The eleventh article drawn from Davey Jones’ Locker is from a special Seapower 1979 edition of the Journal of Australian Naval Institute. As a measure of the ANI’s early ambition on 2-3 February 1979 it held an international naval conference – Seapower 79 at Academy of Sciences, Canberra.
This was at a time when international defence conferences were a rarity in Australia. It stretched not just the Council, the ANI budget, but also its members and the Navy itself to logistically stage the event. The headline speaker was the retired US Chief of Naval Operations, the charismatic Admiral Elmo ‘Bud’ Zumwalt Jr. On arrival in Australia he was taken aback by the scale of the event. The Governor General (and former naval officer) Sir Zelman Cowan was opening the conference, followed by the Minister for Transport the Hon. Peter Nixon. The after-dinner speaker would be the former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Realizing his planned informal remarks, would not ‘cut it,’ Admiral Zumwalt in short order prepared a candid and compelling address. In a media interview during his visit he spoke about the need for Australia to be much more self reliant in her defence and this garnered a front page article in the Canberra Times.
At the end of the conference’s final session there were “howls of protest” as the packed audience wanted the proceedings to continue. Seapower 79 had indeed been a great success. Frank Cranston wrote in the Canberra Times, “Whatever else it might have achieved the “Seapower” seminar in Canberra during the weekend has probably ensured that the Australian debate about defence, such as it has been, will never be quite the same again.”
Below is Admiral Zumwalt’s edited address. Next week, Gough Whitlam’s evening speech will be reproduced.
Balancing Strategy, Technology And Resources: A Personal Experience
Admiral Zumwalt was introduced by Dr Robert O’Neil who made mention of Dr Kissinger and Admiral Gorshov in the introduction.
Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is a great thrill for me to be here. Perhaps the most significant thing which can be said about that story just told, is to give the reason that I knew what Kissinger said when the door closed. I had taken the precaution of recommending to be his assistant, my former special assistant who had just left the Navy. It is an honour to be listed in the same category as a man of the professional competence of Admiral Gorshkov. I request that Tass, who is here to report everything else I say inaccurately, relay to him my professional respect.
I would like my comments to be considered a tribute to a professional colleague, Admiral Peter Peek, whom I would gladly follow into any battle.
I came to the job of Chief of Naval Operations on 1st July, 1970 (to begin a four year term which, under the law, could not be extended) after 31 years as sailor, midshipman and officer.
I fought in World War II, in Pacific destroyers…In the Pacific, I observed Japan make its great strategic error at the outset by its sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, which so rallied the diverse US public opinion that it was possible for us to gird our muscles for war. It became critical to the United States, with its early losses, to secure the Hawaiian-Australian line.
That service began as I witnessed and two days. I might note that our declaratory policy was to preserve the Philippines. And we gave them up. Our declaratory policy was to preserve Australia, and had we lost the battle of Coral Sea you would have been on your own.
These strategies gave us time for the United States to organise the brute force effort back home that made it possible to build up the sea, land and air forces, with which to seize the key islands. Iceland in the Atlantic and the Central and Southern Pacific Islands. We moved our forces across those oceans, where the Armies delivered the coup de grace in Europe, and where Air and Naval forces strangled Japan without invasion. Now the net assessment was a real-life bottom-line, in World War II (something very difficult (or us military men to get in peace time). We know what happened. The outcome was: Axis fleets destroyed; the Soviets remaining with only a meagre coastal defence; Anglo-American forces in total control of Japan and the islands intervening, and of Western Europe and of the interconnecting oceans; and with a modest fission monopoly.
I fought in the Korean War as the skipper of a destroyer escort and the navigator of a battleship. I observed there, that we came to that war as a result of demobilisation overnight after World War II, demobilisation of our forces, which turned us rapidly from number one to number two on land. I watched our Air and Naval forces cut back, remaining only slightly superior to those of the Soviet Union. I saw Stalin failing to demobilise and over running Eastern Europe. I observed the first in pressures on Turkey and the insurgency in Greece. We knew long after the fact through Milo van Agilas book Conversations with Stalin that Stalin never believed the Anglo-American powers would suffer their sea lines of communication to be severed in Greece. But nevertheless, like some Machiavellian mother whose children were spawned by the devil, he permitted them to play with it until we look our stand watched President Truman have the courage unique for a politician in 1947, to report the facts of Stalin’s mischief to the public, and saw in 13 dramatic weeks the way in which our people turned the situation around:
- through their elected representatives, they created the National Security Act of 1947, which established the Central Intelligence Agency, a Policy Planning Council in State, a Defence Department – mechanisms for dealing with the Soviet aggressive strategy,
- the enabling legislation to the Truman Doctrine which liquidated the pressures on Turkey and together with Tito’s defection eliminated the insurgency in Greece.
- the enabling legislation for the Marshall Plan which recreated the war-time economies of Europe and made possible the NATO alliance which saved the rest of Europe
I observed the formulation of the NSC 68 document which told President Truman shortly before the Korean War that the Allies were on the brink of disaster. I read, heartbroken, Acheson’s statement that Korea was not within our strategic perimeter, whereupon Stalin struck by proxy. Within a few weeks our Air Forces were overrun on the Korean Peninsula – only the Pusan perimeter remained. I observed naval carriers save the Pusan perimeter and naval forces and Marines go in at Inchon to turn that war around and, notwithstanding the temporary setback in the Chinese invasion, to maintain the logistics which won the War. And again at the end of that War, I had a real-life bottom line net assessment. The US and her Allies had demonstrated that they could win a limited war.
But in a sense we got a free ride; our nuclear stock-pile was still very modest. President Eisenhower was able to use it to threaten the Chinese and force a truce, but we’d have run out relatively rapidly. We got a free ride because we were able to retrieve the ships and tanks and Reserves of World War II, and bring them back and make it look like we could ‘do it on the cheap’. And we didn’t take account, in our net assessment at that time, of the importance of the discontent among our populace for a war that had run that long with limited aims, and no sure, visible victory.
The period from the Korean War to the Cuban Missile Crisis (during which I commanded a World War II destroyer and the first of our Guided Missile Frigates and attended the National War College), were interesting to me as I observed Admiral Radford, our first Navy JCS Chairman, persuade President Eisenhower to build a carrier a year and to make huge investments in the strategic fleet, which has been so critical to the deterrence over the years. I observed President Kennedy come into office, winning in part on the allegation of a Missile Gap. and then promptly, after looking at the facts, dismissing that gap and calling General Taylor to organise the counter-insurgency effort and to build up the Army and Air conventional forces.
I observed that team increase greatly the speed with which the Polaris Fleet could be delivered, and as a result I saw the decline in expenditures for our conventional fleet. I observed Soviet Maritime capabilities surging. They had come from nothing to a submarine fleet three times the size of ours. They overtook us with nuclear-propelled submarines and then dropped modestly to a two-and-a-half-fold advantage in submarines. I saw them conclude that they could not match us in carrier air, and therefore develop twenty years before we did, the pilotless aircraft, competent to operate from air, sea and land platforms and sub-surface. I saw them build a surface fleet, with heavy arms and short legs, expendable, with cruise missiles ready for the first conventional strike against us and a long-range land-based Naval Air Arm to give them the capacity which they demonstrated in Exercise Okean 70 to attack large numbers of task forces around the globe.
In the Cuban Missile Crisis I served as a member of the staff of a member of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. I observed the Soviet design in seeking to preserve a client communist state in Cuba and to double the mega-tonnage and cut in half the warning time that we would have, in a desperate effort to try to overcome our nuclear advantage. I had there my third real-life bottom line net assessment – the first true nuclear confrontation. I had the opportunity to observe days on the part of all the members of our National Security Council, who set everything else aside to focus exclusively on this problem. I saw the impact on them of my relaying to them the information that we had reckoned there would be ten times as many Soviet dead as American dead in the event of a strategic nuclear exchange. I saw the confidence with which President Kennedy concluded, after examining the naval ability to defeat them in Cuba, and to deal with options in Europe, that he could deliver the ultimatum to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union saw it the same way. Mikoyan, in his final remarks after the secret negotiations, made it clear that the Soviet Union would never jump us again without having an advantage.
They initiated three impressive actions:
- the largest strategic program in history, continuing unchecked to this hour (it has been a fraud on the American people to say that SALT I stopped it):
- the largest maritime expansion in history except for our own World War II growth;
- the detente of that decade (they have practiced it in each) – the Test Ban negotiations.
They invented soon thereafter, out of fear of strategic nuclear confrontation, the Khrushchev Doctrine of Wars of National Liberation. The major test of the Soviet Theory of Wars of National Liberation was fortuitously selected by them and unfortuitously by us.
President Kennedy’s build-up of conventional forces made it feasible to send forces to Vietnam. His counter-insurgency philosophy made it seem important to do so. In my judgement two grand strategic errors occurred at that point, which I argued against at the time. The first was that we got in in the first place, that was not the place to do it. And the second was that having gotten in, we never should have fought ‘the finger-tips’ in the jungles, but rather should have gone out after ‘the heart’, with air and sea strikes against Hanoi, as we did ten years later when we got a truce in ten days. I observed President Johnson decide that he would fight that war on a ‘guns and butter’ basis. Therefore the hidden tax on the Navy was to be the foregoing of another generation of replacement of its ships. I observed, as you saw on the chart earlier today, the Soviet Union drive us, with the expenditure of only one billion dollars of aid on its own part, to spend thirty billion dollars per year, in bombs, bullets, attrition aircraft and spare parts, wasted in the jungles in a foolish strategy. And the fourth real-life bottom line net assessment of my career then, was that there are wars of national liberation in which the United States dare not get involved because we do not have the patience as a people to fight them in the way we were required to do at that time. We need to take a different approach.
I observed in this same time frame the change in the strategic balance, from the Cuban Missile Crisis until 1970 when I came to office. In the aftermath of that crisis. President Kennedy and Secretary McNamara concluded that the time had come to permit the Soviet Union to join us at a higher level of force in a mutual deterrent relationship. In their policy statements they made it clear that we were going to stop at the then prescribed force levels building and build nothing more. We dropped our strategic expenditures to one third of the level of the average of the previous ten years and have continued at that level ever since. The Soviet Union raced ahead with hugely increased expenditures. It has proceeded to build an asymmetrical advantage in every one of the areas of suggested constraint.
So the situation when I came to office on 1st July 1970, was one in which the strategic advantage was going to shift to the Soviet Union during my four years. It was one in which the conventional advantage was going to shift to the Soviet Union during my four years. It was one in which the Soviet Union’s strategy had driven us to convert from a counter-insurgency effort to a conventional war effort, in Vietnam with all the wrong constraints, with discontent rising in the United Stales, with Richard Nixon just elected on the premise that he would end the war where the country was, as we say in our Navy, ‘sullen, but not yet mutinous’. It was a country that would have the draft come to an end within a year or three, we knew not which. We had a Navy in which, because of all these factors that I have summarised, our average age for 967 ships was 19 years – technologically obsolescent, obviously half of it older than that figure.
Our Defence Department was only spending two-thirds of the Russian sum for research and development. Navy research was skewed badly, in favour of heavy, nuclear ships and sophisticated jet aircraft, and badly under-funded with regard to surface ships. ASW, C3, ECM, counter-mining and so forth. My estimate of the situation I gave during my interview for appointment to the job (indeed some 13 or 15 of us were so interviewed). I said what I have said here about what I had seen in my career. I gave some suggestions for the future – I was picked. So for those of you who do not like what I did you should blame civilian authority. I was selected from among the alternatives because the Secretary of Defence, Melvin Laird, believed that that was the particular package he wanted. He could have picked another person.
What I said in that appointment interview about the strategic situation, I visualised for the seventies. I can summarise briefly. With regard to the geopolitical situation, I said that the Soviet Union was undoubtedly going to continue its strategic force momentum to obtain superiority. I saw that we had to strive mightily and quickly to get a fair and balanced SALT 1 because the longer we waited the worse it would be. I said that we had to worry about Soviet conventional force momentum. We needed to get stability – a stable situation – as quickly as possible in South East Asia, so that we could get out of that trap of thirty times the expenditure that the Soviets were making in those jungles. I said that I believed the Soviet Union was, and proclaimed to be, an offensive alliance dedicated to our long term disadvantage. I saw that we and our allies had to assume that we would continue to be a defensive alliance and that we therefore had to take the long term view of a competition that would go on for generations and be prepared to stay the course. I believed that the Soviet Union was moving towards a Blitzkrieg capability in Europe; that it aspired to control Africa through the assumption of a series of strategic bases; that it schemed for position in the Middle East that would give it control of the oil; and the opportunity to extend, there and through the Indian sub-continent and around South East Asia, the containment of China whom it feared.
With regard to technology. I had the following to say that the US forces were obsolete and their technology was obsolete; that the Soviets were outspending us, doing three projects tor every two of ours in the research field; that the boundaries between air, sea and land warfare were becoming fuzzier as one examined the future in which satellites were available to control and to surveil and to guide and in which missiles were very long range and could be fired from shore or in the air as well as ships – in which accuracies were becoming very accurate indeed – and in which conventional explosives were becoming so powerful that together with those accuracies in many situations strategic nuclear war-heads would no longer be needed.
I felt that miniaturisation was making it quite possible with these other developments force us to think in terms of a large number of more numerous ships and to avoid the very costly, very large nuclear propelled ships in such numbers.
I saw that we should think in terms of using all our national assets (rather than just armed forces) tied together, merchant marine, commercial aircraft and so forth. I talked about the very special place that I saw for energy, with the United States already then being dependent on overseas supply for a third of its oil, now over 50%.
I reported that I believed there were three separate delicate decisions that had to be made. I said given the present levels that you, Mr Secretary, and the President, are telling me we can have. I’ve got to do it myself. I’ve got to reduce current capabilities in order to deal with this long haul effort with the Soviet Union. I’ve got to eliminate ships and aircraft and men, and put the money saved into capital investment. And I’ve got to reduce the probability of victory from 55% to below 50% in the first year of my tenure. You must understand that such cuts are necessary in order to have the possibility (after dropping to one chance in three of victory) that we can recover one chance in two by 1970. I suggested that we must have a high/low mix, about which you’re well informed. I said that we had to worry about the allocation between our strategic requirements and conventional, and that in either category inadequate funds could leave us in a very bad way
They liked these ideas I decided to come back within 60 days with what I called Project 60, a project that I promptly assigned to two Navy geniuses both of whom have subsequently become four star officers – one later a Vice CNO and the other Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. I gave them the requirement to have back in my possession a paper that would go to Melvin Laird 60 days from the day I took over, outlining our strategic concept. I asked that it deal with personnel as well as forces and technology.
With regard to personnel there were a number of driving factors that caused us great concern. The anti-war mood of the country made our sailors the pariah of their peers, as were our soldiers, airmen and marines. We had sailors that had been on sea duty for twelve to fifteen years. They were spending 85% of that time at sea (most of it overseas) because of the war. They were under-supported (you heard today that comment made about Australian Forces, we still have not replaced all of the items that we gave to Israel in the Yom Kippur War, six years later). These sailors were required to live a life style completely different from that of their peers. Re-enlistment rates were at an historic Navy low – 9.5%. We were a racist organisation. The Navy had defied President Truman’s orders to integrate, while the other Services had done so a generation earlier. Less than 1% of our officer corps were black, instead of 11%, and less than 5% of our sailors. And the draft pressure which had made three of the Services volunteer Services, was about to expire. So it was mandatory that we take these actions which I will just briefly categorise in three sub-sets:
First there were those that had what I would call ‘home and mother’ connotations. They had to do with providing greater shore duty opportunity, taking it out of our hide, reduced readiness by reduced in-port watches and that kind of thing. None of this category was subject to much criticism.
The second category had to do with lifestyle changes: the authorisation for our Petty Officers to have beer in the barracks, a heinous crime to some old salts: an authorisation to have hard rock music in the clubs (I can’t stand the stuff, but my four children love it and they’re all square).The authorisation to wear hair more like the life styles from which they came. (Everyone of my peers came in to remonstrate with me on that one. I heard them out and then took them out to introduce them to the portraits of our mutual predecessors, all of whom had beards and long sideburns, and suggested that we were just returning to the conservative standards of our grandfathers).
The third category of change had to do with the provision of equal opportunity for all, regardless of race or sex. And these were a series of highly controversial changes which some of our retired community worked very hard to unhorse.
With regard to weapons modernisation, I concluded that the first thing we had to worry about was to make more of our new ships to replace our dwindling number of old ships. We were going to go down from about 967 to half that number. We had to make more of them truly offensive. We had never had a surface ship missile. I expedited the production of the Harpoon cruise missile so that we could get it to sea in as many ships as possible. I sought to make as many ships as possible air-capable to give us reconnaissance and surveillance support. With regard to our carriers, it was clear that we were dropping rapidly from the 24 of earlier years down to something that would fetch up to a total of 12, that we had to make them dual capable, not only attack, but also ASW-capable, and we had to make them individually more qualitatively capable. So we created the CV out of the separate CVA or CVS concepts – a single carrier having both strike and ASW capabilities We did everything we could to expedite the highly sophisticated jet aircraft that were already in the pipeline, the F-14’s, the S-3’s, the E-2C’s and the A-6 all-weather strike aircraft. Air defence was a significant weakness. We had one thing coming along very promptly, the F-14 aircraft, which is the best air defence weapon we’ve got, and we put great effort in resources into getting it as fast as possible. The Close In Weapons System, the Vulcan-Phalanx was also a near-term solution. In the long term, we accelerated the sum being spent for research on the Aegis system. We tried to put much more than had been done in recent years in C3 and into mine counter-measures work
With regard to ASW, where we had another notable weakness, we speeded up the Mk.48 torpedo and the P-3C’s. We tried to cover our blind areas in SOSUS. We accelerated the Captor mine which had not had a real sponsor. Ditto with array systems and computer processing for all the ASW input.
With regard to ship modernisation, I sought to maintain a balance I fought hard for the fourth nuclear carrier on the theory that we had to have two in each ocean to give us the flexibility of rapid deployment. But I specified to Congress that in my judgement we should never build a fifth: they were just too costly and we could have three fossil fuelled carriers for the price of two nuclear carriers, I stood by that and helped defeat the fifth nuclear carrier in the budget when the President vetoed it I supported that action in an exchange for the commitment that a smaller carrier would be in this year’s budget, which it is, and for another commitment. We speeded up the rate of production of nuclear submarines from 3 to 5 per year, in order that we could buy subs ahead, early, and leave an unused stream of expenditures in later years available for some of the lower cost ships that would lake longer to develop.
Among the low cost ships in the series, we invented the PHM, the hydrofoil craft. We now have five of those It took some Congressional action (to over-rule the Presidential decision) to save them, a year or so after I left office. Another concept was the Sea Control Ship — that 17,000 ton flat top which could carry 17 aircraft, costing one seventh of the cost of a carrier. It would have given us the capability to have platforms deployed in peacetime, toward, while the big carriers slayed well rearwards ready to come in shooting, to avoid their principle deficiency, the Soviet trailers who constantly have their missiles trained on them in deployed areas. In war, there would be a reversal of positions, with the Sea Control Ship doing the guarding of the central oceans. As you know that concept was defeated. However Spain is building one, you have one under consideration here (I hope it goes toward), the Russians are building them, and the United States Navy will one day come back to it through its VSS concept which is now beginning to gain some momentum.
A third ship in the low end of the mix was the Surface Effect Ship, the ship that travels on the surface of the sea with an air cushion – 80 to 100 knots, therefore out-running a torpedo, making current torpedo systems obsolete. A demonstration of how long it takes to get the hardware is that in Project 60 we had Melvin Laird’s approval for the whole bag within 60 days. It took eight years to get SES through the R & D system. Last year’s budget had the first production money in it. The President had taken it out, we got Congress to restore it. This year’s second Presidential commitment was that it would be there. He forgot that commitment Congress is going to have to restore it this year in order to complete the procurement funds.
I want to talk now a little bit about the problem of dealing with constituencies which one has, in seeking to maintain this balance among resources (within which I include personnel) and to conclude on what one can do in the area of strategy and technology.
So, first with regard to constituencies. There are about six of them. One important one is uniformed personnel. We are all aware of the things that are done to communicate, down, within the uniformed services. In the United States at least, the retired community is a very powerful one I found that I had to spend a certain amount of time de-lagging the more militant opposition within the retired community. I never got it all de-fanged, but I managed to split them a bit. As a result we lessened some of the opposition that they were giving us on Capitol Hill. Another constituency is the Civil Servants. I didn’t pay very much time and attention to them. They seemed to go their way and I went mine. Another is Civilian Authority. In my case the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of Defence and the President, the Commander-in-Chief. There’s a very special feature of law relevant to the Chief of Navy – not to the other Services – that the Chief of Navy is the Naval Adviser to the President. That has never been subsumed by subsequent legislation which makes all the Joint Chiefs of Staff advisers to the President via the Secretary of Defence. Therefore, I found myself having a set of responsibilities to the Secretary of the Navy, different ones through my JCS hat to the Secretary of Defence, and still different ones, through the statute, to the President himself. The latter authority became very important to me in my last month in office, when Secretary Kissinger, who had seized power from Mr Nixon when the latter became a vegetable, ordered the Secretary of Defence not to send any advice from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the President, prior to Mr Nixon’.s trip to Moscow to deal with SALT I Kissinger knew what he wanted to negotiate, he didn’t want the military to harm that package deal. Unable to get a decision from the Secretary of Defence to forward JCS views through JCS channels, I quoted the law, wrote a letter to the President, via the Secretary of Defence as every seaman has the right to do, and sent an advance copy to the President. He therefore had it officially, and Kissinger knew he had it officially. They had to reckon that the Congress would hear that they had had such advice before considering a deal at Moscow. Perhaps of even greater significance was that at the same moment Paul Nitze. a distinguished SALT I negotiator, resigned in protest at the lack of respect for the constitutional process and to the disastrous package Kissinger was proposing. To his credit. Mr Nixon who was in deep trouble at home, forewent the opportunity to achieve a diplomatic triumph and did not negotiate that very bad deal with Moscow.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff is itself a constituency with which one has to deal and we have the same kinds of problems that were discussed here among your Services. I won’t go into them except to say that it always intrigues me that the media used to say that the Supreme Court deliberates, the Congress legislates, and the JCS bickers. I found that they were all committees and had all the virtues and weaknesses thereof.
I want to talk a little bit about the next two together. The public and the media, which are very much a constituency with which a Service Chief and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has to deal. Because the anti-war sentiment in the country was so very strong, and because the disposition on the part of the Congress therefore, was to cut, cut, cut defence budgets, it turned out to be very important to have some leverage different from the traditional military leverage. Quite by accident, not part of our original strategic concept, the changes that we were making with regard to personnel, turned out to have a tremendous boon for us in the Congress. I could go in and talk to the most liberal-hearted member of the Congress, and talk to him about what we were doing for minorities and women, and then just on leaving ask him please to vote for the F-14. It was amazing how many votes one could get because they thought you were right on certain issues. The treatment for our programs in the personnel field by the media, in my judgement, was probably more responsible than any other factor for the fact that we were able to increase the Naval slice of the budget by a percent a year for each of the four years that I was there – more than it did with the logic of any arguments I was making with the Joint Chiefs or the Secretary of Defence.
Let me talk now about some of the roadblocks we encountered. First were Unions. We all have them; we really need them and we need more of them. But they’re a problem. The aviators want it all their way, the submariners want it all their way and the surface fellows want it all their way. They are a very powerful group each; they are further complicated by Admiral Rickover as he sits off on the side. The problem of dealing with them is the following. Once you conclude, as a Service Chief of Staff, that one of their programs was a good idea, you could forget it because if it had been their program they would really run with it. But if you wanted to change a program, you’d better watch it very, very closely indeed. And if you wanted to invent a program, like the Captor Program (where there is not a Captain to command the bridge of the Captor, or to command a squadron of Captors) or in mine counter measures or the ECM field, you’ve got to create a little mini-union in order to get it supported. I frequently recall following Admiral Burke’s advice to me when I first went to see him after my appointment. He said to me, after you’ve made a decision be sure you look up the Action Officer and convince him it’s a good idea.” I’ve mentioned the Rickover phenomenon: there’s a fascinating chapter in my book and if any of you haven’t been able to get it, leave your names, and I’ll send you a free copy.
Another major complication was the Kissinger philosophy about which I wrote in that book. He was a man of Spenglesian philosophy, who believed privately and said so, amongst many of us in positions of authority, that the West was a civilisation which had passed its historic high point and was on the wane; that we were dealing with the rising Imperial Empire in the Soviet Union; that his job was to preside over the smooth transition, hopefully slowly, into inferiority; that the American people lacked the will and the toughness to give him the necessary defensive strength and therefore he had to do the best he could. Now, some of us in office used to say to him that that was the worst immorality of all, believing that, not to report it and let it be debated, not to permit the public to understand what the facts were, and then decide whether it wanted to do more. His answer to that used to be “If I say it publicly, I lose my negotiating leverage.”
But of all the road-blocks, the most driving and overriding was the disaster of Watergate, which came along some three years after our programs had been set in train, which led to the President’s becoming literally a political vegetable for his last 6 to 8 months. It led to a series of individual dukedoms being created around town, each seeking power in its own right, with Kissinger maintaining a kind of defacto Presidency for Defence and Foreign Policy. Perfectly good programs lost momentum as a result of that terrible crisis in our constitutional period.
Let me speak briefly about the mechanisms for effecting change. First, internally, we tried very hard to use primarily line channels. But we also found that we could head off an awful lot of the letters to Congress if we had a Flag Officer set up as an Ombudsman to whom anybody could report a complaint, giving him a chance to sort them out instead of having to explain to Congress what we had done about those complaints. And because of the controlled revolution we were bringing about with regard to minorities we had to set up a system of special assistants for minority affairs in each Command, which we planned would phase out in about four years and which now has I believe. We set up internally a new Deputy CNO for C3 kind of things. For those special new areas where we didn’t have strong unions, I would bring an individual into my mini-staff to monitor the programme until we got one started.
With regard to external relations, an important source of input to me was an organisation I set up called the CNO Executive Panel (CEP), which consisted of a wide mix of strategic analysts, scientists, and other types of defence experts who were able to survey the whole scene and come in and meet with me ‘cold turkey’ once a month. They were very helpful to me in making sure that I went back and looked at places where I may have moved too quickly. They became very strong advocates for a strong Navy and were effective with their friends, present and future Secretaries of Defence, etc. With regard to externals, one had to deal, as I have described, with Congress. I tried to visit every member of the Congress every year. I found they broke down fairly neatly into three categories. One thirdthought that Defence was irrelevant – “Don’t talk to me”. One third said “I’m as worried as you are, don’t waste time on me, get out and get the others”. And the middle third would say “I’ve got to worry about re-election. You give me a 30% pro-defence, 70% anti-defence record, so I can get re-elected, and I’ll vote for anything you say”. We saved the Trident strategic submarine on a 49 to 47 vote by casting three senatorial proxies, keeping them within their batting average. They didn’t know what they were voting for, but we saved the Trident system.
Another important device which I’m sure you can’t use here, was that I had at least twice a week, lunches with individuals brought in from the press, and from industry, and from banking, and from government, and told them frankly what the situation was; I found that by keeping in touch with them (using a Staff Officer to do so), I could call them on the phone in time of need I’d go see Senator X and give him a perfectly brilliant argument to support one of my systems and would get nowhere, and then I’d call two of his major contributors and the next time I saw Senator X he was very impressed with my logic.
The final device that I tried to use was a continuation of the net assessment which I had had the opportunity, as you all have had, to observe in the real life wars and confrontations. Without a war, the next best way to assess is a process of doing the analyses to try to understand what would probably happen in the event of a war. It was those analyses that I had done as Director of Systems Analysis several years earlier and which I continued to sponsor and grapple with, that made it possible for me to make my judgement, after also taking account of readiness factors, intelligence, Fleet Commanders judgements etc. that we had a 55% probability of victory the day I took over, in a conventional war with the Soviet Union. It was 45% by the end of the first year, and 35% by the end of the second, third and fourth years. I reported those each year to the President and to the Congressional Committees. The frankness of the report to Congress always earned a certain number of scars from the executive branch.
Let me speak briefly now about the outcomes in this whole range of effort in trying to balance strategy, resources and technology. With regard to personnel, the Navy ended up integrated. We selected for the first time in history, a black Admiral, we now have three, the senior of these is a three-star Admiral, they are doing magnificently. It is no longer an issue in the United States Navy. With regard to women, we did a pilot experiment on the hospital ship, Sanctuary. They proved they could do the jobs of seagoing ratings. We put them through Naval Aviation training. They flew their weather recce aircraft into the eyes of a storm. We’ve selected at least three women Admirals. They’re doing very well indeed. But women are still very much an issue. Male chauvinism turns out to be stronger than racism. However Judge Sirica, the man who handled the Watergate Affair, has recently struck down as unconstitutional the law that prohibited the assignment of women to combat duties, and the Navy is now cranking up to take the benefit of lessons gained in the two experimental activities to implement Sirica’s decision. With regard to personnel overall, the bottom line is that re-enlistment rates quadrupled in that four year period of time.
In the field of ships we have the five PHMs, the Sea Control ship is dead in our Navy, but lives elsewhere, the Surface Effects Ships as I’ve discussed, still lives thanks to Congress overruling the President. The main program of the low-end of the mix, the Patrol Frigate, now called FFG, which we originally conceived would be fifty in number, has been so highly successful that the Navy now plans to build seventy. Recently you have read a piece of flak on the part of one of our less responsible critics, Senator Proxmire, (who, I have been told was put up to it by Admiral Rickover, who fears this program because it is competition for his nuclear propulsion program). Vulnerabilities of the FFG were reported. They might have been discussing any warship because they all have similar battle damage vulnerabilities. They discussed some of the limitations. Those were limitations that we decided upon to keep the costs down. The report of the Board of Inspection and Survey by that tough, old, irascible ‘P.T. Boat’ Buckley, who’s been inspecting ships for ten years, gave the Perry Class the highest marks of any ship he’s ever inspected. And I think you’re going to be very pleased with it in Australia.
With regard to the Project 60 weapons, one can say that they’re all coming along, notwithstanding the Watergate-inherited delays.
In the field of geopolitics. I would say that my forecasts at the 1970 period were wrong, because they have come about faster than I predicted as a result of the loss of our first war and the loss of our first President in political action.
The geopolitical situation has hastened the Soviet advantage. We learned in Vietnam that neither our country, nor any democracy, is capable of a long protracted, meaningless, ill-defined war. We have therefore seen the Soviet Union move rapidly beyond its original concept of Wars of National Liberation, to exploit every opportunity in Angola, in Ethiopia, in Somalia initially (and then having given this country up, they’re already organising the insurgency which will return Somalia to a client state, having used Ethiopia to overrun the Ogaden. Eritrea, and to build a naval base on the island off Ethiopia). They’re already training the insurgents that they intend will bring the black radicals to power in Rhodesia, rather than the black moderates who are already striving for power. They are, I learned when I was in South Africa last year, already training the future revolutionaries for South Africa in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Iran is an example of the way in which the Soviet Union has almost contemptuously speeded up the drive of their activity. From over the border Soviet Radio has urged Iranians to burn, pillage, loot and to bring down the Shah and now Bakitiar. They of course fear this Moslem fanatic who will take over because of his effect on their own Moslems. But he intends, they know, to try to turn the country backwards. They know that that will not work. They’re already in touch with the Marxist radicals whom they hope will take over from him.
With regard to SALT negotiations, SALT I, as it was explained to Congress by the Nixon Administration, has been violated in a number of significant ways by the Soviet Union. Later strategic decisions have accelerated the rate of Soviet superiority. SALT II negotiations therefore have been much less fortuitous than the not very fortuitous SALT I negotiations. The SALT II treaty when it is announced shortly will, in my judgement, if it is ratified by the Senate, ensure strategic nuclear superiority for the Soviet Union. Indeed the United States juridically will forego the right to recover superiority in SALT II. This will be the first time in our history that we have accepted juridical inferiority. Numbers of us are working very hard to defeat that treaty. I believe that there is about a 50-50 chance that it can be done. I think that the debate will be very important in order to educate the public on what the situation is.
Let me talk last then about the technological situation. The Soviet Union continues to do three interesting research projects for every two that we do because of their greater R&D budget. Before I left office, in my last posture statement before the Congress, I had analysed 15 of the areas of naval war and reported to the Congress as I had to the President, that in my judgement the Soviet Union was ahead in 10 of the 15 areas technologically. I believe that that situation continues today. I believe that the Soviet Union is doing better than we are with regard to research in particle stream and laser work. I know that they have violated the ABM Treaty and are doing research and development, some of which is authorised, under the treaty, and that they aspire to have an ABM system which will make their homeland invulnerable, defeating what was supposed to be mutual deterrence. I think the hopeful field is in ASW, where the United States has made some significant improvements and I’m feeling better about that end of the business.
My conclusions with regards to my assigned topic, are that, it’s very difficult to maintain a sensible balance of strategy, technology and resources while losing a war and losing a President; and that under the US system, not to comment on yours, it is very important for a Service Chief of Staff not only to work on the amount of his Services’s allocation within the authorised ‘Defence Pie’, but also to work very hard on the amount of dollars in the ‘Total Pie’, maintaining that posture which permits him to be in touch with our co-equal body, the Congress, directly and indirectly.
My conclusion is that if one is going to be successful with regard to winning the battle amongst Services, but far more importantly, if one is going to be successful together with the other Services, in increasing the total pie for the benefit of his country, it is critical that he maintain the most efficient possible administration, and that he maintain his Service relevant to the Nation which it represents. I believe that the answer to Peter Young, whom I consider a fine and impassioned young man, is that a Service Chief, rather than resign, should make the bastards fire him – and that he should continue to call them as he sees them and to report his concerns in the most public ways possible, and let the civilian authority fire him if they will. My book reports that in my last month they tried once to fire, once to court martial, finally settled for not awarding any medals, and then Jim Schlesinger double-crossed them and awarded anyway. I believe that we are as a free world in a part of the normal democratic cyclic swing. As a result of our terrible domestic tragedies, the Western alliance is in great danger I believe that it is absolutely mandatory for those who have held high office to do their best to warn their own countries, and the countries of their allies about the seriousness of the situation. I believe that the theory that governments know best and that the public should be told what the government thinks it should be told, is a dangerous and pessimistic theory of the democratic system. I, for one, believe that if the public understands the facts they will rally to make the necessary decisions, and that even in a democracy the necessary insurance policy will be forthcoming when people understand that their very survival rests on it.
Thank you
The Author
The naval career of Admiral Elmo R Zumwalt, Jr. spanned the years from 1939 to 1974. He saw combat service in World War II (in the Pacific Theatre), in the Korean War (navigator of the battleship USS Wisconsin), and the Vietnam War(Commander US Naval Forces Vietnam), from 1969-70. In 1962 he played a significant role in helping to shape US policy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. During his sea-going career he commanded a frigate, a destroyer escort and a destroyer. In 1970, at the early age of 49 he was appointed as Chief of Naval Operations. He was the youngest officer to hold the office, a position he held until 1974. After retirement, Admiral Zumwalt wrote his memoir On Watch, which won a Book of the Month award in 1976. He was the author of numerous articles and commentaries and ran as the Democratic candidate to the US Senate for Virginia in 1976.
Admiral Zumwalt died in 2000 aged 79 from mesothelioma. His funeral service was held at the Naval Academy Chapel. In his eulogy President Bill Clinton called Zumwalt “the conscience of the United States Navy”.
