The Fisher Solution 2.0
Joint forces can hold the line outside of INDOPACOM
The Navy could rely mostly on allies and air power to deal with Russian and other regional threats around and near Europe while the Navy concentrates in INDOPACOM.
Is the Navy going to get reinforcements any time soon? I’m not hopeful:
The multifaceted challenges facing U.S. shipbuilding include workforce shortages, overly bureaucratic procurement processes, inconsistent funding, design instability, and a limited industrial base.
But all is not lost. Strategypage writes that land-based planes and missiles can handle the Russian fleet; and that all American carrier strike groups should be in INDOPACOM.
That fits my view on the Russians:
A Russian flotilla based in the Mediterranean Sea will lead a short but exciting life during a war. Russia doesn't need a blue water fleet and trying to cling to one is foolish.
And it applies generally around Europe despite that being focused on the Mediterranean Sea. And yes, the Baltic Sea is a "NATO lake." That doesn't mean there won't be a hard campaign to lock it down. But would anybody say that NATO would want to trade places with Russia on geography and capabilities? I think not.
There are several areas where greater alignment between U.S. and NATO maritime forces could enhance warfighting readiness and crisis response. These include streamlining command relationships, enhancing maritime domain awareness, harmonizing rules of engagement, strengthening maritime logistics, integrating NATO into North American defense planning, and improving amphibious force employment. While NATO navies bring significant capability to bear, optimizing these areas will ensure that the alliance is positioned to deter aggression, enhance decision advantage, and maintain maritime superiority in an increasingly complex and contested security environment.
And in general for coping with rising Chinese power, the Fisher Solution should work:
To concentrate power in or near the Pacific, America would need to leave securing the Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea largely to our NATO allies (including Canada) who have significant if dispersed naval power to block Russia's weak navy from Norway to the Mediterranean Sea.
America would have to shift Fifth Fleet from the Arabian Sea center of gravity to the east from Diego Garcia to Darwin and Perth (where they'd still be able to respond to Central Command problems), to support operations against forces in the South China Sea from the Indian Ocean, with logistics and military support from Australia.
Putting American assets on the eastern end of the Indian Ocean also helps keep our fleet within supporting distance of Pacific assets. And with more Chinese warships heading for the Indian Ocean, an American naval force based out of Australia will be able to hammer the Chinese ships, bolstered by American and allied land-based air power in the Gulf region and Diego Garcia (plus the Indian navy).
America's regional allies would step up their abilities to secure sea lines of communication in the Persian Gulf region (like Saudi Arabia), with larger ships that even now are being built for Qatar (which I noted here) in the region. Britain will help there, too. Don't forget that America could expand the deployment of smaller vessels in the Gulf backed by air power there. And diverting some of the oil traffic away from the Strait of Hormuz is one element of that protection.
And as far as I'm concerned, I don't know why land-based air power can't replace carriers in the Middle East (and in the Mediterranean Sea and North Atlantic, for that matter--with land-based planes in Norway, Britain, and Iceland defending the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap to secure trans-Atlantic lines of supply).
But I'd like to offer a couple refinements. One, American modularized auxiliary cruisers could pick up the slack in the Atlantic. And a variant of such a vessel type, which I wrote about in Military Review, could help cope with problems in Africa and Latin America.
Two, American carrier air wings could be shifted between INDOPACOM and other commands even if the carriers are all east of Suez and west of Panama.
And depending on the state of the Air Force's anti-ship capabilities and the level of China's A2/AD threat to the carriers, elements of a carrier air wing could be based on land airfields in the western Pacific until the Chinese anti-ship threat is reduced enough to take calculated risks with the carriers with embarked air wings to stretch China's capabilities.
Of course, I don't want to jam too much into vulnerable western Pacific bases. We'd need more capacity plus more logistics capacity—thank you Transportation Command—to sustain carriers in the distant Pacific theaters without getting too close to China's anti-ship power.
And how long it would take to shift bases from the east coast to the west coast for permanent basing is outside my lane. Perhaps east coast ports could focus on long-term overhauls—in addition to surface ships and submarines that can still be home ported there.
But I'm sure that would be a long and expensive process, if the Marine long march to Guam is any guide. So start now.