re: "Where are the Carriers?"

Lex at Neptunus Lex ("The unbearable lightness of Lex. Enjoy!") wonders what I was wondering.

(The difference is that he knows how to reason his way to an answer on this one.)

Money quote(s):

"That was the question that once used to spring unbidden to presidential lips when an international crises bubbled up. It wasn’t that the sheer destructive power of the carrier’s air wing and her escorts were immediately put to use, so much as the weight of all that firepower rested heavily on tempestuous brows: An aircraft carrier strike group tends to alter the calculus.

So it’s with interest we read in Bill Gertz’ Inside the Ring that, with Libya burning and the tyrant starting to gradually throttle the nascent rebellion that President Obama has not shifted anyone anywhere"

It's a ship after all. It's supposed to move, to keep moving, so moving it around isn't going to hurt anything and, as a precaution ahead of time, can likely save days when hours will count.

"(F)or 9 months of the year anyway, given our rotational capabilities with only 11 big decks, the Mediterranean is less a destination than a throughway.

Once she’s already forward deployed, it’s an almost trivial thing to shift a carrier between the 5th and 6th fleet OPCON lines. Doing so can send a message. So can not doing so: The tyrant who our president has said “has to go”? Has a free hand.

The rebels who stood against him? None of our concern.

If we really cared about the humanitarian element of this crisis, we’d come right out and say that. Having the rebels know that there is no NATO or “international community” cavalry coming to the rescue might save a lot of lives in the long run by suppressing false hopes."

re: "Today's Reading Assignment"

George Smiley at In From the Cold ("Musings on Life, Love, Politics, Military Affairs, the Media, the Intelligence Community and Just About Anything Else that Captures Our Interest") discusses a national asset in decline.

Money quote(s):

"(S)igns of our naval decline were on display in recent weeks, as the Libyan crisis began to unfold. Instead of sending a warship to rescue American citizens from that country (as the British did), the U.S. hired a commercial ferry. One reason: there was only one U.S. warship in the Mediterranean at the time, although a carrier battle group and an amphibious group were only three days away, in the Red Sea. Those assets have since re-deployed to the Med.

We neglect our Navy at our own peril."

Actually two warships, were in the Mediterranean but one was a command and control ship and the other was having, er, command climate problems.

"(I)n an era when federal spending must be reduced, it is very easy to say we have "no peer competitors" (to use Dr. Gates's phrase) and use that as an excuse to downsize the military. A modern Navy is expensive to build and expensive to operate. Yet, it represents an essential investment, not only for the United States but for the west as a whole.

Did we mention that China is currently building five fleet carriers which will join the PLAN by 2020? Beijing is building a Navy for the future, while ours continues to decline. We've been down this road before (think Japan in the 1930s) and paid dearly for our mistakes. The next time, we may not be as lucky."

I'm not a naval expert, but five "fleet carriers" sound like just the thing if you want to be a regional hegemon, and the region you have in mind is the Pacific Ocean.

re: "What's Involved In Setting Up A No-Fly Zone Over Libya? - DrewM."

Drew M. at Ace of Spades HQ is realistic about limitations on U.S. and Allied capabilities.

Money quote(s):

"From the military perspective, it's not impossible but it's not like we have a lot of extra capacity laying around in that part of the world."

Used to be we had something called a "fleet" on station in the Med, or do I mis-remember?

Even back in the "shores of Tripoli" days we'd have a squadron of frigates thereabouts.

"After surveying the help we might be able to get from our regional allies, CDRSalamander seems a bit more pessimistic about the available options."

"Would we give a station to our allies? Of the remaining
folks, GBR, ESP, & ITA have CVS, right? Well, the Brits don’t do CVS
counter-air anymore – and the Italians and Spanish carriers? How many sorties can they do? How about if they had a lot of land based fighter support? How many fighter aircraft need to be stationed at Sigonella supported by how many tankers to cover Tripoli? Same
question about Souda Bay and Benghazi. The British bases
on Cyprus?

UK officials said they could use of a British military air base in Akrotiri, Cyprus to enforce a no-fly mission. “Akrotiri would be very useful if we wanted to deploy,” said an official. “That would seem most logical.”Although fixed-wing aircraft appear to be depleted, British officials said the main concern was that Col Gaddafi could use helicopters to mount bombing raids on opponents."

"(T)he leader of the No Fly Zone idea is UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Good for him and all but it's rather hollow to hear this can of talk from the guy who has put the Royal Navy out of the power projection business.

Aircraft carriers are damn expensive to build, operate and man but they are damn handy things when you need one or three. We are at the bare minimum at the moment and as you can see, it's actually below the minimum."

As much as former dirt merchants like myself like to tweak my swabby friends about how carrier battle groups are something of a self-licking ice cream cone, they're darn useful things to have on the board when things like islands and air bases aren't conveniently located in terms of threats or operational areas.

"Gates talks a lot about how much is enough, especially in terms of carriers when no one else really has any to speak of. According to the Chief of Naval Operations, we need at least 2 to cover the Persian Gulf, 5th Fleet area alone for the foreseeable future. If you want to start cutting them, you better let the CNO and head of Central Command what operations you want them to stop doing. And oh yeah, when the shit hits the fan, don't ask, "Where are the carriers"?"

And if you need two carriers for the Persian/Arabian Gulf, basic logisitics means you need a third one. Multiply that by "the world" and the numbers needed start to climb. Then add in all the other surface and support ships needed to make a carrier task force more than one big target.

re: "Soft power, or flaccid power?"

"The Phibian" at Cdr Salamander ("Proactively “From the Sea”; leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.") is always insightful with regards to the naval aspect.

Money quote(s):

"As an already dangerous nation started to disintegrate last week, I heard it first from Charles Krauthammer - the phrase that always comes up when something nasty turns towards our people or a national interest - "where are our carriers."I don't know about you, but I count this as a moment of national shame last week. The world's greatest naval power, its citizens in danger and need evacuation by sea - and our answer is ...."

Apparently the only U.S. warship in the entire Mediterranean Sea, and area I always to have a Fleet dedicated to it, was a destroyer, and one rather pre-occupied beyond mission parameters.

"I know the argument that the American military presence would be destabilizing - but I just say it is wrong headed in the extreme.

At this touchy moment - letss not even talk about which ship is where. What the Big E is doing and not. If there is a CSG and an ESG in the Gulf of Sidra or the Gulf of Mexico - or on liberty in Caan; it does not matter to the argument ... but we'll get to that later.

For an untold number of times, American citizens have relied on the Navy-USMC team to get them out of a country falling apart. Our citizens in Libya are lucky that things did not go south. Nod our heads and be thankful that we got lucky this time. Ask yourself why we did not have other ships out there, and know we are not alone.

I think the nations of the world are re-discovering the joys of having and effective navy - and the consequences of not having one."

As a consular officer, it's always been a source of reassurance to know that my Navy and Marine Corps colleagues had my back, especially since consular officers are virtually the last official Americans to be evacuated, occupied, as they/we are with assisting in the evacuation of American citizens.

"(I)f you ever wanted to create air supremacy - a no fly zone if you will - either to cover evacuations or to keep the Libyan runt Air Force from bombing their own people - there is only one way to do it - with Aircraft Carriers. Big deck aircraft carriers. Way to far for land based air even if you could get basing rights.

If you want to do it for any length of time, you need two at a minimum. Longer - three. Two American and one French would be nice. Two American and then perhaps Brit/Italian/Spanish as help would be."

It's an awfully big world out there. Since nearly the founding of the Republic, the U.S. Navy has helped ensure that freedom of the seas and of navigation meant something more than an aspiration. They've made it stick. But they can't do that from the Pentagon, from Norfolk or San Diego; they have to have hulls in the water and sailors to crew them.