The Navy was very quick to sink Capt. Brett Crozier’s career for an apparent command performance failure. Unfortunately, it won’t apply that same standard to those shaping the Navy’s strategy to deal with China.
On Thursday, Crozier was relieved of command of the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, whose severe coronavirus outbreak had led Crozier to return to port. But the Navy says it lost faith in Crozier’s command because, rather than communicate with his direct commanding officers via a classified system, Crozier used public email to raise concerns with dozens of officials, and his missive was leaked to the press.
The Navy also insists it was working to address Crozier’s concerns but faced the challenge of providing accommodation for the Theodore Roosevelt’s nearly 6,000 strong crew-air wing on Guam, where such capacity is limited. The Navy infers that Crozier undermined the chain of command by exerting public pressure on officials to accede to his requests.
Even so, the Navy has much bigger problems than Crozier and his perhaps excessive but laudable concern for his men. It would do well to apply to its admirals the same exceptional measure of scrutiny because the Navy’s senior leadership is dropping the ball where it matters most — in grappling with Chinese capabilities that threaten to turn U.S. aircraft carriers into floating wrecks.
China now retains an ability to target aircraft carriers at range and from variable platforms. These threats include the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s very quiet Yuan-class diesel-electric submarine and the versatile Qing-class submarine, which will start deploying in the near future. Equally impressive is China’s Renhai-class air-defense destroyer. Armed with the advanced YJ-18 anti-ship cruise missile, these warships will pose a potent threat if they can sneak within range of U.S. carriers — which, it should be noted, they have already been able to do.
And that’s just the start of the problem.
Alongside these manned platforms, China’s electronic warfare and space-air-sea sensor network is developing rapidly. Indeed, China used the Obama administration’s strategic slumber to outmatch the United States in some of these areas. The potential consequences are alarming. Chinese DF-21 and DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missiles can credibly threaten U.S. carriers at very long range and with survivability against U.S. countermeasures (especially if China decides to launch a saturation strike of dozens of missiles against one carrier). Then there’s Beijing’s heavy investment in hypersonic glide vehicles, which threaten to make moot the carrier’s strike group’s air defenses.
Navy leaders continue to insist that the carrier strike groups must remain the linchpin of the fleet. They say that Chinese threats are exaggerated and that new U.S. defenses against those threats are underestimated. The admirals are fixated on the prestige that carriers offer the Navy and the nation.
This is willful delusion. Although it is true that U.S. space-based capabilities have recently improved so as to undermine China’s ballistic and hypersonic forces, Beijing isn’t sitting idle. And whatever improvements China makes, aircraft carriers will ultimately remain big and relatively slow. The problem here isn’t simply that China can threaten our carriers, it’s that our carriers will struggle to threaten Chinese forces in conflict. To achieve that threat, the carriers would have to get close to Chinese forces and take serious risk of being caught in China’s web of weapons platforms. New carrier-based drones can boost U.S. reach here but likely not enough.
There is a solution to all this. One that would match the Navy’s treatment of Crozier to strategic introspection. And it would entail dramatically shrinking the carrier fleet and replacing it with many much longer-range missiles, drones, and submarines. (In skill and capability, our submarine forces are truly superb.)
Sadly, I doubt it will happen.
