By Leonard Picotte and Maurice Gauthier*
The U.S. Navy has a global and enduring mission, and it requires a combat-ready force of capable and survivable ships to accomplish it. These ships provide the naval presence required to keep the waterways of the world safe and open for U.S.and global commerce. (US Naval Institute News.)
To ensure the survivability of the sailors and Marines embarked in these ships, the Navy has developed a ship survivability instruction: Survivability Policy and Standards for Surface Ships and Craft (OPNAVINST 9070.1B), dated 17 November 2017. This instruction sets the Navy’s standards for ship construction and assigns responsibilities to ensure ship survivability is addressed throughout a ship’s lifecycle. The policy applies to all Navy surface ship classes and craft, and to “those ships and craft procured by the Navy in support of Navy missions.”
The instruction obligates Navy decision-makers to meet the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s System Survivability Key Performance Parameter (KPP). The three requirements for ship survivability in this KPP are susceptibility (avoiding or defeating attacks); vulnerability (ability to withstand damage from attacks); and recoverability (damage control and restoration of the platform’s capability).
Ship requirements are determined by a ship’s concept of operations, which is approved by the Chief of Naval Operations. Ship survivability is considered a fundamental design requirement. Naval Sea Systems Command verifies that each ship meets survivability requirements and validates their maintenance during all phases of the ship’s acquisition and throughout its operational lifecycle. Ship survivability features must carry the same weight as any other design criteria to protect the ship, its crew, and embarked Marines.
Threats to Navy ships do not only come from newly introduced high-speed precision weapons. As history has shown, effective attacks can come from low-tech floating mines, explosives-laden small craft, and swimmer-delivered limpet mines. Regardless of the threat, surface ships and craft must be designed and built to avoid battle damage when possible, and to withstand it when it occurs, to prevail in combat—in sum, they must be built to fight and win.
History is full of events when ships might have sunk, with significant loss of sailors and Marines, were it not for the standards required of shipbuilding and crew training. In 1988, the USS Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) was operating in the Persian Gulf. While maneuvering to exit a mine field, she struck a mine that blew a 21-foot hole in her port side, flooding two main engineering spaces and causing dozens of cracks in the hull. With a ship designed to Navy survivability standards learned from World War II experiences, and a crew well-trained in damage control, she was able to proceed to port for repairs.
In 1991, the USS Tripoli (LPH-10) struck an Iraqi contact mine in the Persian Gulf. The resulting explosion ripped a 25-by-23-foot hole in her starboard side below the waterline. Twenty hours later she resumed operations, and the ship remained on station for seven days before returning to port for repairs. This was possible only because of the ship’s survivability, excellent damage-control capabilities, and a well-trained crew.
In October 2000 in Aden, Yemen, a small boat manned by terrorists approached the USS Cole (DDG-67) and detonated an explosive charge, leaving a 40-foot hole near the waterline, killing 17 sailors, and injuring and additional 40. Many more lives would have been lost had the ship not been designed to the robust Navy ship survivability standards.
Ships built to these standards are more likely to survive attacks than are vessels designed to commercial standards. The Samuel B. Roberts, Tripoli, and Cole all survived, and in two cases continued to operate, because of the damage-control lessons learned in World War II and a Navy ship acquisition program that applied those lessons by mandating strict survivability standards for its new ships. Of course, these standards come with increased costs in design, construction methods, and materials, but sailors and Marines are more than deserving of this investment.
The Danger of Lowering Standards
Surface ship survivability is a topic that evokes memories of lives lost and lives saved. Those who bear the burden of putting U.S. ships in harm’s way hold an equally somber responsibility to maximize sailors’ and Marines’ chances for a safe return. Shipbuilding requirements are many. They increase the complexity and cost of the design, construction, and operational maintenance of a ship. But their most important aim is to ensure a warship is survivable. Many of these requirements are written into the military specifications embedded in the contracts awarded to the Navy’s shipbuilders, and proponents of military specifications routinely remind cost-focused overseers that most of these standards are the result of lessons learned from naval combat and past attacks on U.S. vessels. If its warships are survivable, the Navy has a greater chance of winning at sea and bringing home as many of its people as possible.
The Marine Corps meanwhile is revising its concept of naval expeditionary warfare, and it proposes reducing the procurement of capital amphibious ships in exchange for dozens of smaller, less capable vessels. Consequently, the Navy and Marine Corps spent recent years considering a concept for a small, slow, and lightly armed landing ship medium (LSM). The process has been drawn out by the considerable difference between Navy survivability standards and proposed standards that would reduce the LSM’s cost by approximately 50 percent. A request for proposals for the LSM embodied Navy survivability standards upfront, and the Navy’s ship acquisition executive was assured by experts that budget estimates would align with industry bids. But the gap between those bids and the Navy’s expectations was so wide that the service was forced to withdraw its solicitation.
The Navy’s failed LSM solicitation was for a vessel approximately 400 feet long manned by 70 sailors with 50 embarked Marines. The concept of operations is to deploy to the western Pacific, embarking, transporting, landing, and reembarking Marine Corps units moving between islands to set up installations for antiship cruise missiles. These sites would then counter Chinese forces and deny sea control. The ships would often operate independently and unsupported in remote areas. The high operational risk makes it imperative that these vessels be survivable.
What Sailors and Marines Deserve
The ongoing disconnect between the Marine Corps’ appetite for a low-cost ship built to commercial standards and the Navy’s higher cost and survivable design requirements persists. What is at stake is the survivability of the 120 sailors and Marines on board such a ship. The Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff determined that a commercial ship design cannot provide the survivability owed to embarked sailors and Marines. However, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes language that could be interpreted as pushing the Navy toward a commercial or non-developmental design for the LSM.
The NDAA prohibits the Secretary of the Navy from awarding a contract for the LSM program, including construction of the lead ship, until basic and functional designs are certified to be complete. This a seminal change to the Navy’s past costly process of concurrent design and construction. This is a responsible congressional intervention, and it is overdue. However, the FY 2025 goes on to make this requirement inapplicable to a commercial or non-developmental design for an LSM. This would authorize the Navy ship acquisition executive to waive the requirements for full and open competition for the lead ship, assuming the design of the LSM is commercial or non-developmental. This exemption of a commercial design from competition also exempts the vessel from survivability. It is a congressionally authorized, sole-source commercial procurement strategy that leaves survivability subservient to cost savings. This would be the LCS all over again, with Congress complicit. Many members of Congress lived through the LCS debacle. They know the outcome of a ship that does not meet Navy survivability standards. They should not wish to repeat the experience.
Navy survivability standards are based on years of hard lessons, many of which were written in blood. This is where the Joint Chiefs of Staff mandatory survivability KPP came from and why it came about. What is the rush to award a sole-source LSM contract built to commercial standards? Embracing and subsidizing the necessary costs of survivability in whatever ship becomes the LSM is more than a dollars-and-cents issue. It is also a moral one that recognizes the value of the sailors and Marines who will man those ships.
Lessons learned in combat must remain in focus as the Navy and Marine Corps build the force of the future. Building and fielding lower-survivability, lower-cost vessels is inconsistent with national values, and members of Congress should never publicly or privately embrace such so-called savings.
