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…With several US destroyers seeing action recently in the Red Sea, retired Navy Captain and former Cruiser and Destroyer commanding officer Dave Snee walks us through the challenges of modern sea combat in confined and constrained waters against known and unknown threats.
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This Week’s Naval Round Up:
All US military V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft were ordered grounded December 6 after eight US service members were killed November 29 in the crash of a US Air Force CV-22 off the coast of Yakushima, Japan. The aircraft was assigned to the 353rd Special Operations Wing. The grounding affects Ospreys operated by the US Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. The order also affected the CMV-22B Ospreys operated in the carrier-onboard-delivery, or COD, role by the Titans of Fleet Logistics Multi-Mission Squadron 30 aboard the carrier USS CARL VINSON deployed to the western Pacific. Two C-2A Greyhounds formerly of Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 30, however, are based in Japan to support the carrier USS RONALD REAGAN, which has not yet been fitted to operate Ospreys, and those legacy aircraft are expected to support CARL VINSON as long as the grounding order continues.
Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 30 itself was officially decommissioned December 8, a move associated with the introduction of the Osprey into the COD role, beginning with Pacific Fleet carriers. The two VRC-30 aircraft in Japan were transferred to sister squadron VRC-40, and the remaining three Greyhounds in the squadron were flown to Norfolk, Virginia to join VRC-40, which will continue flying the C-2 until 2025. A decommissioning ceremony for VRC-30 was held in October at Naval Air Station North Island, California.
In the Red Sea on December 6, the destroyer USS MASON downed another unmanned aerial vehicle that launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen. Few additional details were provided other than a US Navy statement to USNI news declaring there was no damage or injury to US equipment or personnel. It was the latest in a series of incidents that began October 19 involving US responses to Houthi-launched missiles or unmanned aircraft in the Red Sea.
National Security Council communications coordinator John Kirby on December 4 told the press that, in response to the threat in the Red Sea and elsewhere, the departments of State and Defense are leading a coordinated effort to strengthen and expand the 39-member Combined Maritime Forces partnership. The CMF, based at Manama, Bahrain and sometimes described as the world’s largest maritime security partnership, consists of five combined task forces operating in the Mideast region.
Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, head of the Russian Navy, told an Arctic conference in Saint Petersburg on December 6 that Russia in the Arctic Sea is carrying out a, quote, “full-scale expansion into the continental shelf beyond the borders of the 200-mile exclusive economic zone.” As reported in the Independent Barents Observer, Yevmenov said that Russia’s increased naval capacities in the Arctic come as a forced measure following aggressive action from other countries.” World attention has long been focused on the Arctic as global warming opens the area for increased navigation and economic exploitation.
A US Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft transited the Taiwan Strait on December 6, US 7th Fleet announced. It was the fifth P-8 transit of the strait during 2023, along with at least seven surface transits by US Navy and Coast Guard, Canadian and Australian warships.
And on Capitol Hill, House-Senate negotiators on December 6 approved an 874 billion dollar 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that includes a billion dollars for amphibious warship LPD 33, currently stalled by the Pentagon. The ship has been at the top of the Marine Corps’ annual unfunded with list for two years. The draft bill, which authorizes nearly $33 billion for shipbuilding, also addresses the size of the amphibious and sealift fleets. While Congress is expected to approve the Authorization Act, also known as a policy bill, action on the defense 2024 appropriations, or spending bill is stalled, with a continuing resolution lasting only into January.
Cavas Squawk:
As you heard in the previous discussion, there’s been a resurgence in the use of the phrase “going Winchester.” Not a new phrase to be sure, but not one you hear every day. Until now. Now – very quickly – it’s a phrase that is popping up in all kinds of forums and discussions. It is clearly on people’s minds.
Simply put, Going Winchester means you’re out of ammo. No more bullets, missiles, torpedoes, mines. Nothing to shoot at bad guys from your weapons. Not a good state of affairs if you’re in a firefight or expecting one.
In virtually all conflicts there is a tendency to use everything one has to counter a threat. If it looks like it could be a danger, smash it. Squash it. Destroy it. Make sure it’s neutralized. Don’t wait, act now. Better safe than sorry. That’s how you fight, that’s how you – hopefully – stay out of trouble.
I’m often reminded of the early days of anti-submarine warfare in World War II, when thousands of newly-minted sailors and commanders went to sea to hit back against the German or Japanese submarine threat. An awful lot of whales and dolphins and otherwise innocuous floating jetsam were blown up by depth charges and gunfire, and it wasn’t long before a lot of those ships faced the threat of running out of ammunition long before their escort mission was completed. It took awhile to convince and train warfighters to hold fire until a more definitive identification of the threat was achieved in order not to waste ammunition. Still, no matter how much training or experience was gained, the problem persists.
It’s hard to argue against a commander that wants that threat neutralized. But the history of warfare is also replete with strategies to get the other guy to waste and use up his ammo on decoys, deceptions and less-valuable targets. Sacrificing pawns to capture rooks, bishops, knights and the queen until nothing’s left to defend the king. Getting the other guy to waste high-value, expensive bullets on cheap targets is a sound strategy.
A lot of observers are seeing something like that in these Red Sea engagements, which could easily be harbingers of conflict elsewhere. Send in a cheap, low-value unmanned aerial vehicle, get the US Navy to expend high-value Standard surface-to-air missiles to shoot them down, to make sure any potential UAV threat is neutralized for good. Not only that, but doctrine often says to shoot two Standard SM missiles at any single target for even better odds. Send in enough UAVs and pretty soon those destroyers which were full of Standard missiles are nearing Winchester. These are calculations that are widely known to all warfighters, from the U.S. to the Chinese to Ukraine to the Russians to the Houthis. No secrets here.
That UAV might cost the other guy no more than a few hundred thousand dollars. Maybe not even that. But, according to the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a Standard SM-2 Block IV missile costs the US taxpayer about $2.1 million apiece. More effective Standard SM-6 missiles run more than twice that, over $4.3 million. Even a cheaper ESSM Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile is about $1.8 million a copy, and cheaper-still RAM Rolling Airframe Missiles are over $900 thousand.
It’s not just an issue of money. It’s also one of time. Raytheon, maker of the Standard missile, has told me it takes about three years to build an SM-6, starting from ordering the components to delivering an all-up round. With high production rates it might be possible to get those three years down to two. That’s still a loooong time.
Recent defense budgets have shown modest increases in weapons procurement, but the time to pay for and order a lot more of these weapons was yesterday. It is now. It most certainly is not tomorrow.
By the time we’ve Gone Winchester, it is too late.
