Welcome to the CavasShips Podcast with Christopher P. Cavas and Chris Servello…a weekly podcast looking at naval and maritime events and issues of the day – in the US, across the seas and around the world.
This week…Rumors about the Pentagon’s budget plans for the Navy do not sound good. We talk with CDR Issac Harris, a destroyer captain about his recent experiences getting his ship through a major yard period and what the Navy could do to make the whole process better.
In this Week’s Squawk Chris Cavas comments on the Navy’s Budget woes.
Please send us feedback by DM’ing @CavsShips or @CSSProvision or you can email chriscavas@gmail.com or cservello@defaeroreport.com .
This Week’s Naval Round Up:
Malabar exercises kicked off August 26 in the Pacific’s Philippine Sea off Guam. The annual Australia-India-Japan-US maritime exercises have gained stature and strength in recent years and have increasingly annoyed China, who views the maneuvers as intrusive. The first round of exercises is led by the Japanese helicopter carrier KAGA.
The British carrier HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH and ships of her strike group on August 25 wrapped up nearly two weeks of exercises in the Philippine Sea with the US Navy’s AMERICA Amphibious Ready Group and Japanese warships led by the helicopter carrier ISE. Some of the maneuvers were folded into the larger US-led Large Scale Global Exercise 21, a major command and control effort.
The US carried out another passage of the Taiwan Strait on August 27, this time with two ships – the US Navy destroyer KIDD and US Coast Guard cutter MUNRO. The transit between Taiwan and mainland China keeps up a roughly once-a-month pace the US has held to over the past two years.
The disaster relief mission in Haiti continued throughout the week with US Coast Guard, Navy, Army and other US government forces working throughout the island country, devastated on August 14 by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake. Coast Guard helicopters in particular performed a number of medical evacuations. Three Navy ships and at least seven Coast Guard cutters are also taking part in the Haiti mission.
In a rare high-profile visit for the littoral combat ship force, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the LCS TULSA August 23 at Singapore’s Changi Naval Base. Harris toured the ship and held an all-hands call on board, noting the ship’s presence in the Indo-Pacific region is, quote, critical to the security and prosperity of the United States. TULSA is one of at least three LCSs currently deployed to the western Pacific.
The carrier DWIGHT D EISENHOWER on August 25 entered Norfolk Naval Shipyard for a planned 13-month overhaul. IKE returned to Norfolk in mid-July from her latest deployment, during which the crew was awarded the Navy Unit Commendation. The EISENHOWER’s next deployment is not likely to be before late 2023. Just before IKE entered the yard, the carrier GEORGE H W BUSH finally left, ending a 30-month overhaul that ran six months longer than planned.
The ESSEX Amphibious Ready Group deployed in early August from San Diego with the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The ARG left southern California with no public notice of the deployment – a policy we find hard to understand given the overall deterrence mission of amphibious and carrier group deployments.
SQUAWK BOX CAVAS
The budget battles being fought now inside the Pentagon and the White House are shaping up as a disaster for the Navy. At this point, the outlook for the 2023 budget is for a smaller Navy – fewer ships, fewer people. The hounds are not just barking at the door, they’re in the house – they’re hungry and they are feeding.
There seems to be little appetite in the Pentagon’s top leadership to support a Navy that can maintain a worldwide presence. The relentless calls of the past decade to grow the fleet well beyond its current level have grown silent. There isn’t a Navy leader in the job today who is demanding a bigger fleet.
This is perplexing. Nature abhors a vacuum, so the saying goes, and if an ever-shrinking US Navy is unable to keep the seas in the western Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and ever-more-importantly, the Arctic, someone will fill that vacuum. Hello China. Hello Russia.
There’s a classic quote from Lenin: “You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” That pretty much sums up China. They push and push. If they find little or no resistance, they push more. If there is resistance – they tend to back off and look elsewhere.
That resistance role is one the US Navy plays all over the world. It’s why American warships cruise the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, the Strait of Hormuz, the Black Sea. It’s why they carry out freedom of navigation passages through areas where nations illegally claim territory. The effect of these missions is not necessarily confrontational. Shots do not have to be fired, warfare does not need to break out. But a certain resolve has to be shown to provide that resistance that might make a provocateur back off.
The 296-ship Navy already is hard-pressed to do this job, and it ain’t gettin’ any easier. A smaller Navy with even fewer ships will not be able to handle these missions. Is the Pentagon leadership ready to cede the high seas to China and Russia? It’s certainly starting to look like it.
