The U.S. Navy has spent a great deal of time preparing for the major engagements a conflict in the western Pacific would bring. Much ink has been spilled on ballistic missile defense, available vertical launch system tubes, and breaking the enemy’s sensor-to-shooter chain. In turn, this body of thought has driven doctrine, congressional testimony, and acquisition decisions. When the time comes to pay Kipling’s “price of admiralty,” the Navy is prepared to give the last full measure while simultaneously inflicting great damage on its likely foes.1
But the intensity with which the Navy focuses on “fighting tonight” stands in contrast with how little attention it has paid to surviving tomorrow. Over the past 15 years in particular, the Navy has conflated the ability to win one or two engagements with sustaining combat power throughout a conflict. Lacking sufficient means to reconstitute combat power; treat, evacuate, and rescue sailors; and retain the American people’s faith in their Sea Services, the Navy could find itself narrowly victorious in its battles only to lose the overarching war.
Shattered Hulls
The first shortfall in the Navy’s capabilities resides in damage control.2 As exhibited by incidents involving the USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62), John S. McCain (DDG-36), Princeton (CG-59), Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58), and Stark (FFG-31), Navy crews are extremely good at isolating damage, extinguishing fires, and stemming flooding in singular cases. In addition, Navy ship design emphasizes survivability and redundancy. The service has not lost a major surface combatant underway to either incident or enemy action since 1945.3 Outside immediate, catastrophic damage to a powerplant or magazine, Navy vessels are likely to survive several weapon impacts during combat.
Unfortunately, the Navy has maintained little operational capability to capitalize on this tactical excellence. A carrier strike group (CSG) today typically consists of three or four ships in addition to the carrier, so if one ship is damaged, it is unlikely there will be another standing by to render escort. Even when the Navajo-class rescue and salvage ships are fielded, the Navy will have fewer than a dozen modern, capable tugs across the entire fleet. This means that in the aftermath of an engagement, even a successful one, a CSG commander will have to figure out what to do about one or more escorts that have suffered heavy but not fatal damage.
Should the commander opt for towing, another 25 percent of the CSG’s combat power would be lost. On the other hand, leaving the damaged ship to fend for herself likely would have a deleterious effect on morale and future combat operations. Surface warfare officers and crews are prepared to sacrifice their ships to protect the carrier. They do not, however, expect their reward for successful damage control to be subsequent abandonment by the rest of the CSG.
The conundrum of a crippled carrier is even more dire. Nominally, with the acquisition of the Navajo and her sisters, the Navy will possess modern assets capable of towing a crippled Nimitz- or Gerald R. Ford-class carrier. To date, however, the service has not conducted a long-distance (i.e., more than 100 miles) operation with any of its tugs and any of its carriers. The effects of dragging a 100,000-ton hunk of steel on a tug’s material readiness, even if multiple tugs are used, are unknown.4
The Navy also has not engaged its international partners to determine what, if any, precautions might be necessary to take their vessels under tow should they be part of a coalition fleet. It is surely imprudent to have the first time a U.S. vessel has to tow an allied ship be after it is damaged in the western Pacific.
Towing damaged vessels to port is not an end in itself. The purpose of rescuing a damaged vessel is so she might be repaired and return to the fight. Despite this, the Navy has no large, mobile floating dry dock capable of handling either a single carrier or multiple smaller vessels. Furthermore, recent investments in San Diego have increased dockyard capability by just two slips. Finally, the Navy has not employed a whole-of-government approach to acquiring possible forward repair facilities on a contractual basis with friendly nations. In total, these decisions have left the Navy facing a dearth of shipyards west of San Diego.
An engagement that does not include severe damage to a combatant is highly unlikely. In the best case scenario, Navy and coalition vessels could face the prospect of limping across several thousand miles of potentially hostile seas to Pearl Harbor, San Diego, Bremerton, or possibly Australia. In a worst case scenario, they could find themselves arriving at already overwhelmed repair facilities on the West Coast. This would give U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (IndoPaCom) little choice but to begin transferring vessels to shipyards on the Gulf of Mexico or East Coast. In effect, the lack of ship repair facilities could force the Navy and its partners to cede control of the seas, making any victory a Pyrrhic one at best.
Broken Sailors
The Navy also has paid little heed to treating potential casualties in an engagement’s aftermath.5 Recent conflicts in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh have demonstrated modern weapons’ lethality across the air and land domains. There is no reason to believe large-scale combat in the maritime domain will be any less dangerous. Using the average casualty rates suffered by HMS Sheffield (16 percent), the Stark (26 percent), ARA General Belgrano (28 percent), and INS Eilat (23 percent), an Arleigh Burke- or Ticonderoga-class ship damaged by an antiship missile or torpedo could be expected to suffer roughly 60 dead and wounded. Should a carrier be damaged, that number could balloon to 900–1,000 (including the air wing).
If an engagement saw three or four surface ships struck, there could be 200 or more sailor casualties. Those not killed immediately likely would have burns, severe trauma, and smoke inhalation. The level of need would challenge even a major city’s trauma capacity; it almost certainly would overwhelm a CSG’s, even if the flagship escaped damage. Should the carrier be struck, medical capability would decrease significantly.
Evaluated against such potential losses, the Navy’s current equipping decisions are inadequate. Based on acquisitions and doctrine, it appears the Navy intends to rely primarily on evacuation to shore bases for the worst cases. The flight from the Taiwan Strait to the U.S. hospital at Yokosuka is more than 1,000 miles—a three-hour flight for a V-22 Osprey, twice that for helicopters. Put bluntly, the Navy does not have a solid, rehearsed casualty evacuation plan from ship to shore in the event of a large-scale conflict in IndoPaCom.
This gap is not alleviated by introducing either the USNS Mercy (T-AH-19) or Comfort (T-AH-20) into the equation. Although both vessels have more than 1,000 beds, their size, relative lack of speed, and reliance on reserve component crew members make it questionable whether they would be available in the initial stages of a western Pacific conflict. Even if the Mercy were able to make a timely transit from San Diego, she has only 80 intensive care beds, likely sufficient for casualties from a single damaged surface vessel. In the event a carrier were hit by one or more missiles, the Mercy’s capacity could swiftly be overwhelmed.
Plucked From A Cruel and Unforgiving Sea
Plucking any lost vessel’s crew out of the water is a major logistical event. First, there is the issue of how nearby vessels could do so. Even with an engagement nominally concluded, hostile submarines, aircraft, drones, and loitering munitions would make bringing a ship to a complete stop problematic. Oil bunkerage, debris, swells, and darkness could make it difficult to spot individual crew members. In addition, modern search and rescue often heavily relies on airborne assets, and aircraft losses and other combat requirements may remove this possibility. If the CSG is crippled, all these activities become vastly more challenging.
In either victory or defeat, pulling sailors from the ocean is only the start of a complicated problem. Navy ships are not built with a large degree of spare habitation capacity. There has been no instance since World War II of a U.S. vessel taking on a significant number of survivors relative to its own crew. Ergo, no one is sure how a surface combatant would handle additional personnel, especially if another engagement were in the offing.
The loss of an escort would mean nearby vessels would have to split roughly 300 survivors. If a carrier foundered, the surviving escorts would have to take on up to 5,000 sailors. How the rescuing vessels would feed, clothe, and clean those survivors while continuing to fight has never been exercised. Nor has the Navy addressed what happens to survivors (i.e., return to duty, survivor’s leave, etc.) after they return to port.
Without putting thought to these questions in peacetime and in exercises, the Navy will be forced to learn under fire. This is a recipe for bad processes that would only compound the trauma from the initial sinking.
The Secretary of the Navy Regrets . . .
Even familiar processes may not serve the Navy in a major conflict. In more than 20 years of conflict from 11 September through the final evacuation of Afghanistan, the Department of Defense suffered 6,987 deaths.6 Given the composition of a CSG, the Navy could suffer that many dead in the first 48 hours of combat in the western Pacific. Each of these losses would be a personal tragedy to friends, comrades, and loved ones. Such a large loss of life also could make it difficult for the Department of the Navy to fulfill its responsibilities to these service members and their families.
Department of Defense Instruction (DoDI) 1300.18, Military Personnel Casualty Matters, Policies, and Procedures, was created to bring uniformity across the Department of Defense to notifications of next of kin (NOK). It provides clear guidance on how each service will support a dead or missing service member’s family: Next of kin will be contacted by a two-person notification team within 24 hours of a service member’s death or 72 hours of him or her being declared missing. Both team members must come from the same service as the deceased, with the only exception being another service’s chaplain may be substituted. A trained casualty assistance calls officer will support each family through the administrative processes of claiming life insurance and survivor’s benefits and moving the remains. Moreover, all remains are to be escorted by a service member of appropriate rank and grade until transferred to the NOK. Finally, each deceased service member is to receive a dignified transfer of remains at Dover Air Force Base.7
It is highly unlikely the Navy, in the throes of a major conflict with China’s Navy, will have enough officers to spare for casualty assistance. Nor will there be sufficient Navy personnel to follow the steps found in the Navy Gold Star Commander’s Casualty Assistance Guide. If the steps in the instruction and the guide are left as is, the result will be a marked disparity in treatment among individual service members’ cases based on available resources. This could cause media and congressional distractions that a service in mid-conflict does not need. Most dangerously, it could provide an opening for Chinese propaganda.
Potential Solutions
Fortunately, there are some relatively inexpensive and swift actions that could help address current shortfalls in operational damage control, mass casualty events, sailor rescue, and next of kin assistance. First, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) could direct that all task force and fleet exercises have a “postengagement phase.” This could begin in fiscal year (FY) 25 with simple tabletop exercises that introduce the issues to senior officers and their staffs. However, by FY26, they should involve some live training activities to prepare the force for marine casualty recovery. In both stages, likely coalition partners also should be involved. Second, the Navy should accelerate and expand its Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program so damaged vessels can be returned to combat more rapidly.
Concurrently, in preparation for a mass casualty evacuation, IndoPaCom and U.S. Transportation Command should examine and test current operation plans in accordance with Joint Publication 4-02: Joint Health Services
by the end of FY25. Any gaps identified should be presented to the Secretary of the Navy and CNO pursuant to being addressed by the Joint Staff. If necessary, the Department of the Navy should contract for the use of civilian shipping (e.g., large container vessels, cruise ships, etc.) combined with joint assets to bring medical support forward. Finally, in the mid to long term, the Navy should continue to explore building new hospital ships on current amphibious ship hulls or accelerate the development of medical packages for expeditionary sea base ships.
Similar attention should be paid to finding and recovering crews forced to abandon ship. This should begin with a dedicated two-star air/sea rescue command in the IndoPaCom theater. Further support should come via development of joint rescue packages that can be airdropped from C-17s, C-130s, or other large transport aircraft to adrift sailors and Marines. The Navy also should consider leasing or acquiring seaplanes such as the ShinMaywa US-2 as dedicated personnel recovery platforms.
To support future sailors and Marines who could be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice, the Secretary of the Navy should seek a rewrite of DoDI 1300.18. The Navy should be allowed to request casualty support and assistance from other services as needed, and the revised instruction should establish procedures for standing up a second, emergency transfer-of-remains facility on the West Coast in the event of a western Pacific conflict. In addition, casualty support and assistance should become a Navy Reserve mission in case of a large-scale combat operation in the western Pacific.
None of these actions will be a panacea. But by taking immediate steps to address its shortcomings, the Navy may yet lessen the ultimate butcher’s bill. It should seek to do no less for both its sailors and the nation they have sworn to protect.
1. Rudyard Kipling, “The Song of the Dead.” The poem makes clear that the blood of a nation’s sailors and the wreckage of its ships are how admiralty is paid.
2. All information on the current state of U.S. Navy shipyards and repair facilities drawn from Naval Sea Systems Command; PEO Ships, “USNS Navajo (T-ATS-6) Class Towing, Salvage, and Rescue Ship: Overview Briefing for Surface Navy Association Symposium,” 15 January 2020; and Ronald O’Rourke, Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 25 August 2022).
3. There is some room to quibble about the fate of the USS Frank Evans (DD-754) after her collision with HMAS Melbourne. However, the Navy chose to scuttle the Frank Evans as a cost-saving measure as opposed to the vessel foundering.
4. Although the Navy regularly maneuvers Nimitz-class carriers around its ports and has experience moving decommissioned supercarriers (e.g., the Forrestal and Kitty Hawk classes) to disposal, neither of these is the same level of difficulty as towing operations in open waters with a nuclear reactor on board.
5. Complement numbers for U.S. Navy vessels are taken from the official fact sheets at www.navy.mil/Resources/Fact-Files/. Casualty figures for the Stark are provided by the NAVSEA D.C. Museum, while for the Eilat, they are from the Center for Israeli Education. The Sheffield casualties are from the official Board of Inquiry conducted by the Ministry of Defence, while the General Belgrano casualties are the numbers from Martin Middlebrook’s The Argentine Fight for the Falklands (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Military, 2009). There are those who would argue the Belgrano’s casualty rates were exacerbated by the vessel’s readiness state and the unfortunate location of the second torpedo hit. In all cases cited, rescue from other vessels was relatively close at hand.
6. United States post-11 September casualty figures come from the Department of Defense, “Casualty Status as of 10 a.m. EDT, Oct. 10, 2022,” press release.
7. Department of Defense Instruction Number 1300.18, Department of Defense (DoD) Personnel Casualty Matters, Policies, and Procedures, 8 January 2008, Incorporating Change 1, 14 August 2009.