A thousand-ship navy
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SKETCHES By ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN
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Mistrust will have to be overcome, and navies will have to link up with each other to fight an unseen threat.
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The Americans are building a thousand-ship navy, and no, we’re not getting any hand-me-downs from the naval buildup.
We will be part of that navy, if we’re not already, considering that the Arroyo administration has declared the country a staunch US ally in the war on terror.
Armed Forces chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon said the other day that if all the warships of the Philippine Navy were placed together end-to-end they would not cover a kilometer. It’s a testament to how poorly equipped our Navy is that we actually wondered if that was no exaggeration.
But the size of the naval fleet does not matter to the superpower that wants a thousand-ship navy. What matters is sharing information about security threats in the high seas, so that even if the US in fact has only about 280 naval vessels and does not intend to add 700 more, its partnerships with other navies around the world will make it seem as if it has a fleet of a thousand or more vessels deployed around the globe.
This is partly why the commander of the US Seventh Fleet is in town with his flagship, the USS Blue Ridge. "One of the reasons I am here is to talk to the Philippine Navy and see how we could operate together and better share information," Vice Adm. Doug Crowder told me the other day over lunch with US Ambassador Kristie Kenney and embassy press attaché Matthew Lussenhop.
The thousand-ship navy was conceived in 2005 by Adm. Michael Mullen, US chief of naval operations, and presented for the first time at an international sea power symposium in Newport, Rhode Island with naval officers from about 50 countries in attendance.
Crowder, who has been to the Philippines "about two dozen times," said the US initiative has been "enormously successful."
"It’s about a group of navies in the world doing what’s in their best interest and knowing that they’ll be more successful, because it is a global war on terror… if they share information with other navies," he said. "We’re gonna partner with as many nations… as we can."
It’s a partnership "not against things," he emphasized, "but for things – to keep things safe, to keep terrorism out of our seas."
* * *
The biggest hurdle for the world’s lone superpower, amid the debacle in Iraq, is overcoming mistrust of the Bush administration. The US must forge such partnerships and assist weak navies such as ours without raising protests about impinging on national sovereignty.
Mullen, who wants a new global maritime strategy for the US Navy, has said membership in the thousand-ship navy will be purely voluntary and will not infringe on sovereignty. Amid the protests over Iraq, the Americans are learning subtlety in providing aid.
Esperon, when asked about US support in the naval blockade of Sulu, would say only that if US ships are down south, "they must be in international waters."
The recent battle over custody of convicted rapist Daniel Smith, a US Marine lance corporal, has been used by certain groups to warn of the wages of dependence on US military assistance.
But so far there has been no groundswell for kicking out US troops once again, or for rejecting US aid or ending military cooperation between the two countries.
When even the most powerful navy in the world needs help from other countries, our own Navy can surely use all the help it can get.
Apart from the lack of capability to set up a real naval blockade of Sulu, our Navy and Coast Guard cannot keep out pirates, smugglers, poachers, or Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists from Indonesia.
* * *
The US Navy, like the rest of the major service commands, has had to adjust to a new threat – one where the enemy is not a country but certain groups whose operations are borderless, whose militants are ready to blow themselves up. In this asymmetrical warfare, powerful American battleships are vulnerable to attack from a tiny boat laden with explosives, as we saw in the 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden.
Apart from such direct attacks, counterterrorism officials worry about the use of commercial shipping containers – there are millions out there – to transport weapons of mass destruction.
"One of the things that the United States Navy has learned is that there’s no less ocean after 9/11 than there was before," Crowder told me. "But there’s more activity, there’s more piracy, there’s some lawlessness, there’s potential for terrorism at sea and of course the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction."
The Seventh Fleet, which was created in 1943 and fought in the Battle of Leyte Gulf during World War II, covers an area of 52 square miles. The Honolulu-based US Pacific Command covers a hundred square miles.
"You have to find these needles in a haystack, essentially, and you just can’t search through all the hay to do it," Crowder said. "No navy can be everywhere."
* * *
About 18 months ago the US Navy created the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command in response to the terror threat. The command is focused on explosives ordnance, WMD, security along waterfronts and threats posed by small boats.
Crowder, who graduated from the US Naval Academy in June 1974, was originally trained to go after large formations of ships, with the Soviet Union "kind of like our training aid."
After getting out of the quagmire in Vietnam, the US Navy phased out its small patrol boats and focused on the Soviet threat and a war at sea. Now it must prepare both for conventional warfare at sea and the unconventional war on terror.
Crowder can’t say if the threat has gone down since the months after 9/11: "You don’t know what you don’t know, but the threat is there and there’s a lot of ocean out there."
"It comes down to, information is key… sharing information and then being able to fuse that information that’s usable to the commander," he said.
Even the private sector is interested. Danish giant Maersk, with 500 ships and 1.4 million containers, is talking with the Americans about new security initiatives, including automatic ID systems on ships at sea. A system of monitoring merchant ship traffic in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea is being developed.
Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have banded together to fight piracy and terrorism in the Malacca Straits, one of the busiest commercial sea channels in the world.
Mistrust will have to be overcome, and navies will have to link up with each other to fight an unseen threat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SKETCHES By ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mistrust will have to be overcome, and navies will have to link up with each other to fight an unseen threat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Americans are building a thousand-ship navy, and no, we’re not getting any hand-me-downs from the naval buildup.
We will be part of that navy, if we’re not already, considering that the Arroyo administration has declared the country a staunch US ally in the war on terror.
Armed Forces chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon said the other day that if all the warships of the Philippine Navy were placed together end-to-end they would not cover a kilometer. It’s a testament to how poorly equipped our Navy is that we actually wondered if that was no exaggeration.
But the size of the naval fleet does not matter to the superpower that wants a thousand-ship navy. What matters is sharing information about security threats in the high seas, so that even if the US in fact has only about 280 naval vessels and does not intend to add 700 more, its partnerships with other navies around the world will make it seem as if it has a fleet of a thousand or more vessels deployed around the globe.
This is partly why the commander of the US Seventh Fleet is in town with his flagship, the USS Blue Ridge. "One of the reasons I am here is to talk to the Philippine Navy and see how we could operate together and better share information," Vice Adm. Doug Crowder told me the other day over lunch with US Ambassador Kristie Kenney and embassy press attaché Matthew Lussenhop.
The thousand-ship navy was conceived in 2005 by Adm. Michael Mullen, US chief of naval operations, and presented for the first time at an international sea power symposium in Newport, Rhode Island with naval officers from about 50 countries in attendance.
Crowder, who has been to the Philippines "about two dozen times," said the US initiative has been "enormously successful."
"It’s about a group of navies in the world doing what’s in their best interest and knowing that they’ll be more successful, because it is a global war on terror… if they share information with other navies," he said. "We’re gonna partner with as many nations… as we can."
It’s a partnership "not against things," he emphasized, "but for things – to keep things safe, to keep terrorism out of our seas."
* * *
The biggest hurdle for the world’s lone superpower, amid the debacle in Iraq, is overcoming mistrust of the Bush administration. The US must forge such partnerships and assist weak navies such as ours without raising protests about impinging on national sovereignty.
Mullen, who wants a new global maritime strategy for the US Navy, has said membership in the thousand-ship navy will be purely voluntary and will not infringe on sovereignty. Amid the protests over Iraq, the Americans are learning subtlety in providing aid.
Esperon, when asked about US support in the naval blockade of Sulu, would say only that if US ships are down south, "they must be in international waters."
The recent battle over custody of convicted rapist Daniel Smith, a US Marine lance corporal, has been used by certain groups to warn of the wages of dependence on US military assistance.
But so far there has been no groundswell for kicking out US troops once again, or for rejecting US aid or ending military cooperation between the two countries.
When even the most powerful navy in the world needs help from other countries, our own Navy can surely use all the help it can get.
Apart from the lack of capability to set up a real naval blockade of Sulu, our Navy and Coast Guard cannot keep out pirates, smugglers, poachers, or Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists from Indonesia.
* * *
The US Navy, like the rest of the major service commands, has had to adjust to a new threat – one where the enemy is not a country but certain groups whose operations are borderless, whose militants are ready to blow themselves up. In this asymmetrical warfare, powerful American battleships are vulnerable to attack from a tiny boat laden with explosives, as we saw in the 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden.
Apart from such direct attacks, counterterrorism officials worry about the use of commercial shipping containers – there are millions out there – to transport weapons of mass destruction.
"One of the things that the United States Navy has learned is that there’s no less ocean after 9/11 than there was before," Crowder told me. "But there’s more activity, there’s more piracy, there’s some lawlessness, there’s potential for terrorism at sea and of course the trafficking of weapons of mass destruction."
The Seventh Fleet, which was created in 1943 and fought in the Battle of Leyte Gulf during World War II, covers an area of 52 square miles. The Honolulu-based US Pacific Command covers a hundred square miles.
"You have to find these needles in a haystack, essentially, and you just can’t search through all the hay to do it," Crowder said. "No navy can be everywhere."
* * *
About 18 months ago the US Navy created the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command in response to the terror threat. The command is focused on explosives ordnance, WMD, security along waterfronts and threats posed by small boats.
Crowder, who graduated from the US Naval Academy in June 1974, was originally trained to go after large formations of ships, with the Soviet Union "kind of like our training aid."
After getting out of the quagmire in Vietnam, the US Navy phased out its small patrol boats and focused on the Soviet threat and a war at sea. Now it must prepare both for conventional warfare at sea and the unconventional war on terror.
Crowder can’t say if the threat has gone down since the months after 9/11: "You don’t know what you don’t know, but the threat is there and there’s a lot of ocean out there."
"It comes down to, information is key… sharing information and then being able to fuse that information that’s usable to the commander," he said.
Even the private sector is interested. Danish giant Maersk, with 500 ships and 1.4 million containers, is talking with the Americans about new security initiatives, including automatic ID systems on ships at sea. A system of monitoring merchant ship traffic in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea is being developed.
Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore have banded together to fight piracy and terrorism in the Malacca Straits, one of the busiest commercial sea channels in the world.
Mistrust will have to be overcome, and navies will have to link up with each other to fight an unseen threat.