Gates: 'We Simply Cannot Afford The Status Quo'

By PETER ATKINSON, Deputy Editor

While describing the challenges facing the U.S. sea services "as they strive to field and fund the capabilities our nation will need for the decades ahead," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told a luncheon audience at the Navy League's Sea-Air-Space Exposition May 3, "we simply cannot afford to perpetuate a status quo that heaps more and more expensive technologies onto fewer and fewer platforms – thereby risking a situation where some of our greatest capital expenditures go toward weapons and ships that could potentially become wasting assets." (See full transcript of Gates' speech under the May 3 heading to the right.)

The Navy and Marine Corps, he said, "must be willing to re-examine and question basic assumptions in light of evolving technologies, new threats and budget realities. ... At the end of the day, we have to ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 [billion] to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines and $11 billion carriers.

"Potential adversaries are well aware of our overwhelming conventional advantage," Gates said, "which is why, despite significant naval modernization programs under way in some countries, no one intends to bankrupt themselves by challenging the U.S. to a shipbuilding competition akin to the Dreadnought race prior to World War I.

"Instead, potential adversaries are investing in weapons designed to neutralize U.S. advantages – to deny our military freedom of action while potentially threatening America’s primary means of projecting power: our bases, sea and air assets, and the networks that support them."

The answer to combating these asymmetric threats, advances in anti-ship missile technology and more sophisticated underwater systems that are posing an ever-increasing danger to the U.S. naval fleet lies more in innovative strategies, joint approaches and engagement, Gates argued. As missions change, budgets grow tighter and funding becomes more elusive, building more and bigger traditional platforms is not a practical way forward.

"These issues invariably bring up debates over so-called 'gaps' between stated requirements and current platforms – be they ships, aircraft or anything else," he said. "More often than not, the solution offered is either more of what we already have or modernized versions of pre-existing capabilities. "This approach ignores the fact that we face diverse adversaries with finite resources that consequently force them to come at the U.S. in unconventional and innovative ways. The more relevant gap we risk creating is one between the capabilities we are pursuing and those that are actually needed in the real world of tomorrow.

"We must rethink what and how we buy – to shift investments towards systems that provide the ability to see and strike deep along the full spectrum of conflict," he said. "Whether the mission is counterinsurgency, piracy or security assistance, among others, new missions have required new ways of thinking about the portfolio of weapons we buy. ... As we learned last year, you don’t necessarily need a billion-dollar guided-missile destroyer to chase down and deal with a bunch of teenage pirates wielding AK-47s and RPGs."

Gates admitted that part of the problem is the Defense Department itself, noting that its "track record as a steward of taxpayer dollars leaves much to be desired."

Congress, too, continues to add what he called "unnecessary costs to the taxpayer" by insisting on funding programs such as the C-17 cargo aircraft and a second engine for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter over the objections of the services.

"We have to accept some hard fiscal realities," he said.

Despite all of the funding concerns, the Navy, Gates said, has responded to new threats and missions with investments in more special warfare capabilities, small patrol coastal vessels, a Riverine squadron, joint high-speed vessels and accelerating the purchase of the Littoral Combat Ship, which Gates described as a "versatile ship that can be produced in quantity and go places that are either too shallow or too dangerous for the Navy’s big, blue-water surface combatants."

He also lauded the Navy's partnership programs with an array of other nations, humanitarian relief initiatives and the work of its Sailors on the ground in Iraq.

By the same token, the Marine Corps "for years now ... has been acting as essentially a second land army," Gates said. "As Gen. [James T.] Conway [Marine Corps commandant] has noted, there are young, battle-hardened Marines with multiple combat tours who have spent little time inside of a ship, much less practicing hitting a beach. Their critical work well inland will be necessary for the foreseeable future."

Gates described the impact of the work the Corps has done first in Iraq and now in Afghanistan as "a game-changer."

He noted the "military’s unprecedented level of global engagement – especially the sea services. ... Many of the tasks and roles I’ve just mentioned would have been unthinkable as recently as a decade ago, and are with our sea services to stay."