Replacing the Maritime : The Change in Naval Strategy from 1989-1994

A dissertation presented to

the faculty of

the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Steven T. Wills

April 2017

©2017 Steven T. Wills. All Rights Reserved.

2

This dissertation titled

Replacing the Maritime Strategy: The Change in Naval Strategy from 1989-1994

by

STEVEN T. WILLS

has been approved for

the Department of History

and the College of Arts and Sciences by

Ingo Trauschweizer

Associate Professor of History

Robert Frank

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3

ABSTRACT

WILLS, STEVEN T., Ph.D., April 2017, History

Replacing the Maritime Strategy: The Change in Naval Strategy from 1989-1994

Director of Dissertation: Ingo Trauschweizer

The change in U.S. naval strategy from 1989 to 1994 was the most significant of its kind since the end of the Second World . The end of the , the provisions of the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 and the effects of the First of 1991 combined to radically alter U.S. and naval strategic thinking. The end of the Cold War brought about a review of U.S. naval strategy, but the personalities involved created a new process that greatly hampered the re-creation of strategy designed to combat peer competitors. The provisions of the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 indirectly affected the

Navy where strategy documents had heretofore been produced. Talented officers that had sought service on the Staff gravitated instead toward the Joint Staff and regional Commander Staffs as these positions offered better chances for promotion and advancement. Finally the First Gulf War caused a crisis of confidence among the Navy’s senior leaders in that they did not get to validate traditional concepts against Saddam Hussein’s limited Iraqi naval forces. This feeling seems to have further convinced leaders to leave behind traditional concepts and the service staff structures that created them in favor of Army and methods of organization for combat. Those services appeared to have confirmed their warfare doctrines in the 1991 conflict.

Congress agreed and the Navy was concerned that vital funding in the post-Cold War-era 4 required the seagoing service to also adjust to a warfare organization more favorable to legislative support.

These factors combined to produce a different kind of new naval strategy in the form of the “From the Sea” white paper. It eschewed blue water naval operations for those in the coastal regions of the world know as the littorals. U.S. Marine Corps forces, which had almost always had a secondary role in naval strategic planning in the past, were in many cases given the leading role in From the Sea with the regular Navy providing logistics support. Once adopted, however, From the Sea was increasingly less relevant as an active document as its predecessor (the 1980’s Maritime Strategy.) In the absence of an integrating opponent like the , the fight with the other services for scarce budgetary resources dominated the concerns of naval leadership. The

Budgets and Assessment arm of the Navy Staff had achieved a significant superiority in authority and influence over its peer staff counterparts as a result of post-Cold War reorganization in response to this concern. Preservation of shrinking naval force structure rather than future strategic planning dominated naval thinking for the next quarter century. The strategy arm of the Naval Staff, weakened in influence due to reorganization, and less well staffed by talented officers due to the Goldwater Nichols

Act provisions, was unable to conduct effective strategic planning that had an influence on naval budgets and force structure planning. As a result, the naval service was increasingly less capable of producing new strategic concepts in the post-Cold War era. 5

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to my wife Alice, my son John and my daughter Emily who

endured many evening hours, weekends and several vacations without me so that it could be completed. My wife’s encouragement sustained this effort and I could not have

accomplished it without her loving support.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The contributions of numerous active and retired officers, civilian officials and academics were essential to the completion of this work. The author is grateful to the following persons for their comments, support and assistance; Arthur (Trip)

Barber, USN (ret), Captain/Dr. Roger Barnett, USN (ret), Mr. Irv Blickstein,

Commander/Dr. Mitch Brown, USN (ret), Former Deputy Navy Undersecretary Dr. Seth

Cropsey, Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret), Captain/Dr. Thomas Fedyszyn, USN

(ret), Commander Paul Giarra, USN (ret), Dr. John Hanley, Captain R. Robinson (Robby)

Harris, USN (ret), Professor John Hattendorf, Captain/Professor Wayne Hughes, USN

(ret), Captain William Spencer Johnson, USN (ret), Commander/Dr. John Kuehn, USN

(ret), Former Navy Secretary Dr. , Captain/Dr. Brad Martin, USN (ret),

Rear Michael McDevitt, USN (ret), Commander Bryan McGrath, USN (ret),Mr.

Greg Melcher, Vice Admiral Henry C (Hank) Mustin, USN (ret), Mr. Charles Nemfakos,

Mr. James O’Brasky, Admiral William Owens, USN (ret), Dr. Bruce Powers, Dr. David

Alan Rosenberg, Captain Robert (Barney) Ruebel, USN, (ret), Rear Admiral Joseph

Sestak, USN (ret), Rear Admiral James Stark, USN (ret), Commander/Dr. Stanley

Weeks, USN (ret), Commander/Dr. Steve Woodall, USN (ret), and Dr. Harlan Ullman.

The author is especially grateful to Captain Peter Swartz, USN (ret), who very graciously opened to research his archives, rolodex and insights on nearly four decades of naval strategy and policy. This work would not have reached its level of detail in the absence of Captain Swartz’s contributions, for which the author will always be grateful.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract ...... 3

Dedication ...... 5

Acknowledgments...... 6

Introduction ...... 8

Chapter 1: Naval Strategy: 1945-1980 ...... 26

Chapter 2: The 1980's ...... 104

Chapter 3: The Effect of the 1986 Goldwater Nichols Act on Navy Strategy ...... 172

Chapter 4: The Impact of the First Gulf War and the Revolution in Military Affiars on

Navy Strategic Change ...... 227

Chapter 5: Making the Change ...... 292

References ...... 361

8

INTRODUCTION

It was becoming readily apparent by the middle of 1989 that the dissolution of the

Warsaw Pact would have significant implications for the U.S. military. This was especially true for the Navy (USN) that had devised its Maritime Strategy and associated 600- navy for the purpose of countering global Soviet threats. Naval analyst Ronald O’Rourke described this period as the Navy’s “most significant crossroads in four decades” and a change that “called into question many of the basic assumptions that have guided U.S. Defense Planning for naval and other military forces since the 1950’s.”1

The historical assessment of periods of fundamental strategic change is vital to understanding both the changes of that era and those of past significant change. It also serves to perhaps predict and understand future occurrences. This work serves to explain in detail the fundamental alternations in strategic thinking, organization and execution of global U.S. naval operations that occurred in the relatively short period between 1989 and

1994. While the transition from the 1980’s era Maritime Strategy to the post-Cold War and post-Gulf War naval policy entitled “From the Sea” was essentially successful, the

U.S. Navy did not accurately assess those Cold War-era elements of Navy strategic organization that had proved effective at creating the strategy and operational analysis of the last two decades. This failure in retrospect served to leave the Navy ill-prepared to conduct the strategic assessment necessary to identify a new era of strategic competition where both rising and revanchist near-peer competitors as well as non-state actors now

1 Ronald O’Rourke, “The Future of the U.S. Navy”, in Joel Sokolsky and Joseph Jockel, eds.,Fifty Years of Canada-United States Defense Cooperation: The Road from Ogdensburg (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 289. 9 threaten U.S. naval superiority in a growing number of geographic locations. Periods of great change demand considered response. While immediate strategic conditions may alter and demand new solutions, that does not mean that the system of producing strategic thinking must also change. The U.S. Navy’s system of producing strategic documents had successfully functioned since 1970, yet Navy leaders in the period 1989-1994 cast it aside. This work serves to warn decision-makers of the perils of careless change without adequate assessment of what had proved a successful system of strategy generation before 1991.

The U.S. Navy had spent the last two decades reconstituting its Vietnam-era fleet.

Its Maritime Strategy had been carefully crafted and refined since the late 1970’s, and was updated several times before 1989. The 600-ship building program was approaching fruition, albeit at the cost of significant , and stood at 588 in 1988.2

Elements within the Chief of Naval Operations’ staff (OPNAV) had been largely responsible for the creation of both the strategy and the accompanying, planned 600-ship force structure. The OPNAV staff was in effect a competitive marketplace of ideas where strategy and analysis elements vied to produce products that would sway the Navy service chief to their desired outcomes. Three such men; , James

Holloway III, and Thomas Hayward effectively balanced these groups and in doing so laid the building blocks for both the Maritime Strategy and the 600-ship Navy. Many of the officers from both the strategy and analysis cohorts would go on to more senior

2Steven Howarth, To Shining Sea, A History of the , 1775-1998, (Norman, OK, University of Oklahoma Press), 547. 10 positions of greater influence, suggesting that the people were as much a successful

“product” of this process as the strategy documents they created.

This great effort had been contrived to confront a global Soviet threat that was now evaporating at the beginning of 1989. The Soviets had begun withdrawing from

Afghanistan in May of 1988 and would finish this process by February 1989.3 The revolutions that brought about the end of Communist governments in Eastern Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 signified that the Cold War was ending.4

It was with some irony that the unofficial end of the Cold War occurred in a distinctly naval environment at the 1989 Malta summit between U.S. President George H.

W. Bush and Soviet Premier . Both countries were represented by in the Maltese harbor and President Bush stayed aboard the 6th Fleet Flagship

USS Belknap for the duration of the summit. A storm lashed at Belknap throughout the

President’s stay. Three strategic storms were about engulf the U.S. Navy as it thought about how it would replace a Cold War maritime strategy that had dictated its force structure and much of its operations for nearly forty years. These storms would significantly affect the Navy and Marine Corps’ efforts to create a strategy and attendant force structure for the emerging post-Cold War era. They include the disappearance of the Soviet threat and resulting end of the Cold War on which naval strategic planning had been based for over four decades, the changes wrought by the passage of the Goldwater

Nichols Act of 1986, and the effects of the First Gulf War (1990-1991). All would all

3 Bill Keller, “Last Soviet Soldiers Leave Afghanistan,” ( International, 16 February, 1989), electronic resources, https://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/021689afghan-laden.html, last accessed, 8 January 2017. 4 George Bush and , A World Transformed, The Collapse of the Soviet Empire, The Unification of , Tiananmen Square, and The Gulf War, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998) 148. 11 play noteworthy roles in shaping the proposed and force structures of the 1990s and following decades.

The Maritime Strategy of the 1980’s was designed around combating and defeating the Soviet Navy on a global scale and in supporting the expected main in

Europe against a hypothetical Soviet across Central Europe. The Navy would support the European contest by attacking the Soviet homeland and its nuclear ballistic missile that operated in home waters, as well as landing Marines in Norway, the Balkans and in the Soviet Pacific in order to divert Soviet resources and attention away from the all-important contest in Central Europe.

The strategy came under fire within the Navy in the late 1990’s as the Warsaw

Pact alliance began to fail, and for the rising cost of the naval component of the Reagan military buildup. Navy believed a new strategy was in order by late 1989 and set up a series of official and ad-hoc, unofficial groups to examine possible successor strategies over the course of 1990-late 1992. Many of the same individuals responsible for the creation of the 1980’s Maritime Strategy participated in these discussions. The

“From the Sea” Strategy that emerged in late 1994 was designed around a new area and principle of naval warfare. “Littoral” operations in coastal areas and within range of sea- based air and missile were to be the new focus of naval warfare, a sharp turn away from the high seas, blue water combat expected against the Soviet Navy in the

1980’s. Naval forces would maneuver from the sea to the land and in some cases the land forces and their actions would be more important than operations at sea. The Navy was 12 still expected to maintain sea control in forward areas when required, but its new focus was supporting air/ground expeditionary operations along the greater Asian littoral.

While the new, “From the Sea” concept had been created by the same staff organizations and in some cases many of the same people who had a hand in creating the

Maritime Strategy, the reorganization of the Navy Staff that came with the Cold War’s end, the Goldwater Nichols provisions and the moral effects of the First Gulf War made the new product much less effective over time than its predecessor and the creation of future, influential strategic documents problematic at best. The competitive environment of the 1970’s and 1980’s was in effect replaced by one of top-down consensus thinking for the sake of timing, budgets and convenience.

It was perhaps inevitable as the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 was conceived partly in response to a perception that the collaborative and competitive process of negotiations on the Joint Staff in order to achieve consensus was inherently flawed. That system was accused of producing watered-down, consensus decisions and documents. A top-down, directive system was considered a more effective choice in terms of budgetary efficiency over time. Goldwater Nichols was in effect a victory for the acolytes of

Kennedy and Johnson administration Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who sought to strip the individual military services of their budgetary and force creation powers in favor of a centralized, analysis-driven process directed by senior Defense

Department civilian personnel. The Goldwater Nichols Act concentrated much of this authority within the office of the Chairman of the rather than senior 13 defense civilian leaders, but the outcome still served to remove the competitive process of the past decades.

That effort, however flawed, produced some of what has been acknowledged as the finest strategic and operational U.S. military thinking since the Second .

The Army and Air Force’s Air Land battle doctrine, the Navy Maritime Strategy, and the

Marine Corps concepts of operational maneuver warfare all came from a competitive, decentralized system of uniformed military leadership. The list of similar products from the 1990’s to the present does not include such illustrious entries. While Goldwater

Nichols was billed as a preventative measure against future, fruitless conflicts like the

Vietnam War, the fought in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 and 2003

(respectively) have not displayed much in the way of improved strategic thinking. U.S. forces achieved rapid, operational victories only to become mired in operations as challenging as those in Vietnam. The vaunted Iraqi “surge” effort of 2007 was a product of retired officers and members of think tanks rather than one of the

Chairman and the Joint Staff.

The Navy’s alternation of strategy from one based on threats, geography and military capability in favor of one where budgetary concerns are the primary mirrors that of the U.S. defense establishment in general in the 1990’s. Deprived of strategic vision following the collapse of the Soviet Union, forced into a top-down, non-competitive decision-making environment as a result of Goldwater Nichols and perhaps conditioned by the First Gulf War into assumptions of an “easy” post-Cold War security environment,

U.S. long range strategic military planning lapsed over the 1990’s. While it returned to a 14 degree after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, long term strategy remained governed more by budgets, and systemic organization. While some reform attempts have been made, there has been no attempt to fundamentally change the concepts and systems for running the business of national security that have been in place since Robert S.

McNamara was the Defense Secretary over a half century ago in the past. Instead,

McNamara’s systems analysis methods of defense planning migrated to the service staffs after his departure from , and were largely re-affirmed by the Goldwater

Nichols Act. The Navy’s experience in this process is worthy of continued examination as begun in this dissertation.

The historiography of the U.S. Navy’s strategy development from the end of the

Second World War through the 1980’s is rich and well developed. Historian Michael A.

Palmer’s The Origins of the Maritime Strategy and Navy History and Heritage Command scholar Jeffrey Barlow’s From Hot War to Cold effectively cover the early and middle

Cold War periods of Navy strategy development. Michael T. Isenberg’s Shield of the

Republic is also a reliable early Cold War reference on a host of Navy policy issues.

Hoover Institute scholar Paul Ryan’s book First Line of Defense and

Professor Thomas Hone’s Power and Change, The Administrative History of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1945-1986, provide detailed coverage of both operational and administrative changes in the Navy over the course of the Cold War through 1980.5

5 Micheal Palmer, The Origins of the Maritime Strategy, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1988.), Jeffrey Barlow, From Hot War to Cold, The U.S. Navy and National Security Affairs, 1945-1955, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.), Michael T. Isenburg, Shield of the Republic, The United States Navy in an Era of Cold War and Violent Peace, 1945-1962, (New York: St. Martins Press, 1993.), Paul B. Ryan, First Line of Defense, The U.S. Navy Since 1945, (Stanford, CA: The Hoover Insttiution Press, 1981.), Thomas C. Hone, Power and Change, The Administrative History of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1946-1986, ( D.C.: The United States Navy Historical Center, 1989.) 15

The works of Naval War College professor John B. Hattendorf, both alone and in collaboration with Maritime strategy author Captain Peter M. Swartz, are arguably the most detailed accounts of the origins, development and eventually fall of the Maritime

Strategy over the period 1970 through 1990.6 Both authors also describe aspects of the change in strategy from the Maritime Strategy to “From the Sea,” and further developments in naval policy to the present day, but many of these are either introductory remarks to anthologies of post-1989 strategies or bulletized summaries. Other authors have touched upon the period 1989-1994 as one of great strategic change for the U.S.

Navy, notably Admiral William Owens in his 1995 book High Seas.7 Naval Reserve intelligence and PhD historian Dr. David Rosenberg is another significant author on elements of the Maritime Strategy. His book with fellow intelligence specialist

Christopher Ford, The Admiral’s Advantage examines the operational intelligence underpinnings of the Maritime Strategy.8

Naval Postgraduate School scholar Captain Peter Haynes’ recent book Toward a

New Maritime Strategy provides coverage of a much wider period of strategic change from the late 1980’s through the recent past.9 Haynes served within the Chief of Naval

Operations Staff (OPNAV) on multiple occasions including one as the Branch Chief for

6 John B. Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, (Newport, RI: The Naval War College Press, 2004.), John B. Hettendorf and Peter M. Swartz, editors, U.S. Navy Strategy in the 1980’s, Selected Documents, (Newport, RI: The Naval War College Press, December 2008.), and John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, (Newport, RI: The Naval War College Press, September 2006.) 7 William A. Owens, High Seas, The Naval Passage to an Uncharted World, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1995.) 8 David Rosenberg and Christopher Ford, The Admiral’s Advantage, U.S. Navy Operational Intelligence in World War 2 and the Cold War, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2014.) 9Peter D. Haynes, Toward a New American Maritime Strategy, American Naval Thinking in the Post Cold War Era, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2015) 16

Strategy and Concepts (N513) and speaks with institutional authority on changes in

OPNAV-sponsored strategy over the period he examines.

Haynes’ arguments rest on two specific assumptions. The first is that the Navy’s strategy throughout the Cold War was not a classical maritime strategy of global systems management as expressed in the writings of American naval Admiral Alfred

Thayer Mahan. Haynes instead suggests that the post-World War 2 U.S. Cold War strategy was, “hyperrationalist, apolitical, and ahistorical,” and in the words of Henry Kissinger, “turned strategy into deterrence and deterrence into an esoteric intellectual exercise.”10Haynes postulates that nuclear weapons altered the business of strategy to one focused only on the military threat posed by the Soviet Union and not on the maintenance of an international system. Haynes’ second argument states that the end of the Cold War did not fundamentally alter U.S. strategic principles. He suggests that the

U.S. government again ignored maintenance of a global system after the collapse of the

Soviet regime in favor of a business model for the Department of Defense and, “imposed a centrally controlled programming and budgeting process and the rationality of the science of management in which the coin of the realm was marginal cost-benefit analysis.” Haynes states that the U.S. was largely incapable of creating a new systemic maritime strategy such as those used by past liberal economic powers to defeat continental threats because, “a myopic focus on determining means” vice a holistic, traditional ways, means and ends discussion had become the basis for strategy as exercised by a pragmatic, -driven U.S. defense leadership.11

10Ibid, 5, 6. 11Ibid, 6. 7. 17

This thesis largely disagrees with Haynes’ first argument, but affirms his second.

It can be argued that there are multiple interpretations of ’s strategy principles and that the maintenance of a global economic and trade system was a cooperative and not a single nation effort in Mahan’s thinking.12 It can also be argued that the United States did not aspire to the leadership of a global system until well after the end of the Second World War, and even then, not until after the Cold War ended did U.S. naval strategists suggest such a role for the U.S. Navy. Mahan suggested in 1900 that the

U.S. did not have the same global responsibilities or face the same threats as did the

British Empire. Mahan wrote, “contrary to her [the British Empire], we need not to fear from vital injury by an external blow to our communications with the world. For simple internal safety and maintenance we can depend upon ourselves, and we have no distant possessions vital to our mere existence, however useful they may be to our external development and influence.”13

American naval writers Harold and Margaret Sprout suggested a similar U.S.- centric approach to U.S. maritime strategy in the early 1940’s. They argued that the First

World War “destroyed the last vestiges of world strategic unity, so long symbolized by the dominant sea power of England.”14In the Sprouts’ opinion, the United States’ interests would be best served by joining with the British to create a new Anglo-

American sea power consortium in which responsibilities for global management of

12 Jon T. Sumida, Inventing and Teaching Command: The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered (Baltimore, MD: The Press, 1999). 13Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Problem of Asia and its Effect Upon International Policies, (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1900), 197, 198. 14Harold and Margaret Sprout, Toward a New Order of Seapower, American Naval Policy and the World Scene, 1918-1922, (New York: Greenwood Press, 1974), 285. 18 threats would be divided. Talk of actually taking over British global dominance, “ignored the plain facts of political and military geography. It overlooked the absence of any commercial bottlenecks in the Western Hemisphere that were in anyway comparable to

Europe’s narrow seas.”15

This lack of emphasis on a global system continues with American sea power thinker rear Admiral J.C. Wylie who wrote in the mid 1960’s, “Mahan became famous for, and rightfully so,” for, “his recognition of the role of sea power as a basis for national strategy.”16 In the late 1980’s naval historian Colin Gray suggested that the British experience of maritime power repelling continental invaders from Louis XIV to Adolf

Hitler was just as formative a theory in support of sea power as was the global system of control version.17Naval War College professor Jan Breemer suggested in 1994, “for the first time in centuries the world’s largest fleet is without an actual or foreseeable competitor on the high seas. It can therefore focus its energies on ‘operations other than war at sea’ without having to look over its shoulder for the next blue water challenge.”18

These references suggest that the United States was concerned primarily with

Mahan’s precepts in attaining , and viewed maintenance of the global system as at best a joint, Anglo-American enterprise until the Second World War. The

Cold War focused U.S. efforts on the sea control aspects of Mahanian strategy and only with its end did the U.S. consider assuming the role of global guarantor of maritime

15Ibid, 288, 289. 16 J.C. Wylie, , A General Theory of Power Control, (Annapolis, MD: The Naval Institute Press, 1989), 34. 17 William S. Lind and Colin Gray, “The Maritime Strategy 1988; Bad Strategy or Global Deterrent,” (The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, (February 1988), 56. 18 Jan Breemer, The End of Naval Strategy, Revolutionary Change and the Future of American Naval Power,” (The Strategic Review, Vol XXII, No. 2, (Spring 1994), 48. 19 security. Even the known, historical champion of global, maritime economic management, the British Empire, knew at the height of its maritime influence that maintenance of global systems came after batter. The British naval strategist Vice

Admiral Philip Colomb, a contemporary of Mahan wrote, “nothing can be done of consequence in naval war till one side secures control of the water area. But even then it is not clear to men’s minds that this control must either be acknowledged by the side which has it not, and all its disabilities admitted; or else must be fought for by all of the naval strength either side is capable of putting forth.”19

This thesis agrees with Haynes’ argument that the pragmatic, technology and analysis-driven leadership of both military and civilian elements of the navy contributed to the service’s inability to produce a global maritime strategic document until nearly fifteen years after the Cold War’s conclusion. The provisions of the Goldwater Nichols

Act, and the decline of the Chief of Naval Operations Staff Strategy staff office at the end of the Cold War contributed to the rise of Haynes “myopic focus on determining means” through the empowerment of the OPNAV staff N81 assessments office, a that largely controlled the Navy’s annual budget submission from the mid 1990’s through the recent past.20

This thesis provides a more detailed examination of Haynes’ second argument in that it explains why a means-based strategy arose in place of the 1980’s Maritime

19 P.H. Colomb, Naval War Warfare: Its Ruling Principles and Practice Theoretically Treated, 2nd Edition, London: W.H. Allen and Company, 1895, 21, electronic resource, https://archive.org/stream/navalwarfare00cologoog#page/n41/mode/2up, last accessed 19 February 2017. 20 James A Russell, James J. Wirtz, Donald Abenheim, Thomas-Durrell Young and Diana Wueger, “Navy Strategy Development: Strategy in the 21st Century,” (Monterey, CA: The Naval Postrgraduate School, June, 2015), 10, 25. 20

Strategy. It examines the period of 1989-1994 in historical context and in terms of three significant drivers of change. These were the Cold War’s end, the passage and implementation of the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 and the effects of the First Gulf

War. The author argues that the intersection of these three events over a period of less than a decade played the dominant role in forcing change from an opponent and geographic strategy to the focus on means that Haynes suggests. Finally, this thesis is focused as much on the people responsible for the change in Navy strategy from 1989-

1994, as the documents and processes that created them. Several persons involved in these efforts interviewed by the author stressed, “The people are the product.” Many of the same Navy officers were responsible for the creation of both the 1980’s Maritime

Strategy and From the Sea. The competition between some of these groups is integral to the story of the Navy’s strategic changes in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. The thesis is loyal to that concept in that it makes ample use of personal accounts in telling that story.

The abrupt end of the forty plus year Cold War caught Navy strategists unawares and plunged the U.S. Navy and the rest of the U.S. defense establishment into the most significant period of strategic change since the end of World War 2 and the passage of the

National Security Act of 1947. The Army and the Air Force both maintained operational- level strategies that could be adapted to multiple situations and geographic environments.

The Navy however was fully invested in the Maritime Strategy that had based force structure, deployment, and principle basis of existence on a peer opponent. Deprived of a

Soviet naval threat, the Navy and Marine Corps would spend the years from 1989 to 1994 in determining what naval strategy and attendant force structure would replace the 21

Maritime Strategy and the 600 ship navy concepts of the early 1980’s. There was an immediate understanding that the world had changed with the dissolution of the Soviet

Union, and that the “blue water” 1980’s Maritime Strategy was no longer applicable to the present situation. Unlike the late 1970’s, when initial planning for what became the

Maritime Strategy was conducted at the highest levels of naval leadership, post-Cold War strategic research began at the level of Navy captains, Marine Corps colonels and junior flag officers. The Marine Corps played an unprecedented role in the process and a focus on support of operations ashore quickly emerged. Remarkably, however, despite their advocacy of major strategic change, this same group did not recommend significant change in the Navy’s force structure. Older warships, no longer supported by generous

Cold War budgets were retired, but the basic fleet of aircraft carriers, surface warships, and nuclear submarines remained unaltered.

The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Frank B. Kelso also took the opportunity offered by the end of the Cold War to fundamentally reorganize his service staff (OPNAV) along lines more favorable to the maintenance of the remaining fleet strength vice a continued focus on strategy. The Navy would have a remarkably different strategy in place by 1994, but it was supported by the same fleet built to oppose the

Soviet Union in the twilight of the Cold War. Entitled “From the Sea” and labeled as a

White paper rather than a strategy, the new concept was based on “shaping the future in ways favorable to U.S. interest;” had a focus on “joint and combined operations” together with the Marine Corps; and proposed to provide a host of non-warfighting specific capabilities including presence, crisis response and the ability to project power from the 22 sea.21The ultimate purpose was a replacement for the Maritime Strategy of the 1980’s, but it is debatable if the new product, From the Sea, was the basis of a new kind of post-

Cold War force, or just the best use of existing, more recently built force structure. This thesis leans in favor of the second supposition.

The advent of greater defense centralization and primacy of joint rather than single service planning through the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 would further complicate Navy efforts to create a new strategy. This legislation passed in 1986 stripped away the few remaining controls service chiefs like the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps possessed over operational forces. Other requirements of Goldwater Nichols, especially the need for much greater staffing of joint vice service-specific staff officer billets would shift the services’ personnel priorities away from those billets that were traditionally responsible for service-based strategic planning. Those talented officers who had previously served in service planning positions were naturally attracted to operational joint positions in order to enhance their career prospects. While this effect was not immediate in the late 1980’s, it would become more pronounced as “From the Sea,” the Navy’s first strategic doctrine for the post-Cold War era, was developed.

The elevation of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) to a position of principal military advisor to the President allowed that officer to exercise significant influence over any purely naval-themed strategy and force structure. General Colin

Powell, who served as CJCS from October 1989 to September 1993 exercised the full

21 Sean O’Keefe, Frank B. Kelso II, and Carl E. Mundy, “From the Sea: Preparing the Naval Service for the 21st Century”, U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 118, No. 11(November, 1992) . 93. 23 range of powers given to his office by the legislation. His development of the Base Force over this same period was driven by his own strategic vision of the U.S. retaining superpower status rather than any threat-based scenarios of where the U.S. might become militarily involved in a post-Cold War world.22 The Chairman’s assumption of traditionally service force planning rules as mandated by the Goldwater Nichols Act further complicated the Navy’s efforts to devise a post-Cold War strategy and attendant force structure.

Most of the Navy’s leadership had vigorously opposed the Goldwater Nichols legislation. Much of joint doctrine emphasized operational art, a term the Navy had long eschewed as not applicable to blue water naval combat. Army War College Professor

Antulio Echevarria suggests some of that reluctance stems from a Navy belief that it is able to, “exert direct strategic influence” in the course of its campaigns.23 The maritime service felt pressured however to drop its objections to joint operations after the

Goldwater Nichols legislation passed Congress with near-unanimous approval. While all services sought to support the mandate for joint operations Congress had given in the form of the legislation, the Navy started from a position of relative disadvantage in comparison with the Army and Air Force due to its earlier disapproval of joint concepts.

Members of Congress and the Bush administration that had succeeded that of Reagan in

1988 tended to view the Navy as backward thinking due to this earlier opposition. This negative view of the Navy would also complicate the business of new strategy creation.

22 Lorna S. Jaffe. The Development of the Base Force, 1989-1993(Washington D.C.: (The Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Joint History Office), 1993, 22. 23AntulioEchevarria, “American Operational Art, 1917-2008,” in: The Evolution of Operational Art: From Napoleon to the Present,eds. John Andreas Olesn and Martin Van Creveld, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 137. 24

Finally, the first Persian Gulf War cast a long shadow over the post-Cold War

U.S. military force. The Army and the Air Force ended the conflict secure in the knowledge that their Cold War operational and tactical concepts had been validated by the war’s results. The Navy did not enjoy the same experience. Iraq did not have a significant navy, and mounted little opposition to U.S. Navy operations in the First Gulf

War beyond its mine laying operations in the Persian Gulf that damaged two U.S. warships. The Navy’s inability to validate its principal Cold War strategy and operational doctrine cast a cloud of uncertainty over service efforts to create a replacement for the

Maritime Strategy. Congress and the press saw this uncertainty as an indication that the

Navy was too “parochial” and unable to adjust to changing times. The 1991 further unnerved naval leadership and put greater pressure on Navy leaders to develop a new strategy that eschewed the immediate past.

Despite these obstacles, the Navy produced a strategic concept for the post-Cold

War world that largely met internal and external measures of success. The progression from blue water warfare against the Soviets to a trans-oceanic successor in support of operations ashore was a logical development. The new strategy was developed and nurtured by many of the same offices that produced and refined the 1980’s Maritime

Strategy. The Navy preserved nearly all of its modern fleet units despite numerical and budgetary limitations imposed by the requirements of the Base Force. As with the end of past conflicts, some significant ship, aircraft, and programs were cancelled and

Cold War disciplines like antisubmarine warfare atrophied in the absence of a peer competitor. 25

This combination of the Cold War’s end, the Goldwater Nichols Act, and the effects of the first Gulf War served to alter substantially the political-military climate where the Navy had to create a new strategy. The Navy struggled to define what capabilities it needed to retain in a post-Cold War environment where it was deprived of its principal opponent. The Goldwater Nichols Act provisions forced the Navy to collaborate on an unprecedented level with the other services in determining its own strategic vision. Finally, the results of the Gulf War did not validate the Navy’s Maritime

Strategy of the 1980’s and introduced further uncertainty into the process of creating a successor. Ironically, unlike in past significant changes in U.S. naval strategy, the force structure of the fleet did not applicably change. Efforts by senior officers to protect existing force structure as an offset against the return of an aggressive Soviet/Russian fleet further complicated the process of strategic change. The change from the 1980’s

Maritime Strategy to the concepts embodied in “From the Sea” and “Forward from the

Sea” constituted the most significant change to U.S. naval strategy and operations since the end of the Second World War.

26

CHAPTER 1: NAVAL STRATEGY: 1945-1980

The Post-World War 2 Trans-Oceanic Strategy

It is necessary to review the development of both national and naval strategy from the end of the Second World War through the late 1970’s and the process of defense reorganization reform within Department of Defense (DoD) in order to appreciate the scope and magnitude of change that occurred between 1989 and 1994. The Cold War’s containment policy is best described by historian John Lewis Gaddis as the “series of attempts to deal with the series of consequences that resulted from the Faustian bargain” of the World War 2 U.S. alliance with the Soviet Union.24 The actions of the Soviet

Union from the end of World War 2 through the Berlin of 1948 and 1949 eventually compelled the U.S. to join with other nations in unified opposition, but internal U.S. military issues also shaped the response.

The military strategy and attendant defense organization that emerged at the end of the 1940’s to support containment was also based on the competition among the U.S. military services for increasingly scarce resources, their differing, historical service concepts of unification and grand strategy, and arguments about who would employ atomic weapons and in what capacity. These issues, rather than specific Soviet or other

Communist actions, defined how the U.S. Defense Department and its component military services structured their Cold War strategies and force structures to support the

Containment policy. The U.S. Navy grappled with all three issues over the course of the middle Cold War as it sought naval strategy that preserved its force structure and

24 John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, A Critical Appraisal of American Security Policy During the Cold War, revised edition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 4. 27 independent fleet action, supported hypothetical strategic and actual ground operations in

Korea and Vietnam, and eventually confronted a global Soviet naval presence in the

1970’s. Those conditions would also affect the process of post-Cold War strategy development when the Navy again faced issues concerns about force structure, independence of the fleet in a joint era and how best to support operations ashore.

Unification Disrupt Naval Strategic Planning

The fight for funding in the immediate aftermath of World War 2, and initial

Navy attempts to build a postwar naval strategy coincided with intense service disputes over the unification of the armed forces that resulted in what would become first the

National Military Establishment (NME) in 1947 and the Department of Defense in

1949.25 The advent of atomic weapons, the apparent failure of the Army and Navy to anticipate and prevent the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 07 December 1941, and a general sense that the United States’ new found global responsibilities in 1945 demanded a new defense organization drove both Congress and President to demand some measure of armed forces unification. The public at large seemed to agree. A Life

Magazine article in 1945 stated, “How large the subject of security has grown, larger than the combined Army and Navy.”26

This concept would merge the service secretaries and their respective departments into a single department responsible for military, naval, and now aviation affairs. It would be led by a cabinet-level secretary. The corporate board like structure and collaborative

25 James C. Bradford, America, Seapower and the World (Oxford: John Wiley and Sons, 2016), 261, 262. 26 David Jablonsky, War by Land, Sea, and Air, Dwight Eisenhower and the Concept of Unified Command(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 142. 28 decision-making policies of the wartime Joint Chiefs of Staff would also be altered in favor of a single armed forces chief of staff, with deputies for ground, air and naval warfare. A series of Congressional and military boards would take up the issue of unification in the late 1940’s and their efforts divided the services on what best course of action would provide national security (a term first coined by then Secretary of the Navy

James Forrestal at a 1945 Senate hearing) as well as meet service needs and requirements.27

The new U.S. Air Force, which gained independence from the Army as a result of the National Security Act of 1947, was anxious to exert its influence on national strategy.

Public opinion polls suggested there was popular support for a powerful and influential aviation . A 1949 Gallup poll revealed that 76% of the U.S. public felt the

Air Force would “play the most important role in winning any future war” while only 4% of suggested the Navy would do the same.28 Senior advocates of an independent Air Force such as Lieutenant General James Doolittle and General Carl

Spaatz had provoked the ire of the Navy even before the air service’s independence in

1947 by continuing to “call for the separation of naval aviation from the Navy and its incorporation into the new service.”29The Air Force leadership was convinced that the only effective means of deterring the Soviet Union from a ground attack in Western

Europe was through, “a powerful strategic air , which would lay waste to

27Ibid, p. 144. 28 Samuel Huntington, “National Policy and the Transoceanic Navy,”The United States Naval InstituteProceedings, Volume 80, No. 5 (May 1954), 485. 29 Edgar F. Raines Jr. and David R. Campell, Evolution of Army Ideas on the Command, Control, and Coordination of the U.S. Armed Forces, 1942-1985(Washington D.C.:U.S. Army Center of , 1986), 36. 29 urban/industrial targets in the USSR that were vital to the Soviet war making capacity.”30

This offensive required a new, more powerful bomber that could carry both conventional and nuclear payloads. This concept became a key part of a series of emergency joint war plans developed with the in the period 1947-1949.31

The Army, seeing its force structure in danger after the end of World War 2, made common cause with its Air Force offspring against the Navy and Marine Corps. The

Army’s own experience with intra-service unification in the early 1900’s, its theory of , and its persistent lack of funding over the years, appear to have significantly influenced its military and civilian leaders in the late 1940’s to support a unification plan. The Army internal unification process in the early 1900’s under

Secretary Elihu P. Root stamped out rivalries among the , and branches by imposing a Chief of Staff position that was senior to these branch chiefs.32Army leaders advocated the same general procedures for all armed services to eliminate similar inter-service arguments in the post-World War 2 environment.

The Army had continued to push these concepts in interservice planning discussions just before the U.S. entry into World War 2. Army Secretary Henry Stimson and Chief of

Staff General George C. Marshall believed that the Root reforms, “represented a model to which they instinctively turned when the sought a structure to encompass both the Army and the Navy.”33 Supporting this view was a July 1941 Army paper on the proposed structure for the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) by War Plans Director Brigadier General

30Jeffrey Barlow, From Hot War to Cold, The U.S. Navy and National Security Affairs, 1945-1955 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 176. 31Jablonsky, 178. 32Ibid, 174-175. 33 Raines and Campbell, 6. 30

Dwight Eisenhower who stated, “The principles of strategy and employment of military forces are the same for all of the services.”34 General Marshall’s attitude toward unification hardened over the course of the Second World War over a number of conflicts with the Navy, especially those involving the services’ competing wartime budgets.

Marshall wrote to the Army Quartermaster General at one point regarding the Navy’s better budget situation, saying, “I know that they have more money because they are more popular with Congress and I believe they are less rigidly held to account for the details of their expenditures.”35

Formal, more detailed plans for restructuring the nation’s defense organization were pursued at the end of the Second World War. The Army’s concept for defense unification under a single chief of staff was known as the Collins plan for its nominal author Lieutenant General Joseph Lawton Collins, although many of its concepts were those previously promoted by General Marshall. Collins had commanded troops in both the Pacific under General Douglas MacArthur and in Europe under General Eisenhower.

The Collins Plan called for a Secretary of the Armed Forces who would replace the previous, cabinet-level service secretaries. A single armed forces chief of staff responsible to the President would “direct the military activities of four operating commands: the Army, Navy, Air Forces, and a Common Supply and Hospitalization

Service patterned after Army Service Forces. Overseas commanders would report

34Barlow, 64. 35 Jeffrey M. Dorwart, Eberstadt and Forrestal, A National Security Partnership, 1909-1949 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991), 72. 31 directly to the Chief of Staff.”36 The World War 2-era Joint Chiefs of Staff would continue in existence, but would be strictly an advisory group to the President and the

Armed Forces Secretary and would have no control over operating forces.37

President Truman served in the U.S. Army in World War 1, and was generally predisposed to Army viewpoints on unification. He was also strongly in favor of a system with a single, supreme commander of the nation’s armed forces in place of the wartime, corporate Joint Chiefs of Staff. Truman blamed the Pearl Harbor fiasco on the separate

Navy and Army command structures in in 1941, felt that separate military departments contributed to duplication and waste, and believed that separate services bred “elitism and military cliques.”38

Attempts at compromise between the services were marred by high-profile infighting and accusations. There had been initial support from some senior naval leaders including Admirals Chester Nimitz and William Halsey for a unified defense establishment, but favor for such an organization faded over concern that the Army, and later the Air Force, was engaged in unification to “deprive the Navy of its air arm or of a fully trained and equipped Marine Corps.”39 While Nimitz and Halsey liked the idea of supreme commander at the operational level, they became opponents of the concept when exposed to harsh Army rhetoric regarding who won the . Army Air Force

Brigadier General Frank Armstrong suggested during a dinner in Norfolk, designed to promote service harmony that Air Force B-29’s really won the war against

36 James F. Hewes Jr., From Root to McNamara, Army Organization and Administration, (Washington D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, Special Studies Series, 1983,) 129. 37Ibid, 135. 38Dorwart, 83. 39Barlow, 66. 32

Japan and that the Marine Corps was, “a small, bitched up army talking Navy lingo” that needed to be put back into the Army where they could become “real soldiers.”40

While such blatant hyperbole was rare, senior naval aviators like Admirals Forrest

Sherman and Arthur Radford were concerned about the welfare of naval aviation. The

Marine Commandant, General Alexander Vandegrift, wrote a circular to his generals saying, “the Marine Corps was it a fight for its life” and specifically to General Howland

Smith that “unification is more like a street brawl than a knightly joust.”41 On a more practical note, the naval service was used to controlling its strategy, and its acquisition and operations budgets without the interference of civilians (other than the President), and especially the other services. Military analyst Carl Builder, whose work examined military traditions as a source of strategic thinking suggested, “The concept of independent command at sea is to be sought and honored by every true naval officer.”42

The Army-supported unification plans seemed to violate this principle of naval independence.

Unification of some kind was likely inevitable, but the new Navy Secretary was determined to preserve naval independence within a unified armed service organization.

James Forrestal, a Wall Street investment banker, former naval aviator, and close friend of Franklin Roosevelt had been appointed Secretary of the Navy in April 1944 after the death in office of his predecessor .43 Forrestal urged Navy admirals to “end their luxury of separation from national affairs and to take a more active and vocal role as

40Isenburg, 111. 41Isenburg, 104. 42Carl Builder, “The Army in the Strategic Planning Process, Who Shall Bell the Cat,” (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, R-3515-A, April1987), 25. 43Palmer, 10. 33 advocates of their service.”44 Forrestal recruited his friend and partner in both business and government administration, Ferdinand Eberstadt, to create an alternate plan to the

Army’s Collins effort. Eberstadt believed that the Army’s unification efforts, “had deep political-economic and organizational implications that overshadowed the simple combination of the Army and the Navy into a single department” and that “unification was a complicated subject where opinions seem to more plentiful than knowledge.”45

Eberstadt’s background in industry and finance recommended the continuation of a corporate model for high military leadership as the best course of action to derive military readiness, “within the framework of our democratic system of government.”46 Eberstadt’s plan called for “separate departments that provide a greater representation of specialized knowledge” and suggested that, “they provide a varying aggregation of experienced judgement and insure representation of varying viewpoints.”47 A single Armed Forces

Secretary, Eberstadt warned, “might become a puppet of the military establishment” and threatened the possibility that, “The civilian and military chiefs might be tempted to exercise prerogatives reserved by the Constitution to the President.”48

The Eberstadt Report recommended the creation of coordinating bodies such as the National Security Council and the National Security Resources Board in order to promote its theme of corporate cooperation between the Army and the Navy. It also recommended that the Air Force be granted separate service status. The report received much praise from both within the Navy and the wider defense community. President

44Palmer, 12. 45Dorwart, 90. 46Dorwart, 104. 47Dorwart, 105. 48 Ibid. 34

Truman’s first Executive Secretary of the National Security Council, Rear Admiral

Sidney Souers, said that Eberstadt’s work, “provided a definite plan for unification instead of a merger” as proposed by the Army.49

Congress began examination of both plans at the end of 1945, but could not agree on either the Army or Navy effort as the blueprint for postwar national security organization. An exasperated President Truman finally suggested that Army Secretary

Robert Patterson and Forrestal settle the unification dispute rather than attempt to mandate what form unification should take. The service secretaries, and now the prospective Air Force Secretary W. , worked out the most significant service differences. The Navy received significant concessions from the Army in that the

Marine Corps and naval aviation remained largely unaltered and under naval control. The military departments, including the newly independent Air Force, were organized along the corporate lines suggested by Eberstadt. Unification of the services became official on

26 July 1947 with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947.50 Forrestal was not

President Truman’s first choice for the new Defense Secretary position; he had wanted

Army Secretary Patterson, but Patterson desired to return to private life and Forrestal accepted the President’s offer to become the nation’s first Secretary of Defense.51 He was sworn in on 17 September 1947.

Forrestal and his friend Ferdinand Eberstadt had preserved many of the Navy’s freedoms through their efforts in shaping the unification struggle and its final product, but other challenges to the creation and implementation of a postwar naval strategy for the

49 Barlow, 86. 50Barlow, 94. 51Dorwart, 147, 148. 35 emerging Cold War now loomed on the immediate horizon. A contest over service- preferred platforms to deliver atomic weapons threatened the Navy’s credibility with lawmakers, the press, and the public, while an unexpected conflict in the gave the naval service a boost in its campaign to restore appropriate funding for a global naval force.

Preserving a Carrier-Based Force

The compromise that produced defense unification also gave birth to a crisis of roles and missions amongst the services, notably the mission of employing atomic weapons. Navy strategy in the late 1940’s was coalescing around -based aviation, antisubmarine forces and amphibious ships capable of ferrying Marines or

Army troops to distant strategic locations. The Navy came into direct conflict with the

Air Force, however, over the capability to employ strategic nuclear weapons. This conflict in turn created a roles and mission’s crisis affecting all four military services that called into question the planned Navy strategy and attendant force structure.

The Navy’s chief post-World War 2 strategist was Admiral , who had spent much of World War 2 working for commander Admiral Chester

Nimitz as his chief planner.52 Serving as the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for

Operations (OP-03), Sherman had created the naval component of the first postwar U.S. joint plan confront the Soviet Union. Operation PINCHER, which appeared in March

1946, formed the basic outline for a war against the Soviet Union where nuclear weapons would be the key equalizer against large Soviet ground formations that the U.S. and its

52Palmer, 42. 36 allies could not match in quantity.53 The Navy’s role in PINCHER would be the destruction of the Soviet Navy and merchant marine, as well as the blockade of the Soviet coast.54

In early 1947, Sherman unveiled the first, full postwar Navy strategy for a global war against the Soviet Union to President Truman and members of the House and Senate

Armed Services Committees.55 Sherman’s strategy generally followed what he had articulated in PINCHER, but added greater emphasis on U.S. presence in the

Mediterranean. Great Britain’s , which once patrolled the Mediterranean as a

British lake from the 1870’s through the end of the Second World War, was now in the throes of even greater postwar cutbacks than the United States. Sherman and other senior

U.S. naval commanders had met with Royal Navy First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval

Staff Admiral Lord Cunningham in 1946. Cunningham had bluntly informed his guests that Britain was, “Unable to support their whole Mediterranean forces anymore,” and that, “Britain would need help from the United States in Europe.”56 Sherman’s plans assumed a more robust U.S. presence in the Mediterranean than envisioned in PINCHER as a result. His’s presentations were generally well received, and although he departed

Washington D.C. to command the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean in early 1948, Vice

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arthur W. Radford continued to advocate and advance Sherman’s global naval strategy. Sherman’s efforts formed the basis of the next forty years of U.S. Cold War naval strategy and force deployment, where U.S. Navy units

53Barlow, 111. 54 Ibid. 55Palmer, 37. 56Palmer, 30. 37 would routinely deploy from ports in the continental United States (CONUS) to forward deployed stations in European, Mediterranean and Pacific waters in order to be ready for conflict with the Soviet Union as far forward as possible.

Sherman and Radford both believed that the limited number of available atomic weapons would demand the presence of aircraft carriers for strikes against the Soviet homeland. This assumption brought the Navy into direct conflict with the Air Force over atomic delivery rights, and forced the services into another round of roles and missions fights that appeared to have settled by the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. Air Force leadership was convinced that the only effective means of deterring the Soviet Union from a ground attack in Western Europe was through, “a powerful strategic air offensive , which would lay waste to urban/industrial targets in the USSR that were vital to the Soviet war making capacity.”57 This offensive required a new, more powerful bomber that could carry both conventional and nuclear payloads. This concept became a key part of a series of emergency joint war plans developed with the United

Kingdom in the period 1947-1949.58 The Navy, however, felt that this approach was completely at variance with U.S. national security interests in that it abandoned large parts of Western Europe, the , and the oil fields of the Middle East to the Soviets at nearly the outset of war, and such abandonment could, “seriously jeopardize the possibilities for ultimate victory.”59

The Navy also deplored the Air Force concept of massed verses precision strike, even in atomic warfare; another result perhaps of the services’ very different World War

57Barlow, 176. 58Jablonsky, 178. 59Ibid, 176, 180. 38

2 experiences. A 1948 draft Navy briefing stated, “National air power must consist of a land-based air force and a sea air force (carrier task forces), each developing the weapons and tactics for the precision, instead of mass, destruction essential to the successful prosecution of atomic warfare.”60 These differing views on the prosecution of atomic warfare, service roles and missions in general, a change in defense leadership, and an unexpected war first threatened, and then affirmed the Navy’s Cold War strategic concepts.

A series of events from early 1948 through 1950 served to first upend, and then preserve the Navy’s Cold War strategy concepts. Conflict over the employment of atomic weapons restarted the fight over service roles and missions that had been only tentatively settled with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. Departing CNO Admiral

Nimitz may have innocently begun the second round of interservice roles and missions battles in his farewell “valedictory” speech by stating, “It is improbable that in bomber fleets will be capable, for several years to come, of making two way trips between continents with heavy loads of bombs. In the event of war within this period, if we are to project our power against vital areas of an enemy across the ocean before beachheads on enemy territory are captured, it must be by air-sea power.”61 Air Force Chief of Staff

General believed that this statement by Nimitz violated Truman administration Executive order #9877 “Functions of the Armed Forces”, that named the

Air Force as the service charged with, “Organizing, Training and Equipping air forces for

60Barlow, 179. 61Barlow, 180. 39 the strategic air force.62 Spaatz concluded Nimitz statement, “starts off the fight again” over service roles and missions.63

Secretary Forrestal, in his new capacity as Defense Secretary tried to mediate these disputes through negotiation. The March 1948 conference and the subsequent Newport conference in August of that year provided some agreement between the Navy and the Air Force over the question of strategic air operations, naval air capabilities, and the employment of nuclear weapons. The gave the

Navy the primary interest in combat operations at sea, and the specific right to, “conduct air operations as necessary for the accomplishment of objectives in a naval campaign,” thus preserving the concept of carrier aviation.64 The Air Force’s primary interest was in all air operations, except those elements given to other services like the Navy. It was given specific control of “strategic air warfare.”65 The subsequent Newport agreement allowed the Navy to pursue atomic weapon capabilities while the Navy agreed that the

Air Force should assume responsibility for the nation’s nascent atomic weapons program until further study on atomic energy organization could be completed.66 These conferences solved some of the outstanding strategic issues between the Air Force and the Navy, but an uneasy truce remained. Historian Jeffrey Barlow quotes Captain

Fitzhugh Lee, an aide to Navy Secretary Sullivan telling his boss after the Key West event that “ means many things to many people. The basic issue as to

62Ibid, 177, 180. 63Ibid, 180. 64 Memorandum from Secretary of Defense James Forrestal to the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Functions of the Armed Forces and the Joint Chiefs of Staff”, Washington D.C., The Office of the Defense Secretariat, 21 April 1948, 9. 65Ibid, 11. 66Steven L. Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, The Formative Years, (Washington D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), 409. 40 whether or not carriers can be utilized for atomic bombing on selected targets remains unresolved.”67

These agreements, however, did not end conflict over roles and missions. Greater centralization in the National Military Establishment, reductions in the defense budget, the resignation of Secretary of Defense Forrestal due to ill health, and his replacement by

Air Force partisan Louis Johnson served to re-ignite controversy. The 1948 Hoover

Commission examined the fledgling defense establishment with Forrestal’s confidant

Ferdinand Eberstadt serving as primary investigator. Eberstadt recommended further centralization and strengthening of the Defense Secretary position in order to avoid further service disputes like those involving unification and postwar roles and missions.

Congress embraced the Hoover Commission’s recommendations as did President

Truman. The National Military Establishment was renamed the Defense Department, and service secretaries were placed directly under the Defense Secretary and without direct reporting responsibility to the President.68

Concerns that the Joint Staff and the new Chairman position resembled the

World War 2 German General Staff drove Congress to take a measured approach to continued service unification. The legislature made the Defense Secretary the principal assistant to the President for all Department of Defense issues, created a permanent position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), and doubled the size of the

Joint Staff supporting the Joint Chiefs (JCS) from 100 to 210. It still rejected calls from

67Barlow, 188. 68 Gordon Nathaniel Lederman, Reorganizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986, (Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1999), 18, 19. 41

President Truman to increase the size of the Joint Staff, or to make the CJCS the

President’s “principal military advisor.”69

These actions did not reduce service infighting over military strategy, conventional or nuclear weapons programs. The reduced 1950 defense budget increased service competition for scarce resources. President Truman had requested 14.2 billion dollars, a significant increase from the 11.9 billion dollars proposed for 1949, but considered only half of what was really required to fund the emerging containment force structure.70 The tense situation amongst the services was further complicated by the resignation of Defense Secretary Forrestal and his replacement by Louis Johnson on 28

March 1949.71 Johnson had been a financial backer of President Truman in the 1948

Presidential election, as well as an executive with the Convair Aviation Company, the producer of the Air Force B-36 bomber that would be the principal competitor with the

Navy’s emerging super carrier design for decreased defense resources.72 Although he told

Nimitz replacement as CNO, Admiral Louis Denfield that he, “Would not allow anything to happen to the Navy” while he was Defense Secretary, Johnson privately told Truman administration officials, “The Navy was really a terrible outfit because they were anti- unification; the whole damn Navy.”73 Johnson quickly made it clear he was no friend of the super carrier and requested service input on whether the super carrier program should continue just 18 days into his term of office.74 The Army and Air Force combined against

69Lederman, 19. 70Isenburg, 150. 71Barlow, 201. 72Reardon, 144. 73Barlow, 202. 74Barlow, 212. 42 the Navy with both Army Chief of Staff General and Air Force Chief of

Staff General issuing negative appraisals of the large Navy carrier program. Johnson agreed and decided to cancel the program. The CNO received notification just three hours before Johnson intended to release the news to the press.75

Navy Secretary John Sullivan and his deputy W. John Kenney both resigned in protest.

The replacement, Secretary Francis Matthews, was not well regarded by his uniformed colleagues and was disparagingly referred to as “rowboat Matthews” for his lack of naval knowledge and apparent unwillingness to become more educated in naval capabilities.76

Navy leaders at all levels responded to the cancellation of the super carrier as tacit

White House and Defense Department rejection of naval strategic principals of precision airstrike against specific military and industrial targets in favor of an Air Force campaign of atomic attack on cities. Air Force leaks on the capabilities of the B-36 force to conduct atomic attack, and the release of an anonymous, negative acquisition and testing procedures report actually written by Navy Department civilian special assistant to the

Under Secretary of the Navy Cedric Worth and his military subordinate Commander

Thomas Davies, convinced House Armed Services Committee Chairman

(D/Ga) to open an investigation into the allegations of problems in the B-36 program.77

These hearings and the related controversy over Navy attempts to conduct damage control and preserve carrier aviation have become known as the “Revolt of the

Admirals” due to the large number of senior naval witnesses who testified or submitted statements in support of naval aviation and its central role in naval strategy for the

75Barlow, 212. 76Reardon, 49. 77Barlow, 220, 221. 43 postwar world. This group included former CNO’s Admirals King and Nimitz, and

Pacific fleet leaders such as Admirals William Halsey, Raymond Spruance, and Thomas

Kinkaid. CNO Denfield created his own research office within the CNO staff, code named OP 23 by its director Captain , to support the Navy’s role in

Vinson’s hearings. Captain Burke, a respected surface officer, had been the primary author of a significant contribution to postwar naval strategy in a 1948 General Board of the Navy document entitled, “National Security and Navy Contributions Thereto for the

Next Ten Years”. Burke’s assessment too recognized the need for the Navy to be able to strike the Soviet Union through naval air attack, but also that such a capability “may well be beyond the capacity of the United States Navy.”78

The hearings became a de facto referendum on carrier aviation as a component of the United States military. In addition to retired officers, senior active duty officers such as Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO) Admiral Arthur Radford and Captain Burke spoke of the effectiveness of naval aviation as a component of national power and of the potential shortcomings of the B-36 in its role as an atomic weapons delivery vehicle.

Radford, in particular, questioned the use of atomic weapons against cities, the primary mission of the B-36. Radford suggested that this would result in a “pyrrhic victory” and be “morally indefensible.”79 While senior naval leaders worked to defend the case for naval aviation, other naval officers caused pursued their own public efforts against the B-

36. Rear Admiral Dan Gallery wrote an article critical of Navy opponents entitled “Don’t let them Scuttle the Navy” and aviator Captain John Crommlein staged his own ad hoc,

78Palmer, 67. 79Barlow, 236. 44 unauthorized press conference to highlight the plight of naval aviation. These actions, although widely supported from within the naval officer ranks, generally undermined the reasoned efforts of senior officers to persuade a generally sympathetic Carl Vinson of the

Navy’s need for carrier-based aviation. CNO Denfield, despite instructions from

Secretaries Johnson and Matthews to the contrary, gave dramatic testimony before the

Vinson Committee in favor of naval aviation. The Soviet Union had meanwhile exploded its own atomic bomb in September 1949, further complicating the discussion over how the U.S. military would employ its atomic weapons.

The Navy appeared to have suffered a significant defeat by the time Carl Vinson’s

B-36 hearings concluded in October of 1949. Vinson concluded that, “not one scintilla of evidence” offered in the hearings suggested the presence of corruption or undue influence in the B-36 acquisition program.80 The Navy Secretariat was somewhat discredited due to its inability to exercise control over its uniformed officers. CNO Admiral Louis Denfield was fired by Secretary Matthews for his refusal to support the civilian chain of command

(Johnson and Matthews). Rear Admiral Gallery and Captain Crommlein were denied future active duty advancement. Vice Admirals William Blandy and Gerald F. Bogan, who testified against Secretary Matthews for his lack of support to naval aviation, were specifically given Read Admiral assignments as “punishment” for their actions.81 Arleigh

Burke nearly met a similar fate when Secretary Matthews tried to prevent his promotion

80 Barlow, 227 81Keith D. McFarland, “The 1949 ”, (Carlislie, PA:Parameters, The Journal of the U.S. Army War College, Volume XI, No. 2, 1981), p. 61. 45 to rear admiral, but President Truman in an out-of-character decision specifically overruled Matthews and approved Burke’s promotion.82

The “Revolt of the Admirals” appears on the surface as a significant defeat for both the emerging naval strategy of strike warfare from aircraft carriers and the supporting force structure of large flattops capable of launching aircraft armed with nuclear weapons. The Air Force B-36 emerged from the hearings unscathed, as did the

Air Force strategy of nuclear attack on Soviet cities. Despite these setbacks, the Navy’s preferred Cold War strategy of strike from the sea, and the large aircraft carrier survived both the tenure of Secretary Johnson, the service life of the B-36 bomber and the general ire of the other services. The USS United States was not reprieved from scrap, but its successor Forrestal class of four super carriers survived determined Air Force opposition and eventually joined the fleet in the late 1950’s after carrier operations against North

Korea convinced the Truman administration of the utility of the large carrier.83 Johnson did not get along well with Congress, and became a political liability over his claims that his military budget cuts could sustain readiness; a claim largely disproved by the rapid success of the initial North Korean attack.84 He was replaced as Defense Secretary by

George C. Marshall in September 1950.

Not all of Louis Johnson’s personnel changes were detrimental to naval interests.

His appointment of Admiral Forrest Sherman to the position of CNO as Denfield’s replacement and that of Admiral Radford to Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet ensured that the Navy’s preferred strategy will remain viable. Sherman continued to refine Navy

82 Ibid. 83Palmer, 80. 84Reardon, 75, 548. 46 strategic concepts as CNO. He continued to refine his plans to use naval forces in support of both strategic air and ground forces in Europe and the wider Eurasian littoral. The birth of the Organization (NATO) in April 1949, and the had sparked a general re-birth of the concept of a robust U.S. military capability in the post-World War 2 era. The Truman administration’s more muscular concepts of containment as embodied in its NSC-68 policy document brought about renewed growth and power of the U.S. Army. The Army’s leaders of this time, Generals Bradley and

Eisenhower, brought renewed focus on North Western Europe as the cockpit of future conflict with the Soviet Union.85 The Navy had to fight to maintain an equal focus on the

Mediterranean and the Middle East as essential to what historian Michael Palmer called,

“Great Britain’s World War 2 role” of “peripheral operations in dispersing enemy forces before a decisive campaign,” presumably in Northwest Europe, could begin.86 Sherman died suddenly of a heart attack while touring the Mediterranean in July 1951, but his strategic concepts would endure into the next presidential administration. His successor

Admiral William M. Fechteler continued Sherman’s policies. He was well supported by newly promoted Rear Admiral Arleigh Burke, who as head of the Navy’s Strategic Plans

Davison (OP 30) further refined Sherman’s strategic concepts and developed operational plans for carrier task forces and submarines to, “operate offensively against enemy bases and thus force the dispersion of his land and air strength.”87

The War in Korea also confirmed the need for an effective, mobile non-nuclear aviation capability. Although only one carrier, the USS Valley Forge was on duty in the

85Palmer, 77. 86Palmer, 77. 87Palmer, 82. 47

Western Pacific with the Seventh Fleet at the time of the initial North Korean attack in

June 1950, eventually eleven large carriers and six smaller escort carriers served in the conflict.88 On the last day of combat alone, 4 carriers with 21 aviation squadrons amongst them were engaged in combat operations on the Korean peninsula.89 The Air Force had been more focused on its strategic bombing mission from 1945-1950 and had dedicated few resources to the close air support needed by Allied ground forces fighting in Korea.90

The Navy, by contrast, had maintained this capability that had first been created for the

Pacific island opposed landings in World War 2.91 Between the testimony of naval leaders during the “revolt of the admirals” and combat experience in Korea, the U.S.

Navy succeeded in convincing members of Congress of the usefulness of naval aviation and its strategy for trans-oceanic warfare. This strategy and its spokesmen, including

Radford and Burke, were well positioned to support it as the nation changed political administrations and containment philosophies in 1953.

The contest over unification and the fielding of nuclear weapons among the services continued through the Cold War and those battles laid a lasting suspicion among the services that persisted beyond its end. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General

Colin Powell’s Base Force concept seemed to some naval observers as the ultimate victory of the Army’s idea of service unification. Naval historian George Baer suggested,

“Administratively during the 1980’s the Navy lost a battle against greater Defense

88 Gerald E. Wheeler, “Naval Aviation in the Korean War”, (Annapolis, Md, The U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol 83/7/653, July, 1957.) 89 Ibid. 90 Edward J. Marolda, The United States Navy and the Korean War, (Annapolis, Md, The U.S. Naval Institute Press: 2007,) 33. 91 Ibid. 48

Department Centralization. The Goldwater Nichols Department of Defense

Reorganization Act of 1986 marked the triumph of vertical organization. It gave the

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs the power to communicate his own opinion to the President via the Secretary of Defense. Previously the Chainman had to report differing views held by the service chiefs.”92 Powell’s Goldwater Nichols-derived authority allowed him to dictate the size of the fleet without Navy input. Powell later described his dealings with the service chiefs over force structures; “muggings” as they would not willingly reduce force structure, as he demanded.93 Powell’s forced reductions in Navy size as formalized in the Base Force helped to drive Navy strategy changes in the early 1990’s.

Naval Strategy and the New Look

The election of Dwight Eisenhower as President in 1953 ended the first phase of the U.S. Containment strategy. The period of 1945-1953 featured significant change in that the one time Soviet ally became the United States’ most feared international opponent. The changes in how the nation and the Navy in particular planned and executed military strategy were much altered from their prewar condition. Unification and the resultant, modified defense organization of a Defense Department, permanent

Joint Chiefs of Staff, an independent Air Force, the beginning of the NATO alliance, and the advent of atomic weapons had greater impacts on strategy than did the forces of potential enemies. Unification placed service priorities in direct competition against each other for scarce financial resources. The permanent JCS organization was pressed into

92 George Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power, The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990, Stanford, CA, The Stanford University Press, 1994, 443. 93Colin Powell with Joseph Persico, My American Journey, (New York: Ballantine Books, 1995), 438. 49 service as an operational advisory body in a peacetime environment, a mission that it was not really designed to undertake. Former Deputy Navy Secretary Robert Murray described the post- World War 2 JCS system as one developed more for rather than limited engagements.94 This mismatch of organization to operational responsibilities would affect naval strategy development throughout the Cold War. There were also tensions between representing national security vice service needs that individual JCS members faced in the course of their duties, which made unified JCS decisions difficult.95The addition of an independent Air Force raised the stakes of the contest to higher levels by further dividing the service resource pool among branches desperate to replace worn-out, wartime equipment. The advent of atomic weapons heightened the ferocity of the competition as the services fought to have a share in the employment of the ultimate weapon. The need to provide significant support to the nascent NATO alliance also complicated these conditions. It further taxed national resources, added new peacetime force requirements to be deployed overseas, and gave birth to additional questions regarding who would employ atomic weapons and when in support of alliance and U.S. national security requirements. Many of the factors that influenced the start of the Cold War would return at its end to complicate planning for the post-Cold War environment.

The Eisenhower administration brought with it a method of containment that generally favored the naval strategic concepts developed by Admirals Sherman, Radford,

94 Robert Murray, “Reform of the Joint Chiefs of Staff”, in: The Reorganization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, A Critical Analysis ,(Cambridge, MA: The Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1986), 66. 95 Steven L. Rearden, Council of War, A History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1942-1991, (Washington D.C.: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of the Director of the Joint Staff, the Joint History Office, 2012), 124. 50 and Burke. It came, however, with another round of defense organization that was not compatible with naval concepts of strategy and command of naval forces. Eisenhower assumed the presidency convinced that the nation needed a major shift in its application of the containment strategy. Truman’s military build-ups from $13 to about $40 billion for a more muscular containment articulated in the NSC-68 document and for the Korean

War had strained the postwar U.S. economy and contributed to a rise of .

Military historian David Jablonsky suggests that Eisenhower sought a balance of affordable containment that could be maintained over decades as a substitute for perpetually large defense budgets. If the cost of maintaining containment became too high, Eisenhower felt that the American public would return to a policy of isolationism, which neither the U.S. nor its Cold War allies could afford to do in an age of atomic weapons.96 Estimates suggesting a small Soviet stockpile of nuclear weapons, combined with the conventional military products of NSC-68 convinced the incoming Eisenhower administration that a policy of deterrence could be had for a reasonable price.97 While outgoing Truman administration officials believed that military expenditure for fiscal year 1946 would be upwards of $46.3 billion dollars, Eisenhower set an upper limit of

$41.1 billion and set to work on the mechanics of a new strategy, within eventual goal of

$33 to $34 million dollars by 1957.98

In a 1954 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary of State John

Foster Dulles expounded on the traits of the new doctrine labeled “Massive Retaliation.”

96 Ibid. 97Russell Weigley, The American Way of War, A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy, (Bloomington, IA: Indiana University Press, 1973), 400-401. 98 Ibid, 201. 51

He stated that it provided “maximum deterrent at a bearable cost” and that it gave the

U.S. and its allies flexibility and security in that the threat of a devastating nuclear attack.99 The threat of this option would check Soviet aggression and allow the Western powers to choose how and where they responded to Soviet aggression rather than letting the Soviets choose the venue for confrontation. Massive Retaliation was part of the larger

“New Look” policy instituted by Eisenhower and Dulles that presumed to deter the aggressive use of Communist land power. Dulles intimated that Soviet land-based forces would overrun Western forces and that no alternative other than the threat of nuclear retaliation could check a determined Soviet effort. The President also did not approve of what he called “local” conflicts. He saw “no sense in wasting manpower in small costly wars that could not achieve decisive results under the political and military circumstances then existing.”100 Eisenhower felt these small conflicts only strengthened U.S. adversaries like the Soviet Union and Communist and allowed them, rather than the US to dictate the terms of the conflict. Only by working with local allies to police trouble spots and threatening Communist sponsors with nuclear attack would the U.S. avoid expensive

‘brush fire” conflicts.101 Under Eisenhower’s organization for the New Look, the U.S. could still fight conventional conflicts if required, but it would rely on those forces already deployed overseas supported by air power. The President’s first CJCS Admiral

Arthur Radford wrote in his memoirs that “the organization that would evolve would be

99 John E. Endicott and Roy W. Stafford Jr, editors, American Defense Policy, 4th Edition,(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press), 1980, 65. 100 Dwight D. Eisenhower. The White House Years; Mandate for Change; 1953-1956, (New York: Doubleday, 1963, 543. 101Eisenhower, 543-544. 52 heavy in air power (both Air Force and Navy) and that the other services would have to adjust to organizations that could be fleshed out rapidly in case of emergency.”102

The 1950’s heralded a smaller fleet in line with the President’s emphasis on strategic air delivered nuclear weapons as the cornerstone of U.S. defense strategy. The

Navy prospered over the course of the decade despite further reductions in both ships and numbers of personnel. The President’s new strategy may have rejected small conflicts, but the Navy’s experience in the Korean War suggested that the service should prepare to fight them in any case. The emerging “Warfare State” might later be decried by President

Eisenhower as “the military industrial complex,” but the Navy embraced the infusion of science, technology and associated funding that would ensure the next generation of naval weapons. The problem of defense organization, however, caused the decade to end on a negative note for the Navy as President Eisenhower sought to place all the military services under more restrictive Executive Branch organization. The President’s 1958 reforms would lay the seeds for another 25 years of defense organization battles. This series of conflicts would significantly affect the Navy’s strategic concepts in the latter half of the Cold War.

The New Look policy denied the likelihood of limited wars like the Korean conflict, but the Navy actively prepared for such conflicts and associated operations in the 1950’s. Eisenhower was impressed with Admiral Radford’s “distinguished war record and grasp of global politics” and selected him as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to

102 Arthur W. Radford. From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam; The Memoirs of Admiral Arthur W. Radford, (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), 318-319. 53 succeed Army General Omar Bradley, whose term expired in 1953.103Radford had become a convert to the President’s New Look policy, and was a trusted Eisenhower advisor, but he was also able to emphasize the utility of naval units in accordance with the Navy’s postwar strategy. Political scientists Samuel Huntington said, “Admiral

Radford probably played a more important role in shaping military strategy than any other military man in military office between 1946 and 1960.”104

In February 1954, as the position of French forces in the beleaguered Dien Bien

Phu outpost became more desperate, Radford kept aircraft carriers in the Pacific ready to conduct both conventional and nuclear air strikes against Vietminh positions if the

President decided to intervene in the conflict.105 When the 1954 Geneva Accords divided

Vietnam at the 17th parallel, the U.S. Navy was in position to provide a humanitarian operation named “Passage to Freedom” that moved 311,000 out of a total 800,000

Vietnamese that migrated to South Vietnam in the wake of the agreement. U.S. naval forces also supported Nationalist Chinese efforts to retain control of key outposts. The U.S. Seventh Fleet evacuated some 27,000 Nationalist Chinese troops from the disputed Tachen islands in just eight five hours in January 1955.106 In August 1958, the Seventh Fleet provided a significant show of force in the Taiwan Strait, causing

Chinese Communist forces to back down from a similar attempt to intimidate Nationalist

Chinese of the island of Quemoy.107 These deployments placed a severe strain on the fleet and in particular its Pacific elements. Training and maintenance deficiencies

103Steven L. Reardon, Council of War, 135. 104Quoted in Jablonsky, 234. 105Barlow, 385. 106Ibid, 20, 21. 107Ibid, 20, 21. 54 on board four aircraft carriers and their associated air wings caused acting CNO Admiral

Donald Duncan to write Admiral Radford in 1954, “The deployment of four CVA’s

(large, attack carriers) to the Far Eastern Command is the most difficult commitment to maintain,” and that “one entire (carrier) unit pressed through an abbreviated training period which has proved unsuitable to prepare the ship for its intended duty.”108 This new pattern of extended deployments by naval forces to overseas locations in support of national interests was rapidly becoming the hallmark of post-World War 2 U.S. naval operations. It was, however, fully in line with the strategic planning carried out by

Admirals Sherman and Radford nearly a decade earlier. While Eisenhower ultimately shrank from combat employment of naval units, the CNO after 1955, Admiral Arleigh

Burke, sought to prepare the service for this eventuality. In the preface to a 1957 book on

Korean War naval operations, Admiral Burke observed that, “because major nations shrank from wreaking nuclear destruction on one another, the probability of had increased.”109The Navy’s postwar strategy would fully embrace this concept in the decade of the 1960’s.

The President’s focus on strategic nuclear weapons and their associated technology as the primary enablers of his New Look strategy was a significant boon to the Navy. It provided funding and access to scientists and engineers that would produce a new generation of naval platforms, weapons, communications equipment, and new strategic missions for the Navy over the course of the Eisenhower presidency and beyond to the present. James Forrestal recognized the importance of new technology to the

108Ibid, 22. 109Ryan, 17. 55

Navy’s postwar success in 1948 when he said, “It is apparent that radical revisions of combat tactics and concepts are necessary, and the Navy is preparing itself in accordance with these developments.”110 As Navy Secretary, Forrestal organized agreements with more than forty-five schools and industrial firms in support of developments in

“electronics, nuclear physics, chemistry, metallurgy, and guided missiles” in order to make possible his radical revisions.111

Advancements in all these fields were employed to maintain the Navy’s global strategy of carrier and submarine operations against the Soviet Union and other opponents in support of the nation’s security and interests. The development of missiles, both as offensive and defensive weapons, ensured that the aircraft carrier could be defended at sea from air threats and that its aircraft might attack targets at greater range.

Advancements in electronics spawned a new field of network communications amongst ships and aircraft that enabled naval forces to disperse more widely at sea in avoidance of attack, yet concentrate their offensive efforts over great distances. Advancements in nuclear technology, however, gave the Navy a new platform and a new strategic mission that gave it equality with the Air Force in delivery. It also gave the service a hard-nosed engineer bureaucrat whose management of the nuclear navy brought both success and challenges to the business of naval strategy.

President Eisenhower demanded reliable long-range U.S. nuclear-armed missiles in response to Soviet developments in missile technology. He announced to a December

1955 meeting of the National Security Council that he would run such a project himself if

110 Isenburg, 290-291. 111Ibid, 295. 56 required.112CNO Admiral Burke responded by creating the Polaris ballistic missile project; a program that produced a weapon and its attendant platform, the ballistic missile submarine USS George Washington, in less than 4 years. Rear Admiral William “Red”

Raborn led the program and had implicit authority from Admiral Burke to lay claim to any necessary resources to ensure its successful completion. The Polaris submarine launched ballistic missile had a range of 1500 miles and the Washington could carry 16 such weapons. The program had support through the network of scientists and industrialists first cultivated by Forrestal a decade earlier including physicist Edward

Teller, , the Electric Boat Corporation, and General Electric.113The addition of the submarine launched ballistic missile finally gave the U.S. Navy a significant role in the nation’s nuclear deterrence force.

This advance in strategic weaponry and the addition of a new strategic mission for the Navy would not have been possible without the development of the nuclear-propelled submarine. That development was made possible thanks to the tireless and sometimes tyrannical efforts of Rear Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the Engineering Duty Officer turned “father of the nuclear navy” in the early 1950’s. Reporting to the Oak Ridge

Nuclear Facility, Tennessee in June 1946 after World War 2 assignments in ship repair and supply efficiency, Rickover’s engineering and electrical skills were focused on the translation of the awesome power of atomic weapons to that of ship and submarine propulsion.114 By 1949, Rickover was running the Navy’s nuclear reactors program and

112 Ryan, 26. 113 Ibid. 114Isenburg, 393. 57 actively planning an atomic powered submarine. His efforts attracted positive attention from Oak Ridge scientists and the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy.

When he faced mandatory retirement as a senior Captain in late 1952, his supporters weighed in on Congress to promote the unorthodox Rickover to flag rank, despite there being no specific billet for him to occupy. Thanks to support from key members of Congress interested in , including Senator Henry “Scoop”

Jackson from Washington and Representative Melvin Price from Illinois, and the threat of a Congressional investigation into Navy promotion procedures, Rickover was promoted to Rear Admiral in 1953.115 The first U.S. nuclear-powered submarine, USS

Nautilus, was commissioned in 30 September 1954, and quickly set new standards in speed and range for submarine operations. Rickover was a difficult personality for senior officers and subordinates alike. World War 2 Navy Submarine force commander Vice

Admiral Eli T. Reich referred to him as, “the Navy’s evil genius.”116 He would be the bane of many future commanders such CNO Admiral Elmo Zumwalt and submarine

Lieutenant (and future President) for the withering nuclear interview, a personal audience with Rickover that according to some recipients had the hallmarks of the Spanish Inquisition. Carter later held only possible views of Rickover, but Zumwalt described his interview as, “something akin to the hazing process from plebe year at the

Naval Academy.”117

115Isenburg, 400. 116Isenburg, 401. 117Larry Berman, Zumwalt, The Life and Times of Admiral Elmo Russell “Bud” Zumwalt Jr,” (New York, Harper Collins, 2012), 119. 58

Rickover often went beyond his purview of and dueled with multiple senior military and civilian officials over the manning and employment of nuclear- powered surface warships and submarines, making a host of enemies in the process.

Rickover was also opposed other forms of naval propulsion, such as gas turbines, despite their efficiency, low weight and easy maintenance, fearing that they might be competitors to his nuclear propulsion system.118Navy Secretary John Lehman, who ultimately succeeded in retiring Rickover in January 1982, was unhappy with Rickover’s failure to embrace automation (and the reduced costs it brought to the submarine fleet) and the tyrannical personnel and training system Rickover created which Lehman described as a cult-like religious group.119Despite this, the Navy’s exceptional record of nuclear powered operations and safety remain a testament to his dedication and devotion to duty over several decades of service.120 The marriage of nuclear power, submarines and nuclear weapons made possible by Rickover’s efforts in the 1950’s restored the

Navy’s presence in the front rank of the U.S. nuclear deterrence force. This equality also gave greater strength to the general Navy Cold War strategy of offensive operations from aircraft carrier battle groups and submarines.

118 Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar, Rickover, Father of the Nuclear Navy, (Washington D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007), 81. 119 John F. Lehman Jr, Command of the Seas, (Annapolis, Md: The United States Naval Institute Press, 2001), 25-27. 120 Ryan, p. 28. 59

Eisenhower Defense Organization Reforms Limit Naval Freedom of Action

President Eisenhower had endorsed Navy efforts to implement a global, naval component to the New Look strategy, and he had been supportive of naval service attempts to gain new technology in furtherance of that goal. His experience of joint command in Europe during and after World War 2, however, accustomed him to strict command unity behind a single commander. In 1948 he wrote, “Statesmen, generals, admirals, air marshals and even populations must develop confidence in the concept of single command and in the leader by which single command is exercised.”121Despite being codified in law as the principal advisors of the President and Secretary of Defense,

Eisenhower felt the Chiefs’ loyalty and principal responsibility was closely aligned with their parent services.122 His program of continued defense unification and defense organizational reform would emphasize a direct chain of command from the President to the commanders in the field, and it would divorce service chiefs from direct command of their services, as the Army had done earlier in the 20th century with the Root reforms.

These beliefs put him at odds with senior naval officers, who had traditionally commanded and administered the fleet through the office of the CNO, which unlike the

Army Chief of Staff, retained active command of naval forces.

Military historian David Jablonsky suggests Eisenhower had long believed that the JCS organization needed significant reform and greater unification than had been

121Stephen Metz, “Eisenhower as Strategist; “The Coherent Use of Military Power in War and Peace,” (Carlisle, PA: The War College, The Strategic Studies Institute, 1992), 22. 122 Richard M. Leighton, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. III: Strategy, Money and the New Look 1953-1956 (Washington D.C.: The Office of the Secretary of Defense, The Historical Office, 2001), 29 60 provided in 1947 and 1949.123 The President’s chief concern was that the service chiefs placed their own service’s welfare above that of the nation’s best interests.124Eisenhower and naval leaders of the 1950’s had very different World War 2 experiences in terms of command and fundamentally disagreed on what the nature of war was in the second half of the 20th century. Military historian Allan Millett has suggested that Eisenhower’s experience as “a skilled staff officer and a wartime allied theater commander” predisposed him to “a more structured approach to defense decision-making.”125 This was in stark contrast to senior naval officers such as Admiral Burke, who were used to independent operations far from the observation and control of immediate superiors.

Most significantly, Eisenhower and the admirals differed on the nature of war at the century’s middle decade. Eisenhower, in testimony before Congress during the defense unification hearings in 1945 stated, “There is no such thing as separate land, sea and air war, and we must all recognize this fact.”126 Eisenhower spoke these words even before the rise of the Soviet Union as the U.S. Cold War opponent, and this belief remained with him as President.

Admiral Burke, by contrast disagreed that was such a unified business. The business of operating and navy was fundamentally different from that of ground forces. Burke stated to his biographer in the 1980’s that,

He was reluctant to see the operational command of the U.S. Navy removed from the control of the Chief of Naval Operations. Only naval officers, he believed,

123Douglas T. Stuart, ed., “Organizing for National Security,” (Carlisle, PA: The United States Army War College, The Strategic Studies Institute, November, 2000), 41-44. 124Metz, “Eisenhower as Strategist,” 29. 125Allan Millett, The American Political System and Civilian Control of the Military, A Historical Perspective, (Columbus, OH: The Mershon Center of the Ohio State University, 1979), 40. 126Jablonsky, 150. 61

were familiar enough with the unique requirements of operations at sea to direct them with the dispatch needed that was needed in far-flung crisis situation. He was deeply worried about the prospect of a unified military service, in which the command of a naval force might fall to an Army or Air Force officer who knew nothing about seafaring.127

Such an opinion was bound to bring Burke into a conflict with the President that he could neither win nor afford to lose.

The President was determined to pursue his reorganization agenda and formed a commission on defense reorganization in February 1953 led by , who headed the President’s Advisory Committee on Government Organization.128 The

President received the committee’s recommendations in April of 1953 and acted swiftly upon them to create Reorganization Plan 6 for Defense Department reform for

Congressional action, named so since it was the 6th report in a series of government reorganization programs created by the committee. Principally, Reorganization Plan 6 made it clear that the members of the JCS were not a military command group, but rather advisors to the President and Secretary of Defense. Eisenhower also wanted to transfer authority over the unified commands from the JCS to the Secretary of Defense, who would then designate a military department and its secretary, as the executive agent, making the Defense Secretary rather than the JCS in change of assigning executive agency.129 The plan also included additional authority for the Chairman of the Joint

Chiefs to direct the Joint Staff that supported the chiefs, and six additional assistant

Secretaries of Defense to relieve the uniformed services of some of their responsibilities

127 Peter M. Swartz, Drawing Lines in the Sea The U.S. Navy Confronts the Unified Command Plan, (Alexandria, VA: The Center for Naval Analysis, CRM 99-3.09, January 1999), 92. 128Jablonsky, 226. 129 Swartz, Drawing Lines in the Sea, The U.S. Navy Confronts the Unified Command Plan, 89. 62 and allow the civilian Defense Secretary to direct the Department. In his own memoirs,

Eisenhower was more direct, stating that his real intent was forcible removal of the members of the Joint Chiefs from their respective services in order to give the whole body a joint, less parochial outlook in considering the best course for the nation’s defense.130

Unlike in previous reorganization battles in 1947 and 1949, Congress and the military services were much opposed to Eisenhower’s concepts of reform. Members of the House of Representatives opposed the idea of adopting a “Prussian-like” General

Staff system so prominently associated with the defeated German Empire and Adolf

Hitler’s Nazi state. Representative Clare Hoffman (R/MI), who then headed the House

Government Operations Committee, suggested that President was attempting to turn the

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs into a powerful figure capable of becoming a military dictator if this officer felt the need to usurp civilian authority. Eisenhower rejected claims that he was creating a potential dictator, or “man on horseback”, to which Hoffman responded that this figure was indeed “on the road and riding fast.”131

Congress eventually approved much of Reorganization Plan 6, except for the provisions that would have empowered the CJCS. Eisenhower campaigned to get the entire package approved by Congress, but the House of Representatives ultimately defeated the measure 235-108.132 Despite this defeat, since neither House of Congress

130Jablonsky, 228. 131Ibid, 229. 132Ibid, 230. 63 took unfavorable action within sixty days of the President’s transmittal message of the legislation to Congress, it became effective.133

The Navy responded to Reorganization Plan 6 by creating its own study to examine naval organization in light of the President’s changes. Secretary of the Navy

Robert Anderson appointed Under Secretary Thomas S. Gates to head a special study on how to manage the growing power of the Navy Secretary and his staff with that of the

CNO. The biggest problem, according to naval historian Thomas Hone, was managing both the CNO and the Navy Secretary’s access to the President. The Gates Committee sought to create consensus between the two centers of naval power by creating joint administrative boards where consensus might be forged between the two stakeholders.134

These efforts were not successful in the short term, and President Eisenhower soon took matters into his own hands in response to his unhappiness with the functioning of the JCS and the service secretaries.

None of the service chiefs was enamored with Eisenhower’s actions that placed their civilian service secretary between them and the Defense Secretary and President.

Eisenhower was equally disappointed in their lack of faith and decided to replace them in mass. This action brought Admiral Radford into office as CJCS, as well as Admiral

Robert Carney as CNO. One of Carney’s chief contributions to the further development of naval strategy was the creation of the OP-06 office (Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans and Policy) within the CNO’s staff. Carney intended the office to serve as the

133 Ibid. 134 Ibid. 64

CNO’s dedicated office to manage military planning and policy at the JCS level.135 OP-

60 and its satellite offices would go on to be the Navy’s most important strategic planning organ in the middle and late Cold War. Carney, however, incurred Eisenhower’s wrath when he balked at swiftly carrying out Navy budget cuts for fiscal year 1956 and for dour reports on the fate of U.S forces if they engaged in battle with China in the

Taiwan Strait crisis of 1955.136 After just two years, Admiral Arleigh Burke replaced him in mid-1955.137 Burke was perceived by Navy Secretary Charles Thomas as more youthful, had a strong technical background, and an excellent leadership record.138Burke was also supposed to be less resisting to defense unification than was his predecessor.139

The prospective CNO told the Senate Arms Services Committee at his confirmation that he had in no way changed his opinion on defense unification, which he had forcefully opposed as the head of the OP-23 office in 1949.140

Burke did not hesitate to engage the President directly on issues of importance to the Navy on which Eisenhower had a differing opinion. Burke secured an oval office meeting with the President in order to explain the importance of the current military draft in meeting Navy manpower requirements. Eisenhower had previously determined not to re-institute the draft, but on hearing Burke’s presentation relented. He cautioned Burke however to, “never again to put his commander-in-chief in such an embarrassing

135 Hone, p. 34. 136 Leighton, Strategy, Money and the New Look, Pp. 373, 374. 137 Hone, p. 34. 138 David Alan Rosenberg, “Arleigh Burke, The Last CNO,” (Washington D.C.: The Navy History and Heritage Command, 22 December 2015), electronic resources, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/a/arleigh-burke- the-last-cno.html, last accessed 10 Jan 2017. 139 Hone, p. 35. 140 Hone, p. 35. 65 position.”141 The two men also remained at odds throughout the President’s second term on the value of defense reorganization, but Eisenhower learned to appreciate Burke’s value, came to regard him as a member of his team and re-appointed him as CNO for a second and later an unprecedented third term.142The President and the CNO developed a strong friendship over their respective terms in office. Burke’s biographer David Alan

Rosenberg related one example of this when President sent the CNO a bottle of scotch whiskey to congratulate the CNO on the successful launch of a Vanguard satellite in

February 1959. Burke’s return note was a humorous one where the CNO misspelled words and pretended to be intoxicated from the effects of the gift.143

Despite differences with the President on some issues, Burke worked well with

Secretary of the Navy Thomas S. Gates who replaced Charles Thomas in 1957. The two were effective allies in mitigating the more draconian measures of Eisenhower’s 1958 defense reorganization effort. They managed to retain CNO control over most operational naval forces though Gates’ selection as the civilian secretarial agent for the principal naval commands in the Atlantic (CINCLANT), Pacific (CINCPAC) and the Middle East

(CINCNELM).144 This action preserved a “bi-linear” concept of naval command that had been in place since the Second World War whereas Admiral Burke related, “The CNO was able to alert his fleet commanders to potential emergencies and position ships in areas of potential trouble,” while at the same time “keeping the president, defense

141 Rosenberg, “The Last CNO” 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid. 144Swartz, Drawing Lines in the Sea, 91. 66 secretary and the JCS informed of his actions.”145 This system worked well during the aforementioned Tachen island evacuation, the 1956 Suez crisis, and the 1958 U.S.

Marine Corps landings and operations in Lebanon. Burke was also a constant advocate for advanced warfighting technology. In addition to his efforts in supporting submarine launched ballistic missiles, Burke convened the Libby Board (led by Rear Admiral Ruthven Libby) to examine naval organization as it pertained to the advocacy for and promotion of advanced naval technology.146 Burke was concerned that the development of naval surface to air missile systems, as embodied in the “3 T’s” program of Talos, Tartar and Terrier missiles, was slow and the weapons ineffective. The

Navy intended to build a layered system of missile shooting warships around the aircraft carrier for its defense; a vital element of its preferred strategy. The Libby Board place responsibility for new weapons development within the OPNAV staff and allowed Burke to strengthen his own position in a time when the President was looking to reduce the overall power of service chiefs.

Despite these successes, the powers Burke and the other service chiefs exercised were further reduced by President Eisenhower’s second round of defense reforms in

1958. Eisenhower was increasingly dissatisfied with his 1953 reforms package, especially in continued inter-service budget rivalry and in particular a battle among the services over responsibility for the development of intermediate range ballistic missiles.147

Eisenhower’s 1958 Reorganization plan called for further reduction of service chief powers by formally removing them from the operational chain of command, but allowing

145Ryan, 23. 146Hone, 36. 147 Swartz, Drawing lines in the Sea, 90. 67 them to issue operational orders in the name of the Defense Secretary. The prior JCS staff organization of joint committees would be disbanded in favor of a conventional service staff organization with the J prefix for joint staff, together with traditional staff numbers like two for intelligence and three for operations. The Joint Staff would be further strengthened, as would the position of the Chairman, who was to be given the authority to select the Director of the Joint Staff and manage it “in the name of the Joint Chiefs of

Staff.”148

Despite another round of significant opposition, this time led by House Armed

Services Committee Chairman Carl Vinson (D/Ga), Eisenhower again achieved most of his objectives. Some objectives however eluded his grasp. Congress, still frightened by the specter of a Prussian General Staff, limited the Joint Staff to 400 members and limited their term of re-appointment in order to avoid the creation of a dedicated, long serving

Joint Staff cadre. The President could not transfer specific warfare functions between the services, as Eisenhower had desired without first informing Congress. Finally, a bilinear chain of command persisted in that while unified commanders were truly joint in composition and operational authority; their staffs were still selected by the component services and the services still maintained and administrative chain of command with deployed units for the purposes of regular administration.

While Eisenhower had faced some opposition in 1953 and 1958 from all of the services, it was the Navy, as in 1947 and 1949, that was most directly opposed the

President’s reorganization plans. The Navy’s concept of postwar strategy and associated operations was also most directly affected by the President’s actions and had now nearly

148Jablonsky, 296. 68 accomplished the divestment of command that Burke feared. The CNO stated his fears over this change in 1958, bluntly stating, “We believe in command and not staff. We believe in having ‘real things to do.’ We decentralize and capitalize on the capabilities of our individual people, rather than centralize and make automatons of them.”149 Burke said that he always believed the JCS was more a political rather than a , and an arena where the services fought their battles for resources.150 He also feared the new powers given to the Defense Secretary and the Army Staff-like organization given to the Joint Staff. The Defense Secretary could now control service functions and their acquisition programs, and delegate that authority to a growing number of subordinates. The new Joint Staff was “alien” to naval officers in Burke’s opinion, and caused the Navy to begin the practice of not sending its “best and brightest” officers to

Joint Staff assignments.151This process would later put the Navy at odds with the Defense

Department when the Goldwater Nichols Act demanded the services assign quality personnel to the Joint Staff.

Burke had, in Thomas Hone’s words generally shielded the Navy from many of

Eisenhower’s defense reorganization reforms.152 He also preserved the Navy’s component of the strategic nuclear deterrent in the process of the negotiations leading to the JCS approval the first National Strategic Target List (NSTL) and Single Integrated

Operations Plan (SIOP) for the employment of strategic nuclear weapons on 2 December

149 James C. Bradford, editor, Quarterdeck and Bridge, Two Centuries of American Naval Leadership, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1997), 379. 150Hone, 43. 151 Ibid. 152 Thomas Hone, Power and Change, The Administrative History of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 41. 69

1960.153Eisenhower once more was angry that the JCS had not done a better job in the effort, especially as the President believed that the (SAC) should have been given the task instead of the service chiefs.154His frustration was especially directed at the Navy and exposed the President’s real feelings about defense organization as the angry Eisenhower exclaimed, “the original mistake in this whole business was our failure to create one single service in 1947.”155 Despite presidential diatribes, Burke’s efforts preserved the Navy’s Polaris entry in the ballistic missile field and promoted it as the least vulnerable of the strategic triad elements.156 Burke’s successors, however, would not be as successful in meeting Navy desires. The next three presidential administrations would make the most of Eisenhower’s defense reforms and often not in ways favorable to the Navy, its concept of Cold War strategy, or its preferred force structure to accomplish that mission. The magnitude of these changes was so great that Rosenberg in his capacity as Admiral Burke’s biographer referred to him as “the last CNO.”

The policies of the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations from 1961 to

1974 provided multiple opportunities for the Navy to demonstrate its preferred Cold War strategy through active military operations in Southeast Asia. The long-lasting conflicts in Vietnam and adjacent Southeast Asian nations, however, sapped funds from the defense budget necessary for the replacement of aging, Second World War era ships.

These platforms in particular were rapidly becoming outmoded in a new era of missiles, , and networked data communications at sea. The Navy adapted well to

153 David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill; Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945- 1960,” International Security, (Spring, 1983), Vol 7, #4, 65. 154Ibid, 5. 155Ibid, 64. 156Ibid, 58. 70 technological and operational change, but faced a horizon darkened and confused by the

Eisenhower reforms in defense organization. The reforms of 1953 and 1958 brought about significant growth and potential for continued expansion in the Department of

Defense civilian work force. This process, referred to by Allan Millett as the

“hypertrophy of civilian control of the military,” also promoted “a similar erosion of uniformed armed forces autonomy over military operations; the sine qua non of military professionalism.”157The next several administrations would make full use of the increased civilian control of the military enabled by Eisenhower, and further expand its authority to the detriment of both the Navy and perhaps the nation. The period did end on an optimistic note for the Navy as a renewed emphasis on naval strategy accompanied the rise of a more powerful Soviet Navy and led to the most successful American naval strategy since War Plan Orange.

Naval Strategy and the Doctrine of Flexible Response

President Eisenhower had eschewed small wars on the periphery of Eurasia. He hoped that the threat of nuclear weapons embodied in his New Look policy was enough to deter war with the Soviet Union and any other potential “bad actors” that might threaten regional peace. Many senior service leaders, especially in the U.S. Army, rejected Eisenhower’s dismissal of ground forces from the center of American military effort. The rise of Soviet nuclear capability throughout the 1950’s also called into question the continuation of the New Look into the new decade of the 1960’s. The rise to power of Nikita Khrushchev brought with it a new Soviet policy to support revolutionary

157Millett, Civilian Control of the Military, 45. 71 wars of national liberation, such as that fought by the Vietnamese Viet Minh revolutionaries against the French in Indochina in the early 1950’s. Eisenhower’s youthful successor, John F. Kennedy, and his own group of relatively young advisors sought a new, more flexible form of containment to contend with the wars on the

Eurasian periphery that Eisenhower had been determined to prevent with non-military action or delegate to proxies for actual combat.

At the center of Kennedy’s effort to adjust U.S. strategy to “Flexible Response” was his Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara. A former Army Air Forces operations analyst and Ford Motor company executive, McNamara’s concepts of systems analysis and corporate management would play a significant role in articulating the Kennedy administration’s new containment policy. McNamara entered office with the specific goals of “redesigning the military strategy and Armed Forces of the United States to achieve greater flexibility and effectiveness,” and “to install new methods of analysis and decision-making in the areas of planning, management and acquisition.”158 Kennedy wanted “a more robust military force posture” and McNamara intended to deliver such through 5-year plans that divided the military into functional areas for the purpose of draft budgetary suggestions for the While House known as Draft Presidential Memoranda

(DPM)’s.159

The principal tool for the implementation of McNamara’s reforms was the system of output budgeting known as the Planning, Programming and Budgeting system (PPBS).

PPBS proposed, in the words of one of its architects, to create “decision-making based on

158Rearden, Council of War, 245. 159Rearden, 246. 72 explicit criteria of the national interest in defense programs, as opposed to decision making by compromise among various institutional, parochial, or other vested interests in the Defense Department.”160 The purpose of PPBS was to create, “explicit criteria, openly and thoroughly debated by all interested parties, that could be used by the

Secretary of Defense, the President, and the Congress as measures of the need for and adequacy of defense programs.”161 These criteria would take the form of systems analysis developed by the coterie of civilian systems analysts responsible for the implementation of PPBS who were known derisively known as, “the whiz kids.” These individuals, such as Department of Defense General Counsel John McNaughton, McNamara aide Adam

Yarmolinsky, former President of the University of Charles Hitch, and economist Alain Enthoven formed the core members of McNamara’s new legion of analysts determined to alter defense planning.162 They were the product of Ivy League schools and often contemptuous of military experience in the determination of strategy.

The fact that they desired to examine military programs “from a broader perspective than that of the organization proposing them, choose among real alternatives, and ascertain at what point further spending on a given military program results in incremental gains so small that it is no longer justified” put them at odds with senior military officers from the start.163The Whiz Kids would play significant roles in the implementation of both the nuclear and conventional aspects of the Flexible Response doctrine.

160Alain Enthoven and K Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough, Shaping the Defense Program 1961-1969, (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 1971), 33. 161 Ibid. 162 H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, The Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam, (New York, Harper Collins, 1997),18-19. 163 Ibid. 73

McNamara described Flexible Response in a 1962 speech at the University of

Michigan as “a credible deterrent for the kind of conflict proposed by Khrushchev,” and composed of both nuclear and conventional elements.164 The nuclear component was straight-forward in that McNamara said the U.S. would, “maintain our nuclear strike power as a realistic, effective deterrent against Soviet initiation of long wars.” The conventional component, however, came from a potential gap in the Eisenhower New

Look. McNamara suggested in 1962 that a limited conventional force would, “invite the

Soviets to practice the ‘salami slice’ technique,” of “piecemeal military ,” to which “we had no suitably scaled and obviously credible countermeasures.” In response, the Kennedy administration would develop, “a military force tailored to the particular challenge.”165

The Navy had few complaints about the new containment concept. CNO Arleigh

Burke had said the U.S. and its Allies would “be well advised to prepare for a broader set of military contingencies,” and, “what is more apt to occur {than a general war with the

Soviet Union} are local wars which both the Free World and the USSR will take great pains to prevent expanding into general war.”166 Burke had also suggested the service’s force structure through the 1970’s as one composed primarily of 40 ballistic missile submarines as the Navy’s contribution to the nation’s nuclear deterrent and 15 large

164Robert S. McNamara,“June 1962 speech on Flexible Response,” in:American Defense Policy, eds.John E. Endicott and Roy W. Stafford, Jr.4thedition,(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 71-72. 165 Ibid. 166“Admiral Arleigh Burke,” in James C. Bradford, ed., Quarterdeck and Bridge, Two Centuries of American Naval Leadership, (Annapolis, Md, The Naval Institute Press, 1997), 376. 74 aircraft carriers as the service’s “primary cutting tool” to forestall or fight limited conflicts.167

The Kennedy and Johnson administrations were generally supportive of this strategy and force structure. Kennedy approved one of President Eisenhower’s final strategic initiatives, the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) in 1961. It allowed for the substantial force of ballistic missile submarines recommended by Burke and left the

Air Force complaining that the Navy had completed a “strategic power grab” with the acquisition of its own, unique nuclear deterrent arm.168

Implementation of the conventional elements of the Flexible Response Doctrine, however, proved more troublesome. Kennedy largely excluded the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the planning process that produced the failed Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961.

Admiral Burke, among all the Joint Chiefs, was most in favor of military action against

Castro’s Cuba and suggested covert action as one possible means of eliminating the

Cuban Communist government. Burke was present at a March 16 1960 conference where

Eisenhower approved the Central Intelligence Agency’s plan for a covert effort to remove

Castro from power.169 While the CIA was hopeful of success, the Joint Staff suggested that the plan had only a one in three chance of success and Admiral Burke told President

Kennedy that his estimate was a fifty percent chance.170Burke said later that the Joint

Chiefs should have been more forceful in demanding a role in the planning, or at least more information. The Chiefs’ reticence was rooted in their military-like relationship

167 Ibid, 377 168David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill,” 53, 54. 169 Rearden, Council of War, 198. 170 Rearden, Council of War, 215. 75 with President Eisenhower, who brooked no dissention within the ranks once he had rendered a decision. Burke concluded that the Bay of Pigs operation was, “a which was conducted by amateurs all, from top to bottom, and it was a horrible fiasco.”171Eisenhower’s successor John F. Kennedy wanted more actual advice from the

Chiefs and was disappointed in their lack of opinion regarding the Bay of Pigs operation.

Kennedy later said, “The first advice I’m going to give my successor to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that just because they are military men their opinions on military matters are worth a damn.”172Whether the Chiefs had overestimated the chances of success, or the Kennedy administration had not asked the right questions, the overall effect was a noticeable chill in the relations between the Chiefs and the new President.

The after-effects of the Bay of Pigs operation presaged a less than cordial relationship between the Joint Chiefs and Chief Executive that would continue throughout the

Kennedy and Johnson administrations. This lack of communication would later be cited by U.S. Army officer H.R. McMaster in his book Dereliction of Duty as one of the factors leading to President Johnson’s decision to enter the without seeking proper military advice.173

The Kennedy administration had supported further construction and operation of large aircraft carriers, but in February 1963 Defense Secretary McNamara “directed that the Navy justify its operation of 15 attack carriers, as well as requests for new

171Ryan, 37, 38. 172 Rearden, Council of War, 173 H.R. McMaster, 333. 76 construction.”174 Caught off guard by McNamara’s request, the Navy struggled to justify its large carrier force in two studies that were both rejected by Secretary McNamara as insufficiently detailed. In October 1963, McNamara backtracked to a degree, and while he rejected nuclear propulsion for what would later become the USS John F. Kennedy

(CV 67), he approved the carrier’s construction.175 McNamara’s decision caused a firestorm within the Navy and resulted in the resignation, in protest, of Navy Secretary

Fred Korth.176 Congress became involved and the Joint Congressional Committee on

Atomic Energy held hearings on the matter. McNamara was resolute in his decision and suggested that his analysis had determined that an even smaller force of 9-11 flattops would be the right number of carriers. He cited his own analysis that said the carrier’s potential as strategic platforms had been reduced due to the larger number of submarine launched nuclear weapons that were now available and by improvements in land-based aircraft. The Congressional committee rebuked McNamara in its November 1963 findings, stating that the Defense Secretary’s arguments were “misleading, misinformed and incorrect.”

Congress had rescued the Navy’s premier system for flexible response and its nascent surface ship nuclear power program, but the persistent Mr. McNamara found other venues in which to chip away at the naval service’s operational strength. The

Defense Secretary was a persistent visitor to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)

Operations Plot on 23 and 24 October 1962 at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

174 Norman Polmar, Aircraft Carriers, A History of Carrier Aviation, Volume II, 1946-2005, (Washington D.C.: Potomac Books, 2008), 222-223. 175Ibid, 223. 176 Ibid, 223, 224. 77

While some historians have suggested an argument took place between McNamara and

Admiral Burke’s successor as CNO Admiral George Anderson, no such heated discussion took place according to retired Naval Intelligence officer Captain William

Manthorpe. McNamara was, however cheated out of the honor of telling President

Kennedy that Soviet ships had been turned back by the blockade by officials of the

National Security Agency (NSA) and the Naval Intelligence Agency (ONI). These negative encounters between the Navy and McNamara did nothing to improve relations between the sea service and the Department of Defense.

President Kennedy’s death from an assassin’s bullet in Dallas, Texas in

November 1963 was a great blow to naval service. In spite of antagonisms with members of his administration, the Navy and the President, a decorated World War 2 naval reserve officer, had good relations. Those with his successor Lyndon Johnson were not so cordial. President Kennedy had refrained from significant, active military engagement in

Southeast Asia, but his successor felt compelled to continue and expand U.S. efforts against on communist aggression as he sought funding and support for expansive domestic anti-poverty programs.177 Johnson largely retained Kennedy’s national security team including Secretary McNamara. The period of active U.S. combat in Vietnam from

1965-1973 was a full-scale test of the Flexible Response doctrine. The Navy, for its part displayed the capabilities of its aircraft carrier strike and riverine and coastal combat forces. The fleet continued to develop new communications and data exchange operations, and additional nuclear-powered submarines and surface ships entered the

177 Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of the War in Vietnam, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 401. 78 active Navy. Active combat experience and new , however, came at the price of a war that cost upward of $150 billion dollars and sapped Navy attempts to recapitalize a largely World War 2 era fleet facing block obsolescence.178 Civilian authorities continued their usurpation of traditional military roles. The effects of the Vietnam War, both in budget shortfalls and conflicts with civilian defense authorities left the Navy ill prepared to modify its Cold War strategy to meet the threat of a rising Soviet fleet. The

Navy’s youngest-ever CNO, however, would begin the process of reversing that trend, and initiate a strategic revolution that would put the Navy at the forefront of national strategy at the end of the Cold War.

Naval Strategy and the Vietnam War

President Johnson determined that the best way to fight the Vietnam War was through a strategy of gradualism, which suggested gradual periods of increasingly military pressure, broken by periods of pause for an opponent to re-evaluate their decisions, and persuade political leadership to seek a negotiated settlement, could be an effective tool for keeping wars limited in cost and scope.179This method became

President Johnson’s preferred means of dealing with the Vietnam War, during which periods of intense U.S. military action were followed by palpable lulls where the North

Vietnamese and National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) opponents were meant to re- consider their actions against the South Vietnamese state.

178Ryan, 47. 179Ryan, 49. 79

The verified naval action in the Gulf of Tonkin on 1 August 1964 between the USS Maddox and North Vietnamese torpedo boats, and the subsequent, probable non-action on 4 August that also involved the USS Turner Joy began a significant naval combat effort in the rivers and littoral waters of North and South

Vietnam. President Kennedy had approved the assignment of U.S. Navy advisors to train the South Vietnamese Navy as early as April 1961, and the Desoto direction patrols that brought Maddox and Turner Joy into direct combat with North Vietnamese were only the latest is such direct support missions of the South Vietnamese. The U.S. Navy would bring to bear over xx personnel in riverine combat operations that formed the largest, active “brown water” force since the American .180 Thousands of others served in an array of vessels from recommissioned to modern guided missile and in naval gunfire support and interdiction operations against North Vietnamese supply efforts. Many of the Navy’s future maritime strategy writers began their careers in the jungles, on the coasts and in the skies over Vietnam.

The riverine, interdiction and gunfire support missions were largely controlled by

U.S. military leaders on the ground in South Vietnam. The carrier airstrike operations against targets in the north and south of the embattled Southeast Asian state were, however more directly influenced by leaders in Washington D.C. The Navy benefitted from the process to a degree in that its carrier-based aviation forces played a significant role in the bombing of targets in North Vietnam. While these operations were useful to the overall military effort in Vietnam, they conflicted with the Navy’s concepts of

180 William B. Fulton, Vietnam Studies Series, Riverine Operations, 1966-1969, (Washington D.C.: The Department of the Army, The U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973), 8. 80 strategy, even those defined by Flexible Response. Carrier operations against Vietnamese targets would achieve success only to be suddenly stopped by order from President

Johnson or Secretary McNamara in order to give the appropriate pause. Naval leaders often saw this “stop and go” war as unproductive in that they could not control its course when inundated by daily changes of campaign direction from Washington.181 Admiral

Ulysses Grant Sharp, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Command (CINCPAC) and operational commander of the first “Rolling Thunder” air campaign in 1965 argued that greater pressure, rather than gradualism was the correct course needed to force North

Vietnam to the negotiating process.182 The pauses in the air campaign, as well as non- combat patrols by U.S. warships off the coast of North Vietnam ordered by the President mystified naval leaders. They had prepared for limited war in the wake of the Korean

War, but at least expected to carry most, if not all of the military measures they recommended. Admiral Sharp later criticized his own meekness in representing his views to elected leaders saying, “I should have perhaps interjected myself, early on and more than once into the Washington arena with personal briefings of the sort I gave to

Secretary McNamara in Saigon in mid-1967 (that recommended the mining of North

Vietnamese harbors).”183

The approaching block obsolescence of a large part of the fleet was of greater concern. Warships constructed during the Second World War had served the nation throughout the first 25 years of the Cold War, many in deployed locations for extended

181Ryan, 56. 182 Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power, The American Bombing of North Vietnam, Lincoln, Nb, The University of Press, 2006 edition, 82, 83, 106. 183 Ryan, 63 81 periods. These ships were now approaching the end of their service lives and urgently needed replacement. The Vietnam War had generated an enormous drain on national resources and in some estimates its direct cost approached $150 billion by its end.184

Funding for the war crippled the Navy’s shipbuilding budget. By 1968, out of a total

Navy budget of $26.7 billion, only $800 million was earmarked for new construction warships.185

Getting new construction funds in face of the competition for funding from both

Vietnam and President Johnson’s domestic spending programs was a significant challenge for the Navy during the latter half of the 1960’s, but it also faced new challenges from within the Department of Defense for such requests. The root of this problem was perhaps due to the increasing level of civilian influence and outright control of strategic processes that had once been the province of uniformed officers. Attacks by

McNamara and his close advisors on the big-deck aircraft carrier or the preferred means of waging war in Vietnam both reflect a progressive loss of uniformed military influence over general national security affairs. Allan Millett described this condition in two parts.

The first was that civilian leaders in the post-World War 2 era asked the Joint Chiefs of

Staff to advise and comment on situations beyond their military operational expertise.

The second was a growing civilian assumption that, “the risks of escalation (in conventional or nuclear conflict), require operational decisions by the political elite”

184Ibid, 47. 185Ibid, 51. 82 since the JCS, as designed, did not give answers at the speed desired by civilian leaders.186

The Navy viewed strategy as the product of professional military judgement.187 It saw McNamara’s vision of qualitative policy analysis as one that “devalued and eviscerated strategy and intellectual audacity.”188 The core of McNamara’s analysis theory was the question, “how much was enough” for national defense spending, as articulated the seminal book of the same name by economist and chief McNamara “Whiz

Kid” Alain Enthoven. The Navy’s view, as articulated by three Navy Secretaries in the

1970s and 1980’s, was that such questions were irrelevant to the sea service. Analysts had to make a number of assumptions in order to build specific scenarios that supported their conclusions on the numbers of ships to buy and what weapons to acquire. Naval strategists, on the other hand, relied on much wider historical experiences over time insisted flexibility was essential to naval success. They viewed the products of

McNamara’s systems analysts as deceptive cover for subjective Office of the Secretary of

Defense judgments.

McNamara’s tendency to bypass the service chiefs and the JCS collectively in both operational and administrative matters, and his focus on programming and analysis served also to reduce the power of the CNO’s OP-60 (Plans and Policies) office. With the

CNO focused on the management of multiple acquisition programs, he was able to spend less time on his service and JCS strategy functions that were at the core of the OP-06

186Millett, Civilian Control of the Military, 42-45. 187 Peter M. Swartz with Karin Dugan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, Introduction, Background and Analysis, (Alexandria, Va: MISC D0026421.A1/, December 2011), 74. 188 Ibid, 72-74. 83 office’s mission. OP-06 also had to compete with OP-96, a systems analysis branch the

Navy was forced to create in order to support McNamara’s demand for multiple analysis efforts in support of every major acquisition program. The effective re-tasking of the

CNO from operational to programming concerns would make it harder to focus on the creation of strategy in the future and was a major change in the Navy’s organizational structure and culture. Although much of McNamara’s operational and tactical analysis concepts were discredited in the wake of the Vietnam War’s failure, they persisted at higher levels of Defense Department strategy in succeeding presidential administrations.

Responding to the Rise of the Soviet Navy

This disagreement between the Navy and OSD could not have come at a worse time, as it paralleled a significant rise in the size and capability of the Soviet Navy. The

Soviet Navy had been a coastal defense organization until the late 1950’s, when the development of longer-ranged, supersonic, carrier based attack aircraft allowed U.S. and

Allied carriers to remain further off shore when conducting air attacks against the Soviet homeland.189 The development of the ballistic missile submarine as the new, primary nuclear weapon threat from the sea, and the outcome of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 further hastened a change in Soviet naval practice.190 The Soviets responded with a shipbuilding program that emphasized anti-carrier and anti-submarine platforms, and further extended their maritime defense zones.191 The Soviet Navy’s new commander,

189Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power, 394-395. 190Ibid, 397. 191David E. Thaler, “The Fifth Eskadra, Soviet Maritime Power in the Mediterranean”, The Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, Volume V, No. 3 (March 1987), 1,2. 84

Admiral Sergey Gorshkov, wrote a series of eleven articles from 1972-1973 suggesting that the Soviet Union, traditionally a land power was also a “mighty seapower, “and were a powerful means of achieving the “political goals” of an armed struggle.192

Gorshkov also said the Soviet Navy’s primary missions were defensive in nature and focused on preserving the deterrent value of Soviet ballistic missile submarines.193Finally, Gorshkov suggested that the expanded and empowered Soviet

Navy could serve to “withstand the ocean strategy of imperialism.”194

The Soviet shipbuilding and naval exercise program of the preceding decade supported Gorshkov’s concepts. In 1968, the Soviet Navy had numbered 790 major ships, but by 1972 it possessed 820 such vessels.195 The U.S. navy, on the other hand, continued to shrink as aging World War 2 era warships were retired without replacement due to the costs of the Vietnam War and the Great Society programs of the Johnson administration.

In 1968, the U.S. Navy had 574 major combatant ships while in 1972 this figure had shrunk to 447.196 The Soviet Union also surpassed the U.S. in overall numbers of nuclear submarines built and under construction in 1971.197Soviet naval efforts culminated in the first half of the 1970’s with two global naval exercises entitled Ocean 70 and Ocean 75, as well as aggressive action during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, where Soviet surface and submarine forces closely trailed their NATO rivals and appeared ready to intervene in the

192John Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 25-26. 193Ibid, 26. 194Baer, 397. 195 Ryan.73. 196 Ibid. 197Baer, 397. 85 conflict198. The rising Soviet Navy clearly presented the most significant challenge to the

U.S. Navy and its trans-oceanic strategy since the Second World War.

The departure of McNamara in 1968 allowed the Navy a pause from management through analysis and gave the service some freedom to manage its now shrinking budget.

McNamara’s successors in the Johnson, Nixon, and Ford administrations returned a degree of independent decision-making to the military departments. McNamara’s immediate successor, , did not alter his predecessor’s organization or methods, but President Nixon’s first defense secretary, , instead practiced a system of “participatory management” where according to his deputy Lawrence Korb,

“Laird looked primarily to the military services and the service chiefs for the design of the force structure.”199 His successors in the later Nixon and Ford administrations, Elliot

Richardson, James Schlesinger, and Donald Rumsfeld followed similar policies in their short terms, but Congressional budget limitations prohibited them from restoring the

Navy to pre-Vietnam War strength. The Navy’s budget grew over the period of the Nixon and Ford administrations from $222.4 billion dollars in 1970 to $315 billion by the end of

Ford’s presidency, but overall numbers of Navy ships sank from 743 to 559 in the same period.200

The reduction in numbers of ships, as well as the rise of the Soviet Navy also precipitated what John Hattendorf called, “A renaissance in U.S. naval strategic thinking.” A new naval leadership in the 1970’s began to adjust the purely trans-oceanic

198 Lyle J. Goldstein and Yuri M. Zhukov, “A Tale of Two Fleets, A Russian Perspective on the 1973 Naval Standoff in the Mediterranean,” Newport, RI: The Naval War College Review, (Spring 2004), 47. 199Quoted in Hone, 80. 200Hattendorf, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970’s, xiii-xiv. 86 strategy of the 1950’s and 1960’s into one that emphasized sea control and direct combat with its Soviet rival. Elements of this change included a renewed focus on naval intelligence to determine Soviet intentions, a revitalization of the Navy’s strategy development efforts in the CNO’s staff, the Naval War College, and in organizations specifically assembled and tasked with strategy development. It began with the appointment of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt as CNO, who in addition to his well-known social reforms within naval regulations, undertook to rebuild the Navy’s strategic culture and modernize its force structure in the wake of budget cuts and operational strain from the Vietnam War.

Zumwalt was frequently criticized by other senior naval officers for his changes to naval culture and leadership through the ubiquitous “Z gram “messages.201 He was a relatively junior when appointed, had not commanded one of the Navy’s numbered fleets, and perhaps, as Thomas Hone suggests, he did not have the same

“image as an independent Navy man” as did his predecessors like Arleigh Burke.202

Despite these perceived limitations, Zumwalt was able to re-introduce strategic thinking into the OPNAV staff and the Navy and alert it to the rising Soviet threat. Naval intelligence assessments provided accurate information on how the Soviets intended to use their new force. Zumwalt put that information to good use within the naval strategic community in order to build an effective response. He also attempted to re-capitalize an aging fleet by retiring obsolete ships and replacing them with modern units. Although he was frequently opposed by many within and outside the Navy, his efforts in the early

201 Hone, 87-88 202 Ibid. 87

1970’s would enable the creation of the new Maritime strategy beginning later in the decade.203

Admiral Zumwalt believed that the Nixon Doctrine, articulated by the President and his National Security Adviser Dr. Henry Kissinger, “Offered a rationale for a maritime-oriented national strategy,” that emphasized a “lower profile, land-based presence overseas.”204 Zumwalt sought to define that maritime strategy through a capstone document that formed the basis of his efforts from his first day as CNO. This was Project Sixty, Zumwalt’s most important contribution to what would emerge as the

Maritime Strategy, a task list of immediate actions he intended to take early in his CNO tour. This initial effort would spawn Project 2000, an attempt to look beyond the rigid programmatic regime of defense planning imposed by Defense Secretary McNamara during his tenure at the Pentagon, as well as the Future Maritime Strategy Study

(FUMAR) and the “U.S. Strategy for the Pacific and Indian Ocean Areas for the 1970’s.”

These endeavors were in turn supported by Naval War College President Rear Admiral

Stansfield Turner’s efforts to use the institution in support of Zumwalt’s strategic objectives, notably in the 1973 “Missions of the Navy” document.205

Project Sixty comprised a laundry list of intentions Zumwalt intended to pursue as

CNO from the strategic, to the operational and administrative elements of the Navy.

Written by Stansfield Turner before his promotion to Rear Admiral, Project Sixty laid out four naval capabilities that needed preservation and reassessment in response to the

203Jeffrey I Sands, On His Watch, Admiral Zumwalt’s Efforts to Institutionalize Strategic Change,(Alexandria, VA, Center for Naval Analyses, CRM 93-23, July 1993), 58. 204Ibid, 18. 205Hattendorf, The Navy of the 1970’s, 31. 88 growing Soviet fleet. They were assured second strike, control of sea lines and areas, projection of power ashore, and overseas presence in peacetime.206 Zumwalt noted that the growth of the Soviet navy and its global deployment meant that the U.S. Navy “must be based on the two ocean concept. We cannot concentrate forces in one ocean unless we are prepared to accept the loss in war of control of the other oceans, and thus the destruction of the Free World Alliance.”207 His solution was a re-capitalization of Navy units, especially in the surface fleet, and the building of low cost platforms designed to make the most of the post-Vietnam war declining Navy budget. Finally, Zumwalt sought to determine the correct mix of expensive “high” and cheaper “low” cost platforms to confront the Soviet Union globally.

Turner’s “Missions of the Navy” was written in support of Zumwalt’s four missions of the Navy near the end of the controversial CNO’s tour. Turner’s goal was to

“get naval officers to think deeply about their service, understand what is best for the whole organization beyond their own platforms, and focus on the missions (output) of the

Navy vice their own platform’s inputs.”208 Turner was also concerned about increasing civilian control and influence over military and naval strategy; a growing phenomenon of the Cold War era. Turner criticized the Navy for “our increasing reliance on civilians and on think tanks to do our thinking for us.”209 While Turner’s short, 16-page document focused on Project Sixty’s missions and the Soviet Union as the principal U.S. antagonist, it represented a return of the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) to the business of creating

206Ibid, 4. 207Ibid., 10. 208 Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, 18 209 Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 8. 89 naval strategy. Over the course of the 1950’s and 1960’s many NWC faulty members including Rear Admirals Henry Eccles and Joseph Wylie, and Dr. Herbert Rosinski all sought to develop what John Hattendorf calls, “a thoroughly modern synthesis of major strategic ideas for wartime.”210Of these, only Admiral Wylie’s efforts had much lasting appeal and his book Military Strategy was one of the few readily available resources for

OPNAV strategic planning in the 1970’s.211 Admiral Turner’s efforts served to link the work of strategic thinkers from the NWC like Admiral Wylie to the wider naval profession in terms of what the Navy was expected to do in peace and war. Turner called his missions “outputs” and suggested they were more important to harnessing public support for the service than were mere reports on numbers of ships, aircraft, submarines and personnel.212

There was a great deal of criticism of Zumwalt and Turner’s efforts. They especially emphasized the sea control mission of the Navy that other naval officers, notably from the carrier aviation ranks saw as a purely defensive mission. Critics said that both Project Sixty and “Missions of the Navy” ignored non-Soviet threats, , and Allied contributions.213 Most notably, they suggested that any strategy that did not center on offensive operations would “lose the fleet and lose the war.”214

Zumwalt’s desire to build more numerous, less capable warships, especially the small aircraft carrier known as the Sea Control Ship, in order to prevent Soviet naval forces

210Ibid, 5,6. 211 J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy (Annapolis, MD: The United States Naval Institute Press, 1989), p. xxxiv. 212Stansfield Turner, “Missions of the U.S. Navy,” (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Review, Vol.26, No 5 (March/April 1974), 2,3. 213 Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, 1970-1980, (Alexandria, VA: The Center for Naval Analyses, D0026414, December 2011), 25. 214Ibid, 13. 90 from cutting sea lines of communication between the U.S. and Eurasia earned him the hatred of naval aviators, who saw such a ship as too vulnerable to be of offensive use.

Zumwalt specifically rejected intelligence chronicled in a 1968 book by Soviet naval analyst Robert Herrick that the Soviets were only interested in maritime defense.

Herrick’s claims were later justified during the late Cold War by intelligence gathering operations.

Both Zumwalt and Turner had been the head of the OP-96 operations analysis branch and were in favor of naval acceptance of the planning programming and budgeting system introduced by Secretary of Defense McNamara. Zumwalt conducted a significant reorganization of the CNO’s staff while in office that emphasized the rising importance of analysis in Navy program management and strategy. OP-96 was reorganized along the lines of Turner’s “Missions of the Navy,” and given greater authority over net assessment and extended planning.215This branch and the OP 06

(Deputy CNO for Plans, Policy and Operations) office, where naval strategists had been housed up to that point in the Cold War, developed a competition for influence within the

Navy staff. In contrast to OP 96’s expanding domain, OP 06 lost influence in long range planning. Its Strategic Objectives Plans Branch (OP 605) was re-designated as the mid and Long Range Plans and Policy branch.216 The strategy office also had to share long range planning efforts with the newly created CNO Executive Panel (OP 00K) that served as the CNO’s personal think tank for elements of long-range planning. Zumwalt made use of OP 06 to carry out extensive analysis such as the “U.S. Strategy for the

215 Peter M. Swartz, Organizing OPNAV, 1970-2009, (Washington D.C.: The Navy History and Heritage Command and CNA Analaysis and Solutions, CAB D 0020997.A5/2REV, January 2010), 18. 216 Swartz, Organizing OPNAV, 17. 91

Pacific and Indian Ocean Areas for the 1970’s” [done by Captain William Cockell of OP

06]. He also gave significant control to OP 96 to generate the CNO’s Policy and Planning

Guidance (CPPG), a companion to the Pentagon’s PPBS used to put naval programming more in line with DoD organization. Navy strategist Peter Swartz suggests this change marginalized the OP 06 organization in the drafting of planning and strategy documents throughout the 1970’s.217

Deep Origins of the 1980’s Maritime Strategy

Zumwalt’s tenure as CNO served to prepare the fleet for the task of again producing workable strategies to combat the rising Soviet fleet, despite internal Navy conflict over what constituted naval missions, the importance of offensive carrier aviation verses sea control exercised by the surface navy, and dissatisfaction in the senior ranks over his personnel policy changes. Competition, and alternately cooperation between the

OP 06 and OP 96 offices served to test and validate or reject different concepts Zumwalt wanted to evaluate. The interaction between these two offices would be at the center of naval strategic development throughout the 1970’s.

Zumwalt’s was succeeded as CNO in June 1974 by Admiral James Holloway III, an aviator with nuclear power training. Holloway’s term as CNO was also unique in that it overlapped that of three occupants of the White House. This was a period of significant turmoil as the nation left the Vietnam conflict behind and struggled through President

Nixon’s resignation. Holloway, like Zumwalt, began his CNO service under the Nixon

White House, but it was in its final agonies over the Watergate scandal and provided no

217Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, 1970-1980, 15. 92 immediate direction. President Ford, a World War 2 naval officer, was generally supportive of a recapitalized and revitalized Navy, but had neither the time in office nor the financial support of Congress for such plans in times of decreasing defense budgets.

In 1976 Ford declared that, “We cannot and will not let any nation dominate the world seas. The United States must and it will.”218 In particular, Congress failed to authorize

$1.7 billion dollars in naval spending for fiscal year 1977 that included significant units such as nuclear strike and the first AEGIS destroyer.219 Ford pledged additional support to the navy, but lost the 1976 presidential election to Georgia governor Jimmy

Carter. Although Carter had been a naval officer and one of Admiral Rickover’s nuclear- trained experts, he was generally not sympathetic to naval budgets and the force structures they supported.

The new CNO who, like many naval aviators, had been critical of Zumwalt’s focus on sea control rather than , set out to return the Navy to its primary focus on influencing events ashore. Holloway completed a revised strategic concept by the end of his CNO assignment that like Zumwalt’s was “book ended” by two strategic documents. The Naval Warfare Publication-1 (NWP-1), first published in 1975, was

Holloway’s answer to Project Sixty. It was divided into two main parts. The first part dealt with naval force requirements and the second revised the operational organization of the fleet from one based on ship types to that of unified battle groups.220 NWP-1 reflected Holloway’s concerns that Zumwalt and Turner had misused the concept of

“missions,” which in the new CNO’s opinion reflected warfare areas. He instead

218 Ibid. 219 Ibid. 220Hattendorf, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970’s, 53. 93 proposed the term “functions” and reduced them to sea control and power projection.221

NWP-1 was updated in 1976 and 1978 and was not finally canceled until 1993.222

Holloway’s focus on specific warfare areas and on the carrier battle group as the core organization of the U.S. navy at sea represented a return to offensive power projection as the Navy’s principal mission.

The second of these documents was Sea Plan 2000, which was completed at the end of Holloway’s tenure in 1978. This effort originated with the Navy Secretariat and not Holloway’s office, but his staff played a significant role in its research and completion. Sea Plan 2000 explored, “what policy makers could expect of naval forces,” and “how capable are those forces of carrying out missions assigned in the present

(1978), the 1980’s and 1990’s.223 The document proved useful for the Navy during the

Carter administration, as it was a rare positive view of the sea service in an otherwise dismal period. Jimmy Carter’s presidency proved a disappointment for many Navy leaders who believed a Naval Academy graduate would be sympathetic to their concerns.

Carter was more interested in domestic policy and arms limitations then in military spending. 224

The President was opposed to Admiral Holloway’s signature nuclear powered aircraft carrier initiative and even vetoed the 1979 National Defense Appropriation Act

(NDAA) over its inclusion of CVN 71 (USS ) in this appropriation.225

221Ibid, 54. 222 Swartz, Capstone Strategies, 35 223Hattendorf, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970’s, 105. 224 Scott Kaufman, editor, A Companion to Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, (Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons, 2016), 431, 435. 225 Scott Truver, “Why America Needs Aircraft Carriers.” (Breaking Defense.com, 02 October, 2015), Last accessed 27 October 2015. 94

President Carter’s selection of Harold Brown, however, the first scientist to occupy the position of Defense Secretary and one of Secretary McNamara’s “whiz kids,” brought about a return of more directive management, coupled with fresh analysis demands to the military services. While Brown was not directly hostile to the Navy, some of his fellow

Carter administration members and subordinates were more combative. The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Randy Jayne, excoriated the Navy in a 1978 speech for its “incoherence” on strategy.226 Carter’s principal NATO advisor and later

Under Secretary of Defense Robert Komer was in favor of sea control, but only so far as it supported, “the classic maritime mission of protecting sea lines of communication to permit vital trade and overseas reinforcement.”227 Komer further stated that Defense

Secretary Harold Brown’s policy of selective use of carriers demanded only 12 of the large flattops at best and not 15 as larger fleet advocates demanded. The Carter administration was not popular among advocates of a more aggressive naval strategy, but its opposition to a larger fleet stimulated thought and discussion. One of the future

Maritime Strategy authors, Captain Peter M. Swartz, recalled that for the Navy, “Carter got us mad but made us think” about how the Navy might regain the initiative in its contribution to Cold War strategy.228

Sea Plan 2000 at least reinforced the idea that 600 ships, as articulated by

Zumwalt and Holloway as CNOs, was the most economical, minimum number of units to fulfill naval peace time presence and wartime combat requirements. Studies, including

226 Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, 1970-1980, 57. 227 Robert W. Komer, “Maritime Strategy Verses Coalition Defense,” Foreign Affairs, Volume 60, No 5, (Summer, 1982,) 1132. 228 Email from Peter Swartz dated 15 October 2015. 95 work done by then CNO consultant and future Navy Secretary John Lehman, were conducted for fleets ranging from 800 to as few as 500 ships as appropriate for carrying out the Navy’s global requirements.229 A briefing that analyzed these respective fleet sizes in March 1975 recommended a 600 ship as the best fit, as it corresponded to the present DoD Five Year projection that expected a 588-ship fleet (based on expected growth) by 1983.230 Admiral Holloway began to focus on the goal of a 600-ship Navy because of these analytical efforts.231

While Sea Plan 2000, and NWP 1 were like Project Sixty in that they sought to look beyond Defense Department Five Year planning cycles, they were different in that they constituted a combined effort from the analysis groups like OP 96, traditional strategists in OP 06, small personal staffs like 00K, as well as academics from the Naval

War College.232 Holloway’s tenure as CNO also marked the return of the OP 06 office to a greater level of influence than during the Zumwalt tenure. Led by post-Fleet Command flag officers with significant influence, OP 06 boasted an elite staff from which would come nearly two-dozen flag officers over the late 1970’s to the early 1990’s. Holloway transferred responsibility for war-gaming analysis from OP 090 (the program planning office within OP 96) to OP 06.233 The Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans,

Policies and Operations, Vice Admiral William Crowe, was directed to create a new strategies and concepts within OP 06. This office, OP 603, became the home of

229Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 10. 230 Ibid, 231 John B. Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 12. 232 Swartz, Organizing OPNAV, 28. 233 Hone,104. 96 the successive naval strategy experts who would play an outsized role in the creation of the 1980’s era Maritime Strategy and subsequent strategic documents.234

The systems analysis division (OP 96) had also seen its share of high profile leaders including future CNO Elmo Zumwalt, and future Naval War College President

Stansfield Turner. Its structured analysis had superseded that of the politico-military OP

06 as the basis of force programming, and it had a brief renaissance during the Carter administration when formal analysis products like those of the McNamara era were again in demand. It would be weakened and banished to less authoritative status within

OPNAV in the 1980’s, but would return in the 1990’s as a force of significant strategic change. The cooperation and conflict of these differing orders of strategy experts continues to drive strategic change within the Navy to the present day.

The final CNO in the 1970s was Admiral Thomas Hayward, another carrier aviator who reported to the CNO position from command of the Pacific Fleet in Pearl

Harbor. When he had taken command of the Pacific Fleet in 1977, Hayward discovered that his unit’s only war plan was the1960’s-era single integrated operating plan (SIOP) for nuclear war, first signed by President Eisenhower in 1960.235 Hayward also learned that most of his Pacific forces were designated to transfer to the Atlantic in the event of war as part of the “Swing Strategy” following the execution of their part of the SIOP.236

Hayward had taken CNO Holloway’s concept of the carrier battle group (CVBG) and developed them for multi-carrier operations against Soviet bases in the Pacific.237 Entitled

234Swartz, Capstone Strategies, 133. 235 Rearden, Council of War, 189. 236 Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 17, and Rearden, 342. 237Hone, 106. 97

“Sea Strike,” Hayward’s concept involved a change from defensive naval operations to an aggressive strike by carrier-based aircraft on Soviet Pacific bases such as Vladivostok,

Petropavlovsk, and the Kurile islands with upwards of four carrier battle groups deployed as a single battle force. Hayward and his Pacific fleet staff believed that the threat of such a significant strike on its Pacific bases might prevent the Soviets from upwards of

100,000 troops from these bases to the European theater.238 Hayward’s experience in developing Sea Strike would play a significant role is his development of a similar, global offensive naval strategy.

Like his predecessors in the 1970’s, Hayward wanted a unified Navy effort in support of an operational concept. Rather than concentrate on budgets or force structure, however, Hayward decided to focus on the development of a war winning strategy as the means to achieve a capable Navy ready for combat with the Soviet Union where the battlefield was much greater than just the central front of Europe. The Navy’s focus on budget and force structure, in Hayward’s opinion, allowed, “Academics and others say the Navy has no strategy.”239 Hayward also created his own capstone document entitled

“CNO’s Strategic Concepts” with the aid of his executive assistant (and OP 06 alumnus)

Captain William Cockell. This document contained 17 specific points that suggested a worldwide, carefully considered deployment of the fleet would be vital to a conventional forces victory over the Soviet Union. It was aimed at influencing Congress and the Carter administration on force structure and strategy, especially in the advocacy of global, offensive operations as opposed to the sea lines of communication (SLOC) protection

238Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 19. 239Ibid., 37. 98 mission envisioned for the Navy by Carter administration officials like Bob Komer.240

The administration believed that any war with the Soviet Union would be short, sharp, and rapidly descend to a nuclear conflict while most in naval leadership believed in preparing for a longer war that could be maintained conventionally without reliance on potentially devastating nuclear weapons.241

The administration’s focus on naval support to NATO ground efforts in Europe was accompanied by skepticism from the President’s team on the usefulness of the large aircraft carrier, the signature force structure component of Hayward’s strategic concepts.

A 1978 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) document noted that the growth in capability of the Soviet naval force, “Ended the carrier’s previous status as a safe haven” from which U.S. power could be projected.242 In response, President Carter and his administration officials attempted to prevent further large carriers from being constructed. Carter vetoed the 1979 National Defense Appropriation Act because it included authorization of an expensive nuclear powered flattop (CVN 71) in August

1978.243Congress was unable to override Carter’s veto, but the large carrier returned in the 1980 budget, thanks in part to the efforts of Navy Office of Legislative Affairs’

Captain, and future Senator, John S. McCain, Jr.244

240 Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts 1970-1980, 75-77. 241 Thomas H. Etzold, “The Navy and National Policy in the 1970s,” in Harry R. Borowski, ed., Military Planning in the Twentieth Century: Proceedings of the Eleventh Military History Symposium:: US Air Force Academy: 1984 (Washington: USGPO, 1986), 282. 242 Dov. S. Zackheim and Andrew Hamilton, “U.S. Naval Forces, The Peacetime Presence Mission”, (Washington D.C., The Congress of the United States, The Congressional Budget Office, December 1978), 39. 243 Norman Polmar, Aircraft Carriers, A History of Carrier Aviation and Its Influence on World Events, Volume 2, 1945-2005, (Washington D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007, 364. 244 Ibid. 99

Several developments and studies successfully blocked the effort toward smaller, less capable carriers. The first of these was the AEGIS missile defense system that developed from efforts to improve fleet air defense in the mid 1960’s. This effort, the advanced surface missile system (ASMS) program became the AEGIS weapon system program in 1969 and an official naval requirement in 1972 when CNO Admiral Zumwalt requested, “a new highly capable, but affordable, single-purpose battle group AAW escort ship class.”245 Furthermore, Zumwalt said he would cancel the requirement if the system did not fit in a 5000-ton warship and cost more than $100 million dollars.246

Although originally intended for a larger, traditional cruiser-sized warship, naval engineers led by Captain Wayne Meyer were able to meet Zumwalt’s requirements and

Congress authorized the first AEGIS warship, a modification of the Spruance class destroyer hull, in fiscal year 1978.247 The development of AEGIS did much to blunt carrier critics’ assertions that that flattop was vulnerable to Soviet cruise missiles. The unclassified executive summary of Sea Plan 2000 stated, “Technology has not made the

U.S. surface forces the ‘horse cavalry, ‘of the 1980’s. This trend is due to the development of fighter aircraft protection, and point antimissile defenses (especially the new AEGIS air defense system), electronic warfare and cover and tactics.”248

In addition to technological developments, analysis from outside the fleet bolstered the case for the larger carrier. John Lehman’s Aircraft Carriers, The Real

Choices explored concepts for large, medium and small carriers without judgement but

245 David L. Boslaugh, When Computers Went to Sea, The Digitalization of the United States Navy, (Los Alamitos, CA: The IEEE Computer Society Press, 1999), 385, 386. 246Ibid, 386. 247 Ibid. 248Hattnedorf, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970’s, Selected Documents, 110. 100 discovered that larger carriers were more economical to operate, generated larger numbers of aircraft than did groups of smaller carriers, were less prone to accidents than were smaller flattops, and tended to be more survivable than their smaller counterparts.249 The Sea-Based Air Platform Study of 1978 further reinforced the preference for the large carrier. This analysis, which examined the large nuclear carrier

(CVN), the large conventional type (CV) and a smaller conventional flattop (CVV), stated that the 30-year cost of the larger nuclear carrier was only slightly more than a smaller conventional one. The larger ships also had a significant advantage in overall number of aircraft carried for the same system cost.250

Studies such as these helped to solidify the place of the large aircraft carrier as the centerpiece of naval strike capability. The demise of the Carter administration in 1980 after one term, and the election of as the 40th President of the United

States would mark a fundamental turning point U.S. naval strategy. Much like the advent of Eisenhower’s “New Look” and the Kennedy administration’s “Flexible Response,” the

Reagan administration’s turn toward more confrontational approach to relations with the

Soviet Union would empower and extend Admiral Hayward’s strategic concepts to a wider and more influential audience. President Carter’s administration had begun the return to a more aggressive approach after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In terms of naval force structure, it accepted, perhaps with reluctance, the idea of a 600 ship

Navy first identified by its own naval secretariat as the ideal size of the fleet.

249 Polmar, Aircraft Carriers, 364. 250 Wayne Hughes, Navy (Catonsville, MD: Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, 2002), 108, http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/opre.50.1.103.17786, last accessed 08 Nov 2015. 101

Furthermore, the analysis community, which had never been a warm friend of the large aircraft carrier, had largely confirmed the economic and operational superiority of the big flattop over smaller, non-nuclear propelled versions. These conclusions would be put into overdrive by the incoming Reagan administration and would boost the navy within reach of the force structure and capability goals of the 1970’s before the end of the next decade.

More importantly, the 1970’s and the 1980’s to come were the coming of age periods for a new and dynamic group of naval strategists and analysts who would create the 1980’s Maritime Strategy, make it operationally viable, and wield it against the

Soviet Union as a powerful Cold War tool. These officers came from two distinctly different disciplines. Some were traditional political-military analysts who sought big picture solutions based on history, geography, and their professional naval service at home and abroad to fashion the Maritime strategy and 600- ship navy as a global tool for potential combat against the Soviet Union. They had their origins in Admiral Chester

Nimitz and Admiral Forrest Sherman’s CNO staffs in the immediate Cold War era, but also in the war-plan offices that produced the pre-World War 2 War Plan Orange that was the foundation for the defeat of in the Pacific during the Second World War. Some had risen to flag rank by the late 1970’s including future Joint Chiefs Chairman William

Crowe. Largely occupying the OP 06 and OP 603 offices on the CNO’s staff, they had been the authors or co-authors of many strategic documents throughout the 1970’s and would become the primary authors of the 1980’s Maritime Strategy.

Their sometime collaborators and sometime opponents had a more recent origin in the analysis of the strategic bombing campaigns of World War 2, and in the emerging 102 science of systems analysis. They got their own Chief of Naval Operations office in 1965 during the golden age of Pentagon systems analysis under Defense Secretary McNamara.

This staff element, the OP 96 office soon also had flag representation in the form of the former first director and later CNO Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, and his right hand, and later

Maritime Strategy critic Admiral Stansfield Turner. This office was the focus of much effort in the late 1960’s. As OP 96 alumni and future expert Captain Wayne

Hughes, USN (ret) has said, “we were on center stage, as decisions were going to be made by analysis”251

The interaction between these groups was the foundation of the production and evolution of the 1980’s Maritime Strategy. While political leaders sanctioned the creation of the Maritime Strategy, these officers ultimately made it work at all levels of the chain of command from the Pentagon down to individual ship, submarine and squadron commands at sea. These officers are not only the center of the 1980’s maritime strategy, but also in the following decade. When the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed and deprived the Maritime strategy of its reason for existence, the Navy again turned to these officers to develop and implement its successors. Many remain active in naval strategy development in the 2nd decade of the 21st century.

Throughout the period 1945 to 1980 the evolution of U.S. naval strategy was to a great degree affected by three factors. The end of old geopolitical systems and their replacement by new ones in the wake of war was the dominant reason for changes of naval strategy, but other factors significantly shaped how that process occurred. The lessons drawn from conflict, such as those drawn from the Korean and Vietnam wars

251Hughes, “Navy Operations Research”, 106. 103 regarding the use of carrier aviation play a role in what strategy and force structure follows a conflict’s conclusion. Defense reorganization reform throughout the Cold War shaped the process of how and in what service structures new strategy was shaped.

Finally, the elusive, but enduring quest for advanced , often as a means to drive down costs and enable the armed forces to do more with less has also shaped the process of making new strategy. All three of these factors would play outsize roles in the replacing the Maritime strategy upon the collapse of its Soviet opponent and foundational geopolitical construct.

104

CHAPTER 2: THE 1980’s

The Strategic Environment of the Early 1980’s

The transition of presidential administrations in January 1981 was perhaps not a moment of significant change in U.S. military force structure and operations, but rather one of attitude and provision of greater funding for previously approved force levels.

Ronald Reagan had emphasized “peace through strength” in his campaign. This meant

“improved U.S. military abilities would check the Soviet Union’s imperialist ambitions.”252 A critical element of this pledge was the military expansion program undertaken by President Reagan at the outset of his first term. Military historian Andrew

Bacevich suggests that President Jimmy Carter “seldom spoke at length about American military power,” and gave the impression to some that “he took American soldiers for granted.”253Ronald Reagan exalted U.S. , both past and present, as symbols of heroism and self-sacrifice in service of the nation. Bacevich suggests that

Reagan’s election was the beginning of a new sense of American of which the drive to a larger fleet would be a part.254

Jimmy Carter had been generally opposed to greater military spending and expansion until 1979. Carter reacted slowly, but generally in support of greater military strength in his last year and a half in office with several events driving this change.255The

Soviet decision to place medium range SS-20 ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe, the

252 Gail Yoshitani, Reagan , A Reappraisal of the Weinberger Doctrine, 1980-1984, (College Station, Tx: The Texas A&M University Press, 2012), 17. 253 Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 105. 254Ibid, 106. 255Author, chapter title, in:, Grand Strategies and Millitary Alliances, eds. Peter R. Mansoor and Williamson Murray. (Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 2016), 190. 105 capture of U.S. diplomatic and military personnel as hostages by terrorists who took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan combined to change Carter’s outlook on defense cuts to a much more pessimistic one.256 The

Congress that convened in January 1980 after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was also decidedly more hawkish and committed to an agenda of, “a stronger defense force,” in the words of House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill.257By the end of 1979 Carter was committed to a military buildup that included a 550 ship navy with new Trident ballistic missile submarines and an expanded force of maritime pre-positioning ships to better support U.S. forces in remote locations.258

Later analysis suggested a more even pace of defense spending over the four years of the Carter administration. Lawrence Korb, who served in Reagan’s first term as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and

Logistics, states that defense spending across the Carter administration was largely flat and kept pace with inflation. In addition, Carter presented Congress with a much- increased five-year defense plan of over $1 trillion dollars in 1980 as he was leaving office.259 According to Korb, Reagan had promised a 5% defense budget increase over that of Carter and when that figure was added to the already inflated Carter budget for

256 Lawrence J. Korb, “Where Did All the Money Go? The 1980’s Defense Buildup and the End of the Cold War,” in Mysteries of the Cold War, edited by Stephen J. Cimballa, (Aldershot, UK: The Ashgate Publishing Company, 1999), 7. 257 Paul B. Ryan, First Line of Defense, The U.S. Navy since 1945 (Stanford, CA: The Hoover Institute Press, 1981), 167. 258 Jimmy Carter, “United States Defense Policy Remarks to the members of the Business Council,” December 12, 1979, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/pid=31820 259 Korb, “Where Did All the Money Go?”, 6. 106

1981, the average, real increase to the defense budget was 10%.260 Korb finally suggests that the 10% increase remained in place due to the recommendation of the new Senate

Armed Services Committee Chairman John Tower (R/TX), who told Defense Secretary

Caspar Weinberger to make the most use out of such fleeting opportunities. Some critics,

Korb among them, would later that a Reagan Pentagon flush with resources caused significant waste in defense spending as the decade went on and invited

Congressional scrutiny and curtailment later in the decade.261

Areas of strategic concern also expanded at the end of the Carter presidency.

Carter responded to the presence of Soviet forces in Afghanistan, near the strategic

Persian Gulf, with the January 1980 Carter Doctrine. This pronouncement made clear the

U.S. concern for the Middle East. It focused on the Gulf oil states by saying, “an attempt by any force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States, and such an assault will be repelled by use of any means including military force.”262 The U.S. Navy was unsure of the importance of the

Gulf region in a global war and how much force could be spared to retain access to the oil-producing region. The SEAPLAN 2000 study of 1978 suggested, “the Persian Gulf region cannot be ignored,” but also stated that support to Atlantic and Pacific allies across those respective oceans remained the primary fleet tasks.263 In the early 1980’s U.S. naval

260Ibid, 7. 261 Ibid, 6-7. 262Ibid, p. 177. 263 John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970’s, Selected Documents, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers #30, September 2007), 113, 115-119. 107 leaders would suggest that the Persian Gulf needed to be abandoned, given that the U.S.

Navy had too few ships to fight the Soviet Union everywhere and still prevail.264

A number of roughly 580-600 ships had been determined members of both the Ford and

Carter administrations as the right fleet size in terms of global conflict with the Soviet

Union, peacetime presence operations and affordability over time. The Navy’s budget had been slowly growing over the course of the Carter administration, but jumped from

$41.7 billion to $47 billion from 1979 to 1980.265 Despite this increase in funding, the overall strength of the fleet did not increase over the course of Carter’s presidency.

Warship strength remained approximately 530 ships of all types, including auxiliaries and the Navy counted 6300 to 6400 aircraft of all types.266

President Reagan and the incoming Republican administration were well positioned to take advantage of the initial planning done by Carter and accelerate this process through the aforementioned additional funding. The Republican Party platform for the 1980 election included references to maritime superiority over the Soviets and a

600-ship fleet, so the Reagan administration’s pursuit of these objectives was not a surprise.267The Reagan administration was strongly in favor of a larger and more capable

Navy from its outset in 1981. Its National Security Directive (NSDD 32, May 20, 1982) emphasized the importance of sea lines of communication to Europe, oil supplies from

264 John B. Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers #19, 2003), 51. 265 John Hattendorf, editor, Preface to U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970’s Selected Documents, (Newport, RI: The Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers, 2007), xiii 266Ibid, pp. xiv, xv. 267 Republican Party Platforms: "Republican Party Platform of 1980," July 15, 1980. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25844, last accessed 27 January 2017. 108

Southwest Asia, and links to Pacific and Indian Ocean allies.268Of these links, the most critical was that between Europe and North America in support of a NATO defense of

Europe against Soviet attack. U.S. Naval forces were specifically tasked to maintain this link in the Maritime strategy as follows, “In the NATO-European Theater, naval and air forces have, as first order of business, the control of the North Atlantic SLOCs. A key role is assigned in securing the flanks of the Northern and Southern region, affecting the weight of attack the Soviets may bring to bear on the Central Front.” The Maritime

Strategy also specifically supported defense of the links to Southwest Asia and the Indo-

Pacific in accordance with the 1982 Defense planning guidance that support NSDD 32.269

From this emphasis on specific Reagan administration guidance, the Maritime Strategy was well positioned to claim the role of maritime component of national strategy.

President Reagan called for a return to U.S. maritime supremacy early in his first term.270 Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger’s first annual report to Congress presented a clear need for increased naval power. Weinberger said, “The most significant force expansion proposed by the administration centers on the Navy, particularly those components of it that have offensive missions.”271 Weinberger referred to the Maritime

Strategy by name in his annual 1987 Congressional report, but it was couched in terms of

268 National Security Directive 32, 20 May 1982, (Simi Valley, CA: The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Virtual Archive, https://reaganlibrary.archives.gov/archives/reference/Scanned%20NSDDs/NSDD32.pdf, electronic resource, last acceessed 10 February 2016. 269 John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz, editors, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, Selected Documents, (Newport, RI: The Naval War College Press, December 2008), 24-26. 270 Ronald Reagan: “Remarks at the Recommissioning Ceremony for the USS in Long Beach, California,” December 28, 1982, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=42153. 271 Caspar W. Weinberger, Annual Report to Congress, Fiscal Year 1983, (Washinginton D.C.: The Office of the Secretary of Defense, 08 February 1982), I-30. 109 force structure with only a brief mention of the strategy element’s components, including,

“keeping key sea lanes open, supporting air and ground operations on the flanks of

NATO, and elsewhere on the Eurasian littoral, and taking the initiative against weak points in the Soviet military structure.”272 The Reagan administration did not formally endorse the Maritime strategy, but was clear in its objective of “maritime superiority over any likely enemy.273

The U.S. NATO allies had a more varied viewpoint on the Maritime strategy as part of an effective NATO deterrent, but were generally supportive of its principles.

British naval historian Eric Grove suggested that while the strategy’s 1986 public brochure had too much emphasis on “extreme war fighting scenarios,” it was still a

“useful rearticulation –with some significant additions- of NATO’s maritime strategy dating back to the earliest days of the alliance.”274 Grove stated that while some element of “nuclear uncertainty” would be present, conventional maritime forces could, “prevent an attacker rapidly gaining his objectives on land.”275He also suggested that the U.S.

Maritime strategy helped to reinvigorate the British Royal Navy’s discussion of forward maritime defense.

British naval historian Geoffrey Till rejected criticisms by some European observers that the Maritime Strategy was “an independent maritime campaign that had precious little to do with the grim air/land war realities of the European Central Front and

272 Casper W. Weinberger, Annual Report to Congress, Fiscal Year 1988, (Washington D.C.: The Office of the Secretary of Defense, January 12, 1987), 165. 273 John Allen Williams, “The U.S. Navy Under the Reagan Administration,” in William P. Snyder and James Brown, editors, Defense Policy in the Reagan Administration, (Washington D.C.: The National Defense University Press, 1988), 289. 274Eric Grove, Maritime Strategy and European Security, Common Security Studies #2, (London: Brassey’s, 1990), 15. 275Ibid, 15, 16. 110 that it would jeopardize the humdrum business of the direct defense of NATO’s sea lines of communication” as unfair characterizations of the U.S. effort.276 Till described the

Maritime Strategy effort as one that would “improve the correlation of forces on the

European central front by posing an outflanking threat to the north and threatening the

Soviet Union’s all-important ballistic missile submarines.”277 Finally, Till suggested that the Maritime Strategy echoed the philosophy of American naval strategist Admiral

Alfred Thayer Mahan as explained by U.S. naval historian Jon Sumida who said Mahan,

“was concerned with wider and broader aspects of maritime power in which its function was to defend the international trading system on which the world’s peace and prosperity seemed to depend.”278A number of NATO observers also stated that the Maritime

Strategy generally followed the NATO Concept of Maritime Operations of 1980, which stated that, “the containment of Soviet forces was based on forward operations, conducting defense in depth and maintaining the initiative at sea.”279 These opinions suggest a significant correlation in U.S. and European thinking on forward maritime strategy in the 1980’s in spite of continued fears of nuclear conflict.

The opposition that initially emerged to the 600 ship fleet and to the Maritime strategy came primarily from legislative budget monitoring activities such as the

Congressional Budget Office (CBO.) A 1983 CBO report cautioned members of

Congress that not only was the planned increase to 600 ships expensive, but also risked provoking the Soviet Union to use nuclear weapons against offensive naval

276 Geoffrey Till, Seapower, A Guide for the 21st Century, (London: Frank Cass Books, 2004), 45. 277 Ibid. 278 Ibid. 279Joel J. Sokolsky, Seapower in the Nuclear Age: The United States Navy and NATO, 1949–80, (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1991,) 2. 111 platforms.280Additional, critical reviews of both the 600-ship fleet and the Maritime

Strategy would come from former Carter administration officials and policy academics.

The Maritime Strategy and its attendant 600-ship fleet proved durable over the

1980’s despite criticism. Three successive Chiefs of Naval Operations (CNO); Admirals

Thomas Hayward, James Watkins, and were able to execute a global maritime strategy that had been under research and development within the Navy since the mid 1970’s. The Naval Intelligence community, that had been collecting revealing information regarding Soviet maritime intentions, was more effectively lashed to the process of strategy creation than at any time since the Second World War. The Naval

War College was again harnessed to support strategic thinking, and this time in a way directly responsive to the CNO’s office in the form of the Strategic Studies Group (SSG).

This handpicked, rising group of naval leaders would help to create some of the operational and tactical support to the Maritime strategy’s components. Some would go on to create the Maritime strategy’s successors in the next decade.

Reagan’s election also unleashed “the most aggressive and organizational perceptive Navy Secretary since Forrestal” in the form of John F. Lehman, Jr., who shifted the focus of naval planning from programs to geographic strategy.281 That situation had begun to improve with a change of administration in 1968 that demoted

Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara’s quantitative analysts to a more subsidiary role.

The Nixon administration promoted the idea of a service-generated defense programs as

280Peter T. Tarpgaard, “Building a 600 Ship Navy, Costs, Timing and Alternative Approaches,” (Washington D.C.: The Congress of the United States, The Congressional Budget Office, March, 1982), xxiii, xxiv. 281Thomas Hone, Power and Change, The Administrative History of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations 1946-1986, (Washington D.C.: The Naval Historical Center, 1989), 114. 112 opposed to centralized control by Pentagon civilian analysts. This change was achieved through the implementation of the Program Objective Memorandum (POM) in 1969 that returned control of the design and organization of forces to the services and the Joint

Chiefs.282 Freed from the program battles with DoD that characterized Mr. McNamara’s tenure as Secretary of Defense, service leaders were able to spend more time during the

1970’s considering the future. The change from programmatics to strategy energized the

CNO’s strategic planners who created and implemented the new Maritime strategy both in the halls of the Pentagon and as commanders of the fleet at sea, a situation not seen since Arleigh Burke’s term as CNO.283

The Navy had made progress toward replacing the nearly 50% of the surface ship fleet that faced obsolescence in the 1970’s. Naval theory in terms of what constituted sea control in the nuclear age had been debated since the end of the Second World War, but was now coalescing around the concept that would continue and require large, capable forces. Finally, a resurgence in strategic thinking among all of the

U.S. military services and the academic community in the wake of the end of the

Vietnam War promoted thoughtful examination of both old and new concepts.284

Hattendorf labeled the period from 1979 to 1985 as a “renaissance” in U.S. naval strategic thinking that resulted from this environment.285

282Richard A. Hunt, Melvin Laird and the Foundation of the Post-Vietnam Military, 1969-1973, (Washington D.C., The Office of the Secretary of Defense, The Historical Office, 2015), 17. 283 Thomas Hone, Power and Change, The Administrative History of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1946-1986, 51. 284 John B. Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, (Newport, RI, The Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers #19, 2003), 4. 285Ibid, 193. 113

Not all elements of the Navy strategic enterprise, a term coined much later to describe all personnel engaged in Navy strategic planning, equally benefited from the renaissance in strategic thinking. The rejected, centralized analysis approach had spread to the services in order that they could respond to Mr. McNamara’s revolution in defense organization. The analysis component on the CNO’s staff was the OP 96 Systems

Analysis division. It boasted an impressive series of leaders including Admirals Elmo

Zumwalt, Stansfield Turner and Carlisle Trost. Conflicts over force structure expansion in the 1980’s put this office into conflict with some members of the strategy community bent on increasing the fleet to 600 ships at a faster pace and higher cost then had been postulated in the studies that recommended 600 ships at the end of the 1970’s. The strategists exiled the analysts from the immediate power circles around the CNO after substantial conflict in 1982 and 1983. The analysis discipline was sidelined for a nearly a decade with much reduced influence. They would, however, return in the wake of the

Soviet collapse to dominate the strategists for over a quarter century.

In the course of the 1980s, the Maritime strategy became the Navy’s sole purpose.

The Navy’s uniformed political military strategists wrote successive versions of the

Maritime strategy, but this condition was not to continue. The Navy descended into a period of strategic drift when the Maritime Strategy’s Soviet opponent collapsed. The recovery from this took several years to complete, during which time the nation’s strategic vision for the future was radically altered. President George H. W. Bush’s

Aspen speech of 02 August 1990 articulated a new post-Cold War strategic geography where regional concerns in the Mediterranean, the Pacific, and even the Persian Gulf, 114 where Iraq had just invaded Kuwait the night before, would surpass those of Europe, and if needed, be met by a scaled down U.S. military force.286The service would spend 1989-

1994 trying to re-forge a set of unifying principles in a period of significant strategic drift.

A Maritime Strategy Overview

The story of how the Maritime Strategy was formulated and presented to both naval and civilian leadership over the course of the 1980’s has been well described by naval historian John Hattendorf and Captain Peter M. Swartz, who drafted the strategy’s incremental updates in the mid 1980’s. The works of these authors provide the best overview of the Maritime strategy’s creation and evolution over the course of the 1980’s.

It is of vital importance to understand how the various efforts by CNO’s Hayward and

Watkins, Navy Secretary Lehman, Naval Intelligence, the CNO Strategic Studies Group

(SSG) and the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) staff came together in 1982 to produce the first version of the Maritime Strategy. The working, staff level commanders and captains are of special importance in this effort, as they were the officers who went on to develop and implement the post-Soviet From the Sea strategy.

Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William Small first commissioned what became the Maritime strategy in a December 1981 memo to Director of Navy Program planning and other senior OPNAV officers detailing his thoughts on the problems of

286George Bush: "Remarks at the Symposium in Aspen, ," August 2, 1990. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=18731, online resource, last accessed 29 January 2017. 115

Navy program management.287 Small was concerned that navy programs for the construction of new ships, submarines and aircraft tended to drive the strategy for their employment, when the reverse situation would be a better choice. He wanted to change this so that “Serious and responsible thought about the naval part of national strategy would eventually become the basis upon which the United States built its navy for the future.”288

Small’s memo provoked action from multiple offices in OPNAV including OP 06

(Deputy CNO for Plans and Policy), OP 095 (Naval Warfare) and OP 96. There was general agreement that the Navy needed a strategy that fit with Secretary Lehman’s 600 ship navy program, and supported the program objective memorandum (POM) that stated the Navy’s planned force structure acquisitions for the upcoming years. It was generally agreed that the OP 06’s OP 603 (Strategic Concepts) branch would take the lead in developing the strategy. OP 603’s branch chief Captain Elizabeth Wylie assigned the work of assembling the strategic document to Lieutenant Commander Stanley Weeks, a officer with significant academic credentials, including a PhD from

American University in International Relations.289 Weeks was teamed with Commander

William Spencer Johnson, another surface warfare officer with strong academic credentials from the Fletcher School of Diplomacy.290 He was then serving in the OP 602 office engaged in an effort to expand the number of ports in the continental United States

287 02 October 1998 Fax memo from Admiral William T. Small, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), subject: Maritime Strategy Development, The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, Washington D.C., used with permission by the author. 288 Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, p. 65. 289Ibid, p. 67. 290 Ibid. 116 where naval vessels could be permanently assigned. Johnson also had experience working directly with Secretary Lehman and spent 27 months assigned to the Joint

Staff.291

Weeks and Johnson molded the force structure for their strategy by adding together the force requirements from each of the unified commanders (CINC’s). They also used the CINC’s own war plans as the basis for the Maritime strategy’s Atlantic,

Pacific, and Mediterranean elements. Much of the inspiration for the plan also came from

Admiral Hayward’s war planning for the Pacific when he served as Commander, Pacific

Fleet prior to his selection as CNO. Weeks used elements of Hayward’s “Sea Strike” plan, which involved massing carrier groups for strikes against selected targets, as one of the core operational elements of the Maritime Strategy.292Control of vital island chains and landmasses above the transoceanic trade routes formed the core of the Atlantic and

Pacific elements. Weeks and Johnson added U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Air Force units into their force structure accounting to cover the control of some of these areas, notably

Norway, but did not notify representatives of either service. Neither service, however, objected to their inclusion. The Air Force was pleased that its B-52D aircraft was counted as a minelayer, which provided justification for elements of their service force structure.293

291Author phone interview with Captain William Spencer Johnson, USN (ret), 01 July 2015. 292Author phone interview with Dr. Stanley Weeks, 16 February 2016. 293 Donald D. Chipman and David Lay, “Sea Power and the B-52 Stratofortress,” (Maxwell, AL: The Air University Review, January/February 1986), electronic resource, http://www.au.af.mil/au/afri/aspj/airchronicles/aureview/1986/jan-feb/chipman.html, last accessed 26 January 2017. 117

Weeks also passed elements of his document through Captain Bill Manthorpe,

USN, a naval intelligence office who directed the OPNAV office of Net Assessment (OP

96N), Commander Kenneth McGruther from the CNO’s SSG support staff in Newport

(and OP 603 alumni), and Lieutenant Commander Tom Marfiak (also from OP 603) in order to get their insights into the most recent intelligence on Soviet naval intentions.294

The strategy was extensively reviewed and critiqued by the Weeks’ peers and superiors for accuracy and in preparation for the questions that would undoubtedly come from senior officers in response to the briefing. This process, known as “murder boarding” developed highly skilled briefers that would anticipate and be prepared to answer detailed questions. Commander Johnson made sure the strategy fit within budget guidelines and served in the role of “adult supervision” for the junior Weeks.295 By the early fall of 1982 the strategy was deemed mature enough to present it to the forward-deployed unified commanders who would need to carry it forward.

The venue for this presentation was the October 1982 CNO’s annual naval commanders (CINCs) conference. Rather than hold the gathering in Washington D.C., as had been the case for past events, the new CNO Admiral James Watkins decided to host the conference at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. As recounted by naval historian

John Hattendorf, Watkins wanted to emphasize the centrality of the War College in naval strategic thinking and highlight the efforts of the CNO’s Strategic Studies Group fellows, the second group of which was beginning their yearlong tenure in Newport that

294 Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, p. 70. 295Author phone interview with Dr. Stanley Weeks, 16 February 2016. 118 fall.296Watkins liked the SSG agenda as prepared by Director Robert S. Murray and asked him to prepare a memorandum for the flag officer gathering that would “Outline the framework within which U.S. naval forces could be best utilized toward the objective of defeating Soviet strategy.”297

The memorandum was supported by recent Naval Intelligence reporting that suggested the Soviets had a primarily defensive strategy for the conduct of a war against the NATO alliance. It advocated a high capability fleet force structure as the best way to launch an offensive strategy designed to drive the Soviet fleet from the oceans and influence the battle on land. The fleet commanders that received the briefing were in some ways critical of the presentation. Admiral William Crowe, then serving as

Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Southern Europe (CINCSOUTH), warned the

Mediterranean Sea would present challenges for implementing the strategy. Admiral

Sylvester Foley, the Deputy CNO for Plans and Policy (OP 06) suggested it was arrogant of the Navy to assume it knew so much about intended Soviet operations.298 Despite such criticism, there was enough support to press on with the development of the Maritime strategy. The first full brief of the completed Maritime Strategy document was given to

Navy Secretary Lehman, CNO Admiral James Watkins and Marine Corps Commandant

General Robert H. Barrow on 04 November 1982.299

Reduced to basics, the Maritime Strategy represented a three-phase plan to defeat the Soviet Navy, drive it from the world’s oceans, and support Allied ground force efforts

296Ibid, p. 57. 297 Ibid. 298 Ibid. 299 John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, Selected Documents, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, December, 2008, editors), 20. 119 in Europe and other locations. It made use of existing concepts, billed itself as the maritime component of a national strategy, supported North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO) allies and did this all in a narrative rather than calculating analysis. Phase 1 was the “deterrence and/or transition to war” phase where U.S. and Allied naval force took positions at sea to deter Soviet forces from attack, but also in preparation for conflict and in direct support of Norway, Greece, Turkey and Japan.”300 Phase 2 involved “seizing the initiative” and described U.S. action against Soviet Force “as far forward as possible,” which included intentions to attack Soviet nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN’s) in their protected bastions in the Barents and Arctic Seas.301 The final phase was called

“carrying the fight to the enemy” and implied strikes against the Soviet homeland as the threat from Soviet naval aviation was eliminated.302

The Maritime Strategy supported a global wartime effort as Lieutenant

Commander Weeks had constructed it from the various CINCs’ war plans and force requirements. While the CINC requirements added up to 22 aircraft carrier battle groups to support global combat efforts, Weeks based the Maritime Strategy around the then present 14-carrier force of which only 11 could be immediately available in the first weeks of the war.303 It emphasized the input of Allied forces and supported the NATO doctrine of forward defense. In addition to securing important sea lines of communication to alliance members and the Middle East oil supply, the Maritime strategy called for offensive maritime action on NATO’s northern and southern flanks to divert Soviet

300 William P. Snyder and James Brown, editors, Defense Policy in the Reagan Administration, (Washington D.C.: The National Defense University, 1988), 282. 301Ibid, p. 282. 302 Ibid. 303 Hattendorf and Swartz, Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, 27. 120 attention away from the vital battle for Central Europe. In the North, this meant securing

Norway and Iceland to protect NATO’s northern land flank opposite the Soviet Union and the North Atlantic sea line of communication. In the South, this entailed a variety of operations that included driving the Soviet naval presence out of the Mediterranean, securing and supporting NATO allies bordering the Mediterranean Sea, driving the

Soviets out of Libya, and supporting continued NATO control of the Turkish straits that denied Soviet re-entry into the Mediterranean from the Black Sea.304

The contributions from CNO Hayward’s Pacific carrier-based strategy, the CNO

SSG’s work, recent intelligence collection efforts and planning from the 1970’s were evident in the Maritime Strategy document. The aircraft carrier in the form of multiple ship battle groups, first demonstrated in the Pacific when Admiral Hayward was Pacific fleet commander in the 1970’s, remained the primary offensive punch of this first version of the Maritime Strategy. Great effort went into planning how aircraft carriers could operate in the high threat environment of the Western Mediterranean, a project that the first and second SSG’s examined in detail. While the Soviets were assumed to have the capability to launch attacks on NATO sea lines of communication, the Maritime Strategy described an offensive campaign against Soviet forces that did not wait for them to transit the vital Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom “gap” or transit area from the Barents Sea into the Atlantic. Instead, the Maritime Strategy stated that Soviet forces would be interdicted by up to four carrier battlegroups before they even entered the North

Atlantic.305 The destruction of Soviet naval forces worldwide and continued support to

304 Ibid, pp. 31-33. 305Ibid, p. 30. 121

NATO ground forces combating their Soviet counterparts rounded out the list of requirements.

The Maritime Strategy supported national military strategy, but it was also written for an internal Navy audience. Maritime Strategy author Captain Peter Swartz said there were six primary internal reasons for the Maritime Strategy. The strategy was written so that new intelligence views that suggested a more defensive Soviet naval posture could be widely disseminated to the fleet. It also countered Navy Secretary John Lehman’s claim at the outset of his term that naval officer corps did not “do strategy.”306 The

Maritime Strategy was designed, “to educate the OPNAV staff on wider world of joint and USN intelligence, strategic plans & policy.”307 This feature was of special importance to the OP 06 drafters of the strategy as it emphasized their work connecting the OPNAV staff to the wider Joint staff organization. The strategy was also a good way to vet fleet and CNO SSG inputs that were under development. The SSG’s work in designing protective basins for aircraft carrier operations in the Eastern Mediterranean was a good example of such efforts.308 The Ocean Venture Exercise of 1981 where the

Second Fleet under Admiral Harry Train conducted an extensive war game simulating naval warfare in the North Atlantic was a similar effort.309

The Maritime Strategy accomplished both its external and internal goals.

Externally the Maritime Strategy, along with its supporting 600 ship navy concept served

306Ibid, p. 13. 307Ibid, p. 7. 308 Hattendorf, 309 Drew Middleton, “U.S. and Allied Navies Starting Major Test Today,” The New York Times, 01, August 1981, electronic resource, http://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/01/world/us-and-allied-navies-starting-major- test-today-military-analysis.html, last accessed 11 February 2016. 122 as a strong component of the Reagan administration’s military program. Its offensive character fitted well with Reagan’s return to a more aggressive Cold War strategy against the Soviet Union that was pursued during his first term in office. It accomplished the intended goal of naval and civilian leadership of becoming the maritime component of national military strategy through the end of the decade and the Cold War. The Maritime

Strategy exercised influence on the budgetary process through its influence on the service’s Program Objective Memoranda that were the basis for the Navy’s annual budget submissions. This effect was most keenly felt in the continued construction of large, nuclear powered aircraft carriers.310The Maritime Strategy served as a means of strategic communication by signaling U.S. Navy capabilities and intentions to the Soviet

Union.311 Most importantly, it provided the Navy a leading role in U.S. national strategy by giving the service a global role, vice the more limited regional missions met by the other services.

Translating the 1970’s Vision into the Maritime Strategy

Several factors were crucial to creating the environment for the Maritime

Strategy’s creation and implementation. Freed from the Carter administration’s absolute focus of NATO resupply escort, CNO’s Hayward and Watkins were able to restructure of the fleet’s priorities by first changing the emphasis of its force structure.

Admiral Zumwalt had advocated a mix of some higher capability ships [aircraft carriers and guided missile ,] supplemented by a much larger contingent of smaller, less

310 Peter Swartz with Karin Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Documents, p. 12. 311 Ibid. 123 capable warships [frigates and other small ships] as the best, most affordable fleet for sea control mission promoted by President’s Nixon and Carter. Admiral Hayward ended this

“high/low” mix in favor of a concentration on high capability warships best suited to combat against the Soviet Union’s naval forces rather than just the defensive, sea control, and convoy escort mission championed by Carter.

The ships that entered the fleet in the early 1980’s were the fruition of technical efforts in the previous decade to counter Soviet cruise missile development and the overall increasing size of the Soviet navy. Advances in naval technology helped win the

Navy more supporters in Congress and the public. Many critics suggested that the aircraft carrier was highly vulnerable to attack by air and especially cruise missiles. The AEGIS weapon system entering the fleet on board the Ticonderoga class cruisers was touted by the Navy as a response to Soviet air and missile threats. AEGIS employed a combination of very accurate , a computerized fire control system tracking dozens of targets, and capable of rapid, automated, responses to aircraft and missile attack with a ship’s weapons suggested that surface warships to protect the aircraft carrier from Soviet air and missile attack.312

The emergence of the AEGIS weapon system had been predicted as a great equalizer in the defense of carrier battle groups against Soviet air and missile attack since the mid 1970’s. AEGIS was originally conceived as a system operating from nuclear powered large escorts, but was gradually made more affordable and acceptable to

Congress. AEGIS program manager Admiral Wayne Meyer was able to make the AEGIS

312 Thomas Hone, Power and Change, The Administrative History of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations 1946-1986, 100, 101. 124 system fit on a smaller hull, an achievement that reduced costs. More importantly,

AEGIS became the cornerstone of all aspects of future surface warfare battle management and not just an expensive anti-air and anti-missile system.313 While there was some resistance within the Navy to a fully integrated battle management system and questions regarding how AEGIS would interface with the Navy’s proven Naval Tactical

Data System (NTDS) that had managed warfare coordination for nearly two decades.314

After a successful merger between the systems, the AEGIS system gave the Navy confidence that an aggressive carrier-centered strategy on the borders of the Soviet empire was sustainable.315

Other technological advancements improved the Navy’s confidence in meeting the Soviet threat at sea. Antisubmarine warfare improved through the addition of the new

Light Airborne Multipurpose (LAMPS) system of the SH-60 lightweight helicopter and shipboard datalink equipment that combined the sensors and weapons of the ship and helicopter into one system. LAMPS and new, lightweight towed array sonars that could hear Soviet submarines at much greater distances bolstered the surface navy’s confidence in its antisubmarine warfare capabilities.316

The development of the and cruise missiles in the 1970s helped to improve the ability of the surface navy to strike at targets afloat and ashore.

Some surface navy flag officers, notably CNO Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, blamed this on

313Malcolm Muir, Black Shoes and Blue Water, Surface Warfare in the United States navy, 1945-1975, (Washington D.C.: The United States Navy Historical Center, 1996), 211. 314 David L. Boslaugh, When Computers Went to Sea, The Digitalization of the United States Navy, (Los Alamitos, CA: The IEEE Computer Society, 1999), pp. 386-387. 315 George Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power, The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994, pp. 428, 435. 316 Malcolm Muir, BlackShoes and Blue Water, 232. 125 the naval aviation and submarine communities for delaying the development of these weapons for the surface community.317 Harpoon was, however, an expensive weapon at

$255,000 per copy in 1972, and the reliability purchased by this price tag was designed to assure its users. One Harpoon project officer later said, “You couldn’t carry five around with the hope of getting off three.”318 Some aviators did oppose the much longer range and nuclear-warhead capable Tomahawk cruise missile as a threat to manned aircraft operations. Admiral Zumwalt’s trusted subordinate Stansfield Turner, who like Zumwalt was a surface officer and not an aviator, suggested that he did not fear the Soviet surface fleet, as carrier aircraft were more than capable of defeating them.319 Unfortunately, the diminishing number of carriers over the course of Zumwalt’s CNO term suggested to some that a carrier and its aircraft might not always be available to cover surface assets, as had been the case in 1968 when the intelligence vessel USS Pueblo was captured by

North Korean surface units.320All of these new systems served to better equip the surface navy to perform a more offensive role in the 1980s.

Admiral Zumwalt had carried out a significant reorganization of the Navy

(OPNAV) staff in 1970 to better support the development of Navy ship and effectiveness in weapon system programming.321Admiral Hayward also conducted a reorganization of the OPNAV staff, but his focus was on improving all warfare capabilities. His reorganization, unlike Zumwalt’s rejected the methods of the last decade where strategy

317 Rodger Thompson, Brown Shoes, Black Shoes and Felt Slippers, Parochialism and the Evolution of the Postwar U.S. Navy, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, Strategic Research Department Report 5-95, 1995), 45. 318 Malcolm Muir, Black Shoes and Blue Water, 218. 319Ibid, 222. 320 Ibid. 321 Peter M. Swartz with Michael Markowitz, Organizing OPNAV, 1970-2009, (Alexandria, VA: The CNA Corporation, CAB D0020997.A5/2Rev22, January 2010), 22. 126 followed from quantitative analysis. The Navy’s Program Objective Memorandum

(POM) was a key component of the Department of Defense’s Future Year Defense

Program (FYDP), a component of the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System

(PPBS) that governed how the service intended to “balance their allocation of resources” over the next five years.322 Admiral Zumwalt had ensured the creation of this document was exclusively the province of the OP 96 Assessment division of the OPNAV staff.

Seeking a “whole of Navy” approach to programming, policy and strategy, Admiral

Hayward sought to distribute the programming influence beyond OP 96. Prior to 1980,

OP 095 had been just the antisubmarine warfare staff office. Hayward had the office upgraded to three-star, Deputy CNO status with control over all naval warfare functions including some program spending authority.323 Hayward also increased the professional competence of the office by staffing it with officers just returning from fleet service and with former members of the CNO’s Strategic Studies Group (SSG). Armed with this new authority over multiple warfare disciplines, the OP 095 office was able to supersede the systems analysis OP 96 organization as the “driver” of the Navy Program Planning

Appraisals.324

This change did not elicit comment or opposition from the Carter administration.

It had been largely estranged from the navy’s uniform leadership and from its own Navy

Secretary for most of Carter’s term. Serious disagreements with the policies of Defense

Secretary Harold Brown left little room for continued engagement. Secretary of the Navy

322 http://acqnotes.com/acqnote/acquisitions/program-objective-memorandum-pom, Last assessed 17 November 2015. 323 Ibid, 39. 324 Ibid. 127

W. Graham Claytor was frequently was in conflict with Brown and in 1980 wrote the

Defense Secretary a scathing memorandum arguing that the Carter administration’s efforts to reduce defense spending were having a negative effect on national security.325

Claytor also pushed ahead with the SEAPLAN 2000 analysis effort that confirmed the figure of 600 ships as the right size for the Navy first proposed during the Ford administration; a move that contradicted Secretary Brown’s statements that a smaller number of warships would suffice.326

The reformed OP 095 office was composed largely of recent returnees from the fleet, warfare experts and war game experts.327 In this change, Hayward sought to give a more balanced and global strategic view in the Navy’s POM input to the FYDP. Hayward also created his own think tank at the Naval War College to assess global and regional strategic issues that resulted from the improved POM process. The CNO’s Strategic

Studies Group (SSG) would play a significant role in making what became the Maritime

Strategy work at the regional level.

The CNO’s Own Think Tank for Strategy

In April 1981, Admiral Hayward told the Current Strategy Forum at the Naval

War College, “There is no dearth of strategic thinking going on these days in your navy.

What is lacking is a more useful way to capitalize on that abundant talent with more

325 Thomas C. Hone, Douglas V. Smith and Rodger C. Easton Jr, “Aegis Evoluttionary or Revolutionary Technology,” in Brad C. Hayes and Douglas V. Smith, eds, ThePolitics of Naval Innovation, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, Strategic Research Department Report 4-94, 01 August 1994), 59 326Ibid, 50. 327 Ibid. 128 alacrity.”328 Naval historian John Hattendorf asserts that Admiral Hayward thrived on a diversity of viewpoints in his quest to create a global, offensive naval strategy. To this end, he created the CNO’s Strategic Studies Group (SSG) as the core of a new Center for

Naval Warfare Studies at the College in July 1981. Its two distinct purposes according to

Hattendorf and former SSG advisor Dr. John Hanley were, “to create a core of future naval leaders who were well versed in the role of naval forces in national policy and strategy and to re-establish the Naval War College, in everyone’s view, as the pinnacle for education in naval strategic thinking.”329Former Under Secretary Bob Murray was selected as the first moderator of the SSG, but he had little idea on how it ought to be used. Murray later told John Hattendorf, “No one knew what the Center for Naval

Warfare Studies was to be, even me!”330

Murray received a fair amount of leeway in constructing the mechanics and operation method of the SSG. The members, a group of Navy captains and commanders, and later Marine Corps colonels were personally selected by the CNO and the

Commandant of the Marine Corps. Their budget for travel in support of their research was significant.331 Murray was soon convinced that a coherent strategy such as desired by

Admiral Hayward could not be produced in the isolation of the Naval War College in

Newport.332 Murray desired that the SSG travel widely and meet with as many commanders as possible in order to ensure that everyone involved, “had a stake in the

328 John Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers #19, 2003, 45. 329 John Hanley, “Creating the 1980’s Maritime Strategy and Implications for Today,” The Naval War College Review, (Spring 2014), Volume 67, No. 2, 14. 330Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 45. 331 Proceedings of the CNA Corp. Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Study Group History Conference, Arlington, VA, unpublished paper, 20 February 2015. 332Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 46. 129 issues discussed and that, most importantly, the process could spawn broad ideas that could merge narrow concepts together.”333 The SSG was not warmly welcomed in all quarters and pursued some very unconventional concepts.334 Robert Murray said the group was thrown out of several offices by operational commanders who were not interested in SSG assessments.

The membership of individual SSG’s often included iconoclasts. Future leader of the Office of Force Transformation, Commander Arthur Cebrowski was regarded as very intelligent by his fellow first SSG members, but pursued some avenues of research that later “led down rabbit holes” in the words of fellow SSG member Commander (later

Admiral) Bill Owens.335 In one such effort, according to Owens, “Art Cebrowski decided we should all go to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in order to see how gray whales communicate. This was very strange, but Cebrowski had found out that gray whales communicate at the 20 Hz range and was interested in seeing if the US Navy might communicate at similar low frequencies under the cover of animal sounds.”336 Many members of the first SSG felt Cebrowski’s ideas often made sense, “only after a few drinks”, but this was the sort of freewheeling atmosphere that both Admiral Hayward and

Bob Murray wanted to create in the SSG.

One of Murray’s personal goals for the SSG was to introduce a greater sense of operational art into the Navy through the group’s investigations. Murray later recalled,

“In the mid 1970’s I was involved in the beginning of Air/land Battle. I saw in that

333 Ibid. 334 Proceedings of the CNA Corp. Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Study Group History Conference, 20 February 2015. 335Ibid. 336Ibid. 130 process an evolution attempt by the Army and Air Force to think themselves out of their post-Vietnam bad situation to a new strategy with a purpose. I saw in this a possibility for the Navy to also re-invent conventional strategy. This led to new ideas for ways the Navy and Marine Corps could support a potential war in Europe.”337The first two SSG’s focused much of their efforts in how to operationally deal with Soviet forces in the

Mediterranean Sea in support of this effort.

The Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) examination of the two concepts found some points of agreement, but many fundamental differences between AirLand Battle and the Maritime Strategy. Both concepts supported “anticipating enemy actions,” and,

“seizing the initiative” at the outset of combat.338 Both concepts were criticized as being provocative and possibly de-coupling the U.S. from its NATO allies in terms of operations in response to Soviet aggression. The CNA analysis also firmly separates the two concepts in terms of doctrine and definition. It states that the Army’s concept

“contains little in the way of specifics as to how the Army would fight its wars.”339 The

Maritime Strategy by contrast is very specific in how it intends to confront the Soviet

Navy. This, according to the CNA analysis, was “because doctrine is a level of abstraction and generality higher than strategy. Doctrine is a guide to thought on how to employ strategy and tactics. Commanders formulate their strategy, employ tactics, and then appeal to doctrine for how to combine these elements effectively in battle.”340These

337 Ibid. 338 Douglas Skinner, “Airland Battle,” (Alexandria, VA: The Center for Naval Analysis, Professional paper 463, September 1988), 32, 33. 339 Ibid. 340 Ibid. 131 differences in the Army and Navy’s new conventional force doctrines would be of more significance during and after the first Gulf War.

The experience of the 1973 standoff between the U.S. Sixth Fleet and the Soviet

Mediterranean 5th Eskadra had unnerved U.S. naval leadership and caused doubts whether the Sixth Fleet could defeat its Soviet counterpart in combat. The first SSG examined a number of operational issues involved in a potential Mediterranean conflict and produced novel and potentially effective solutions. The group recommended that the

Sixth Fleet not abandon the Eastern Mediterranean Sea as planned in the event of war with the Soviets, and instead make use of natural features and deception to maintain a vital U.S. presence. One of these, introduced by submariners in the group according to

Captain Renee Leeds, USN, involved the identification of natural “masking areas” where

Sixth Fleet carriers could go and remain acoustically hidden from Soviet submarines.341

Rear Admiral Clarence “Skip” Armstrong, another member of the first SSG recalled that such ideas received some skepticism from Sixth Fleet leadership at first, but later gained more currency when tested by units at sea.342

The SSG proved a remarkable tool across the 1980’s for testing elements of what became the Maritime Strategy. The SSG evaluated its inputs in the Global War Game, a simulation created by Naval War College Professor Francis “Bing” West, Captain Hugh

Nott, and Commander Jay Hurlburt in the late 1970’s to evaluate elements of Sea Plan

2000.343Results from the first game were not encouraging to naval leaders. The game

341Proceedings of the CNA Corp. Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Study Group History Conference, 20 February 2015. 342 Ibid. 343John Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1978-1986, 51. 132 assumed the of U.S. carrier assets from the Mediterranean because of a supposed lack of survivability and a need to support sea control efforts in the North

Atlantic. The game results were “a political and military disaster.” The central and eastern Mediterranean Sea became a “veritable Red (Soviet) lake” and Greece and

Turkey were forced out of NATO’s war against the Soviet Union.344SSG 1’s efforts in securing a carrier presence in the eastern Mediterranean during wartime were a positive step toward solving the problems of carrier vulnerability and directly supportive of overall strategic efforts. This combination of SSG concepts, wargaming, and operational experimentation by deployed commanders proved to be a significant aid in developing the details of what became the Maritime Strategy. None of these steps, however, would have been possible in the absence of good intelligence on potential Soviet actions. As it had with potential strategy and force structure, the 1970’s had been a period of development for operational naval intelligence. Continuing intelligence efforts would prove a major enabling force behind the core concepts of the Maritime Strategy.

Naval Intelligence Prepares the Battle Space

The expansion of the Soviet Navy in both size and capability from the late 1960’s through the 1970’s raised considerable concern in the United States and among its NATO allies. Two differing viewpoints of Western observers developed to suggest how the

Soviets would employ these forces in wartime. The first, articulated by uniformed members of the naval intelligence community, academics, and political leaders assumed

344 Bud Hay and Bob Gile, Global War Game, The First Five Years, (Newport, R.I: The Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers #4, June 1993),15, 16. 133 that the Soviet Navy’s acquisition of large numbers of submarines meant another “.” This conclusion was perhaps not surprising given that the relevant history on the subject of submarine operations was concentrated on German operations against merchant convoys in both world wars. American political scientist Richard

Neustadt suggested that concerns derived from past history play a role in what historical examples a decision-maker selects to guide them in their choices.345The combination of a powerful Soviet submarine and naval aviation force with enhancements to the Soviet surface fleet introduced by Fleet commander Admiral Gorshkov in the 1970’s, created,

“the specter of a powerful Soviet Navy leaving home waters, overwhelming U.S. and

Allied defensive checkpoints and barriers, and proceeding into the open oceans to disrupt sea lines of communications.”346 This threat was perhaps enough to meet Neustadt’s criteria and strongly suggest to U.S. naval intelligence that the Soviets intended a campaign against NATO resupply efforts much as the Germans had conducted in past conflicts.

A remarkable set of analyses emerged in the late 1960’s that supported a very different view of Soviet naval strategy. As early as the late 1960’s, some U.S. naval analysts were rejecting the idea that the Soviet Navy was a mirror image of that of the west. Naval intelligence Robert Herrick suggested in his 1968 book Soviet Naval Strategy that the Soviets Navy’s primary purpose remained a defensive one focused on the prevention of nuclear attacks from Western aircraft carriers and submarines on the Soviet

345Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time, The Uses of History for Decision Makers, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 132. 346 Christopher Ford and David Rosenberg, The Admiral’s Advantage, U.S. Navy Operational Intelligence in World War II and the Cold War, (Annapolis, MD: The Naval Institute Press, 2005), 55. 134 homeland.347Based on his analysis of Soviet statements and actions over five decades,

Herrick listed unfavorable geography, a military leadership dominated by army generals, and a lack of understanding of strategic seapower as proof of a defensive Soviet ethos of seapower. Admiral Gorshkov attempted to articulate a more independent, global role for the Soviet Navy in the late 1970’s and early 1980s after the publication of his book

Seapower of the State. Defense Minister Marshal Nikolai V. Ogarkov rebuffed him in this effort. While all branches of the Soviet armed forces would be labeled as

“symbolically equal” in a 1980’s Izvestiia article, Ogarkov was not interested in an independent mission for the Soviet Navy, and had apparently been successful in subordinating Soviet naval strategy to overall Soviet military strategy.348 Other U.S. analysts, such as James McConnell at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) came to similar conclusions in the 1970’s and argued for a move away from “an American ethnocentric view of the Soviets.”349

Human intelligence and some remarkable submarine-based intelligence collection efforts confirmed the defensive cast to Soviet naval strategy in the early late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Specially outfitted attack submarines were equipped with special equipment that enabled them to place taps on Soviet Navy’s underwater communications cables in the and the Barents Sea. The taps were first authorized by President

347 Robert Waring Herrick, Soviet Naval Strategy, Fifty Years of Theory and Practice, (Annapolis, MD,: The Naval Institute Press, 1968),143. 348Dale Roy Herspring, The Soviet High Command, 1967-1989, Personalities and Politics, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 134, 135. 349 Ford and Rosenberg, The Admiral’s Advantage, p. 79 and Hattendorf, Evolution of the Maritime Strategy 1977-1986, p. 13. 135

Jimmy Carter in 1977 and continued throughout the rest of the Cold War.350 The information they collected suggested that the Soviets indeed had a defensive strategy that emphasized the protection of their sub-based nuclear weapons deterrent above all other

Soviet naval efforts. Early analysis indicated that the Soviets appeared to be turning away from wider naval deployments and were instead “dedicating the bulk of their ships, attack subs and planes to protecting their missile subs in safe bastions close to home.”351

Dramatic briefings on both the technology involved in the collection efforts as well as the results by Office of Naval Intelligence civilian analyst Rich Haver captured the interest of both Carter and his successor Ronald Reagan. Further missions were authorized and over the early 1980’s a clearer picture emerged of Soviet naval strategy.

Part of this new picture involved the peacetime movements of the Soviet fleet.

There was no global Soviet naval exercise in 1980 as there had been in 1970 and 1975, despite the expectation in the West that another would occur.352The Director of Naval

Intelligence, Rear Admiral Sumner Shapiro, conducted a series of high-level combined seminars that included members of the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Defense

Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Center for Naval Analyses from 1980-1982. They examined Soviet fleet movements and other aspects of Soviet naval operations. Their conclusions tended to support the idea that the Soviet Navy

350 Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, with Lawrence Drew, Blind Man’s Bluff, The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage, (New York: Public Affairs, 1998), 210. 351Ibid, 223. 352 Peter M. Swartz with Michael Connell, “Understanding an Adversary’s Strategic and Operational Calculus, A Late Cold War Case Study with 21st Century Applicability.” (Alexandria, VA: The CNA Corporation, COP-2013-U-005622, August 2013), 19. 136 intended to primarily operate in home waters in defense of the Soviet homeland and in support of Soviet ballistic missile submarines (SSBN’s).

This had not previously been the case in Soviet SSBN operations. The Soviets had previously relied upon the Project 667 (NATO code name Yankee) class ballistic missile submarines with shorter-range nuclear missiles as their primary sea-based nuclear deterrent. These subs had to travel past underwater detection cables, the SOSUS net, in the Atlantic Ocean in order to reach patrol boxes from where their weapons could threaten the continental United States. The advent of longer-range Soviet ballistic missiles on the succeeding Delta and later Typhoon class ballistic missile subs allowed the Soviets to position their submarines in areas of the Barents Sea close to the Soviet

Union. These areas, called “bastions” by U.S. naval analysts, could be well protected against attack by Soviet air and naval units. This strategy fit quite well with Robert

Herrick’s and CNA analysts’ original assumptions, was more cost effective in terms of operations and maintenance, and could protect Soviet sea-based nuclear forces from

Western attack.353

These revelations were met with surprise in U.S. and Western naval circles. A briefing to the CNO and Fleet Commanders in August 1981 generated disbelief among senior naval leaders. Admiral Hayward did not believe that the Soviets could operate their navy in such a manner. The Deputy CIA Director Rear Admiral Bobby Inman asked if the analysis behind these conclusions was flawed. Those officers who were confident in the intelligence assessment of Soviet intentions, notably the Vice Chief of Naval

Operations Admiral William Small, and his executive assistant Captain William

353 Ford and Rosenberg, 79. 137

Studeman, set out to further educate senior naval leadership as to the assessment’s validity. They were ably assisted in this effort by Captain William Manthorpe of the

Navy’s Net Assessment Office. Manthorpe’s 1981 Navy Net Assessment of Soviet

Intentions largely confirmed the intelligence finding as did the Navy’s Advanced

Technology Panel (ATP) of senior officers. The CNO’s Executive Assistant Captain

William Cockell, an OP 06 veteran, recognized the implications of the intelligence and suggested that the CNO require the Office of Naval Intelligence to create an office to monitor the development of Soviet strategy. War games in 1981 and 1982 tended to confirm the viability of the intelligence and suggested that an aggressive forward strategy against the Soviet fleet was possible.

Not everyone agreed with the new assessment of Soviet naval strategy. Navy

Secretary John Lehman became aware of the emerging anti-SSBN strategy in 1982 and generally approved of it as part of an overall, aggressive strategy against the Soviet navy.

Lehman also had concerns that acceptance of the defensive Soviet strategy would mean less of a need for the proposed 600-ship navy and this brought him into conflict with members of the OPNAV staff.354 The navy leadership was also skeptical of the new assessment of Soviet intentions. The Vice Chief of Naval Operations

Admiral William Small later suggested that Admiral Hyman G. Rickover had a role in that opinion, but that it did not last after Rickover’s 1982 retirement.

Gradually, more senior officers were converted to the view that the Soviet Union did not intend to operate its navy in a traditional format, but instead planned to use it as

354 Fax memorandum from Admiral William H. Small, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), dated 02 October 1998, The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Post-1991 Commentary on the Maritime Strategy file, used with permission by the author. 138 another line of defense in securing the Soviet homeland, and their vital SSBN’s from attack. The intelligence findings that supported this change in thinking made their way into more significant documents. They were largely encapsulated within the U.S. intelligence community’s 1982 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) under four numbered priorities. The two primary tasks were “to deploy and provide protection for ballistic missile submarines in preparation for and conduct of strategic and theater nuclear strikes,” and “to defend the USSR and its allies from strikes by enemy ballistic missile submarines and aircraft carriers.”355The Soviet focus on naval operations as merely a support for ground forces and as a defense for nuclear weapons platforms caused some surprise as it suggested that the Soviet Navy was, as one Navy admiral described, “No more than a deep water adjunct to ground forces.”356 It would be some time before the

U.S. could fully evaluate the new Soviet strategy, but its focus on defensive operations played a significant role in the development of the Maritime strategy throughout the

1980’s. The Office of Naval Intelligence, the CNO Strategic Studies Group (SSG), the

CNO’s Directorate of Naval Warfare (OP 95), and the CNO’s OP 603 office, the naval chief’s “political military planning brain trust” all made use of these initial findings in the

Maritime Strategy’s development over the course of the decade.357 While some elements of the Maritime Strategy such as a global, aggressive campaign against Soviet naval forces had been proposed before this intelligence was fully developed, it has been

355National Intelligence Estimate, “Soviet Naval Strategy and Programs Through the 1990’s”, (Washington D.C.: The Central Intelligence Agency, NIE 11 15-82/D, March 1983), 5, electronic resource, http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000268225.pdf, last accessed, 02 December 2015. 356 Ford and Rosenberg, 83. 357Ibid, 86. 139 suggested by naval historian David Rosenberg and arms control expert Christopher Ford that it was crucial to the strategy’s full development. These experts state, “The Navy’s

Operational Intelligence was vital to the analytical understanding of the Soviet Navy upon which the Maritime Strategy was based.”358

All of the potential inputs for developing the 1980’s Maritime Strategy were in place. The 600-ship navy was a generally accepted goal for both affordable wartime operations against the Soviet fleet and peacetime presence missions. The aircraft carrier had weathered challenges to its position as the premier instrument of naval warfare against both land and sea-going targets. The development of the Aegis system for surface combatants improved both their ability to defend the aircraft carrier from attack and to conduct offensive operations. Intelligence work had provided vital clues as to how the

Soviets intended to use their fleet in war. Work by three successive CNO’s over the course of the 1970’s had developed many of what would become the Maritime strategy’s chief tenets. Groups of staff officers and analysts were in place to create, develop, wargame and refine strategy and operational and tactical concepts. All that was needed was a catalyst to set the apparatus in motion to produce a strategic product. That catalyst would be Navy Secretary John Lehman.

Lehman

A combination of strategic analysis, experience from operations in the Pacific

Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, advanced technology and operational intelligence laid

358 Christopher A Ford and David A. Rosenberg, “The Naval Intelligence Underpinings of Reagan’s Maritime Strategy,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol 28, No. 2), April, 2005, 401. 140 the foundations for what became the Maritime strategy of the 1980’s. It constituted a significant shift to an offensive U.S. naval strategy that would persist for nearly a decade.

That said, in every revolution, there is one man with a vision.359 The man in this case was

John Lehman, who served as the Reagan administration’s Secretary of the Navy from

1981 to 1987. Lehman was a student of the noted political geographer Robert Strausz-

Hupe and molded his strategic thinking along geographical and historical lines rather than those of budgets, systems analysis and defense organization.360He dropped his plans for law school and Strausz-Hupe’s PhD program in 1965 and spent a year abroad studying at

Cambridge. His “interests in things naval” began there while studying the diaries of the

17th century Secretary to the British Admiralty Board Samuel Pepys.361Lehman returned from Cambridge and spent a year at the Foreign Policy Institute at the University of

Pennsylvania to work on his doctorate in International Relations. He took leave from that effort in 1968 to work for the Nixon presidential campaign and then employment on

Henry Kissinger’s National Security Council staff where he became Kissinger’s point man for dealings with Congress.362Lehman left the NSC staff in 1974 and completed his

PhD dissertation while serving as a visiting fellow at the Johns Hopkins University

School of Advanced International Studies.363He was also Deputy Director of the Arms

359 David A. Rosenberg, “The Realities of Formulating Modern Naval Strategy,“ Mahan is Not Enough, The Proceedings of the Conference on the Writings of Sir Julian Corbett and Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, James Goldrick and John Hattendorf, editors, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, 1993) , 168. 360 Author telephone interview with John F. Lehman Jr., 02 December 2014. 361 John F. Lehman Jr. Command of the Seas, (Annapolis, Md: The United States Naval Institute Press, 2001), 56. 362 Timothy Naftali, Transcript of John Lehman interview, Presidential library 2007, 7 electronic resource, https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/histories/lehman-2007-10- 04.pdf, last accessed 31 January 2017. 363 Lehman, Command of the Seas, 82. 141

Control and Disarmament Agency under President Ford from late 1974 through the end of the Ford presidency.

Lehman remained interested in naval affairs as he worked as a private policy consultant and later as a member of the Republican Party’s policy committee. He contributed to elements of what became the basis of the Maritime strategy through his work as a Chief of Naval Operations consultant on the Sea Plan 2000 project. His 1978 book Aircraft Carriers; The Real Choices examined the potential effectiveness of various sizes of carriers in relation to global naval strategy. His understanding of maritime strategy was further informed through his service as a naval reservist intelligence officer and aviator from 1968 through the 1980’s.

Lehman later stated that his reasons for wanting the Navy Secretary position in the Reagan administration stemmed from the problems he had observed affecting the

Navy from the Nixon through the Carter administrations and from the concerns his boss

Henry Kissinger had regarding the decline in fleet size. Kissinger commissioned a study on fleet size before the end of the Ford administration that recommended a fleet of 600 ships with 15 aircraft carriers. Lehman was a participant in this study, and was greatly influenced by its conclusions.364The Carter administration’s proposed cuts to naval force structure only deepened his resolve to reverse them as an active participant in the next

Republican presidential administration.

Lehman’s overall performance as Navy Secretary generated a mixture of assessments. His service on Henry Kissinger’s National Security Council Staff well prepared him for service in the Reagan administration. Lehman later described the

364Ibid, 97. 98. 142 differences between the Nixon and Reagan administrations’ policy debates. He said,

“Debates over policy issues in the Reagan administration have been at times rather sporty, but are genteel indeed compared to the brawls between the Nixon administration and the Senate in the early 1970’s.”365Naval historian Thomas Hone described Lehman as, “the most aggressive and organizationally perceptive Navy secretary since James

Forrestal,”366Political scientist John Mearsheimer agreed Lehman was an excellent

“bureaucratic ”, but castigated him for both the Maritime Strategy and the 600 ship as, “the equivalent of buying pellet guns to shoot rampaging elephants” as embodied by the powerful Soviet land-based defenses.367 General described Lehman as, “the best bureaucratic infighter in the building (the Pentagon)” and well qualified to fight the political struggles necessary to remove obstacles to both the Maritime strategy and its 600 ship navy supporting pillar.368

Lehman did advance the case for a renaissance in naval strategy that had begun in the 1970’s under the leadership of CNOs Zumwalt, Holloway and Hayward. While these officers were capable of advancing strategic concepts within the fleet, Lehman, as an influential member of the Reagan administration was able to gain wider support for emerging naval strategic concepts. He acted in the role of catalyst in moving the

Maritime Strategy and its 600 ship Navy supporting plank from the realm of theory to reality. In addition to the 600 ship Navy building program, Lehman entered office

365 Lehman, Command of the Seas, 66. 366Thomas C. Hone, Power and Change, The Administrative History of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1946-1986, (Washington D.C.: The Naval Historical Center, 1989), 114. 367 John J. Mearsheimer, “Review of John Lehman’s Command”, A Review Essay on Command of the Seas by John F. Lehman, (Carlisle, PA: The United States Army War College Parameters, June 1990), 14, 15. 368 Colin Powell with Joseph Persico, My American Journey,(New York: Ballantine Books, 2003), 298. 143 vowing to revitalize strategic thought in the navy as well as to establish firm links between strategy and programs.”369He sought additional allies in both the “up and coming” uniformed and civilian leadership of the Navy through regular contact. To this end, he hosted regular strategy lunches for the “Young Turks” of the Navy staff with responsibility for the creation of what would become the Maritime strategy.

Lehman was also the vital conduit for approval of the Maritime strategy beyond service leadership. Following the first presentation of the Maritime Strategy to him on 04

November 1982 by Vice Admiral Arthur Moreau, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for

Plans, Policy and Operations (OP 60), Lehman remarked, “Bravo, you have given us a handbook that can be used in our deliberations with the third deck (Office of the

Secretary of Defense), with Congress, with OMB, and the joint arena.”370 Lehman also suggested the strategy could support development of the Navy’s POM (Program

Objective Memorandum), which was the Navy’s key input to future force planning.

Lehman’s associated campaign for the 600 ship Navy, although not originally connected to the Maritime strategy at its outset, served to support the concept. A report from

Congressman Charles Bennett (D/FL), Chairman of the House Subcommittee on

Seapower, Strategic and Critical materials to Congressman Les Aspin (D/WI) stated,

“The subcommittee finds that the Maritime Strategy is, in fact, a proper naval component to national level military strategy, and that the 600 ship navy, as currently described, is a reasonable and balanced approach to meeting the force structure requirements of that

369 Roger W. Barnett, Navy Strategic Culture, Why the Navy Thinks Differently, (Annapolis, MD:The Naval Institute Press, 2009), 91. 370John Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers Series #19, 2003), 73. 144 strategy.”371 Bennet and Aspin were by no means favorably disposed to the Maritime

Strategy, a point the officer who briefed the Seapower, Strategic and Critical Materials subcommittee later suggested when he described the briefing event as one where, “we took on some of our most ardent critics head to head.”372

Lehman gave speeches, and generated a stream of articles advocating that the

Navy return to, “the historical, global, conceptual approach to strategy brought to the

Navy by Theodore Roosevelt,” organized within, “an integrated, coherent, intellectual framework.”373 These efforts resulted in Lehman being identified as one of the key architects of the Maritime Strategy. While often given the predominate share of the credit for its development, Lehman was but one of the Maritime strategy’s many creators and promoters. Naval historian John Hattendorf suggested that Lehman, along with Chief of

Naval Operations James Watkins, who succeeded Admiral Hayward as CNO, “clearly deserve credit for their efforts in further coordinating and helping to bring the diverse segments of the navy together, focusing on the basic and continuing strategic issues.”374

While Lehman was not the father of the Maritime strategy, his written and spoken work in its advocacy, combined with his efforts to support strategic institutions within the

Navy served to support the acceptance of the Maritime strategy both within and external to the Navy. The aggressive elements of the Maritime Strategy appealed to members of the Reagan administration who were skeptical of the Carter administration’s more

371Ibid, 88. 372Ibid. 373 John Lehman, Command of the Seas, 128. 374Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 91. 145 defensive stance.375 Reagan had made a campaign pledge to restore the Navy to 600 ships and made progress toward that goal. Lehman’s experience in working with Congress as a member of Henry Kissinger’s staff gave him an advantage in persuading individual members of Congress to support both the strategy and the 600-ship force structure. A number of historians also credit Lehman with ensuring the success of both the Maritime

Strategy and the 600-ship navy. Military historian Ronald Spector states, “Lehman offered a coherent, integrated framework for naval planning and procurement which he called the Maritime Strategy.” Lehman, “forged his own connections key congressmen and senators,” and “took full advantage of President Reagan’s commitment to a massive defense buildup.”376 Historian Stephen Howarth is more critical of Lehman’s performance as Navy Secretary, but also states of his affection to the maritime service,

“not only did he support it vigorously and coherently, he also identified with it passionately,” and was responsible for its increase from 470 ships in 1980 to 516 by the end of his service as Secretary.”377

Lehman made enemies throughout his service as Navy Secretary. Some of the most persistent, and perhaps most resented opponents came from within the Navy’s own ranks. Lehman was especially effective at promoting the Navy Staff’s own strategy cohort within the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Plans (OP 06), often at the expense and in direct opposition to those staff elements associated with systems

375 Norman Friedman, The Fifty Year War, Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2000), 461 376Ronald H. Spector, At War At Sea, Sailors and Naval Warfare in the 20th Century, (New York: Viking Press, 2001), 377. 377Stephen Howarth, To Shining Sea, A History of the United States Navy, 1775-1998, (Norman, Ok: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 541. 146 analysis, programming and budget matters. Lehman was opposed to the rise of the,

“institutional obsession with engineering and hard sciences” imposed on the Navy by nuclear program czar Admiral Hyman G. Rickover.378 He also detested the, “mechanistic religion of the McNamara managerial reorganization” of the Pentagon that resulted in

85% of the personnel on the OPNAV staff being devoted to analysis, programming and budget work by 1981.379

Lehman was especially opposed to the level of control that analysts had over

Navy strategy. Lehman described strategy as, “the logical set of allocations and priorities that guide how the Navy Department spends its money and trains its people.”380 John

Lehman’s definition of strategy also identified, “enduring realities and vital interests” such as diplomatic and military alliances and commercial and energy interdependence as the building blocks of successful maritime strategy.381

The business of making logical sets of allocations and priorities, however, had been the province of the Navy’s operational analysts and net assessors within the OP 96 office as part of a wider group of Defense Department analysts. This organization had been in place since Robert S. McNamara was Defense Secretary. Secretary McNamara’s idea of strategy that formed the basis for the Department of Defense Planning,

Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS focused instead on the defense budget as the primary consideration in strategic planning. Economist Dr Alan Enthoven, one of

Secretary McNamara’s principal assistants during his tenure and a PPBS architect

378 Lehman, Command of the Seas, 128. 379 Ibid. 380 Ibid, p. 43. 381Ibid, 121, 122. 147 suggested that, “defense budgeting was, in effect, conceived as being largely unrelated to military strategy.”382 This disconnection of strategy and budgets in Enthoven’s opinion was caused by arbitrary budget levels, “that did not follow from decisions about strategy; military needs, and weapon systems.”383 McNamara and Enthoven’s solution to the problem was a strong systems analysis office that could review strategy, force requirements and budgets and render advice independent of military service allegiance.384

John Lehman agreed that the Department of Defense needed, “tools of empirical analysis” that would be, “useful in providing a framework in making judgments” on

“quicker, thicker and slicker weapons.”385 His concern was that this tool, “had become the decision process,” and was a dangerous development for a naval officer corps that already had an, “overwhelming engineering bent.”386 Lehman believed that an absolute focus on systems analysis would further limit traditional concepts of strategy from active consideration in the uniformed Navy. He worked throughout his tenure to reduce the influence of analysts within the Navy staff. The focus of his discontent was the OPNAV

OP 96 systems analysis division and its Extended Planning Branch OP 965.387

The systems analysts within these OPNAV staff offices based their argument on the Extended Planning Annex (EPA), a document regularly attached to the Navy’s annual

Program Objective Memorandum (POM) that detailed the service’s budget requests for the year. The EPA had been a required document since the creation of the POM as the

382 Alain Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation online edition, reprint of 1971 edition, 2005),13. 383 Ibid. 384Ibid, 74. 385 John Lehman, Command of the Seas, 95. 386 Ibid. 387 Peter M. Swartz, Organizing OPNAV, 1970-2009, 36. 148 services’ primary budget tool in 1970. Admiral Stansfield Turner had put OP 965 in charge of producing this document in the early 1970’s. The EPA for 1982, which contained the budget for 1983 and assumptions for 1984, was especially controversial.

Commander Harlan Ullman, who served in the OP 965 office in the early 1980’s, recalled that his branch was opposed to the 600 ship Navy concept that Lehman was promoting in conjunction with the Maritime Strategy as unsustainable in long term costs.388 The OP

965 analysis that was included in the 1982 EPA stated that the 600 ship assumed an unprecedented growth in the Navy’s Total Obligational Authority, or percent of all allotted Congressional outlays for one year, at 8%. The OP 965 office cited historical growth figures that suggested that average TOA growth for the Navy from 1949-1983 was 3% per year. Lehman believed the 600-ship fleet met the strategy conclusions of the last several presidential administrations. Lehman retorted that the 600-ship fleet could be maintained by the planned 3% growth first suggested by the SEAPLAN 2000 study of

1979. Lehman said the post-Vietnam era of limited defense budget growth were in fact an anomaly and that the American people supported the Reagan administration’s planned defense growth. Lehman already faced considerable opposition from Congressional

Budget Office (CBO). A January 1981 CBO report bluntly stated that no plans had been made for a major naval expansion despite the fact that the winning 1980 Republican national platform contained a demand for a 600-ship navy.389 A 1983 report issued by the

388 Email from Dr. Harlan K. Ullman to the author, 12 February 2016. 389 40.Dov S. Zackheim and others, “Resources for Defense, A Review of Key Issues for Fiscal Years 1982-1986,” (Washington D.C.: The Congressional Budget Office, January 1981), 40. 149 agency on the 600-ship navy stated, “As a gross ship total, the 600 ship navy can be justifiably criticized as an inadequate indicator of naval strength.”390

Lehman’s reaction to criticism within the Navy Department are not surprising given this environment of opposition and his strong convictions regarding the 600 ship fleet size. Despite objections from some on the Navy staff, CNO Admiral Watkins and

Lehman succeeded in abolishing the OP 96 division office. Along with the OP 96 office went its Extended Planning and Net Assessment branches that had dominated Navy input to the Planning, Programming and Budget System (PPBS), that had controlled most aspects of the U.S. defense strategy, programming and spending since the early 1960’s.

The former members of OP 96 were transferred to the Program Appraisal Division (OP

91), an office with a similar mission to OP 96 and OP 965, but one that did not produce products that traveled outside the Department of the Navy.391Some critics of Lehman suggested that the Secretary had assumed all planning authority for the Navy Department independent of any honest brokers.392Others, however, defended Lehman’s positional authority to make these changes. Lehman disestablished the OP 96N net assessment office led by Captain Manthorpe, whose intelligence net assessment of the Soviet submarine force had helped to advance the Maritime Strategy in 1982.393 While not a

“fan” of Secretary Lehman, Manthorpe later defended Lehman’s right to make the choices he did based on his authority as the Navy Secretary. Manthrope said, “Many of

390 1983 CBO report on 600 ship navy. 391 Stephen R. Woodall, “Analysis of the Future, Some Thoughts on the Utility of Resurrection of the Extended Planning Annex (EPA) in Support of Strategic Programming,” (Washington D.C., The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, The Strategic Programming Office (N816), 25 October 1997), 6. 392 Ibid. 393 Swartz with Markowitz, Organizing OPNAV, 1970-2009, 35. 150 the senior uniformed leaders worked hard at modifying or changing Secretary Lehman’s views. But when he gave specific direction or orders, as was often the case, they were obliged to carry them out.”394In place of the systems analysts, Lehman tapped the OP 095

(Director of Naval Warfare) office to assume the duty of formulating the Navy’s initial

PPBS inputs.395

The end of the OP 96 office and Navy systems analysis with it gave the political- military experts within the OP 06 office and its branches the principal authority for the creation and updates to what emerged as the Maritime Strategy in 1984. OP 06 members drafted and were the principal briefing officers for five classified versions of the

Maritime Strategy produced in the 1980’s. OP 06 also became the “primary OPNAV interlocutor with the Joint Staff at a time when the CJCS and the Joint Staff were increasing in competence and influence.”396 The influence of this office and the cohesive group of uniformed political military experts who staffed it played a significant role in the success of the Maritime Strategy across the decade of the 1980’s. The power of the

OP 06 office may have also created an imbalance in strategic thinking that made it more difficult for the Navy to create a successor to the Maritime Strategy after the fall of the

Soviet Union.

The OP 06 and the OP 96 offices formed separate intellectual traditions within the confines of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) staff. U.S. Army historian Brian

McAllister Linn constructed his book The Echo of Battle, The Army’s Way of War on the

394 Thomas A. Brooks and Bill Manthorpe, “Setting the Record Straight; A Critical Review of Fall From Glory by Gregory I. Vistica,” The Naval Intelligence Professional’s Quarterly, (Spring, 1996), 62. 395Ibid, 38. 396Ibid, p. 41. 151 assumption that intellectual traditions within an armed service make up a specific service

“way of war.”397 Linn states that sometimes these service traditions overlap and this too occurred within the Navy staff construct of OP 06 and OP 96. Some officers were assigned to both offices over their careers. The CNO’s executive planning office, OP 00K also saw officers from both disciplines, but competition between the two groups persisted throughout the decade of the 1980’s.

Defense analyst (and former naval officer,) Carl Builder’s views on the Navy’s treatment of the analysis discipline may also be a model for the competition between the

Navy’s uniformed political-military strategists and its analysts. Builder states,

The Navy’s attitude towards analysis is quite different again. The Navy has been at the forefront of operational analysis – to improve the tactical or operational use of its existing platforms and forces. But it has little tolerance for analysis for planning, or evaluating the Navy. Analysis of naval force requirements or effectiveness is a direct threat to the Navy’s traditional institutional prerogatives. The Navy doesn’t need analysis to define its requirements; it has always known what its requirements were. It knows that naval forces are effective when the Navy is left alone to use them as it sees fit.398

Builder’s opinion on how the Navy responded to the analysis discipline also suggests how the Navy’s political military strategists in OP 603 responded to the operations analysts in OP 96 and OP 965. Operations analysis is acceptable for operational and tactical use, but fails in the kind of geopolitical thinking that dominants strategy. Navy force requirements are determined by geographic and associated operational concerns rather than by the pure analysis of means to ends common to the other services. Builder

397 Brian McAllister Linn, The Echo of Battle, The Army’s Way of War, (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2007), 5. 398Carl Builder, The Army in the Strategic Planning Process, Who Shall Bell the Cat, (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, April, 1978), 40. 152 describes the Maritime Strategy as, “not a concept for relating means and ends; it is an explanation of how all existing means can be related to all ends.”399 Critics of the

Maritime strategy would likely agree with Builder’s arguments for the reason that the

Maritime Strategy appears “unconstrained” by not forcing means to support ends. Naval strategist Admiral J.C. Wylie perhaps better recognized the geography rather than force structure management that underpinned Navy strategic concepts in the post-World War 2 era. Wylie stated, “a maritime strategy is one in which the world’s maritime communication systems are exploited as the main avenues by which strength may be applied to establish control over one’s enemies.”400 This intra-service argument was replayed in the wider interservice and academic world in critical review of the Maritime strategy.

Maritime Strategy Critics

In addition to internal OPNAV criticisms, the Maritime Strategy faced considerable opposition from former Carter administration officials Robert Komer and

Admiral Stansfield Turner, and political scientists such as John Mearsheimer, Edward

Luttwak and Barry Posen. The former Carter officials wanted a greater emphasis on the protection of the sea line of communication to Europe in support of NATO ground forces. Komer believed aircraft carriers could not survive against the Soviet air defense, surface ships and submarines that could be arrayed against the carrier, its airwing and

399Ibid, 69. 400 J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, (Annapolis, MD: The Naval Institute Press, 1989), 125. 153 escorts.401 Turner opposed the offensive definition of U.S. naval power and its focus on large aircraft carriers as its principal combatant, preferring a focus on sea control as he had done when helping to construct Admiral Zumwalt’s Project Sixty plan.402

Mearsheimer, Luttwak, and Posen made the case against the Maritime strategy from within the academic community. Couching his opinion in Cold War deterrence strategy, Mearsheimer asserted that the Navy did not have a strong role in conventional deterrence. Offensive operations in the Barents Sea, in his opinion, would be a foolhardy errand given that Soviet naval forces would likely be concurrently attacking the vital sea lines of communication between Europe and North America.403 Mearsheimer also thought attacking Soviet SSBN’s would lead to heightened tensions regarding first use of nuclear weapons.404Edward Luttwak cited the high costs of the preferred aircraft carrier force designed to carry out the Maritime Strategy missions against the Soviet Navy and homeland. Luttwak said, “A classic strategic error has been made in devoting so much money to aircraft carriers and all that goes with them.”405

Barry Posen was in favor of both the previous sea control strategy promoted by the Carter administration and the avoidance of provocative attacks against the Soviet ballistic missile submarine force and Soviet homeland. Posen preferred a NATO defense line running across the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap and believed that any

401 Frank Leith Jones, Blowtorch, Robert Komer, Vietnam and American Cold War Strategy, (Annapolis, Md: Naval Institute Press, 2013), 250. 402 Stansfield Turner and George E. Thibault, “Preparing for the Unexpected, The Need for a New Military Strategy,” Foreign Affairs, Fall 1982 edition. 403 John J. Mearsheimer, “A Strategic Misstep, The Maritime Strategy and Deterrence in Europe,” International Security, Vol 11, #2, (Fall 1986), 12. 404 Ibid, p. 6. 405Edward N. Luttwak, The Pentagon and , The Question of Military Reform, (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1984), 264. 154

Soviet asset that crossed that line and entered the North Atlantic Ocean was “fair game” for NATO attack.406 Attacks by NATO and especially U.S. carrier and submarine force against Soviet nuclear assets and bases would “pose dangerous and escalatory pressures” that the Soviets could view as “deliberate attempts to degrade the Soviet Union’s nuclear retaliatory capability” and invite a nuclear response.”407

What critics such as Komer, Turner, Mearsheimer, Luttwak and Posen said about the Maritime Strategy was well founded in terms of Cold War strategy and assumptions about Soviet military strategy. But they did not have the same intelligence picture as did

Maritime Strategy planners and tended to “mirror image” Soviet intentions from a U.S. and not from a Soviet perspective. The Soviets, in retrospect, were much more interested in protecting their SSBN force than in attacking transatlantic convoys. As no third “Battle of the Atlantic” was fought, the ultimate outcome of a global naval war between the West and the Soviet Union remains one of mere speculation. Luttwak’s concerns about the high cost of aircraft carriers and their escorts would however return in the late 1980’s when concerns mounted over the cost of the Reagan military buildup.

The Maritime Strategists Dominate the OPNAV Staff

Of greater importance to the business of making U.S. naval strategy was the success of the Maritime Strategy internally within U.S. Navy organizations. This was particularly true within the OPNAV staff. The Maritime Strategy’s success brought unprecedented success and influence to the OP 06 office whose OP 603 branch authored

406 Barry R. Posen, “Inadvertant Nuclear War and NATO’s Northern Flank,” International Security, Vol 7. No 2, (Fall 1982), 37 407Ibid, 40, 41. 155 the initial document and successive updates. The OP 06 office codes progressively took control of all aspects of naval strategy by the middle of the 1980’s. Other OPNAV offices like the OP 96 code that had some influence over strategy products were driven from all influence over strategy documents. This remained an acceptable situation so long as the strategic situation remained constant and the OPNAV staff organizations unchanged.

Several key events would upset these conditions at the end of the decade and force the disassembly of both the Maritime strategy and the cohort of naval strategists that controlled its evolution.

The people who created and refined the Maritime Strategy were a group of officers whose careers had been informally managed by successive leaders of the OP 06 office. They were the product of extensive graduate education in political-military affairs, but also had successive, operational assignments within the fleet. The operational analysts within the OP 96 office code were equally well educated and groomed for advanced assignments. The story of these groups and their interactions is important to the understanding of how the Navy created the successor to the Maritime Strategy in the early 1990’s. The same officers, in different navy or joint office codes would be influential in producing what became “From the Sea” in 1992. The schools that produced them, however, were largely sundered by multiple changes in the OPNAV organization and by the effects of the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986, which mandated a much stronger service commitment to filling joint billets with quality appointees.

The 1970’s were a period of renaissance for the plans and policy organization as in worked in tandem with the analytical branches to produce the groundwork for what 156 became the Maritime Strategy. OP 06 was also in the process of producing a cadre of top quality officers whose repeated assignments in the branch deepened their understanding of Navy strategy. Future Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Crowe had multiple assignments within the OP 06 organization before he became its chief in 1978.

Vice Admiral James Lyons had three assignments within OP 06 before becoming its chief in 1984. Many of the OP 06 chiefs in the 1970’s and 1980’s had also been numbered fleet commanders which further enhanced their authority and influence within

OPNAV.

OP 06 also contained (after 1978) an even more elite strategy shop in the form of the OP 603 branch office. Created by Rear Admiral Bob Hilton in 1978 in response to threats from the Carter administration that it would conduct another round of defense reorganization, this OP 603 contained an even more exclusive and talented group of officers dedicated to long-range strategic planning. Most had graduate education from prestigious schools such as Columbia, Harvard, the Fletcher School at Tufts and Johns

Hopkins University. The incumbent OP 06 kept files on those officers who had distinguished themselves in their initial OP 06/OP 603 assignment and requested their reassignment to the office at appropriate career intervals. The roster of OP 603 included a number of officers who rose to flag rank in the 1980’s, 1990’s, and 2000’s including

Philip Dur, Hank Mauz, Bill Strasser, and present Pacific Commander Admiral Harry

Harris. Maritime Strategy writers Commander (later Dr.) Stanley Weeks, Captain

William Spencer Johnson, Captain Peter Swartz, and Captain/Dr. Roger Barnett were all

OP 603 veterans. Those officers who managed these writers, including Captains/Dr Bill 157

Garrett and Elizabeth Wylie were also former or current OP 603 members. The large number of flag officers that had served in this office served to bolster its influence throughout the operational fleet in a way not achieved by other CNO staff offices.408The

OP 96 division had a similar impact in the service through the flag promotions of successful office directors like CNO Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Naval War College

President Stansfield Turner, and Admirals Harry Train and M. Staser Holcomb.409 OP 96 had its own stable of successful officers who made strong impacts beyond the systems analysis office. These included future defense transformation advocate Vice Admiral Art

Cebrowski, future CNO Admiral , and Admirals Dennis Blair and Bill

Hancock. Except for Cebrowski’s work in the CNO SSG, these officers were not directly involved in the drafting of the Maritime Strategy. They would see their influence return when the Navy returned to the business of campaign analysis in the early 1990’s.410

Officers who served in both OP 06 and OP 965 (the political-military component of the systems analysis office like Captain (later Rear Admiral) Jim Stark, Commander Harlan

Ullman, and Captain Roger Barnett, had some significant influence on the Maritime

Strategy’s development, but only in the outset of its development or as members of the

OP 06/OP 603 office.411

Following the initial, very successful first drafting of the Maritime strategy, successive political/military strategists from the OP 603 continued the process of updating the document, and putting it to work in the active fleet. Stanley Weeks returned

408Author interview with Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 5 November 2015. 409Wayne P. Hughes, “Navy Operations Research”, (2002) Navy Operations Research. Operations Research 50(1):103-111, 107. 410 Ibid, p. 108. 411 Author interview with Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 5 November 2015. 158 to sea duty in 1983, and was replaced by Commander Peter Swartz in the role of

Maritime Strategy working author. Swartz was a veteran of multiple tours in OP 603 and had been recommended by its then branch chief Captain Roger Barnett to succeed

Weeks. Barnett had previously served as the Branch head of the OP 96 office and had originally complained to his superiors that taking charge of OP 603, a subsidiary branch, was in effect a demotion. His prospective boss, Rear Admiral Art Moreau, offered to

“sweeten” the deal for Barnett to take the position. Barnett in turn requested Commander

Jim Stark and (then) Lieutenant Commander Peter Swartz both to be assigned to OP

603.412 Stark and Swartz would go on to be two of the principal Maritime Strategy writers in the 1980’s.

Barnett and Swartz drafted the second classified version of the Maritime Strategy that drew heavily from SSG, operation fleet and updated intelligence inputs.413OP 603 and SSG veteran Captain Larry Seaquist, who in conjunction with U.S. Marine

Phil Harrington wrote a complementary Amphibious Warfare Strategy, drafted the third version. This effort drew on operational exercises the late 1970’s and early 1980’s that involved the prepositioning of U.S. Marine equipment in Norway and the landing of U.S.

Marines in the Scandinavian nation to repel Soviet invaders. The addition of Captain

Seaquist was especially helpful as he reported directly from the SSG in Newport and retained special intelligence access from that assignment that eased the process of updating the Maritime Strategy with the newest Soviet information.414 The fourth and unclassified version of January 1986 was written by the CNO’s OP 00K office, but the

412 Email from Dr. Roger W. Barnett to the author, 11 February 2016. 413 Peter M. Swartz, 1980’s Naval Strategies, p. 49 414 Author interview with Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 05 November 2015. 159 drafters of this version came from familiar backgrounds. OP 603 veteran Captain Linton

Brooks and Commander Robby Harris, who had graduate education in Political Science from the University of North Carolina, drafted this version, but Captain Peter Swartz, with Dr. Harvey Sicherman provided Secretary Lehman’s component and additional support.415The Naval Institute Press editor, Fred Rainbow, provided additional print support to the August 1986 unclassified public version of the Maritime Strategy that was published to further educate a wider audience on the Navy’s strategic mission.

The unclassified version represents the beginning of a number of literary and academic support efforts by OP 603 veterans to support the Maritime Strategy in the public arena. Swartz generated numerous annotated bibliographies from 1986 through the end of the decade to guide supporters and detractors alike through the literature that produced the Maritime Strategy. Captain Linton Brooks, one of the writers of the 1986 unclassified version of the Maritime Strategy “crossed verbal and academic swords” with

John Mearsheimer on its merits at a 1985 Naval War College symposium. Brooks suggested that the Soviet Union controlled nuclear weapons as tightly as did the United

States and that the Soviet Union, “with a military dominated by artilleryman, a strategy focused on land, and a doctrine that suggests that nuclear war cannot be limited,” was,

“unlikely to cross the nuclear threshold based on at-sea tactical considerations.”416In 1988

Rear Admiral Bill Pendley, another OP 603 alumnus, tried to connect the U.S. Army’s

415 Peter M. Swartz, 1980’s Naval Strategies, 51. 416Linton Brooks, “Naval Power and National Security,” International Security, Volume 11, Number 2, (Fall, 1986,) 79. 160 concepts of Air Land battle and forward defense to the Maritime.417These supporting efforts further entrenched the Maritime Strategy within the Navy and deepened OP 603’s association with the strategy effort.

While its OP 603 branch continued to update the Maritime strategy, its parent OP

06 leadership gained in influence as the strategy was implemented in the U.S. Navy. OP

06’s long history of direct dealings with the Joint Staff as the CNO’s liaison with the wider Pentagon organization allowed it to seek joint input to the Maritime Strategy before the passage of the Goldwater Nichols Act demanded such action. The activist

CNO’s Admiral Hayward and Admiral Watkins were eager to implement the strategy within the wider U.S. defense strategy of the 1980’s and gave the effort their full support.

Former OP 06 leaders such as Admiral Henry “Hank” Mustin went on to command significant operational formations like the Atlantic-based Second Fleet; the force that would bear the brunt of a war with the Soviet Union. Mustin in particular was able to conduct exercises that tested elements of Maritime strategy tenets while serving as

Second Fleet commander. Mustin argued that, “NATO is short of maritime forces to the extent that we cannot perform simultaneously all required maritime tasks to basically implement a defensive strategy in the high north. We must defend forward through offensive operations.”418

Navy Secretary John Lehman’s background in strategic studies, advocacy for the

600 ship that supported the Maritime strategy, personal interaction with individual

417Kevin Falk, Why Nations Put to Sea, Technology and the Changing Character of Seapower, (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), 30. 418 Henry C. Mustin, “The Role of the Navy and the Marines in the Norwegian Sea,” (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Review, Volume XXXIX, No 2, Sequence 314, (March/April 1986), 2. 161 members of OP 60 and OP 603 on strategic issues, and influence within the Reagan administration secured additional support. Lehman tended to view strategy as his personal mandate within the Navy given that in his opinion, naval officers were no longer well versed in strategy as an art.419 Lehman made efforts to reinvigorate the Navy’s internal culture of strategy during his tenure as Secretary. The OP 06 office code, as the center of naval strategy on the OPNAV staff was a great beneficiary of his efforts. The

U.S. Naval Academy hosted an annual Naval Long Range Planning Conference that while organized by the CNO’s personal 00K staff was staffed largely by OP 06 veterans.

The Washington D.C. area was the site of numerous informal strategy discussion groups including Secretary Lehman’s “Young Turks” luncheons in the early 1980’s and a more formal Strategy Discussion Group convened by OP 06 and OP 96 veteran Captain (later

Admiral) Jim Stark. The Navy established a two-year Master’s degree in Strategic

Planning at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA in 1982 and in 1985 Lehman asked for a mandatory course in Maritime Strategy to be added. In August 1986,

Commander James Tritten arrived at Monterey with a mandate from Deputy Under

Secretary of the Navy Seth Cropsey and OP 06B Rear Admiral Paul Butcher to, “inject

The Maritime Strategy into the curriculum, so as to reach every student in the school.”420

Tritten, a PhD graduate in International Relations (IR) from the University of Southern

California, taught courses in strategy at NPS assisted by fellow Southern Cal IR PhD Jan

Breemer and Philosophy doctoral graduate and former Navy

419 Peter M. Swartz, 1980’s Naval Strategies, p. 43. 420 Email from Peter M. Swartz to the author, 26 February 2015. 162 officer Tom Grassey.421 Commander Mitchell Brown, an OP 603 alum who wrote the

1989 Secret update to the Maritime Strategy relieved Tritten and continued in the role of

OP 06 Chair of Naval Strategy.

The influence of OP 06 and its OP 603 component did not stop at official positions, but extended into wider, unofficial settings within the Navy. Successive editions of the Maritime Strategy continued to be widely disseminated and vetted throughout an expanded body of critical thinkers. These included the operations departments of the various forward-deployed commanders (CINC’s), the naval and wider intelligence community, successive Naval War College Global Wargames, and SSG’s III and IV. In addition, an after-hours Pentagon office discussion group led by Captain Stark sprang up to discuss the evolving Maritime strategy.422The primary writers and articulators of the Maritime Strategy, however, remained the small core of officers assigned to the OP 603 office, its parent OP 06 code, and crossover officers from the analysis-based elements of OPNAV that had participated at one time or another in the strategy’s construction in the early 1980’s. This was still a substantial group of officers, and by 1983 OP 06 comprised 16% of the entire OPNAV Staff.423

In short, the OP 06 organization dominated the production, dissemination and operational implementation of the Maritime Strategy over the course of the 1980’s. The officers assigned to the office, whether junior Lieutenant Commanders or much more senior Admirals were the living embodiment of the Maritime Strategy. They wrote it; they updated it; they tested it at sea in exercises and represented it to the U.S.’s NATO

421 Ibid. 422 John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz, editors, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s , 2. 423Ibid. 163 allies. They directly engaged critics like Mearsheimer and Komer when they attempted to discredit the Maritime Strategy. OP 06 got a great deal of support from the strategy- minded Lehman who had made support for the Maritime Strategy one of the key points of his tenure. The strategists in OP 06 and especially OP 603 formed an unofficial strategic enterprise that ensured the continuing success of the Maritime Strategy as the preeminent statement of naval strategy and operational doctrine.

Unfortunately, this close association between the Navy Secretariat, the OPNAV staff’s strategy office and a strategy designed largely around one opponent was a recipe for problems if the leadership, the opponent, Navy funding or the staff structure changed.

All four of these elements changed within the Navy in the period 1986-1988. Those changes significantly weakened the Navy’s strategic enterprise that had formed in the

1980’s and left it divided and disorganized heading into the most significant geopolitical change of the last 50 years.

Navy leadership changes in the late 1980 played a significant role in the fate of strategic planning within the OPNAV staff. Admiral Watkins was replaced by Admiral

Carlisle Trost, another career submariner, but also a former Director of the OP 96

Systems Analysis division. Trost was supportive of continuing the Maritime Strategy, but was more comfortable tasking former OP 96 members now housed in OP 90 and OP 095 with special projects, including long range planning, rather than the OP 06 office that had accomplished many of these tasks for Admiral Watkins.424 Trost also had the leadership of these offices increased in authority from Directors to Deputy Chiefs of Naval

Operations (DCNO’s) soon after assuming CNO duties in 1986.

424 Peter M. Swartz with Michael Markowitz, Organizing OPNAV (1970-2009), 37, 44. 164

In addition to organization differences, Admiral Trost had to confront a restless

Congress that was concerned about waste and overspending in the Reagan military buildup, and felt the Maritime strategy was too focused on the Soviet threat.425 Trost shifted the argument to one of capabilities rather than pure strategy. Trost later told historian John Hattendorf, “I planned to focus my (congressional) testimony on the broader applications of naval power in support of U.S. national interests….Obviously my end goal was to sustain the naval capability which we had and were continuing to build.”426 The Maritime Strategy had always had a force structure component in the 600 ship navy concept that supported its global application. Trost’s decision to defend the strategy from a force structure rather than a conceptual point of view was, however, a departure from the views of Admirals Hayward and Watkins.

Trost also curtailed naval debate on the Maritime Strategy in a July 1987 speech where he advised the naval strategy community (presumably the OP 06 and OP 603 offices) to, “take the naval strategy indoors; we have had a full run of public debate.”427

Curtailing the public strategic debate on the Maritime Strategy may have served to improve the chances to retain naval force structure in the face of Congressional desire to cut the defense budget. Congress was dismayed by a number of defense contractor scandals in the mid 1980’s that involved procurement issues. The Air Force, for example,

425 John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz, eds, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, Selected Documents, Newport, RI, The Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers Series, #33, December 2008, pp. 259, 260. 426 2007 Letter from Admiral Carlisle A.H. Trost, USN (ret) to Dr. John B. Hattendorf, Washington D.C., The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, The Maritime Strategy Post 1990 file, used with permission by the author. 427 , “Our Risky Naval Strategy Could Get Us All Killed,” , 03 July, 1988. 165 purchased coffee machines for Air Force C-5aircraft with a unit cost of $7622.428The 600

Ship Navy Concept was also unpopular due to rising costs of both new construction and maintenance costs for older ships. Carrier critics, repeating concerns voiced in the late

1970’s, suggested that the large flattops were increasingly vulnerable to Soviet attack and that their 80-90 aircraft could be immobilized by a single, well placed hit.429 The increasing cost of the carrier and its aircraft was also a source of Congressional concern.

By 1988, the carrier and its aircraft together were estimated to cost $9 billion dollars to purchase and $500million a year to operate.430A bipartisan Military Reform Caucus that eventually included over 140 legislators arose in response to these scandals and increasing defense costs. Defense Secretary ’s response to these calls for cuts directly affected Navy force structure. It did not, however, support the concept that strategy must remain an active topic of conversation in order to ensure its continuing relevance.

The principal Reagan administration champion of the Maritime Strategy had also departed the scene and was no longer in a position to wage war against either conceptual or budgetary opponents of the Maritime Strategy or the 600-ship Navy. John Lehman resigned as Secretary of the Navy on 10 April 1987.431 While his methods were sometimes abrasive and controversial, he had been one of the primary early supporters and persistent defenders of the Maritime Strategy. While some opponents that had

428 Charles Mohr, “Military Price on Coffee Cited as $7622,” The New York Times, 20 September 1984. 429 Peter T. Tarpgaard, and Robert E. Mechanic, “Future Budget Requirements for the 600 Ship Navy,” (Washington D.C.: The Congress of the United States, The Congressional Budget Office, September, 1985), 28. 430Lane Pierrot, Naval Combat Aircraft, Issues and Options, (Washington D.C.: The Congressional Budget Office, November, 1987) , 23. 431 Frederick H. Hartmann, Naval Renaissance, The U.S. Navy in the 1980’s, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1990), 270. 166 personally experienced his wrath thought he should get no credit for the Maritime

Strategy’s success, others offered grudging respect. Persistent foe John Mearsheimer called Lehman, “the most effective service secretary in modern times” and one that

“never lost a involving the 600 ship navy in his tenure.”432 Others who knew Lehman well remarked on the great service he had done in promoting the Maritime

Strategy. Naval historian Norman Friedman, who worked for Secretary Lehman, suggested, “Lehman has given the Navy a rational…but I worry that when he goes, it all falls apart.”433 Lehman’s geopolitical and bureaucratic skills had been essential to advancing the Maritime Strategy along with a supporting force structure as an integral package. While some like Admiral Trost might have desired to separate the two concepts, the Maritime Strategy was supported by its direct linkage to the navy’s force structure through the CNO’s Program Advisory Memorandum (CPAM).434Secretary Lehman had made this specific change during his tenure by shifting control of the CPAM input within

OPNAV first from OP 96 to OP 095, and then to OP 06 where the Maritime Strategy became the starting point for Navy force structure planning.435 This link was valuable in maintaining the concept that strategy, whether Cold War or post-Cold War successors, would drive force structure.

Lehman’s long tenure at the Navy department was followed by several short-term occupants. His first replacement, former Marine Corps officer and attorney James Webb

432 John Mearsheimer, “John Lehman’s Command, A Review Essay on Command of the Seas by John Lehman”, 13-16. 433Quoted in Hartmann, Naval Renaissance, p. 270. 434 John Allen Williams, “Defense Policy in the Reagan Administration”, 279. 435 Swartz, Organizing OPNAV, 1970-2009, p. 43, and U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies, 1981-1990, p. 91. 167 served from May 1987 through February 1988.436 Webb resigned in protest over Defense

Secretary Carlucci’s 1988 $12 billion dollar cut in the Navy’s budget that would prevent the service from reaching the 600-ship goal.437 Webb was followed by former Reagan administration Director of Legislative Affairs William Ball, who remained as a placeholder until the appointment of H. Lawrence Garrett by the new Bush administration in May 1989. Secretary Garrett would ultimately have a significant impact in the change of naval strategy from 1989-1994, but the short terms of Webb and Ball did not allow them to develop the deep influence and bureaucratic power held by John

Lehman. Neither successor had the same strategy education as did Lehman. Webb was a valiant defender of the 600-ship force structure, but resigned to protest cuts in that strength before he could develop policy guidance on strategy.

Admiral Trost presided as CNO over two more iterations of the Maritime Strategy before his retirement in July 1990.438 Both attempted to adjust the strategy to account for the management of regional instabilities as well as a lingering threat of global war against the Soviet Union. Both also had to account for another personnel change; this time in the

Navy’s sister service. The U.S. Marine Corps had been a reliable partner in the development of the Maritime Strategy over the course of the 1980’s. The Amphibious

Strategy of 1985, a well-integrated companion to the 1985 version of the Maritime

Strategy, was produced in close cooperation between OP 06’s Captain Larry Seaquist and

436 John Hattendorf, The Navy of the 1990’s, p. 269. 437 Davis Evans, “Navy Secretary Quits over $12 Billion Dollar Cut,” The Chicago Tribune, 23 February 1988. 438 John Hattendorf and Peter Swartz, “U.S. Navy Strategy in the 1980’s”, p. 309. 168

Marine Colonel Phil Harrington. Both had been members of the CNO SSG in

Newport.439

Marine Corps Commandant General P.X. Kelley had co-signed the 1985 Secret

Amphibious Strategy along with Admiral Watkins. This document specifically stated that it would, “address the uses of naval amphibious forces across the spectrum of conflict while focusing on a global conventional war with the Soviet Union.”440Marine Corp staff officers Tom Wilkerson and Major Hugh O’Donnell were active participants with OP 603 officers in writing the early versions of the Maritime Strategy.

O’Donnell wrote the first unclassified discussion of the Maritime Strategy in the

September 1985 issue of the Naval Institute Proceedings.441 This cooperation continued into the later 1980’s as General Kelley’s successor as Commandant General Al Gray and his Plans, Policies and Operations (PPO) Deputy Lieutenant General Carl Mundy both made inputs and signed the 1989 version of the Maritime Strategy.442

General Gray, however, was more astute or more willing to accept change in the global strategic situation, and the mood of Congress than his naval colleagues were.

Sensing that the Marine Corps would need to adjust its posture to a post-Cold War world,

Gray changed the concept of Marine forces from “amphibious” to “expeditionary” forces and, “refocused the Corps on warfighting contingencies in the Third World vice anti-

Soviet operations in NATO and Northeastern Pacific campaigns.”443 U.S. Marine Corps

439 Peter Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, 1981-1990, 27 440 Watkins, James D, and Kelly, P.X. The Amphibious Warfare Strategy, (Washington D.C.: The Department of the Navy, OPNAV 60 P-2-85/NAVMC-2790, 26 June 1985), 1. 441Ibid, 53. 442 Ibid. 443 John Hattendorf and Peter Swartz, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, Selected Documents, 309. 169

Expeditionary units (MEU’s) became “special operations capable” but were not grouped under the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) created as a separate unified command by Congress in 1987. This growing Marine Corps independence would turn the creation of strategy on its head in 1990 when the Navy would shift focus to operations in support of land-based forces.

While the Marine Corps was growing more independent, some traditional Navy elements based in Cold War strategy were already starting to vanish. The anti- capability of the U.S. Navy had been a significant concern of uniformed and civilian defense leaders since the late 1940’s when the Soviet Navy first began to acquire and reproduce advanced German-designed submarines from the Second World War.

Much of the CNO’s SSG work in the early 1980’s had been about countering the Soviet submarine threat to U.S. aircraft carriers. The Maritime Strategy postulated an aggressive naval campaign north of the Greenland-Iceland,-United Kingdom “Gap,” the traditional highway of the Soviet submarine force into the Atlantic Ocean. That threat vanished and its disappearance caused many to immediately question the Navy’s future roles and functions.444 The advent of peace with the Soviets, however, took a rapid toll on the

Navy’s anti-submarine forces. By 1990, Navy leaders assumed that significant cost savings could be derived from cuts to submarines, maritime patrol aviation, and global anti-submarine warfare sensors.445The early retirement of sixteen anti-submarine warfare frigates, one of the causes for Secretary Webb’s early resignation and resultant confusion

444 John Hattendorf, ed, The Navy of the 1990’s,. 1. 445 Ibid, p. 9. 170 in the Navy’s highest civilian office was just the beginning of major changes to the

Navy’s force structure at the end of the Cold War.

The Maritime Strategy might have accommodated all of these changes to a degree, but by early 1990, the principal reasons for its existence were rapidly disappearing from the international scene. The December 1989 Malta Summit between

George H.W. Bush and Mikhail S. Gorbachev had effectively began the rundown to the end of the Cold War standoff between the two powers.446 In the absence of an organizing threat, the Navy would be forced to fall back upon the maintenance of force structure as a substitute for strategic thought. Admiral Trost’s successor Admiral would declare to a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his confirmation in June 1990 that, “a military strategy needs a specific enemy” and that, “the issues before us today seems ones of naval policy rather than strategy.”447

While the Navy and especially its strategy community reeled at the loss of their primary opponent, another significant change had been underway since the summer of

1986 that would profoundly affect the Navy’s method of responding to a change in the global strategic situation. The Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986, passed by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate and supported by much of the Reagan administration, was in the process of profoundly changing naval operations, administration, authority and culture. The legislation would more firmly chain naval forces to joint constructs operating against land targets rather than conducting warfare at

446 George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed, (New York: Knopf, 1998), 175, 318. 447 “The Nomination of Admiral Frank B. Kelso, Jr USN, to be Chief of Naval Operations,” Hearing before the Committee of the Armed Services, The , Second Session of the One Hundred First Congress, 14 June 1990, 326, 327. 171 sea. It would redraw the boundaries that the Navy would operate within, both at sea and administratively within the Defense Department. It would change naval culture by demanding that the Navy place more of its best and brightest officers in joint, rather than

Navy-specific staff billets. Finally, it would have the effect of tearing down the Navy’s informal networks of strategists and scattering them among other commands. These same officers would still lead much of the effort to create a new strategy, but they would do so in a very different organizational and operational environment. The analysts that formerly inhabited the OP 96 branch would return to a preeminent role in the generation of Navy programs and eventually the strategic thought that defined their missions. The analysts would come to dominate the business of strategy as much as the political military strategists of OPNAV had done in the 1980’s. The Maritime Strategy had been a remarkable opportunity to focus the Navy’s efforts on a unified campaign against a single opponent, but the collapse of the Soviet Union ended that consensus and moved the service into a period of strategic drift that would continue for the next several years.

172

CHAPTER 3: THE EFFECT OF THE 1986 GOLDWATER NICHOLS ACT ON NAVY

STRATEGY

While You Were Gone

In late 1990, veteran U.S. Navy strategist Captain Peter M. Swartz was preparing to return to the United States after a three-year joint assignment at the U.S. mission to

NATO in Brussels, Belgium. Swartz desired to return to the Office of the Chief of Naval

Operations (OPNAV) and to the business of naval strategy in which he had been so engaged during the previous decade. He was advised strongly by his mentor in Brussels,

Admiral Jim Hogg, the U.S. military representative to NATO’s Military Committee, to instead take a position as a special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

(CJCS), General Colin Powell. Swartz reiterated that he was not interested in yet another joint job, but instead desired to return to the business of creating and disseminating naval strategy. He checked, however, with various Navy colleagues and friends. He was surprised at how many old Navy friends told him the job working for General Powell was

“a plum assignment”; they unanimously urged him to take it. One front-running naval officer went so far as to suggest that if Swartz did not want it, he should let him know immediately, so he could bid for it. Admiral Hogg grew impatient, and gave Swartz one more day to make up his mind. He accepted the position.

Swartz plunged immediately into his new job, which involved a very close and positive working relationship with General Powell—just when Saddam Hussein was wreaking havoc on Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia. As Swartz found his way around the Pentagon again, he noticed a very high level of Navy talent on the Joint 173

Staff—a quality of officer that had never been assigned there by the Navy in all his previous experience in the Pentagon during the 1970s and 1980s. In contrast, when he returned to visit his old haunts and re-establish his Washington Navy network, he was nonplussed by the decline in the experience base and educational background in some

OPNAV shops.

Swartz had an occasion in September 1990 to visit the Joint Staff J-8 office to get input on a project he was working on for General Powell. While there, he spoke to

Commander Joe Sestak, whom he knew by reputation and whose Harvard PhD dissertation on the Seventh Fleet Swartz had previously read and utilized Swartz commented to Sestak that he found the disparity of talent between the OPNAV and the

Joint Staff both new and disconcerting; he feared for the future intellectual prowess of those in OPNAV and other key Navy institutions. This was a particular concern for

Swartz since he had participated in and fostered that prowess during the 1980sin OPNAV as an author of and advocate for the Maritime Strategy. Sestak responded, “Captain, you’ve been away. Goldwater Nichols happened while you were gone, don’t you remember? Do you remember how hard you and your colleagues fought against it? Do you remember that you lost?”448

Overview of Goldwater Nichols Act

Sestak’s curt response encapsulated a significant period of change for the Navy from 1989 to early 1994. The Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 significantly changed the

448 Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), interview with author 5 November 2014, and RADM Joe Sestak, USN (ret), email exchange with author 9 February 2015. 174 way the nation, and particularly the U.S. Navy, approached the business of strategy. The first Chairman under the new regulations, Admiral William Crowe decided to take a measured approach to the changes and work in a collaborative fashion with the service chiefs.449 His successor Colin Powell was determined to make the most of his new authority.450 While many defense officials, members of Congress and military leaders welcomed the new legislation, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps were both opposed to the changes that limited the independence of their services and forced their officers into heretofore unpopular joint assignments.451Alterations to the military chain of command that the legislation affected completed the separation of the leaders of the Navy from the service’s operational forces that had begun during the Eisenhower administration.

Strategy had become, in effect, “someone else’s job.”452

The senior leadership of the military services, and especially the Joint Chiefs of

Staff in office at the time of its passage, were opposed to the Goldwater Nichols Act on the grounds that it constituted Congressional meddling in uniformed military matters where it was not desired.453 The Navy was seen as being especially opposed to Goldwater

Nichols due to the efforts of Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, who vigorously opposed the legislation in Congressional testimony and in a variety of media outlets. The quick American victory in the First Gulf War of 1991 was often attributed in part to the

449William J. Crowe, In the Line of Fire, From Washington to the Gulf, Politics and Battles of the New Military, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 161. 450Karen DeYoung, Soldier, The Life of Colin Powell, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2006), 185. 451 Charles Nemfakos, Irv Blicksteain, Aine Seitz McCarthy and Jerry M. Sollinger, The Perfect Storm, The Goldwater Nichols Act and Its Effects on Navy Acquisition, (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 2010), 15. 452 Peter Haynes, Toward a New American Maritime Strategy, American Naval Thinking in the Post-Cold War Era, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2015), 244. 453 Barry M. Goldwater with Jack Casserly, Goldwater, (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 338. 175

Goldwater Nichols reforms. The legislation has been viewed as a generally positive effort since 1986, and has been praised by senior civilian leaders, current and retired senior officers, and members of the academic community. U.S. Army and Air Force leadership has been generally supportive of the Goldwater Nichols reforms. Significant opposition has come mostly from the Navy’s strategy and acquisition experts who have suggested that the legislation damaged those disciplines within the naval service and made them less capable of fulfilling their duties.

The changes affecting the Navy’s strategy community did not immediately occur, but rather took place over the course of the late 1980’s and 1990’s. Regional, combatant commander-based strategy replaced that of central service-based global leadership.454

The physical domains of those regional commanders also increasingly cut across traditional naval geographic command boundaries. These changes perhaps affected the

Navy more than the other services due to how the service viewed strategy as a concept.

Strategy formulation for the Navy and the strategic elements of the Air Force is, “to think in terms of the total world.”455 The Army, by contrast views strategy through the concept of a theater of operations, i.e., “a terrain division somehow arbitrary to the sailor or airman, but sound and logical if we move into the soldier’s headquarters.”456The

Goldwater Nichols legislation primarily affected the services at the service chief level in that it downgraded the authority and capability of service staffs. The Navy’s Maritime

Strategy was created and maintained at the service staff level. Cuts in the authority and

454 George Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power, The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 441, 442. 455J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy, A General Theory of Power Control, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1989), 42. 456 Ibid. 176 capability of service staffs hampered the Navy’s ability to update or create new strategic concepts.

The Army’s AirLand battle concept is often cited as the ground service’s own offensive strategy much as the Maritime Strategy was for the Navy. Both were implemented at the operational level of war, but the Army’s theater-based concept of strategy allowed it to better connect with regional CINCs. The Army in fact depended on close a close relationship with the regional commander to implement its strategic concepts.457 The Goldwater Nichols Act provisions strengthened the authority and responsibility of the regional commanders at the expense of the service chiefs, perhaps allowing the Army greater freedom to conduct its preferred operational level of strategy.458 The Army also conducted the Anteaus future force study in 1989 and, unlike the Navy, accepted that the Soviet threat was receding, force size and budgets would decline, and regional, contingency operations would become more likely in the near future.459 The Air Force also came to realization in 1989 that the Soviet threat was weakening after the Communist superpower’s withdrawal from Eastern Europe.460Air

Force Chief of Staff General Larry Welch further assumed that a smaller force was inevitable and was prepared to accept the Joint Staff strategy concept so long as it “did not do violence to people or to the future quality of the force.”461 From these experiences

457 Don M. Snider, Strategy, Forces and Budgets: Dominant Influences in Exexcutive Decision Making, Post-Cold War, 1989-91, (Carlisle, PA: The Strategic Studies Institute of The United States Army War College, February 1993), 15. 458 Ibid. 459 Mark D. Sherry, The Army Command Post and Defense Reshaping 1987-1997, (Washington D.C.: The United States Army Center of Military History, 2008), 27. 460 Don Snider, Strategy, Forces and Budgets: Dominant Influences in Exexcutive Decision Making, Post- Cold War, 1989-91, 14. 461 Ibid. 177 it would appear that the emphasis of the Goldwater Nichols provisions in support of regional, vice service commanders aided the Army and Air Force in making the transition to regional strategies more rapidly than did the Navy and with fewer ill-effects within the force.

The Navy’s service staff-based strategists did not fare as well as their Army and

Air Force counterparts as a result of the defense reorganization effort. In addition to removing the responsibility for strategy from the Navy’s leadership, the Goldwater

Nichols Act effectively dispersed the naval service’s informal but highly effective cohort of strategic experts who had been responsible for decades of naval strategy. The effects of the legislation effectively removed them from naval control, and scattered them in assignments on the Joint Staff and the regional and functional commanders’ (CINC) staffs.462 The personnel changes the legislation brought about forced many strategy experts like Swartz into joint jobs instead of their traditional billets on the OPNAV staff.

This initially had a positive effect: seasoned, knowledgeable, and experienced naval strategists were now populating influential joint staffs, where their capabilities and concepts ensured that the nation continued to sensibly deploy and use its naval power.

OPNAV office OP-06, the professional home of naval strategic concepts during the Cold

War, still had a reasonably good reputation and attracted some of the Navy’s brightest officers at the end of the 1980s. However, as young officers sought important jobs in

Washington, they increasingly recoiled from assignment to OPNAV, instead embracing joint strategy duty as an essential ticket on the way to flag rank. In some cases, the Navy

462 Anne D Parcell, Donald J. Cymrot, and Carol S. Moore, The Officer Structure in the 21st Century, Alexandria, VA: The CNA Corporation, CRM D0003570.A2, May, 2001), 11. 178 was forced to shorten essential assignments at sea where officers learned core service competencies in order to meet requirements for joint officer assignment.463As late as

2002, a RAND Corporation study on how the Navy filled joint billets stated, “There is currently an ‘us versus them’ perspective on joint duty for naval officers. Joint assignments are considered ‘time away’ from the officer’s warfare specialty and career path, and officers are advised to ‘stay Navy’ selected and screened for command.”464

Many officers continued to look for joint assignments for their next tour in Washington, while others sought billets in those OPNAV offices with strong connections to their warfare communities. Thus, after Goldwater Nichols the “bench” at OP-06 began to weaken, and entering the 1990s its strength continued to slide.

Concurrent with the decline of the strategist cohort within the OPNAV staff was the return of the Operations analysis discipline after nearly a seven-year absence. The end of the Cold War and the provisions of Goldwater Nichols brought about significant reorganization of the OPNAV staff by CNOs Admiral Carlisle Trost and Admiral Frank

Kelso. Support in Congress for the Goldwater Nichols legislation was near unanimous and demanded an OPNAV staff that was ready to work on joint terms with the Joint Staff that was now under the control of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The Joint Staff had worked for the service chiefs on a collective basis before 1986.465The OPNAV OP 06 office had been the CNO’s primary link to the Joint Staff since the 1960’s and there were

463 Kinnard McKee with David Winkler, The Oral History of Admiral Kinnard McKee, U.S. Navy (Retired), (Washington D.C.: The Naval Historical Foundation, 13 June 2000,) 78. 464 Margaret C Harrell, Harry H. Thie, Jefferson P. Marquis, Kevin Brancato, Ronald J. Yardley, Clifford M. Graf II, and Jerry Sollinger, Outside the Fleet, External Requirements for Naval Officers, (Santa Monica, CA, The RAND Corporation, 2002), 98. 465 Douglas Lovelace, “The DoD Reorganization Act of 1986, Improving the Department Through Centralization and Integration,” in Douglas Stuart, editor, Organizing for National Security, (Carlisle, PA: The United States Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, November, 2000), 77. 179 attempts to cement the strategy office’s Joint Staff connection after the passage of

Goldwater Nichols. These failed due to the new CNO’s opinions about what constituted his close staff. Unlike his predecessors, Admiral Trost was more comfortable working with the analysis branch (OP 90), an office, like OP 96, where he had previously served as Director. Trost’s changes included redesignating the Director of Naval Warfare (OP

095) and the Director of Navy Program Planning (OP 090) to Deputy CNO status.466

Both offices were well populated with analysts, some of whom had previously served in the now-disbanded OP 96 office. Both were also re-designated as OP 07 and OP 08, respectively, to match joint terms.467 Trost’s choices in which OPNAV offices he worked closely with served to reduce the influence of the OP 06 strategy branch that had been the preeminent branch of the Navy staff since the early 1980’s.

The Soviet Union also collapsed in the first two years of the 1990’s. Admiral

Trost had sought to maintain the focus on the Soviet naval threat in the late 1980s. The

Soviet Navy remained a formidable force in spite of the collapse of the Warsaw Pact

Treaty organization. The Soviet’s alliance woes, however, reinforced a general perception that the Communist superpower’s overall military capability was much diminished. In the absence of a major threat, Trost’s successor as CNO, Admiral Frank

Kelso turned from a focus on global naval strategy against the Soviet Navy to activities designed to preserve naval force structure for the presence and regional threats expected in the emerging post-Cold War world. Such efforts called for the work of budget and

466 Peter M. Swartz with Michael Markowitz, Reorganizing OPNAV, 1970-2009, Washington D.C., The CNA Corporation and the Naval History and Heritage Command, CAB D0020997.A5/2Rev , January 2010, 37. 467 Ibid. 180 force structure analysts rather than the strategy experts who wrote successive versions of the Maritime Strategy. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 1987 Admiral William Crowe specifically noted this need in Senate Armed Services Committee testimony on national strategy.468

The situation at the end of the 1980’s, as described by one veteran of OP 06, was one where the Navy needed “a revised story line to match the emerging ‘Jointness’ of the post-GNA (Goldwater Nichols Act) reality”469 For Admiral Kelso, this meant a massive reorganization of the OPNAV staff that gave the N8 office (Deputy Chief of Naval

Operations for Resources, Requirements and Assessments) direct control over the other deputy CNOs for acquisition, program planning, and logistics.470 This change, along with

Trost’s previous close association with the OP 96 and OP 90 offices served to enable the return of the analysis arm of the Navy staff to power. The newly re-empowered analysts would not write the strategic concepts that followed the 1980’s Maritime Strategy, but they nevertheless shaped their development and ultimately controlled their ultimate dispositions. The Joint Mission Area Assessment (JMA) Process adopted by the N8 office was the re-entry point for operations analysis back into the process of developing naval strategy, albeit from the Army-centric prospective of force structure management over time rather than political military calculation.

468 National Security Strategy, hearings before the Committee on the Armed Services, United States Senate, 100th Congress, First Session, 21 January 1987, 453. 469 Email from Professor Mitch Brown, Naval Postgraduate School to Peter Swartz, 14 March, 2008, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M.Swartz, USN (ret), The Maritime Strategy Folder, used with permission by the author.) 470 Peter M. Swartz with Michael C. Markowiz, Reorganizing OPNAV 1970-2009, Washington D.C., The Naval History and Heritage Command / CNA Corporation, CAB D0020997.A5/2Rev, January 2010, 54. 181

This combination of change in command structure, alteration of traditional naval concepts of the battle space, migration of Navy strategy experts from the OPNAV to the

Joint Staff, and the return of systems analysts to positions of authority on the OPNAV staff altered the Navy’s concept of strategy. The Navy’s most senior officers no longer controlled the forces they built, trained, and equipped. The concepts of naval strategy that remained in the wake of Goldwater Nichols were regional rather than global in character.

They would be more influenced by force structure and budget analysis than strategy, especially moving into the middle 1990’s. Finally, the legislation’s joint personnel requirements effectively served to disband the Navy’s ad hoc, but very effective cohort of strategic experts, dispersing them throughout the joint force. While perhaps useful in the immediate post-Cold War era, these changes would have significant impacts in the first decade of the twenty-first century as the Navy sought new strategic solutions to a dwindling budget and an aging, contracting force structure.

Genesis of the Legislation

The Goldwater Nichols Act was the most significant shake-up in the Department of Defense since its creation in the period from 1947 to 1949.471 The failure to achieve desired results during the Vietnam War may have been the early catalyst for the defense reform movement of the late 1970s, but events that followed provided further impetus for change.472 A series of military disasters since the end of the Vietnam War—including the

471 Steven L. Rearden, Council of War, A History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1945-1991, (Washington D.C.: The Office of the Director of the Joint Staff, 2012), 450. 472 David Jablonsky, War By Land, Sea and Air, Dwight Eisenhower and the Concept of Unified Command, (New Haven, CT, The Yale University Press, 2010), 319-321. 182

Iran hostage crisis of 1979-81, problems with inter-service planning and communication during the 1983 Lebanon peacekeeping mission including the October bombing of the

U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, and the October 1983 invasion of Grenada all provided significant additional impetus for reform.473

In addition to perceived operational military failures, the performance of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff (JCS) as the leadership of the military came under strong criticism from senior uniformed officers and a growing number of civilian Department of Defense officials. These criticisms became more pronounced with the change of presidential administration in 1981 and with it a significant, promised increase in defense spending that former Reagan defense official Lawrence Korb described as a, “wartime buildup without a war.”474The impression of excessive defense spending resulting from soaring

Reagan administration military budgets also caught the eye of some members of

Congress and helped generate additional legislative-branch interest in defense reform.475

Uniformed criticism of JCS and DoD organization came primarily from a small number of senior Air Force and Army officers. Then outgoing Chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General David Jones, USAF, suggested in Congressional testimony that, “There is very little disciplined long term planning in defense,” and “We spend too much time on the scramble for resources and not enough on the oversight of

473 Gordon Nathaniel Lederman, Reorganizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 65, and Douglas Lovelace, “The DoD Reorganization Act of 1986, Improving the Department Through Centralization and Integration,” in Douglas Stuart, editor, Organizing for National Security, (Carlisle, PA: The United States Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, November, 2000), 71-73. 474 Lawrence J. Korb, “Where Did All the Money Go,” in Stephen J. Cimbala, editor, Mysteries of the Cold War, (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999), 3. 475 James R. Locher III, Victory on the Potomac: The Goldwater Nichols Act Unifies the Pentagon (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2002), 283-285. 183 those resources.”476 Jones was very critical of the JCS structure and stated that the advice issued by the Joint Chiefs was neither adequate nor timely in its delivery. Jones advocated moderate reform that involved strengthening the office of the Chairman and

Joint Staff as the best remedies for the ills he described.477 Former Army Chief of Staff

General Edward Meyer was even more critical of the present JCS system and offered a more radical solution. Meyer recommended eliminating the JCS as an organization and replacing it with a National Military Advisory Council (NMAC) comprised of retired officers who would not have the same service, parochial concerns as did the active duty service chiefs of staff.478 Meyer’s plan would allow for direct communication between the deployed commanders and the NMAC, with the role of service secretaries and service chiefs significantly reduced.

Members of the civilian Defense Department staff were more critical of the JCS than Jones or Meyer. Jones and Meyer represented defense reorganization concepts that had been in existence since the end of the Second World War. They were based largely on the concept that the services should be able to compete evenly for the scarce resources of the early Cold War. Jones and Meyer were young officers in this period and influenced by its events. Civilian defense organization critics hailed from a very different background and experience. This group ranged in rank from former defense secretaries to junior analysts and staffers. Many had served in the post-1949 Department of Defense or specifically under Kennedy and Johnson administration Secretary of Defense Robert S.

476 “What Witnesses had to Say,” The Armed Forces Journal International, Congress/Administration, February, 1984, 18. 477 Congress, House, Committee on Armed Services, Reorganization Proposals For The Joint Chiefs of Staff: Hearings before the Investigative Subcommittee, 98th Cong., Ist sess., 14 June 1983, 1. 478 Peter Chiarelli, ““Beyond Goldwater Nichols”, The Joint Forces Quarterly, Autumn 1993, pp. 71-72. 184

McNamara in analysis positions. Their criticisms were focused on the corporate organization of the JCS as perhaps the root cause of less than useful and untimely JCS operational or administrative advice to civilian leadership. Members of the JCS were deemed parochial servants of their own services’ needs and unable to rise above these to support national defense requirements.479

A number of the senior members of this group expressed these critiques in hearings held before the Senate Armed Services Committee in early 1984. Former

Defense Secretary James Schlesinger identified the structure of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as “the central weakness of the existing system.”480 Former Defense Secretary Elliot

Richardson suggested that “Service Chiefs were placed in a position where they are inevitably torn between competing loyalties.”481Lower- ranking civilian supporters of the legislation, such as West Point graduate and former DoD analyst turned Senate Armed

Services Committee (SASC) staffer James Locher and retired Air Force Colonel, systems analyst, and House Armed Services Committee (HASC) staff member Dr. Arch Barrett played key roles in connecting Congressional allies of reform with former senior defense department leaders.482 They would also play a significant role in drafting parts of what became the Goldwater Nichols Act.

Washington think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies

(CSIS) provided a hub where supporters could meet and combine their efforts. CSIS hosted the Defense Reorganization Military Reform Project Steering Group from

479 Peter J. Roman and David W. Tarr, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff: From Parochialism to Jointness,” The Political Science Quarterly, Vol 113, No 1, (Spring 1998), 92. 480 “What Witnesses Had to Say”, 20. 481Ibid, 19. 482 James Locher III, Victory on the Potomac, 60, 61 and 88-90. 185

December 1985 through the legislation’s completion, which included a diverse group of academics, former DoD officials, retired military leaders and members of Congress. The group included well known individuals such as political scientists Samuel Huntington,

Barry Posen and , Generals Jones and Meyer, future Defense Secretary

Dr. , and Representative (later Speaker of the House of Representatives)

Newt Gingrich.483 The Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution also offered support to the defense reform effort through publications and advocacy.

The reform movement had strong bipartisan support within Congress as well as from some well-placed Reagan administration officials and the defense intellectual community. Congressional supporters such as co-sponsors Senator Barry Goldwater (R-

AZ) and Representative Bill Nichols (D-GA), Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), Senator

William Cohen (R-ME) and Representatives Ike Skelton (D-MO), Richard White (D-

TX), John Kasich (R-OH) and Les Aspin (D-WI) formed the core of the legislative support for defense reform.484 They felt that greater centralization of power in the CJCS office would improve the quality of advice available to the nation’s civilian leadership.

Goldwater called the legislation “the only goddamn thing I have ever done in the Senate that was worth a damn.”485 Reagan administration members such as National Security

Advisor Robert McFarland supported reform efforts, as did former Deputy Defense

Secretary , whom President Reagan appointed chairman of a presidential

483 Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, USN (ret), “CSIS Military reform Project Steering Group memo to Navy Secretary John Lehman,” (Washington D.C., The Naval History and Heritage Command Archive, The Papers of Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman Jr., Box 3 Defense Reorganization Files, 24 October 2012.) 484Robert D. Worely, Shaping U.S. Military Forces; Revolution or Relevance in a Post Cold War World, (London: Praeger Security International, 2006), 39. 485Barry M. Goldwater with Jack Casserly, Goldwater, 357. 186 blue-ribbon commission on defense reform. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was not in favor of reform at first, but later shifted his position—for practical reasons, rather than due to an actual change in his beliefs.486

The Navy and Marine Corps leadership, including CNO Admiral James D.

Watkins and Marine Corps Commandant General P.X. Kelley, were generally opposed to the legislation, as they believed it restricted their traditional freedom of action and gave other services, which were less well versed in the matter, control over shipbuilding and naval and marine operations. Vice Admiral Henry Mustin, who assumed the OP 06 position on the OPNAV staff just before Goldwater Nichols was passed, described it as follows:

Power in Washington is a zero-sum game. The big winners in the Goldwater- Nichols Act were the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the big losers were the service secretaries and the service chiefs. Goldwater- Nichols essentially enabled the creation of a longtime Army dream which had been personified by George Marshall in World War II, which was to have what the Germans called a general staff, with great power and authority. The Navy position on the matter was that that was dangerous over-centralization, that you stifled dissent, and therefore increased the risk of making bad decisions; and that we didn’t like it. When I got up there the Secretary of the Navy made no bones about telling me that, that that’s how he felt, and that I was down there to guard the gates against these assaults by the Army and the Air Force.487

Past naval leaders were also not in favor of significant change. Former CNO

(1974-1978) Admiral James Holloway replied to the accusation that the JCS provided

“bad advice” by in turn suggesting that this was a “euphemistic way of saying the JCS

486 Caspar W. Weinberger, letter to Senator Barry M. Goldwater, 8 May 1986, Papers of James Locher, accession number 330-88-0038, box 14, folder 20 (DoD May 1986), National Defense University, Washington D.C., and William Crowe, In the Line of Fire, From Washington to the Gulf: The Politics and Battles of the New Military (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), p. 157. Sources vary on the level of Secretary Weinberger’s acceptance of the Goldwater Nichols legislation. Most suggest grudging acceptance, with some conditions, on the final legislative product. 487 Henry C. Mustin, with David F. Winkler, The Oral History of Vice Admiral Henry C. Mustin, USN (ret), (Washington D.C.: The Naval History and Heritage Command, July 2001), 185, 186. 187 did not provide the desired answer.”488Navy Secretary John Lehman offered the most vocal criticisms of the proposed legislation and quickly become the effective leader of the opposition. Lehman’s criticisms were rooted in the Navy’s opposition to reform at the dawn of the Cold War and continued the fight waged by CNO Admiral Burke against

President Eisenhower’s reform efforts in the 1950’s.489Lehman stated that the proposed legislation would create inefficient bureaucracy in the Defense Department and reduce the quality of military advice offered to the president. He also opposed concentrating so much power in the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, which would restrict advice flowing to the president to “the opinions and decisions of one man, the chairman himself, and his general staff bureaucracy.”490 Lehman’s opposition campaign was well organized, and while ultimately unsuccessful, it served as a rally point for reform opponents. It even opened a hotline number where those in opposition to defense reform could call and offer their support. Senator Goldwater was furious when he discovered the coordination office and called the number, pretending to be a supporter.491 He later wrote directly to Defense

Secretary Weinberger and President Reagan to complain that the efforts of Lehman’s staff were illegal.492

Few senior naval officers supported the reforms proposed by Army, Air Force, and defense civilian authorities. Those who did, like Admirals Harry Train, Robert Long,

488 Thomas Fedyszyn, “A Maritime Perspective,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, (July 1985), 84. 489Craig S. Faller, “The Navy and Jointness; No Longer Reluctant Partners,” (Monterey, CA: The Naval Postgraduate School, Published Thesis, 1991), 132. 490 John Lehman, “Let’s Stop Trying to be Prussians,” Washington Post, 10 June 1984, C7. 491 Michael Ganley, “How’s That Again, You’re Opposed to What?”, Washington DC, The Armed Forces Journal, March, 1986, 18. 492 Barry Goldwater, letter to Caspar Weinberger, 6 March 1986, Papers of James Locher, Special Collections Series, Box 14, Folder 020, DoD (Mar), National Defense University Library, National Defense University, Washington D.C. 188 and Thor Hanson all had joint or Defense Department analysis experience. Long and

Train had been combatant commanders (in the Pacific and Atlantic, respectively) and both Train and Hanson had been Directors of the Joint Staff.493 Train was a political military expert from OP 06 who had also been the director of the OP 96 analysis division within OPNAV while Hanson had served on the staff of Deputy Secretary of Defense for

Systems Analysis Dr. Alain Enthoven.494The new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral

William Crowe was also in favor of reform, but tended to keep his opinion more closely held.495

Despite opposition, and reinforced by findings from Packard’s Blue Ribbon

Committee on Defense Reform, the legislation passed Congress by a significant bipartisan majority in both the House of Representatives (383-27) and Senate (95-0).496

The Navy knew this would be the outcome as early as November 1985. The JCS, in written testimony to the SASC indicated general support for Goldwater’s intended reforms to make the CJCS the President’s principal military advisor, the creation of a deputy CJCS at the four-star rank, and the creation of “some kind of joint personnel

493 Locher, Victory on the Potomac, pp. 71, 72, and “The Oral History of Admiral Harry DePueTrain II, USN (ret), (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1997), Online segment, http://www.usni.org/heritage/train, last accessed 17 August 2016. 494Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., (2002) Navy Operations Research. Operations Research 50(1):103-111. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.50.1.103.17786, last accessed 17 January 2017,, and Maurice Matloff, “Oral History Interview with Dr. Alain Enthoven,” (Stanford, CA: The United States Department of Defense, Historical Office, 03 February 1986), 11. 495 William J. Crowe Jr., In the Line of Fire, From Washington to the Gulf, the Politics and Battles of the New Military, 152. 496 Charles Nemfakos, Irv Blickstein, Aine Seitz McCarthy, and Jerry M. Sollinger. “The Goldwater Nichols Act and Its Effect on Navy Acquisition,”14. 189 management system.”497John Lehman later suggested that the legislation was in effect a retirement gift for Goldwater.498

Although hailed as a great triumph for the defense reform movement, the

Goldwater Nichols Act was more of an incomplete armistice than “victory on the

Potomac,” as one of the legislation’s authors, James Locher contended in his 2002 book.

In fact, defense reformers had a considerably more radical plan for fundamental changes to the structure of senior military leadership and the armed forces’ organization for combat. The Senate Armed Services Committee staff study “Defense Organization, The

Need for Change,” authored by Locher, contained ninety-one specific recommendations.

It specifically suggested the disestablishment the Joint Chiefs of Staff in favor of a Joint

Military Advisory Council (JMAC) independent of all service functions; a reorganization of the military along mission, rather than service, lines; and removal from the chain of command of service component commanders located within the unified commands.499

Locher himself dismissed these proposals as diversionary “bullet traps” designed to divert antireform opponents from more moderate goals.500Senator Nunn’s staff director

Arnold Punaro similarly suggests deception was at the core of Nunn and Goldwater’s efforts.501Yet similar recommendations appear in the memoirs of Senator Goldwater as

497 Memo from Deputy Undere Secretary of the Navy Seth Cropsey to Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr, “DoD Organization, dated 23 December 1985, Washington D.C., The Navy History and Heritage Command, The Papers of Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr, Box 8, Defense Reorganization. 498Author telephone interview, 02 December 2013. 499 James Locher III, “Defense Organization, The Need for Change,” A Staff Report to the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 16 October 1985, 10-12. 500 Locher, Victory on the Potomac, 329-331. 501Arnold L. Punaro with David Poyer, On War, On Politics, The Battlefield Inside Washington’s Beltway, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2016), 131. 190 well as those of Senator John Tower.502 There had also been strong arguments from analysts influenced by the policies of Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara for reorganization of the Defense Department around joint missions rather than geographic or service constructs ever since the Symington Commission of 1961. This effort by

Missouri Senator and former Air Force Secretary William Stuart Symington recommended the abolition of the separate military departments, the replacement of the

JCS with a group of senior officers separated from their respective service affiliations, and the reduction in authority of the individual service chiefs to mere administrative and logistics duties.503

Locher’s House Armed Services Committee counterpart in defense reform also seems to contradict the assertion of intentional deception on the part of the members of the House and Senate in regards to the goals of reform. In a 1991 interview, Dr. Arch

Barrett stated that the committee reconciliation effort between the House and Senate versions of what became the Goldwater Nichols Act purposely embraced those reforms that were “politically possible.”504 Barrett’s more moderate reform recommendations formed much of the backbone of what became the Goldwater Nichols Act.505 House

Armed Services Committee Chairman Representative Les Aspin credits Bill Nichols as the real driving force of defense reform, more so than Goldwater’s later push in the

502 John G. Tower, Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1991), 247, and Goldwater and Casserly, 355-356. 503 Amy B. Zegart, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 138, and Lawrence S. Kaplan, Ronald D. Landa, and Edward J. Drea, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. V, The McNamara Ascendancy 1961-65 (Washington DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, The Joint History Office, 2006), p. 18. 504Faller, 61. 505Ibid, 62. 191

Senate.506 This was readily apparent to the Navy at the time as well, as Deputy Under

Secretary of the Navy Seth Cropsey noted in an 11 September 1986 memo to Navy

Secretary John Lehman, “it is remarkable how much the Senate proposals have faded in favor of those in the House.”507

This evidence suggests that pro-reform advocates had a much longer list of objectives that were not met in the Goldwater Nichols legislation. The reform camp’s inability to implement the more comprehensive reforms they advocated suggests that

Secretary Lehman’s opposition movement was much more effective in preventing significant alteration to U.S. defense organization than it may seem at first glance. The partial reform that was implemented made for an uncertain climate as the military services grappled with the problem of creating strategy in the post-Cold War era.

Substance and Effects of the Act

The legislation had three significant effects on the creation of military strategy within the services and in the Department of Defense at large. It elevated the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the position of principal military advisor to the president. It also placed the Joint Staff under the Chairman’s direct control. It also gave each regional combatant commander greater power over his or her organization and regional strategy at the expense of the service chiefs. These changes further restricted service leaders’ abilities to influence the development of strategy and formulation of the defense budget,

506Ibid, 57, 58. 507 Memorandum from Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy Seth Cropsey to Secretary of the Navy John Lehman entitled, “Defense Reorganization; Where Things Stand,” Washington D.C., The Naval History and Heritage Command Archives, The Papers of Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr, Defense Reorganization files, Box 18. 192 as well as the roles and force structure of the services. Finally, the Goldwater Nichols Act had the effect of diverting talented officers from their traditional roles on service staffs to the heretofore less desirable joint and CINC staffs. One of the Navy’s official spokesmen for the Maritime Strategy stated in 1985 that, “no meaningful, single-service strategy was possible in the modern era,” and that the Navy referred to the Maritime Strategy as, “the maritime component of the national strategy,” where the Army and Air Force were included.508 This trend affected not only the strategy-producing elements of the OPNAV staff, but also the acquisition management offices. Line officers who heretofore also served within the acquisition elements of the Navy staff were also diverted. This move tended to separate the future leadership of the service from the process that produced the tools of warfare capability they would wield as senior leaders of combat formations.509

The Goldwater Nichols legislation fundamentally shifted the balance of power in defense authority from the services to a “joint” construct, but in the words of one critic of the legislation, “never offered a positive model of how amore joint military would think or perform.”510Vice Admiral Henry Mustin described the effect of the legislation on a Navy that was in his words, “very, very hard over against it. John Lehman, who was the

Secretary of the Navy, was very hard over against it. Nonetheless it was the law of the land, and so we had all the transition pains as the authority for many, many of the issues that affect the armed forces migrated from the services to the Chairman of the Joint

508Linton F. Brooks, “Naval Power and National Security, The Case for the Maritime Strategy,” International Security, Vol 11, No 2, (Fall 1986), 59. 509 Nemfakos, Blickstein, McCarthy and Sollinger, p. 48. 510 Seth Cropsey, “The Limits of Jointness,” The Joint Forces Quarterly, (Summer, 1993), 29. 193

Chiefs.”511The changes brought about by the Goldwater Nichols Act were documented in

Department of Defense Directive 5100.1 of 3 April 1987.512

It became evident as the 1980’s came to a close that the Navy would need to implement the provisions of the Goldwater Nichols legislation in an environment in which “senior four-star officers no longer had control of the fleet.”513 While the service chiefs had been physically removed from the operational military chain of command in

1958 as part of the Eisenhower reform package and no longer commanded any deployed forces, they still retained significant influence over such forces through their service component commanders. These senior three star officers communicated freely with the

CNO during the production and evolution of the 1980s-era Maritime Strategy.514 While anchored in the Navy’s traditional responsibility to provide naval force through the 600- ship Navy concept, the Maritime Strategy also served as a “contingent war-fighting doctrine” describing how the U.S. Navy proposed to combat the Soviet Union across the multiple regional commands.515

The Maritime Strategy was the latest in a series of naval strategic documents from the late 1940s to the 1980s that sought to articulate the Navy’s place in Cold War era national strategy. They had generally been produced at the behest and under the guidance

511 Mustin Oral History, 185. 512 Lindsey Eilon and Jack Lyon, “The Evolution of Department of Defense Directive 5100.1; Fuctions of the Department of Defense and its Major Components,” (Washington D.C.: A Defense White Paper, The Office of the Secretary of Defense, Director, Adminsitration and Management, Organizational Management and Planning, April 2010), 22. 513 Interview with Captain R. Robinson (Robby) Harris, USN (ret), 22 Sept. 2014. 514 Christopher A. Ford and David A. Rosenberg, “The Naval Intelligence Underpinnings of Reagan’s Maritime Strategy,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol 28, No 2, (April 2005), 393. 515 Barney Rubel, “What Critics of the Navy’s Strategy Get Wrong”, War on the Rocks, 06 January 2015, electronic copy, http://warontherocks.com/2015/01/what-critics-of-the-navys-strategy-get-wrong/, last accessed: 11 April 2015. 194 of the CNO and the Secretary of the Navy. Some regional combatant commanders resisted this influence at the time. They, not the CNO, were responsible for the employment of combat units against the enemy. Future CJCS, then-Pacific Commander

Admiral William Crowe responded to a 1984 presentation of the Maritime Strategy with,

“I’m not sure why the CNO needs a maritime strategy; I need one, but he doesn’t.”516When serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Crowe told Senator Sam Nunn

(D/Ga) in January 1987 Senate Armed Services Committee testimony that “there is no such thing as a ‘maritime’ or ‘Navy’ strategy for the United States. We have a national strategy and a national military strategy. I do not believe that the scheme known as the

‘maritime strategy’ is a strategy. It is a conceptual way in which you might use naval forces.”517

There was a degree of irony in Crowe’s statement, for while serving on the

OPNAV staff (OP-06; Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Strategy, Plans, and Policy) during the mid-1970s, he had been responsible for creating the OPNAV staff office specifically charged with strategy creation (OP 603) and filling it with strategy experts.518

Dividing the fleet into theaters subject to the individual war-fighting concepts of individual CINCs, not to mention the CINCs’ reluctance to deploy their own ships across

CINC boundaries, hamstrung the Navy’s attempts to organize, train, and equip its forces to deter or confront the Soviet Union on a coherent global basis.

516 John Hattendorf, The U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986,( Newport, RI, The Naval War College Newport Papers Series, 2004), 85. 517 National Security Strategy, hearings before the Committee on the Armed Services, United States Senate, 100th Congress, First Session, 21 January 1987, 452. 518Peter Swartz with Karen Duggan, “U.S. Navy Capstone Strategy and Documents 1970-1980, Strategy, Policy, Concept and Vision Documents”, (Washington D.C., Navy History and Heritage Command, MISC D0026414.A1, December 2011), 33. 195

The Goldwater Nichols Act seemed, at the time, to settle this argument in favor of the strategic primacy of the CJCS and combatant commanders over the service chiefs.

The legislation elevated the Chairman from a position of first-among-equals to being the principal military assistant to the president, and gave the Chairman the authority to convene, set the agenda for, and preside over the meetings of the JCS.519Title II of the

Goldwater Nichols legislation specified that the Joint Staff now worked directly for the

Chairman and not the collective JCS, which greatly empowered the Chairman’s ability to set the wider agenda for the Joint Chiefs.520While individual members of the JCS were not prohibited from offering separate advice to the President on their own initiative, the

Chairman’s own advice took priority in presidential review over that offered by other service chiefs.521 The Chairman was also given significant authority over the strategic planning and assessment functions of the JCS, with responsibility for providing strategic direction and preparing strategic, logistics, and mobility plans for the armed forces.522

The Goldwater Nichols legislation did not make the Chairman a “supreme commander of the military services,” as some reformers had proposed, but it did demand that combatant commanders communicate with the defense secretary and president through the CJCS officeholder, thus allowing the Chairman to act as a “de facto” supreme commander in the eyes of some critics.523 The service chiefs retained their authority to train, equip, and provide forces to the combatant commanders, but

519 United States, 99th Congress, 2nd Session, Public Law 99-433 The Department of Defense Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986, 99th Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 5, Section 151. 520 Paul J. Bolt, Damon Colletta, and Collins G. Shakleford, Editors, American Defense Policy, Eight Edition, (Baltimore. Md, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 152. 521The Department of Defense Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986, Chapter 5, Section 151. 522Ibid, Chapter 5, Section 153. 523 Peter L. Hays, Brenda J. Vallance, and Alan R. Van Tassel, editors’s, American Defense Policy; 1997 Edition, (Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 123. 196 responsibility for strategy appeared, at that time, to reside firmly in joint hands. Some outside observers worried that an empowered Chairman might practice “strategic monism” and emphasize one carefully predicted and orchestrated mission or the needs of one service, as opposed to a “strategic pluralist” who planned for a diversity of threats.524These provisions and potential threats from an unbalanced Chairman would make comprehensive, global, service-based strategic concepts much more difficult to create and implement in the post-Goldwater Nichols era.

Effects on Planning

The effects of the legislation soon manifested themselves in the first post-

Goldwater Nichols Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan in early 1987. Intelligence reporting at that time indicated that a Soviet attack would be evident at least two weeks before it started, thus giving planners time to reinforce Western forces on the Central European front.525 This appraisal led to some planning reassessments regarding where to focus primary U.S. efforts early in a global conflict. Believing that constrained resources might force decision makers to choose between preparing for a global or a regional war, Joint

Staff planners in 1987 had attempted to incorporate greater emphasis on regional planning in the National Military Strategy Document (NMSD) for fiscal years 1990-

94.526 The continued reduction of the Soviet threat, particularly the Soviets’ decreasing ability to project power into Central Europe and the Persian Gulf, allowed Joint Staff

524 Mackubin Thomas Owens, “The Hollow Promise of JCS Reform,” International Security, Winter 1985- 1986, Volume 10, #3, 106, 107. 525 Lorna Jaffe, History of the Base Force, (Washington D.C., Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint History Office, July, 1993), 2. 526 Ibid. 197 planners to focus more on regional strategies. The Director of the Joint Staff Planning

Office (J5) in 1989, Major General George Lee Butler, made the projection of increased warning time a justification for greater focus on regional planning.527

The Joint Staff might have been planning for the end of the Cold War, but the

Navy was not convinced that the Soviet Union was finished in terms of seapower. CNO

Admiral Trost had been fighting this assumption since late 1987 we he, “realized that there was a perception that the Maritime Strategy was confined to dealing with the existing threat posed by the Soviet navy’s increasingly capable naval forces.”528 He was very concerned when Congress began to suggest budget cuts as the Soviet threat waned.

Trost had been the first Navy chief to visit the Soviet Union when he conducted a series of lectures and visits there in October 1989.529He remained convinced that the Soviet

Union could be a threat, but more importantly sought to convince those in Congress desiring a “peace dividend” to consider the Navy’s global missions regardless of the

Soviet threat and size of force required to meet them. Trost added elements on operations in the Pacific in the 1988 and 1989 versions of the Maritime Strategy in hopes of shifting the focus away from Europe and the Atlantic, but he remained committed to the concept that the Soviet Union was the primary U.S. threat.530

The bulk of the Joint Staff, however, was already committed to the idea of an impending end to the Cold War and coming to terms with an expected drawdown in defense spending. The new office of the Force Structure, Resource, and Assessments

527Ibid, pp. 7-9. 528 John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz, editors, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, 259. 529Ibid,309. 530Ibid, 271. 198

Directorate (J8), a product of the Goldwater Nichols Act, conducted a review of several force-reduction strategies entitled the “Quiet Study.” However, the departing Chairman,

Admiral William Crowe, did not want to recommend force reductions in the absence of a new presidential strategy.531As a result, J8 conducted a second Quiet Study that further focused on regional vice global conflicts.

The study’s conclusions were embraced by the new Chairman, whose own assumptions on the change to regional strategy were closely aligned with the language of the Quiet Study 2 report. The appointment of General Colin Powell to the Chairmanship by President George H. W. Bush in 1989 significantly aided in the transformation from global to regional-based strategy. General Powell embraced the new authority granted him under Goldwater Nichols “with alacrity” and used it to advance a post-Cold War agenda of change.532 General Powell expanded the J5 and J8 projects into a combined effort that eventually recommended a 25 percent cut in overall military strength and a change to a regional strategic focus. A briefing entitled “A View to the 90s” was produced that encapsulated the views of the Chairman as well as Defense Secretary

Richard Cheney, who largely agreed with Powell’s assessment. These changes also were incorporated into the President’s National Security Strategy and the Defense Planning

Guidance (DPG), which were both products of the Goldwater Nichols legislation. Powell viewed his new defense strategy as “analysis by instinct” rather than reliance on,

“intelligence, estimates, war games, or computer projections.” He later observed, “My

531 Lorna Jaffe, History of the Base Force, 9, 10. 532 Don Snider (with the Office of Net Assessment), “Strategy, Forces, and Budgets; Dominant Influences in Executive Decision-making, Post Cold War, 1989-1991”, (Carlisle, PA, The United States Army War College, The US Army 4th Annual Strategy Conference, 24-25 February 1993), 10. 199 thoughts were guided simply by what I had observed at world summits, by my experience at the NSC, and by what I like to think of as informed intuition.”533

The Battle is Joined

General Powell’s full presentation of these changes at a 26 February 1990 meeting of the Joint Chiefs and regional commanders was the services’ first chance to oppose or propose changes to the Chairman’s concept. The Navy, under the leadership of

Admiral Carlisle Trost, disagreed with the naval force structure outlined in “A View to the 90s.” Admiral Trost believed the Soviet Union still posed a global naval threat, and he had two specific complaints about the proposed force structure directly related to the effects of the Goldwater Nichols Act. First, and most importantly, “the Navy had not been a part of the development of the force before it was ‘laid on the table’ with the strategy, and thus was not privy to the analysis that validated its size and capabilities.”534

Second, due to this lack of naval participation, the proposed naval force was too small to be effective in the rotational forward presence mission it was intended to fill.535

Admiral Trost was fighting an uphill battle. Before his planned testimony on force posture in April 1990, Senate Armed Services Committee members Senators Sam Nunn and (R-VA) both said that the “Chiefs needed to come up here with a different story this year, it’s time to reduce.”536Trost made one last attempt to make his point two months before his retirement in the summer of 1990. In a May 1990 article for

533Karen DeYoung, Soldier, The Life of Colin Powell, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2006), 188. 534 Snider, p. 16. 535 Ibid. 536Ibid, 17. 200 the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Trost stated, “the Maritime Strategy’s origins predate the Cold War” and was “designed to support the entire spectrum of actions needed to represent U.S. global interests as a maritime nation and a world superpower.”537 Trost reminded readers that despite the changes implemented by General

Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet Union, “possesses an impressive ocean-going navy and continues to modernize.”538

Trost’s efforts were largely in vain due to the institutional superiority of the Joint

Staff and the Chairman. Passage of the Goldwater Nichols Act enabled Powell to create naval force structure recommendations without input from the Navy’s service chief, and made possible congressional favoring of Powell’s proposal over the objections of the responsible service chief. As one chief noted, “the planning for the defense build-down was a case of someone determining in advance what was needed, and then seeing that the result was produced.”539The Navy had suggested as early as in the Richardson Committee hearings in 1945 that if non-naval military authorities were allowed to decide naval force structure size, “there is a real danger that one component will be seriously affected by the decisions of one man to the detriment of the effectiveness of the Armed Forces as a whole.”540

General Powell further strengthened the hand of joint rather than service-based planning in the research, planning, and implementation of the first National Military

537 Carlisle Trost, “Maritime Strategy for the 1990’s,” (The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol 116, No 5, (May 1990), 92. 538Ibid, 95. 539 Ibid. 540Jeffrey Barlow, From Hot War to Cold, The U.S. Navy and National Security Affairs, 1945-1955, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 83. 201

Strategy associated with the new National Security Strategy and DPG. There was broad agreement that a change in focus from global to regional-based strategies was in order, although some global plans against residual Soviet action persisted.541 These concepts formed the basis of the 1991 Contingency Planning Guidance (CPG) document, which

“established a new framework for operational planning based upon both the changes that had taken place in the strategic environment and expected force reductions.”542 The CPG in turn was the basis for the Joint Strategic Contingency Planning (JSCP) document that was the basis for the new 1991 National Military Strategy (NMS) that was adopted on 27

January 1992.543 The latter document directed the regional commanders in chief to

“prepare operational plans that focused on regional threats.”544These regional plans were implemented by the regional commanders (CINCs) in the early and mid-1990, although some commanders had taken into account regional concerns since the 1980’s. The U.S.

Central Command that began life as the Carter administration’s Rapid Deployment Joint

Task Force for the Middle East had taken into account regional concerns since its inception.545The service chiefs all objected in varying degrees to the new strategy, but when confronted with President Bush’s demand to reduce the defense budget due to the end of the Cold War, they quickly assented and moved to protect their respective budgets.546 The results of the Gulf War also appeared to “validate the conceptual

541Jaffe, pp. 45, 46. 542Ibid, p. 46. 543Ibid, p. 49. 544Ibid, p. 46. 545Steven K. Metz, Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy, (Washington D.C.: Potomac Books, 2008), 5, 6. 546 Snider,12-17. 202 underpinnings of the new military strategy,” discouraging further argument over its scope and implementation.547

These changes were especially hard on the Navy. It struggled to adjust to a new national military strategy, a new force structure determined by outsiders, and a fundamental shift in the service’s own maritime strategy concepts. Admiral Frank Kelso, who replaced Admiral Trost as CNO in 1990, had planned to write a comprehensive naval plan on a logical reduction of naval forces for the postwar world, but could not gain the concurrence of the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Defense fast enough to get ahead of General Powell’s efforts.548 This effort later appeared in the Naval Institute

Proceedings in April 1991.549Kelso said, “I never got approval to publish the article in time for it to have the effect I desired. It was finally published after General Powell came up with a 450-ship Navy that he called a base force.” Kelso later stated that the article had “Absolutely zero effect or impact, because it was not a ‘put your step forward.’ It was ‘Okay, you’ve been drug down ship by ship now.’ In other words, it came after the fact that the reductions had started.”550

Not only was the senior naval leadership no longer in command of the fleet, those leaders’ opinions on naval strategy and force structure were rejected in favor of that of an army general, supported by a Joint Staff, which included naval officers that had been effectively decoupled from naval leadership. While defense cuts were inevitable in the

547Ibid, p. 28. 548 Frank B. Kelso II with Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, U.S. Navy (Retired), (Annapolis, Md: The U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2009), 669. 549 H Lawrence Garrett III, Frank B. Kelso II, and A.M. Gray, “The Way Ahead,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol 117, No 4, (April 1991), 36. 550Kelso, Reminiscences, 669. 203 wake of the Cold War’s end, as they had been after the Second World War, Korea, and

Vietnam, in this case the CJCS rather than the CNO or even the Secretary of the Navy made the recommendation to Congress and the President as to what naval forces would be retained. The Navy’s inability to exert influence on its size, composition, and missions would negatively impact the ability of naval leadership to create strategy from 1991 onward.

The New Perspective

The Chairman’s new powers also extended to the strategic orientation of the services. Before 1986, naval officers involved in strategic and operational planning had been accustomed to think of broad ocean areas as single conceptual units, and the older naval organization of the Atlantic and Pacific commands had reinforced that way of thinking.551The Chairman’s new powers, however, included the right to periodically review and adjust the missions, responsibilities, geographic boundaries, and force structure of each combatant command.552

The Navy had historically seen the whole of the world’s oceans as a unitary theater of action uniquely suited to naval control. The service had not fully articulated this concept on paper until the creation of the first version of the Maritime Strategy in

October 1982.553 Naval leaders had also been loath to give land-based commanders any

551Hattendorf, Selected Documents, 6. 552 United States, 99th Congress, 2nd Session, Public Law 99-433 The Department of Defense Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986, 99th Congress, 2nd Session, Chapter 6, section 161. 553Author phone interview with Captain William Spencer Johnson, USN (ret), 01 Jul 2015. 204 control over ocean areas due to their belief in a unitary global ocean battle space.554

While a global Cold War supported the Navy’s view, its end allowed for the development of a number of regional strategies.

General Powell’s “View of the 1990s” briefing was based on his vision that the disintegration of the Soviet Empire called for new regional strategies that should assume the United States would remain a superpower due to its military capabilities, forces, and alliance relationships.555 His solution to this challenge involved reshaping not only the force structure but the geographically defined battle space in which that force operated.

Naval historian John Hattendorf described the effect of this change on the Navy as one of

“structural change in command authority” that “had the intended effect of increasing joint strategic and operational planning in specific geographical locations, but also had the unintended effect of making it more difficult to implement coordinated concepts for oceans—the natural geographical unit of maritime space.”556

This process began even before Powell was appointed Chairman. The 1987 review of combatant command (COCOM) boundaries required by the Goldwater Nichols

Act generated several disputes between the services. The Army attempted to revive a previous plan for a sub-unified Northeast Asia Command centered on the Korean

Peninsula, but this requirement was rejected in the course of the Joint Chiefs’ review.557

Of more concern was an appraisal of whether U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)

554 Edward Drea et al., History of the Unified Command Plan, 1946-2012, (Washington D.C.: Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint History Office, 2013), 70. 555 Don Snider (with the Office of Net Assessment), 11. 556 John Hattendorf ed, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, 2006) , 6. 557Drea et al, 70. 205 should assume responsibility for the eastern Mediterranean water space directly adjacent to the “confrontational” states of Israel, Syria, and Lebanon.558 CNO Admiral Trost counter proposed that both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf be reassigned to U.S. Pacific

Command (PACOM), arguing that “USCINCCENT could not carry out his mission without command of the seas stretching all the way back to the California coast, which was USCINCPAC’s responsibility.” In the end, the JCS review made only a moderate change—it assigned limited areas of the Gulfs of Oman and Aden to USCENTOCM— and even so Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger had to personally intervene to settle the situation.559 The Navy’s objections to the proposed changes to COCOM oceanic boundaries demonstrated the service’s concept of a unified ocean area of responsibility within which the inherent maneuverability, reach, power, and flexibility of naval forces could be optimally deployed and redeployed to meet the nation’s challenges.

The Navy had mixed success in retaining its traditional maritime responsibilities during General Powell’s 1991 COCOM review. The new Strategic Command

(STRATCOM) and North American Command (USACOM) had force structures favorable to naval leadership, but USACOM acquired maritime geographic responsibilities over the objections of the Navy and Marine Corps leadership. General

Powell in particular desired that the Navy gunnery range in Vieques, Puerto Rico, be available for joint exercises.560

558Ibid, 62. 559Ibid, 63. 560 Ibid. 206

Changes through the 90s

These adjustments to COCOM boundaries and areas of responsibility were minor in comparison with changes yet to come in the late 1990s. It was the chairman’s greater

Goldwater Nichols-mandated authority that made them possible, and they supported the continued shift from a global to a regional-based strategy in the aftermath of the Cold

War. The 1992 Presidential Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) stated “We can shift our defense planning from a focus on the global threat posed by the Warsaw Pact to focus on the less demanding regional threats and challenges we are more likely to face in the future.”561 This document further identified four elements of the regional defense concept: planning for uncertainty, shaping the future security environment, maintenance of “,” and continued U.S. leadership to maintain security and prevent the rise of a successor to the Soviet Union.562

Although the CINC positions were originally designed as regional commands for a global conflict with the Soviet Union, they took on new prominence after 1991 as the active facilitators of a new world order friendly to U.S. interests. This new role was stated in a 16 April 1992 memorandum by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul

Wolfowitz on the contents of the 1992 DPG: “The perceived ability of the U.S. to act independently, if necessary, is thus an important factor, even in the cases where we do not actually do so.”563 Wolfowitz went on to recommend:

561 Various, “Defense Planning Guidance: 1994-1999”, Washington D.C, National Security Council, 16 April 1992, 4, electronic resource, http://www.archives.gov/declassification/iscap/pdf/2008-003-docs1- 12.pdf, last accessed 9 April 2015. 562Ibid, 4. 563Ibid, 8. 207

Our forward presence helps to shape the evolving security environment. We will continue to rely on forward presence of U.S. forces to show U.S. commitment and lend credibility to our alliances, to deter aggression, enhance regional stability, promote U.S. influence and access, and, when necessary, provide an initial crisis-response capability. Forward presence is vital to the maintenance of the system of collective defense by which the United States has been able to work with our friends and allies to protect our security interests, while minimizing the burden of defense spending and of unnecessary arms competition.

Although the new post-Cold War national strategy and national military strategy were the original products of the civilian presidential administration and defense secretariat, the principal military inputs came from the Joint Staff who worked for the Chairman. The services provided only input that was limited to a defense of their spending programs. In comparison with the environment in which the Navy produced the Maritime Strategy, it had lost control of the argument about the size and composition of its force and how and where it would fight.

The Navy’s Legacy of Strategists

This change in the Navy’s fortunes was not due to a deficiency in qualified strategic thinkers. The service had cultivated a cadre of experts since the days of War

Plan Orange when Navy strategists such as Charles “Savvy” Cooke and Richmond K.

Turner accurately anticipated the maritime strategy and course of the future Pacific war of 1941-1945.564This tradition continued throughout the Cold War, with the service mentoring and sustaining a number of experts in naval strategy. While these officers were assigned operational, fleet-related billets in the course of their regular career paths, they

564Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange, The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1991), 368. 208 were also rotated through a small number of strategic planning offices on the CNO’s staff.565 They often worked in concert with civilian academics at the Naval War College; the traditional home of naval strategic thought and culture since the days of Alfred

Thayer Mahan in the late nineteenth century.566

These officers were the product of what naval historian John Hattendorf called “a resurgence in strategic thinking in the U.S. Navy” in response to the tenure of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, during which long-range planning had been reduced to a series of five-year planning cycles.567 CNO Admiral Elmo Zumwalt first sought to create a new cadre of strategists through the Naval War College. This effort was not entirely successful. The overall curriculum of the War College improved thanks to the efforts of then-President Vice Admiral Stansfield Turner, but the school did not attract enough of the Navy’s best to rapidly create a new strategic culture.568 Zumwalt’s other focus, however—on strategic problems in the Pacific and Indian Oceans—did create the desired strategic culture through the CNO office staffs that worked on these issues.569

The CNO OP-06 and the newly created OP-00K (CNO Executive Panel) offices in particular were a veritable breeding ground for naval strategic thinkers over the course of the 1970s and early 1980s. These officers worked in close cooperation with the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Fleet Staffs, and the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) and did much of the planning and staff work that led to and included the Maritime Strategy of the

565John B. Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers #19, 2003), 76-79. 566 John Tetsuro Sumida, Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command, The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered, (Baltimore, Md: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 21. 567 Hattendorf, The U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 8. 568 Ibid. 569 Jeffrey I. Sands, On His Watch, Admiral Zumwalt’s Attempts to Institutionalize Strategic Change, (Alexandria, VA, The Center for Naval Analyses, CRM 93/22, July 1993), 23, 59 209

1980s. The Navy did have a strategy subspeciality code that officers could acquire through appropriate military or civilian education, but this cadre of strategic experts was informally organized. This was especially true in the case of the strategy experts assigned to the CNO’s staff. Captain William Spencer Johnson, who served multiple assignments in the OP-06 office in the 1970s and 1980s, recalled that the executive assistant (EA) to the flag officer in charge of OP-06 kept a wooden box in his office with file cards detailing those who had served in OP-06. This simple filing system recorded the officer’s current service billet, and when he or she would again be available for service on the OP-

06 staff. The admiral in charge of OP-06 essentially had unofficial detailing authority over these officers, and with the support of Naval Personnel Command could order their return when requested.570

The officers who headed the OP-06 office included a number of former fleet commanders, among whom were Admirals James “Ace” Lyons, Henry “Hank” Mustin, and Charles Larson, as well as future CJCS Admiral William Crowe. Some staff members such as flag officers Crowe, Lyons, Vice Admiral Art Moreau, Rear Admiral

Ron Marryott and staff officers Captains Peter Swartz, Rodger Barnett and William

Spencer Johnson completed multiple tours within the OP-06 organization over the course of their careers.571 Multiple assignments within OP-06 produced a strong but largely unofficial strategic community of talented men and women within the larger CNO staff.

The efforts of Undersecretary of the Navy Bob Murray stimulated the CNO,

Admiral Hayward, to create the CNO’s Strategic Study Group (SSG) in the summer of

570Author phone interview with Captain William Spencer Johnson, USN (retired), 01 July 2015, and author phone interview with Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (retired), 28 August 2016. 571Author phone interview with Captain William Spencer Johnson, USN (retired), 01 July 2015. 210

1981. The group was convened under Murray’s leadership and mentorship, assisted by

Commander Kenneth McGruther, Naval Reserve Commander John Hanley, and others.

The initial purpose of the group, according to Commander McGruther, was to “reinforce in the Soviet mind the perception that it could not win a war with the United States, both before a war, to enhance deterrence, and at all phases of the war should it occur.”572

The first two SSGs became very influential in determining how elements of the new Maritime Strategy would eventually be employed. Bob Murray desired that the group work on problems of strategy and theater operations that would broad enough to be useful, but narrow enough in scope to be reasonably accomplished. The SSG could not accomplish these goals in isolation and would need to travel around the world and discuss its proposals with multiple senior officers and staffs.573Their feedback was important to the builders of naval strategy in OP 60. Commander McGruther, a protégé of Admiral

Moreau and former OP 603 staff officer, kept the OP 60 staff appraised the work of the

CNO strategy group.574The SSG continued operating throughout of the 1980s and supported further improvements in the emerging maritime strategy.

The other important product coming from both the OPNAV strategy offices and the SSG were the officers themselves, those who gained great professional expertise from their assignments to these groups.575 They constituted an expanding cadre of strategic- minded officers trained to both create strategy and anticipate responses to that strategy from opponents. The interaction of the OPNAV strategy offices such as OP 603, the

572Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 54. 573Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 45-46. 574Author telephone interview with Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 26 August 2016. 575Author interview with Captain R. Robinson (Robby) Harris, USN (ret), 22 September 2014.

211

SSG, and naval intelligence experts channeled the inspiration for a new naval strategy to

confront the Soviet Union into plans and war-fighting doctrine useful to operational

commanders. This group’s combination of operational, academic, and cooperative

experience was well suited to the rapid and effective production and updating of strategy-

related materials. The changes wrought by the Goldwater Nichols legislation would

eventually relegate this group from an officially constituted forum to an ad hoc assembly maintained by the members themselves. This alteration occurred through modification of both missions and personnel composition of these cooperative strategic entities.

One of the most contested aspects of the legislation was the establishment of a rigorous qualification, assignment, and management program for joint-duty officers. Due to a perceived predilection in the services to assign less-qualified officers to the Joint

Staff, Congress required the Secretary of Defense to submit an annual Joint Officer

Management (JOM) report to the legislative branch. This document was to report joint duty officers ‘number, promotion rate, and promotion rate in comparison with non-joint

qualified officers, and to which billets each service assigned such officers.

One of the other significant changes in officer assignments was the requirement

for joint duty assignments for promotion to the flag ranks. The Army and Air Force

tended to assign those officers not required for active, operational assignments to

Washington DC staff duty, so they never suffered from a lack of personnel to fill joint

assignments. The Navy, however, that was constantly operational at sea, as opposed to

the Army and Air Force who remained largely in garrison bases, did not have the same

surplus of officers who could be assigned to joint billets. Vice Admiral Mustin explained 212

the problem from his view as OP 06 as the provisions of Goldwater Nichols were

enacted. He stated

What happened in all of this was, it became apparent that the Navy officers’ structure was not adequate to man both the Navy and this burgeoning joint arena. There are more officers in Air Force ground than there are in the Navy. At the time the only headquarters that was absolute one-third, one-third, one- third was CinCPac. But none of the others was. We just didn’t have enough people to man these, to make sure that Navy views were properly represented in the operations of these new commands. So CinCCent, which was created during this time, had a very small Navy representation on the staff.576

Mustin knew the Navy had to conform to the new system. There was also a short timeline for the Navy to achieve results. The CJCS Admiral Crowe was insistent and not in the mood to give waivers; even to his own service. Mustin later recalled,

My personal view was that we had to try to integrate the Navy into this new structure, because, like it or not, we were going to have to live with it. It was very difficult. And Bill Crowe had a scoreboard that he was keeping on it. He gave us a year to work that out. The first flag list, which I had been on the selection board, was sent down and asked for a waiver for some really good nuclear guys, we got it. The next time I was not on the flag board. Same thing, asked for a waiver, and Crowe said no, the waiver period’s expired; those guys can’t be flag officers. Everything sort of came to a boil at that time, which exacerbated the Navy’s feuds with the Air Force, with the Army, and with the Chairman himself. It was very difficult.577

Mustin and CNO Trost eventually secured some additional waivers, but these proved to be a temporary reprieve. This focus on joint assignments, especially as a hurdle for promotion to flag rank caused a significant shift in where the talented officers of each service were assigned.

The Navy Staff suspected this outcome with the passage of the legislation.

Captain Tom Fedyszyn, a former OP 603 strategist with a PhD in political science, then

576Mustin Oral History, 186. 577Ibid, 188. 213

serving on the OPNAV staff in the 00K office, recalled the analysis he did on the

promotion rates of O-4 (Lieutenant Commander) to O-6 (Captain) as part of his

observations on the progress of the Goldwater Nichols legislation at the behest of Deputy

Under Secretary of the Navy Seth Cropsey. Assignment to the OPNAV staff generally

meant an 80% to 90% promotion rate, while the promotion rate for those assigned to the

Joint Staff was at the 30% to 50% level.578 As a close observer of the legislation’s

progress, Fedyszyn knew immediately what the implications of the changes posed for the

OPNAV staff in terms of quality personnel. He drafted a memo to CNO Admiral Trost

explaining the likely outcomes of the Goldwater Nichols Act, including a prediction that

quality officers would quickly migrate to the Joint Staff in response to the legislation.

Admiral Trost replied that he was not surprised and laconically agreed that the Navy staff

would have to adjust to a new reality.579

Although the whole of the OPNAV staff would be affected by the Goldwater

Nichols joint personnel provisions, the strategy branch would in some ways bear the brunt of the changes. The OP-06 office had risen to prominence during the 1980s in the

course of its work with the Maritime Strategy. CNOs Hayward and Watkins as well as

Secretary Lehman valued its inputs and contributions (along with those of the OO-K office) to the creation of the Maritime Strategy and its communication to a wider audience. The emphasis demanded by Goldwater Nichols on joint vice service-centric activities, however, helped bring about a significant reorganization in the OPNAV office

578Author telephone inetrview with Captain Thomas Fedyszyn, USN (ret), 5 May 2016. 579 Ibid. 214

structure that weakened the influence of OP-06 on both naval and wider strategic

concerns.

In 1992 and 1993, CNO Kelso conducted a major reorganization of the OPNAV staff structure in response to the Goldwater Nichols Act provisions; it was conceptualized and implemented by Vice Admiral Bill Owens, one of the members of the first SSG. OP codes became N-coded offices that mirrored the Joint Staff. A new and powerful N8

office (Integration of Capabilities and Resources) was constructed to include the warfare

“baron” offices of OP-02, -03, and -05 (Deputy CNOs for submarine, surface, and air

warfare, respectively); Owens was the first to head the new office).580 N8 was

considerably more powerful than the old OP-06 in a new world in which Goldwater

Nichols had determined that services only built, trained, and equipped forces, but did not conduct strategic planning for their use. OP-06 itself became N3/N5 and lost influence, as

OPNAV had considerably less influence on the Joint Staff now that it worked for the

CJCS alone and not the collective Joint Chiefs.581

The Other Guys who did Strategy; The Navy’s Analysts

Where the OP 06 and OP 603 offices had been among the incubators of future

Navy leaders in the 1970’s and early to mid-1980, the N8 organization slowly eclipsed it as the new home of future Navy leaders. Similar to OP 06, the Navy’s analysis shop had its own “roll call of heroes” that had risen to high rank since Navy Secretary

580 Peter M. Swartz with MichaelC. Markowitz, Organizing OPNAV, 1970-2009, (Alexandria, VA: The Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) and The Navy History and Heritage Command, CAB D0020997.A5/2Rev, January 2010), 49. 581Ibid, 42. 215

first established the OPNAV analysis shop (OP 96) in 1966 with Captain and future CNO

Elmo Zumwalt as the first Director.582 Former OP 96 officers that rose to flag rank

included Pacific Commander and National Intelligence Director Admiral Dennis Blair,

future CNO Admiral Vern Clark, and Office of Force Transformation Director Vice

Admiral Arthur Cebrowski among many. A small number of very talented officers that

moved between the strategy and analysis disciplines also achieved flag rank including

Admiral Harry Train, and Rear Admirals Jim Stark.

One of the additional enabling factors for the resurgence of the analysts over the

strategists was their more established academic qualifications and established career path.

While not all of the Navy’s operations analysts hailed from the Naval Postgraduate

School (NPS) Operations Analysis Department, many came with solid science and

technology backgrounds from civilian schools. The Navy Operations Research

subspecialty dated from 1951, and was well developed by 1966 when the Navy created

the OP 96.583 It was further refined and had its own institutional “feeder” school in the

NPS Operations Research program. There dedicated analysts such as former OP 96

Deputy Director Captain Wayne P. Hughes, USN who continued to refine the curriculum

and provide top quality analysts to first OP 96, and after 1992 its successor N81.584 In

contrast, the Navy strategy subspecialty suffered from a lack of formal standards and

remained an informal enterprise throughout this period of transition. The Navy had

582Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., (2002) Navy Operations Research. Operations Research 50(1):103-111. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.50.1.103.17786, 106. 583Ibid, 06. 584 29 October 2014 email from Wayne Hughes to Peter Swartz on Lack of Navy Strategy, (Washington D.C., The Personal and Professional papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), N96 file, used with permission by the author. 216

developed a Chair in Naval Strategy position at NPS in 1988 in order to develop a more

stable career path for Navy strategy experts, but this position was eliminated in a

curriculum review in 2000.585 The position’s institutional authority had already been

diminished following the end of the Maritime Strategy as an official U.S. Navy concept

in 1990, and by Admiral Kelso’s OPNAV reorganization of 1992 that reduced the

influence of OP 06/OP 603’s successor N3/N5/N513.586

The analysts returned to power slowly, but gained in authority and influence over

time. Admiral Trost’s accession to the CNO position was the beginning of this process.

The provisions of the Goldwater Nichols Act also played a significant role. The Joint

Requirements Oversight Council had been first established in June 1986 following

Department of Defense instruction.587 It was staffed with relatively low-ranking service

vice chiefs of staff and chaired by the Joint Staff director. The provisions of the

Goldwater Nichols Act caused the four-star Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to be appointed as its new chairman. The JROC was specifically tasked with, “submitting

alternative budget and program recommendations to the Secretary of Defense.”588In addition, the business of long range forecasting and associated naval planning had lapsed

following the reorganization of the systems analysis offices (OP 96 and its OP 965

branch) in 1983. The CNO’s 00K staff, and a short-lived 00X staff had undertaken some

efforts, but none matching the efforts of the analysis branches. The OP 06 strategy branch

585 Email from Professor Mitch Brown, U.S. Naval War College, Naval Postgraduate School campus to the author, 8 June 2016. 586Swartz, with Markowitz, 54. 587Richard Meinhart, “Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Leadership of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council,” The Joint Forces Quarterly, Issue #56 (1st Quarter 2010), 145. 588William Owens, “JROC, Harnessing the Revolution in Military Affairs,” The Joint Forces Quarterly (Summer 1994), 56. 217 was also uninterested; as they were fully engaged in the successive updates of the

Maritime Strategy.589 Extended planning was again required in support of the new JCS

(JROC) mission of long-range program oversight. This new emphasis on program management over time, the requirements those programs filled and the budgets that supported them called for an increased priority for analysis vice political/military strategy in the early 1990’s.

This change is exemplified by the establishment of the N81 office within the new

N8 office, born of the 1992 OPNAV reorganization conducted by CNO Admiral Kelso.

The newly formed N8 division, led by a Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (three-star admiral), combined the previous functions of the Navy’s warfare area experts (undersea, surface and air warfare) and added a Marine Corps-led Expeditionary warfare division.

All of these former three star, now-two star positions were now under the control of N8, who was given control of the OPNAV-wide process of program assessment.590The business of assessment required analysts with programmatic experience rather than political military strategy experts in order to manage the fleet’s force structure and planning. The large number of OPNAV staff personnel assigned to N8 gave it inherent power over shrinking offices like OP 06’s successor N3/N5. Admiral Owens, who led the new N8 organization, explained the significance of this change. He stated,

The reorganization greatly bolstered the institutional power of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Resources, Requirements, and Assessments (N8). The office (N8) that emerged from the staff reorganization had the staff authority to establish

589Swartz with Markowitz, 40. 590Ibid, 54. 218

requirements for future naval forces, allocate money among those requirements and judge the implications and effectiveness of the allocations.591

Admiral Owens was also in charge of the analysis-driven process that directly supported the new N8 powers. The Joint Mission Assessment (JMA) Process was in

Owens’ words, “a new program assessment structure. That structure was essentially a matrix that made program advocates justify their programs in terms of their contribution

to the new (joint) mission areas.”592The imposition of the JMA process also served to

reduce the power of what had been the three star flag officer leaders of the Navy’s

individual warfare disciplines of surface, subsurface and aviation warfare. By reducing

their bureaucratic status, Owens believed that Navy would focus instead on service-wide

innovation and .593The key interlocutor for this new organization

was the N81 Assessments division with the parent N8 structure. N81 was a worthy successor to the OP 96 and OP 965 offices that once held the bulk of the Navy’s uniformed and civilian analysts. The JMAs it serviced and supported were the lineal descendants of Defense Secretary McNamara’s functional mission organization concepts for the U.S. Navy. Bruce Powers, who joined N81 in 1994, described its mission as follows,

In N81, we were focused on the first ‘‘P’’ in PPBS (Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System). That was like the ‘‘architect’’ phase of building a home. The perspective was often that of the whole Navy, and it was always cost- constrained. So proposals for inclusion of additional ships or aircraft types had to be accompanied by trade-offs, or off-sets, of equal cost. Skilled teams of analysts, military and civilian, worked on these trade-off issues. Most of the

591William A. Owens, High Seas, The Naval Passage to an Uncharted World, (Annapolis, Md: The United States Naval Institute Press, 1995), 126. 592 Ibid, pp. 127-128 593 William A. Owens with Ed Offley, Lifting the Fog of War, (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2000),166-167. 219

officers had a master’s degree in OR from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey (where I later taught OR).594

Powers further described some of connection between the 1980’s era OP 96 systems

analysis office and the N81 organization. He stated:

It was basically the analytical arm of OpNav. It evolved from its earlier days when it did cost effectiveness and other kinds of analyses. It didn’t do very well during the Lehman era as Sec Nav, and he cut it back and reduced its size, and reduced its mission. But after Lehman left the Sec Nav job, it was restored to some of its earlier health. And I moved to N81 because of the CNO at the time. Boorda was his name. He said he wanted to re-vitalize N81 and turn it back into what Op 96 had been earlier.”595

Even though Admiral Mike Boorda’s tenure as CNO did not begin until two years after the reforms of Admiral Kelso first created N81, Powers’ comments suggest the connections between the new analysis arm of N8 and its OP 96 predecessor. The resurgence of N81 came at the expense of the flag officer discussion process instituted by

Admiral Owens.596

The SSG also changed in form and content, but perhaps less directly than the

offices of the OPNAV staff. The SSG moved from being a Cold War naval strategy and

operations think tank to being a wider DIME (diplomatic, information, military, economic) effort.597 It acquired its first members outside the Navy and Marine Corps in

1993 and its focus for a time became identifying future global trends and their

implications for the Navy. Much of this change was precipitated by the end of the Cold

War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, but some was in response to the activities of

594 Bob Sheldon and Mike Garrambone, “The Oral History of Dr. Bruce Powers”, Military Operations Research Magazine, (Vol 21 No 2.) 595Ibid, 118. 596Author telephone interview with Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (retired), 26 August 2016. 597 Interview with Captain R. Robinson ( Robby) Harris, USN (ret), 22 Sep 2014. 220 the empowered office of the CJCS. The Chairman, rather than Navy flag officers, now made force-structure recommendations.

Budget and Other Challenges

Admiral Kelso had replaced Admiral Trost as CNO in June 1990 and was immediately confronted by a host of direct and indirect challenges to the maintenance of a robust naval force structure. The Navy’s budget had grown from $57.4 billion in 1981 to $100.3 billion in 1988, but fell back below $100 billion in 1989 and 1990.598The

Navy’s budget would rise significantly in 1991, primarily for First Gulf War requirements to $103.5 billion, but then decreased steadily to $79.5 billion in

1997.599Kelso acknowledged in his Senate confirmation hearing that the Maritime

Strategy was “on the shelf,” and that the 600-ship Navy concept should be replaced by a more flexible objective.600 The end of the Maritime Strategy and change of CNO leadership created a power struggle in the OPNAV Staff as competing offices sought to present new strategic visions to the CNO. This struggle produced a general document known as “The Way Ahead.”601 This document effectively served as Kelso’s planning strategy document for the 1990’s.602

598 Hattendorf and Swartz, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, 11. 599 “The Budget of the United States Navy from 1794-2014,” Washington D.C., The United States Navy History and Heritage Command, 31 May, 2016, electronic resource, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/b/budget-of-the- us-navy-1794-to-2004.html, last accessed 5 February 2017. 600 United States, One Hundred First Congress, Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, Nomination of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II for the Office of Chief of Naval Operations, 14 and 21 June 1990, 344-345. 601 H. Lawrence Garrett III, Admiral Frank B. Kelso and General A.M. Gray, “The Way Ahead”, Proceedings (April 1991). 602Kelso, Reminiscences, 688-689. 221

Budget estimates, however, continued to stymie the CNO’s efforts to functionally

support his vision. Kelso had hoped to kick off the 1991 budget season with a positive

and influential Total Force Assessment (TFA) briefing to accompany the Navy’s budget

proposals. Instead, he got a sobering and dismal appraisal of what force the Navy might

field in the post-Cold War era. Captain Dick Diamond, the OP-603 Branch Chief who

gave the brief, recalled that Kelso responded to its contents with a “ of

scatological invectives and expletives.” One particular slide entitled “The Coming USN

Budget Train Wreck” predicted that the Navy “was about to face a major budget crisis that made a new strategic rationale mandatory”; it caused the CNO to “go into overdrive” in his negative response.603 The slide “flipper” for that brief, Commander Paul Giarra,

USN (ret), said, “The CNO left the room without providing any guidance to the

assembled three-star officers present for the brief,” and for a time this caused great

uncertainty.604

Even so, if the challenges had been limited to dramatically shrinking budgets,

Admiral Kelso might have had greater influence on controlling the Navy’s response to

the empowered CJCS; but his immediate focus was on troubling service-specific issues.

He was in particular, distracted by negative publicity about the USS Iowa B-turret

explosion, the ‘Tailhook’ scandal, and the crash/death of F-14 pilot LT Kara Hultgreen,

603 Email from Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret) to Dr. John Hattendorf, Naval War College, subject “Paper Review Status” (unpublished narrative of the events leading up to the September 1992 publication of “From the Sea”), 09 September 2006, Filed jointly inThe United States Naval War College, The Naval Historical Collection, The papers of Dr. John Hattendorf, and in the Professional papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 1991 “The Way Ahead” file, used with special permission of Dr. John Hattendorf, Captain Swartz and Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret). 604 Email to the author from Commander Paul Giarra, USN (retired), 19 May 2015. 222

USN.605 In such an environment, Admiral Kelso could not concentrate on strategy as well as he needed to.606

Effect on the Strategy Cohort

The legislation affected not only the Navy offices that created strategy but also the careers of individual naval officers engaged in that effort. The new emphasis on joint, vice service, offices that the Goldwater Nichols provisions demanded created a significant impact on officers in the ranks of O-4 (lieutenant commander) to O-6

(captain) who would normally have been recruited to serve in OP-06 (now N3/N5) and other purely service staff positions. Those officers were now drawn to joint positions in order to meet the new requirements that demanded joint service as a precursor to consideration for flag rank. The service solution was to “shorten some assignments and eliminate others” so that joint assignments could be fit into the same nominal twenty-year career plan demanded by the 1980 Defense Officer Personnel Management Act

(DOPMA).607

The addition of joint assignments was further complicated by an overall manpower reduction at the end of the Cold War. The number of Navy joint billets for officers in the ranks of O-4 (lieutenant commander) to O-6 (captain) increased by 10 percent over the period 1989-1999 in spite of a nearly 15 percent overall postwar decline

605 Hattendorf, Navy Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents, 39. 606 Interview with Captain R. Robinson (Robby) Harris, USN (ret), 22 Sept. 2014. 607Peter Schirmer, “Challenging time in DOPMA, Flexible and Contemporary Military Officer Management”, (Santa Monica, CA, The RAND Corporation 2006), 14. 223

in the number of officers in those ranks.608 These changes also seem to have affected the

overall amount of service-based expertise that the average naval officer acquired over the

course of his or her career. A 2001 analysis suggested, “The prescribed tour lengths in

Goldwater Nichols tend to deepen officers’ joint opportunities but may limit the breadth of experience.”609

The experience of the strategy cadre of OP-06 would not initially seem to support

this assumption. The individuals who spearheaded the drive to create the Maritime

Strategy in the 1980s found continued employment in the strategy business during the

1990s. As noted at the outset, Peter Swartz, after some initial misgivings about having

two consecutive joint assignments, became one of General Colin Powell’s special

assistants. Captain Richard Diamond became OP-603 (the Strategic Concepts office of

OP-06) in February 1990 and exerted significant influence on the development and coordination of the follow-on strategic concept to the Maritime Strategy known as “From the Sea.”610 Joe Sestak contributed what Diamond referred to as “the bumper sticker” for

the new strategy in the phrase, “The Navy/Marine Corps Team is the Enabling Force for

Follow-on Joint Operations.”611 Diamond, along with Captain Jim Stark and other OP-60,

OP-00K, and SSG alumni founded a regular naval strategy discussion group that first

began meeting in 1989 entitled “the ancient mariners”.612 Other groups such as Dr. David

st 608 Ann D. Parcell, Donald J. Cymrot and Carol S. Moore, “The Officer Structure in the 21 Century”, Alexandria, VA: The Center for Naval Analysis (CNA), May 2001, 16. 609Ibid, p. 11. 610 Email from Captain Richard Diamond to John Hattendorf, Naval War College, subject “Paper Review Status” (unpublished narrative of the events leading up to the September 1992 publication of “From the Sea”, 09 September 2006. 611 Ibid. 612 Ibid. 224

Rosenberg’s Navy Study Group of 1992 and 1993 would continue the informal

discussion of naval strategy.613

Yet while these officers continued their strategic vocation in both Navy and later joint offices involved in producing strategic work, their shoes were not being filled by a new generation of Navy-created strategy experts. The analysis arm of the Navy centered on the N8 office has prospered throughout the same period thanks to its established career path created by people like retired Captain and Naval Postgraduate School Professor

Wayne Hughes, and the persistent need for analytical products that support a programmatic and budget vice a strategy driven Navy. The provisions of the Goldwater

Nichols Act appear to be the direct cause of this change, in the eyes of some of these experts. Captain Robby Harris, a former member of the SSG and 00-K, has suggested that the OPNAV staff in general is “a shadow of what it was twenty years ago in both quantity and background” due to the changes caused by the legislation’s joint-officer requirements.614 The new requirements for joint assignment appeared to have harmed the ability of the Navy to send officers to multiple tours within OPNAV strategy offices.

Captain William Spencer Johnson believes that the joint requirements prevented the

Navy from sending officers to multiple assignments in OP-06 where they would have acquired further strategic competence and maintained corporate memory in naval strategic planning.615 Before Goldwater Nichols, Johnson asserts, it was commonplace

for strategy-coded officers to have multiple OPNAV tours in strategic planning

613 John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s; Selected Documents, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press), 2006, 8. 614 Interview with Captain R. Robinson (Robby) Harris, USN (ret), 22 Sept. 2014. 615 Interview with the author, 11 August 2014. 225

offices.616Now there is barely time for one such assignment in order to meet the joint

requirements necessary for eligibility for flag rank. This lack of repeat experience in

OPNAV further weakened the Navy’s ability to create strategy on its own. John Lehman says the joint requirements have created excessively large staffs that draw too many officers from experience-generating operational billets.617 Together, these changes meant

a Navy with fewer strategic planners and possibly less operational experience, and forced

it to fill a much larger staff pool, thus leaving it bereft of its own strategic veterans.

The armed forces of the United States were going to face significant cuts in the

wake of the Cold War. A new strategy would have emerged in response to this sea

change in international affairs alone. The Goldwater Nichols legislation, however,

significantly complicated that process for the U.S. Navy. The Navy had been the most

significant source of organized opposition to the legislation and its senior officers at the

end of the 1980s, and in the early 1990s remained antagonistic to its tenets as it struggled

to adjust to a new international situation and a new internal Defense Department

organization. The legislation did not have the same impact on Navy strategy as the end of

the Cold War, but the empowered CJCS, new concepts in combatant commander area of

responsibility, and the personnel changes it demanded made the process of creating new

strategies for the naval service, especially those involving a global responsibility, more

challenging in the years after 1992. The Goldwater Nichols Act gave the CJCS the

decisive voice in determining naval force structure and how maritime geographic areas of

responsibility were divided.

616 Ibid 617 Interview with the author, 02 December 2013. 226

Further, the legislation altered the career path of naval officers by mandating joint assignments as a precursor to flag rank. This action caused a practical migration of

talented, career-minded officers out of the service offices such as OP-60, where they had

been carefully trained, mentored, and subsequently assigned important Navy follow-on

assignments, into joint billets in which the Navy could no longer make direct use of their

talents. These officers continued to contribute to the process of strategy creation in the

1990s, but there was no longer a strong service staff organization to mentor and aid them

in their development. These changes caused by the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986

fundamentally altered the process by which the U.S. Navy developed both strategy and

the people involved in that creative process. They would play a significant role in the

development of the Maritime Strategy’s replacement.

227

CHAPTER 4: THE IMPACT OF THE FIRST GULF WAR AND THE REVOLUTION

IN MILITARY AFFAIRS ON NAVY STRATEGIC CHANGE

The Navy was still working to implement to the provisions of the Goldwater

Nichols Act, and adjust its strategy and force structure to the end of the Cold War, when it was confronted with the largest exercise of U.S. arms since the end of the Vietnam

War. The invasion of Kuwait ordered by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on 02 August

1990, and subsequent war between a large international coalition and Iraq further complicated the Navy’s transition to a new strategy.618 The Navy conducted its part of the

First Gulf War under strategic and operational conditions that were not expected when the service planned for war against the Soviet Union. New joint command and control structures implemented due to the Goldwater Nichols Act were still unfamiliar to the

Navy at the outset of the First Gulf War. The service had a difficult transition from its institutional expectations for war and the reality of combat in the Persian Gulf. There was also little room for the Navy to showcase its full set of capabilities in what was an air and land conflict led by an Army general. A “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA) that experts such as Office of Net Assessment chief Andrew Marshall and nuclear strategist

Albert Wohlstetter suggested had been underway since the mid to late 1970’s had further complicated the Navy’s participation in the conflict.619 What the Army and Air Force saw as revolutionary the Navy observed as evolution over time, especially in deep strike, and

618Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, The General’s War, The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf, (New York: Little Brown and Company, 1995), 27. 619 Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr, “The Military Technical Revolution, A Preliminary Assessment,” (Washington D.C.: The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2002), i, electronic resource, http://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/2002.10.02-Military-Technical-Revolution.pdf, last accessed 11 February 2017. 228 command and control of forces. As was the case in the implementation of the Goldwater

Nichols provisions, operations analysis played a significant role in advancing the RMA, with little room remaining for the participation of the Navy’s political military strategists.

The Army and Air Force were able to validate many of the operational concepts they had developed for Cold War combat. The Navy fought a very different Gulf War than it had planned for the past decade, although some analysts gave it great credit for a logistics victory.620Many leaders of the Gulf War effort, both military and civilian lauded the

Goldwater Nichols Act provisions as crucial to victory. The Navy leadership had vigorously opposed the legislation and its troubles in adjusting to the changes the Act created in the execution of the Gulf War served to put the naval service further on the defensive. The Marine Corps did not suffer the same disconnection from wider joint efforts and embraced the new environment; often at the Navy’s expense. The effects of the First Gulf War and the Revolution in Military Affairs often associated with that conflict further complicated the environment in which the Navy sought to create a successor to the 1980’s Maritime Strategy.

Revolutions in Military Affairs

The idea of a revolution in military affairs (RMA) was not a new concept.

Military historians had labeled the introduction of gunpowder and associated modern military organization efforts in the 16th and 17th centuries as one of the first such great changes. The British military historian Michael Roberts first postulated a late

620 Harry G. Summers Jr, America the Vulnerable, Our Military Problems and How to Fix Them, John F. Lehman and Harvey Sicherman, editors, (Philadelphia, PA, The Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2002), 76, 77. 229

Renaissance European military revolution in a January 1955 lecture at Queen’s

University of Belfast.621 Roberts stressed that technology was but one part of the

European military revolution, with revolutions in tactics, and strategy enabling larger and more complex military operations with more wide-ranging effects.622The technological change of this period was not confined to gunpowder. It also included advances in military training needed to employ gunpowder weapons effectively in battle.623

Roberts’ view was useful in analyzing changes in ground warfare, but perhaps missed how some of the same factors influenced naval warfare and further propelled Western

Europe toward overall military superiority in comparison with other great powers of the

17th century. Military historian Geoffrey Parker suggests that European control of naval technology and suitable strategies and tactics for its employment allowed the West to,

“Turn maritime superiority into global hegemony.”624Improved sailing warships armed with gunpowder weapons crushed the naval forces of ancient states such as the Chinese,

Ottoman and later the Indian Empires. Those modern states such as Spain that did not adapt fast enough to changing naval technology also faced defeat at the hands of those that did.

Roberts and Parker wrote on the European military revolution from the mid

1950’s through the mid 1990’s, but in this same period Soviet military leaders were writing on a more often quoted military revolution and prophesying the beginning of

621Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution, Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1. 622 Geoffrey Parker, “The Military Revolution, 1550-1650, A Myth?,” The Journal of Modern History, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1976, 195-197. 623 Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution, 1,2. 624 Ibid,. 114. 230 another. American strategic theorist Bernard Brodie had labeled the atomic bomb as the absolute weapon and suggested, “Even the most ‘revolutionary’ developments of the past seem by contrast with the atomic bomb to have been minor steps in a many-sided evolutionary process.”625Soviet military strategists also labeled the invention of the atomic weapon as the key enabler of a “military technical revolution,” but as in the case of the past European RMA, they did not limit their description alone to ordnance. Soviet

Navy commander Admiral S.G. Gorshkov defined the military technical revolution as early as 1976 not only in terms of atomic weapons, but also in, “outstanding discoveries in the field of radio electronics and rocket construction.”626Chief of the Soviet General

Staff Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov lobbied the Soviet military leadership from 1971 onward that the they should reform the large, unwieldy Soviet military force, suggesting that,

“bold experiments and solutions are necessary, even if this means discarding obsolete traditions, views and propositions.”627Ogarkov further stated in a 1983 article in the

Soviet newspaper Izvestiya, “Operational and tactical means of combat are being improved and new ones created on the basis of the latest achievements of electronics and other technical sciences.”628 These developments, Orgarkov asserted, created “improved automated systems of command and control, and ‘highly effective new means of

625 Bernard Brodie, editor, The Absolute Weapon, Atomic Power and World Order, (New Haven, CT: The Yale Institute of International Studies, 15 February 1946), 28, 29, electronic resource, https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/16380564-wvLB09/16380564.pdf, last accessed 10 February 2017. 626S.G. Gorshkov, The Seapower of the State, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1979), 157. 627Mary C. Fitzgerald, “Marshal Orgarkov and the New Soviet Revolution in Military Affairs,” (Alexandria, VA: The Center for Naval Analyses (CNA), Research Memorandum, CRM-87-2, January 1987), 8. 628 Ibid. 231 conventional combat are being developed and introduced.’”629Soviet Defense Minister

Marshal Dmitriy Ustinov was more specific in a 1983 Pravda article and identified,

“reconnaissance-strike complexes with great precision and range,” as key emerging U.S. military capabilities.630 The Warsaw Pact military commander Soviet Marshal Viktor

Kulikov further elaborated Soviet concerns in 1984 when he described the U.S. and

NATO as, “systematically equipping its troops with ‘a new generation of conventional weapons, and above all long-range precision weapons, modern means of air defense and radio-electronic combat, and projected command-and-control and communications systems.’"631 Marshall Ogarkov went as far as to suggest in 1983 that the West had already won the Cold War. He told journalist Leslie Gelb,

Numbers of troops and weapons mean little, he said. We cannot equal the quality of U.S. arms for a generation or two. Modern military power is based upon technology, and technology is based upon computers. In the U.S., he continued, small children -- even before they begin school -- play with computers. Computers are everywhere in America. Here, we don't even have computers in every office of the Defense Ministry. And for reasons you know well, we cannot make computers widely available in our society. We will never be able to catch up with you in modern arms until we have an economic revolution. And the question is whether we can have an economic revolution without a political revolution.632

Nuclear weapons might have been the absolute weapon as Brodie suggested, but Soviet and soon American leaders would recognize that they were not enough alone to guarantee victory in the Cold War.

629 Ibid. 630 Ibid. 631 Ibid. 632Leslie Gelb, “Foreign Affairs, Who Won the Cold War,” NY, The New York Times, 20 August 1992. 232

Offset Strategies and Maneuver Warfare

U.S. leaders, however, did not have such a positive view of the Cold War balance of power in the mid 1970’s through much of the 1980’s. The head of the Office of Net

Assessment Andrew Marshall reported that his office began following the Soviet reporting on U.S. technological advancement in the mid to late 1970’s.633Clearly, Soviet military leadership understood the U.S. efforts that would later be labeled as an offset strategy, where superior technology would counter numerically larger Soviet forces. The

Carter administration’s Defense Secretary Dr. Harold Brown described this effort in a

January 1981 report produced after Carter left office:

Technology can be a force multiplier, a resource that can be used to help offset numerical advantages of an adversary. Superior technology is one very effective way to balance military capabilities other than by matching an adversary tank-for-tank or soldier-for-soldier. Other tools that combine with technology to this end include doctrine, tactics, and training. Even with the most sophisticated weapon systems, however, we cannot allow the numerical disparities between us and the Soviets to widen further. Thus, we continue to plan our forces on the basis of a "high-low" mix of high performance, high technology systems with less complicated, less expensive systems.634

Brown also suggested a sense of urgency in the U.S. embrace of advanced technological capabilities. Brown was a child prodigy in mathematics and the sciences who graduated with a bachelor of physics from Columbia University at age 18 and received a PhD from that institution in that subject at age 21.635He worked for Defense Secretary Robert S.

McNamara as the Research Director of Defense Research and Engineering from 1961-

633Andrew Krepinevich, “The Military Technical Revolution, A Preliminary Assessment,” i. 634 Harold Brown, Department of Defense Annual Report to Congress, Fiscal Year 1982, (Washington D.C., United States Department of Defense, 16 January 1981), x. 635 “Biography of Dr. Harold Brown,” (Washington D.C.: The Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense,) electronic resource, http://history.defense.gov/Multimedia/Biographies/Article- View/Article/571287/harold-brown/, last accessed 11 February 2017. 233

1965, and then as Secretary of the Air Force from 1965 to 1969. He returned to the

Pentagon in 1977 after seven years as President of the California Institute of Technology.

He was the first scientist to serve as Defense Secretary.636 Brown’s science and technology background well prepared him to manage the effort to weaponize advanced technology as an offset to Soviet numerical advantages in ground and air units. He cited significant numerical growth in individual Soviet ground and air units over the decades of the 1960’s and 1970’s, specifically in tanks and other armored vehicles, artillery and tactical aircraft.637 The U.S. technological efforts to “offset” these Soviet numerical advantages should first be directed at these Soviet formations.

Brown and his deputy Dr. William Perry focused their efforts on the development of stealth aircraft, a general program known as the “assault breaker” that was designed to defeat a Soviet ground force invasion of Western Europe, and the air and ground launched cruise missile (ALCM and GLCM) as a nuclear-armed counterparts to the

Soviet SS 20 medium range ballistic missiles.638Perry later described this effort as one where, “1970’s U.S. defense officials saw the opportunity to exploit the new developments in microelectronics and computers to great advantages in military applications.”639 Perry also contended that the “offset strategy,” as he described specifically, “sought to use technology as an equalizer or ‘force multiplier,’ and was pursued by five successive presidential administrations into the 1980’s.640

636 Ibid. 637 Brown, Department of Defense Annual Report to Congress, Fiscal Year 1982, 69. 638Brown, pp. ix, 65-67, and 115. 639 Robert Tomes, U.S. Defense Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Military Innovation and the New American Way of War, 1973-2003, London, Routledge, 2007, p. 58. 640 Ibid. 234

Perry was also interested in the potential of precision-guided munitions (PGM’s) as an equalizer against Soviet numerical strength on the battlefield. In 1978 testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Perry stated, “Precision guided weapons, I believe, have the potential for revolutionizing warfare. More importantly, if we effectively exploit the lead we have in this field, we can greatly enhance our ability to deter war without having to compete, tank for tank, missile for missile with the Soviet

Union.”641

The stealth aircraft was another new technology supported by Perry in the late

1970’s. The F-117 stealth aircraft was begun as an experimental effort by the Defense

Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1977 that achieved initial operating capability in 1981.642 The combination of Assault Breaker, communications technology advances, and stealth aircraft served as the basis of the Reagan administration’s build-up of Army and Air Force systems during the 1980’s.643 The development process was aided by cooperation between the Army and the Air Force. General Donn Starry of the Army’s

Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) and Air Force Tactical Air Command’s

General William Creech actively collaborated on the Assault Breaker program, but due to the fact that it did not threaten any existing service acquisition programs.644

The technological advancements of Brown and Perry needed new operational theories of war that could make best use of them to check the massive Soviet advantage

641Ibid, 67. 642 William J. Perry, “Technology and National Security: Risks and Responisbilities,” (Stanford, CA: The Stanford University, The -Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, April 2003), 4, electronic resource, http://stanford.edu/dept/france-stanford/Conferences/Risk/Perry.pdf, last accessed 11 February 2017. 643Tomes, U.S. Defense Strategy, 69. 644 Ibid. 235 in ground forces on the Cold War Central European front. Air Force fighter pilot Colonel

John Boyd laid the foundations for these with his 1976 presentation entitled “Patterns of

Conflict.” Boyd was an unorthodox combat leader who self-educated himself in military history and operations research. He was especially interested in the relationship between an observer and what they observe. Boyd believed that many observations were biased in favor of pre-conditioned thinking. He sought to “destroy” such thinking and challenged those who listened to him to, “construct order and meaning out of this mess.”645

Boyd applied his ideas on differing observer views to the science of air combat maneuvering. He theorized from historical ground-combat evidence and tactical fighter aircraft combat theory that maneuverability rather than superior force was the key to victory. Boyd stated that, “A fighter that can pick and choose engagement opportunities, yet has fast transient capabilities that can be used to either force an overshoot by an attacker or stay inside a hard-turning defender,” was the key component in, “creating a faster tempo or (battle) rhythm than the adversaries.”646 This faster battle rhythm would in Boyd’s thinking, allow U.S. commanders to penetrate what he called the adversary’s

“Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action ‘OODA loop, “which was the process by which a military organization makes operational and tactical decisions.647 The desired outcome, in Boyd’s opinion, was one where the tempo of U.S. force decision-making and action was much faster than that of an opponent. The adversary would suffer “confusion

645Robert Coram, Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, (New York, Little Brown and Company, 2002), 323-325. 646 John Boyd, “Patterns of Conflict”, Washington D.C., presentation briefing to U.S. Army/U.S. Marine Corps, 1976, 1980, pp. 4, 5., electronic resource, http://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/poc.pdf, last accessed 25 June 2016. 647Ibid, p. 5. 236 and disorder,” and be unable to “generate mental pictures of images that agree with the

(threat),” or the “faster transient rhythms of patterns they are competing against.”648

Boyd’s message spread informally through a group of influential defense analysts who knew him and respected his ideas. These included defense analysts such as William

Lind and Thomas Christie, as well as Senator Gary Hart and Congressman Newt

Gingrich.649 Future Vice President Dick Cheney heard Boyd’s presentation while serving as a member of Congress for Wyoming and said, “I was intrigued by the concepts he was working on,” and thought, “he was a creative and innovative thinker with respect to the military.”650 While largely unpopular among senior defense officials, Boyd’s ideas attracted support form reformers seeking to improve the defense establishment in terms of financial stability and operational capability. His theories found significant acceptance in the Marine Corps. One Marine who knew Boyd and followed his work, Colonel Mike

Wyly, introduced him to Marine Commandant General Al Gray, who like Boyd believed in the doctrine of maneuver warfare.651 Boyd’s theories later found their way, via Wyly, into the new Marine maneuver warfare doctrine entitled “FMFM-1 Warfighting” authored under Gray’s leadership in 1989.652 The Army would be the first service, however, to produce a new warfighting doctrine that embraced maneuver warfare and it would be the key to success in the First Gulf War and the post-Cold War struggles with the other services over strategy.

648 Ibid. 649Coram, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, 339, 340, 362. 650Ibid, 355. 651Ibid, 390, 391. 652Ibid, 391. 237

Air Land Battle

Perry’s offset technologies, and Boyd’s OODA loop theories, with support from tactical Air Force elements were combined by the U.S. Army into what became known as the AirLand battle operational doctrine. The Air Force had its own overarching strategy document in Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the , AFM 1-1 (January

1984), but this document had only a limited focus on joint operations.653The Air Force was receptive to greater cooperation at the service level. Its 1984 doctrine document

“represented a more coherent explication of airpower principles than its predecessor and recognized some of the potential for the cooperation of air and ground forces at the operational level,” but according to historian Harold Winton, “stopped short of a fully developed typology of how this synergism could best be achieved.”654 It would be left largely to the Army to integrate the services’ doctrine at the theater operational level of conflict in the 1980’s.

The Army’s AirLand Battle concept allowed both services to exploit Perry and

Boyd’s contributions, served as the cornerstone in rescuing the Army from its post-

Vietnam War doldrums, and gave the Air Force a significant role in supporting ground force efforts. The Vietnam War forced the diversion of significant defense budget resources to operational efforts at the expense of force modernization.655 The Army compensated with defensive concepts on the Central European front in lieu of

653 John Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S.Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986 , Newport, RI, The United States Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers #19, 2004, p. 232. 654 Harold R. Winton, “Partnership and Tension, The Army and the Air Force Between Vietnam and Desert Shield,” Carlisle, PA, The United States Army War College Parameters, Spring 1996 issue, p. 101, electronic resource, http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/articles/96spring/winton.htm, last accessed 01 September 2016. 655 Douglas Skinner, “AirLand Battle Doctrine”, Alexandria, VA, The Center for Naval Analysis, Professional Paper 463, September 1988, p. 4. 238 modernization, but still suffered from the effects of the long Vietnam conflict, specifically in officer doctrine training. Some felt the Army so bankrupt in training and doctrine that they recommended the Army in Europe’s principal posture should be to prepare for its own evacuation in the event of war.656

Two successive leaders of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command

(TRADOC) were able to stem this tide of institutional pessimism. TRADOC had been created to, “centralize the process of reform in training and doctrine,” necessary to meeting the Soviet and Warsaw Pact force threat in Central Europe.657 German and

Soviet World War 2 operational art was a starting point in developing new U.S. doctrine, as were the lessons learned from the 1973 Yom Kippur War.658 The Israeli and Arab armies saw tank losses approach 50% of total vehicles engaged; a figure that suggested modern firepower would inflict heavy losses.659 TRADOC’s first commander, General

William DePuy, argued that the best way to meet this goal was to plan operationally and tactically for the worst-case threat of Soviet invasion across the West German border.660

DePuy’s solution came in the form of the 1976 Army Field Manual 100-5.661

While this document still promoted a defensive Army posture, it prescribed fast-paced action at potential or actual Soviet breakthrough sites on the Central Front. It recommended the placement of as much firepower as possible in forward areas, but still

656Ibid, p. 3. 657 Ingo Trauschweizer, The Cold War U.S. Army, Building Deterrence for Limited War, (Lawrence, KS: The University of Kansas Press, 2008), 199 658Ibid, 235. 659 John Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle: The Development of Army Doctrine, 1973-1982, (Fort Monroe, VA: The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Historical Office, 1984), 7. 660Trauschweizer, Cold War U.S. Army, 201. 661 Skinner, “AirLand Battle Doctrine”, p. 4. 239 emphasized, “Traditional concepts of attrition and terrain-oriented warfare.”662 DePuy desired, “an elastic defense that could cope with Soviet strength and lack of maneuver room in Germany,” that was to be achieved through “superior concentration of combat power in the attack and in the defense through good intelligence, quick decisions and high mobility…as the only solution for an outnumbered force.”663

General Starry took DePuy’s reforms in a very different, offensive direction.

Army Chief of Staff General Edward Meyer provided some of the push for this in criticisms of General DePuy’s efforts. Meyer wanted a doctrine that was applicable worldwide, as opposed to DePuy’s that was specific to Europe. Meyer also believed that the orientation of DePuy’s concept was too defensive and not well understood in the

Army.664 Meyer was concerned that DePuy’s effort was still a losing effort. He stated,

“we couldn’t fight an attrition war if we wanted to today. We’d be the first attrited.”665

While he had been involved in the design of DePuy’s Active Defense doctrine,

Starry eventually believed that it was a “false start” in the process of rebuilding the

Army.666His experiences as commander of the V Army Corps in Germany in the mid

1970’s also motivated him to seek means of attacking Soviet follow-on forces waiting to be fed into the battle.667Active Defense had no capability or design to deal with these second-echelon Soviet units. Starry’s new design involved seizing the initiative by being

662 Ibid. 663Trauschweizer, 209. 664 John Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle: The Development of Army Doctrine, 1973-1982, 31, 32. 665Brian McAllister Linn, The Echo of Battle, The Army’s Way of War, (Cambridge, MA: The Harvard University Press, 2007), 207. 666Ibid, 214. 667Ibid, 50. 240 able to “see deep and attack deep at the same time.”668 These two events could happen at the same time, or not in Starry’s opinion, but they had to be synchronized at the Corps level of command.669 In this system of “battlefield dynamics,” each level of the chain of command from Corps (commanded by a general) to companies (commanded by Army

Captains) would maximize U.S. effectiveness and minimize that of the opponent.670

In order to accomplish both seeing and attacking deep into an opponent’s reserve forces, Starry placed greater emphasis on maneuverability, and coordinated firepower at both the leading edge of a Soviet advance and the second echelon of Soviet forces waiting to be fed into the battle. Starry also added electronic warfare (EW), electronic countermeasures (ECM), intelligence collection, and enemy detection, and deception as major elements of his doctrine design.671The Corps Commander was given control of deep surveillance systems like JSTARS (Joint Surveillence Attack Radar System) and the physical means of damaging Soviet forces to include MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket

Systems) and the ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System).672Intelligence from the late

1970’s through early 1980’s, and from General Ogarkov’s writings, suggested that Soviet forces were tactically rigid, had predictable operational deployment patterns

(echelonments) and were technologically inferior to NATO troops.673

668 Donn Starry with Lewis Sorley, editor, Press On, The Selected Works of General Donn A. Starry, (Fort Leavenworth, KS, The U.S. Army Combined Arms Center Combat Studies Institute Press, September 2009, 1264. 669 Ibid, 1264, 1265. 670 John Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle: The Development of Army Doctrine, 1973-1982, 8. 671Skinner, “AirLand Battle Doctrine,”. 5. 672Starry with Sorley, 1264. 673 Skinner, “AirLand Battle Doctrine, 6. 241

Starry wanted his effort to be joint inasmuch as the U.S. defense system supported this concept before the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986. He solicited support from both the Air Force and the Navy, but later decided to limit the concept to the Army and Air

Force.674 Starry actively recruited and solicited advice and content on AirLand battle from the Air Force Tactical Air Commander General Bill Creech. Starry and Creech made use of the Air Land Forces Agency (ALFA), a joint Army/Air Force coordination agency created in 1975 by Army Chief of Staff General and Air Force

Chief of Staff General George Brown. ALFA was designed to address the lessons of the

Vietnam War in terms of service cooperation and, “designed to be an independent organization that could cut through bureaucratic “red tape” to rapidly meet the immediate needs of the warfighter.”675

The Air Force was ready to address the new challenge of supporting the Army on the Central European front. The end of Vietnam caused the Air Force, like the Army and

Navy, to re-assess its role in the wider Cold War against the Soviet Union. The Tactical

Air Force (TAF) enjoyed a renaissance after the Vietnam conflict. Combat action played a role in promotion to the general officer ranks in the Air Force and TAF members had a good deal of it from service in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.676 More TAF members were also promoted to the general officer ranks in the early 1970’s in order to meet Nixon administration Defense Secretary Melvin Laird’s desire to bring younger officers with

674Starry with Sorley, 1276. 675 John R. Anderson, “ALSA Center Meets Immediate Needs of the Warfighter”, Infantry Magazine, Fort Benning, GA, May-June 2006 edition, p. 46. 676 R. Michael Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, The Problem of Air Force Leadership, 1945-1982, (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, The Air University Press, 1998), 224. 242 combat experience into more leadership positions.677TAF members learned much from recent conflicts such as the 1973 Arab/Israeli War where, “the ferocity and nature of the tactical air war seemed more relevant to the TAF than did Vietnam.”678They were ready to play significant roles with the Army in planning for combat with Soviet and Warsaw

Pact forces on the European Central Front.

The Army and Air Force cooperation in creating AirLand Battle developed from

ALFA roots. It was not a firm concept at its outset, as Starry did not want it to become what he called “Pentacrete” which in his words meant a Pentagon-approved design that took massive coordination to change in even the slightest amount.679 He wanted a fungible document that could support quick changes. AirLand battle he asserted was,

“nothing but a stack of slides,” that frequently changed based on the input from the recipients of the briefings.680 Assisted by his TRADOC deputy Major General Don

Morelli, Starry traveled widely in the U.S. and overseas presenting the AirLand battle briefing to U.S. Army and Allied forces leadership. It was later summarized as a Military

Review article entitled “The Extended Battlefield” in March 1981 under Starry’s authorship. Starry credited General Morelli for coming up with the term “AirLand battle” as a “catchier name” that made alphabetical sense.681 It was formally promulgated as doctrine in the U.S. Army Field Manual FM 100-5 Operations in 1982 and slightly revised in 1986.682

677Ibid, 224, 225. 678Ibid, 220. 679 Starry with Sorely,1275. 680Ibid, 1274. 681Ibid, 1276. 682Skinner, “AirLand Battle Doctrine”, 2. 243

The doctrine was organized around the Army Corps as the principal action unit, with an emphasis on the operational level of warfare. This made sense as the Corps was the smallest size Army unit that had the requisite organic intelligence, command and control capability and assigned fire support units to direct the kind of rapid, high intensity combat the Army assumed would happen on the Central European front.683The Corps level of command also supported the airpower coordination vital to attack Soviet reserve forces waiting to enter battle. Corps level commands also had control of the nuclear weapons that could come into play if the ground war situation turned for the worse.

AirLand battle had seven key features identified in the FM 100-5 manual. These were indirect approaches, speed and violence, flexibility and reliance on the initiative of junior officers, rapid decision-making, clearly defined objectives and operational concepts, a clearly designated effort and deep attack.684 These points show the influence of Harold Brown and William Perry’s defense technical revolution and the operational concepts of John Boyd. The concept of deep attack was especially dependent on the products of the military technical revolution of the last decade. Generals Starry and

Creech saw advancing this part of the new doctrine as one of their top priorities.685

Follow-on efforts included educational support to teach U.S. Army leaders about campaign planning, and greater service coordination. The U.S. Army School of

Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) was created in 1981 to accomplish this effort.686

683 U.S. Army Field Manual, FM 100-5, Washington D.C., Headquarters, Department of the Army, 20 August 1982, 6.3. 684 U.S. Army Field Manual, FM 100-5, 7.1, 7.2 685Starry with Sorely, 1277. 686 Robert R. Tomes, U.S Defense Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Military Innovation and the new American Way of War, 1973-2003, (London, UK: Routledge, 2007), 113. 244

More interservice cooperation in the form of Army Chief of Staff General John Wickham and Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Gabriel produced a Joint (Army/Air Force)

Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) agreement governing both services.687 The agreement further supported the deep strike mission by allowing the Army to prioritize the target list while permitting the Air Force to use some Army weapons (missiles) to eliminate selected Soviet targets.688

U.S. Army General Bernard Rogers provided a NATO component to AirLand battle while serving as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR). His concept entitled Follow on Forces Attack (FOFA) was based on his understanding of the precision guided munition advances due from the 1970’s Assault Breaker program, Air

Force concepts for deep interdiction of Soviet airborne assets and the emerging AirLand battle doctrine.689 FOFA was very similar to AirLand battle in that in postulated deep strike attacks on Soviet second and third echelon troops. FOFA was adopted by NATO in

November 1984.690 It became the basis for the Alliance’s ground and air force operational efforts to repel a Soviet ground invasion of Central and Western Europe.

Army Revolution versus Navy Evolution

While the Army was engaged in developing AirLand battle, the U.S. Navy was just beginning to identify and assemble the components of what became the Maritime

687Ibid, 114. 688 Ibid. 689Ibid, 115, 116. 690 Robert Tomes, “The Cold War Offset Strategy: Assault Breaker and the Beginning of the RSTA Revolution,” Warontherocks.com, 20 November 2014, http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/the-cold-war- offset-strategy-assault-breaker-and-the-beginning-of-the-rsta-revolution/, last accessed 30 June 2016. 245

Strategy. Both were post-Vietnam responses to mounting Soviet superiority in platform numbers and capability. Both account for military technical advances but under differing interpretations. It is necessary to compare and contrast them as they represent two very different assemblies of strategy, operational art and tactical efforts that were at odds with each other in the 1980’s. Interestingly, the Maritime Strategy also began life as a traveling slide stack that was edited after each presentation.691 The Maritime Strategy died with its Soviet opponent, but successive versions of the Army FM-100-5 survived and continued as the Army blueprint for war into the 1990’s, in part due to its perceived success in the Desert Storm campaign. It is worth noting that General Starry attributed much of the success of Desert Storm to regular, realistic Army training, the right equipment, and the right group of military and civilian leaders.692

U.S. Navy Rear Admiral J.C. Wylie, USN and political scientist Samuel

Huntington provide some of the best descriptions of the fundamental differences in Army and Navy-based strategy. Huntington explored the institutional origins of the services’ differing views on strategy. The Army, he argued, was an inherently passive, machine- like organization that waited on civilian leaders to provide it tasking. It was in

Huntington’s words, “The country’s general servant; well-disciplined, obedient, and performing civil functions.”693Not all elements of the Army have been so passive.

691Author phone interview with Dr. Stan Weeks, Commander, USN (ret), (first Maritime Strategy author,) 6 February 2016. 692Starry with Sorely, 1229, 1238. 693 Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State, The Theory and Politics of Military Relations, (Cambridge: MA, Harvard University Press, 1957), 261. 246

Colonel Harry G. Summer’s work On Strategy, The Vietnam War in Context, was very critical of the passive approach to strategy and national tasking.694

The Navy, Huntington stated, was a much more independent organization than the

Army. It had no civil functions such as the Army did in the active defense of U.S. soil, and believed itself to be the nation’s ultimate frontier. As such, naval officers were more confident in telling civilian leaders how they intended to defend the nation rather than waiting for detailed instructions as did the Army.695 The Navy, Huntington believed, desired, “Room to work out its own ‘rules of strategy, tactics and discipline’ free from the more direct civilian control.

The Navy needed Huntington’s “room to work” since its concept of strategy was global rather than regional or theater based. Admiral Wyle suggested, “The connotation of the word ‘strategy’ is not the same to the soldier as it is to the sailor or airman,” and,

“Where a sailor or airman thinks in terms of the entire world (in terms of strategy,) the soldier at work thinks in terms of theaters, in terms of campaigns, or in terms of battles.”696 Although he often grouped the airman with the sailor in terms of how the two services viewed strategy, Wylie recognized the tactical component of the Air Force as more similar to the Army in terms of strategic thinking. Wylie stated, “The ‘tactical’ air element was in a situation comparable to that of the soldier. He needed his supplies brought to him and he needed his bases to be defended.”697 The U.S. Air Force tactical element thought more in terms of offensive activity for its part of AirLand battle, but it

694 Brian McAllister Linn, The Echo of Battle, The Army’s Way of War, 194, 195. 695Ibid, 262. 696J.D. Wylie, Military Strategy, A General Theory of Power Control, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1989), 41, 42. 697Ibid, 48. 247 was tied to the Army’s fortunes in land combat. As Wylie suggested, if the Army was not able to defend advanced air bases, the tactical air force would too be subject to defeat.

This was especially the case in the post-Vietnam era through the Desert Storm campaign when the Tactical Air Force was largely in control of the service.698

The Army and tactical Air Force concepts that emerged at the end of the 1970’s fit well into Admiral Wylie’s model for how the Army and tactical air elements think.

The Army had rediscovered the theories of in the late 1970’s and the

German concepts of operational art were influential in the development of AirLand

Battle.699Controlling the ground and air battle through rapid decision-making that was faster than an opponent’s, the core of John Boyd’s thesis, was also seen as a revolutionary concept. AirLand battle was organized specifically at the operational level of war. Its preface clearly stated that, “Winning campaigns and battles is the purpose of this manual.”700 The Air Force and Army both promoted the use of the term “strategy” as a synonym for operational level warfare. John Boyd uses strategy to describe what is clearly operational art in numerous instances in “Patterns of Conflict.”701Some critics have suggested that the U.S. Army mis-applied the concept of operational art in its definition of what constitutes a campaign. Consider page 2-3 of the 1982 FM-100-5:

The Operational Level of War involves planning and conducting campaigns. Campaigns are sustained operations designed to defeat an enemy force in a specified place and time with simultaneous and sequential battles. The disposition

698Carl H.Builder, The Masks of War, American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis, (Baltimore, Md: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 138. 699 John Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle: The Development of Army Doctrine, 1973-1982, 58, 59. 700 U .S. Army Field Manual, FM 100-5, Washington D.C., Headquarters, Department of the Army, 20 August, 1982, 1-1. 701 Boyd, “Patterns of Conflict,” 176. 248

of forces, selection of objectives, and actions to weaken or outmaneuver the enemy all set the terms for the next battle and exploit tactical gains.

The drafters of AirLand battle may have misunderstood the operational level of war.

Some critics suggested that FM 100-5 “Removes from strategy its traditional role of planning campaigns and conflates the term “campaign” with what the Soviets would recognize as an “operation”—a sequence of simultaneous and sequential battles, connected by a unifying idea and intended to defeat an enemy force.”702This error may have been compounded in the 1986 edition of FM-100-5 where the term “operational art” was first introduced in a U.S. military publication. Operational Art was described as,

““the employment of military forces to attain strategic goals in a theater through the design, organization, and conduct of campaigns and major operations.”703 The U.S.

Army’s adoption and application of operational art served to promote the concept to the level of a defacto strategy. The Army also suggested in its official writings that its definition of strategy fit all other services. A 1982 document authored by General Glen

Otis; General Starry’s successor at TRADOC addressed the differing levels of war as,

“The doctrinal perspectives of different levels of war applies to all forms of warfare-land, sea, and air-and has impact on all-services- Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

There is an underlying unity of basic principles and fundamentals that applies to all forms of organized conflict.”704

702Mike Kelley and Justin Brennan, “Alien, How Operational Art Devoured Strategy”, (Carlisle, PA: The United States Army War College, The Strategic Studies Institute, 16 September 2009), 61. 703Ibid, 61, 62. 704 John L. Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle, The Development of Army Doctrine from 1973 to 1982, 109. 249

In addition to widely differing concepts of strategy, the Army and Navy also had very different experiences within the military technical revolution of the 1970’s. The

Army and to a degree the Air Force readily accepted the 1970’s and 80’s revolution in military affairs as something new and different from past concepts of war. Many of the technological improvements introduced through the efforts of Secretaries Brown and

Perry such as air and ground launched cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions, and long-range aircraft surveillance systems, were first intended for the Army and Air Force.

By 1985, the Defense Department’s fiscal year 1986 report to Congress listed twenty- eight Army programs designed to produce air/ground missile systems and fifteen to create new or improved command, control, communication, and intelligence capabilities.705 The Air Force had nineteen and twelve such programs, respectively, working to produce similar capabilities.

The Navy perhaps rediscovered the basic theories of its own primary theorist

Alfred Thayer Mahan just as the Army was again quoting Clausewitz. Like the Army, the

Navy also wrestled with interpretations of Mahan in terms of operational application of the theorist’s strategic maxims. The Navy also temporarily pursued a defensive sea control strategy during the tenure of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt as CNO.706Like the Army, however, it returned to a more offensive stance with the Maritime Strategy of the 1980’s that began development in the late 1970’s. Unlike Zumwalt’s interpretation, the authors

705 Skinner, “Air Land Doctrine,” 23. 706 John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970’s, Selected Documents, (Newport, RI: The Unoted States Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers #30, September 2007), 31, 38. 250 of the Maritime Strategy invoked Mahan in terms of offensive action.707While the Navy did benefit from some aspects of the defense technical revolution such as those that led to the development of the surface-launched cruise missile, the service had a challenging relationship with the Department of Defense civilians leading that effort. The Navy had been at the forefront of the development of advanced tactical command and control equipment and precision munitions since the end of World War 2. Consequently, the U.S.

Navy saw the military technical developments of the 1970’s as more evolutionary in character. Its strategy that evolved from post-Vietnam War assessments was also based on countering the Soviet Union, but was entrenched in specific areas of geography and contained more detailed direction on how to fight the Soviet fleet. The Navy planned to operate in support of the Army’s battle on the central front of Europe, but it would need to first defeat its Soviet counterpart and secure the NATO Atlantic and Pacific flanks.

President Jimmy Carter and his Department of Defense officials were convinced that all of the services should concentrate on the vital Central European front and the associated need to repel a potential Soviet ground attack across West Germany and into the heart of

Western Europe.708 Naval historian Norman Friedman explains that opposition to the

Navy’s Maritime strategy was focused on the carrier. Carrier strike forces were “a potential drain of scarce resources better devoted to buying enough Army and strategic

Air strength to execute the war plan (in Europe).”709

707 John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz, editors, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, Selected Documents, (Newport, RI: The U.S. Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers #33, December 2008), 203. 708 Norman Friedman, Seapower as Strategy, Navies and National Interests, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2000), 202. 709Norman Friedman, The Fifty Year War, Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2000), 64. 251

Carter administration defense officials like Brown and Under Secretary of

Defense for Policy Robert Komer criticized the Navy’s operational concept of power projection ashore using carrier aircraft. Komer would gain notoriety in the 1980’s as an outspoken carrier opponent, but he had already been wary of Navy carrier promotions in the preceding two decades. Komer thought carriers excessively vulnerable and even in the mid 1960’s, as a Kennedy and Johnson administration official, declared them

“Surplus to a nuclear war involving NATO.”710 Komer supported the use of carriers in remote areas like the Indian Ocean as presence units, and later as support forces to the

U.S. Rapid Deployment Force earmarked for Persian Gulf operations, but could not be persuaded to support greater carrier construction at the expense of the modernization of ground and air units designated for NATO support.711

Harold Brown was also an opponent of the large, nuclear powered aircraft carrier and believed smaller flattops with vertical short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) represented a better value.712The Navy’s primary mission in Brown’s opinion was sea control, which meant protecting re-supply routes between the United States and

Europe.713 Few offset strategy concepts filtered into the naval service during the Carter presidency. Many of the Navy’s own precision-guided weapons programs predated the

Carter administration and Secretary Brown’s effort. The Harpoon cruise missile had

710 Robert W. Komer, with Elizabeth Farmer, “Robert W. Komer Oral History Interview, JFK#4 10/31/64”, The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, electronic resource, http://archive1.jfklibrary.org/JFKOH/Komer,%20Robert%20W/JFKOH-ROWK-04/JFKOH-ROWK-04- TR.pdf, p. 6, last accessed 3 July 2016. 711 Robert W. Komer, “Maritime Strategy versus Coalition Defense,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 60, No. 5 (Summer 1982), 1129-1131. 712 James L. Holloway III, Aircraft Carriers at War, A Personal Retrospective of Korea, Vietnam and the Soviet Confrontation, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2007), 383, 384. 713 George W. Baer, One Hundred Years of Seapower, the U.S. from 1890 to 1990, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 412, 413. 252 begun development in 1969 and the Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) program that was the genesis of the Tomahawk cruise missile began in the early 1970’s, but officially merged with the Air Force effort to create the weapon in 1973.714Secretary Brown also made no friends in senior naval leadership due to his opposition to large, nuclear- powered aircraft carriers.715Brown’s annual reports to Congress are filled with references to “offsetting Soviet numerical advantages,” but the Navy did not usually figure into this calculus beyond its nuclear ballistic submarine (SSBN) force. The Carter defense budgets did allow for an increase in the number of Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates, as a means to “offsetting some of the existing numerical deficiencies in surface combatants required for sea control and defense tasks as well as other operations in ocean areas where there was a less concentrated threat.”716

While these differences significantly divide Army and Navy views in the 1970’s and 1980’s, some similarities existed. Both responded to the unfavorable outcome of the

Vietnam War and the expectation that Soviet numerical strength would continue to grow over the 1980’s. Both initially embraced defensive measures, but ultimately rejected them in favor of offensive means. Both were perceived initially as threatening to stability by

U.S. NATO allies.717Events at the end of the decade and the First Gulf War would remove strategic rationale for the Navy’s preferred strategy, allow the Army and Air

Force’s operational design to continue and imprint the Army’s concept onto the Navy

714Kenneth P. Werrell, The Evolution of the Cruise Missile, (Maxwell Air Force Base, Al: The Air University Press, September 1985), 150, 154, electronic resource, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a162646.pdf, last accessed 12 February 2017. 715Holloway, 383, 384. 716Harold Brown, The Department of Defense Annual Report, Fiscal year 1979, (Washington D.C.: United States Department of Defense, 02 February 1978), 173. 717 Friedman, The Fifty Year War, 463. 253 with crippling results for the generation of new strategic concepts for the sea service in the post-Cold War era. There is a degree of irony in this in that the Navy’s Maritime

Strategy was designed for both war with the Soviets and for the maintenance of lesser levels of conflict, unlike the Army’s, which was geared alone for high end conflicts.718

The Navy had actively evolved its command and control capabilities since the end of the Second World War. The Japanese offensive called into doubt the service’s ability to both project power and defend the fleet from hostile attack. It was estimated that the Japanese flew 2550 individual kamikaze suicide missions, of which

15% ended in a successful impact or near miss sufficient to inflict damage.719 Continuing development of radar and the proximity-fuzed shell mitigated the effects of kamikaze attack, but wartime Chief of Naval Operations Admiral was not satisfied with progress at the conclusion of the war. In October 1945 he wrote to the chiefs of the

Ships, Aeronautics, and Ordnance Bureaus to express his concerns for the future of the fleet.720 King commented on the slow rate of information display on individual ships under kamikaze attack and the general inability of the fleet to disseminate information fast enough to repel an attack. King recommended a number of improvements, notably,

“A method of presenting radar information automatically, instantaneously and continuously, and in such a manner that the human mind…may receive and act upon the

718 Hattendorf, The Evolution of the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy, 1977-1986, 79. 719 David L. Boslaugh, When Computers Went to Sea, The Digitalization of the United States Navy, (Los Alamitos, CA: The IEEE Computer Society, 1999), 53. 720Ibid, 55. 254 information in the most convenient form; plus instantaneous dissemination of information within the ship and force.”721

King’s call to action stimulated a half-century of continuous action by the Navy to meet the goals of more rapid transmission of information and targeting data throughout the fleet. Working in conjunction with private industry and academic institutions, the

Navy produced the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS); an information exchange system that shared the sensor tracking information from multiple ships. It was installed on the new frigates (later re-classified destroyers) USS King and USS Mahan by

September 1961, and aboard the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany by the end of that year.722

The Navy followed a similar path in the development of precision-guided munitions for war at sea. The kamikaze threat also resulted in a family of guided missiles designed to shoot down attacking aircraft before they could attack U.S. naval units, especially the aircraft carrier. The Standard missile family of surface to air missile weapons began as a joint project of the Navy’s Ordnance Bureau and the Johns Hopkins

University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in January 1945.723 It did not produce a viable weapon until 1953, but it and successor versions gradually became more accurate and lethal.724 Efforts such as these culminated in the development of “A fully integrated, digitized, ship’s combat system” (known as AEGIS) that first went to sea in 1983.725

721Ibid, 56. 722Ibid, 211, 212. 723Michael Isenberg, Shield of the Republic, The United States Navy in an Era of Cold War and Violent Peace, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 369. 724 Ibid. 725Boslaugh, 388. 255

Similar evolutionary paths were followed by the Navy’s other warfighting elements. The submarine and naval aviation arms also practiced evolutionary development in pure combat capability. Nuclear power for submarine propulsion was revolutionary in its own right, and the submarines it produced had a radically different mission than their World War 2 predecessors in that their primary mission was antisubmarine vice anti-surface warfare. Navy nuclear power chief Admiral Hyman G.

Rickover made use of the same partnerships with industry and academia in order to achieve success. The Navy’s aviation component was less successful in that it did not have a powerful shepherd like Rickover to sell its attributes to Congress and protect it from administration officials intent on bending the sea service to their will. Despite that condition the aviation Navy introduced new jet aircraft, angled flight decks, air-launched missiles, mirror landing systems, nuclear weapon-armed anti-submarine aircraft and

Rickover’s propulsion plant for carrier use in the USS Enterprise (CVN 65). These developments took place almost entirely within the decade of the 1950’s and were service, vice Department of Defense driven capabilities.726

Unlike its sister services the Navy historically had not viewed operational art or doctrine, as exemplified by the Army’s FM-100-5, as a necessary concept. This view is based on the differences in how the services viewed the concept of strategy in the 1980’s.

Navy officers primarily viewed doctrine as an outgrowth of naval tactics. Captain Wayne

P. Hughes, longtime professor of tactical analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in

Monterey, CA, describes doctrine as, “the glue of tactics,” that, “enunciates policies and

726 Email to author from Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret) on review of draft, 16 September 2016. 256 procedures that govern action.”727 While these principles appear to mirror those of the

Army, Hughes cautions that while doctrine in naval combat is vital, it should also not become dogmatic.728 Hughes continues his analysis by saying that doctrine is greater than tactics in that it encompasses command structure and communication, but that it is not the equal of tactics in that it can only establish the conditions that lead to good tactics.729

Hughes further asserts that naval officers should be wary of doctrine in general and,

“leave room for men of freewheeling genius, for such will be the aces of the next war.”730

This decentralized view of doctrine is remarkably similar to the path pursued by the

Army in adopting AirLand battle. The ground force adopted the German scheme of mission command known as Auftragstaktik in order to allow freedom of movement for junior leaders in order to adapt to, “the chaos of the next battlefield,” where “centralized control of subordinates would be always difficult and sometimes impossible.”731 This commonality in Army and Navy concepts was often forgotten during the 1980’s.732

Misunderstanding between the services over doctrine as a concept persisted throughout the 1990’s as well.733

The net effect of the military technical revolution was negative for the Navy in the short term but ultimately a positive one due to the development of the Navy’s strike capability. The ground and air launched cruise missile program were originally planned

727 Wayne P. Hughes, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat, 2nd Edition, (Annapolis, Md,:The Naval Institute Press, 2000), 29. 728 Ibid. 729Ibid, 30. 730Ibid, 33. 731 John L. Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle, The Development of Army Doctrine from 1973 to 1982, 58, 59. 732Skinner, 33. 733 John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Navy Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents,(Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers # 27, September 2006), 101. 257 as elements of the nation’s nuclear weapons capability. The Navy’s conventional variant of this effort, the Tomahawk cruise missile, would greatly improve the service’s ability to strike targets ashore without risking aircrews to determined enemy air defense systems.

The advent of the Reagan administration allowed the sea service to achieve many of its long sought goals in both force size and preferred global strategy for their employment. The U.S. Army to a degree saw itself a loser in this process and sought to better articulate its own view of strategy through documents like RAND analyst Carl

Builder’s “Who Shall Bell the Cat” study of April 1987.734 The end of the Soviet menace, however, immediately left the naval service without its preferred opponent, although it retained forward presence and crisis response functions. As the Navy began to formulate a replacement strategy and attendant force structure, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of

Kuwait precipitated an ideal conflict for proving the utility of AirLand Battle. The First

Gulf War would have significant effects in validating the Army’s concept and the centralized, Goldwater Nichols Command structure. The Navy’s path to a replacement for the Maritime Strategy was more challenging in that the joint structures the service had so vigorously opposed in the mid 1980’s now appeared the author of one of the nation’s swiftest and least costly wars—the First Gulf War.

A 1991 article in Defense magazine suggested that the Gulf crisis “Occurred at a critical time in the development of the U.S. Navy for both strategic and financial reasons.” The end of the Cold War had apparently removed the Navy’s prime raison d’etre at a time when Congress was increasingly balking at the cost of new warships and

734Carl H. Builder, “The Army in the Strategic Planning Process, Who Shall Bell the Cat,” (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation Press, April 1987), v. 258 aircraft.”735 The sea service appeared obstinate in accepting the new joint structures under which the Gulf War would be planned and fought. The Army and Air Force thought of strategy in terms of force structure while the Navy viewed strategy from more of a geographic perspective. The geographically limited scope of the Persian Gulf War favored the Army interpretation. The Army and Air Force’s tactical and operational concepts of planning also prevailed over the Navy’s strategic planning efforts. The new national security and defense strategies that emerged from the Gulf War were much closer connected to Army and Air Force operational concepts than to the Navy’s global

Cold War strategy. These differing constructs of “strategy” collided at the outset of the

Gulf conflict. The Gulf War naval component commander Admiral Stan Arthur later stated in 1999, “Because Desert Storm was the only major war we have had in a generation; conclusions drawn from it will drive force composition, systems design, and budget decisions for decades.”736 The concept of military strategy appeared to have also been decided by the outcome of the Gulf War with the Navy clearly on the losing side of the argument.

Struggling to Go Joint in Command and Control

The effects of the Goldwater Nichols Act and the end of the Cold War immediately impacted the Navy as it mobilized assets for President George H.W. Bush’s response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the summer of 1990. The Navy had struggled

735 James Roberts, “Going in Harm’s Way, The U.S. Navy in the Light of the Gulf Crisis,” Defense, (March 1991), 27. 736Marvin Pokrant, Desert Storm at Sea, What the Navy Really Did, (Westport, Ct: Greenwood Press, 1999), x. 259 to catch up to the other services in adapting “joint” structures and significant differences remained. These were especially apparent in the upper command relationships for the

Desert Shield and Storm operations, and in the planning for the air war against Iraq. The

Center of Naval Analysis (CNA) history of the Gulf Conflict identified five early command decisions affecting the Navy’s performance during the conflict.737 Three of these directly involved joint relationships.

Admiral Hank Mauz, then commanding the U.S. Seventh Fleet based in

Yokosuka, Japan, was designated as Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command

(COMUSNAVCENT) on 16 August 1990.738 The Joint Chiefs and civilian leadership felt that a three-star officer (Vice Admiral) was necessary as U.S. Central Command

(CENTCOM) Commander General Norman Schwarzkopf’s naval component commander. This change would allow the Army general to command the multiple Navy aircraft carriers gathering in the region in support of Operation Desert Shield and be in line with the ranks of Schwarzkopf’s other component commanders.739

Mauz was an experienced surface warfare officer who among his many assignments had served as an action officer in the OP 603 strategic concepts office in the late 1970’s when the Navy began to shift toward the offensive concepts that would later become the Maritime Strategy. He was confronted almost immediately by significant differences in Army (and Air Force) interpretation of command structure and

737 Marvin Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, What the Navy Really Did, (Westport, Ct: The Greenwood Press, 1999), 18. 738 Edward J. Marolda and Robert J. Schneller Jr, Sword and Shield, The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf War, (Washington D.C.: The Naval Historical Center, The Department of the Navy, 1998), 72. 739Ibid, 81. 260 organization for the air war against Iraq than those of the Navy. Mauz decided to make his headquarters aboard a Navy command ship; first the USS LaSalle and then his regular

Seventh Fleet flagship USS Blue Ridge when she arrived from Japan in September

1990.740 This choice made sense from the traditional Navy perspective as locating

COMUSNAVCENT on a specially configured flagship, “provided instant communications, a command center, berthing (accommodations), and office space.”741

This choice allowed the naval component commander to remain close to his forces and remain closely apprised of their combat operations.

An additional problem existed in that Admiral Mauz and one of his key, senior subordinates were scheduled to rotate to other commands before the end of 1990. Rear

Admiral Timothy Wright, a one-star flag officer, was appointed on short notice as

COMUSNAVCENT’s personal representative at CENTCOM headquarters, but this effort did not significantly improve the Navy’s influence on Schwarzkopf’s planning and conduct of the war. Wright, a naval aviator with strike warfare experience, was later replaced by Rear Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher in November 1990 (before the commencement of active air operations against Iraq.)742Lautenbacher, although a very capable and experienced officer, did not have the same strike warfare experience as

Wright.743

Vice Admiral Mauz was also scheduled to rotate back to Washington D.C. for

service on the OPNAV staff in December 1990. He was to be replaced by Vice

740Ibid, 82. 741Pokrant, Desert Shield At Sea, 18. 742 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 186. 743Ibid, 186, 187. 261

Admiral Stan Arthur as both Commander Seventh Fleet and as Commander, U.S.

Naval Forces Central Command. CNO Admiral Frank Kelso desired that Mauz return

to the OPNAV staff so that Admiral William Smith, whom Mauz was scheduled to

relieve, could fill a vacant, but presumed important billet on the NATO staff in

Brussels.744CENTCOM and its air and maritime components were supposed to have

non-rotational policies for their commanders in case of crisis or conflict.745 The Navy

now appeared to be violating this rule for its incumbent commander. This choice,

however, did not make sense in the new joint environment for two important reasons.

A component commander’s proximity to the overall leadership of the operation

counted for more than traditional naval command concerns in the new joint command

environment. Admiral Wright and now Admiral Lautenbacher were capable officers

but did not have the same rank and prestige as did their three star maritime component

commander boss far away on his flagship.

CENTCOM commander General Schwarzkopf located his command post in the

Saudi capital of Riyadh. While both Mauz and his successor Vice Admiral Arthur

spoke with Schwarzkopf several times each day, their lack of physical presence and

face-to-face staff conversations appeared to lessen naval influence on the overall

operation. Schwarzkopf was reported by some to have a very personal style of

command that valued face-to-face personal discussions over phone

conversation.746General Schwarzkopf asked Mauz if he wanted to remain as the

CENTCOM Maritime Forces commander, but Mauz declined, saying that he did not

744 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 169. 745Ibid. 746Ibid, 19. 262

want to make trouble for the Navy.747 Everyone involved later claimed the move was

supported by all. In retrospect, however, the choice to keep the maritime commander

on a ship far from Riyadh and the early relief of Admiral Mauz may have complicated

the Navy’s efforts in the forthcoming Desert Storm campaign. The Navy remained

officially agreed on the choice to keep COMUSNAVCENT at sea and Admirals Mauz

stated after the war that he would not have changed their command locations.748

Admiral Arthur was less certain. He said in 1999 that COMUSNAVCENT should

have been located in Riyadh, but also stated that if he had needed to be there, the

Navy, “would have somehow put together an adequate communications package for

him.”749

Lack of good communications and immediate physical proximity between

General Schwarzkopf and his naval component commanders seem to have played a

role in three other key elements of the Desert Shield/Desert Storm campaign. Planning

for the air campaign saw the Navy clash bitterly with the Air Force over command and

control arrangements and the use of airpower in support of the overall effort. The

command arrangements and general differences in strategic ethos of the Army and

Navy led to what the Navy always feared in an Army or Air Force general telling

admirals how to conduct naval operations. Finally, the issue of whether or not to use

the Marine Corps as an active combat participant or merely a decoy caused frustration

at Marine Corps headquarters in the U.S. and perhaps also suggested the Army

capitalized on the Goldwater Nichols provisions to support its own parochial service

747Ibid, 169. 748 Ibid. 749 Pokrant, Desert Storm at Sea, 210. 263

desires. The Marine Corps later exploited the issue to break free of naval domination

at the operational level of warfare. As one naval officer later remarked, “After Desert

Storm, no longer would the Marines be represented by a Colonel – the Fleet Marine

Officer – on a Navy component command staff, supporting an Admiral, but rather they

would be their own component, under their own general.”750

Planning the Gulf War Air Campaign

Conflict over command and control of the air campaign, and target designation

in support of the ground effort led to serious disagreement between the Air Force and

Navy at the outset of the war and throughout its duration. The course of the air

campaign for the Gulf War was by no means set in the mind of General Schwarzkopf

as planning commenced in September 1990. The Air Force started planning for the

Iraq conflict independent of CENTCOM in early August immediately after Saddam

Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.751Led by Air Force air power theorist Colonel John

Warden, the service planning group named “Checkmate “came up with a plan entitled

“Instant Thunder” that proposed dramatic attacks against the senior civilian and

military leadership of Iraq.752

Warden was well known in the Air Force and in the Pentagon as an astute

advocate of the war-winning capabilities of airpower. He was sought after for strategic

studies assignments even when he was a relatively junior officer. In 1977 Warden was

750 Email to the author from Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 16 September 2016. 751 Richard P. Hallion, Storm over Iraq, Air Power and the Gulf War, (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 142, 143. 752Ibid.. 264

a member of the Air Force team assigned to evaluate President Carter’s Presidential

Review Memorandum 10, a statement on Military Net Assessment and Posture

Review. A very junior Lieutenant Commander Peter Swartz found himself confronting

Warden as his service opposite member on the review. Swartz felt afterward that

Warden “creamed him” in terms of strategic knowledge. 753 While Swartz vowed not

to again be so overmatched by the Air Force in terms of strategic knowledge, Warden

went on to become one of the Air Force’s premier advocates of offensive action,

arguing that defensive use of airpower imposed too many risks and allowed an enemy

to concentrate their own forces in response.754 Warden was a military theorist on par

with John Boyd and produced a significant book on how to conduct a modern air

campaign in 1988. Warden believed that operational art had been badly neglected by

the U.S. military, and suggested that a single service could conduct operations capable

of winning a conflict.755

Instant Thunder was designed “to inflict strategic paralysis upon Saddam

Hussein’s military machine.”756 The plan closely followed Colonel Warden’s theory of

“five strategic rings” that must be broken to meet victory conditions in war.757 They

included isolating enemy leadership from the wider conflict, degrading key production

753 Email to the author from Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 16 September 2016, and James Earl Carter, “Presidential Review Memoradum 10, “Comprehensive Military Net Assessment and Posture Review, 18 February 1977,” Atlanta, GA: The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum , http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/prmemorandums/prm10.pdf, electronic resource, last accessed 16 September 2016. 754 Richard P. Hallion, Storm Over Iraq, 117. 755 John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign, Planning for Combat, (Washington D.C., The National Defense University Press, 1988), electronic resource, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/warden/wrdprosp.htm, last accessed 12 February 2017. 756Ibid, 151. 757Ibid, 116, 117. 265

facilities, and disruption of enemy infrastructure through attacks on transportation

lines. These actions would then turn both the civilian population and troops against

their leadership and hence destroy an opponent’s offensive and defensive military

capability.758

Schwazkopf received Warden’s brief in Tampa, Florida (the nominal stateside headquarters of CENTCOM) on 17 August. Schwarzkopf’s Chief of Staff, Marine Major

General Robert Johnson asked Warden if the Air Force “had a plan to logistically support a longer air campaign” in case CENTCOM wanted to first destroy Iraqi air defenses before attacking targets in Baghdad.759 Schwarzkopf liked some aspects of Warden’s plan, but wanted his designated air component commander Air Force Lieutenant General

Chuck Horner to approve the strategy first. Schwarzkopf must have had serious doubts, as he later described Warden as “a member of the Curtis LeMay school of Air Force planners – guys who think strategic bombing can do it all and that armies {and navies} are obsolete.”760 Warden’s presentation to Horner did not go well. Horner was convinced that a decapitation strike such as Warden advocated would be insufficient. The Air

Component Commander was also concerned about having someone from “Washington” pick and choose targets, as that process during the Vietnam War had been disastrous in

Horner’s opinion.761

758Ibid, 151. 759Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, The General’s War, The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf, (New York: Little Brown and Company, 1995), 99. 760 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 112 761 “Interview with General Charles Horner, Commander of the U.S. Ninth Air Force,”PBS Frontline, The Gulf War, Original air date 09 January 1996, electronic resource, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/horner/1.html, last accessed 12 February 2017. 266

Horner appointed the outgoing deputy chief of the Joint Middle East Task Force (an office disestablished in the Desert Storm buildup), Air Force Brigadier Buster Glosson, as the chief of the air war planning group, later dubbed “the Black Hole” for the level of secrecy given to its plans and products.762 Glosson adopted a modified version of

Warden’s plan that identified many of the same command and control and communications/transport targets for early termination, but spaced the campaign over months rather than the original six-day window advocated by Warden. Military historian

Steven Metz suggests that, “ultimately, Schwarzkopf and Powell neither rejected nor fully embraced the strategic airpower idea, but allowed it to coexist in parallel with the other parts of the campaign.”763

The air plan was still in its infancy when it collided with the Navy’s alternative plans for air warfare in the Gulf. The key differences between Navy and Air Force planners were how much focus to give the Iraqi air defense system at the outset of the war, geographic separations of command, and who was in charge. Vice Admiral Mauz liked the aggressive side of Warden’s plan, but he was unhappy that it only intended to suppress and not destroy Iraqi air defenses.764 The Navy’s representative in “the Black

Hole,” Commander Donald McSwain labeled it as “Distant Blunder,” as it was, “drafted at the distant Pentagon and a blunder for its emphasis on attacking Baghdad at the outset of the war.”765

762Ibid, 115. 763 Steven Metz, Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy, (Washington D.C.: Potomac Books, 2008), 26, 27. 764 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 68. 765 Gordon and Trainor, The General’s War, 97. 267

The Navy’s experience in Vietnam and its plans to attack Soviet ground targets demanded that the enemy air defense system be silenced before more significant attacks could commence. Admiral Mauz had just conducted extensive planning and exercises on this concept while serving as Commander, Seventh Fleet. Where standard NATO doctrine discussed the concept of Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD), Mauz preferred that of Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses (DEAD) as a more appropriate operational effort and acronym.766 Mauz and the Marine Air component commander

Major General Royal N. Moore, Jr. also argued for a “rollback” campaign against Iraq’s air defenses before engaging in aggressive attacks against Iraqi command and control and infrastructure targets.767 The Admiral and his staff had developed their overall air warfare concept based on Mauz’s experience as the commander the USS America carrier battle group that had conducted the Operation El Dorado Canyon raids on Libya in 1986, as well as Mauz’s more recent Pacific command experience. Mauz also backed up his plan with analysis on the Iraqi Air Defense system provided by the Office of Naval

Intelligence Strike Projection Evaluation and Anti-air Warfare Research (SPEAR) office.768

The Air Force had other ideas. Vice Admiral Mauz went to see his air component command counterpart General Horner soon after arriving to discuss their respective allocations of the air war over Iraq. Mauz wanted to divide Air Force and Navy targets geographically in order to minimize confusion. This was the way air operations had been conducted during the Vietnam War and had been described as “route packages” for the

766 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 64. 767 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 114. 768 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 65. 268 separate service air components. The Navy’s official account of the First Gulf War notes

General Horner responded angrily to this suggestion: “Fuck that! Don’t ever talk to me about it again, because we’re not going to do it, I’ll resign first!”769 Mauz later said he never used the term “route package,” but that Horner had assumed he meant that in their discussion.770 Mauz also stated that Horner said route packages, “got people killed in

Vietnam.”771Horner later stated that This was perhaps due to some of the challenging assignments the Air Force in particular had received as it share of Vietnam route packages, although the Navy and Air Force had shared responsibility for arguably the most dangerous of these. The Route 6 package shared between the services contained the heavily defended Vietnamese capital of Hanoi and the important port city of Haiphong.772

Mauz thought the real reason for the large number of airmen deaths over Vietnam was not the route package concept, but rather, “sending aircraft repeatedly to the same stupid targets picked by Washington.”773 While Horner may have been opposed to anything resembling a route package in coordinating Air Force and Navy strikes from Saudi

Arabia and the Persian Gulf, he apparently did not have the same reservations with aircraft based elsewhere. Horner approved specific geographic separation for aircraft assigned to Joint Task Force Proven Force that was based in Turkey. The Gulf War

Airpower survey says Horner was specifically concerned about the symbolism of

769 Marolda and Schneller, Sword and Shield, 115. 770 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 68. 771 Ibid. 772Walter J. Boyne, “Route Pack 6,” Washington D.C., Air Force Magazine, November 1999, electronic resourse, http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/1999/November%201999/1199pack.aspx, last assessed, 25 July 2016. 773 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 68. 269 geographic separation between Navy and Air Force strike locations.774 While Horner did not allow for route packages or a sense of decentralized air operations as advocated by the navy, he did alter the final Desert Storm Air Plan to include, “a major effort to destroy Iraq’s air defense system in the first few hours of the war,” as the Navy had first advocated.775This conflict illustrated another aspect of the wide gulf between Navy and

Air Force concepts of strategy and operational planning that made joint operations challenging.

Leadership of the air campaign also showed the significant differences between the services. The Navy and Marine Corps, as well as the Air Force and Army followed service traditions in their respective plans for organizing the air war component to what became Operation Desert Storm. The Navy and Marine Corps preferred a decentralized approach that empowered tactical commanders to take charge of all units (surface, subsurface and aviation) in different geographic regions. The Navy carrier battle group and the Navy/Marine Corps Air Ground Task force were representative constructs of this idea with one commander in charge of all assets in each formation.776 The Air Force and

Army preferred more centralized control in a unitary chain of command. They only desired joint coordination at the operational level of warfare and higher. This concept was exemplified in Joint Forces Air Component Commander (JFACC), the organization that was charged with fighting the air war.777

774 Elliot A Cohen, Director, “Gulf War Airpower Survey, Volume 1,” (Washington D.C.: The United States Government Printing Office, 1993), 52, electronic resources, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a279741.pdf, last accessed 16 September 2017. 775 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 66. 776 Ibid. 777 Ibid. 270

The Air Force had published the blueprint for joint air operations soon after the

Army had completed its FM 100-5 field manual that was at the heart of what became the

AirLand battle concept. The Joint Doctrine for Theater Counterair Operations (for overseas land areas) was published in April 1986 and constituted the most recent word from the Joint Chiefs on joint air command functions at the operational level of warfare.

This document stated, “The joint force air component commander will be the Service component commander who has the preponderance of air assets to be used and the ability to assume that responsibility.”778 The Navy had participated in the creation of this document and it had been co-signed by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and the

Marine Corps Commandant. Many in the Navy thought, however, that they would never have to abide by its tenets.779

The Air Force and its coalition partners would provide the bulk of the airpower for the conflict. The Air Force had 718 aircraft in theater in November 1990 as opposed to the Navy and Marine Corps’ combined 581 aircraft.780 Schwarzkopf had also wargamed a potential conflict with Iraq in July 1990, just one month prior to Saddam

Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, where Horner acted as commander of all air forces, including those based on carriers.781 The Theater Counterair document did allow the

Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF) commander autonomous control over the

778“Joint Doctrine for Theater Counterair Operations,” (Washington D.C.: The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), 1 April 1986), III-4, electronic resources, http://www.davi.ws/doc/JointPub_3-01-2.pdf,, last accessed 16 September 2016. 779 Email to the author from Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 16 September 2016. 780 Gulf War Airpower Survey, Volume 1, 33-35. 781 Hallion, Storm Over Iraq, 142. 271 aircraft specifically assigned to his command, but allowed the Joint Air Commander the right to overrule the MAGTF commander as required.782

This appointment put the Air Force effectively in control of the air war and subjected naval officers to both JFACC control for the first time and to that agent of control in the Air Tasking Order (ATO.) This massive document that often contained hundreds of pages of detailed daily operations specifics was anathema to the Navy’s concept of decentralized control of the battlefield. It listed everything, including type of aircraft, mission, call sign; identify friend or foe (IFF) codes, takeoff and landing times, time over target and refueling instructions. A supplemental instructions (SPINS) section gave additional, detailed data. This message went to every command every day and its transmission caused significant confusion because ATO had never been applied to such a large joint force before the Gulf War. In some cases the message arrived a day late on the aircraft carriers assigned to COMNAVCENT even when sent via satellite with the highest “Flash” message priority routing.783

The Center for Naval Analysis study of the Gulf conflict found that many naval officers it surveyed had no familiarity with the JFACC and ATO prior to the Gulf War.

They believed it to be a coordinating but not a command tool and did not expect to receive such detailed instructions on how to carry out their missions.784 Naval aviators usually received more general instructions and, “feel they can understand the CinC’s

(commander’s) objectives well enough to pick out the most lucrative targets to strike.”785

782Joint Doctrine for Theater Counterair Operations, III-4, III-5. 783 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 71 784Ibid, 66, 67. 785Ibid, 68. 272

Many naval officers also believed the JFACC did not have an appreciation for naval issues or the characteristics of naval aircraft, despite the inclusion of naval personnel in the Riyadh headquarters and in the writing of the ATO. The official Navy history of the

Gulf War notes that the Air Force planners running the air war did not appreciate the potential threat of the Iraqi Navy’s Exocet missile-armed aircraft and patrol boats in the

Persian Gulf.786 Naval forces needed to keep watch over the Gulf as it was the coalition’s

“right flank” where Iraqi units had the potential to attack allied naval forces.787

The JFACC staff was often ignorant of the capabilities of naval aircraft and units, which caused confusion in naval response to missions ordered by the air component commander. Generals Schwarzkopf and Horner were skeptical of Navy claims that its conventional Tomahawk cruise missile would be an effective strike weapon. Air Force cruise missiles, unlike the Tomahawk missile, were nuclear weapons and the available

Navy weapons had been programmed for missions against Soviet targets rather than those in Iraq.788 When General Glosson prepared his first draft of the air war plan, the missions included one where six Navy A-6 Intruder aircraft would conduct a bombing raid against a heavily defended target west of downtown Baghdad.789 The Office of Naval

Intelligence SPEAR division argued that such an attack was better suited to Tomahawk missiles than manned aircraft. The Air Force resisted this argument, but General Glosson still ordered a series of computer simulations of the attack that also included the Air

786 Marolda and Schneller, Sword and Shield, 189. 787 Ibid. 788 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 73. 789 Gordon and Trainor, The General’s War, 115. 273

Force F-117 Stealth aircraft.790 The results suggested that over half of the Navy bombers and Air Force stealth aircraft would be lost. Such losses would likely have amounted to a significant political and propaganda victory for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.791 Gulf

War chroniclers Michael Gordon and General Bernard Trainor suggest this potential poor outcome was enough to convince General Glosson to select the Tomahawk for the mission.792 In spite of some programming difficulties, the Navy was able to reprogram enough Tomahawk missiles to support the entire Desert Storm air campaign in less than six months.793 The costs of the Tomahawk verses that of conventional air-dropped weapons may have been a limiting factor for CENTCOM I agreeing to more cruise missile participation. Each Tomahawk missile cost approximately $1.2 million to deliver a 1000 lb warhead, while a 2000 lb air-dropped, laser guided bomb could penetrate more hardened targets for just $73,000 per round.794

Planning the Ground War without the Marines

Further exposing the cleavages between services in the new joint system, there was also the interesting case of the employment of Marine Corps units during the buildup to and execution of Operation Desert Storm. In the immediate aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, U.S. and Saudi officials were concerned that Saddam Hussein might

790 Ibid. 791 Ibid. 792 Ibid. 793 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 73. 794 Hallion, Storm Over Iraq, 250, 251. 274 order his forces to advance further south into Saudi Arabia.795 The Navy ordered two separate amphibious warfare groups with thousands of embarked U.S. Marines from the

East Coast of the United States and from the Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines to the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Desert Shield.796 The Marine units dispatched were prepared for combat both in the ground defense of Saudi Arabia, but also as a force that might affect a forced landing in the rear of Hussein’s forces if they advanced into

Saudi Arabia.797 In their haste, however, to get as much combat capability into the

Persian Gulf region as possible, Navy and Marine planners had not loaded the individual ships as would be expected for an imminent amphibious assault. Instead, the ships were given a compromise loadout that left them not fully able to immediately land on a hostile coast.798 Communications problems between Vice Admiral Mauz and his amphibious warfare commander, Rear Admiral John LaPlante, further complicated the effective communication of this problem to General Schwarzkopf.

The Navy and the Marines worked out their communication and organizational details, but fears of substantial casualties and perhaps service parochial concerns effectively canceled a major amphibious operation during the Gulf War. Rear Admiral

LaPlante and his Marine Landing Force commander colleague Major General Harry

Jenkins had not yet assembled their entire potential force in November 1990 when first asked of the feasibility of an attack. They concluded that with only one Marine

795 George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed, The Collapse of the Soviet Empire, The Unification of Germany, Tiananmen Square, and The Gulf War, (New York, Alfred Knopf, 1998), 316, 317. 796 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea , 79. 797 Ibid. 798Ibid, 83. 275

Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) they did not have enough forces and, “We would get our ass kicked.”799 The Marine general commanding Marine Forces already ashore as part of the defense of Saudi Arabia, Lieutenant General Walter Boomer, did not command the

Marine units embarked in the amphibious ships. When pressed by Schwarzkopf on whether or not an amphibious landing was necessary to the Marines already on the ground in Saudi Arabia, Boomer said it was not.800 Vice Admiral Mauz was concerned about potential mine threats to the amphibious ships. Finally, General Schwarzkopf was also loath to sustain the potential heavy casualties that had historically been associated with opposed amphibious . After the war Schwarzkopf said that he and

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell decided that, “High priority was placed on deception from the outset of the crisis,” and that, “we worked hard to convince the Iraqis that coalition forces would attack directly into Kuwait supported by amphibious operations.”801 The official Army history of the First Gulf War suggests that

Schwarzkopf desired to use both the Marines and Army Airborne Assault forces, “to tie down the Iraqis by making them believe that both options would be exercised.” The

Army history also says this decision distracted seven Iraqi divisions from participating in the main battle to the west.802

Despite this generally common view among senior leaders that an amphibious attack was unnecessary, some retired Marines, like Bernard Trainor, accused

Schwarzkopf of placing parochial Army concerns ahead of those of the Marine Corps in

799 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 118. 800Ibid, 254. 801 Ibid. 802Robert H. Scales, Certain Victory, The Army in the Gulf War, (Fort Leavenworth, KS, The U.S. Army Command and General Press, 1994), 128. 276 terms of the planning for the ground assault into Kuwait. The CENTCOM commander was concerned from the outset of the crisis about the ability of his command staff to effectively plan such a complex ground operation. Instead of his staff in Riyadh or the continental U.S. CENTCOM headquarters staff, Schwarzkopf selected an elite group of

Army operations planners picked from the staff of the School for Advanced Military

Studies (SAMS) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Purvis, this group was tapped by Schwarzkopf to conduct the planning for the ground war in

Kuwait and Iraq under isolated and secretive conditions. These men were soon known by the derisive sobriquet “Jedi Knights” at the Riyadh headquarters.803

Nicknames aside, Purvis’ SAMS cell constituted another service-based, parochial planning group similar to Warden’s “Checkmate” organization and the “Black Hole” cell planning the air war in a vacuum in Riyadh. The Navy and Marine Corps appeared to be separated from the campaign planning effort at both its strategic and operational levels, but equally the maritime services did not invite the Army or Air Force to participate in their planning for amphibious operations.804These non-joint planning efforts led to further cases of service bickering involving the use of the Marine Corps units afloat. Purvis and his group actively studied the idea of a Marine Corps amphibious assault by the 4th

Marine Expeditionary Brigade across a marsh area at the Kuwait/Iraq border in the vicinity of Bubiyan Island.805 They did not however invite Marine representatives to any of their planning meetings for nearly two months. In November 1990 a member of

803 Gordon and Trainor, The General’s War, 126. 804 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 84. 805 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Storm, 117. 277

Lieutenant General Boomer’s staff was invited to participate, but Marines from the shipboard contingent were not.806

The “Jedi” planners had decided to use Boomer’s land-based Marines for frontal infantry attacks that in conjunction with a British assault would open a hole in the Iraqi lines through which U.S. Army armored forces would race in a sweeping “left hook” around the Iraqi forces in Kuwait.807In a commanders meeting that shortly followed the unveiling of the “Jedi” plan of attack, Lieutenant General Boomer strongly disagreed with the concept, preferring to keep Marines close to coastline of Kuwait where they could advance to Kuwait City under the protection of Navy ship-based weapons.

Schwarzkopf agreed and told Purvis and his team to “Stop screwing with the Marines.”808

Accounts as to whether or not the Army planners made best use of their Marine

Corps assets vary. The official Army history of the Gulf War written under the direction of Brigadier General Robert Scales suggests the Army believed the Marines to be too lightly equipped and too dependent on seaborne fire support and logistics to play anything but a supporting role in the campaign. Lieutenant General Gary Luck, commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps assigned to protect the Saudi border from a potential Iraqi invasion in November 1990 was concerned about the capability of the

Marines assigned to his command. Luck noted,

the Marines prefer to keep ground forces further back and nearer to the coasts than Army forces and to control the vacated ground using fires from their Harrier ground support aircraft and naval gunfire. The Marines did not have the armored staying power necessary to fight well forward. They had only 123 tanks—all older M60s—that were overmatched by the Iraqi T-72s. With only two other

806 Gordon and Trainor, The General’s War, 159, 160. 807 Ibid. 159-161. 808Ibid, 161, 162. 278

battalions of extremely thin-skinned and vulnerable light-armor vehicles, the Marines were capable of limited maneuvering against the Iraqis outside their narrow coastal enclave.809

The Marines own Gulf War history notes that just two months later the Marines ashore under Army command, “had a considerable number of M1A1 tanks,” courtesy of an arrangement between Army Chief of Staff General Carl E. Vuono and Marine Corps

Commandant General Al Gray.810 Other elements of the Marines official Gulf War history suggest cooperation between Army and Marine Corps planners.811 It should be noted that while service synchronization in the Gulf War was good, it was “not yet seamless.”812 Disagreements about each other’s service capabilities could have been due to unfamiliarity. Coordination between the services occurred almost entirely at the strategic level, with limited contacts at the operational and tactical levels. A 1993 assessment suggested, “Jointness still stops at the headquarters of the CINCs: they are the lowest level at which joint staffs exist in most theaters.” 813

As Schwarzkopf was trying to clarify the role of his Marine elements afloat and ashore in the region, the Marine Corps Commandant General Al Gray became involved unofficially in the CENTCOM planning process. According to Bernard Trainor, himself a retired Marine Corps general, Gray lacked confidence in Boomer’s ability to command ashore and desired greater Marine participation in the form of an amphibious attack in

809Robert H. Scales, Certain Victory, The Army in the Gulf War, 96. 810 Charles D. Melson, Evelyn A. Englander and David A. Dawson, U.S. Marines in the Persian Gulf, 1990-1991, Anthology and Annotated Bibliography, (Washington D.C., The History and Museums Division. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1992), 16. 811 Charles J. Quilter II, U.S. Marines in the Persian Gulf 1990-1991, With the I Marine Expeditionary Force in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, (Washington D.C., The History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1993), 20, 21. 812Metz, Iraq and the Evolution of U.S. Strategy, 34. 813 James A Winnefeld and Dana J. Johnson, “Unity of Control, Joint Air Operations in the Gulf,” The Joint Forces Quarterly, (Summer 1993), 99. 279

Kuwait or Iraq.814 Gray visited the Riyadh headquarters in December 1990 and sought to insert himself into the planning process by telling Schwarzkopf that he disagreed with the

Marine component of the attack and that Boomer was not up to the task of leading the

Marine operation ashore.815 Schwarzkopf questioned Boomer on Gray’s complaints.

Boomer saw no reason to change the attack plan and especially saw no need for Gray’s suggestion that another three star Marine general be assigned to the Riyadh headquarters to supervise him. Schwarzkopf rejected all of Gray’s suggestions and the disconsolate

Commandant returned to Washington bereft of any success in altering the ground war.

Vice Admiral Mauz was not in favor of amphibious operations due to poor beach conditions in the proposed areas for assault.816 His successor, Vice Admiral Stan Arthur, however, pressed for an amphibious attack at the outset of the ground war in case the

Army advance ashore bogged down, but was rebuffed by Schwarzkopf who was not in favor and indirectly by Boomer who again said the Marines ashore could “get by” without one.817 After the war Arthur recalled, “I knew that neither Schwarzkopf nor

Powell wanted to have an amphibious landing. That was the last thing they wanted to have happen. And there was never an occasion where an amphibious landing was going to be necessary to conduct the war the way they wanted to.”818 While there was perhaps agreement at the outset of the Desert Shield deployment on the lack of need for amphibious operations, there is some evidence to suggest that parochial concerns from the services interfered with further assessment of amphibious requirements. In any case,

814 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 118. 815 Gordon and Trainor, The General’s War, 176. 816 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 118. 817 Gordon and Trainor, The General’s War, 292, 294. 818 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 150. 280

Schwarzkopf as the theater commander had the final say and the Marines remained aboard their ships.

Despite claims after the Gulf War of marvelous joint effort made by Vice

President Cheney, Chairman Powell, General Schwarzkopf and other leaders, primarily as the result of the Goldwater Nichols Act provisions, the examples of the command and control arrangements, the planning for the air war, and the question of how to use the

Marines in the conflict suggested that service parochialism was alive and well. The Army and Air Force held predominant command positions at the national strategic level and at the operational level in the Persian Gulf. The focus on land operations against Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait justified those appointments. Generals Powell, Schwarzkopf, Horner and Glosson imposed their service doctrines developed in the 1980’s for fighting the

Soviet Union. Joint integration for the Army and Air Force only took place at the operational level of command and above, so it was unlikely that Schwarzkopf would allow intrusion by the Navy and Marine Corps into planning for the air and ground campaigns led respectively by the Army and Air Force.819Strategic level integration took place, but was likely hampered by the Navy’s refusal to base its commander at

Schwarzkopf’s Command headquarters in Riyadh.

The lessons learned by the Navy in the wake of the Gulf conflict centered on same concerns. Command and control, the planning and the conduct of the air war and the future of the Marine Corps and its relationship with the Navy were debated. The two commanders of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf War came to differing opinions on where their headquarters should have best been located. Vice Admiral Mauz remained

819Scales, 106. 281 convinced that his headquarters belonged aboard a ship and that ship ought to be at sea.820

There was still a significant Iraqi maritime threat in the form of mines, and small surface combatants armed with cruise missiles when the buildup for combat operations commenced. The CNA operational report on the Gulf War also suggested that a ship facility had better means with which to communicate with other fleet units than one located on shore. It further reported there had been real concern that the Iraqis might invade Saudi Arabia and that the Navy wanted no part of a land-based headquarters that could be overrun by hostile ground forces.821

Vice Admiral Arthur however believed that the headquarters should have been located with the rest of the joint force leadership in Riyadh and not on a ship at sea or in port. General Schwarzkopf lacked experience in handling naval units and would have benefitted from senior naval leadership in close proximity. His experience as the Army component commander during the 1983 Grenada invasion under naval leadership did not raise his opinion of the naval service’s professionalism.822Given Schwarzkopf’s misgivings regarding the Navy, the presence of a senior officer would have served to assert the Navy’s role in the mission far earlier and with better results. In an ironic twist of fate, it should have been an admiral’s turn to lead CENTCOM at the time of the First

Gulf War. The Navy had nominated Vice Admiral Hank Mustin for the position, but according to Mustin and others, Colin Powell, then National Security Advisor for

820Pokrant, Desert Storm at Sea, 209, 210. 821Ibid, 208, 209. 822 William Owens with Ed Offley, Lifting the Fog of War, (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 90, 91. 282

President Reagan, demanded an Army general for the position.823 Mustin later described

Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci who acquiesced to Powell’s demand as a “tower of jello” for not standing up to such blatant Army parochialism.824 Carlucci’s military assistant Admiral Bill Owens also suggested that Mustin was not the right man for the

CENTCOM position.825 The denuded naval presence at CENTCOM headquarters did not contribute to its situational awareness. The one-star naval liaison officer located in

Riyadh, Rear Admiral Timothy Wright, was not apprised of or invited to any of the key briefs such as Colonel Warden’s Instant Thunder strike plan. Wright later observed,

“Decisions were made in Riyadh on the spot by ‘people with faces,’ and by implication not by electronic communications.”826

The official Navy history of the Gulf War suggests that the Navy’s indifference to past joint efforts in the Persian Gulf region, such as General Schwarzkopf’s initial exercise Internal Look of July 1990, and a reluctance to engage with CENTCOM’s U.S. based headquarters staff in Tampa, contributed to the Navy’s lack of interest in establishing its headquarters in Riyadh.827 It also suggests that while the Navy had good reason to focus on maritime threats from both Iraq and Iran during the Gulf conflict, it had a historically fragmented command structure for Persian Gulf operations that hampered effective deployment against either threat. The CNA report also notes this

823Henry Mustin with David F. Winkler, The Oral History of Vice Admiral Henry C. Mustin, USN (ret), (Washington D.C., The Navy History and Heritage Command, July, 2001), 191. 824 Ibid. 825 Frank Charles Carlucci III with Charles Stuart Kennedy,“Interview with Frank C. Carlucci III,” (Washington D.C.: The Library of Congress, The Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, 2000), 138, 139, electronic resource, https://cdn.loc.gov/service/mss/mfdip/2004/2004car04/2004car04.pdf, last accessed 15 February 2017. 826Ibid, 210. 827 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 359. 283 problem, stating that the pre-war Navy Commander, Middle East Force should have perhaps been absorbed into the larger COMUSNAVCENT organization early in the crisis.828 In general, senior Navy leaders assumed that elements from the larger fleets would support the small naval forces generally assigned to the Gulf region for patrol work during the Cold War.829 The new Goldwater Nichols-based authority of the regional combatant commanders did not make such direct service leadership of campaign elements possible. No service leader could in fact visit the Gulf region without

Schwarzkopf’s permission.830

The second post-Gulf War controversy centered on the planning and execution of the air war over Iraq. While it might be easy to look back and suggest the Navy should have had a stronger presence at the Joint Force Air Component Command (JFACC) in

Riyadh from the outset of planning for the Gulf War, the doctrine supporting the concept was less than five years old in 1990.831 The exercises that had been done using a JFACC and its associated Air Tasking Order (ATO) had been regional ones held in Europe late in the Cold War and much of the campaign effort had been simulated. As a result, many naval officers had no idea what to expect when the operational JFACC was stood up at the outset of the Gulf crisis.832 The computer system used by the Air Force for the Gulf

War JFACC and ATO was one developed by the 9th Air Force and was not a universal system with which the Navy was familiar.833 The ATO remained slow and cumbersome

828 Pokrant, Desert Storm at Sea, 215. 829 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 359. 830 Gordon and Trainor, The General’s War, 471. 831 Pokrant, Desert Storm at Sea, 271. 832 Ibid. 833Ibid, 271, 272. 284 to prepare and transmit throughout the conflict and was geared more for offensive rather than defensive operations. It would have been useless, for example, in countering any surprise Iraqi naval activity in the Gulf. An attempted breakout to internment in Iranian ports by the remnants of the Iraqi surface navy on 30 January 1991 was met exclusively by naval aircraft not under the control of the JFACC and not subject to the ATO.834The

CNA Gulf War study suggests that naval staff members quickly became discouraged in trying to influence the JFACC, believing it had, “no appreciation of the necessity for and benefits of striking naval targets.”835 The JFACC operations director Major General John

Corder, USAF perhaps said it best when he stated, “he who controls the target list controls the war.”836 Additional problems included such basic issues as refueling for carrier-based vice land-based aircraft. Navy carriers used a less explosive and more stable fuel named JP-5 that is more suitable for shipboard use than the more flammable Air

Force Jet A-1 fuel. 837 Vice Admiral Arthur regularly complained that naval aircraft, that generally had shorter ranges than their Air Force counterparts, could not get adequate tanking support from the Air Force operated campaign air tanking effort.838

The third controversy was the decision on whether or not to conduct an amphibious landing as part of the Desert Storm operation. It appears to have been rejected from the outset by Generals Powell and Schwarzkopf based on high potentialcasualty estimates and the limited geography in which such an operation could

834 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Storm, 231, 232. 835 Pokrant, Desert Storm at Sea, 273. 836Ibid, 272, 272. 837Ibid, 177. 838 Ibid. 285 be mounted.839 They preferred to have the amphibious force serve instead as a distraction and deterrence force that kept Iraqis planning for an amphibious attack that never came.

Postwar intelligence assessments presented to Lieutenant General Boomer suggested that the Iraqi Army had well-fortified the coast of Kuwait, but personal inspection by Marines afterward suggested they were poorly constructed.840 The work on the Kuwaiti coastland that was done suggested that the Iraqis believed allied forces would make an amphibious attack.841

The amount of pressure placed on CENTCOM leadership by Marine Corps

Commandant General Al Gray to conduct an amphibious attack is debatable. Gray was on record as saying that an amphibious capable force was in effect the “strategic reserve” of the Desert Shield/Storm campaign.842 The friendly account of Gray’s career by the

Commandant’s former staff officer Colonel Gerald H. Turley suggests that Gray was as determined to find a role in the Desert Storm campaign for an amphibious attack.843 The

CNA report suggests that Gray wanted to conduct such an attack, but if not wanted the afloat Marines to be an accessible reserve if needed for continued ground operations.844

The official Navy history says Gray pushed hard through the Marine Corps representative on the NAVCENT staff Major General John Sheehan for an amphibious landing on the

839 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 117, 118. 840 Pokrant, Desert Storm at Sea, 225. 841Ibid, 228. 842 Pokrant, Desert Shield at Sea, 157. 843 Gerald H. Turley, The Journey of a Warrior, The Twenty Ninth Commandant of the United States Marine Corps (1987-1991), Alfred Mason Gray, (Bloomington, IN: Iuniverse press, 2010), pp. 401, 402, and John Grady, “Book Review, The Journey of a Warrior, The Twenty Ninth Commandant of the United States Marine Corps (1987-1991), Alfred Mason Gray,” (Washington D.C.: The Naval Historical Foundation, 11 December 2012), electronic resource, http://www.navyhistory.org/2012/12/book-review- journey-of-a-warrior-29th-commandant-marine-corps-general-alfred-mason-gray/, last accessed 16 September 2016. 844Ibid, 229. 286 coast of Kuwait.845 While suggesting such an attack was initially approved, the amount of damage to property in Kuwait, as well as problems clearing mines on the invasion beaches caused the plan to be shelved.846 Gordon and Trainor suggest that General Gray felt there was not enough emphasis in the CENTCOM theater on amphibious operations.

Gray had the Marine Corps warfighting center at Quantico, Virginia prepared to brief the

Marine Corps version of Colonel Warden’s Instant Thunder Brief and the Army SAMS

School “Jedi” ground warfare planning group’s efforts for amphibious warfare.847 The plan was wargamed and 10,000 friendly casualties were expected in the course of one week’s fighting.848 The plan was transmitted to Vice Admiral Arthur in theater but found no allies and was not pursued.

While General Gray did not get the amphibious assault during the Desert Storm operation that he may have desired, Lieutenant General Boomer’s Marines on the ground in Iraq and Kuwait executed many of the maneuver warfare concepts Gray had attempted to inculcate into the Marine Corps since becoming Commandant in 1987. The 1989

Marine Corps FMFM-1 document, entitled Warfighting, was Gray’s attempt to, “return the Corps to its roots in warfighting learned in the Banana wars, but shelved during the set piece battles of the Pacific and Korea.”849 General Gray desired to focus on Third

World Contingency operations rather than the Navy’s global Maritime strategy as it became apparent that the Soviet Union was facing significant troubles in the late

845 Marolda and Schneller, Shield and Sword, 251. 846Ibid, 252, 253. 847 Gordon and Trainor, The General’s War, 173-175. 848Ibid, 174. 849Terry C. Pierce, Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies, Disguising Innovation, (New York: Frank Cass Publishing, 2004), 86. 287

1980’s.850Gray retired soon after the Gulf War and was replaced by General Carl E.

Mundy Jr. who was also interested in moving the Marine Corps beyond mere amphibious warfare into a more holistic concept of operations in coastal areas on both land and sea, an area known as the littoral.

It was readily apparent as the First Gulf War drew to a close in March 1991 that the Navy would need to adjust to a new reality in the post-Cold War world. There would be no other peer opponent fleet to fight and the Army and Air Force concepts of strategy and operational planning would dominate. Former OP-06 planner, National Security strategy author and Stanford University PhD in political science Captain Joseph

Bouchard gave a concise description of what happened in a 2005 email to Captain Peter

Swart, USN (ret). He said,

The Navy was very slow to react to the doctrinal implications of the collapse of the Soviet Union and was unprepared doctrinally for Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Desert Storm was fought using joint doctrine based on AirLand battle. That made sense. Iraq was in effect a continental theater, but it means that the full capabilities of naval force were not exploited in Desert Storm. This was manifested in many ways as well as documented in the studies of Desert Storm.851

Bouchard’s statement perfectly encapsulates the Navy’s dilemma in fighting Desert

Storm. While the naval service could do little to change the geographic and political conditions under which the Gulf War was fought, it might have been more directly engaged in shaping the lessons and emerging views on the nature of the post-Cold War

850 John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz, editors, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, Selected Documents, Newport, RI, The United States Naval War College Press, The Newport Papers #33, 2008, p. 309. 851 28 June 2005 email from Captain Joseph Bouchard, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret) on Capstone Strategy concepts, (Washington D.C., The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Way Ahead Files, used with permission by the author.) 288 world. Military historian Steven Metz suggests that the Gulf War created a new strategic paradigm due to its timing, and overwhelming success. The U.S. needed a new paradigm now that the Soviet threat was dissipating. Desert Storm, “provided an instant perception of clarity,” for U.S. leaders and “they knew how to deal with such challenges.”852

The Navy Does Not Validate its Cold War Strategy

Captain Bouchard’s comments highlight the Navy’s problems with some aspects of the Gulf War, a conflict that had significant impact on U.S. strategy, defense organization and operations in the next two decades. The Navy had been slow to react to the crumbling Soviet threat in terms of tactics and organization for battle. Former Vice

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral William Owens stated that the Navy was successful in carrying out its Desert Storm missions of strike warfare and maritime interdiction operations because “It was able to modify its operational doctrine that-along with the weapons, systems, and training it generated-proved ill-suited to the Gulf

War.”853 Owens further stated the Gulf War did not feature any of the expectations of the

Maritime strategy that assumed opposing aircraft, submarines and other forces would contest U.S. control of the seas in one or more oceans.854 Owens also declared that all of the tactics associated with war at sea such as fire and forget cruise missile combat and especially decentralized command and control had been replaced by, “the deadly

852Metz, Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy, 29, 30. 853William Owens, High Seas, The Naval Passage to an Uncharted World, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1995), 4. 854 Ibid. 289 skirmishing of littoral warfare.”855Admiral Owens summarized the effect of the Gulf War as follows:

Both the Army and the Air Force had come home from the first of the new-era conflicts –Desert Storm-with their entering doctrines intact. The AirLand Battle concept that the Army developed after Vietnam held up well in Desert Storm’s one hundred-hour ground campaign, and the concept of strategic , long an Air Force doctrinal belief, seemed vindicated by the victory….But while the Army and the Air Force came out of the conflict believing the that the operational concepts they had developed during the latter decades of the Cold War were still valid for the new era, this was more difficult for the Navy to do.856

Naval strategy, however, was a different concept that needed more time to change. Such adjustment had been underway since the late 1980’s. Naval analyst Ron O’Rourke noted that the Navy had begun to move away from a pure Soviet focus as early as mid-1988 when Congressional and Reagan administration financial support for the 600-ship navy began to wane. O’Rourke cited a January 1988 speech to the National Press Club by

Secretary of the Navy James Webb who stated that the U.S. should reduce emphasis on

Western Europe and the static defense of land areas in favor of more maneuverable forces that can, “deploy and fight wherever they are needed without access to overseas land bases,” as one of the first public notations of this change.857CNO Admiral Trost, however, remained firmly in support of the Maritime Strategy throughout duration of his appointment.858

In 1988, the U.S. Marine Corps began the study of Third World contingency operations that were quite unlike the amphibious landings proposed for the Gulf War.

855 Ibid. 856Ibid, 125, 126. 857 Joel J. Sokolsky and Joseph T. Jochel, editors, Fifty Years of Canda-United States Defense Cooperation, Chapter 11, “The Future of the U.S. Navy”, (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 292, 293. 858 John B. Hattendorf and Peter M. Swartz, editors, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, Selected Documents, 309, 310. 290

This change from an amphibious toward an expeditionary capability helped to propel the

Marine Corps away from the Navy’s Maritime strategy as previously described. The

Navy, however, caught up in outgoing Navy Secretary William Ball’s 1989 posture statement to Congress. Ball emphasized the ability of the Navy to conduct operations independent of base access and overflight rights.859Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett continued this trend in his fiscal year 1991 statement to Congress. Garrett emphasized the capability of aircraft carrier battle groups, in particular, as an example of “flexible, mobile, maritime forces” that could be “on station [to] preserve our nation’s position of strength around the globe.”860

The Navy still faced a number of significant obstacles despite this apparent strategic transition between the Maritime Strategy and a new regional power projection concept. This was an ironic situation given the fact that just two decades earlier Admiral

Zumwalt had emphasized the Navy’s ability to provide forward presence.861 CNO

Admiral Arleigh Burke had argued in the wake of the Korean War that the Navy provided the best force for waging limited war.862 That notwithstanding, the Maritime

Strategy was primarily oriented to the global threat presented by the Soviet Union and its

Warsaw Pact allies. But now the Soviet threat was gone, and with it the justification for the 600-ship Navy as appropriate numerical measurement of naval strength. Carrier battle groups and Tomahawk cruise missile-shooting ships and submarines might play a role in ground campaigns like Desert Storm, but the Navy needed to convince Congress how

859Ibid, 295. 860Ibid, 295, 296. 861 John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970’s, Selected Documents, 14-17 862 Paul B. Ryan, The First Line of Defense, The U.S. Navy Since 1945, (Stanford, CA: The Hoover Institution Press, 1981), 17. 291 many could be supported in the post-Cold War environment. The U.S. Marine Corps was already moving away from the Maritime Strategy and developing maneuver warfare concepts that supported its future employment more in Desert Storm-like operations than in traditional amphibious warfare. This command and control arrangement tended to put

Marines directly under the COCOM, not under Navy component commanders’ authority.

While there was some confusion within the senior naval ranks on how to move forward as Admiral Owens suggested, the Navy’s political-military strategists again led the way to creating a post-Cold War strategic framework. They would do so, however, in a new environment that was organized by joint rather than service structures and controlled by a growing emphasis on force structure analysis vice geopolitical strategy.

The absence of a unifying enemy in the form of the Soviet Union, the reorganizations in the Navy staff and the wider Department of Defense that were effects of the Goldwater

Nichols Act, and the effects of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and its supposed archetype product; the First Gulf War, all played a significant part in this process.

292

CHAPTER 5: MAKING THE CHANGE

By early 1990, it was evident to many in the Navy’s strategy community that a replacement would be needed for the Maritime Strategy. The sudden collapse of the

Warsaw Pact over 1989 strongly suggested that while the Soviet Union might survive, the global threat it posed to Western interest would be diminished. The presumed end of the

Cold War as proclaimed by President George H.W. Bush and Soviet General Secretary

Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1989 at the conclusion of their Malta summit only accelerated the process.863 The Maritime Strategy developed over the course of the

1980’s was wholly focused on meeting a global Soviet naval threat. Some kind of strategic reorganization along regional lines had appeared likely as early as 1987, when

Joint Staff planners reviewing the national military strategy suggested a regional and less global approach. This was in line with Goldwater Nichols Act provisions that gave greater power to regional commanders. It serves as a useful reference point in the origins of post-Cold War strategic reorganization.864

Many of the same people who had been involved in the development of the

Maritime Strategy in the 1980’s led the way toward the creation of a replacement. As in the 1980’s, there was a combination of efforts from OPNAV staff offices, think tanks, and senior officers in the process. The changes brought about by the end of the Cold War, the Goldwater Nichols Act, and the First Gulf War dictated a different product with a much-reduced influence on both the Navy and national strategy in comparison with its

863 George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed, The Collapse of the Soviet Empire, The Unification of Germany, Tiananmen Square and the Gulf War.( New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998), 172, 173. 864Lorna S. Jaffe, The Development of the Base Force, 1989-1992. (Washington D.C., The Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Joint History Office, July, 1993), 2. 293 predecessor. Geopolitical assumptions about the emerging post-Cold War world demanded a very different product from that of the 1980’s. Littoral and land-based operations rather than blue water naval strategy would play the leading roles. The littoral was a new concept for naval planners, with some suggesting that it extended from coastal regions to 600 miles inland and included 80% of the world’s capital cities and 95% of the global population.865 The Marine Corps, previously just a component part, was to be integral to developing the new strategy. The Chief of Naval Operations who presided over this change in strategy was process-oriented as opposed to product-driven and outside distractions from the 1991 Tailhook and investigation into the 1989 USS Iowa turret explosion limited his influence on the final product.

The inevitable post-Cold War drawdown in military strength further complicated the creation of a new strategy by demanding greater OPNAV focus on budget and programmatic functions. The programmatic arm of the OPNAV staff significantly increased its power and influence between 1991 and 1994 at the expense of the strategy and policy divisions. By 1994 a defacto strategy of force structure management over time was rising even as the successors to the 1980’s Maritime Strategy were approved and disseminated to the fleet.866

The success of joint approaches in the First Gulf War and in particular that of the

Army and Air Force demanded that the Navy’s follow-on strategy would parallel that of its sister services. This change made for a fundamental shift in the U.S. Navy’s traditional

865Milan Vego, “On Littoral Warfare”, The United States Naval War College Review, Vol 68, No 2 (Spring 2015), 31. 866 James Russell, James Wirtz, Donald Abenheim, Thomas-Durell Young and Dana Wueger, “Navy Strategy Development in the 21st Century,” (Monterey, CA: The Naval Postgraduate School, June 2015), 10. 294 geographic and threat-based strategy planning process. Joint planners drew “lines in the water” that linked naval forces with land-based commanders more closely than at any time in the last century. These changes made the Navy’s strategy planning process more like that of the Army and Air Force. The changes brought on by the end of the Cold War, reorganization in the OPNAV staff, the Goldwater Nichols Act, and the First Gulf War were largely in place by 1994. They fundamentally changed naval strategy from a global effort in support of general U.S. interests to a force divided along regional commanders’ boundaries that was focused on maintenance of its newest, existing force structure. These changes would dictate how the Navy viewed and conducted strategic planning for the next two decades.

The Marine Corps Moves beyond the Maritime Strategy

The Marine Corps was moving past the Maritime Strategy even before the collapse of Soviet power. Commandant General P.X. Kelley had been a strong supporter of the Maritime Strategy and its design of using Marine Corps units on the flanks of a

Central European conflict between the NATO alliance and the Warsaw Pact. This cooperative effort culminated in the 1985 Amphibious Warfare Strategy document that closely complemented the Navy’s own Maritime Strategy. The Amphibious Warfare

Strategy was regularly practiced in the TEAMWORK exercise series where U.S. Marines landed in Norway, collected pre-positioned equipment and deployed to counter a northern

Soviet offensive.867 Vice Admiral Henry Mustin, the NATO strike fleet commander in

867 Jacob Borrenson, “Alliance Naval Strategies in Norway in the Final Years of the Cold War,” The United States Naval War College Review, Vol. 64, #2 (Spring 2011), pp. 99, 100. 295

1986, suggested that the potential loss of Norway to the Soviets would “be a determining factor in the Battle of the Atlantic,” and as severe a loss as that of Iceland or

Greenland.868 Similar operations were planned in the Mediterranean in Greek Thrace or

Turkey’s strait to ensure the Soviet could not open a second southern front against NATO forces.869 There were even landings suggested on the Soviet Pacific coast as distractions against the perceived main Soviet offensive effort on the European Central front.870

General Kelley’s successors had other ideas and, in the words of naval historian

John Hattendorf, “the U.S. Marine Corps momentarily moved away from concentration on such closely-integrated, strategic, high-end warfighting cooperation with the Navy to develop more independent or Marine Corps–led operational concepts focused on lower- intensity regional contingencies.”871 General Al Gray succeeded Kelly in 1987 and brought with him a new ethos of maneuver warfare. Gray had seen one of John Boyd’s

“OODA loop” (observe, orient, decide, act) briefs while serving as commander of the 2nd

Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, NC in 1981.872 As a result, Gray became a strong supporter of Boyd’s maneuver warfare concepts. Boyd told Marines to think “beyond the beachhead” that Marines were focused on in amphibious operations, and instead think about how best to engage the enemy regardless of the terrain.873 Boyd advanced the

868 Henry C Mustin, “The Role of the Navy and the Marines in the Norwegian Sea,” The United States Naval War College Review, Volume 39, # 2 (Spring 1986), pp. 4-6. 869Hattendorf and Swartz, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, p. 127. 870 Narushigue Mishishita, Peter M. Swartz, and David F. Winkler, “Lessons of the Cold War in the Pacific, U.S. Maritime Strategy, Crisis, Prevention and Japan’s Role,” (Washington D.C.: The Wilson Center Asia Program, March 2016), 14. 871Hattendorf and Swartz, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s,4. 872Coram, Boyd, 383. 873Ibid, 381. 296 operational warfare ideas and practices of World War 2 Generals Rommel and Patton and their maneuvers over wide areas of territory vice the set-piece amphibious warfare operations the Marines had conducted in the Pacific or their counterinsurgency efforts in the Vietnam War.874

Gray established a maneuver warfare innovation group within the 2nd Marine

Division whose members included future Central Command leader Anthony Zinni;

Colonel Ray Smith, who would lead Marines in the Grenada invasion; and Colonel James

Myatt, who would lead a Marine division in the First Gulf War.875 One of Gray’s instructors in this effort was Colonel K.D. Schreiber, a German emigre to the U.S. whose father served in the Wehrmacht in World War 2 and died fighting the Soviets on the

Eastern Front. Schreiber had attended the German General Staff College (formerly the

Kriegsakademie) and had been instructed in maneuver warfare techniques by surviving

World War 2 German generals.876 When Gray became Marine Corps Commandant in

1987, his maneuver warfare theories spread beyond the 2nd Marine Division and throughout the Corps. It acquired new disciples in future commandant General Charles

Krulak and influential General Paul Van Riper.

The final product of Gray’s efforts was the FMFM-1 “Warfighting” operational manual that encapsulated his thoughts on both the nature of war and how the Marine

Corps in particular would prepare for and execute combat operations. It represented a form step away from the Marine Corp’s amphibious roots and intended use during the

Cold War. FMFM-1 stated:

874 Terry C. Pierce, Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies, (London: Frank Cass Books, 2004), 96. 875Ibid, 89. 876Ibid, 90. 297

The Fleet Marine Forces must be organized to provide forward-deployed or rapidly-deployable forces capable of mounting expeditionary operations in any environment. This means that, in addition to maintaining their unique amphibious capability, the Fleet Marine Forces must maintain a capability to deploy by whatever means is appropriate to the situation.877

During the First Gulf War the Marine 1st and 2nd Divisions were employed similarly to

Army formations vice the amphibious warfare operations they had prepared to conduct as elements of the Maritime strategy on the flanks of the European Central front. This change in operational employment of the Marine Corps distanced them from the Navy in terms of both strategy and operational art. It would have significant consequences for the

Navy when it began the process of creating a replacement for the Maritime Strategy in late 1990.

The Way Ahead

The process that eventually created the “From the Sea” White Paper, the replacement for the Maritime Strategy, had as many claimants to ownership as did its predecessor. Unlike the Maritime Strategy that developed over the course of the 1970’s during the tenures of three CNO’s, the development of “From the Sea” occurred over a much shorter period. Many familiar faces and offices again took up the task of strategy creation and refinement, but the post-Cold War, and later post-Gulf War environment added players with agendas not seen in the 1980’s.

CNO Admiral Frank Kelso brought a different perspective on naval organization that was perhaps as radical as that of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt two decades earlier. Kelso

877“FMFM-1 Warfighting”, (Washington D.C.: The Department of the Navy, Marine Corps Headquarters, 6 March 1989), 42. 298 had read a book by the American management expert Edward Deming, attended one of the business guru’s three-day seminars, and even invited him to dinner.878 Kelso noted,

“What most impressed me was his dedication to what he was doing. He was 90. He really did not have to work anymore, but he was dedicated to changing the work ethic in this country.”879 Deming’s 14 points to good management included elements that the CNO thought could be applied to the Navy. These included eliminating slogans, work quotas, and annual evaluations that might not reflect the associate’s true performance. Kelso decided to bring Deming’s system to the Navy, but changed it from Total Quality

Management to Total Quality Leadership (TQL), citing concerns that operational naval officers at sea self-identified as leaders and saw managers as those sitting behind a desk.880

The Navy TQL program never got the support Kelso desired from the bulk of

Navy leadership. No one admiral was in charge of its implementation, Kelso never described in detail what the program was meant to achieve, and the Navy Department’s

TQL office was dominated by civilians, rather than experienced military professionals necessary to translate its tenets to the operating forces. The program did not survive beyond Kelso’s CNO tour, but since it was implemented at the outset of his term, it had significant impact on Kelso’s OPNAV reorganization effort and altered both the creation and influence of the “From the Sea” strategy.

878 Thomas H. Lee, Shoji Shiba and Robert Chapman Wood, Integrated Management Systems, A Practical Approach to Transforming Organizations, (New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc, 1999), 164. 879 Ibid. 880Ibid, 165. 299

One of Admiral Kelso’s first projects was to establish, “A strategic rationale for a continued robust USN force structure in the face of the impending CJCS (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Base force, which at the time (late 1990) was still speculative, though all but inevitable.”881 President George H.W. Bush’s August 2ndremarks at the

Aspen Institute had clearly indicated that military budget cuts would happen. Chairman

Powell had already taken steps to support a major downsizing and President Bush had approved the “draft blueprint for America’s future defense configuration” during a 26

June 1990 Oval office meeting.882 At that point Kelso was still in the confirmation process for the CNO position. His efforts at a counter-proposal were strongly disadvantaged by Powell’s efforts from the outset.

The U.S. Air Force had released its own future concept study in June 1990.

“Global Reach, Global Power” emphasized the combination of strategic nuclear deterrence, tactical fighter, bomber, space and special operations forces, and their joint and especially allied applications as crucial to the uncertain security environment of the

1990’s.883 The Air Force document also succulently stated the air service’s primary missions in strategic deterrence, theater operation and power projection, mobility through airlift and tankers, controlling the “high ground” of space and securing partnerships with

U.S. friends and allies.884 The document was firmly couched in the joint language of the

881 Email from Captain Michael Dunaway, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), dated 5/2/2005, subject: Drafting Admiral Kelso’s first Way Ahead Document, Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Way Ahead file, Washington D.C., Used with permission by the author. 882Karen DeYoung, Soldier, The Life of Colin Powell, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2006), 191. 883 Donald B. Rice, “The Air Force and U.S. National Security, Global Reach Global Power, A White Paper,” (Washington D.C.: The United States Government Printing Office, June 1990), 4, electronic resource, ,https://secure.afa.org/EdOp/2012/GRGP_Rice_1990.pdf, last accessed 12 December 2016. 884Ibid, p. 5. 300 post-Goldwater Nichols era. It also gave the Air Force a solid foundation in the operational level of war for the post-Cold War era.885

Admiral Kelso knew that the U.S. Navy needed a similar vision. He told naval historian Paul Stillwell in a 2002 interview, “Look, we understand that this is a different time, a different era, and we will try to accommodate to the change.”886 There were many reasons for Admiral Kelso to be positive about a future that no longer included the Soviet

Union as the singular opponent. The National Military Strategy of 1989 and Defense

Planning Guidance for 1990 still suggested that substantial forward presence was required against a possible Soviet (or Russian) resurgence of power.887 within the service was high and modernization efforts begun in the latter part of the Carter administration and accelerated during the first Reagan administration had begun to reduce the average age of ships and aircraft.888 It was in this positive setting that planning began for Kelso’s attempts to change the Navy’s strategic course for the post-Cold War world.

The first product of this effort was an article entitled “The Way Ahead” that appeared in print in the April 1991 edition of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.889 It had been a document in progress since Kelso’s confirmation as CNO. A joint memo from

Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett and Admiral Kelso on 23 August 1990 gave general guidance to the effort that culminated in “The Way Ahead.” It specified three challenges;

885Hallion, Storm Over Iraq, 119, 120. 886 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, U.S. Navy Retired, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2009), 668. 887Jaffe, Development of the Base Force, 2. 888Ibid, 61. 889 H. Lawrence Garrett III, Frank B. Kelso II, and A.M. Gray, “The Way Ahead,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, (April 1991), 36. 301 the necessity of maintaining an adequate industrial base, identification of how many ships and aircraft the Navy could afford to operate in the future, and an examination of the size and shape of the 21st century Navy that would replace current ships and aircraft.890 It was also written as a response to the Air Force’s “Global Reach, Global Power” document.891

Two significant differences from the 1980s appeared in the 23 August memo that would have significant effects as the process continued. The Deputy Chief of Naval

Operations for Plans and Policy (OP 06) and the Strategic Concepts Division (OP 603) did much of the work building “the Way Ahead,” but the Deputy CNOs for Program

Planning (OP 08) and for Naval Warfare (OP 07) claimed much of the credit.

Personalities also made for different outcomes in terms of which OPNAV staff office could claim the new strategy products as their own.

Many of the officers who had participated in the building of the various editions of the Maritime Strategy recognized that a successor was needed for the new strategic era. The OP 603 staff had begun an unofficial effort to replace the Maritime Strategy in early March 1990, but due to reluctance on the part of the Deputy CNO for Plans, Policy and Operations to assume control over the project it was taken over and exploited by other OPNAV offices.892 Captain Dick Diamond, who led OP 603 from 1988 to 1991, suggested that, “The Way Ahead had everything to do with the personalities/motives of

890 Joint OPNAV/SECNAV Department of the Navy Memorandum dated 23 August 1990, subject: The Way Ahead, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), Maritime Strategy Demise File, used with permission by the author.) 891 Peter Swartz with Karin Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, (1991-2000), Strategy, Policy, Concept and Vision Documents, (Alexandria, VA: The CNA Corporation, MISC D0026416.A2, 2012),6. 892 John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents,(Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, September, 2006), 9. 302 the key players involved.”893 The OP 06 incumbent in 1990 and 1991 was Vice Admiral

Robert J. Kelly, who was not as assertive in pushing for a defined role for the Operations

Plans and Policy Directorate as were his predecessors.894 In the absence of such pressure,

Kelso appeared to turn naturally to those officers with whom he had worked in the past decade, including OP 07 leader Vice Admiral Paul David Miller, who had served with

Kelso in John Lehman’s Navy Secretariat.895While OP 603 continued to provide many of the concepts for the further strategy products of the early and mid-1990’s, it was apparent that the Strategy division had lost some of its influence.

The second difference involved the prominence of the Marine Corps in the process, as it was given a co-equal place in the project. This was in contrast with the development of the Maritime Strategy where it had less direct influence on the project until later in the process. General Gray and his Deputy Commandant for Plans Policy and

Operations Lieutenant General Carl Mundy had been sending officers to work with the

OP 603 strategists and the 00K CNO’s personal office since Admiral Trost’s tour as

CNO. Gray may have also been eager to be seen as an equal alongside the Secretary and the CNO in the Department of the Navy.896 Inclusion on “The Way Ahead” document may also have convinced Gray that the Marine Corps could attain a superior position

893 Email from Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), dated 7 July 2006, subject: The Way Ahead and the Navy Policy Book, (Washington D.C.; The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Demise of the Maritime Strategy File, used with permission by the author.) 894 Ibid. 895 Ibid. 896 Ibid. 303 within the Navy Department in terms of which service had the lead in strategy and policy, and resource allocation in the future.897

The OP 603 office had been the center of post-Maritime Strategy thinking since

March 1990, when Captain Diamond hosted an unofficial Saturday meeting to discuss elements of a future maritime strategy with interested OPNAV staff members.898The group agreed that the future of the U.S. Navy was about supporting combat ashore, being an emergency crisis response force in the world’s littoral areas, and that while warfare disciplines like antisubmarine and antiair warfare needed to be maintained, they would no longer have paramount focus.899 OP 603 also started a monthly, catered luncheon that invited notable guest speakers on naval strategy in order to generate discussion related to strategy development. The consensus of the Saturday study group was that a small team of officers from both OPNAV and the Marine Corps Commandant’s office were best suited to produce a strategy that incorporated these concepts.900 Captain Diamond’s informal group continued to meet and develop these concepts into a workable replacement for the 1980’s-era Maritime Strategy.

Admiral Kelso struggled to catch up to General Colin Powell’s Joint Staff-driven post-Cold War force structure and strategy production effort that resulted in the 1991

Base Force. This document assumed a nominal 20%-25% cut in the strength of each of

897 Ibid. 898”Introduction,” in John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents, 9. 899 Ibid. 900 Email from Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret) to Dr. John Hattendorf, Naval War College, subject “Paper Review Status” (unpublished narrative of the events leading up to the September 1992 publication of “From the Sea”), 09 September 2006, Filed jointly inThe United States Naval War College, The Naval Historical Collection, The papers of Dr. John Hattendorf, and in the Professional papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 1991 “The Way Ahead” file, used with special permission of Dr. John Hattendorf, Captain Swartz and Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret). 304 the armed forces as Powell’s design for the post-Cold War military.901 This plan would reduce the Navy to between 400 and 450 ships. The bulk of the planning for General

Powell’s proposed base force had taken place before President Bush’s Aspen Conference announcement on post-Cold War reductions, leaving Kelso little time to produce a response. His predecessor Admiral Carlisle Trost, convinced that he had little choice, had been working on a notional 450-ship force since spring1990. Defense Secretary Cheney,

Powell, and much of Congress agreed on the base force. Kelso accepted the Base Force when he became CNO, convinced that the plan might be an “anchor against pressures for further reductions” in fleet size.902 He also agreed to seek no new ship designs during his tenure as CNO in order to acknowledge the need for reductions in force size.903The CNO had to explore other avenues than fleet size to articulate his vision for the post-Cold War

Navy.

Captain Diamond’s OP 603 Strategic Concepts office was already at work on a post-Cold War strategic vision for the Navy; both through its own efforts and through the wider Washington D.C. naval strategy community. The monthly “Strategy Lunches” hosted by OP 603 alumnus Captain Jim Stark (then serving as the Director of the CNO’s

Executive Panel), had served to bring together those in the Washington D.C. naval community with political military affairs backgrounds and fuel greater discussion regarding the post-Cold War Navy’s operations.904 Diamond later credited Stark as the,

901Jaffe, Development of the Base Force, 12. 902 Ibid, p. 40, and email from Rear Admiral James Stark, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), dated 09/03/2008, subject: USN Force Goals 1990’s, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swatz, USN (ret), “The Way Ahead” file, used with permission by the author.) 903Jaffe, Development of the Base Force, 40. 904 Email from Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret) to Dr. John Hattendorf, Naval War College, subject “Paper Review Status” (unpublished narrative of the events leading up to the September 1992 publication 305

“Founding genius of this important and much unheralded back-room shaper of Navy

Strategic Thinking and cross-pollination.”905

Diamond assigned Commander Michael Dunaway as the lead author for OP 603’s unofficial effort in drafting a theme document for the new strategic era. In a major difference from the 1980’s effort that produced the Maritime Strategy, Diamond directed

Dunaway to work directly with Marine Corps Major Al Heim from the Commandant’s

Plans, Policies and Operations Deputy (PP&O) to combine the Navy’s thinking with that of the Marine Corps.906Heim’s inclusion in the process was the natural product of the ongoing cooperative efforts among the OPNAV OP 603, OP 00K and the USMC Plans,

Policies and Operations office.907

Diamond first presented the results of this unofficial effort to his boss, Vice

Admiral Robert “Barney” Kelly (Deputy CNO for Plans, Policies and Operations, OP 06) on a plane ride back from the 1990 Global War Game.908It had been a challenge from

Diamond to get Kelly’s attention for his new strategic concept. According to Diamond,

Vice Admiral Kelly was a reluctant occupant of the OP 06 position who viewed the

“pol/mil weenies” under his authority with disdain.909 Kelly viewed himself as an

of “From the Sea”), 09 September 2006, Filed jointly in The United States Naval War College, The Naval Historical Collection, The papers of Dr. John Hattendorf, and in the Professional papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 1991 “The Way Ahead” file, used with special permission of Dr. John Hattendorf, Captain Swartz and Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret). 905 Ibid. 906 Email from Captain Michael W. Dunaway, USN (ret), to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), dated 05/02/2005, subject: A Chance to Excel, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Way Ahead file, used with permission by the author.) 907 Email from Captain Richard E. Diamond, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), dated 07/07 2006, subject: The Way Ahead and the Navy Policy Book, (Washington D.C.:The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), the “Way Ahead” file, used with permission by the author.) 908 John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents, 11. 909 Ibid. 306

“operator,” not a staff officer, and many in the OP 06 and OP 603 offices thought he was

“more concerned with protecting the carrier/naval aviation community” rather than making radical revisions to the Maritime Strategy. He preferred to take direction from the

CNO on all issues rather than to offer new ideas. His staff viewed him as a “speed bump” for new ideas, someone who often commented, “Who asked for this” when presented with new ideas.910

Diamond had confronted Kelly on how his posture and remarks had lowered morale in the offices under his authority and while Kelly admitted that Diamond was probably correct, he did not change his behavior. Diamond later said that the OP 603

Friday afternoon celebrations were called “pol/mil weenie roasts,” a term that Kelly did not find very amusing.911 Kelly’s disinterest in OP 603’s ideas perhaps relegated them to the duration of a boring plane ride back to Washington D.C. The plane ride briefing was significant more in terms of who else viewed the brief. Kelly invited fellow passenger and Deputy CNO for Naval Warfare (OP 07), Vice Admiral Paul David Miller to view

Diamond’s brief. Miller, like CNO Kelso was a member of Navy Secretary (SECNAV)

John Lehman’s close staff and had returned to Washington D.C. with Kelso and a number of other former Lehman-era staff officers. These included Miller, Commander Rick

Wright who moved from the position of junior SECNAV staffer to Vice Admiral Miller’s flag writer and “idea man.” Captain Daniel Murphy, who drafted Admiral Trost’s 450

910 Ibid. 911 Email from Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret) to Dr. John Hattendorf, Naval War College, subject “Paper Review Status” (unpublished narrative of the events leading up to the September 1992 publication of “From the Sea”), 09 September 2006, Filed jointly in The United States Naval War College, The Naval Historical Collection, The papers of Dr. John Hattendorf, and in the Professional papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 1991 “The Way Ahead” file, used with special permission of Dr. John Hattendorf, Captain Swartz and Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret). 307 ship navy plan, became Admiral Kelso’s Executive Assistant. Finally, Captain William

“Wild Bill” Center joined Vice Admiral Miller’s staff as its unofficial “briefing builder.”

His then, very advanced Apple Macintosh personal computer churned out “colorful and engaging” briefing slides to which the OPNAV graphics shop at that time had no equal.912

Miller decided that the OP 603 brief had merit, but needed “catchy graphics and a snappy title.”913 Miller desired to move it forward in his organization rather than perhaps wait for Kelly to promote it within OPNAV. He asked Kelly for a copy of Diamond’s briefing and proceeded to develop it using his own staff. Captain Diamond later suggested that perhaps Admiral Kelly was more interested in his upcoming appointment to the four-star Pacific Fleet Command (CINCPACFLT) rather than, as Diamond said, having OP 603 “bore him with the history of Western Christendom and never give him quantitative information.”914 Vice Admiral Miller was successful in his efforts and the creation of what became “The Way Ahead” was tasked to his OP 07 office by the CNO and SECNAV joint memorandum on 23 August 1990.915

The Marine Corps was jointly tasked in the same memorandum and began to exploit the contacts it had developed with OP 603 over the last several years to put its

912 Ibid. 913“Introduction,” in John B. Hattendorf, editor, :U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents, 11. 914 Email from Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret) to Dr. John Hattendorf, Naval War College, subject “Paper Review Status” (unpublished narrative of the events leading up to the September 1992 publication of “From the Sea”), 09 September 2006, Filed jointly in The United States Naval War College, The Naval Historical Collection, The papers of Dr. John Hattendorf, and in the Professional papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 1991 “The Way Ahead” file, used with special permission of Dr. John Hattendorf, Captain Swartz and Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret). 915“ Joint Memorandum from CNO Admiral Frank Kelso II and Secretary of the Navy H. Lawrence Garrett III dated 23 August 1990, SER 00/0U500222, Subject: The Way Ahead,” (Washington D.C.: he Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Way Ahead 1991 file, used with permission by the author.) 308 own stamp on the new document. OP 603 staff including Captain Diamond and

Commander Paul Giarra remained the primary briefing presenters despite the change to

OP 07 in overall authority. They gave a presentation to Marine Corps Commandant

General Al Gray on 7 September 1990 at Headquarters Marine Corps. General Gray was, in Diamond’s words, “very enthusiastic” about the brief and had five specific recommendations. The Commandant demanded that amphibious strategy be a part of the document or he would not recommend its use to the CNO. He wanted the document to include messages to “John Q. Public” that the Navy and Marine Corps team could do the job at hand. Gray also wanted the brief to become, “An enduring comprehensive strategy document,” that was “widely distributed and not programmatic. “It needed to mention not only joint operations, but also combined ones with allies. Finally, Gray thought the document needed both his signature and that of the CNO to be viable and threatened not to sign if the document was, “not focused on the larger strategic thrust of maritime issues.”916 The general also included some observations on the operational aspects of the document including sealift, deployment patterns and force components.

Notably, no Navy flag officer attended this brief, but perhaps its results were already pre-ordained by the senior officers personally involved in its creation.917

According to Captain Diamond, Kelso, Vice Admiral Miller and General Gray worked out the details of “The Way Ahead” around Kelso’s kitchen table in his Washington

Navy Yard quarters during several weekend work sessions. Navy Secretary H. Lawrence

916 Ibid. 917 Ibid. 309

Garrett lent his name to the document once the basic elements were complete.918The

“Way Ahead” was unclassified and published in an open forum, unlike the Maritime

Strategy that began life as a classified product. The various authors of the Maritime

Strategy, as well as naval historian John Hattendorf have suggested that the older strategy’s distribution in classified format had helped to strengthen its influence on the uniformed Navy.919 Wider dissemination was useful for influencing outsiders such as academics and members of think tanks concerned with strategic issues, but uniformed audiences must be won first through a secret version that in the words of two Navy strategists “shows the insiders that we are serious.”920 The 1980’s Maritime Strategy gained much of its initial credibility with Navy officers when it was presented as a classified document. The Way Ahead did not attempt this and perhaps was not as successful as a result.

The Way Ahead was a document attempting to describe uncertain conditions. It was in direct support of President Bush’s Aspen address that stated future U.S. defense policy would be based on, “deterrence, forward presence, and crisis response and force reconstitution.”921 The document emphasized traditional elements of naval strategy such as power projection capability and a need for a surge capacity to, “get adequate combat

918 Email from Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), dated 07/07/2006, subject: They Way Ahead and the Navy Policy Book, the Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Demise of the Maritime Strategy File, Used with permission by the author. 919 Peter M. Swartz and John L Byron, “Make the Word Become the Vision,” Proceedings, Vol 118/11, November 1992, and John B. Hattendorf, and Peter M. Swartz, editors, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1980’s, Selected Documents, Newport, RI, The United States Naval War College Press, December 2008, p. 1. 920 Peter M. Swartz and John L. Byron, “Make the Word Become the Vision,”, 72. 921 H Lawrence Garrett III, Frank B. Kelso II, and A.M. Gray, “The Way Ahead,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1991, 38. 310 power rapidly to the scene of action.”922 It did so in a “joint and combined environment,” that General Gray had demanded, but also required flexibility in active employment due to the 25% force structure reduction imposed by General Powell’s Base Force concept.

The Way Ahead also shifted the Navy from geographic or threat-specific force requirements to support of the President’s national security strategy, which was subject to rapid change.923

Despite the document’s beginnings within the OPNAV staff, the Marine Corps, rather than the Navy, emerged more successful in that expeditionary warfare was accepted by the other services and enduring over two decades. According to “The Way

Ahead” draft author Captain Michael Dunaway, “The USMC more or less won the idea that all naval operations were inherently expeditionary.” This represented “an important concession for the Navy to come around to the USMC way of viewing the world.”924

Perhaps this was the result of the Marine Corps’ more effective understanding of its place in the world at the beginning of the post-Cold War era. General Gray had spent the

1980’s continuing to develop Boyd’s maneuver warfare concepts. Captain Dunaway viewed Gray’s FMFM-1 document as, “The best and probably the only true neo-

Clausewitzian warfighting strategy written by any of the services in the last 40 years,

Maritime Strategy notwithstanding.”925

922Ibid, 46. 923H Lawrence Garrett III, Frank B. Kelso II, and A.M. Gray, “The Way Ahead,” 45. 924 Email from Captain Michael W. Dunaway, USN (ret), to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), dated 05/2/2005, subject: A Chance to Excel, The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The “Way Ahead” file, Washington D.C., Used with permission by the author. 925 Ibid. 311

The Way Ahead represents Admiral Kelso’s first attempt to recapture the initiative in defining the Navy’s size and roles and missions largely lost through the issue of and approval of General Powell’s Base Force concept. Naval historian John Hattendorf concludes that while The Way Ahead was prescient in its expectations for the future, its overall influence was short-lived and did not last beyond the retirements of its senior architects.926 Naval historian Peter Haynes suggests that The Way Ahead’s release just a month after the end of Operation Desert Storm minimized its overall impact on the

Navy’s process of rethinking its purpose after the Cold War.927 While opinion on the

Navy’s performance was divided, enough members of the OPNAV staff were convinced that the full capabilities of naval forces were not exploited during Desert Storm and this was enough to cast some doubt on the influence of The Way Ahead.928 It also did not set firm priorities against which to budget for the near or immediate future.929 This lack of direct connection to budget and specific force structure would plague The Way Ahead and future Navy strategy products for the next two decades.930

The document’s direct influence was limited in the short term but it has gained in importance in defining general naval requirements and responsibilities over the past quarter century. Naval strategist Peter Swartz later suggested The Way Ahead was better

926“Introduction,” in John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents, 12. 927 Peter Haynes, Toward a New Maritime Strategy, American Naval Thinking in the Post-Cold War Era, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2015), 59. 928 Email from Captain Joseph Bouchard (former OP 603 staff officer) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret),” dated 06/28/ 2005, subject: Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Way Ahead File, used with permission by the author.) 929 Peter Swartz with Karin Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, (1991-2000), Strategy, Policy, Concept and Vision Documents, (Alexandria, VA: The CNA Corporation, MISC D0026416.A2/Final), 19. 930Thomas Durell Young, “When Programming Trumps Policyand Plans, The Case of the U.S. Department of the Navy,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, (10 May 2016), 2, 3. 312 suited to the 2000’s than the 1990’s.931 Official Navy posture statements before Congress did not mention it after 1993.932 Its direct influenced waned once its creators resigned, retired or transferred to duties outside OPNAV.933Admiral Kelso himself was dissatisfied with The Way Ahead: “The article itself badly disappointed me, because by the time it came out it looked like, ‘Well, hell, all you’re doing is writing an article to say what the status quo is at the time you’ve written the article.’ So that disappointed me a lot, because

I really wanted to lead the curve, not be hanging behind it all the time.”934

The Navy Policy Book

The next step in the post-Cold War Navy strategy development process was another unclassified document that focused more on internal process than on a strategy product. The Navy Policy Book was another outcome of Admiral Kelso’s interest in

Deming’s Total Quality Management theories. It was modeled on the United Parcel

Service policy document and had a wide base of input from throughout the fleet.935This work was less than 40 pages in length and proposed to be, “The single reference of the most important guiding principles of our Navy.”936 It included chapters on vision, guiding principles and strategic guidance, but was not specifically a strategy document as were the succession versions of the1980’s Maritime Strategy. Dick Diamond, who penned the

931 Ibid. 932 Scott C. Truver, “Tomorrow’s Fleet,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, (June 1992), 51. 933 Peter Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, (1991-2000), Strategy, Policy, Concept and Vision Documents, 20. 934 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, U.S. Navy Retired, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 2009), 669, 670. 935 Peter Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, (1991-2000), Strategy, Policy, Concept and Vision Documents, 25. 936The United States Navy Policy Book, Alexandria, VA, The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, The OPNAV Executive Panel (00-K), May 1992, cover. 313 document’s strategy and policy chapters, labeled it as, “the Company owner’s manual,” and described it as “an intention to give a concise summary of what the Navy was about to the rank and file sailor or officer.”937 Commander Judy Myers, USN (ret), who took part in drafting elements of The Navy Policy Book, said the document was Admiral

Kelso’s effort to “Institutionalize what the Navy was as an organization and that people, accountability, responsibility, and good stewardship were critically important to us and in fact part of our culture.”938

The Navy Policy Book represents CNO Kelso’s second attempt to recapture the initiative in developing the Navy’s strategy and operational concepts in the post-Cold

War world. While it was not a strategic work as Dick Diamond described it, its organization around core values and concepts served to make it a common point of reference for future concepts.939 It was generally well received. The Naval Institute

Proceedings book review, for example, praised it for its focus on people, but also labeled it a series of “homilies,” such as “good health is important.”940 Retired Marine Lieutenant

General Bernard E. Trainor was critical of The Policy Book for not having enough

Marine information in its history section.941

937 Email from Captain Richard K. Diamond, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swatz, USN (ret), subject: Comments on Navy Policy Book, The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Navy Policy Book file, Washington D.C., Used with permission by the author. 938 “Email from Captain Judith Myers, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret),” subject: Remember the Policy Book!, dated 6/6/2012, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Policy Book File, used with permission by the author.) 939 Email from Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), dated 7/7/2006, subject: Comments on The Navy Policy Book, The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Way Ahead file, used with permission by the author. 940 “Book Review: The Navy Policy Book,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, October 1992, 113. 941 Ibid. 314

The Policy Book’s publication unfortunately coincided with the unveiling of an investigative report by the Navy’s Inspector General and the Naval Investigative Service detailing events at the September 1991 Thirty Fifth Annual

Symposium on Naval and Marine Corps aviation held in Las Vegas Nevada.

Investigators suggested that, “A reported 83 women and 7 men had been the victims of assault and sexual harassment.”942 The Policy Book was written partially in response to the Tailhook scandal and other events from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s that “Called actual Navy values into question.”943 The release of the “Tailhook” report and previous scandals such as the ongoing investigations in the USS Iowa’s turret explosion and the

FBI’s “Ill Wind” investigation of Navy contracting procedures distracted Admiral Kelso from both his internal process and strategy improvement efforts. He was ultimately forced to retire earlier than planned due to these events.944

Building “From the Sea”

Kelso’s third and most successful attempt to shape the post-Cold War strategic environment was the White Paper “From the Sea.” This document was written for a variety of reasons, but most specifically due to the failure of “The Way Ahead” and The

Navy Policy Book to convince internal and external audiences that the Navy was changing with the strategic situation.945 It built on several origins including the continued

942 John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents, 13. 943 Peter Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, (1991-2000), Strategy, Policy, Concept and Vision Documents, 23. 944 John H. Cushman Jr., “Admiral Frank B. Kelso Dies at 79, Tied to Tailhook Scandal,” The New York Times, 28 June 2013. 945“Introduction,” in John B. Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents, 14. 315 efforts of the OP 603 office, analysis of the Navy’s performance during Operation Desert

Storm, a more detailed analysis of force requirements needed for the post-Cold War environment, and the efforts of outside groups and think tanks. The concept still emphasized traditional U.S. Navy roles including the need to “command the seas,” and ensure freedom of commercial maritime passage.946 The main thrust of the document, however, was its focus on joint operations in coastal areas where expeditionary forces would do most of the fighting, including significant land-based operations by Marines or other ground forces. This process of “maneuver from the sea,” was described as much like the Army and Marine Corps concept of maneuver warfare on land. Finally, new naval doctrine would be developed to make the concept possible.947 From the Sea expanded on concepts developed for “The Way Ahead” and used the teamwork methodology of “The Navy Policy Book” to implement the new strategy across the Navy and Marine Corps.

“From the Sea” served its purpose in giving the Navy a vision for the post-Cold

War era. John Hattendorf calls it a successful effort in that “From the Sea” was an influential document with senior naval leaders and defense civilian experts.948 It constituted a consensus about what the Navy did to replace the unraveling 1980’s Navy identity forged around the Maritime Strategy.949 It also legitimized and focused the Navy

946 Sean O’Keefe, Frank B. Kelso II, and Carl E. Mundy Jr, “From the Sea, Preparing the Naval Service for the 21st Century,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol 118, No 11, (November 1992), 93- 96. 947Ibid. 948 Ibid. 949Peter Swartz with Karin Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, 36. 316 on the mission of surface land attack warfare.950 Unlike the previous attempts at strategy and policy by Admiral Kelso, “From the Sea” survived past his retirement and that of the

Navy Secretaries associated with its creation. Its influence endured in Navy planning documents for the next two decades.

While perhaps successful in creating a strategic vision for the post-Cold War

Navy, “From the Sea” may also be labeled a long-term failure in terms of sustaining strategic thought within the Navy. Many assumed that it was unwise to suggest that the

U.S. held “Preeminent control of the seas.”951 Many also suggested that it gave the U.S.

Marine Corps too much influence and control over naval forces. “From the Sea” talked about joint operations but said little about how they might be integrated. Revolution in military affairs (RMA) advocates thought it did not go far enough in implementation of transformative thinking and still reflected Cold War biases.952“From the Sea” was also an unclassified document like “The Way Ahead” and “The Navy Policy Book,” and as such lacked the institutional influence that a classified version would have generated.953Most significantly, “From the Sea “did not have a direct connection or influence over the

Navy’s budget and programming process.954 The primary connection between Congress and the Navy is the service’s budget requests. Strategies since the 1980’s Maritime

Strategy have been primary used to market specific programs rather than support strategic planning. This lack of connection between Navy strategy and program funding would

950 Terry Pierce, Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies, Disguising Innovation, London, Frank Cass, 2004, 165. 951 Peter Swartz with Karin Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, p. 52. 952 Bradd Hayes, “Keeping the Naval Service Relevant,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, October 1993, p. 57.

954 Peter Swartz with Karin Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, p. 52. 317 prove a fatal flaw for not only “From the Sea,” but also for successive Navy strategic documents up to the present time.955

The end of the Cold War removed the unifying, common threat of the Soviet

Union and replaced it with uncertain regional threats. The Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 gave greater authority to regional commanders and reduced the need for a service-based strategy. The First Gulf War of 1990/1991 show-cased the power that a regional commander might wield. Having lost their strategic authority to regional commanders, service chiefs like Admiral Kelso ultimately turned to the business of preserving force structure and devising operational art for its employment under regional commander control. This change came at the expense of strategic planning.

Kelso already had a deep interest in the improvement of internal processes as shown in his support for Deming’s TQL management theories. His 1992 OPNAV reorganization transferred more authority to those deputies who managed the preservation, purchase and operational use of Navy force structure. “From the Sea” accomplished its mission in providing a post-Cold War strategic vision, but the environment and new operational concepts it engendered significantly weakened the influence of the Navy’s strategic planners within the OPNAV staff organization. This change left campaign and operations analysts in charge of the business of Navy force structure and operations for the next two decades.

“From the Sea “grew from the same process that produced The Way Ahead. It was also stimulated by the OP 603 brief given by Captain Dick Diamond to Admiral

Kelso in July 1991 where the CNO became distraught and then enraged by future force

955 James A. Russell, et all, “Navy Strategy Development: Strategy in the 21st Century,” 4. 318 projections suggesting the Navy’s force structure would plummet in the next two decades.956Dick Diamond transferred from OP 603 soon after the publication of The Way

Ahead to assume command of the cruiser USS Bunker Hill in Yokosuka, Japan. Despite

Vice Admiral Miller’s co-option of his brief as the core of The Way Ahead, the success of that document meant in Diamond’s words that, “We in OP 603 were not completely out of the picture yet,” and since that was the case, “we continued to work the OP 603,

Headquarters Marine Corps, and OP 00K alliance and continued to refine our brief.”957

New leadership and a new task in the wake of The Way Ahead helped Diamond’s team to regain strategic momentum. Vice Admiral Leighton “Snuffy” Smith replaced Kelly as OP

06 director and eventually OP 603 veteran Rear Admiral Ted Baker became Smith’s deputy. The new assignment was a broad OPNAV effort to specify the naval force structure required for the world described in The Way Ahead.

This project was named the Naval Forces Capabilities Planning Effort (NFCPE), and it was designed as an easy exercise to confirm that the Navy’s existing force structure was up to the challenges of the “Way Ahead” world. It instead became a months-long process stretching from November 1991 through March 1992. Admiral Kelso decided that Vice Admiral Smith as the new OP 06 should take charge of the effort to seek a

956 Email from Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret) to Dr. John Hattendorf, Naval War College, subject “Paper Review Status” (unpublished narrative of the events leading up to the September 1992 publication of “From the Sea”), 09 September 2006, Filed jointly in The United States Naval War College, The Naval Historical Collection, The papers of Dr. John Hattendorf, and in the Professional papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 1991 “The Way Ahead” file, used with special permission of Dr. John Hattendorf, Captain Swartz and Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret). 957 Email from Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret) to Dr. John Hattendorf, Naval War College, subject “Paper Review Status” (unpublished narrative of the events leading up to the September 1992 publication of “From the Sea”), 09 September 2006, Filed jointly in The United States Naval War College, The Naval Historical Collection, The papers of Dr. John Hattendorf, and in the Professional papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 1991 “The Way Ahead” file, used with special permission of Dr. John Hattendorf, Captain Swartz and Captain Richard Diamond, USN (ret). 319 coordinated answer to the questions posed by the NFCPE.958 Admiral Smith was at first not convinced this could be accomplished in a coordinated document. He told Dick

Diamond at his checkout meeting that, “Based on my thirty-five years of experience I can assure you that this here Littoral Warfare Shit ain’t never gonna fly in this man’s

Navy…”959

Smith took up his task with enthusiasm, despite whatever initial objections he may have had. He enlisted his deputy OP 06 Rear Admiral Jim Cossey and the OP 60

Plans and Policies head Rear Admiral Ted Baker in the effort, and eventually expanded the flag oversight leadership of the project to five officers including two Marines.960The bulk of the work, however, was done by Navy and Marine Corps officers at the O-4 to O-

6 rank, along with a number of analysts from the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA)

Corporation. Navy Secretary H.Lawrence Garrett III instructed the group to “Create a new, zero-based plan for naval forces spanning the next fifteen to twenty years and provide, in effect, an entirely new strategic concept for the naval forces of the United

States.”961

This effort would result in the creation of the “From the Sea, Preparing the Naval

Service for the 21st Century” document in September 1992.962 It was also published in

Proceedings the following month. According to Peter Swartz, the purpose of “From the

958 Ibid. 959 Ibid. 960 Fred Neider and Thomas P.M. Barnett, “Memorandum for the record, The Final Report of the Naval Force Capabilities Planning Effort, Phases I and II, (Alexandria, VA: The Center for Naval Analyses, CNA 92-0527, 23 March 1992), 1. 961 Edward A. Smith Jr, “What…”From the Sea” Didn’t Say,” The United States Naval War College Review, (Winter 1995), Vol. XLVIII, No 1, 11. 962 Sean O’Keefe, Frank B. Kelso II, and C.E. Mundy, “From the Sea, Preparing the Naval Service for the 21st Century,” (Washington D.C.: The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, The Chief of Naval Information, 30 September 1992.) 320

Sea” was four fold. The Navy’s leadership intended to demonstrate that it understood the world had changed and that the Navy had changed too; it served to leave the 1980’s era

Maritime Strategy behind; it provided a basis for the 450 ship fleet needed for the post-

Cold War era; and to provide the Navy with something like the Air Force’s “Global

Reach, Global Power” doctrine. The Navy also wanted to make up for the lack of interest in “The Way Ahead”, and show that it did not need input from the Joint Staff and

Chairman Powell to come up with its own ideas on force structure and employment.963

Finally, “From the Sea” was intended as a tool to communicate to Navy and Marine

Corps leaders, as well as the Joint Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, that the Navy was fully on board with the changes of the last several years, including the

Goldwater Nichols legislation, the new strategic situation caused by the fall of the Soviet

Union, and the results of the First Gulf War.964

The process of creating the new strategy was embedded within the Naval Force

Capabilities Planning Effort. This months-long effort featured a fairly large and talented group of field grade officers, as well as analysts from CNA, led by Vice Admiral Smith and Marine Corps Plans, Policies and Operations chief Lieutenant General Hank

Stackpoole as co-chairs. Rear Admiral Ted Baker and Marine Major General Matthew

Caulfield provided direct oversight of the team of Navy and Marine Corps officers, and

CNA analysts working on the project.965It was structured in three phases. The first ran from October through December 1991, and, according to participant Captain Edward A.

963 Peter M. Swartz and Karin Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts 1991-2000, 35.

964Ibid, 35, 36. 965 Ibid. 321

Smith, attempted to determine “What had and had not changed in the national security environment and what the implications of the changes were for the roles and missions of naval forces.” The first phase included war games, flag officer conferences and multiple working groups to evaluate the new strategic order from a zero-based analysis that essentially asked, “What did naval forces do that justified the money taxpayers spent to build and to maintain them.”966

Captain Bill Manthorpe, USN (ret), then serving as Deputy Director of Naval

Intelligence (Deputy DNI) gave one of the most significant briefings in this first phase.967

Manthorpe asserted that notwithstanding the collapse of the Soviet Union, history suggested that, “High seas threats presented themselves at regular intervals of about every 25 years.”968 This put Manthorpe and others at odds with the majority who believed that a fundamental, history-changing event had occurred with the U.S.S.R.’s demise. One of those in disagreement with Manthorpe, CNA analyst Dr. Thomas Barnett, stated that the brief accelerated the division of the NFCPE participant into three camps. They included the “transitioneers” who believed the US should deal with small threats in order to assure a transition to a safer-post Cold War world, the “Big Stick” camp who wanted to prepare for the next Operation Desert Storm against a regional hegemon, and the “Cold

Worriers “who believed the U.S. should follow Manthorpe’s advice and prepare for the rise of the next great superpower who might “sneak up” on the U.S. in coming

966 Edward A. Smith Jr, “What…”From the Sea” Didn’t Say,” 11. 967 William H.J. Manthorpe, “Personal Reflections on The Pentagon’s New Map; War and Peace in the 21st Century by Thomas P. M. Barnett (New York, Putnam, 2004)”, The Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly, Vol XXI, #3, Fall 2005, 32. 968 Ibid. 322 decades.969 Ultimately, neither Manthorpe nor Barnett’s views were fully embraced by the Navy and the Department of Defense. Rather, as Manthrope later suggested, “Would the Pentagon help to build a ‘new world order’ in this fractured security environment crammed full of lesser includeds, or would it retreat from this fractious world to focus on

‘the Big One’? The answer is, the Pentagon tried to do both.”970

In the short term the Navy seemed to gravitate toward Barnett’s view, if for no other reason than to assume the mantle of change that perhaps fit the Zeitgeist of the immediate post-Cold War era. The first document from NFCPE was entitled “The

Strategic Concept of the Naval Service” and incorporated stands from all three camps.

Vice Admiral Smith was not happy with the product. Smith described Rear Admiral Ted

Baker’s efforts on the document as, “a rehash of the old one (The Maritime Strategy,) and it wasn’t very good.”971 The working groups returned to CNA to continue their deliberations, but Smith remained unhappy, stating, “I went out (to CNA) and got updates, and I just wasn’t happy. I mean, it just wasn’t clicking.”972 Finally, Smith states he decided to condense the NFCPE working group stating emphatically,

Finally one day I was just totally frustrated. They’d had working groups, and I called them together and I said, ‘Okay, goddam it, here’s the deal guys. Let’s condense this thing. We don’t have to solve world hunger right here. What we need to do is find out what the Navy’s going to do, how it’s going to operate. If it’s not going to be threats, then do we build a capabilities-based force? And I don’t want to go threat-shopping. That’s not what we are here for, so we’re not looking to find a problem with the Chinese or the Pakistani’s or whomever, but think about the kinds of

969Thomas P.M.Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map, War and Peace in the 21st Century, (New York: Putnam, 2004), 69, 70. 970 Bill Manthorpe, “Personal Reflections on The Pentagon’s New Map; War and Peace in the 21st Century by Thomas P. M. Barnett.”, 32. 971Leighton W. Smith Jr, and Paul Stilwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Leighton W. Smith Jr, USN (ret), (Annapolis, Md: The United States Naval Institute Press, 2010), 641. 972 Ibid. 323

missions that we’re going to have to do and break those things down, and let’s see if we can attack it that way.973

Smith’s comments are not surprising perhaps, given the initial guidance he received from the CNO. Admiral Kelso later stated, “The Navy needs a planning document that’s credible in the political and military arena.”974 The Maritime Strategy had provided that in the 1980’s, but as Kelso noted, “Well, here we are going into a new world with no planning document. I wanted a piece of paper that we could use and sell to Congress and to the Joint Staff of the OSD-that this is what the Navy’s job was in the years ahead of us.”975 Given this guidance it is not surprising that Vice Admiral Smith would reject any repetition of past great power strategies.

Smith’s rejection of “The Strategic Concept of the Naval Service” constituted the end of Phase 1 of the NFCPE. Phase II involved the smaller team that Vice Admiral

Smith wanted and featured new leadership in the form of Marine Colonel Thomas

Wilkerson, who had recently been selected for, but not yet promoted to the rank of

Brigadier General. Wilkerson was no stranger to the business of maritime strategy writing, having worked on the 2nd edition of the Maritime Strategy in 1983.Vice Admiral

Smith and Lieutenant General Stackpoole remained in their supervisory roles, but Rear

Admiral Baker effectively moved aside, and a “gang of four” Navy flag officers (Rear

Admirals Dave Oliver, Phil Coady, Charlie Wilhelm, and newly promoted Rear Admiral

Baker) nominally supervised the effort. In practice, Wilkerson was the driving force behind the 2nd phase of the NFCPE, and the supervisory flag officers gave him significant

973Ibid, 642. 974 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminisences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, USN (ret), 686. 975Ibid, 686, 687. 324 autonomy in the process. Wilkerson, assisted by Navy Captain Rusty Petrea and Marine

Lieutenant Colonel Chip Gregson, did most of the work in the second phase.976 The previous “Concept of the Naval Service” document was totally re-written with Marine

Corps requirements equal and later dominant in the thinking of some naval officers involved.977The product from Wilkerson’s work was then forwarded to Vice Admiral

Smith, who along with Major General Charles Krulak (Marine Corps Combat

Development Command) continued to refine Wilkerson’s product.

Vice Admiral Smith was much happier with the new product. He later said,

“Rusty (CAPT Petrea) and his crowd had come up with a new approach-much like I had been thinking. We were going to listen to this presentation about “From the Sea.” After it was done, I had basically heard in a very concise outlined form pretty much what I had told them earlier.”978 Unfortunately, the new concept did not have a good name. The Air

Force had in Smith’s opinion, “One hell of a bumper sticker with Global Reach, Global

Power.”979 Smith wanted something similar and even offered a week of free leave to his staff for a winning name. While he did not claim responsibility for much of the content of

“From the Sea,” he did claim credit for the name:

I had this document in my briefcase and I was sitting at my breakfast table at home in Fairfax, Virginia, one morning about 5:00 o’clock eating my Cheerios or whatever the hell I was eating. The briefcase was open, and right on top of it was this piece of paper, and it had ‘Engagement from the Sea.’ It had several different titles, ‘Engagement from the Sea,’ ‘Power from the Sea, ‘Diplomacy From the Sea,’ and I looked at that thing and suddenly I said, ‘You know, it could be anything from the sea. So why

976Peter M. Swartz and Karin Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts 1991-2000, 42. 977 Ibid. 978 Leighton W. Smith Jr, and Paul Stilwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Leighton W. Smith Jr, USN (ret), 642. 979Ibid, 644. 325

don’t I just put three dots down here:’…From the Sea.’ You can fill in what you want. And I did it, and that’s how we came up with the name.980

The review process did not end with Smith’s triumphal naming process. Smith submitted the document to Admiral Kelso and Marine Commandant General Mundy who approved it and sent it on to the Secretary of the Navy. H. Lawrence Garrett had resigned in mid-1992 due to the continuing after effects of the Tailhook scandal and had been temporarily replaced by Under Secretary Dan Howard. Smith and Howard did not get on well. Smith later said, “So I took this thing down (to the Secretary of the Navy’s office) and this is where I got into a shouting match with Dan Howard. He didn’t like it, (From the Sea) and unfortunately it was going to be a Secretary of the Navy kind of thing and not the CNO.”981

When Sean O’Keefe was confirmed as Garrett’s replacement in July 1992 Smith continued his battle to get “From the Sea” approved by the new Secretary. Again, there were conflicts but this time there was greater progress. Commander Jim Stavridis, then on O’Keefe’s staff, served as an additional editor and go-between for the increasingly frustrated Smith and the new Secretary. Smith later recalled,

Well, finally it got to be an editing contest between O’Keefe’s office and my office, and the guy doing the editing up there was Jim Stavridis; I think he was a Commander at the time. Smart guy. I recall a couple of times we’d get on the phone and I’d just get so damned frustrated. I mean literally I was having chest pains, and my blood pressure was probably off the top of the scale, and I’d just slam the phone down and stomp around.982

980 Ibid. 981Ibid, 643. 982 Ibid. 326

After additional changes Smith re-submitted “From the Sea,” Kelso and Mundy again approved it, and it went to Secretary O’Keefe for approval. While attending a war game in Newport, Smith received the message from O’Keefe’s office telling him that

“From the Sea “would be approved so long as Smith removed a key 7-page section that detailed the importance of “forward presence/engagement” of naval forces.983 Smith reluctantly agreed, and the final, signed version of “From the Sea’ came off Commander

Stavridis’ computer.984 Smith was pleased with the effort and later said the best compliment he received while on active naval service was for his work on “From the

Sea:”

Kelso had a flag conference in D.C. It wasn’t all the flag officers. I think it was just three stars. I briefed the first time there in the barrel, and the idea was once we got this thing written we were going to brief it and get flag officer buy-in. I briefed “From the Sea” to these three stars, and there were some two stars in there and four stars as well-probably about 25 guys in that room. I remember when I was in the briefing and I was looking around the room, and I realized I had their attention. I continued on and finished the briefing. And there was this pause and I said, ‘Now, I’ll be happy to take any questions.’ And they applauded. I went home that night and I told my wife. I said, I think I’ve gotten the highest compliment that you can get. These Guys applauded after I finished my presentation. I’d never heard of it, never seen it before in my life, and so that was the story.

The final document represented a major turning point in U.S. naval policy. Its opening paragraph boldly stated, “The world has changed dramatically in the last two years (1990-1992), and America’s national security policy has also changed. As a result, the priorities of the Navy and Marine Corps have shifted, leading to this broad

983Ibid, 643. 984 Email from Vice Admiral James Stavridis, USN to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), subject: Navy Strategy, dated 6/28/2006, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Way Ahead File, Used with permission by the author.) 327 assessment of the future direction of our maritime forces.”985 The new concept’s slogan was, “Naval Expeditionary Forces-Shaped for Joint Operations-Operating Forward from the Sea-Tailored for National Needs.”986 It certainly represented a fundamental step away open ocean warfighting as envisioned in the 1980’s Maritime Strategy to joint operations in a littoral zone that some planners suggested reached 650 nautical miles inland from the coast.987

From the Sea called for the establishment of a Navy Doctrine command, an event unprecedented in American history as the U.S. Navy had in the past avoided specific doctrine for naval forces. This part of “From the Sea” was likely a Marine Corps initiative, as Naval Postgraduate School Operations analysis professor Wayne Hughes suggests: “In part it had come at the urging of the Marine Corps, which saw the advantage of applying “operational art,” standing between strategy and tactics.”988 The new Naval Doctrine command published its work “Naval Warfare” (Naval Doctrine Plan

#1) in spring1994. Modeled along similar Joint publications, NDP-1 would be the U.S.

Navy’s attempt at something approaching the successful doctrinal publications of the

Army (FM 100-1), Air Force (Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force), and the Marine Corps (FMFM 1.)989

This new strategic situation and environment played directly to the strength of naval forces. “From the Sea” stated that naval forces would operate forward at advanced

985 Sean O’Keefe, Frank B. Kelso, Carl E. Mundy Jr, “…From the Sea, Preparing the Naval Service for the 21st Century,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, (November 1992), 93. 986 Ibid. 987Swartz with Duggan, 44. 988 Wayne P. Hughes, “Naval Operations, A Close Look at the Operational Level of War at Sea,”, The United States Naval War College Review, Volume 65, No 3, (Summer 2012), 24. 989Swartz with Duggan, 57, 61. 328 conditions of readiness that did not require additional staging and advanced basing required by the other services in order to operate in similar environments. Naval forces were swift, self-sustaining, armed with a considerable strike capability, and possessed the necessary command and control sophistication to host either a naval or joint force commander.990 The Naval Expeditionary Force (NEF) also represented the joint force’s connection to its supply base in the continental United States. “From the Sea” emphasized this connection, saying, “Forward logistics, prepositioning, and strategic sealift, coupled with strategic airlift, are the keys to force sustainment.”991

“From the Sea” suggested joint operations, but it was focused much more on the

Navy and Marine joint partnership than on similar relationships with the Army and the

Air Force. Vice Admiral Smith later said that Army and Air Force input was not sought in the creation of “From the Sea.” Instead, Congressional and Joint Staff support was seen as more necessary to the acceptance of the document.992 When “From the Sea” spoke of joint operations with the other services, it did not necessarily mean full integration.993

Naval War College School Professor Jan Breemer considers “From the Sea” as part of the rehabilitation of the surface warfare branch of the Navy after years of being secondary to its naval aviation and submarine components.994 The surface navy’s Aegis system SPY-1 phased array radar and accompanying combat system had its origins in the

990Sean O’Keefe, Frank B. Kelso, Carl E. Mundy Jr, “…From the Sea, Preparing the Naval Service for the 21st Century,” 95. 991Ibid, 96. 992 Leighton Smith and Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Leighton W. Smith Jr., U.S. Navy (retired), 645, 646. 993Swartz with Duggan, 46. 994 Jan Breemer quoted in Rodger Thompson, Brown Shoes, Black Shoes and Felt Slippers, Parochialism and the Evolution of the Post-War U.S. Navy, (Newport, RI: The Naval War College Press, 1995), 57, 58. 329 defense of carrier battle groups, but grew to become a complete battle force integration system. Mated with the new Tomahawk cruise missile, a weapon that had begun development in the 1970’s for the surface force by then CNO Zumwalt, it offered a potent, unmanned strike alternative to conventional aircraft. During the NFCPE process, key members of the group, including naval aviators, offered support for the idea of surface force, land attack as a component of “From the Sea.”995There was a general consensus that dispersed capability of Tomahawk land attack cruise missile fired from surface force and also submarine platforms was one of the primary enabling capabilities for the “From the Sea” concept.996

The Navy and especially the Marine Corps leadership were happy with “From the

Sea.” Admiral Kelso was pleased, stating later that, “At the headquarters level we needed to establish a strategy and program base on which to build for the future. And in my judgement the short white paper ‘…From the Sea ‘was a pretty good start.”997 Kelso spread the credit for the completion of the document, saying,

Snuffy (Vice Admiral Smith) had a significant role in it. But the basic document, the basic idea of the document was written by a bunch of Marine O-6’s and Navy O-6’, and commanders and lieutenant commanders. I mean, it’s the kind of document that had a lot of fingers in it, and a lot of people now would like to claim credit for it. I don’t think any one person deserves credit for the document.998

995Ibid, 172, 173. 996 Brad Hayes and Douglas Smith, editors, “The Politics of Naval Innovation,” (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College, The Center of Naval Warfare Studies, Occasional paper, Strategic Research Department Research Report, 01 August 1994), 31, and Sean O’Keefe, Frank B. Kelso II, and Carl E. Mundy Jr., “From the Sea, Preparing the Naval Service for the 21st Century,” Annapolis, MD, The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, November 1992, 95. 997 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminisences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, USN (ret), 688. 998Ibid, 687. 330

Kelso also praised Secretary O’Keefe for his efforts in making “From the Sea” a useful product. He later said, “Mr. O’Keefe deserves a lot of credit for pushing to get it published. I think he recognized from sitting down in OSD that the Navy needed something like this in order to be able to get OSD focused on what the Navy was going to do, and so he pushed hard to get the document out early in his tour as Secretary of the

Navy.”999

Marine leaders were perhaps even more pleased with “From the Sea.” In a

January 1994 Proceedings article, Marine Corps Commandant General Carl Mundy lauded “From the Sea” for its ideas on command and control, dominance, power projection ashore, and sustainment of forces. In particular, he cited the document’s willingness to allow “The blurring of the line between the land and the sea,” and that “the commander may need to be a Marine instead of a sailor, depending on the circumstances.”1000 Mundy went as far as to suggest “there may be situations in which the commander afloat also may need to be a Marine – a good case in point would be peace enforcement operations like those in Somalia, where there was no serious threat to the naval task force and where the focus of all efforts was clearly on events ashore.”1001

There was still plenty of disagreement on the contents of “From the Sea.” Admiral

Kelso said, “You could find somebody who did not like something in it as well as somebody who liked something in it.”1002 Some naval officers were unhappy that the document lacked specifics on how ships, submarines, and aircraft would be employed,

999Ibid, 688. 1000Carl Mundy Jr., “Getting it Right, From the Sea,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, (January 1994), 70. 1001 Ibid. 1002 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, USN (ret), 687. 331 and with the implicit focus on Marine operations. Admiral Kelso later acknowledged, “A lot of naval officers felt it had too much Marine in it,” but also said, “The Marines wanted more Marine ideas.”1003 Kelso also later agreed that the document did not have enough “blue water warfare” concepts, saying, “Yes, it was absolutely focused on littorals and it did not have enough about carriers and submarines and whatever.”1004

Vice Admiral Leighton Smith regarded “From the Sea” as the high point of his nearly 4 year assignment as the Deputy CNO for Plans, Policy and Operations (OP 06).

He later said, “There were a lot of other things that happened in my tour as N3/N5 (later term for OP 06), but that was clearly one of the biggest. I think if I made a mark, it was there.”1005 The Marines who believed they did not receive the attention needed in “From the Sea” also voiced criticism. Marine Corps Reserve Officer and national security analyst Frank Hoffman wrote, “Most Marines were fairly excited by the hope that the

Navy would finally recognize the changes in the international security environment and finally break loose from its strategic stupor and internal parochialism,” but was disappointed by the lack of focus on peacetime presence operations. Similar to Vice

Admiral Smith’s concerns, Hoffman observed that while “From the Sea” stressed “The potential application of Navy and Marine forces as the nation’s primary crisis response tool and studiously ignores presence and peacetime tasks in support of political and economic objectives.”1006

1003 Ibid. 1004 Ibid. 1005Leighton W. Smith Jr, and Paul Stilwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Leighton W. Smith Jr, USN (ret), 647. 1006 Frank Hoffman, “Stepping Forward Smartly; ‘Forward…From the Sea,’ The Emerging, Expanded Naval Strategy,” The Marine Corps Gazette, (March 1995), 33. 332

Many critics within the Navy pointed out the omission of the peacetime presence mission, removed from the last draft by Secretary O’Keefe, as a significant error. Captain

Edward Smith, an initial member of the NFCPE, described this condition as perhaps influenced by those outside the sea services who assumed that “navies fought navies” as their primary function.1007 The collapse of the Soviet Union should have logically curtailed the need for a larger naval force, but the NFCPE effort found quite the opposite was true. The group examined the period 1946 to 1991 and discovered that in the 325 instances where U.S. armed forces had responded to a crisis of some kind, only 12% involved encounters with Soviet armed forces.1008 The NFCPE group also found that 83% of all crisis response efforts in the 1945-91 timeframe included naval forces; 95% of responses from 1986 to 1991 involved naval forces, and 70% of all crisis incidents since

1977 required aircraft carriers in support.1009It seemed clear that the forward presence of naval forces was crucial to the support of U.S. overseas interests. Why then was the specific presence mission excluded?

History played a role. In a 1993 Center for Naval Analyses paper, Captain Linton

Brooks, one of the 1980’s Maritime Strategy authors, reminded his readers that presence had also been omitted in that series of documents.1010 Brooks also noted that in periods of budget shortfall that presence forces tended to be cut more readily than those purely dedicated to war fighting.1011Influence from Congress and defense policy experts also

1007 Edward A. Smith Jr, “What…”From the Sea” Didn’t Say,” 24. 1008 Ibid. 1009Ibid, 24, 25. 1010Hoffman, 33. 1011Bradford Dismukes, “National Security Strategy and Forward Presence, Implications for Acquisition and Use of Forces,” (Alexandria, VA: The Center for Naval Analyses, CRM 93-192, March 1994), 65. 333 played a role. Combat requirements, not presence efforts, drove the defense spending process and in the absence of a Defense Department document that referenced “presence” as mission, the Navy had to focus on war fighting requirements in order to best support it budget requests. Sean O’Keefe specifically cited the need to make the Navy’s strategic concepts match its budget requests as articulated in the Program Objective Memorandum

(POM.)1012

The lack of forward presence critique on “From the Sea” was relatively short- lived. The incoming administration of President instituted a “Bottom up

Review” of U.S. defense requirements in March 1993. The final report on this effort, published in October 1993, included language similar to both “The Way Ahead” and

“From the Sea” in terms of the importance of forward naval presence. It specifically stated,

To address the new regional dangers and seize new opportunities, we have developed a multifaceted strategy based on defeating aggressors in major regional conflicts, maintaining overseas presence to deter conflicts and provide regional stability, and conducting smaller-scale intervention operations, such as peace enforcement, peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief to further U.S. interests and objectives.

The Bottom Up Review also listed operational level needs for forward presence. It demanded enough naval force to meet two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts, and also support other, smaller regional operations. Overseas presence was recognized as a major mission, especially in terms of aircraft carriers. The big flattops were seen as flexi bible assets, and their ability to operate independently from shore bases made them well suited to overseas presence operations, especially in areas such as the Persian Gulf,

1012 Fred Rainbow and John Miller, “Be Careful What you Ask For…”, The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, January 1993, 73. 334 where land-based military infrastructure was relatively scarce and under-developed. The naval force size specified by the Bottom Up review was sized to reflect both overseas presence, as well as the warfighting requirements of two major conflicts. This level of specific support for presence as a distinct military mission gave the Navy the justification it needed to further articulate this mission area and use it as the basis for budgetary decisions.1013Admiral Kelso later clarified the impact of this decision:

They (the Clinton administration) accepted the fact that if the Navy was going to be forward deployed on a continuous basis, that was a basis for force levels. In other words, in the past the only thing that had been acceptable was, ‘How much do you need for when you’re going to fight?’ And that had been large enough to take care of the forward deployment base. Bust as you get smaller and smaller, that is no longer large enough. So we were allowed to use the idea that if it takes X destroyers to keep one forward deployed, you need X for one on a continuous basis or how many carriers and all that sort of thing. I was a significant recognition of the need for forward-deployed forces within the Navy.1014

The service would further expand upon the need for presence as a funded mission in the follow-on to “From the Sea,” appropriately entitled, “Forward…From the Sea” in

November 1994.1015

“From the Sea” also faced analysis and criticism from a wider body of national and international security scholars. Naval War College professor Jan Breemer called

“From the Sea,” the ‘end of naval strategy,’ but suggested that the Navy’s strategy change was well within historical norms. Breemer stated that the remnants of the Soviet

Navy could at best “survive,” and that the U.S. was correct to seek a new strategy in, “an

1013Dismukes, 70. 1014 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, USN (ret), 689, 690. 1015 John Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents, 198. 335 ocean without challengers.”1016 “From the Sea” represented a top down change similar to that the U.S. Navy executed in the wake of the Second World War as described by political scientist Samuel Huntington in 1954. Breemer’s greatest concern was that the

U.S. Navy could not change fast enough in terms of culture to shift from a war at sea footing to a modern version of “cross ravaging” where naval forces were primarily concerned with attacking land targets.”1017 Breemer still complemented “From the Sea” as, “short and straightforward” in message.1018

British naval historian Geoffrey Till was perhaps more complimentary and suggested that, “With the publication of ‘From the Sea,’ (1994) the Navy’s preoccupation shifted from sea control to land control,” and, “This did not mean that sea control was dead (as Jan Breemer dramatically declared,) it meant only that the U.S. Navy and its allies would now switch their attention to its reward; the capacity to project power ashore, especially in the world’s troubled littorals.”1019 Till also cited both Samuel

Huntington and Sir Julian Corbett as having ideas that prefigured those in “From the

Sea.”1020 It seemed clear to these scholars that while perhaps the change from Open

Ocean “blue water” to “littoral” operations might be difficult for the U.S. Navy to accept and execute, there were known historical examples of how to accomplish the change.

Some critics viewed “From the Sea” as a means to an end state of continued, muscular U.S. naval force structure. Cato Institute analyst Dr. Christopher Preble

1016 Jan S. Breemer, “The End of Naval Strategy, Revolutionary Change and the Future of American Naval Power,” Strategic Review, VOL XXII, No. 2, (Spring, 1994), 49. 1017Ibid, 53. 1018Ibid, 44. 1019 Geoffrey Till, Seapower, A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 67. 1020Ibid, 67, 68. 336 suggested that “From the Sea” did not fully assess U.S. security roles for a post-Cold War world and that maintaining a large fleet in the face of inevitable budget cuts would result in, “Strategic over-extension, and a ‘hollow fleet’ incapable of performing its missions effectively.” Preble suggested that a 275-ship fleet, rather than the 451 ship organization that Admiral Kelso was then trying to maintain would be better suited for U.S. needs and that regional powers should assume more of the burden of protecting the free flow of global trade.1021

Despite these criticisms, “From the Sea” largely succeeded in its quest to create a new vision for the United States Navy and for the Navy/Marine Corps team in the new, post-Cold War world. John Hattendorf said, “’From the Sea’ had wide influence within and outside the Navy. It was extensively used as a basis for flag officer speeches and in testimony before Congress, and it was favorably noted by civilian defense analysts. At the same time, it clearly reflected how the fleet was currently operating and resonated with contemporary thinking about the Navy.”1022 The Marine Corps got equal footing with the Navy in the new environment and in some cases, as Princeton University

International Relations scholar Edward Rhodes noted, “The Navy was acknowledging the

Corps as at least an equal partner, and possibly as the critical partner, in naval operations.”1023

The document also sowed the seeds for its own obsolescence and the isolation of the greater Navy strategic community involved in its production. The conditions that

1021Christopher A. Preble, “The Cold War Navy in the Post War World,” (Washington D.C.: The Cato Institute, Policy Analysis paper No. 95, 02 August 1993). 1. 1022 John Hattendorf, editor, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990’s, Selected Documents, p. 14. 1023 Peter Dombrowski, editor, Naval Power in the 21st Century, A Naval War College Review Reader, (Newport, RI, The United States Naval War College Press, 2005), p. 154. 337 made possible the break with the 1980’s Maritime Strategy and the creation of “From the

Sea” also enabled the wholesale reorganization of the CNO staff in ways that left its strategy branch isolated and without the influence to refine their product. The continuing effects of the Goldwater Nichols legislation and analysis of the First Gulf War accelerated that process. The Navy’s strategy branch continued to produce documents that offered further guidance in post-Cold War operations, but each had a lessened impact in comparison to “From the Sea.”

Admiral Kelso was a champion of the Navy strategy community in that he strongly supported their efforts that resulted in “From the Sea,” but he was just as concerned about the Department of Defense Budgetary process that controlled the size and capability of the service he led. Once “From the Sea” was in place, Kelso was determined to remake the Navy staff in order to preserve as much of the newest fleet force structure as possible to support both the new littoral warfighting mission with the

Marine Corps and the wider mission of forward naval presence. Kelso also believed that he could institute some of Edward Deming’s management theories in OPNAV as part of his planned reorganization. Most notably, Kelso empowered the OPNAV staff’s budgetary Vice Chief of Naval Operations to fundamentally remake the process by which the Navy determined what forces to buy and in what quantities they would be purchased.

This change was in part necessitated by the Goldwater Nichols legislation, but was also in response to the more limited defense budgets of the post-Cold War era.

Kelso later said that Secretary O’Keefe was the initial planner in this effort, stating, “After publication (of “From the Sea,”) he (Secretary O’Keefe,) took that 338 document and did some very smart things. He got the Navy and the Marine Corps leadership together…and said, ‘We’re going to have a war game, a paper war game, a talking war game about what this is going to mean to the Navy and to the Marine Corps, and not only that, we’re going to align our programs to fit this. We’re going to put our money where our mouth is to fit this program.”1024

Kelso’s reorganization of the OPNAV staff began in October 1992 and ended in

February 1993.1025 It included three key elements; the re-designation of the OPNAV office codes from the traditional, Navy preface of “OP” to the Joint Staff “N” code system; the abolition of the OP 07 Warfare integration Directorate, addition of Deputies for Doctrine and Liaison with Forward Commanders and downgrading of several 3-star

Deputy CNO codes to lesser-ranked 2-star positions, and the subordination of the Navy’s warfare Deputy CNO’s to a greatly empowered, 3- star Deputy CNO for Resources,

Warfare Integration and Assessments.1026

The change to the Joint Staff codes for OPNAV offices had been contemplated since the passage of the Goldwater Nichols Act and helped to align the Navy with the

Joint Staff and other services.1027The other reductions in rank were part of a process begun with the passage of the Goldwater Nichols Act, which reduced the number of 3- star Deputy CNO’s on the OPNAV staff from 6 to 5, and additional reductions in

1024 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, USN (ret), p. 688. 1025 “…From the Sea” Update, The OPNAV Assessment Process,” Washington D.C., The Department of the navy, The Navy Public Affairs Office, May 1993, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The “From the Sea” File, used with permission by the author.) 1026 Peter Swartz with Michael Markowitz, Organizing OPNAV (1970-2009), (Alexandria, VA and Washington D.C.: The CNA Corporation and the United States Navy History and Heritage Command, CAB D0020997.A5/2Rev, January, 2010), 54. 1027 Ibid. 339

OPNAV staff numbers at the end of the Cold War as part of General Powell’s Base Force plan for the post-Cold War military services.1028 Admiral Kelso preferred that the

OPNAV staff rather than the operational fleet absorb these losses; as a result his staff organization relinquished 150 officer and enlisted positions.1029

The CNO was also not happy with the OP 07 office, formed by his predecessor

Admiral Carlisle Trost as an “honest broker” among the warfare area platform sponsors.1030 He later stated, “Many officers did a lot of hard work, a lot of assessing ideal, but in the end the money was given to the warfare sponsors and they fought hard to keep their money, and they always needed more than they had. OP 07 had, I think, a significant influence on whether we would support ballistic missile defense from our ships. Admiral J.D. Williams, when he was OP 07 believed strongly that we should,…but he could have done that from anywhere. He did not need an entire organization to do that.”1031

The platform sponsor, surface (N86), submarine (N87) and air warfare (N88) two- star officers lost their direct reporting access to the CNO and were grouped under the new

N8 office. They were also downgraded in rank from three to two-star positions in accordance with Congressional requirements.1032 An additional two star officer billet for

Expeditionary Warfare (N85) was added as required by “From the Sea” and would alternately be headed by a Navy and Marine Corps officer.1033 Many of the Expeditionary

1028Ibid, 40, 57. 1029Ibid, 57. 1030Ibid, 40. 1031 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, USN (ret), 690. 1032 Swartz with Markowitz, Organizing OPNAV, (1970-2009), 57. 1033Ibid, 54. 340

Warfare officer’s responsibilities had previously been held by the surface warfare chief

(N86) and this addition constituted a net loss for the surface warfare community.1034 An additional two star billet for Communication with Forward Deployed Commanders

(CINC’s) was added under the code of N83. This addition came in recognition of the greater influence wielded by the nation’s forward-deployed military commanders in the wake of the Goldwater Nichols legislation.

Kelso’s most important and lasting change in his reorganization effort was the creation of the powerful N8 organization and the selection of its leader, Vice Admiral

William Owens. According to Peter Swartz, Kelso “Saw changing the process (of

OPNAV management and decision-making) as more important than changing the organization.”1035 Kelso later stated, “I believed that the ‘give and take’ (of decision- making) needs to be at the flag officer level in OPNAV, and I wanted them to have to focus all the time on what we really needed to do as a Navy and how we needed to spend our money as a total Navy.”1036 Kelso also wanted to get outside input to his OPNAV flag officer decision-making process. He said, “I wanted them (OPNAV) to bring in people from the outside to talk to us if they had things that we could use that we weren’t traditionally using.”1037 Kelso also knew exactly who he wanted to lead his new organization:

I brought Admiral Bill Owens back from Sixth Fleet, because I thought Bill was the right guy for N8. He’s a very hard worker, and he’s a smart guy, and he’s innovative, and that’s a great combination to have in an officer in the Navy. A lot of people do not always agree with Bill, but I

1034 Ibid. 1035Ibid, 58. 1036 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, USN (ret), 686. 1037 Ibid. 341

don’t think that anybody can argue that he is not smart, that he is not a very hard worker, or that he is not innovative, and he’s honest. He does what he thinks is right. So Bill in my judgement did not need the old OP 07 and the old OP 095 organization trying to tell him how to do his job all the time.1038

Owens was a veteran submariner who was just then completing an assignment as

Sixth Fleet commander in the Mediterranean Sea. He had been a member of the original

CNO Strategic Studies Group (SSG) and created innovative operational concepts for antisubmarine warfare in the Mediterranean. Owens later said that while working on the

SSG he became aware of the many possibilities available when all of the naval warfare

“unions” (surface, subsurface and aviation forces) worked together and joined with their sister services in order to achieve an objective.1039 Owens’ recent Sixth Fleet assignment had given him the opportunity to explore a number of post-Cold War operating concepts.

These included the creation of “Maritime Action Groups” composed of submarines, surface ships and patrol aircraft, and the use of the amphibious warfare ship USS Wasp as a light carrier/sea-control ship, using its Marine Corps AV8B Harrier jets as anti-surface and anti-air warfare missions rather than just supporting Marine units ashore.1040

Owens was in full agreement with Admiral Kelso’s thinking and plunged into his new assignment with enthusiasm. He aided in Kelso’s OPNAV reorganization. He later stated,”

The first task I undertook upon becoming Kelso’s resource director in late summer 1992 was to destroy the enemy within – an archaic and antiquated structure within Navy headquarters (OPNAV) that had artificially divided the service into fiefdoms centered on surface ships, submarines and naval

1038 Ibid. 1039 John T. Hanley Jr., “Creating the 1980’s Maritime Strategy and Implications for Today,” The United States Naval War College Review, Vol 67, No 2, (Spring, 2014), 19. 1040 Swartz with Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts (1991-2000), 37. 342

aviation, institutionalizing an internal rivalry among the traditional ‘warfare communities’ at the expense of innovation and combat effectiveness in the overall force.1041

Owens also knew how he intended to carry out Kelso’s vision of an assessment process involving the whole of the OPNAV staff flag officer leadership. Owens later explained,

“Our first task was to come up with a new scheme to identify the Navy’s priorities in making budget decisions as well as to assess combat capabilities. We had to come up with a way to encourage and hasten a new way of thinking about how the Navy would go to war in the twenty first century.”1042

Owens’ new scheme to promote Kelso’s vision was the Joint Mission Areas

(JMA) assessment process. First announced to the fleet in a follow-on policy paper to

“From the Sea” in February 1993, the JMA process identified 6 Joint Mission Areas and

2 Support Areas around which OPNAV planning and decision-making would be constructed.1043The Joint Mission Areas were Joint Strike, Joint Littoral Warfare, Joint

Surveillance, Joint Space and Electronic Warfare/Intelligence, Strategic Deterrence, and

Strategic Sealift/Protection. The support areas were Readiness/Infrastructure and

Manpower/Personnel and Shore Training.1044These six missions and two support areas were assigned to teams led by flag officers and senior members of the OPNAV staff.

These teams were to draw inputs from the fleet and from the Joint Staff and other services on which systems and programs the Navy should base its budgetary

1041 William Owens with Ed Offley, Lifting the Fog of War, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 167. 1042 Ibid. 1043 “Follow-on Papers Expanding on ‘…From the Sea,’ Washington D.C., The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Memorandum for the Record, 22 February 1993, 4, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The From the Sea file, used with permission by the author.) 1044Ibid, 5, 6. 343 requirements. Their mission was to create an integrated investment strategy within each discipline and to propose programs and systems for inclusion in the Defense

Department’s Planning, Programming, Budgeting system (PPBS). Decisions on whether or not to accept the recommendations of the JMA/Joint Support teams were made by the

CNO Executive Steering Committee and the OPNAV Resource and Requirements

Review Board (R3B). The R3B would then in turn advise the CNO, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Secretary of the Navy on what programs and systems to approve for entry into that defense budget cycle’s Program Objective Memorandum, a document that listed all of the Navy’s program requirements. The JMA point paper memorandum pointedly stated that the goal to be achieved in the JMA was consensus across the whole of the OPNAV organization. The word consensus was underlined in the original text to stress its importance.1045

This end state was in stark contrast to the previous system. The individual Deputy

CNO’s for the warfare disciplines battled each other in a highly competitive environment to win approval, and presumably funding support from the CNO for their warfare area requirements. Admiral Owens later described this process as one where,

For roughly two decades, decisions within the Navy about the allocation of resources had been worked out within a staff structure dominated by five spokesmen. Three of these were Vice Admirals who advocated the perspectives and resource claims of the Navy’s three warfare communities. There were the so-called “staff barons,” a term meant to imply their relative independence and equal power status. Their “fiefdoms” were naval aviation, surface warfare and submarines, and included the research, development and acquisition bureaucracies that worked for and within these platform categories.1046

1045Ibid, 6, 7. 1046William A. Owens, “The Quest for Consensus,” The United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol 120/5/1095, (May 1994), 70. 344

The 1992 OPNAV reorganization effort had been aimed very specifically at reducing the power of these barons. It created a larger and more substantial fiefdom for Vice Admiral

Owens as N8. The demoted warfare barons, along with the N83 office to communicate with forward joint commanders and the new N85 Expeditionary Warfare office were placed under Owens’ control, as were the N80 Programming and N82 Fiscal

Management division.1047 Most notably, Owens was given control of the N81

Assessments division, the hereditary descendant of the former N96 Analysis division of the 1960’s through early 1980’s. N81 was the key to the control of the JMA process, described in the JMA memorandum, “The Assessments Division N81 oversees the assessment process for N8 and provides analytical resources to support the efforts of the

JMA and SA assessment teams. The Assessment Division is also charged with integrating the results of the separate assessments into a single investment strategy (the

Investment Balance review (IBR))”1048 While originally designed as an integrator of the cross-OPNAV flag officer products, the N81 office, “Increasingly became the heart of the

JMA process and overshadowed the collective role of the participant flag officers.”1049

The 1992 reorganization marked the return of the analysis discipline to a position of power on the OPNAV staff equal and in some ways superior to that of the old OP 96 analysis division that had been disbanded in 1983.

As 1993 drew to a close it appeared that Admiral Kelso had accomplished many of the goals he set out to achieve upon becoming CNO. His plan to implement consensus-

1047 Ibid. 1048 “Follow-on Papers Expanding on ‘…From the Sea,’ Washington D.C., The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Memorandum for the Record, 22 February 1993, p.6. 1049 Swartz with Markowitz, Organizing OPNAV 1970-2009, 59. 345 building and cooperative flag officer input to the Navy’s programming and budgeting process, derived from Deming’s TQL method, was being implemented through the 1992

OPNAV reorganization and Vice Admiral Owens’ N8 organization.1050 Moreover, his

“From the Sea” document appeared a useful foundation on which to base the overall effort. Kelso later said, “Well, that (From the Sea) provided N8’s planning a tremendous tool. With this document he (Admiral Owens) had something to assess his program against. It was the cleanest way to do business that I’d ever seen the Navy staff engage in.

I do not want to take any credit for much of this, except that I was there, and I backed Bill

Owens when a lot of people did not want to travel in that direction.”1051

There were also key demotions in the power and influence of OPNAV positions not under the direct control of N8. The Deputy CNO for Operations, Plans and Policies

(OP 06), who had developed “From the Sea” from concept to Navy Secretary signature, was weakened in both rank and influence in the 1992 OPNAV reorganization. The office was re-coded as N3/N5 and saw a number of rank reductions in its subordinate flag officer positions. Its Nuclear Weapons Policy Division (OP 65) was downgraded to a branch. Its Fleet Operations and Readiness (OP 64) and Political/Military and Current

Plans Divisions (OP 61) had to now share the same flag officer director as the combined

N31/N52 branch.1052 Its OP 60 Director of Strategy, Plans and Policy (now designated

N51), and its OP 603 Strategy branch (now N513) remained, but neither had a role within the new N8 JMA process. Most notably, the OP 603 office lost its role as the first

OPNAV office to review the Program Objective Memorandum document. OP 603 had

1050 Swartz with Markowitz, Organizing OPNAV 1970-2009, 56. 1051 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, USN (ret), 688. 1052 Swartz with Markowitz, Organizing OPNAV 1970-2009, 54. 346 previously conducted its strategy appraisal as part of the CNO Executive Board Review

(CEB) prior to the other POM appraisals. The CEB was disestablished as part of the

October 1992 OPNAV reorganization. Subsequent lists of POM development assessments make no mention of a strategy assessment.1053

This was perhaps not surprising given the magnitude of change that had taken place from the end of the Cold War through the period of the First Gulf War. Whether by deliberate design or benign neglect, senior Navy leaders viewed “From the Sea” as a definitive document that would not require significant revision for some time. Admiral

Kelso later suggested, “In my judgement, the short white paper “…From the Sea,” was a pretty good start and I notice it has not changed much (as of 2009). They’ve fiddled around with it, but it’s still pretty much the same thing if you look at it very hard so nobody’s come up with a lot better since then.”1054Admiral Owens had a similar opinion.

“From the Sea,” he stated, “recognized that for the foreseeable future, the Navy’s control of the seas would not be challenged and argued that the primary role of U.S. naval forces would be the application of joint military force in littoral areas.”1055 There appeared to be little need for the OPNAV strategy branch in an environment where the strategic situation seemed so settled.

Admiral Owens later described how the “shock” of Operation Desert Storm contributed to the changes he worked to implement as the OPNAV N8. “Desert Storm,”

1053 The list of POM development assessments conducted before the 1992 reorganization includes a “White Paper Revision,” also known as “From the Sea,” described as a successor to the Maritime Strategy. Subsequent lists of POM development assessments, however, make no mention of a strategy assessment. 1054 Frank B. Kelso II with Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, U.S. Navy (ret), 689. 1055Owens,“The Quest for Consensus,” 69. 347 he noted, “the first post-Cold War conflict was a magnificent battle – and a doctrinal disaster for the U.S. Navy. Our naval forces performed well. There was no failure of nerve on the part of the men and women who fought there. The Navy was successful, however, because it was able to modify its operational doctrine, a doctrine that – along with the weapons, systems, and training it had generated – proved ill-suited to the Gulf

War.1056 There were those who disagreed with Owens’ assessment. Military analyst

Colonel Harry Summers suggested that the Navy had been very successful in that “The

Navy’s initiative in preparing to build a sea bridge to Europe enabled it to build just such a bridge to the Middle East. The amphibious threat from the marines kept Iraqi divisions pinned down in static defenses.”1057 Summers concluded that this effort was made possible only through the Navy’s investments in the 1980’s, both in ships and in the offensive Maritime Strategy.1058 The CNA Corporation analysis of the conflict commissioned by the Navy identified both positive and less effective elements of the

Navy’s role in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Overall, it found that the

Navy and Marine Corps performed very well, and while it suggested improvements in command and control, and the management of precision-guided weapons, it found no major strategic or operational errors in the Navy’s conduct of its part of the conflict.1059

Navy leadership in the early 1990’s was more concerned about the service’s warfighting than its logistics doctrine. Admiral Owens thought,

1056William Owens, High Seas, The Naval Passage to an Uncharted World, (Annapolis, Md: The Naval Institute Press, 1995), 4. 1057John F. Lehman and Harvey Sicherman, editors, America the Vulnerable, Our Military Problems and How to Fix Them, (Philadelphia, PA: The Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1995), 76, 77. 1058Ibid, 76. 1059 Marvin Pokrant, Desert Storm at Sea, What the Navy Really Did, (Westport, CT, The Greenwood Press, 1999), 302. 348

Little in Desert Storm supported the Maritime Strategy’s assumptions and implications. No opposing naval forces challenged us. No waves of enemy aircraft ever attacked the carriers. No submarine threatened the flow of men and materials across the oceans. The fleet was never forced to fight the open-ocean battles the Navy had been preparing for in the preceding twenty years. Instead, the deadly skirmishing of littoral warfare dominated.1060

Owens concluded, “For the navy, more than any other service, Desert Storm was the midwife of change.”1061 This distinct focus on operational warfare, at the expense of wider, specific service strategy and policy would continue to dominate the thinking of senior Navy leaders and make pure strategic considerations gradually less important.

The 1990’s saw further attempts by the N3/N5 Strategy branch to refine the arguments made in “From the Sea,” but with gradually less impact over the decade. The

Clinton administration’s acceptance of the need for forward-deployed naval forces was a welcome development, but continued budget cuts threatened the Navy’s already weakened force structure.1062 Navy Secretary John Dalton also desired to put a Clinton administration imprint on “From the Sea.”1063 “Forward,…From the Sea” reiterated many of its predecessor’s concepts, but specifically focused on forward naval presence and a new concept entitled “Credible Combat Presence,” that according to some was just further justification for existing force structure. President Clinton’s 1994 national security strategy supported forward presence a concept that, “demonstrates our commitment to allies and friends, underwrites regional stability, gains U.S. familiarity with overseas operating environments, promotes combined training among the forces of friendly

1060 Owens, High Seas, 4. 1061 Ibid. 1062 Swartz with Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, 1991-2000, 78. 1063Ibid, 78. 349 countries, and provides timely initial response capabilities.”1064 Despite this support,

Clinton’s “Bottom Up Review” set the goal of a 346-ship Navy by 1999.1065

To counter the shrinking fleet recommendation, N51 Director Rear Admiral

Phillip Dur and his N513 Deputy Captain Joe Sestak proposed the concept of “Credible

Combat Force” to defend existing Navy/Marine Corps forward presence and Navy force structure requirements both to the administration and to the 1994-1995 Congressional

Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces Commission.1066 The new “buzzword,” as some called it, was also an attempt to avoid reducing the number of aircraft carriers below twelve ships. Dur and Sestak did not actually give the brief. Instead, the CNO, the

Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Secretary of the Navy in turn spoke.1067 Other familiar faces in the writing of “Forward, From the Sea” included Marine Corps Major

General Tom Wilkerson (who had played a lead role in writing “From the Sea”), Captain

R. Robinson Harris (who wrote one of the unclassified versions of the 1980’s Maritime

Strategy and now served in the Navy’s Office of Legislative Affairs), and Dr. Scott

Truver (who also worked in drafting the “From the Sea” document).1068 “Forward…From the Sea” emphasized the same concepts of Navy and Marine Corps cooperation as did

1064William J. Clinton, “A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement,” (Washington D.C.: The White House, The United States Government Printing Office, July, 1994), 8, http://nssarchive.us/NSSR/1994.pdf, last accessed 31 December 2016. 1065Leslie Aspin, “The Report of the Bottom Up Review,” (Washington D.C.: The Office of the Secretary of Defense, The Department of Defense Printing Office, October, 1993), 28. 1066 Email from Captain Richard Diamond Jr, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 12/02/2009, subject: First Sea Lord on UK Defense, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The From the Sea file, used with permission by the author.) 1067 Email from Captain Mark N. Clemente, USN (ret) to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), 12/12/2009, subject: From the Sea, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The From the Sea file, used with permission by the author.) 1068 Swartz with Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, 1991-2000, 86. 350

“From the Sea,” but also discussed “enduring contributions in strategic deterrence, sea control and maritime supremacy, and strategic sealift.”1069

Moving Forward…From the Sea into the Twenty First Century

“Forward…From the Sea” did not achieve the same level of influence as its predecessor, despite the massing of familiar offices and experienced staff leaders and authors in support. Despite being essential to the 600-ship navy of the Cold War and the

451-ship force of 1992, the strategy offices no longer had the same influence than in previous decades. The real determinant of fleet size was embodied in the Navy POM as managed by Admiral Owens in the N8 office and through documents issued from that officer such as the “Force 2001, A Program Guide to the United States Navy” issued in

July 1993, and the annual POMs developed by N8 in support of Navy budget objectives.

The desired number of carriers was preserved, but the number of required escorts was reduced based on a lack of significant threat and a simultaneous need to cut forces to stay within the budget.1070

While “Forward…From the Sea” had some initial success, it did not achieve much influence in POM development since it was still focused on “blue water” programs and did not “script a convincing story about how a littoral strategy works.”1071 It was further criticized as just a repeat of the Navy’s Cold War presence operations and

1069 John H. Dalton, Jeremy.M. Boorda and Carl E. Mundy, Jr., “Forward…From the Sea,” (Washington D.C., The Office of the Secretary of the Navy, The Department of the Navy Printing Office, 9 November 1994), 1. 1070Leslie Aspin and Colin Powell, “News briefing on The Bottom Up Review,” (Washington D.C.: The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, official transcript, September 1, 1993), 4. 1071 Edward Rhodes, “…From the Sea and Back Again, Naval Power in the Second American Century,” The United States Naval War College Review, Vol 70, No.2, (Spring 1999), 32. 351 provoked backlash from the Army and Air Force due to its “parochial focus on uniqueness of naval forward presence.”1072 “Only ‘boots on the ground,’ combined with robust land-based (as opposed to carrier-based),” aviation could actually influence others.1073The emphasis on force structure analysis in support of limited defense budgets was clearly the province of the analysis community as opposed to the strategic.

The N8 Assessments branch continued to increase its power within OPNAV over the next decade. The demand for analytical assessment vice strategy in support of fleet size and operations continued in the wake of the 1992 reorganization and the 1993

Bottom Up Review. In 1994 when recruited by CNO Admiral Mike Boorda to work in

N81, veteran Navy operations analyst Bruce Powers said Boorda told him that he desired

“to revitalize N81 and turn it back into what OP 96 had been earlier.” Boorda also fundamentally altered the CNO’s Strategic Studies Group (SSG) in favor of analytical vice strategic objectives. Since its founding in 1981, the SSG had been devoted to developing operational solutions to questions posed by the Navy’s strategic documents.

Naval War College SSG advisor Dr. John Hanley described the SSG mission as one where “the SSG’s approach was to identify strengths that U.S. and allied forces could apply against Soviet weaknesses in the maritime theaters to attack the Soviet Union’s strategic sensitivities in a global war.”1074 Admiral Boorda altered this fundamental mission in 1995 when he, “Redirected SSG from “strategy “to generation of “innovative

1072 Peter M. Swartz with Karin Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Documents, 1991-2000, (Alexandria, VA: The CNA Corporation, D0026416.A2/Final, March 2012), 93. 1073 Ibid. 1074 John T. Hanley, “Creating the 1980’s Maritime Strategy and Implications for Today ,” 15. 352 future naval warfare concepts”1075 This move served to disconnect both the Naval War

College and one of the Navy’s most upwardly mobile (in terms of flag-level promotions) groups of officers from direct work on Navy strategic concepts. Boorda was more interested in a joint Navy/Marine Corps document known as the “Navy Joint Operational

Concept.” This concept began in familiar surroundings as it was generated by the Branch chief of the OPNAV N513 (formerly OP 603) office Captain Joseph Bouchard.1076 This document proposed to expand upon the Navy and Marine Corps cooperation begun in

“From the Sea” and create a new “operational maneuver from the sea” concept that would further link the efforts of the two naval services. Unfortunately, this idea ran up against the empowered N8 office, who felt the idea was merely an attempt by the Marine

Corps to steal Navy budget funding.1077 Other opponents appeared including the new

Navy Doctrine Command and the Naval aviation community, both of whom felt threatened by closer Navy/Marine Corps cooperation. Navy Secretary John Dalton was also opposed and decreed that “Forward …From the Sea” remain as the Navy strategic concept and not be superseded during his tenure.1078

Admiral Boorda’s tenure was tragically cut short by his suicide in May 1996 and he was replaced by as CNO by Admiral Jay Johnson. Johnson was not interested in a new

Navy strategy or operational concept and instead classified “The Navy Operational

Concept” an internal Navy document. It was published in an issue of the United States

1075 Swartz with Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts, 1991-2000 , 105. 1076 John B. Hattnedorf, editor, The Navy of the 1990’s, 17. 1077Ibid, 18. 1078Swartz with Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts 1991-2000, 109. 353

Navy League Seapower magazine, but had little influence.1079 The declining Navy budget was of more concern that strategic concepts. The Navy already had been reduced to 354 battle force ships by 1997 and the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) of that year recommended a mere 305 ships.1080 Other elements of the Navy strategic community were further diminished over the course of the 1990’s and became more private rather than official service-organized efforts. The Admiral Charles M. Cooke Conference for

Naval Strategists and Planners, an influential event in the 1980’s during the height of the

Maritime strategy’s influence, was discontinued in 1995.1081 Continued examination of

Navy strategic concepts became more of a cooperative and private affair as well in the absence of influence within the OPNAV staff. The distinguished naval historian (and

Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer) David Rosenberg hosted a Navy strategy study group that began meeting in the Washington D.C. area in 1992 and continued until 2005.1082

Into the 21st Century

In 2000 Admiral Vern Clark, a 1970’s-era alumnus of the OP 96 office succeeded

Admiral Johnson as CNO.1083 Clark was a former Joint Staff Operations director (J3) and the first business school graduate to be appointed CNO, who was to manage the organization, training and equipment provision to the service. Clark desired a “readiness-

1079 John B. Hattnedorf, editor, The Navy of the 1990’s, 18. 1080 William S. Cohen, “Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review,” (Washington D.C.: The United States Department of Defense, The Office of the Secretary of Defense, May 1997), 29. 1081Swartz with Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts 1991-2000, 105. 1082Ibid, 82. 1083Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., (2002) Navy Operations Research. Operations Research 50(1):103-111. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.50.1.103.17786, p. 107. 354 based” Navy, especially after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.1084 In 2002 Clark told Vice Admiral Kevin Green, the incoming Deputy CNO for Plans, Policy and

Operations that the Navy did not need a new strategy, as it already had one and it was called the POM.1085 Similar attempts by the N3/N5 office to re-introduce a strategy input to the POM over the course of the first decade of the 21st century failed. The fleet that emerged in those years was based almost exclusively on analysis. Clark assigned control of the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan to N81 in 2000.1086 The N81 office was also instrumental in developing Clark’s “Sea Power 21” concepts from 2003 to 2010.1087

Vice Admiral John Morgan was N3/N5 from 2004 to 2008 and had more success than Green in pushing strategy documents to a wider audience, but he still was outpaced by N81 in terms of POM influence. The Navy Operating Concept for Joint Operations, written by N513, by contrast was little cited in either POM documents or within the press. Succeeding strategy documents were also ineffective. The Navy Strategic Plan in support of POM 08 (2006) was signed out six months too late to be of significant influence on its intended POM cycle.1088 The Strategic Plan for POM 10 (2007) had some influence in the development of the 2007 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century

Seapower. It was deliberately targeted at Navy Department programmers supporting

POM development.1089 It had extensive support from to ensure a “fit with the OPNAV

1084 Ronald Ratclift, “CNO and OPNAV Reorganization,” In David A. Williams (ed.), Case Studies in Policy Making and Implementation. 6th ed, (Newport, RI: The United States Naval War College Press, 2002) ,326-328. 1085Haynes, Toward a New Maritime Strategy, 227, 228. 1086 Ronald O’Rourke, “Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress,” (Washington D.C.: The Congressional Research Service (CRS), 7-5700, 12 June 2015), 8. 1087Swartz with Duggan, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies, 27. 1088Ibid, 101. 1089Ibid, 127. 355

POM process.”1090 This document was Secret only and did not get wide distribution as a result. Unfortunately, the POM 10 Strategic planning effort was lost to a degree in the turmoil of the end of the Bush administration during which operations in Iraq and the

Southwest Asia (Afghanistan) dominated Defense Department thinking.1091 It reflected current and near-term Navy programming already in place rather than attempted to influence future efforts. It did not include the Marine Corps and had no mechanism to secure OPNAV support, as did the N8/N81 POM development process.1092

Admiral Morgan’s greatest triumph was perhaps the 2007 Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower. It was championed by CNO Admiral Mullen and drafted by

N3/N5 author Commander Bryan McGrath as a tri-service effort in support of POM

12.1093 The 2007 document had widespread influence in the wider U.S. and international naval community and within U.S. government circles, but again failed to have a significant impact on its intended POM target. Despite its influence, the 2007 had no direct connection with POM development, as did the pre-1992 CPAM inputs to the POM process.1094 The distinct lack of a formal relationship between strategy and the programming process allowed Navy programmers to ignore strategic input from 1992 through the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century.

By contrast, the N81 analysis branch’s formal connection to the programming process has allowed it wide influence. The thirty-year shipbuilding plan has in effect served as the Navy’s de facto strategy document for the last sixteen years. Its main

1090Ibid, 136. 1091Ibid, 129. 1092 Ibid, 138 1093Ibid, 166. 1094Ibid, 189. 356 supporting element is the Naval Force Structure Assessment (FSA). The FSA is described in OPNAV Instruction 3050.27 (12 February 2015), as a tool that “determines long-term Navy force structure objectives to support a global posture of distributed mission-tailored ships, aircraft, and units capable of regionally concentrated combat operations and peacetime theater security cooperation efforts.”1095 The 2012 FSA was used to “determine a post-2020 requirement for 306 ships in the battle force and emphasized forward presence while re-examining resourcing requirements for operational plans and defense planning scenarios.”1096

Conclusion

The Navy’s concept of strategy, the products it engendered, and CNO staff organization that created them were fundamentally changed as the result of the end of the

Cold War, combined with the passage of the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 and the results of the First Gulf War. The end of the Cold War removed the Navy’s primary opponent around which its strategic concepts had been organized since the late 1940’s.

This event alone would have caused a major alternation in Navy strategy and spawned products very different from the 1980’s Maritime Strategy. In that “end of history,” however, some saw the possibility for systemic organizational change as well. Admiral

1095 “OPNAV Instruction 3050.27, Force Structure Assessments,” (Washington D.C.: The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 12 February 2015), 1, electronic resource, https://doni.daps.dla.mil/Directives/03000%20Naval%20Operations%20and%20Readiness/03- 00%20General%20Operations%20and%20Readiness%20Support/3050.27.pdf, last accessed 5 October 2016. 1096 “Report to Congress on the Annual Long Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal year 2016,” (Washington D.C.: The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, The Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Integration of Capabilities and Resources,) March 2015), 7, Electronic resources, https://news.usni.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/FY16-30-Year-Shipbuilding-Plan.pdf, last assessed 5 October 2016. 357

Kelso’s 1992 reorganization of the OPNAV staff was such a change. Kelso later told his oral history interviewer Paul Stillwell that,

I would tell you that I do not think the organization could have been changed without the changes taking place at the end of the Cold War. I believe there are opportunities for change. You cannot make such changes without the right conditions for change.1097

Admiral Kelso’s statement makes it clear that the changes he presided over as CNO in terms of navy strategy and policy products would not have been possible had the Cold

War not abruptly ended.

The provisions of and later effects of the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 were influential in the replacement of the Maritime Strategy with “From the Sea” and later documents. The legislation’s aims, according to naval historian John Hattendorf, were to eliminate unproductive service parochialism that had stymied past attempts by the

Department of Defense to create joint service doctrine and create a new military command organization that was joint and responded to civilian leadership vice service concerns.1098 The legislation strengthened the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, placed the Joint Staff under the Chairman’s control, and further empowered the regional, deployed Joint commanders who would presumably control the global contest against the

Soviet Union should one occur. These changes served to strengthen the combined arms, joint doctrine that the Department of Defense and many members of Congress desired.1099

1097 Frank B. Kelso II and Paul Stillwell, The Reminiscences of Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, USN (ret), 688. 1098 John B. Hattnedorf, editor, The Navy of the 1990’s, 5. 1099 Ibid. 358

The changes, however, had significant effects on the Navy, as opposed to the other services, and became more significant and in some ways crippling in the post-Cold

War era. In strengthening regional commanders’ authority, Joint leaders altered long held concepts of maritime strategy and created a system where,

The majority of these dividing lines were placed in the middle of oceans, dividing them up in ways that were quite foreign to maritime thought. At the same time, the new divisions placed land areas, not maritime theatres, as the central focus for each region, in some cases even dividing coastal areas from their related open ocean regions.1100

Naval strategy planners had to create new products to match this environment that were not only different in terms of potential opponents but also in terms of the strategic geography on which they were based. Captain Manthorpe’s historical prediction of a rising peer competitor every quarter century was rejected in favor of a new world order with new, regional geographic order. While acceptance of a regional model was not detrimental to planning, the supposition that a new or returning peer competitor with a global reach should have remained in the strategic literature.

The Goldwater Nichols’ legislation had a negative effect on the quality of personnel assigned to the OPNAV and particularly the Strategy Branch staffs. While trained strategy experts such as those who created “From the Sea’ remained well into the post-Cold War era, they were not replaced by the same quality personnel who instead sough service on the Joint Staff and in joint commands as the best path to flag rank. The entire strategy cohort was allowed to disperse and force structure management replaced geographic and threat-based considerations in long term planning.

1100Ibid, 6. 359

Finally, the outcome of the First Gulf War and the military technical revolution that preceded it also played a significant role in how the Navy replaced the Maritime

Strategy with “From the Sea” and subsequent documents. Navy resistance to the passage of the Goldwater Nichols Act, while perhaps necessary in terms of maintaining traditional operational freedom, was counter-productive in terms of the end of the Cold

War and the First Gulf War. The First Gulf War displayed the organizational competence and capabilities of the ground forces (Army and Marine Corps,) and the Air Force but not those of the Navy. As Admiral Owens later said, “Desert Storm confirmed the operational doctrines that the Army and Air Force had developed over the last two decades, but also demonstrated that the Maritime Strategy-the basic operational concept governing Navy planning since the early 1970’s-did not fit in the post-Cold War era.”1101

The lack of strategic and operational validation, combined with concerns about not quickly adapting to the joint provisions of Goldwater Nichols, and inability to influence General Colin Powell’s Base Force concept led to a climate of uncertainty within the ranks of naval leadership. As Admiral Kelso suggested, this “tumbled state” was a major factor in his desire to seek significant change. Kelso’s changes, however, were process driven rather than focused on a detailed new strategy. “From the Sea’s” lack of a secret version to gain buy-in from naval officers; its focus on the operational vice strategic level of war; and its failure to develop a connection with budget, the service’s closest connection to Congress, combined to condemn the new strategy to the ranks of background material rather than the leading element of a new Maritime Strategy. The end of the Cold War, the provisions of the Goldwater Nichols Act of 1986 and the effects of

1101William A. Owens,“The Quest for Consensus,” 68. 360 the First Gulf War fundamentally affected the change in naval strategy from 1989-1994, and continues to affect how the Navy produces strategic products to the present day.

361

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Barnett, Roger W, Captain, USN (ret), email to author, 11 February 2016.

Bouchard, Joseph, Captain, USN (ret) to Swartz, Peter M, Captain, USN (ret), 28 June 2005, subject: Capstone Startegy Concepts, (Washington D.C., The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Way Ahead File, used with permission by the author.)

Brown, Mitch, Professor, The Naval Postgraduate School to Captain Peter Swartz, USN (ret), 14 March, 2008, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M.Swartz, USN (ret), The Maritime Strategy folder, used with permission by the author.)

------to the author, Subject: Navy Strategy Course at the Postgraduate School in the 1980’s, 8 June 2016. 368

Clemente, Mark N, Captain, USN (ret) to Swartz, Peter M, Captain, USN (ret), Subject: From the Sea, December 12, 2009, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The From the Sea file, used with permission by the author.)

Diamond, Richard, Captain, USN (ret) to Swartz, Peter M, Captain, USN (ret), 7 July 2007, subject: The Way Ahead and the Navy Policy Book, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Demise of the Maritime Strategy File, used with permission by the author.)

Diamond, Richard, Captain, USN (ret) to Hattendorf, John B, Professor, U.S. Naval War College, Subject: Paper Review Status” (unpublished narrative of the events leading up to the September 1992 publication of “From the Sea”), 9 September 2006. Filed jointly in The United States Naval War College, The Naval Historical Collection, The papers of Dr. John B. Hattendorf, and in Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The 1991 “Way Ahead” file, used with special permission of Dr. Hattendorf, Captain Swartz and Captain Diamond.

Diamond, Richard, Captain, USN (ret) to Swartz, Peter M, Captain, USN (ret), Subject: First Sea Lord on UK Defense, 02 December 2009, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The From the Sea file, used with permission by the author.)

Dunaway, Michael, Captain, USN (ret) to Swartz, Peter M, Captain, USN (ret), subject: Drafting Admiral Kelso’s first Way Ahead Document, 02 June 2005, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Way Ahead file, Washington D.C., Used with permission by the author.)

Hughes, Wayne P, Professor Emeritus, The Naval Postgraduate School to Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), Subject: The Lack of Navy Strategy, 1 October 2014 (Washington D.C., The Personal and Professional papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The N96 file, used with permission by the author.)

Meyers, Judith M, Captain, USN (ret), to Swartz, Peter M, Captain, USN (ret), subject: Remember the Navy Policy Book!, 06 June 2012, Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Policy Book File, used with permission by the author.)

Small, William T, Admiral USN (ret) to Swartz, Peter M, USN (ret), 02 October 1998, subject: Maritime Strategy Development, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Maritime Strategy 1980’s file, used with permission by the author.)

369

Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), interview with author 5 November 2014, and RADM Joe Sestak, USN (ret), email exchange with author 9 February 2015.

Stark, James R, Rear Admiral, USN (ret) to Swartz, Peter M, Captain, USN (ret), 03 September 2008, subject: USN Force Goals 1990’s, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swatz, USN (ret), “The Way Ahead” file, used with permission by the author.)

Stavridis, James, Vice Admiral, USN to Swartz, Peter M, Captain, USN (ret), 28 June 2006, subject: Navy Strategy, (Washington D.C.: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Way Ahead File, Used with permission by the author.)

Letter from Trost, Admiral Carlisle A.H., USN (ret) to Hattendorf, John B, subject: Maritime Strategy, dated 2007, (Washington D.C: The Personal and Professional Papers of Captain Peter M. Swartz, USN (ret), The Maritime Strategy post 1990 file, used with permission by the author.)

Ullman, Harlan K, email to author, 12 February 2016.

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