Senator Webb's Remarks to the Surface Navy Association's 20th Annual National Symposium and Convention

January 16, 2008

Arlington, VA Thank you very much.  [Retired Navy Vice Adm.] Tim LeFleur had the unfortunate experience of having two plebe years under me, first as the member of the Naval Academy Class of 1970 and then as my administrative aide when I was Secretary of the Navy—a wonderful officer.  It seemed that every time I saw him after I left the Department of the Navy, he was getting promoted again. 

I very much appreciate the invitation to come and spend a few minutes with you today, and I'd like to thank Admiral Green for extending that invitation. I see many, many faces of people I've known at different times in my professional life.  It's great to be able to say hello to so many of them. I would like to talk about a few issues for a while.  And then I would be happy to open up the remaining time I have for any questions that you would have from the floor.

I asked Gordon Peterson, who does the Armed Services Committee work on my staff and who is a 30-year career naval officer, to find out how many of the ships in the United States Navy today are underway.  The answer was 109 out of the 280-ship battle force—39 percent of our ships are underway.  Today, 92 of those ships are on operational deployments.  24 attack submarines are underway—44 percent of that force.  Our Military Sealift Command, as all of you know, has 32 ships propositioned, remaining at sea, ready to be sent into whichever theater they're asked to go.  This is a real testimony to how hard the Navy works—peacetime, wartime—whatever is happening with respect to our country's interest around the world.

I was told this is the 20th anniversary of the Surface Navy Association's having these meetings.  It's also the 20th anniversary of when I resigned as Secretary of the Navy in a dispute over the size of the Navy.  And this is also the 40-year anniversary of when I was commissioned in the United States Marine Corps.  And so when I look at the size of the Navy and the requirements that it has around the world and how our country defines our operational strategy, this is an interesting benchmark year because I can look back 20 years, and I can look back 40 years. 

And looking back 40 years, when I was commissioned in the Marine Corps in 1968, the United States Navy had 930 combatants; it also had no Indian Ocean commitment.  The British had a sizable Navy at that time, and that was their area of operations.  We had 157 amphibious ships in the United State Navy at that time. 

Following the Vietnam War, the Navy was gutted.  By 1980 it was reduced to 479 combatants.  When the Regan administration came in, as many in this room remember,  we set a goal of rebuilding the Navy to 600 ships.  On my watch we reached 568, which is the post-Vietnam War high.  When I was Secretary of the Navy we had 620,000 members in the Navy on active duty.  The Coast Guard at that time, 20 years ago, had 248 cutters in service and 37,600 personnel.

I went through a three-month debate from late 1987 into 1988 trying to preserve the force structure of the Navy at a time when there was a piece of legislation called the Graham-Rudman Act which mandated a 5 percent cut in a federal budget that had already been approved. Those of you who had worked in the budget areas know that a 5 percent cut in the overall budget, means a 10 percent reduction in the real operational budget because so many areas of the federal budget are fenced. The entitlement programs can't be cut.  So, we were presented with a situation where we had to take 10 percent of the Navy's budget—a budget that had already been scrubbed out. 

We had a new Secretary of Defense who told all the services that he wanted force structure reduced.  I had written a memorandum four years before to the Undersecretary of Defense for policy, when I was Assistant Secretary of Defense, giving him my thoughts on future force structure of all the services. In that memorandum, I had said that it was logical for the Army and the tactical Air Force to reduce their force-structure size with a reduction in our NATO presence, which at that time was very sizable. 

We had 206,000 Army soldiers in Germany alone. But we needed to re-grow the Navy.  I said this before I became Secretary of the Navy.  We needed to re-grow the Navy because like it or not, by virtue of our geographical position, our historical and cultural ties, and our economy, we are a maritime nation.  So, I argued for three months. Our program people came up with three different options to meet this budget reduction and, finally, we lost and I walked.  it is kind of ironic, because the morning when I decided to resign, my undersecretary came in, and he said, "What are you doing?" and I said, " I do not choose to become the father of a 350-ship Navy." 

Actually, today, that looks pretty good!  We're at a 90-year low in terms of the size of the United States Navy.  I'm told we have 280 ships in the Navy, with 334,000 people on active duty.  The Coast Guard has done fairly well, quite frankly. Although, it is in need, I'm told, of a ship building modernization program because the Coast Guard now has 251 cutters as opposed to 248.  And its end strength has grown just a bit, which leads one to the temptation of proposing to put the Navy under the Department of Homeland Security. 

I have a very strong view—and it has been developed over many, many years—that in order for us to meet the strategic interests that we have around the world, we must grow the sea services' force structure.  I was interested to hear that [Chief of Naval Operations] Admiral Roughead emphasized this point yesterday.  I know when Admiral Mullen was Chief of Naval Operations, he and I had a dialogue in one of the committee hearings, and he had said that he believes this 313-ship force was a floor.  I would personally agree with that. 

Those of us who believe that have a shared responsibility to try to come up with the right formula.  The people in the Navy, the people in the Congress, and the people in the administration need to make the case and to do this in a responsible way.  But I do believe it needs to be done. 

I was thinking about some of the things I have written and talked about over the years, and also discussing this with Gordon Peterson yesterday. I was reminded that in the early 1970s (the first book I wrote came out in 1974), I talked about the fact that in the Pacific the smartest thing for the United States to do would be to reduce the number of ground forces, to relocate a good bit of our force structure on Okinawa and Japan to Guam in the Mariana Islands, and to maintain our strength with a strong forward sea power presence. I also recommended at that time that we should develop a cooperative operational relationship with the Japanese. 

It was not against the provisions in their Constitution—their self-defense provisions for them to be operating even in the Indian Ocean, or up into the Persian Gulf—because their self-defense clearly goes to their oil supply.  Japan must import all of its oil.  It's interesting to look around the world to see what has been happening over the last couple of years.  Much of what I said 1974 is coming to pass. We are moving a significant number of troops to Guam, and we have a relationship with the Japanese in the Indian Ocean, which I was informed last week has been renewed.  Refueling operations by the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force will resume in the Indian Ocean.

I mentioned the memorandum that I wrote to the Undersecretary of Defense in 1984. When I was Secretary of the Navy, as this debate over where the cuts were going to go was ongoing, I made a speech at the National Press Club.  I'm was trying to push the envelope, hoping that we could get this proposal through.  In part of that speech I said that our place in the world has been guaranteed by our maritime power, particularly during the last century.  We are a maritime nation, by virtue of our geographical position, economic necessity, and our political commitments.  American sea power maintains unimpeded access to world markets, it denies our adversaries the use of sea lanes for expansionist or imperialistic reasons, and it maintains international security and stability, including the protection of those nations we count as friends and allies during crisis.  It enables us when war comes to reinforce our allies, to multiply the effectiveness of their armies, to inject our own ground forces when appropriate, to become supreme on the land through control of the sea.  It provides us the single greatest deterrent to nuclear war. 

I have long addressed the emergence of the Chinese, in terms of their economic and military power. I'm going to talk about that in a minute.  But, what we've seen is that all of the reasons for naval power have actually increased.  We're now seeing that seaborne trade has quadrupled in the time since I have first put on the uniform as a United States Marine.  The past is truly prologue for our maritime nation.  And it will continue to guarantee our power and our effectiveness around the world. 

At the same time, because of what has happened in the Middle East—as was quite predictable and predicted by people such as myself, General Zinni, General Hoar—whenever the United States gets tied down, in long-term ground engagements, the focus goes to that area, sometimes at the expense of where our strategic vision should be.  The money goes to that area, because we're burning up equipment, we're seeing tremendous force structure challenges, etc.  All of you know those issues very well. 

Senator Stevens put a number on this a couple of weeks ago, saying that the war in Iraq in the Afghanistan commitments are now costing us $15 billion dollars a month.  These extended deployments are placing enormous strain on our ground deployments.  The readiness of our ground deployments is being affected, clearly. 

And at the same time, we're not focusing the way that we should on the strategic interests that we have around the world.  We're seeing the Middle East, particularly South Asia, in continuing crisis, and we tend to focus just on what's going on in Iraq. But look at what's happening in the region—international terrorism is, by definition, non-national and likes to work the seams of international boundaries. 

When I returned from a visit in Iraq in November, Tim Russert asked me the question: "Do you think the surge is working?" Somebody counted, and I gave a 723-word response. Because it takes that long to truly lay out what is happening—not simply where the American military is in Iraq, but what's happening in the region at large.  And one of the other things that I said was that, if I were al Qaeda, I would be mobile. There was no al Qaeda in Iraq when we got there operationally.  If I were al Qaeda, I would be focusing on Pakistan and Afghanistan.  And I said this before Benizir Bhutto was assassinated.  It's just common strategic sense.  A nuclear-armed Pakistan is and was, even before the invasion in 2003, the area of greatest volatility and the greatest short-term strategic threat the United States has.  China is a different situation. . 

And, speaking of China, I started pointing out 20 years ago when I was Secretary of the Navy that China had a conscious strategy to increase access with the Muslim world.  You could see it for two reasons.  One is obviously it's becoming more and more voracious in its use of energy.  The other reason is that China recognizes this is a weak point in the United States—our relationship with the Muslim world.  This is very smart of them to do that.  Also, if you look at Southeast Asia, we tend to think of the Muslim world as a Middle Eastern phenomenon, but in Southeast Asia you have the largest Muslim country in the world in terms of population: Indonesia.  You have Malaysia which has over the past 20 years gone more and more fundamentalist in its Muslim makeup.  You have the southern parts of the Philippines, particularly Mindanao, heavily Muslim.  It's a very smart move for China to have made in purely military terms.  We saw China develop a relationship with Libya.  China enabled Pakistan to have a nuclear weapon.  China's relationship with Iran has been continuous. 

In fact, right after 9/11, October the 3rd 2001, I spoke at the Naval Institute Conference in Virginia Beach. If all of you remember that time period, the first three or four weeks after 9/11, no one knew what was going to happen.  We were all struggling with what might come next.  Someone asked me: "Should we invade Iraq?"  And I said, "This is a totally different world.  If you want to look at this long term, you have to go after international terrorism, you have to stay maneuverable, and for our long-term strategic interest, you need to watch China, watch Iran, and watch China with Iran."  And I would still hold to that. At the same time, we have, in many ways, been mortgaging our future to China with our economic policies and with our trade policies.  We have on the one hand a vulnerability in terms of larger grand strategy—in terms of our economic policies—by becoming so dependant on Chinese financing.  Even to the point now, where the Chinese government itself is using what are called "sovereign wealth" funds to invest in our economy. 

At the same time, those of you who are in the business know what China has been doing in terms of modernizing its military.  It has been expanding its influence partially for resources in areas like South America and Africa.  But it has also developed over the past 10 years, particularly--and I was writing about this for the New York Times nine years ago--the ability to project its military.  

We have seen, very recently, just in the past few months, incidents on the Spratly Islands and on the Parcels, which China claims sovereignty over.  In the Senkaku Islands, which are in the island chain between Taiwan and Okinawa, the Chinese military is just very gradually pressing forward at the same time the Chinese government is arguing that it has sovereignty over these areas.  It's something that can only be countered with the proper sort of strategic thought and presence—and the maneuverable credibility of strong naval forces. 

This takes me to the Navy's current ship building plan.  As all of you know, this is a different time period than when I was arguing for a 600-ship Navy.  We have different types of ships.  We have more efficient ships.  We have different strategic threats.  But 313 ships can't do it.  I don't see that in the long term.  We are building about one submarine net a year; the Chinese are building about three submarines net a year.  I was, as I said, very interested to hear that Admiral Roughead yesterday emphasized this point.  I'm not going to stand up here and tell you I have a magical number for what the size of the United States Navy should be.  But I will tell you that I spent my entire adult lifetime believing in the validity of a strategy that is based on the notion that the United States is a maritime nation and should be a credible sea power.  I am looking forward to working energetically with Admiral Roughead and others so that we can match our strategic vision with the needs that we will have to have in order to carry it out. 

I did support this year, my first year in the Senate, an increase funding for shipbuilding in the 2008.  This included the multi-year authority for the Virginia-class submarines and the addition of $588 million advance-procurement funding to support buying an additional submarine in 2010.  I also supported additional advance procurement for our new class of supply ships and the tenth San Antonio-class amphibious ship. 

We're going to have a national debate; we need a national debate on how the United States military should be shaped and particularly as we properly downsize our presence in Iraq.  I'm strongly hopeful that that can occur with the right diplomatic overview in sometime in the near future. 

The Navy and the Marine Corps need a stable, affordable shipbuilding plan.  The industrial base also needs it.  When shipbuilding facilities don't have a steady line of work, they lay off highly trained people.  Then they can't get them back.  We have seen this happen, particularly down in the Mississippi area in the aftermath of Katrina.  The industrial base needs a predictable shipbuilding schedule.

We need to find different ways to reduce and control the costs that are involved in this, and this is going to take a multi-dimensional approach.  The Navy needs to come up with ideas on this.  Industry does, and we need to support good ideas in the Congress. 

We decommissioned five of the 27 Ticonderoga-class cruisers more than 10 years ahead of their service life, according to the information that was given to me.  And this did not happen because we had ceased needing them.  It happened, I am told, because we could not find an affordable way to keep them operationally relevant with modernized systems.

The USS Gates—CG  51—was commissioned when I was Secretary of the Navy in 1987, and it was decommissioned three years ago—an 18-year service life.  I think, as all of you appreciate, that the ships' hull, mechanical, and electrical systems generally last 30 to 35 years.  Aircraft carriers, I'm told. last up to 50 years--they don't generally become outdated, but their combat systems do. 

There are theories out now, which I intend to look into, about finding ways to upgrade and modernize the combat systems in a more competitive way to get American industry to compete, to put the benefits of our free enterprise system to work, to use an open- business model to encourage competition, and to drive some of these costs down.  I'm told on the submarine side this has been done with some good effect.  We need to work together to move in that kind of a direction. 

The struggle for a properly sized Navy is about today, but in many ways—as someone who has been around this all my life as many of you have—it's not just about today.  It's about yesterday, and it's about tomorrow.  I remember when I was a midshipman there was a saying from a British ship commander who had been told to pull his ships back and leaving the troops on the beach on one of those European battlefields to protect the ships. They said you have to get the ships out of the way or the ships are going to go down.  He said, "You know it takes three years to build a ship, and it takes 300 years to rebuild a tradition if we violate our tradition which is not to abandon the people we care about." 

There's a little bit of that going on right now.  It takes 200 years to build the kind of Navy we have.  If you think about what goes in, you take somebody down to a shipyard and have them look at the intricacy of actually putting together an aircraft carrier.  It is immense.  It's one of the reasons that every ascending power in the last 70 years has tried to build aircraft carriers, and none of them have been able to do it the way we do it--none of them have.  Consider the operational environment that goes into it, the things that you have to pass down in a mentoring way, to the people who are coming in behind you and that you have learned from people who were ahead of you. 

Those kinds of traditions, those kinds of small set skills can't just be learned if you lose the foundation of your service. 

The United States Navy is now half the size in personnel and less than half the size in terms of combatant ships than it was when I was Secretary of the Navy.  The American people deserve to be properly defended with a clearly articulated national strategy.  And that has been lacking, quite frankly, since the fall of the Soviet Union.  Those who come after us deserve to have the skill sets and the tools. They can only do that with the right- sizing of our fleet. 

So, all of us need to do our part.  It's important for the nation to have the right strategy.  And in that strategy, you're going to have to step up, just like those of us in the Congress, who believe in it and make the case to the American people, because they're the ones who pay the bills.  Thank you.

 

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