There is a long history of Defense Department officials and their Capitol Hill supporters at budget-crunch time talking about new threats. It makes me wonder what facts back up their current claims.
A hearing on Thursday with the not-so-subtle title “A Day Without Seapower and Projection Forces” is a good place to start. Testifying for the Navy was Vice Adm. Bruce Clingan, the deputy chief of naval operations. He picked a single day, March 19, calling it “representative of the daily impact” the Navy has on achieving U.S. “strategic imperatives and protecting our national interests.”
First, let’s hope March 19 does not represent a “representative” day in our future. More about that later.
Clingan began with the two ongoing wars that saw 8,000 sailors, including 1,400 reservists, on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq that day performing many tasks, including detainee operations, training locals and providing combat support. An additional 13,000 sailors were aboard the carrier USS Enterprise and the vessels that support it, as its air wing carried out missions over Afghanistan. There was also the carrier USS Carl Vinson heading toward Dubai and the port of Jebel Ali for maintenance after a month of support in Afghanistan. Within a week it was due to support the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
From air bases in the Persian Gulf area, land-based Navy P-3 aircraft also conducted intelligence, surveillance and maritime patrol missions over Iraq and Afghanistan while similar Navy aircraft conducted such missions, both manned and unmanned, in other parts of the world including Somalia and Yemen.
March 19 was also the day the United States began its attacks on Libya to enforce the no-fly zone against Moammar Gaddafi’s forces. Clingan described the Navy launching 122 Tomahawk cruise missiles from two surface ships and three submarines that had moved into the area from forward bases (meaning outside the United States), along with the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship carrying helicopters and Harrier jets.
In the Asia-Pacific region, another carrier strike group and an expeditionary strike group were maneuvering off North Korea — in an operation called Foal Eagle. It was a combined exercise with South Korea that involved massive ground, air and naval drills designed to show Pyongyang that belligerent acts could invite immediate responses, according to Clingan.
On that same day, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its associated cruiser, destroyer and a support ship were diverted from sailing toward Afghanistan to aid rescue operations in Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. At the same time, a four-ship amphibious-ready group was heading to Japan from its Okinawa base.
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