Naval Power: Robert Gates Is No Henry Knox

This past Monday Secretary of Defense Robert Gates took on the U.S. Navy. In a speech to the Navy League he basically said that virtually the entire structure of today’s Navy was irrelevant to the threats of the future and too expensive to continue to build. Secretary Gates repeated his mantra that the U.S. Navy is larger (based on displacement) than the next thirteen largest with classes of ships such as aircraft carriers and large-deck amphibious ships unmatched in the world. The U.S. Navy has more carrier-capable aircraft, missile launch tubes and nuclear-powered submarines than all the rest of the world. According to the Secretary, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are either overbuilt for the irregular warfare threats we now face or becoming technologically overmatched by the long-range precision-strike threats of the future.

Secretary Gates’ assessment of the “bloated” size of the U.S. Navy is taken entirely out of context. It does not reflect the realities of distance, refit times, allies in different parts of the world or the fact that the U.S. Navy is the only force capable of securing the sea lanes and integrating the operations of its allies. Nor does he appear to understand how a modern ocean-going navy operates. As an erstwhile specialist on the Soviet Union he apparently has forgotten how the U.S. Navy planned to operate against the threat that country posed, one which included lots of missiles, an integrated surveillance network, hundreds of submarines and very powerful air defenses.

Towards the end of his speech, Secretary Gates made reference to one of his most distinguished predecessors, our first Secretary of War and the man who founded the U.S. Navy, Henry Knox. He noted that in order to garner congressional support for his shipbuilding program, Knox had to spread his program out among different yards in multiple states. According to Gates congressional support for the alternative engine and C-17 programs are modern examples of the same problem.

Unfortunately, Gates chose to emphasize the least remarkable feature of his predecessor’s tenure. The more remarkable feature was Knox’s understanding that the fledgling country needed a navy not just to protect its shores to deal with pirates (the irregular warfare problem of his day) but to project power globally against all threats. As he declared in 1794 on the passage of the act to construct the first six frigates: “. . .this second commencement of a navy for the United States should be worthy of their national character. That the vessels should combine such qualities of strength, durability, swiftness of sailing, and force, as to render them equal, if not superior, to any frigates belonging to any of the European Powers.”

Secretary Gates is no Henry Knox. He has no strategic vision for the Navy of the future. His focus is purely tactical and technical. He does not appreciate what Knox understood more than 200 hundred years ago, that the U.S. Navy has to be a strategic capability that can sail on an ocean and face any threat. Knox built a Navy to go in harms way; Gates wants to build one to avoid being sunk.