Sticking together

Navy and Marine Corps leaders, who have often tried to shoot each other down while fighting for military missions and Pentagon dollars, are now flying wing-to-wing as they design radically different naval striking forces for the 21st century.

So many tides-personal, geopolitical, doctrinal, and technological-are running in the two sea services' favor that their Army and Air Force rivals may well lose out in the perennial battles over defense spending, beginning when President Bush's new budget goes to Congress early next year.

And if the United States does indeed go to war against Iraq, and neighboring Middle East countries refuse to allow the American military to use their bases for launching pads, sea-based power will play the same kind of starring role it did during the Afghan war, when as many as four Navy aircraft carriers stood offshore.

The Navy claims it flew the most sorties (one trip to a target and back) in Afghanistan, although the Air Force says it put the most bombs on target. Either way, the Navy and Marine Corps fought a "precision war" with smart bombs and are ready today to answer a new emergency call from the commander in chief, says Adm. Vernon Clark, chief of naval operations.

"The teamwork and the feeling that exist between the senior leadership of the Navy and Marine Corps right now is a historic first," adds Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James L. Jones.

Clark and Jones have signed off on a military blueprint for the new century that calls for sea-based forces to attack and defend deeper inland than ever before. If their blueprint becomes reality, as both four-star officers vow it will, a satellite peering down from space at the world's oceans in the year 2020 will see new sights such as these:

• Navy and Marine Joint Strike Fighter aircraft being launched by electricity, not steam, off the bow of the $10 billion, new-generation Nimitz-class carrier, which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld just approved. Clark and Jones have signed the equivalent of a nonaggression pact concerning their respective air forces. The pact calls for, among other things, each of the Navy carriers' 11 air wings to have a Marine fighter-bomber squadron within it. This comity contrasts with the sword's-point stance Gen. Charles Krulak took when he was Marine commandant from 1995 to 1999. Krulak refused to buy the Navy F/A-18 E and F fighter-bomber, believing it was a Navy ploy to absorb the Marines' independent air force.
• Marine Joint Strike Fighters taking off and landing vertically from an aircraft carrier made just for them. The Clark-Jones idea is to stretch some Navy ships to make landing fields and parking lots for Marine JSFs built to take off and land on a short stretch of deck, with the short take-off and vertical landing technology. When he was shown a sketch that a defense contractor had prepared of a stretched LHD amphibious assault ship that could carry 21 JSFs, and asked whether the idea was just contractor "brochuremanship," the commandant replied, "No. It's not brochuremanship. It's going to happen." That is a comfort for Marine aviators, who frequently wonder whether they have a future. They now have the word from the nation's top Marine that they're no longer on the endangered-species list; that a carrier of their own is definitely in their future. Of course, the ship will still be operated by Navy sailors, as always.
• A guided-missile cruiser designed to catch missiles an enemy might hurl at an Army battalion operating on a distant desert, or at civilians in New York City. Clark sees Navy ships as the most promising javelin-catchers not only for the battlefield but for the American homeland as well. Rather than limit warships to protecting the fleet and ensuring freedom of the seas, tomorrow's Navy must provide "theater and strategic defense for the first time," Clark says. The sea-based defense, which Clark has dubbed Sea Shield, will enable naval forces "to project precise, defensive firepower deep inland to include ballistic and cruise-missile defense far over the horizon." As part of that idea, Clark has repeatedly called for establishing a command center for sea-based missile defenses, which would be the saltwater equivalent of the North American Air Defense headquarters, in Colorado Springs.
• Cargo ships, perhaps with catamaran hulls, streaking across the oceans toward global hotspots at 50 knots, twice the speed of today's vessels.
• Small and fast coastal ships that, as Mohammad Ali once said about his boxing, float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. "I don't think many navies are going to line up toe to toe with us," Clark says. But they might conduct hit-and-run raids with swarms of small vessels close to shore, often in shallow water. To plug that chink in the Navy-Marine armor, Clark has just received $30 million in seed money from Congress to build a new type of mini-warship he calls the LCS-for littoral combat ship.

Clark and Jones understand that modern secretaries are always looking for new ways to fight terrorism and half-wars on the other side of the world with lighter, faster, and cheaper forces that can rush to the fire without a lot of wheel-spinning.

Clark, a quietly religious man who summed up his life and career in six lines for Who's Who, can talk effectively about his Navy of the future, but he speaks reverentially about the men and women in uniform, saying they "wear the cloth of the nation." He declares that his responsibility to care for sailors is nothing short of a "covenant."

Jones, who grew up in Europe, moves easily and smoothly through the corridors of power-a far different personality from those of such former commandants as the rough-hewn Al Gray and the outspoken Krulak. Jones's field experience gave him the muddy boots essential for respect in the Corps. But he learned the intricacies of Washington and of the diplomatic world while a Marine liaison officer to the Senate from 1979 to 1984 and while serving as senior military assistant to former Defense Secretary William Cohen. Cohen and Jones also bonded by playing basketball whenever time allowed, briefly reliving their glory days as basketball stars at Bowdoin College and Georgetown University, respectively.

The rapport Clark and Jones have managed to develop with recent Defense secretaries is the envy of Army brass. Their boss, Gen. Eric Shinseki, Army chief of staff, has failed to develop the same warm relationship with Rumsfeld. So worried has the Army become, that it has been seeking the advice of an outside public- relations executive on how to improve its relationship with Rumsfeld. Meanwhile, Gen. John Jumper, Air Force chief of staff, has also sketched a bold blueprint for how to use his service more effectively in the 21st century, but he has been put on the defensive by the rising costs of the F-22 air superiority fighter, the centerpiece of the Air Force's new weaponry.

Along with the luck of the Navy and Marine Corps in having men at the top who get along well with each other and with Rumsfeld, the geopolitics of the time are also favoring the two services' unfettered, sea-based power. Just this month, for example, the Saudi government flip-flopped on whether the United States could use its bases if it waged war against Iraq. To side too much with the United States, regarded in some circles as the Great Satan propping up Israel, is to commit political suicide in some countries of the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Clark capitalizes on this reality in arguing for a new carrier and other warships: "Navies can get there. A navy can operate at sea without the need to bed down ashore. A navy's sovereignty on the world's oceans avoids raising other political issues" in nearby countries that may not want a U.S. presence.

American presidents do not have to negotiate with other countries for overflight or basing rights before ordering warships or Marines to launch attacks from the seas. In his National Security Strategy released in September, Bush served notice that he was reserving the right to strike pre-emptively anywhere in the world to act against "terrorists to prevent them from doing harm against our people and our country."

Forces nearest the trouble spot are likely to get the president's nod for pre-emptive strikes if speed is of the essence, as it often is. These realities augur well for the Navy and Marine Corps as missions and money are divvied up among the armed services in the future.

Although Bush persuaded Congress this year to appropriate more than a billion dollars a day for national defense, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps all say that is not enough to modernize and transform their services, even if the United States does not go to war against Iraq. So right now Stephen Cambone, Rumsfeld's right-hand man at the Pentagon, is looking for programs to trim or cancel.

To keep peace among the armed services, Defense secretaries have traditionally divided their money pie the same way year after year. This year's defense budget, the one for fiscal 2003, was no exception. Bush called for the Army to receive 24 percent of the total $378 billion in new funds, or $90.9 billion; the Navy and Marine Corps jointly, 29 percent, or $108.3 billion; the Air Force, 28 percent, or $107 billion; and other defense agencies, 19 percent, or $72.4 billion.

Bush and Rumsfeld came into office promising to revolutionize the American military. So far, with few exceptions, such as canceling the Army's Crusader artillery piece, they have contented themselves with putting the defense budgets they inherited on steroids by adding money to existing programs. But times and tides have changed since September 11. How Bush and Rumsfeld apportion the money in this new defense budget among the armed services will show whether the new tides are strong enough to change the formula for deciding which service gets how much of the nation's treasure.