Chapter 7
Fu t ur e Nava l
Oper ations in
Asia and the
P a c ifi c
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7.1 Evolving Naval Forces to
Support Operations in Asia
and the Pacific
Admiral Timothy J. Keating
I think what I have agreed to do today is provide a fairly broad
overview of naval operations in Asia and the Pacific and then use
Admiral Timothy J. Keating (Retired) graduated from the U.S. Naval
Academy in 1971. After duty aboard USS Mason (DD 852) in the western Pacific, he completed flight training in August 1973. Admiral Keating
completed various assignments aboard USS Nimitz (CVN 68), USS Kitty
Hawk (CV 63), USS Enterprise (CVN 65), USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN
71), and the USS Nimitz (CVN 68), deploying to locations all over the
world. In addition, he participated in combat operations in support of
Operation Desert Storm aboard USS Saratoga (CV 60). Admiral Keating
held various other positions including Head of the Aviation Junior Officer
Assignments Branch, Naval Military Personnel Command; Deputy
Commander, Carrier Air Wing Seventeen; Chief of Naval Operations
Fellow with the Strategic Studies Group; Deputy Commander, Carrier Air
Wing Nine; Commander of CVW-9; Commander, Naval Strike Warfare
Center; Director, Aviation Officer Distribution Division; Deputy Director
for Operations (Current Operations/J33), Operations Directorate, the
Joint Staff; Commander of Carrier Group Five; Deputy Chief of Naval
Operations for Plans, Policy and Operations (N3/N5); Commander of
U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and U.S. Fifth Fleet; Director, Joint
Staff; Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command
and U.S. Northern Command. Admiral Timothy J. Keating retired in
December 2009 after serving nearly 3 years as the Commander of the
U.S. Pacific Command. His awards include the Defense Distinguished
Service Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters, Distinguished Service
Medal with Gold Star, Legion of Merit with three Gold Stars, Defense
Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal with Gold Star,
three Air Medals, Navy Commendation Medal with two Gold Stars
and Combat “V,” and various unit and campaign awards. He has received military decorations from Great Britain, Bahrain, Canada, Japan,
Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Singapore, and is a proud
Honorary Master Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy. He has more than
5000 flight hours and 1200 arrested landings.
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the remainder of my time to respond to your questions. First, though,
I want to briefly describe the role that U.S. naval forces played after
Hurricane Katrina. At the time, I had the privilege of commanding
the U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). We were involved
in a fairly big way, as it turns out.
You may recall that when Katrina came across southern Florida,
it did not seem like a big deal. However, when the storm reached
the Gulf, it intensified rapidly. Then it hung a hard right and boresighted New Orleans. At the last minute, the storm turned slightly
east and hit southern Mississippi square on. By that time, its intensity had lessened from category 5 to category 4, as I recall. We in
the USNORTHCOM Command Center were somewhat relieved
because it obviously could have been a lot worse. Please do not
misinterpret what I am saying. I do not mean for a second to diminish the hurricane’s impact on all those who were affected; we realized fully that southern Mississippi had been devastated. But, at
least temporarily, it seemed that New Orleans had been spared the
worst of the storm.
The next day, headlines in papers around the country reflected
that same feeling. “New Orleans Dodges Bullet” one said. Then, as
you know, everything changed. Late on Monday afternoon, we got
a phone call in the Command Center and the duty officer turned
to me and said “the 19th-street levee is leaking.” One of the officers
pulled up a topographical map of New Orleans, and we quickly
saw that the city was surrounded by water. Lake Pontchartrain lies
to the north, and the Gulf of Mexico lies to the south. Parts of New
Orleans lie as much as 80 feet below sea level. And so, at about
1630 that Monday afternoon, we realized that trouble was on the
way. Sure enough, during the night, the levee broke, and water,
being not very smart but quite obedient, went where it could go as
fast as it could get there. As a result, much of the city was awash.
The point of all that is that, before we were even up on the
Internet on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, naval forces
were moving to the New Orleans/southern Mississippi area. In fact,
the captain of the USS Bataan (LHD-5) did not wait for anyone to
call her. She simply moved the ship on her own initiative, without
waiting for orders. As a result, Bataan was first on the scene, with
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significant resources including landing craft and helicopters. Later,
we sent an aircraft carrier down as well as a hospital ship. And, as
you know, the U.S. Coast Guard also provided substantial assets.
So this incident, as well as day-to-day U.S. Pacific Command
(USPACOM) operations, aptly illustrates the remarkable capacity and capability resident in the U.S. Navy and our other armed
forces. These forces can be readily accessed, are available, and are
capable of performing tasks with little or no advance warning. This
capability made a huge difference in USNORTHCOM’s ability to
say to the Secretary of Defense and the President, in some very
tense moments, we have got 25 hospital beds, we have got medical personnel, and we have got dental personnel. In short, we have
all sorts of capability in a ship that can be positioned just 20 miles
off the coast.
Now let’s fast forward to USPACOM. For those of you who are
not familiar with the command, USPACOM’s area of responsibility
(AOR) extends from the west coast of the United States to the east
coast of Africa, although the U.S. Africa Command is taking a little
bit of the Indian Ocean. In the other direction, the AOR extends
from the North Pole to the South Pole. It includes the eastern half
of Russia along with Mongolia, China, India (but not Pakistan), and
on down through Australia and New Zealand. The USPACOM
AOR covers just more than 50% of the Earth’s surface and is home
to fully half of the Earth’s human population.
Those of us who have been in the armed services understand
that it is the best job in the world. It really is. There is so much
happening on a day-to-day basis. Despite the fact that national
security policy and national defense policy are run out of the
Pentagon, being 6000–7000 miles away from the flagpole has its
advantages. Most of the time, we are able to move forces around
on our own because we have operational control of those forces.
As USPACOM commander, I did not have to go to the Joint Forces
Command or the Joint Staff to get the Secretary of Defense to write
a deployment order. The forces were mine, if you will, and I could
move them from one location in the AOR to another as necessary.
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There is a point to all this. In the course of our travels throughout the Asia–Pacific region, we visited 30 of the 38 countries that
lie within the command’s geographic boundaries. We visited some
of them several times, and one of them—Japan—12 times. Some
countries you cannot visit often enough.
In each and every visit, regardless of the country or whether
we were meeting with senior ministry of defense officials, senior
military officers, senior diplomats, labor folks, energy folks, commerce folks, private industry, personnel in think tanks, or personnel participating in war games, there was a common element in
virtually every such interchange. We were invariably told: “You,
the United States of America, represented most frequently by U.S.
Pacific Command forces, are an indispensable element for peace
and stability in the region.”
Someone in every country, in one way or another, whether in
public or in a sidebar conversation, told us: “We can’t do what we
want to do without you.” Some of the people we met were pretty
subtle in expressing that feeling. Indonesia, for example, is a country
of staggering importance to us from both global and regional perspectives. It is home to 210 million people, the vast majority of them
Muslims. It is also a rich melting pot of ethnic and religious varieties.
We had just sent a hospital ship to Indonesia as part of our
Pacific Partnership program. We put a lot of doctors, nurses, engineers, and, yes, veterinarians on these ships, and we made ports
of call to take care of the people, their facilities, and their animals.
In Indonesia, the water buffalo is not only the family pet but it’s
also their John Deere tractor and Ford pickup. If Buffalo Bessie
gets sick, the family cannot tend to the crops and thus cannot eat
or earn any money. So veterinary medicine is a huge part of our
outreach program.
Shortly after we had sent the hospital ship to Indonesia, I went
down for a visit, expecting to receive verbal bouquets and bask in
the reflected glory from the ship’s visit. Although the Indonesian
leaders expressed their gratitude, they also said: “Next time, we
can do without the big white ship with the big red cross. To our
people, it denotes an over-reliance on your country and an inability
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on the part of our country’s leaders to satisfy the needs of our
people. We are grateful for the help, but we do not particularly
appreciate the symbol.”
So instead of sending a hospital ship, we now send C-17s and
C-130s, providing about the same care in a more understated
way. This seems to work better because Indonesia wants us to be
nearby. They do not want us there all the time. They do not want to
be an allied partner of the United States. They would like to be our
friend because we are an indispensable element of their strategy
for peace, stability, and security in the region.
Now let’s take a look at some economic facts that are a daily
concern to us at USPACOM as well as to countries such as China,
Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. As it turns out, 75–80% of the oil
that these countries consume comes through the Strait of Malacca. It
is a super highway of I-95 proportions. Every 7.5 minutes, a big ship
enters the Strait of Malacca, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Many
of those ships are carrying oil: 75% of China’s oil, 90% of Japan’s oil,
90% of Korea’s oil, and 90–95% of Taiwan’s oil arrives on bulk carriers that come through the Strait of Malacca. About 90% of the goods
that we in the United States consume or that our friends and allies
in Europe consume at one point or another in their development as
products are on ships that float somewhere in the Indian Ocean or
the Pacific Ocean. Forty percent of the world’s gross domestic product arises from countries in the Asia–Pacific region. It is an area of
staggering economic importance to us.
Most of that economic engine benefits considerably from free,
unfettered access to the maritime domain. This is the bond that
unites the countries in that region. USPACOM is the most visible
manifestation of that provision, that foundation. When folks say:
“Well, you must have really worried about China when you were
there at U.S. Pacific Command.” I answer, “Not so much. I believe
that in time, with concerted effort on our part, China will realize
they need not confront us.”
Cooperation and collaboration will produce a system of systems that assures them free, unfettered access to the maritime
domain, and all of our other friends and allies and partners, and
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that helps us, the United States, provide the assurance of a hedge
to every country in the world and every country in that AOR. To
some extent, China is concerned about Japan getting a little stronger and South Korea’s capacity as a developing power.
China also wants to be able to go into the Indian Ocean, and
they watch very warily as India’s navy gets stronger and India’s
air force gets stronger. So China likes us to be around. We should
continue to work with them and draw them out and assure them
that we have no hegemonic intentions—we do not want to put
an American flag in downtown Beijing, we do not want to put an
American flag in any country in the AOR; we want to be able to
assure folks that our reasons for being there are peaceful and that
we want to help them help themselves.
The instrument of foreign policy that works best in that part
of the world is the U.S. Navy. The junior officers at the command
coined a phrase, “virtual presence equals actual absence.” That
is the one point I would emphasize to you when you talk about
climate and energy. There is no substitute, in both my personal
and my professional opinion, for American forces being present.
And as the Navy works through the challenges, and the Air Force
works through the challenges, and, to a lesser extent, our Army
and Marine Corps, because those forces that are generally in garrison are of less utility to the commander of USPACOM, unless we
have the lift capability to move those forces out of garrison and be
present for exercises and training in the countries of the AOR.
If we do not have a Navy of sufficient numbers and an Air
Force of sufficient numbers and lift capability, we are not present. We are absent. You can do all of the video teleconferencing
you want. You can have as many meetings as you want. But you
have to be out there and train with, and develop the trust and
confidence of, and build relationships with, the younger men and
women in the armed forces of the AOR so that they can grow up
knowing that we are not going to leave them high and dry.
A great way of manifesting that faith, trust, and confidence
that they should have in us is through humanitarian assistance and
disaster relief operations like those after Katrina. I cannot recount
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for you the number of times that a hurricane, a typhoon, a cyclone,
or an earthquake has hit, or a cold snap has affected hundreds of
thousands of people in the USPACOM AOR, and because we are
there, because we are present, or we have sufficient reach and
lift, we can provide assistance immediately. Such operations have
dramatic impact.
Several years ago, a devastating tsunami hit the western tip of
Indonesia. Although the first forces to get on scene came by air, the
second forces and the most sustainable forces came by sea. When
Myanmar was hit by a tropical cyclone, I flew out there to offer the
use of some of our medium- and heavy-lift helicopters and C-130s.
We and our allies had deployed four ships off the coast. But the
Myanmar government said, “No thanks, we don’t need the help.”
Thousands of lives were lost as a result; it was one of the significant
regrets I have in my tour there.
When an earthquake and a bout of extremely cold weather
occurred in China, the first American expression of support came
in the form of two C-17s loaded with relief supplies. We had to
get permission to let them land, but that is the authority that we
enjoyed at USPACOM. So it is presence. It is readiness. It is partnership. These three essential elements of USPACOM strategy, I
am convinced, provide the basis for success in the region.
That part of the world is critical to us from the perspectives
of economics, energy, and the environment. We need to maintain free and unfettered access to the maritime domain and the
air domain. It is easy for folks in the Navy to think of USPACOM
as a Navy command. However, a senior Air Force officer once
reminded me that there is air over every drop of water out there, so
it should be an Air Force command as well. At any rate, think about
how our Navy and our Air Force in particular are going to have to
manage the challenges confronting them in terms of energy. I will
talk about one last point on climate here in just a second.
How do we manage those challenges so as to be able to assure
our friends, allies, and partners in the region that we will be present—not virtually, but actually? We need to be there in times of
crisis, in times of training, and in times of readiness preparation.
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Then, when we are done, we will leave. But once we are over the
horizon, you do not know how far away we are. It is a wonderful
thing to be able to say yeah, we are nearby. It is a relative term. We
could be 2 miles over the horizon or 200 or 2000, but we will get
there in a big hurry.
Let’s talk for a minute about climate change. Twice a year,
USPACOM gathers many of the chiefs of defense from all of the
countries in the region. The most recent meeting of this type was
held in Indonesia, at Bali, just after Thanksgiving 2008. As I recall,
we had about 28 chiefs of defense or chairmen of other countries’ versions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was just after President
Obama had won the election. I soon discovered that I had underestimated the impact of Barack Obama being the president-elect
in the Pacific region. These gentlemen were consumed with hope.
Expectations were going through the roof.
As usual, we had arrived armed with briefing books on exercises and power projection and seminars and war games and all
that. But many of the countries in attendance, especially the smaller
countries, the island nations, wanted to talk about climate change.
For nations like Tonga, which it turns out is an important partner of
ours, climate change is turning out to be an existential threat.
They are worried about their country going away, and they
expect the United States to help. They expect President Obama to
provide some assistance. Most of their islands are just a foot or two
above sea level. A sea level rise of 18 inches will reduce their territorial land mass by 75%. So they’re worried about climate change.
They’re not the only country out there that will be adversely
affected. Through our ability to be present, we can help manage
these challenges. Whether it is China and energy and oil and
environment, or Tonga and the rising seas, the one element that
countries in the Pacific region depend on and trust are the forces
of the United States of America. I will be happy to entertain
your questions.
Chapter 7 Future Naval Operations in Asia and the Pacific
Q&
A
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with Admir al
Timothy J. Keating
you spoke about the difference between actual presQ: Earlier,
ence and virtual absence. Now that you are retired, can you
comment perhaps more specifically as to the adequacy of USPACOM’s
capacity to provide presence in terms of aircraft, ships, and so forth?
Admiral Timothy J. Keating : I will try. One can easily get into
some controversial discussions here. While still on active duty, I
made some comments that, although appreciated inside of the
Pentagon, were not universally endorsed. At the time, the Navy
had plans to build some very high-end, very sophisticated combatants. Out in USPACOM, we like the Arleigh Burke class DDG
destroyers. On the aviation side, the department is committed to
the F-35, the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). Out in USPACOM, we like
F-16s, F-15s, and F-18s because we have them in sufficient numbers to execute the plans that are on the shelf, but certainly in
greater numbers than we could have 10, 20 years from now. That
goes for ships as well, not to mention tankers and heavy airlift
capacity and sealift capacity. Those of us who have spent a lot of
time in the Pacific tend to agree with Napoleon that quantity has a
quality all its own. As a result, I tend to prefer highly capable, albeit
not the most advanced fifth-plus generation, military air capability
and very capable surface capability in numbers that we can use
to sustain or even enhance presence and crisis response. I like the
DDG-51 and the F-18EF over the alternatives. So, I have provided
a long answer to a short question. We do not have as much as we
would like. Who does? If current budgets are executed, if the current program is executed as is designed, I think we will be in more
trouble than we know 5–25 years from now because we will just
be out of certain elements that are essential to USPACOM.
We have B-2s and F-22s. We have incorporated them, as you
might imagine, in the plans that we have on the shelf. And we use
them. We are also making use of a variety of unmanned aircraft.
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But there comes a time when you simply need numbers, and I do
not think we are going to have enough.
could you highlight a few successes of military-to-military
Q: Sir,
engagements with foreign nations to build capacity for military adaptation to climate change?
Admiral Timothy J. Keating : We conduct an exercise called
Cobra Gold annually in Thailand. Five nations are principal players;
10 nations attend in observer status. Soldiers and Marines storm
ashore, ships shoot, airplanes fly, and there is a United Nations
(UN) peacekeeping aspect to it now that was not there 5 years ago.
From an environmental impact perspective, this is a very
kinetic activity, but the government of Thailand has told me that
the beaches are cleaner after the exercise than they were before it
took place. The land is in better shape after the exercise than it was
before. Countries in that part of the world understand and appreciate the sense of pride we have in leaving it better than we found it.
So that is a kind of a second-order effect. It may not directly
address the question you are asking, but there are points in the
training programs that are sensitive to the environment and sensitive to energy consumption. However, if you want to fly, if you
want to storm ashore, if you want to shoot, you are going to have
to expend some energy. We are paying closer attention to it today
by far than we did when I was a captain, much less a lieutenant. As a rule however, our exercises are not constructed with the
express purpose of accounting for energy and climate considerations, but we work hard to have such considerations included
during planning.
I wanted to ask you about climate predictions in your
Q: Sir,
AOR. Are they adequate? Were you able to obtain the information that you needed? Do you need better environmental assessment
and forecasting tools?
Admiral Timothy J. Keating : We spend considerably more
time today worrying about the environment, the climate, and the
weather than we did when I was a junior officer. We often have
to move forces out of the way of weather, which is perhaps obvi-
Chapter 7 Future Naval Operations in Asia and the Pacific
349
ous. More critically, we also move forces in behind weather patterns, so as to provide assistance to Manila when a 30-hour deluge
leaves 2 feet of water in the streets and the only things that can
float around are shallow water boats, landing craft, and amphibious vehicles off U.S. Navy amphibious ships. So, we pay close
attention to weather for that purpose.
As for the role of meteorology in joint operations, although
weather can occasionally be a “no-go” factor, most of the time
we are going to lean into it. If the weather proves to be insurmountable, we will hold what we have until it clears. Although
our meteorologists usually are not the determining factor in deciding whether we conduct some operation, they have more input
than they used to. And USPACOM and USNORTHCOM, we have
crackerjack meteorologists, but they are in a supporting role.
question is about contingency plans to deal with the effects
Q: My
of climate change. You mentioned Tonga, but you could also
have talked about the Maldives as well as some other places. Although
the Department of Defense (DoD) may not have the lead in dealing with
such eventualities, do we need to be thinking about contingency plans
for these places, especially if people are relying on us as their friends? We
probably have a little bit of time, at least, to develop plans and put them
on the shelf.
Admiral Timothy J. Keating : I would bet that folks would say
we are not doing enough right now. At USPACOM, we did not
stop everything we were doing to begin to address Tonga’s issues
or American Samoa’s issues. Life could easily change for many of
the island nations in the Pacific region, and for some of them in
a very big way. The efforts that we have undertaken so far are at
best rudimentary, which may be an unsatisfactory answer. All of us
understand that the challenge of managing the wolf closest to the
sled is not just a glib response, but a fact. So I would say we would
get not a passing grade and we are not shooting ahead of the duck.
Work needs to be done. We are not doing much. Another
important consideration is, who has the lead? Is it the State
Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID), the Department of Commerce, or the Department of
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Homeland Security (DHS)? Some of the islands of concern are
American protectorates, and so it would become a DHS lead, perhaps. Overall though, I do not think we have a satisfactory answer
on this.
am interested in your perspective on a comment that was
Q: Imade
last year at an Arctic conference at the Naval War
College. A representative from Japan asked: “If the United states shifts its
focus to the Arctic, who is going to be in the Pacific?”
Admiral Timothy J. Keating : Well, let me come at it a slightly
different way, but I hope I answer your question in so doing. When
I made my first visit to Japan, I was scheduled to meet the prime
minister. So while getting prepped for the meeting, I visited the
ambassador and the country team at our embassy and sat through
reviews on a host of issues—economic, environmental, military,
home porting, nuclear carrier, Japanese maritime self-defense
force, and so on. We ran through all of the issues that we thought
that the prime minister might possibly bring up.
When I finally met the prime minister, the first words out of
his mouth were: “Can I assume that the nuclear umbrella of the
United States will continue to extend over Japan for the foreseeable
future?” Of course that was true, but he just wanted to ask it of
some guy wearing a U.S. uniform. Of course, it is a much broader
policy issue than what little Timmy Keating thinks about it, but I
felt safe in saying it was true. So all of these countries look to us in
ways that we do not necessarily realize.
As I mentioned, I had spent a lot of time with desk officers
getting ready for this meeting. It never crossed our minds that he
would be thinking in truly global strategic terms. Over time, however, I learned that many of the countries in that particular part of
the world have such concerns. They think, they feel, they worry
that we are distracted by Iraq and Afghanistan and therefore that
we are not paying as much attention to them. It is critical for us
to be there, to go out, to leave the Office of the Chief of Naval
Operations (OPNAV) and go visit. It is easy to say. I know it is a
hell of a long way. I understand all that. So your question about do
Chapter 7 Future Naval Operations in Asia and the Pacific
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they worry about our being distracted in pursuit of this gold, the
brass ring that is represented in the Arctic, I think they do.
An area where such concerns might be manifested is in the
South China Sea, where there are similar disagreements over ownership and freedom of navigation. Vietnam, Brunei, the Philippines,
Malaysia, and China have all made claims to water and minerals
and resources on the bottom of the South China Sea. When we
discuss such issues with our Chinese colleagues, they stop and say,
“Wait a minute, what did you just call it? The South China Sea.
You see. We rest our case.” They think it is their water, and the
stuff underneath it and the small islands on it, they think are theirs.
As I noted, several other countries in the region have differing
opinions. Those of us who have flown off of carriers and steamed
in ships and submarines and flown in airplanes over it also tend to
have a different perspective from the Chinese. So, I worry about
confrontation in the South China Sea.
Again, I think there is reason for concern that countries in the
Asia–Pacific region would worry about our being distracted by the
siren call of all of the wonderful things could happen in the Arctic.
I do not see it happening quickly. It will be incumbent upon us to
reassure our friends, allies, and partners, through continued presence, through visits, and by inviting foreign military officers and foreign government officials to attend conferences like this. Doing so
will pay massive dividends, and it is a relatively small investment.
Afterward, they will go home and say, “Those folks back in the
United States, they are sweating it! They are worried about it!” It is
that reassurance that I think can disabuse them of the notion that
we are going to leave them high and dry while we chase that brass
ring in the Arctic.
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7.2 Roundtable 5: Operations
in Asia and the Pacific
Moderator’s Summary
Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt
To begin, I want to re-emphasize the objective of this panel. It
is entitled Naval Operations in Asia and the Pacific. We are supposed to discuss how climate and energy may affect how the United
States organizes, trains, and equips naval forces in the region.
The moderator is Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt, U.S. Navy (Retired).
Rear Admiral McDevitt is a CNA Vice President and Director of CNA
Strategic Studies. CNA is a not-for-profit federally funded research center in Washington, DC. Strategic Studies conducts research and analyses that focus on strategy, political–military issues, and regional security
studies. It has widely regarded analytical programs that focus on East
Asia, India, the Middle East, irregular warfare in Afghanistan, Iran, and
Europe. It also has growing programs that address sub-Saharan Africa
and Latin America. During his navy career, Rear Admiral McDevitt
held four at-sea commands, including an aircraft carrier battle group.
He received a B.A. in U.S. History from the University of Southern
California and a master’s degree in American Diplomatic History from
Georgetown University. He was a Chief of Naval Operations Strategic
Studies Group Fellow at the Naval War College. He is also a graduate of
the National War College in Washington, DC. Rear Admiral McDevitt
was the Director of the East Asia Policy office for the Secretary of
Defense during the George H. W. Bush Administration. He also served
for 2 years as the Director for Strategy, War Plans, and Policy (J-5)
for the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Command (CINCPAC). He
concluded his 34-year active-duty career as the Commandant of the
National War College in Washington, DC. In addition to his responsibilities leading the CNA Strategic Studies, he has been an active participant in conferences and workshops pertaining to security issues related
to maritime security and U.S. security policy and has had a number
of papers published in edited volumes on these subjects. His personal
expertise is East Asia, and his most recent research focus has been the
maritime dimension of China’s national strategy.
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Let me just say that I think Admiral Keating covered a lot of
that already. He certainly emphasized the importance of capacity,
made the point that we have the capability to do lots of things,
including humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, the kinds of
operations that can be precipitated by adverse weather or by the
environmental effects arising from climate change. The issue for the
future is not so much that we do not have the capabilities, because
the U.S. military routinely demonstrates that we have the capabilities to respond to all sorts of natural disasters; the key question in
the future will be, if weather changes the periodicity of these sorts
of events, will we have the capacity to respond?
Admiral Keating also mentioned the reaction of countries
around the region to the effects of climate change, and he used
the example of the chief of defense of Tonga, who was worried about inundation as sea level rises. As we have heard, the
AORs for U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) and U.S. Central
Command (USCENTCOM) cover a large expanse of the Pacific
and Indian Oceans, and those two bodies of water include many,
many island nations. There are also immense archipelagic states in
Indonesia and the Philippines that have thousands of islands, many
of which are low lying. The prospect of sea-level rise is a serious
issue for these countries. Based on my own participation in some
of the events that Admiral Keating mentioned, I would like to reemphasize that this is not simply an abstract problem for many of
these countries. This is a no-kidding, serious thing that they talk
about a lot.
Another climate-related concern of particular interest in the
region is that of climate- or weather-induced human migration. In
January 2010, for example, I had the opportunity to talk to some
Indians in New Delhi who felt that they would eventually be
facing a really big illegal immigration problem. They were concerned about what might happen when sea-level rise compounds
the severity of the typhoons that come up the Bay of Bengal and
hit Bangladesh. What if increased flooding becomes a permanent
problem? Where are all those people going to go? The Indians
think that they are going to head for India, and they are not very
happy about the prospect.
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7.3 Expeditionary Energy:
The Marine Corps’ Perspective
Colonel Bob Charette, Jr.
I have spent a lot of years as a serial abuser of energy, flying
F-18s off of aircraft carriers. And so now I am here. Still, it is interesting when you look at what we are trying to do. We hope to realize
our Commandant’s vision of the future, and that is staged in 2025
when your standard barrel of oil costs about $120, according to
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates, and 76% of
the world’s proven oil reserves are in the hands of really bad people.
As we have already heard, every $10 increase in the cost of a barrel
Colonel Bob “Brutus” Charette, Jr., enlisted in the Marine Corps
Reserves in 1985 and attended boot camp at Parris Island, SC. He then
attended Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia, and was
commissioned August 1986. He has earned a B.S. in chemistry from
Delaware Valley College, an M.B.A. from the University of Phoenix, and
a master’s of national security strategy from the National War College.
Early in his career, he served with VMFA-235, 3d Battalion/3d Marines,
VMFA-312, and VMFA-451. He was the Executive Officer of VMFA-314,
the Commanding Officer of VMFA-323, and the Operations Officer
for Marine Aircraft Group 11. He also had a tour with Joint Staff
J8. Colonel Charette currently is the Director, Expeditionary Energy
Office. Colonel Charette participated directly in the following combat
operations: Operation Desert Storm, Kuwait/Iraq; Operation Southern
Watch, Iraq; Operation Deliberate Force, Bosnia; Operation Enduring
Freedom, Afghanistan; and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq. His awards
include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal with two gold stars, Air
Medal with combat distinguishing device, Air Medal Strike/Flight Award
numeral six, Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with combat distinguishing device and two gold stars, Navy and Marine Corps
Achievement Medal, and seven Sea Service Deployment ribbons. He
has earned “Top Ten” honors with Carrier Air Wings 8 and 9. Colonel
Charette was awarded the 1996 Alfred A. Cunningham Award for the
Marine Corps’ Aviator of the Year.
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of oil pretty much exceeds the procurement budget of the Marine
Corps by a billion dollars.
By 2025, we will be looking at a bill of $4 billion coming at
the department, if EIA is correct. And not only is that bill coming at
us, but it is also coming at us from really bad people. As we have
found in Afghanistan and just about every war we have ever fought
in, some of that money goes right into the hands of the people that
we are trying to get rid of. The process of moving supplies and fuel
from Pakistan to Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province, where
our Marines are centered, takes about 45 days because those supplies must be delivered over some of the most dangerous terrain
in the world.
As it turns out, a lot of the Marines’ logistics support in Pakistan
and Afghanistan is contracted. Some of those people are paying
bribes to the Taliban and others. In fact, some experts estimate that
as much as 10% of the money that we pay to contractors goes right
into the hands of the Taliban, who then use it to build improvised
explosive devices or buy weapons and ammunition to use against
us. Then, once the fuel and other supplies get into Afghanistan, we
have Marines on the road hauling it to the places where we need it
or protecting those who are hauling it. So the Commandant’s looking at the future. He is seeing 2025 as a train wreck when you talk
about costs of fossil fuels, when you talk about who those fossil
fuels belong to, and when you consider that our dependence on
those fuels continues to grow.
So he has charged me to go out there and figure out ways
to get our Marines off the road, make us more combat effective,
and get us off of fossil fuels and onto alternate energy sources that
impose less of a burden. So we have been pushing industry around
a lot lately. We set up an expeditionary forward operating base in
Quantico to try to do that. We invited about 200 different vendors
to show us what they had. From those, we identified 27 that we
thought had a product that we could bring to the field right away to
help get us off the roads hauling fuel and water. In the near future,
we are going to choose a couple of them and we are going to bring
them to Afghanistan to see whether they can actually reduce the
effort that we devote to hauling fuel and water.
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So that is part of it. We also want to ensure that we can enhance
our ability to provide combat effectiveness at a reasonable cost to
the American people. We can agree from the outset that that process will invariably entail some cost. We want to make sure that
the cost is reasonable. In the process, we hope to become more
combat effective and less reliant on supply lines. We realize that
there is little likelihood that liquid fuels can be totally removed
from the battlefield. Maybe they will be made out of algae or whale
dung or whatever—not our thing—but the Navy is going to figure
that out and the Air Force is going to figure out what the next fuel
is going to be or from where it is going to come.
And as Marines, we will just pick it up and make sure our
equipment can use it. Deciding what fuel to use is not our lane.
Our lane is at the expeditionary edge, finding those solutions that
help make us an autonomous force.
There is another side of the issue that is also important. Marine
operations will invariably intersect with the lives of the people who
live in whatever country in which we are working. And that world
is getting hotter; it is getting more crowded. Some places lack adequate fresh water. So one of the things we are looking at is whether
we can provide leave-behind capabilities that will help the people
who live in such places.
Recently, someone donated eight solar water purifiers to the
DoD. About a month ago, we took them to Afghanistan and gave
them to the Afghan people. Each of these purifiers produces 30,000
gallons of fresh water a day. The Afghans are ecstatic about the
water; this is the first time they have ever had fresh water in their
villages. But as soon as they got used to their new water supply,
they asked is if they could plug their cell phones into the power
supply. So, it is really interesting, what the availability of energy can
do. Not only are we going to try to get ourselves off the road, but if
we bring these things to others, then they become our friends, they
are a little easier to deal with, they tell us where the bad guys are,
and they help us out when we need it. And also it is the right thing
to do, to take care of these folks.
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This summer, U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) is going to
test some other water-purification systems in Thailand. They will
be looking at renewable solutions that can be turned over to the
population when the exercise is over. Should sea-level rise reduce
the availability of fresh water, we have to figure out how to take the
water that is there, without a big demand for diesel. Today a typical Afghan farmer spends about $500 a month for diesel, and he is
not making that kind of income off his farm. So there is a desperate need to get these kinds of solutions out to those who currently
have to rely on expensive fuels.
So hopefully I have provided some useful background on why
the Commandant decided to create this office.
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7.4 Climate Change
Implications for the
Royal Australian Navy
Commander Stephen Cole
My objective today is to provide a perspective from someone
who lives in the South Pacific. This is a photo of Sydney, and I live
not far from there, but that is our main fleet base right in the heart
of Sydney. What I would like to talk to you about are some of the
key challenges posed by climate change to the Royal Australian
Navy and to those who reside in the Pacific region.
We have already heard several presentations on climate
change, so I will go over this fairly quickly. One of the issues that
I bring to my people at home when I speak to them is that we are
talking about fossil fuels here. We are talking about sequestration
of carbon that occurred over a period of 60 million years, some
300 million years ago, and we are digging up this material and we
are burning it. It was stored as coal, oil, gas, etc., and that accumulated CO2 is being released rapidly into the atmosphere by human
activities. And Australians are the source of some of that activity.
Commander Stephen Cole is a Reserve officer in the Royal Australian
Navy with 25 years service as a seaman officer on Navy landing craft and
patrol boats, and as a diving officer. Steve then worked as Port Services
Manager at Darwin Naval Base for some years and led the organization
during the East Timor crisis in 1999. Steve joined Navy Headquarters
as Navy Environment Manager in 2001 to help guide environmental
policy and compliance of the service. Key areas of focus include disposal of obsolete vessels, compliance with international conventions,
and mitigation measures to manage potential environmental impacts.
Before his Defense service, Steve was a lecturer in the Science faculty at
Charles Darwin University, having previously completed a B.Sc. (Hons.)
in marine biology and a Ph.D. in eco-physiology. An ongoing interest is to understand the impacts of climate change on the Australian environment.
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Some 85% of our electrical energy is provided by coal. In
my lifetime, I have been involved with climate change research. I
started doing my undergraduate studies around 1980, and at that
time I had an infrared gas analyzer that I used to measure plant
photosynthesis. In the early 1980s, when I zeroed out the gas analyzer at the start of my measurements, it showed an atmospheric
CO2 concentration of about 338 parts per million. Figure 1 shows
an almost lineal increase in CO2 levels; currently it is up around
380 parts per million. So in the time that I have been involved
in the science of climate change, we have seen about a 20–25%
increase in CO2 levels.
Figure 1 is an interesting graph, for those of you who have not
seen it before, because the black line is the South Pacific increase,
and, in the Northern Hemisphere locations, you can see a distinct
sawtooth pattern. And I find it really interesting. You can look at
these graphs and you can see that the Northern Hemisphere has
most of the land in the world. The Southern Hemisphere is mostly
oceans. And so the Northern Hemisphere pattern is superimposed
with the summer–winter cycle of productivity.
Figure 1. Carbon Dioxide and the Atmosphere
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As for climate change challenges, the fourth Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change report stated, “Warming of the climate
system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of
increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea
level.” [1] Note that the statement uses the word “unequivocal.”
We are seeing changes to air and ocean temperatures. The vast
majority of glaciers in the world are retreating. We are also seeing
reductions in ice caps and rising sea level.
I am now going to discuss some of the regional impacts that are
likely from climate change. The west Pacific and the Pacific region
differ substantially from the Northern Hemisphere, and I will talk a
little bit about that. I will talk about some of the vulnerabilities that
the Royal Australian Navy faces and some of the challenges they
face. And I will talk about some of the strategies that we might be
able to use to avoid those vulnerabilities becoming serious.
So first, the primary effects of climate change that we are likely
to see include coastal inundation, more frequent and heavier precipitation events, and more intense and longer droughts (Figure 2).
Those of you who know a little bit about Australia will know
that Australia is often referred to rather poetically as “the land of
drought and flooding rain.” Well, what climate change is telling us
is that this is going to become a lot worse.
Figure 2. Primary Effects of Climate Change
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I currently live in Canberra, the capital of Australia, not far from
Sydney. Over the last 10 years, Canberra has had its three hottest years on record. We have had 9 years of substandard rainfall,
and, in one of those years, we received about 20% of our annual
rainfall. The one year that we did have average rainfall, it only just
met the average. So over the last 10 years, Canberra is about 4 feet
short of the cumulative amount of rainfall that it should have had
in that period. When I speak to people in Canberra, I tell them
that what we are seeing is the effects of 2°C of climate change
because that is what the model predictions for Southern Australia
are, about a 25% decrease in rainfall. Some of the issues include
higher sea states and wind speeds as well as resource scarcity,
particularly water.
As I said, Australia is a dry continent. In fact, it is the driest
inhabited continent on the planet. Large parts of Australia are
already experiencing a serious water shortage. We will see degradations to natural habitat and a reduction in the resilience of
species to cope with these changes, and so there will be changes
to distributions of species. Many of these things that we are seeing
here are critical for countries of the southwest Pacific in particular.
We will see increasing temperatures; in fact, we are already seeing
those increasing temperatures in Australia with these record-setting years over in the last decade.
The implication for rising sea level in Australian waters is a bit
of a tricky thing. Most of you will understand that sea level has a
contribution from thermal expansion. As the water gets hotter, it
expands. And there is also a contribution from the polar ice cap,
melting of ice caps and glaciers, etc. In Australia it is about half
and half: the two are causing the sea-level rise. Thus far, we have
seen about 6–7 inches of sea-level rise; the Australian Antarctic
Division’s latest studies predict an additional sea level rise of
between 1.0 and 1.2 meters (around 40 inches) by 2100. [2] Those
estimates, however, are probably still conservative.
As I have said, the primary causes of sea-level rise are ice melt
and thermal expansion of the ocean. As a result, in some locations
you will get a larger sea-level rise rate than in another location.
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The iceberg shown in Figure 3 broke off from Antarctica earlier
this year. It is about twice the size of the Australian capital territory
or, for you Americans, about four times the size of Rhode Island.
As you may be aware, Antarctica is an unusual continent in that
a significant portion of West Antarctica is actually well below sea
level. The ground there is covered by an ice cap that is roughly 3
kilometers thick. Between the ice cap and the bedrock beneath
is a layer of water that is between 100 and 500 meters deep.
One of the many climate unknowns is how quickly that system
will become unstable. There is a lot of research going on in the
Antarctic Division in Australia in an attempt to understand what
the implications are for sea-level rise if there is an instability in the
west Antarctic ice sheet.
As shown in Figure 4, measured sea-level rise at Sydney currently stands at about 10 millimeters per year, although the rate is
accelerating. The problem that we have and that I foresee is that
this temperature that we are expecting over this century is unusual
in at least the previous 1300 years. One has to go back around
125,000 years ago to find a time that was warmer than it is now.
Figure 3. Regional Effects of Climate Change
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Figure 4. Coastal Inundation Facts [3]
At that time, sea level stabilized 4–6 meters higher than it is today.
Given our predilection as a species for living on the coast and the
incredible density of infrastructure on the coast, I find it difficult
to understand how, as a society, we can cope with 4–6 meters of
sea-level rise, if that eventuates.
It is quite clear that temperatures are increasing. You can see
it on the graph provided as Figure 5. This is one of many graphs
Figure 5. Rate of Energy Consumption with
Increased Temperature
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available that show this increase in temperature that is being caused
by climate change impacts. That will only lead to higher energy
consumption. Already in Australia we are seeing an explosion in
the numbers of air-conditioning systems fitted to houses. So it is
difficult to see how we can constrain our energy consumption in a
situation in which we are getting significant temperature increases.
Figure 6 shows the storm incidence in the North Atlantic, but I
can assure you it is exactly the same in the area in which I live. The
problem that it creates for us is that because there is more energy
coming into the system, the storms are liable to be more violent,
with higher wind speeds and great sea states. And that creates
real challenges for operating and also increased responsibilities for
search and rescue and aid to the civil community.
I would also like to point out some of the key issues that I feel
are a little underestimated with regard to climate change. The most
important impact for the Australian Navy is liable to be related to
infrastructure. We have roughly the same value of infrastructure in
our shore establishments as we do in our 60 ships and aircraft. But
there is not as much focus on the infrastructure because it just is
Figure 6. Number of Severe Storms in the North Atlantic
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not as interesting. Because all of our infrastructure is on the coast,
it is vulnerable to sea-level rise. It is vulnerable to changes in intensity of storms. And so we will see the types of problems outlined
in Figure 7.
The first example of sea-level-rise impact will be through storm
water drainage-type systems, which require a head to allow the
water to flow. And once you lose that head, or part of it, these
systems break down. And having spoken to other navies, they
have similar issues with infrastructure that is aged and at the limits
of its capability. Coping with increased stresses will require that
money be spent to repair the systems. There are liable to be issues
related to the performance of breakwaters and other sea mitigation
devices. Depth clearance will be an issue. Wave action can pop
the wharf off its footing, so we are going to have to start looking at
these issues. So there is a propensity for more maintenance, which
will drive up the costs for these systems. There will likely be loss
of some coastal facilities simply because they do not have enough
height above sea level.
As I have said, the problems in the South Pacific, and in the
Pacific in general, are very different from those in the Northern
Hemisphere. We have to remember that many of the people who
live in these countries are subsistence farmers or subsistence fishers.
Figure 7. Climate Change Infrastructure Implications
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They rely on a lot of foreign exchange coming from tourism. So the
health of their coral reefs and the health of their ecosystem are
fundamental to their survival. Climate change predictions include
bleaching of coral reefs as well as damage to fishery stocks, movements of some fishery stocks, and loss of others. Many of these
countries are not currently managing their fisheries in particularly
sustainable ways. So there is potential for loss of fisheries. There is
potential for loss of coral reefs. Such issues are very much at the
heart of the problem for many of these nations that rely on tourism
for the majority of their foreign exchange.
It also seems likely that climate change will have a destabilizing
influence on regional security (Figure 8). There is even the potential for loss of some sovereign nations, one of which is the tiny
island country of Kiribati. Kiribati is pretty easy to find on a globe.
Look for the equator and then find the spot where the equator
meets 180 degrees of longitude—the International Dateline. The
island of Kiribati occupies that spot. It is home to a few thousand
people who rely on subsistence agriculture. Unfortunately, their
land is only a couple of feet above sea level. Once they are inundated, they have nowhere to live. So, if you want to think about the
nations that will be the first to be impacted and lost as a result of
climate change, the Pacific is where you have to look, and Kiribati
is probably the most vulnerable of all of those nations.
Figure 8. Impact of Climate Change on Regional Countries
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This will lead inevitably to the appearance of climate refugees
in this region. It is interesting to note that New Zealand has already
offered to take the entire nation of Kiribati when their country goes
under. When that happens, I think it will be a walk-up call for all
of us, alerting us that we need to do something about this issue. I
hope that it will serve as a catalyst to get further action on climate
change. It is quite clear, also, that increased defense civil community aid will be required. Those people will need to be evacuated.
They will need support.
In terms of operational impacts on the Royal Australian Navy,
I believe it is very similar to all of the statements that have been
made with regard to the U.S. Navy. We have particular vulnerabilities because we have a smaller Navy, and most of our platforms
are significantly smaller than those used by the U.S. Navy. Figure 9
shows helicopter operations on the left and replenishment at sea
on the right. Both of those activities are limited by sea state and
wind speed. All of the predictions for our region are that sea states
and wind speeds will get higher. If that happens, it has the potential
to impose limits on when these activities can be undertaken.
Second, in terms of operational impacts, illegal fishing is already
a large issue for Australia. We manage our fisheries resources very
Figure 9. Operational Impacts as a Result of Climate Change
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closely, and so we tend to get other nations’ fishermen coming into
our Economic Exclusion Zone to take fish. We typically have to
bring in 600–800 illegal fishing vessels each year. But I expect that
those numbers will increase because the effects of climate change
mean that fishing will become less predictable and there will be
more pressure on the system, so less fish.
Search and rescue is bound to increase. You have probably
seen this photo of the MS Explorer, which hit ice and foundered
a year or so ago (Figure 10). Australia is responsible for providing search-and-rescue capability over about one-seventh of the
world’s ocean area—a huge area. We already anticipate that the
increase in tourism that will come as ice diminishes in the Southern
Ocean, and the increased fishing access that will go on as conditions become more mild in the Southern Ocean, will mean that
there will be more ships and more aircraft and more fishing vessels operating there. As a result, it is more likely that you will have
problems like this occurring.
In terms of resilience to climate change, I think it is fairly easy
to say that we need to get bigger platforms. One of the challenges
to operating in high sea states and high wind speeds in small
vessels is that it is pretty uncomfortable. As you can see on the
Figure 10. Additional Operational Impacts as a Result
of Climate Change
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left in Figure 11, we have been using LPA ships that are ex-U.S.
Navy ships. They are soon to be replaced in the next few years
by a Spanish-designed landing helicopter dock (shown in the right
panel of Figure 11). That represents about a threefold increase in
the size of the vessel.
Although climate change has not motivated that change, it will
assist us in meeting some of the challenges that we can foresee
from climate change. Something similar is happening with our
patrol boats. In the time that I have been involved in the Navy, we
have had three classes of ships that have paid off. Figure 12 shows
two museum ships alongside our latest patrol boat and gives you
a fairly good snapshot of how, as the problem of illegal fishing and
maritime patrol has expanded, the capability requirement that we
have needed has also expanded and we have gone up about four
to five times in terms of the size of platform.
Again, that process means that we have more capable platforms
to assist with the types of impacts we expect from climate change.
In terms of shore infrastructure, one of the things that I have started
to initiate is a review of that infrastructure because I think that the
largest cost for the Royal Australian Navy will inevitably be that for
Figure 11. Ways to Build Resilience to Climate Change
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Figure 12. Latest RAN Patrol Boat (Left) with Older Versions
our infrastructure (Figure 13). What I have been asked to do is get
a panel of people together to look at all of our sites and do a risk
analysis that will allow us to identify the locations that are most
likely to be impacted by sea-level rise.
Figure 13. Shore Infrastructure Issues and Climate Change
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We will be looking at wharf deck heights, the height of hard
stands above sea level, the effectiveness of drainage systems, and
the impacts that you are going to get from changes to wind speed
on the ability of large ships to berth alongside the wharfs. As shown
in Figure 13, HMAS Stirling, which is near Perth on the southwest
corner of Australia, is situated in low-lying country. We already
have afternoon wind-speed problems with berthing ships. With
climate change, those types of problems are likely to continue.
Finally, I would just like to show you an example. When I travel
each year from Sydney to Adelaide to visit with my sister, about
halfway across I pass Lake Boga in outback New South Wales.
The image on the right in Figure 14 shows what Lake Boga looks
like today, after 10 years of extended drought. Because the predictions for the southwest corner of Australia are rather dire, I expect
that it will be some time before we again see the view shown
on the left.
Figure 14. Lake Boga in the Past (Left)
and After 10 Years of Drought (Right)
References
1. IPCC, Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007, IPCC,
2007.
2. Australia Antarctic Division, http://www.antarctica.gov.au/.
3. Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre,
Large Iceberg Breaks off the Mertz Glacier in the Australian
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Antarctic Terriory, 26 Feb 2010, http://www.acecrc.org.au/
drawpage.cgi?pid=news&sid=news_media&aid=797707.
4. Pew Center on Global Climate Change, www.pewclimate.org.
5. The Age, The Sinking of the MS Explorer in Antarctica,
5 Dec 2008, http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/travel/
the-sinking-of-the-ms-explorer-in-antarctica/20081205-6s8l.
html?selectedImage=5.
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7.5 Energy Security,
Climate Change,
and National Security
Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn
This has been a very information-intense conference, so I am
going to try to avoid going over topics that have already been
Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn (Retired) took the helm at RemoteReality
in January 2008 after 5 years with Battelle Memorial Institute, where
he was a corporate officer and led the energy, transportation, and
environment division. Additional assignments with Battelle included
serving as Vice President of Strategic Planning and National Security
Business Development and as a Director on the Board of Brookhaven
National Laboratory. Prior to joining Battelle, Admiral McGinn served
35 years with the U.S. Navy as a naval aviator, test pilot, aircraft carrier
commanding officer, and national security strategist. His last assignment was Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Requirements
and Programs at the Pentagon, where he led the development of the
U.S. Navy’s future strategic capabilities. As Third Fleet Commander,
he was recognized for leading great advances in operational innovation, the rapid prototyping of sea-based information technology, and
international naval force experimentation and coordination. Admiral
McGinn serves as a Director on the Board and Strategic Architect of
the National Conference on Citizenship and as a Senior Policy Advisor
to the American Council on Renewable Energy, is a member of the
Center for Naval Analyses Military Advisory Board, and is a senior fellow for international security at the Rocky Mountain Institute. He is
actively engaged in national forums to highlight the close link between
energy and international security and the imperative for innovative
government policies, focused investments, and effective deployment
of technology to create a high-quality, sustainable global environment. Admiral McGinn previously served as Chairman of the U.S.
Naval Institute Board of Directors and served for 3 years as a commissioner on the National Commission on Disabled Veterans’ Benefits.
He received a B.S. degree in naval engineering from the U.S. Naval
Academy, attended the national security program at the Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard University, and was a Chief of Naval
Operations strategic studies fellow at the U.S. Naval War College.
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discussed, although I may touch on a few of those just to put some
of my remarks in context. As Rear Admiral McDevitt has said, we
want to get to your questions, hear your ideas, and have a real discussion so that we can all leave here with a mutual understanding
of the imperatives that climate change and energy impose on our
nation’s naval forces.
I am a member of CNA’s Military Advisory Board. Although
I will not reprise all of General Wald’s excellent presentation, I
would like to reiterate the fact that energy security, climate change,
and national security—international security, really—are inextricably linked. One cannot develop plans or strategies for any of those
factors separately without carefully considering all three in a comprehensive way. It is critically important that we think about how
things done in one area affect what happens in the other areas.
Let me give an example. I would say that one of the key takeaways from this conference is that business as usual is not an
option for dealing with the imperatives that climate change and
energy impose on the way that we organize, equip, deploy, and
employ our naval forces, whether in the Pacific or elsewhere. If we
continue to operate on the same old assumptions about the availability of fossil fuel, the relatively cyclical nature of the weather,
a reasonably stable climate, and mission sets that continue to be
dominated by kinetic warfighting scenarios, we are going to be setting ourselves up for some real serious problems down the road.
Because we have to plan so far in advance to develop our
future capabilities and then use those capabilities to build out the
capacity to meet future mission needs, we have to start thinking
about those things and acting on them now. Business as usual is
not an option. That is not a comfortable thing to hear because we
like stability. We like the fact that the assumptions that have served
us so well in the past, that have served as the basis for building the
capabilities now extant in our naval forces—Navy and Marine—
are adequate to the task. But we need to challenge those assumptions, and we need to act on those challenged assumptions.
Let’s begin by talking about mission capabilities and capacities
in the context of what I have just said. The mission of our naval
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forces is going to change in two ways. I will go from the relatively low end of the mission spectrum, if you will, to something a
little bit higher. On the low end, because of the effects of climate
change, many of which were covered very well by Commander
Cole and in Roundtable 1, we are going to see more humanitarian
assistance and disaster relief scenarios. In addition to increasing in
frequency, we can expect that an increase in scale will be needed
to accommodate the greater intensity of the underlying weather
events. This will mean that the United States and U.S. naval forces
are going to be forced into a higher operations tempo trying to deal
with these humanitarian assistance and disaster relief scenarios, or
else we as a nation will choose not participate to because we are
capability limited or capacity limited.
I think that, given our history, our tendency is going to be to
continue to try to meet the need. Admiral Keating talked about
some of the wonderful responses—those that were actually executed and those that were offered but turned down for whatever
reason. He talked about the aftermath of Katrina. He talked about
the aftermath of the terrible tsunami and various other weather
events on the mainland of Asia. Such events give us a sense of the
large scale with which we can be confronted.
Right now we have foremost in our mind the terrible aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. Although this catastrophe was
not caused by climate change, it gives us a sense of the scale for
future humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations. We
have heard Bangladesh mentioned several times. So imagine, if
you will, that this country, which over centuries has been battered
by typhoon after typhoon in the Bay of Bengal, is confronting more
frequent and more intense typhoons.
Let’s put aside the issue of sea-level rise for the present and
focus on the temperature of the ocean. Rear Admiral Titley, the
Oceanographer of the Navy and the Head of Task Force Climate
Change, can tell us that the intensity of typhoons and hurricanes
is directly related to the amount of energy in the water. Assuming
that there is no sea-level rise but assuming a much greater intensity
of cyclonic activity, tidal surge, and wind damage, we are looking at a scenario in which literally millions of people who subsist
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on coastal irrigation-fed farms and rice paddies, or who subsist
on fisheries that require that they have fishing boats and nets and
structures available to catch fish, are wiped out not for weeks or
months, as has been the case in the past several hundred years in
Bangladesh, but literally for years.
So then you have literally millions of environmental refugees
who need the basics of life. Where are they going to go? Having
them tramp off toward India will ratchet up tension in the region
and put a tremendous burden on India as well as the people displaced from Bangladesh. It is interesting, too, that although I used
Bangladesh for my example, I could have just as well chosen the
Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, mainland China, or all of
the islands of Micronesia.
So let’s talk about some things that really get nations fighting
mad. Such as, where is my oil going to come from? We have a very
energy-intense global economy. We learned from Admiral Keating
that a large percentage of the oil used by Asian nations passes
through the Malacca Strait. Well, let’s fast-forward 10, 20, 30 years,
and imagine what the supply-and-demand curves for this essential
lifeblood of the global economy are. I will tell you this: It will not
be more supply and less demand.
No, it will be just the opposite. The supply-and-demand curves
for petroleum are diverging. How does the market respond when
demand exceeds supply? Prices go up. Eventually, you are going
to get to a point at which the issue is not one of price but rather
one of availability. Can we get the oil we need? And then you start
getting into some really nasty nation-on-nation or region-on-region
scenarios in which we are literally, as the effects of climate change
go on in the background, focused not on competition, but on conflict over energy resources. And then you really get back into the
kinetic mode of strategic planning in which we feel so comfortable.
So what are the capacities that we have now that are relevant to the kinds of scenarios that I just mentioned, or the
kind of mission changes that we should anticipate? As Admiral
Keating made clear, our response, our presence, and our being
there are extremely important. Thanks to our tremendous lift
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capability—both air and sea—and our tremendous medical capability, our ability to support such operations is first rate. But those
capabilities are not perfectly suited for the kinds of scenarios in the
numbers (in terms of people) that may be affected by future climate
change-induced catastrophes.
So we need to think carefully about what kind of lift we have,
what kind of supplies we have, and what kind of afloat prepositioning capabilities we have to deal with more intense, more frequent,
and more widespread humanitarian assistance and disaster relief
operations. We also need to think about what the likely scenarios
are if in fact my prediction of intense competition over oil comes
true. What is that going to do? What do we need to be doing in
terms of working with allied nations? What kinds of kinetic capabilities do we need to develop?
We also need to identify nonkinetic capabilities that will preclude the need to have to get into a shooting war over oil. Capacity
is probably the toughest challenge because, if we feel that we are
not adequate to be everywhere that we would like to be, can you
imagine what it might be like in the future that I have highlighted?
So what do we do about it?
We need to think carefully in two terms. One is, what can we
do to mitigate the effects of climate change? Do we need to change
how we equip and employ naval forces? Second, we need to identify the best ways to adapt to the conditions that we are not going
to be able to mitigate.
To address these issues, we need to make our naval forces
less reliant on fossil fuels. We also need to become more energy
efficient from the installation side. I am assuming that the great
efforts that have been ongoing for a number of years in trying to
improve energy efficiency will not just continue but accelerate.
We should benefit from the broadened portfolio of energy sources
that are being developed for the commercial sector. In addition, we
need to make changes the pointy end of the spear along the lines
proposed by Colonel Charette. What can we do in terms of ship
design, operational patterns, and protocols—the basic technology
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of what we do as sailors and Marines—to become less reliant on
fossil fuel?
What can we do to broaden the sources of fuel to power our
naval forces? Secretary Mabus discussed his goals of deploying a
“green” battle group by 2016. That certainly is a very high mark
for everyone to shoot for. That goal, along with that of reducing
energy consumption by 2020, is an excellent example of a broad
and long-range goal that will lead to changes in how we design,
build, and employ our naval forces. But those are top-down goals.
We also need to start thinking from the bottom up and see what
additional changes we can make.
In terms of identifying the capabilities and capacities needed
to deal with the effects of climate change, we should work closely
with allied nations around the world and especially in the Pacific.
We need to engage in serious conversations about the types of
humanitarian assistance and disaster relief scenarios that might
result from climate change. It might be drought in some places; in
others, it might be inundation by water, either from sea-level rise
or from the skies. We need to work with the nations and regions
that will be affected to help them improve their ability to adapt to
impending changes in both regional weather patterns and global
climate effects such as sea level rise.
We need to start those conversations now. Then, working with
the nations around the region, we need to start making appropriate changes in such areas as infrastructure and agricultural patterns. Does this sound like a naval force mission? If you think of
sailors out in the fields with bags of seeds, no it does not sound
like a naval mission. I am talking about conducting the discussions
and then having our partner nations do what they do best, aided
by us in what we do best. And that could be the introduction of
technology.
At the tactical level, Colonel Charette told a particularly compelling story about solar-powered water-purification units. His
example provides a usable model that we can apply to nations
whose populations barely subsist, barely have enough water to get
by. When you provide them with clean, renewable, and affordable
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energy technology, through the State Department or the United
States Agency for International Development (USAID), or, more
likely, because we are there in more places more of the time,
through U.S. naval forces, you introduce a whole new capability.
Where you have clean, affordable, renewable energy, you have
water, whether it be from purification of surface water, from pumping water from fractionated rock underground, or from desalinization, whichever is most appropriate.
Where you have energy, you have communication because
you can use the energy to recharge your cell phone or plug in
a computer to find out the latest things that can be done about
the diseases that are in the area. By virtue of introducing suitable
energy technology, you lift the quality of life and reduce the likelihood that climate change will have destabilizing effects.
As one last example, I would like to describe an exercise that we
conducted in 2000, called Rim of the Pacific (RimPac). Before that
time, our RimPac exercises had been gun-and-missile-type events.
In RimPac 2000, we embedded a smaller-scale event called Strong
Angel, in which we included real players from nations around the
rim of the Pacific in order to couple the U.S. military with nongovernmental organizations and other governmental organizations
to conduct humanitarian assistance and disaster relief command
and control. We worked with the United Nation’s World Food
Program, USAID, and representatives from all over in a very, very
tasking scenario.
I think this exercise effectively illustrates the points that I have
been making about trying to think in different terms. We had
deployed on the side of a large lava slope on the big island of
Hawaii. This is a part of Hawaii that you do not see in travel posters. It is more like the surface of the moon than it is the Hawaii seen
in brochures. We are out there and we are setting up the command
post tents. We have amphibious ships that are offloading. And at
about the time 1300 rolls around, somebody says, “Hey, my computer is starting to wind down.” Someone else chimes in, “So is my
cell phone.”
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So, the next question is, “Where is the generator?” The answer
comes back: “The generator is going to be offloaded the day after
tomorrow.” And everybody is scratching their heads saying, “Oh
man, how can you do a command post without a generator? What
are we going to do, send out runners?”
Fortunately, while planning for the exercise, we had thought a
little bit about introducing alternative energy into the equation. We
had even brought along some flexible solar panels. Pretty soon,
our technical wizards got it all hooked up. The lights go on in the
command post. The computer batteries and cell phone batteries
are charging. We called down to the amphibious ship and said, “It
isn’t going to be the day after tomorrow; get that generator set up
here right now.”
At the same time, we wanted to have good satellite communications capability, and there was a small mound 400 or 500 feet
high in the vicinity of the simulated refugee camp. So, instead of
going with the usual heavy diesel-powered generator set that we
would normally use, we had brought along a small fuel cell. We
took the fuel cell, put it up on top of the little hill, and hooked it up
to the satellite communications terminal. We had superb satellite
communications throughout the exercise.
And not one time did we lose power. Not one time was it necessary for a perfectly good sailor or Marine, who could do something more important, to drive a Hummer up the top of the hill to
refuel a diesel generator set.
These two examples illustrate how the introduction of technology can change the way that we do things. We have to get away
from business as usual but at the same time not totally forget that
kinetic wars are still possible, and we have to be able to do those
high-end operations very, very well.
We need to realize that as we prepare, organize, and equip
our naval forces for that end, the other types of missions—be they
for response, mitigation, or adaptation in increasing the resiliency
of the region to the effects of climate change—they are not automatically included in that capability, and we need to think carefully
about how we can increase the capability set and how we can
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increase the capacity to deal with those types of scenarios. We
need to do it because we know that the mission is going to change
in significant ways as a result of the competition for fossil fuel and
the effects of climate change.
It occurs to me there is one other element of mitigation that is
very low tech. Those countries who are facing inundation should
be talking to the Dutch. They should be going down and looking
at New Orleans, which is 80 feet below sea level and figuring out
how you construct dikes that do not leak. Those skills should be
part of the toolkit we have available at the absolute opposite end
of the high-tech mitigation solutions.
Q&
A
with the Panelists
are speaking in almost Utopian terms about saving the
Q: We
world to save ourselves. If this is so, it does not appear that
other wealthy nations have the same commitment, and others—France,
China, Russia, for example—seem to be working to counter U.S. initiatives. This raises a question of ends and means. Is the United States trying to do everything everywhere, and therefore inevitably will it suffer
from imperial overstretch?”
Rear Admiral McDevitt: I think that is a fascinating question
about which we could probably have a whole seminar. My sense
is that no matter what administration is in charge, we have sensible,
responsible leaders who are not about to go blindly rushing off to
the point at which we would suffer from those sorts of things. That
is my take for what it is worth, but I will let our panelists have a
shot at this one. Does anybody want to take this one on?
Colonel Charette : Yes, I do know that the British are working
on reducing their expeditionary forces, their fuel consumption, by
50% in Afghanistan. They have a very aggressive program going
right now. So I do not think we are the only ones out there. A lot of
folks are looking at it. Another great example is how the utilization
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of photovoltaic (PV) solar exploded in Europe and really fueled a
lot of other innovations.
Vice Admiral McGinn : The question as I heard it came down
to: “Is the United States going to be carrying the weight of the
world on its shoulders in this type of climate change-affected,
energy competition-affected future?” My response is that probably
for quite a while, I would like it to be that way. I am not saying that
we trade in our economy or our military security or our quality of
life in order to do that, but rather that we continue to be the global
leader for good that Admiral Keating talked about. The stability
of the Pacific region relies a great deal, and has since the end of
World War II, on the military capabilities and economic vitality of
the United States.
I would like to keep it that way. It is in our self interest to do
so. Having the capability and capacity to reduce the scale of problems that would otherwise grow in size were we to employ a business-as-usual mindset will help us mitigate or adapt to these types
of scenarios.
We also have a tremendous opportunity in the economic
sphere, although one that seems to be slipping through our fingers, day by day. We have the ability to bring our tremendous educational capability, infrastructure, wonderful entrepreneurial and
innovative spirit, and business leadership into the market that will
define the 21st century: clean energy technology. Every day, every
year that goes by we sit rudderless while nations such as China,
India, and the countries in the European Union are hard at work on
the technologies and systems that can help provide energy security
and mitigate climate change.
Consider, for example, the PV solar capabilities that Colonel
Charette mentioned. Many of those capabilities were invented in
the United States. However, because we did not have the right kind
of policy to level the playing field and create markets in which the
private sector could invest with confidence, we ended up licensing
PV production to China, and they are now the largest PV producer
in the world. I would hate to see us, this great United States, in 20
Chapter 7 Future Naval Operations in Asia and the Pacific
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or 30 years, have to import clean energy technology from China
and India in order to finally end our addiction to imported oil.
So I think that we should assume this burden not to advance
some Utopian ideal but because it is in our self interest to get on
board militarily and economically with meeting the challenges that
we have talked about and seizing the tremendous opportunity of
clean energy technology.
Commander Cole : I’d like to provide a regional Navy perspective to this question. We in Australia look to the U.S. Navy, as the
most capable force in the world, for leadership and guidance; we
are always there to support, and I think we have supported the U.S.
Navy in every conflict. I think we are the only nation that has.
I would also like to recall our experience during the 1999 East
Timor crisis. As you may remember, Australia led the charge when
the conflict with Indonesia came to a head. At the time, I was the
Navy port manager in Darwin. I just quickly wrote down a list of
the nations whose ships had berthed in Darwin to support operations in East Timor.
I saw ships from the United States, Italy, France, the United
Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, New Zealand, Thailand, Singapore, and
the Philippines. Most of those ships were there within a week to
10 days of that crisis. Although many of the ships rotated through,
they were followed by others as the countries remained involved
for the entire 6- to 9-month duration of that incident. So my feeling is that there are many nations who will provide support when
the need arises. When someone is in trouble, we will always do
the best we can.
want to ask a question I asked earlier today. How do you
Q: Imake
it happen, what you are saying we need to do? Who are
the people who have to basically write the road map, develop the doctrine so that we know what is going to be taught, and rethink the personnel processes and the incentives? These are all kind of tied in. It is one
huge system that has to be adjusted. How long do you think this is going
to take?
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Colonel Charette : Let me tell you from the Marine Corps
standpoint, I am the stuckee and I have until August to provide the
Commandant with a way ahead.
is not a good enough answer because clearly you have a
Q: That
plan. The question is, how long does it take, who are all of the
players who have to be brought in, how much time does it take them to
develop a plan, and how long does it take before the troops are going to
actually be receiving this stuff in terms of what they are learning?
Vice Admiral McGinn : You know better than most how the
conversation about energy and climate change has gone over the
past 10 years. I think you would probably be the first to agree
that the frequency and the seriousness of those conversations, in
formal settings inside the organizational structure of the DoD, for
example, and the services, and outside in fora like these, have
increased. That is a good thing. As a result of the National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, the department and services were required to comment on what they were doing about
energy security and climate change.
I think that the fact that we have Rear Admiral Titley designated
as the head of Task Force Climate Change and Colonel Charette
as the stuckee for the Marine Corps, and considering what we are
going to do about things related to climate and energy security, it
is going to take a long time. The level of awareness is rising rapidly,
but I think that the pace of awareness and the intensity of the mission, the compelling aspect of the mission, and what we have to
do differently, are picking up. So I think that just as we have seen
tremendous change in the discussion—the conversation—over the
past 10 years, we are going to see not just that discussion, but
the actual hardware, tactics, techniques, and procedures on the
ground happening very, very quickly and much more broadly over
the next 10 years.
Is it going to be adequate? Probably not. A lot of times things
happen way too slowly. I am hopeful that we will not have to
wait until a bad crisis happens and we get our backs against the
wall. But it could happen. I can give you four scenarios in which
we could see oil in about a week’s time to above $200 a barrel.
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One of them would be a son or daughter of Katrina with better aim
at the oil infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico and coming ashore
not as a category 3 but a category 5. We could see a terrorist attack
on the Saudi Arabian oil infrastructure. We could see as a result of
imposed sanctions on the nation of Iran, because of the need to
prevent them from building nuclear weapons, some rogue wing of
the Iranian Republican Guard closing down the Strait of Hormuz,
not for a matter of weeks, but months. The U.S. Navy and our
allies would kick their butt, but it would take time, and every day
that went by the global price of oil would just go through the roof.
And then, lastly, for whatever political reason associated with that
troubled-for-centuries area called the Middle East, we could see an
embargo of some sort. Any one of these scenarios would shoot the
price of a barrel of oil through the roof, and we would be looking
at $3 a gallon gas as the good old days.
We have heard that every $10 increase in the cost of a barrel
of oil results in a $1.2–1.3 billion chunk out of DoD’s discretionary
readiness, and it extends to procurement budget. So I am hoping
that none of those things happen. We need to try to get ahead of it,
shoot ahead of the duck, as Admiral Keating said, and try to make
ourselves less dependent and much more resilient as the nation’s
naval forces.
a role for dual life technologies that meet expeditionQ: Isarythere
needs and then can be handed off to local populations
and possibly meet the goodwill goals of counterinsurgency efforts?
Colonel Charette : That is a great question. We are actually
working that today. It is complicated because, first, as a Title 10
force, we are not in the charitable giving business. Second, much of
the equipment that we use is hardened to military standards. So one
of the things we are doing right now is wrestling with our lawyers
and our acquisitions community to determine how we bring those
things to the battlefield that do good and leave them behind for folks
who do not have anything. Right now we are in the process of procuring oil extruders that can be used to squeeze oil out of poppy
seeds. I only found out a couple weeks ago that these exist.
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We are trying to get the oil extruders for the next poppy harvest that will begin in Helmand in about 4 weeks. During the harvest, Afghan poppy growers first make a series of cuts in the poppy
seed pods; raw opium oozes out of these cuts and is then collected by hand. What we are trying to do now is get extruders into
the country so we can provide a small-scale demonstration of taking the poppy seeds—we cannot do anything with the opium for
energy—and putting them through the extruders to get the oil.
We would then contract to buy the poppy seed oil from the
farmers who grow poppies. We are trying to get this all together in
time for this year’s harvest. But we are skirting fine lines here because
you know that, once again, the American people expect us to be out
there as a warfighting element, and that equipment they buy for us,
they expect us to bring back. So we are trying to work with the DoD
Office of the Secretary of Defense Business Development Agency to
get seed money to support this project. Because, you know, strategic
problems all go down to a tactical reality.
to start with a statement and then ask my question.
Q: II want
think most of us here are on the leading edge of the grave
awareness of the problem. Still, when people talk climate change, they
immediately think mitigation and energy. The last Executive Order,
and I don’t remember the number, included one paragraph directing
DoD to make sure that their infrastructure was okay. We have heard
during this symposium that things are going to get worse. It seems that
you almost need an information campaign. We can make some small
steps. A thought occurred to me when Commander Cole was speaking
that coastal installations around the world are going to be changing in
nature through increased storm surge, sea-level erosion, what have you.
So my question is: Is there an international organization that maintains records of facilities—just the physical sense, nothing intelligence
related? So that when you have a crisis and you have ships coming in
from all different countries, they can all see a common picture of what
you can and cannot support in your port because your ports are going to
be changing dynamically over the years. This is the sort of information
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sharing that can go across nations, through defense, to nongovernmental organizations, and be a start of one small element of constructive
cooperation.
Rear Admiral McDevitt: I’d like to hear Commander Cole’s
answer, but there is a very fine registry of ports and aviation facilities, global facilities; I wish I could give you the formal name for
this document. Obviously the quality of it is dependent on the
quality of the inputs, which, for the most part, even going back 10
years, were pretty darn good. So the database you are looking for
already exists. It is accessible, and it can be used by many organizations in addition to the militaries of the world.
Commander Cole : Certainly from the Australian Navy’s perspective, we have what we call a fleet port guide. Every time one
of our ships goes to a port, they determine what facilities are available. We put particular emphasis on areas that are less obvious.
We would not bother doing that in Singapore, but we are very
interested in Kiribati, for example. So, we do maintain that and it is
up to date. And that information would be readily available to other
organizations if there was an incident.
I am sure all navies do a similar thing because you want to make
the information available for the ship that will come on 3 months
later, if there is all of a sudden a sunken ship in the channel that
they need to know about. There is information on berthing and the
type of facilities available to support the ships.
And the second thing is, as many countries do, Australia has a
large number of maritime advisors—about 40—deployed around
the southwest Pacific and south Pacific nations. In nations such
as Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu, and many similar nations, there are actually
Australian Navy personnel attached to their military organization.
As a result, if there is an incident such as a hurricane or a tsunami
or something like that in a region, we have military advisors on the
ground who are separate from the embassy staff.
Colonel Charette : You can go right now to www.cia.gov get
a lot of that information. Anybody can go right now. We used to
have a database for noncombatant evacuation operations that we
would take with us. The data that you can get in the CIA World
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Factbook online include information on ports and airports, all of
the relevant data. [1] We actually look at that when we go to different places in the world.
don’t think there is any forecasting, but in a world of Google
Q: IEarth
you can get satellite coverage of virtually everywhere. I
have another question on the screen here for Commander Cole. It says:
“Do you have any projection for when Kiribati will go under? And given
that it will be a walk-up call to the world, do you feel it will be too late by
then to reverse the trend?”
Commander Cole : I am an optimist. I do not believe it is ever
too late, but I think that it would be very sad if it were left to an
incident like that for people to become aware of the implications
of climate change and sea-level rise. I would hope that we get the
message out and across well before that incident. I cannot tell you
precisely, obviously, but I think the consensus within the Australian
science is that it is somewhere around 2040 when Kiribati will be
totally submerged.
Vice Admiral McGinn : I would point out that the United States
is somewhat unique in our ability to deny climate change effects.
In some cases, deny it completely; in others, deny the ability to do
anything about it. I think that therein lies the challenge and opportunity. If through forums like this and, more importantly, the conversations we carry away from them in our organizations, in our
communities, we can take a serious look at this and get beyond
that human psychology of denial about, “I don’t want to think
about it; it’s too hard,” and rather think about it in terms of, “Hey,
let’s acknowledge that these are challenges—energy, security, and
climate change—then we can say we need to take prudent actions.
We do not need to take our economy and throw it in the trashcan or completely ruin our quality of life; rather, we need to take
prudent measures. I use the example of fire insurance. I hope my
house is not going to burn down today or tomorrow or next year.
But I sleep a lot better knowing I have taken the prudent action of
having fire insurance. If for some reason somebody told me that
I had to pay a thousand bucks a month for that fire insurance, I
would very quickly convince myself that fire did not exist, or that
Chapter 7 Future Naval Operations in Asia and the Pacific
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it is not a threat to my home. So we need to realize that it is not
something that we can refrain from doing something about. We
can. We need to. And not only that, it is not just a burden, it is a
tremendous opportunity. We just need to come to grips with the
facts as we know them.
have two questions, one for Commander Cole and one for
Q: IColonel
Charette. First, how is energy changing, if you know,
in the Australian Navy’s acquisition environment?
Commander Cole : Thank you for the question. I think it is fair
to say that Australia is reasonably energy self-sufficient, although
we do import oil. We need the light crudes, the same way the
United States does. I do not think we have the same issue in terms
of where the oil comes from, and we do have some petroleum
reserves in Australia. We also have abundant coal reserves, so
there is the potential to go down the path of coal to oil.
The Australian Navy got just as big a shock as the U.S. Navy
did a year or so ago when the oil prices skyrocketed. It is an embryonic stage in terms of how we are looking at how we might use
alternative fuels. We are looking to other navies, including the U.S.
Navy, in that regard. There is still a level of concern about alternative fuels in terms of their robustness for our equipment, but this
is not an area of my expertise. We certainly have a group that is
looking at it.
Charette, you have just left the Joint Requirements
Q: Colonel
Oversight Council (JROC) and are now in a position in
which, I should hope, you are examining how energy fits in the Marine
Corps’ procurement environment. We have know from experience that
energy usage has not played a key role in our procurement decisions.
Efficiency usually does not get included in requests for proposal. We can
see this in Marine Corps’ procurement. The JSF and the V-22 Osprey
are bigger, badder, faster, and use much more fuel than the aircraft they
replace. How is energy changing in the Marine Corps’ acquisition profile
right now?
Colonel Charette : We have some really smart acquisition
folks right now looking at it. We do not have anything out right
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now. As you know, the JSF is a Joint program, and we are going to
follow the Joint community. So do I say we have an answer today,
no. But we do know that we have to change behavior. We have
to start that process in boot camp and Officer Candidate School.
Although there is a lot of work going on in alternative fuels, we
do not want to get off of oil and get addicted to something else.
We want to change behavioral patterns so that folks think about it
in everything they do, not just in acquisitions or anything like that.
We need to take a look at weapons systems and evaluate them in
that context, but we want folks to think about this from day one.
So when they become acquisitions people it is automatic because
it is the right thing to do.
There is also a combat-effectiveness side to it. We want to
become more efficient, but we need to do that without sacrificing
combat capability. In recent years, we have increased the number
of radios in our infantry battalions from several hundred to something like 1200 today. It has increased our combat effectiveness.
What we have to ask ourselves now is can we find a way to power
those radios in a smart way that does not have an impact on the
environment, that does not have an impact on our logistics chain,
and that does not put more guys on the road.
So it is not just as easy as writing it in acquisition documents;
it is how we think and how we behave. We also need to consider how we take advantage of the good equipment that we have
bought to address the threat today, and figure out how to use it
more efficiently. There is a lot to the problem; it is not just an
acquisition issue.
Reference
1. Central Intelligence Agency, CIA World Factbook, https://
www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
(accessed 1 Sept 2010).