THE NATIONAL MILITARY STRATEGY FOR THE FUTURE
The military strategy for the United States that was promulgated in the 2001 Quadrennial Review came to be known as the “1-4-2-1 strategy” because it called for the Department of Defense to defend the homeland against external aggression as the number one priority (1); deter aggression and coercion in four critical regions — Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia (4); swiftly defeat the efforts of adversaries in two overlapping wars while preserving the president’s option to call for a decisive victory in one of those conflicts, including the possibility of regime change or occupation (2); and conduct a limited number of lesser contingency operations (1).
In DPG 2004 for the years 2005–9, the secretary of defense introduced the concept of “Sea Basing” as the planning guidance for the implementation of the 1-4-2-1 strategy. In planning forces for this strategy, the DPG sets forth three conditions:
1. Assume that there will be no logistic sites or other forms of land bases in the combat theater. The Navy will establish a sea base.
2. Logistic support for all U.S. military forces committed ashore will be supplied and supported from the Navy sea-base.
3. These sea-bases are intended to give the U.S. an independent, sovereign, and sustaining capability overseas, and they must be able to perform this function two thousand miles from the nearest land base under U.S. control.
To carry out the requirements of DPG 2004, the Navy has reorganized its operating forces through the Global Concept of Operations, which will depend upon two main combatant forces:
1. Eleven carrier strike groups, each organized around a large-deck carrier as its centerpiece.
2. Eight expeditionary strike groups, each with a large amphibious helicopter carrier as the main component, with embarked Marine infantry and their organic strike and transport aircraft.
The Navy additionally established the sea-basing capability around a fleet of thirty-eight modified commercial cargo ships organized into four prepositioned support squadrons, based at sea in international waters adjacent to the four sensitive areas set forth in the 1-4-2-1 strategy.
On 7 February 2006, the secretary of defense published the administration’s 2007 defense budget. It totaled $439 billion, a 7 percent increase over the 2006 defense budget, without including an additional $120 million provided separately for the war in Iraq. The budget was accompanied by the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, issued by the SecDef as a philosophical perspective to illustrate the DoD’s view of the world situation and the relationship of that perspective to the budget programs. QDR 2006 did alter the 2001 national military strategy. It established the “Global War on Terrorism” as the number-one priority of the strategy and it eliminated the requirement that we end one of the “two overlapping wars” rapidly. Otherwise, QDR largely reaffirmed the 2001 strategy and the 2004 DPG. In fact, the DPG specifically called for enlarging the fleet and maintaining the carrier force level at eleven carriers. This was the only force-level guidance provided for naval forces. The QDR also noted, with approval, the Navy’s acquisition of twelve new prepositioning ships for the future sea basing support fleet.
CARRIER FORCE LEVELS
The aircraft carrier force level in the fleet today consists of eleven large-deck carriers. Ten carriers are nuclear: one Enterprise class and nine Nimitz class. An additional nuclear carrier, the George H. W. Bush (CVN-77), is under construction, scheduled to join the fleet in 2008. No further aircraft carriers are fully funded. CVN-78 is planned for authorization and full funding for construction in 2007. It will be a large-deck nuclear-powered carrier of the CVN-21 class, essentially an improved Nimitz design. It will replace the Enterprise, the Navy’s first nuclear carrier, in 2014, when the Enterprise is fifty-three years old. This will maintain the force level of nuclear carriers at eleven. Northrop Grumman at Newport News is the only facility capable of constructing a large nuclear carrier. The projected life span of a nuclear carrier can be extended to more than fifty years through appropriate rebuilding and modernization.
With the long useful service life projected for the nuclear carrier, there has been occasional concern expressed from some long-range planning analysts who have suggested that the aircraft carrier, like the dreadnought battleship, could become obsolescent. The response to this perception is that the aircraft carrier, like an airfield, can only become obsolete when tactical aircraft become obsolete and are no longer of use in warfare. Should this occur, there will then be no need for a U.S. Air Force or for Army aviation. The only function of these organizations, like that of the carrier, is to operate military aircraft in the defense of the nation. There is no suggestion, even in the longest-range plans of the DoD, that aircraft will become obsolete in the foreseeable future.
The concern that carriers may become more vulnerable in future wars is misplaced. The aircraft carrier is no more vulnerable than any of our fleet units. The carrier is, in fact, the primary source of protection for the conduct of virtually all other naval warfare functions. For example, strike operations by Marine expeditionary forces would be unthinkable without the level of air superiority and general naval supremacy provided by the large-deck aircraft carriers. And the land operations conducted by the Navy-Marine carrier and expeditionary forces is the only opposed entry capability available to the U.S. armed forces today. In all recent conflicts, World War II and afterward, more tactical aircraft on both sides were destroyed on the ground than on the decks of aircraft carriers.
The number of carriers, and their associated carrier strike groups, in the order of battle of the United States exerts a critical influence on this nation’s foreign policy. Today, and into the future, the country will go to war with no more than the carrier force in being when the shooting starts. In the Korean War, when the successful outcome of the conflict was dependent upon the available air power that could be brought to bear against the North Korean and Chinese invaders, the Navy was able to triple the size of its carrier fleet by bringing World War II Essex-class ships out of mothballs and manning them with World War II veterans from the Navy Reserve. Today there are no carriers in mothballs available for mobilization. It would take five years to construct a large carrier, even with the highest priority. Therefore, the carrier force in being today, and its sustaining shipbuilding program, must be capable of supporting the nation’s foreign policy in the most critical areas.
THE FUTURE THREAT FROM CHINA
It has been our policy to support the independence of Taiwan, and the U.S. government has been quick and positive to react when the status quo of that country has been threatened. In October 1958 the U.S. Seventh Fleet was reinforced to seven fleet carriers and deployed to the Taiwan Straits to deter the mainland Chinese from their threat to occupy two Taiwan-affiliated offshore islands, Quemoy and Matsu. The Chinese Communists backed down as the result of this confrontation and ceased all threatening gestures toward the offshore islands.