LETTER TO HERSCHEL KANTER FROM STANSFIELD TURNER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP05T00644R000200560010-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2009
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: July 7, 1980
• Content Type: LETTER

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the uirectorot central inteiiigence
? Washington. D C 20505
7 July 1980
Dear Herschel,.
It was nice to hear from you and fun to read your article on the
Defense budget. I say "fun" because I haven't kept up with Defense
programs too closely in the past three years. It certainly was not
enjoyable to recognize the bleak prospect that you lay out so clearly.
I really wish you'd put on another page and told us what to do!
A few weeks ago, Wes McDonald asked me to give a talk to the
quarterly luncheon for Naval Aviators in Washington. I think he thought
I would dwell on the CIA and intelligence. Instead, I took up a small.
portion of the problem you handled in your article--how can we get enough
aircraft carriers and aircraft to do the 'job that the country needs to
have us do today. I.'11 enclose a copy of those remarks as adapted for
possible publication in the Proceedings. . .
Your figures on the relative cost in real terms of aircraft are
tremendously impressive--from $5.4 million in 1964 to perhaps $30 million
today. As I mentioned in my-talk, lesser sophistication and hence lesser
price seems to me to be one of the only routes to go. . My old cohort
George Haering wrote to me after the talk to say that there aren't even
inexpensive alternatives today (the less sophisticated apparently are
high-priced also). I can't help thinking,. however, that that is because
we haven't looked at a more simple alternative. Clearly, whatever you
build has to be able to do the job, but most of what we build today won't
do the job because we can't maintain it or operate it anyway, e.g.., CA-53,!
Wish there were some way to be more optimistic about all this. I
did enjoy poking my.nose back into the DoD just for a few minutes. Thanks
.and warm regards.
Enclosure
Dr. Herschel Kanter
Institute for Defense Analyses
400 Army-Navy Drive
Arlington, Virginia 22202
Orig - W/Atch -
Addressee
1 - W/o -
DC
1 - W/Atch -
ER File
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Thinking About the Future of the Navy
by Admiral Stansfield Turner, USN (Ret.)
In the years since World War II, naval aviation has emerged as. the
Navy's primary element. It is the area where we are most ahead of the
Soviet Navy, and it represents our only effective means of responding at
great distance and quickly to new long-range missile threats. Naval
aviation is vital to protecting our military forces at sea and our convoys,
vital to denying an enemy free use of the sea, and vital to projecting
power, to amphibious assault and to air strikes. In short, naval aviation
is the key today to the Navy being able to carry out its two basic functions:
sea control and projection of power ashore.
Because this is the case, all segments of the navy bear great responsi-
bility to prepare naval aviation soundly for the future. To do that well,
there must exist a strategic concept, an objective, an understanding of what
naval aviation must be prepared to do in the next two decades if the United
States Navy is to fulfill its role in national security. In what circumstances
will sea control be the role of naval aviation control? In what circumstances
will it be power projection? Will the same aviation Navy be able to fulfill the
needs of both functions?
I start with the fundamental premise that sea control is the primary
role for naval aviation. Twice in this century, in World Wars I and II, the
vital -security of.the United States was challenged by the potential loss of
Europe to hostile forces. Our ability to maintain control of the North Atlantic
sea lanes against a formidable and determined German U-boat threat permitted us
to resupply our European allies as well as move our own forces and supplies to
the battle zones. The Allied victory in the Battle of the Atlantic was decisive
in our ability to turn back the tide of aggression on the continent of Europe.
Today, aside from the strategic role of our SSBNs, keeping sea lanes open
remains the single most important reason for having a Navy. The most important
of those sea lanes remain those of the Atlantic.
We tend not to think about the control of sea lanes very much anymore
and some even denigrate its importance. We talk today of the unlikelihood of a
third, prolonged, conventional war in Europe, of ever having to wrest control
of the Atlantic again. But that is far from an original insight. The short
war thesis was the conventional wisdom in 1914 and again in 1939. It was wrong
both times. Another war in Europe may well be over in less than 30 days. If
so, control of the Atlantic will be irrelevant. But, if war comes 'to Europe
and if our short war prediction is not correct, both sides will immediately
focus their entire effort on the North Atlantic umbilical. It would be very
unwise to build the United States Navy on the assumption that we can predict
whether a war will be long or short. That choice may very well not be ours to
make. If that estimate should prove wrong, and if the Navy were not ready to
maintain a sustained sea control effort, the country's basic security would be
at risk. All*Chiefs of Naval Operations, all Secretaries of Defense know in
their inner recesses that being able to meet the threat to our use of the sea
is the core reason for having a navy. And if war comes, they will not
likely divert the navy to any other task until this. key issue is resolved.
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Yet, despite the importance of sea control, since World War II
the only combatant use of the United States Navy has been in power
projection in the Third World. Unfortunately this tends to hypnotize
us, and for years has caused us to try to fit our naval power projection
capabilities into our military strategy for war in Europe. It will not
work. The contribution of power projection by the United States Navy
to a major war in Europe can only be marginal. It is marginal first
because of sheer numbers. The number of aircraft which we can bring to
bear from the sea is insignificant in comparison to available land-based
.tactical air. It is marginal secondly because for mutual defense it would
require three or four carriers in any high.risk area where you would have
to go to check power-on the continent. No Chief of Naval Operations or
Secretary of Defense would.risk one-half to two-thirds of the Atlantic
Fleet carrier force for a peripheral force augmentation of this kind.
Many people do not agree that carriers are essential to winning
the battle for sea control. Too often sea control is relegated to
.P-3s, destroyers and submarines. But, they cannot do it alone. When the
sea control threat is broken down, its most dangerous component is
long-range missiles launched from aircraft, ships or submarines,
perhaps 50 to 100 miles from our force. To counter these, sea-based
aircraft are absolutely essential. To detect an incoming aircraft or
even a surface ship closing the force, radar antennas or other sensors
need to be high in the sky. Even the detection of submarines, nuclear
submarines, requires a radar platform aloft.
One of the most important advantages we have in the contest for sea
control is that the enemy must clearly identify his target. The enemy
aircraft, ship or submarine, must close our force enough and use enough of
his sensors to ensure that he knows what he is targeting. This gives us a
counter-detection opportunity as well as the opportunity with aircraft to
have some hope of reacting quickly enough to counter that threat. This
takes neither large numbers of aircraft carriers nor large quantities
of weapons. But it does require a sea-based aviation capability to lift
sensors aloft and be able to respond quickly at long distances.. Therefore,
we must rely on aircraft from aircraft carriers to accomplish this sea
control task for many years to come.
Assuming then that our carrier fleet has a primary mission of
sea control, what kind of carriers do we want? The answer is "lots".
They will have to be in lots of places. They will have to be able to
suffer attrition because that is the basic nature of sea control warfare.
But I will come back to the question of what kind of carriers in a moment.
The Navy cannot be built solely to satisfy the requirements of sea
control even if it is the highest priority mission. Although power
projection may be of lesser ultimate consequence than sea control, we
may be called upon more frequently to carry it out. Carriers have been
used nearly exclusively in power projection for the past 35 years. Will
that continue to be the case?
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If we set aside strategic deterrence and the NATO conflict which I
just discussed, the next most important contribution of the United States
Navy to national security will be in the Indian Ocean_ Today and for
the foreseeable future this country will have vital national interests
which must be protected in that area. The absence of proximate American
or Allied land bases excludes most static military options such as
in-place armies or air forces. The Navy presents the single means of
positioning American forces near enough to this nexus of American interest
be able to respond to crises quickly and to the exact degree dictated
by the circumstances.
It is axiomatic that where we have a vital national interest we
must also be able to deploy adequate military power. But today we cannot
bring adequate military-power to bear in the Indian Ocean and Persian
Gulf area. Recently, Admiral Hayward summed up this situation accurately
when he said, "We have a three-ocean commitment and a one-and-a-half
ocean navy." And you and I are the ones who are clearly culpable. Over
the past 20 years, we in the Navy have failed to lay out and forcefully
express a sound strategic concept for. the Navy while others, outside the
Navy, with a faulted but more persuasively argued concept for the Navy,
prevailed. As a result, monies to build the kind of Navy we need have not
been forthcoming.
We need three capabilities to be ready to defend our interests in
the Indian Ocean. First, we must be confident of sufficient sea control
capability to get there and be able to stay there. Second, we need the
ability to put forces ashore--to control some of the territory if necessary.
Third, we need the ability to use air power to defend forces that have been
inserted- and to conduct air strikes. Only the Navy and the Marine Corps can
do these jobs. While the Army and the Air Force can help, our sister services
will'always be peripheral forces in this oceanic theatre because of the
territorial inhibitionsI have already mentioned.
It is a long way around the periphery of the Indian Ocean from
the Straits of Malacca, to India, down the East Coast of Africa, to
the. Cape of Good Hope. To cover this area we will need lots of carriers
and lots of amphibious ships. Without numbers, the odds of being close
enough to a crisis are too low. Ships are slow in terms of political
.- decisionmaking. If one makes a political decision today, even if the
whole naval task force can sustain a speed of 20 knots, it takes more
than 22 days to steam from Norfolk to the Persian Gulf. It is even
farther for a Sixth Fleet carrier from the Eastern Mediterranean. The
primary characteristic for carriers,. then, is lots.
How do we get a lot of carriers? We get them, lots of them to do
sea control in the Atlantic and power projection in the Pacific and
'Indian Ocean--perhaps 24 carriers or more--by building them'smaller with
fewer and less sophisticated aircraft. Will smaller carriers and less
sophisticated aircraft do the job? Yes. First, because sea control in the
Atlantic and power projection in remote areas do not call for the great
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Atlantic and power projection in remote areas do not call for the great
numbers of aircraft or weapons per deck with which we now operate. In
neither case will we face the Vietnam practice of dumping large amounts of
ordnance over long periods of time.
Secondly, we can go to lesser sophistication because power projection
in the future will not require as high performance aircraft as in the
past. We are surely approaching the day of real-time, remote-controlled,
unmanned, electronic and photo sensors. Such sensors will allow us to
.remotely guide unmanned weapons to fixed or moving targets at any distance.
Therefore, high performance aircraft for penetrating and evading air
defenses will be less necessary. We will simply stand off. Even for the air
defense interceptor role, the day of the dog-fight died with the AWG-9.
Weapons will do the maneuvering in the future. Therefore, initially at least,
we will need lots of Essex-size carriers with catapults, generating toward
25,000 ton carriers with VSTOL.
There is a nice coincidence here. The proliferation of small
carriers will help us to be where we need to be in the Indian Ocean
in times short of general war, and the same carriers would be capable
of shifting to the Atlantic in great numbers in time of-general war.
More emphasis on sea control not only means that we need different
kinds of carriers and aircraft, but it also means that we need to change
our operating habits. We need increased flexibility in flight operations.
We need to get away from cyclical operations and on to flex deck operations.
Who knows when more strike or interceptor aircraft might be needed? We
need to get away from 12.hours on and 12 hours off flying and become self-
sufficient throughout a 24-hour day because the threat will exist for 24
hours. If any skipper wants to count on his sister carriers to defend him
for his 12 hours off, I think he will change his mind when the chips are
down. We need to get away from thinking about Alpha strikes and think
in terms of maintaining and being able to augment a certain number of
VF and VS stations around every carrier and having a quick reaction VA
potential.
I hardly expect unanimous agreement with this philosophy. I may
well be wrong. Perhaps we do need large carriers and high-performance
aircraft. There are certainly good reasons for them. Hulls are cheap,
so why not build them big? Big decks are safer and more flexible.
Plenty of fuel and supplies are needed when we must go deep into remote
areas. Cutting down the logistics train is always desirable. The sea-
keeping qualities of large carriers are needed in the North Atlantic in
winter. Large carriers are better for defending themselves than small.
But notice please. These are all tactical arguments. Well the naval
aviator may be concerned with them because of whose life will be at stake
with the lesser performance aircraft and smaller carriers that I think we
should have. But the first question, the key question, must be what the
strategic concept is behind what is becoming a small force of large carriers
with high performance aircraft. What will the United States Navy need to
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accomplish in the. 1980s and 1990s that will require Eisenhowers and Nimitzes
and that cannot be accomplished by small carriers? Only after we establish
our strategic goals by defining the kinds and amounts of air power that we
believe the nation will need from the sea, can we address tactical issues
like sea-keeping and self-defense.
Let me emphasize, cheap is not cost effective if it will not do the
job... Of all the arguments for large carriers, the best, in my opinion,
is that it may take a large ship to handle all of the defensive weaponry
that will be needed. But even with that argument in mind, I come down on
the other side, on the side of numbers rather than size. 'Numbers give room
for *attrition. Numbers help confuse enemy targeting. Larger numbers mean
smaller sizes which mean smaller radar and heat signatures to confuse enemy.
targeting. Highly miniaturized, lethal, defensive weapons are in the offing
and will make a small carrier a viable defensive bet.
What then is the minimum size carrier which is defensible under my
strategic concept? What is the minimum size under your strategic concept?
To make that judgment we must have a strategic concept to start with. ' A
strategic concept is the foundation of logic which gives coherence to an
otherwise complex and confusing plan of ship and plane sizes and'types. It
is a vital first step, not only for knowing exactly what we are going to be
called upon to do in the years ahead, but for being able to sell those
convictions to the Congress and to the American public so that an appropriate
Navy can be adequately funded.
In the past decade, the Navy has dwindled from just less than a thousand
ships to about 450. From about 2700 combat aircraft to about 1700. But what
is more important is that the rate of ship and aircraft procurement over the
past decade will not sustain a Navy even as small as today's. All the talk
of increasing the size of the Navy in the years ahead, and the projected
funding level that has been sent to the Congress is a loser. It is possible
there may be a temporary upsurge in numbers for a few years, but over the
longer run, the mathematics of inadequate procurement spells shrinkage. If
we take the number of ships that we have actually procured over the last
ten years and which are programmed for the next five, it averages about
15 ships a year. Average ship life, minesweeper to carrier, is about 22
years. Twenty-two times fifteen is 330. We are today, for the last decade,
for the next five, planning to sustain a Navy of 330 ships. If 22 is too
conservative, make it 25. You now have a 375 ship Navy. Stretch it to 30
years. You now have a 450 ship Navy, the same as we have today. We are not
growing in ships, and the story in aircraft is much the same.
What this tells us in unequivocal terms is that the Congress of the
United States and the American public do not believe that the United States
requires a Navy of even 12 large carriers filled with sophisticated aircraft.
They are not giving us the wherewithal to maintain such a Navy. I can only
conclude that the strategic concept that we have used to support our requests
for large carriers and their aircraft has not been persuasive. Accordingly,
it is the responsibility of each of us who cares about our Navy and its
role in the security of this country to address this issue of strategy.
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If we do nothing, the Navy will continue to shrink and naval
strategy will have to shrink with it. Perhaps you will tend toward
my strategy--strategic deterrence first, defense of the Atlantic sea
lanes second, and power projection in the Indian Ocean third--the
first with SSBNs and cruise missiles, the latter two with larger
numbers of less expensive carriers. But, it will be to no avail
to buy those small ships and lower performance aircraft if they
cannot do the job. So, perhaps instead you will want to refurbish
the. strategy for larger carriers and persuade the Congress that it
should fund 12, 15, 18 of them with full complements of high-
performance aircraft. I submit, however, that after more than two
decades of effort in that direction,. we should recognize that it is
an uphill battle. Whichever route you choose, defining the job to
be done is the primary challenge we face. In my view, that is the
heart of turning the corner on the decline of the U.S. Navy that we
have witnessed in the past decade. The numbers clearly show that time is
running out on the US Navy and with it, the security of our country.
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