrifice they made to help our country improve and be free," she said. "If they die, they need to know they will not be forgotten. It's very important that Americans continue to do that."

SeaCoastOnLine  

US Navy awards $212M contract to Textron for ship to shore connector (SSC) contract

The Navy awarded on July 6 2012 a $212,722,820 fixed-priced incentive-fee contract for the detail design and construction of a Ship-to-Shore Connector (SSC) test and training craft to Textron, Inc., New Orleans, La. The contract also includes options for up to eight additional craft which, if exercised, brings the cumulative value of this contract to $570,451,044. The award was based on full and open competition.

The SSC is an evolutionary replacement for the current Landing Craft, Air Cushioned (LCAC) vehicle, and benefits from more than 20 years of lessons learned from LCAC operations and maintenance.

                         

“The Ship-to-Shore Connector program demonstrates the Navy’s commitment to competition, while reducing acquisition and total ownership costs in the process,” said Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. “This is the first major naval acquisition program in more than 15 years to be designed in-house. The level of detail provided by the government design increased competition, reduced overall procurement costs and leads to smooth transition to full production.”

The SSC program will significantly enhance the Navy and Marine Corps team’s capability to execute a broad spectrum of missions well into the 21st century, from humanitarian assistance and disaster response to multidimensional amphibious assault. Deliveries will begin in fiscal 2017 with initial operational capability projected for fiscal 2020.

                         

                         

The SSC will be a high-speed, fully amphibious landing craft with a 30-year service life capable of carrying a 74-ton payload that can travel at speeds of more than 35 knots, day or night. Ship-to-Shore Connector supports rapid movement of Marine Expeditionary Forces from the sea base to shore and can tactically deliver personnel and heavy equipment to trafficable terrain well beyond the beach with the built-in reliability to operate in the harshest littoral environments.

Ship-to-Shore Connector will also bring improved technology and increased performance to handle current and future missions, plus better fuel efficiency and reduced maintenance through existing shore-based infrastructure. The Navy-led contract design, released to industry in a full and open competition, allowed for mid-tier builders without air-cushioned vehicle experience to compete for the detail design and construction contract. This approach uses the government’s expertise in air-cushioned vehicles and provides industry with the flexibility to make component selections and complete design details for optimal producibility and lowest possible acquisition costs.

U.S. Navy Rethinks The Silent Service

The U.S. Navy is rethinking how it will use its submarines in a future Pacific War. The problem is that a campaign against Chinese shipping is unlikely, in part because of what actually happened during the last great anti-shipping campaign, which occurred during World War II (1939-45). After the war, the U.S. analyzed its operations against Japanese shipping and found that submarines were important, but not the only weapon effective against shipping. Some 8.9 million tons of Japanese shipping was sunk or so seriously damaged (disabled) at the end of the war. Submarines accounted for 54.7 percent of this. But 16.3 percent was attributable to carrier-based aircraft, 14.5 percent to land- based planes and 9.3 percent to mines (most dropped by B-29s). Less than one percent was due to surface gunfire, and the balance of 4 percent was caused by accidents.

Because of their ability to operate in enemy-controlled (mainly by land-based aircraft) waters, submarines accounted for about 60 percent of the damage until the final months of the war. Then, during late 1944, carrier task forces went deep into enemy controlled areas, defending themselves against land-based warplanes and sinking a large numbers of ships. After April, 1945 Japanese shipping was restricted to the Korean and Manchurian runs and to shallow coastal waters. At this point the naval mines dropped by B-29s in Japanese harbors and inland waterways accounted for 50 percent of all ships sunk or damaged. That was then, but sixty years later the United States is able to monitor large ocean areas and has aircraft that are able to hit anything that's spotted. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. has adopted a new approach to any potential war with China. The U.S. Department of Defense has been told that, for the foreseeable future, there will be no more large-scale land campaigns. The air force, navy, and marines responded with a plan (AirSea Battle) that has been in the work for years. The new strategy is designed to cope with the rising power of China in the Pacific. AirSea Battle involves tighter planning and coordination of navy, marine, and navy forces, plus the development of some new weapons and tactics and cooperation with allies.

AirSea Battle has been widely accepted, as China continues to make all its neighbors nervous. That's because the Chinese name for China translates as "middle kingdom" as in "China is the middle of the world." The Chinese government, a communist dictatorship by any other name, is using nationalism to keep its pro-democracy opposition off balance. China has border disputes, expressed or implied, with all its neighbors. This has made the neighbors uneasy, especially as Chinese military forces have been modernized and more aggressive over the last decade.

While Air-Sea Battle was developed to keep the United States out of extensive land combat (the navy still has commandos and marines for brief operations ashore), those kinds of wars tend to show up when you least expect, want, or are prepared for them. For the moment, U.S. military planners believe they can avoid a large land war.

The U.S. Navy has been studying (and wargaming) the situation and that included an examination of American submarine use since World War II. After the 1960s, the U.S. shifted to using only nuclear propelled submarines. During the Cold War (1948-91), American subs were meant for use in defeating the growing Soviet (Russian) fleet. That force disappeared in the 1990s. At that point the Chinese fleet got larger and modernized, but is still nowhere near the size of the Soviet Navy. But this time the U.S. was facing a major trading nation. Unlike Russia, which was largely self-sufficient (or could get what it needed overland from neighbors), China requires thousands of ships a year to handle exports and imports. Like Japan during World War II, China is vulnerable here.

AirSea battle concentrates on military operations. But these will be heavily influenced by economic factors. For example, during World War II the United States was a largely self-sufficient "continental power." We exported much (more than any other nation on the planet), but did not have to import much. That has changed. Now the U.S. has to import a lot of its oil, special raw materials (like "rare earths" from China) and a lot of manufactured goods. The U.S. is now like much of the rest of the world, China included. If there were a maritime blockade of China, the U.S. and many other Chinese trading partners would suffer severe economic disruptions. There would be massive unemployment for all concerned and that would happen despite energetic efforts by everyone to find alternative sources to goods no longer available because of the disruption of the China trade.

Then there is the risk of nuclear war. Since the first nuclear weapons were used in 1945, there has been the longest period of peace between major powers in human history. These days a "major power" is one that has nuclear weapons and can deliver them against other nuclear armed nations. Thus any maritime blockade of China will be a very risky undertaking. That said, it can be done without submarines. Simply order the Western maritime insurance companies to withdraw insurance for ships or cargoes entering or leaving China. That will have immediate effect. China can scramble to try and replace the insurance covering, but along with the "insurance bomb" comes the U.S. declaration that the coastal waters of China are now under blockade and any ship ignoring that is subject to attack. It goes downhill from there, until compromise and moderation replace the war fever.

Meanwhile, the nuclear submarine community has done the math and found that their greatest contribution these days is not attacking enemy warships, but land bombardment with cruise missiles and intelligence collecting. Since the first nuclear subs showed up in the 1950s, only one, a British boat, has used a torpedo to sink a hostile warship. But hundreds of cruise missiles have been launched at land targets and uncounted (because they are highly classified) intelligence missions have been, and continue to be, carried out. All that is the recent past for subs, and is likely to be the future as well. World War II in the Pacific is not likely to be rerun. The U.S. Navy still expects its subs to go after enemy warships, and its surface and air forces to battle enemy subs. But a major war on shipping is much less likely.