Rear Admiral [Ret.] Jim Carey is Chairman of the NATIONAL DEFENSE COMMITTEE and NATIONAL DEFENSE PAC. His background includes duty in cruisers and amphibs, at Naval Beach Group, and in the Pentagon, and naval service from Seaman Recruit to Rear Admiral. He also served in the Reagan and George Bush Sr. Administrations. Further details at The National Defense Committee and The National Defense Political Action Committee.
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I remember well the days in Vietnam when Naval Surface Fire Support [NSFS] was known well to every ship at sea and even better to the Marines and Army troops ashore who called in that fire time after time. Indeed, those troops ashore remember it better than I do because more often than not, it saved their lives.
I also remember when John Lehman [then Secretary of the Navy Lehman] "brought back the battleships" during the Reagan Administration. He had to search for some of the older retired sailors who had manned those huge guns in earlier wars for the experience needed on how best to operate them, and he found them in the retired ranks and in the Naval Reserve and those gunners eagerly came back on ACDU and served superbly and with honor.
A foreign friend of mine who lived in the Middle East once related to me the reaction that rippled through the population of his troubled nation when an American battleship could be seen steaming up and down the coast offshore, since everyone, even nations with no battleships, knew the guns on those magnificent ships could drop a shell the equivalent of a small Volkswagen with pinpoint accuracy on any coordinate, and continue to do so for days and weeks. What an incredible impact these ships had on our nation's ability to enforce foreign policy and to bring a visible sign to belligerents that "we mean business."
So all's well in the world, eh? The troops ashore have this great NSFS ship to bail them out of tough spots when they're surrounded by the enemy and the Commander-In-Chief has these magnificent visible assets that can go anywhere in the world to make clear to all in the area that "we're serious about our presence there."
Well, not really.
At least not if you're talking about having A battleship or THE battleships available to do the job. They've all been mothballed to save money. But at least they're mothballed, right, so that when we need them again we can scrub em up and flush out the pipes, send the crews, and get these huge weapons platforms underway to do their jobs?
Well, not really.
Now there's talk of the Navy's "Striking from the Naval Register" these great one-of-a-kind assets that allows some in our nation to already be clamoring to convert these precious ships into museums. And once they're gone, THEY ARE GONE! These ships and their guns and capabilities and presence are not something you pick up off-the-shelf at the local Sears store. They take years and years to build. And you're talking billions of dollars to be able to replace these world's finest NSFS platforms that we already have available to us today in the Navy's mothball fleet.
Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it? Why are we doing this? Is this in our long-term best interests, or is it another one of those short-term cost-cutting efforts that often turns out NOT to be in the best interests of our Navy or our foreign policy enforcement abilities [one would think by now we've learned that depending upon the United Nations is a non-starter] or our ability to save the lives of troops ashore.
And you know what? We're not alone in raising these questions. Turns out that there is a large and highly-respected segment of our own U.S. Government that thinks as we do, namely that striking from the register "or museuming" the mothballed battleships is a BAD IDEA! And it's not just a couple of old battleship sailors sharing a beer and reliving old times that are saying this. This is our federal government's own Government Accounting Office in their report GAO-04-973 of Sept. 2004, less than 6 months ago. Just go to www.gao.gov and punch it up. Seems to me we ought to be listening to them.
Now don't get me wrong. I've always considered myself a realist and mean to be in this argument as well. I don't pretend to claim that there will never be a time when it won't make good common sense to send the battleships the way that sail and coal went as sources of ship's power. I'm just saying NOW IS NOT THE TIME.
There are ships on the drawing boards and already into the research and development and testing cycle, including DD[X] and CG[X], that may provide the NSFS rate of fire and on-station time needed, but we have yet to build a single one and probably won't for the next 7-8 years. And when you look at the GAO report and the Navy's own numbers, these are going to be VERY EXPENSIVE SHIPS. We may well need them for the future, as "the 21st Century alternative," but my argument is "don't get rid of the battleships until we have the battleship gunfire support capability replaced in the fleet." And this is not just me talking. LTGEN Mike Williams, USMC said when testifying before the Congress in March 2000 "There is no existing Navy program of record that satisfies this [volume of fire] requirement."
