The U.S. Navy’s “Great Green Fleet Initiative” was devised in 2009 in response to the dual threats of fleet disorganization and climate change, both of which pose extensive challenges to U.S. national security. Thirty years of unchallenged maritime supremacy had led to complacency and a fetishization of technological innovation for its own sake, leading to an expensive but rigid fleet with limited abilities to adapt and confusion of purpose. The emphasis on strike warfare during the global war on terror ignored other aspects of maritime warfighting and created a fleet that was not prepared to deal with the challenges of great power competition. However, despite the name attributed to this program, the Great Green Fleet was too limited in scope. In addition to using only one carrier strike group, the initiative primarily was concerned with introducing alternative fuels to the fleet and sourcing fuels from the United States. The the initiative ignored important areas such as environmental impact and force readiness at a time when climate change necessitates substantial changes to strategic thinking and planning.
The prerogative underlying the Great Green Fleet was to use the U.S. security environment to inform a fundamental rethinking of fleet composition and to translate this into a functional fleet ready to face the challenges of the 21st century. Such an approach mirrored the Great White Fleet, insofar as the challenges of the time were translated into an opportunity to rethink and rebuild rather than treated as structural obstacles to be overcome by brute force. However, the initiative should have expanded to other areas beyond fuel consumption. Any contemporary rethinking of the Great Green Fleet should include three issue areas: asset composition, distribution and deployment of forces, and environmental security policies.
Asset composition is perhaps the most obvious area of concern. The Navy inordinately focuses on larger warships intended to be technically exquisite above all else. This allows the United States to operate many of the most capable warships on Earth, but it also means it pays more for fewer hulls in the water. The surface navy seems to miss the lesson of its subsurface counterpart when the latter transitioned from producing the Seawolf to the Virginia-class fast attack submarine, which demonstrated that paying less for “good enough” was a better guarantor of operational success than paying for perfection. This problem was compounded by the legal requirement to maintain a fleet of eleven operational carriers and the troubled littoral combat ship (LCS) program, which once promised a versatile, inexpensive fleet of small surface combatants.
Repeated wargaming has demonstrated the vulnerability of carriers and other large surface assets to missile, small-boat, and UAV-wave attacks as well as submarines. Because of this, the Great Green Fleet should have stressed the importance of increasing the number of capable surface and subsurface combatants by restricting the number of larger ships and expanding the number of smaller combatants. Though this would limit the firepower of any one platform, it also would create a more flexible and survivable fleet by distributing firepower over a greater number of hulls. The FFG(X) and a new destroyer eventually could have replaced or supplemented Arleigh Burke–class destroyers and LCSs as the surface fleet retired the Nimitz and Ticonderoga classes and limited the number of Ford- and America-class ships to six each. The resources freed up by retiring old and expensive larger hulls would have enabled the Navy to explore experimental platforms.
With this change in fleet composition would have come a change in doctrine. For years, the Navy has prided itself on its ability to maintain a forward presence around the globe. The 600-ship Navy advocated for at the end of the Cold War was unsustainable in the long term, but even as overall fleet size contracted, this presence remained possible because of the dearth of challengers. However, the modern-day Navy is not unchallenged, and its forward deployment is more of a liability than an advantage. Forward deployed naval forces in Japan are particularly vulnerable, as they represent a significant component of the U.S. fleet but are outclassed by the presence of the entire People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). An entire carrier strike group could be lost to China at the very start of any potential confrontation.
In addition, little attention is paid to the return on investment for U.S. engagements abroad. While alarm bells sounded in the foreign policy press when China opened its first foreign military base in Djibouti and took control of the port infrastructure in the Pakistani city of Gwadar, U.S. military facilities abroad outnumber China’s 800 to 1. The cost of this global presence in terms of financial resources and material readiness is a greater threat to U.S. warfighting ability than expansion by any near peer rival.
As Captain Dale Rielage postulated in his speculative fiction of a “Great Pacific War,” the answer to this challenge lies in reducing rather than increasing the forward deployment of U.S. naval assets. While some small number of ships should remain based abroad to demonstrate commitment to allies, the bulk of the Navy’s assets (including all high-value units) should be returned to bases in the United States. By returning fleet assets to U.S. bases, greater firepower could be brought to bear against an enemy force intending to challenge U.S. maritime dominance in the immediate vicinity of the United States or in instances where a large formation of ships needs to be sent abroad. In addition, distributing firepower across a greater number of smaller ships and submarines would enable flexible, cost-effective responses to threats that do not warrant the deployment of high-value units such as aircraft or amphibious carriers.
This change in force distribution would also bring a change in deployment schedule. Previous deployments were taxing on the wellbeing of crew and material, leading to shortcomings that caused the 2017 Western Pacific collisions. While training at sea remains integral to the Navy’s performance as a fighting force, the increased number of ships and lower operational tempo that would be enabled by consolidating fleet distribution would allow for shorter deployments and more opportunities to fund and conduct requisite maintenance on mission critical assets.
The “Green” aspect of the Great Green Fleet should be implemented through intentional policy changes and as a secondary consequence of the changes to fleet structure and deployment. Intentional changes to shore installations and assets also should have been included in the policy. Moving shore power to all renewable power would allow for direct, scalable provisions of electricity to bases irrespective of changes to the wider power grid, and would contribute to combating climate change’s effects on environmental security and the viability of the Navy’s numerous shore facilities (many of which remain vulnerable to the effects of climate change).
The second-order effects of fleet restructuring also could help lower the Navy’s carbon footprint. In the 2010s, the U.S. military’s fuel consumption alone made it the 47th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. If the Navy does not change how it operates and climate change continues unabated, U.S. forces rightfully will be understood as a threat to vulnerable civilian populations the world over. The United States will lose credibility as a sincere and trustworthy ally, which would deal a blow to U.S. security strategy far greater than the marginal impact of drawing down its force presence abroad. By consolidating fleet assets, being selective about where and how long to deploy, and being able to deploy less resource intensive assets—be it surface action groups to address acute security concerns, lone warships to patrol a vital area, or groups of patrol boats to conduct maritime counterinsurgency in the manner outlined by authors such as Hunter Stires—the Navy would be able to respond with greater flexibility and less waste. This approach could lower pollution and prevent the overexertion and clouding of purpose that stymies fleet evolution, and also save money that could be reinvested in research, development, and other programs, as well as for other, long-neglected areas of domestic spending. Such an approach would not only bolster our standing with allies, but also confer legitimate strength on the Navy and the country at large.
The Great Green Fleet, irrespective of its environmentalism, could have been, first and foremost, a great fleet. The United States should have used that program to take stock of its long-term strategic vision and the threats facing the world and redesigned the fleet to meet both sets of challenges. We have been living in an age of climate change for some time, yet the nation’s leaders continue to ignore this reality and attack the issue with insufficient force of will. There is no second chance to address this issue; the United States must either work to mitigate it with meaningful policy changes, or we lose. Maritime dominance and environmental protection are not only reconcilable, they require one another.