Military Incompetence Has a Price Tag
The old saw that you can’t put a price tag on a good time is not true in the case of military incompetence; those costs can be quantified. I would expect it of the Navy, but not the Marine Corps which, until 2019, had a reputation for being the most frugal of the services.
The Navy’s habit of turning perfectly good hulls into razor blades has long been a source of amazement to me. At a time when the Pentagon is trying to increase the size of the U.S. Navy and rebuild our naval construction capability, the Navy is retiring the USS Nimitz, which is over 60 years old, but sill serviceable. The original cost of the Nimitz class carriers was $4.5 billion a unit. The new USS Gerald R. Ford came in at a whopping $13.5 billion. The delay in launching the next Ford class ship (the Kennedy) will leave only 10 carriers in the fleet for an indefinite time period.
The advantage of the Ford is that it needs a smaller crew and will be more maintainable because its catapult systems no longer works by steam which is hard to maintain. But the cost overruns caused by improper original planning and design have largely offset those advantages. I write this off to the fact that admirals are drawn to that new ship smell the way we taxpaying peons are drawn to the odor of a new automobile.
Strategically, no-one asked the Corps for this capability, nor does the main customer — Indo-Pacific Command — seem to want it. Tellingly, the Chinese have ignored it.
To give credit where credit is due, the Navy is re-purposing its Zumwalt class destroyers by taking off their guns and replacing them with 1,700 mile ranging hypersonic missiles. The Navy’s problems in shipbuilding and maintenance are caused by passive incompetence and corruption. Since 2019 however, the senior Marine Corps leadership has gone all in on active incompetence.
Starting that year the Marine Corps repurposed itself from a world-wide force in readiness capable of answering any contingency from humanitarian operations to heavy ground combat into a China-centric one trick pony. Under the last two commandants, the Corps has instituted its Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations EABO concept. This piece of military idiocy has wasted billions on a force structure that after nearly seven years is not nearly operational. It envisions placing small anti-ship missile units — called Stand-in-Forces (SIF) — to hide on islands in the South China Sea to attempt to sink Chinese warships that come in range. This concept demonstrates incompetence at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war.
Strategically, no-one asked the Corps for this capability, nor does the main customer — Indo-Pacific Command — seem to want it. Tellingly, the Chinese have ignored it; if it worried them they would have squealed like stuck pigs. Operationally, it presents a logistics nightmare for which the Corps still does not have a good answer. Tactically, it depends on an outdated missile system that does not have the range to be of much help in the most likely combat scenario; that being Taiwan. It is also subsonic making it vulnerable to advanced Chinese anti-ship defenses. After seven years, not a single SIF is fully operational. Worse, the price tag in wasted tax dollars is staggering. When completed the NEMSIS buy will come in at around $50 billion.
To logistically support EABO, the Marine Corps released the Navy from its responsibility to maintain 38 amphibious ships in order to build 18 Landing Ship Medium (LSM) hulls. The LSM will be virtually useless for conventional amphibious operations and will cost at least $7.8 billion. To date, not one of them has been built. The LSM will not be able to defend itself. The geniuses who came up with the idea envisioned its main defense as being able to blend in with commercial shipping in the coastal waters around China. What they did not consider is that, as soon as fighting breaks out commercial shipping will dry up for the duration of the conflict leaving the LSMs naked and alone to be picked off. The only good thing is that the radars envisioned for EABO can be used for other purposes such as air defense and counterbattery fire.
Given the fact that the cost figures are unclassified, the Navy/Marine Corps team has or is planning to flush over $8 billion down the toilet on EABO. A billion here and a billion there, pretty soon we are talking real money. More disturbing, to afford this abortion of a strategy, the naval services are not building sufficient big deck amphibious ships to meet pop-up contingencies world-wide. Since 2019, the marines have had to turn down contingency requests made by the European and Central Commands due to lack of shipping. To afford EABO, the marines divested all of their armor, much of their cannon artillery, snipers, and combat aircraft. Thus far, no-one in the administration or Congress has seriously called the Corps’ leadership out on it. As a retired marine, I am embarrassed. As a taxpayer, I am appalled.
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Gary Anderson is the author ofBeyond Mahan, a Proposed Naval Strategy for the 21st Century