http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/03/opinion/03kaplan.html Quote:
Aboard U.S.S. Benfold, in the North Pacific
AS the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln returned home to San Diego this week from its relief mission in Indonesia, the main lesson of the United States military's remarkable tsunami relief effort has yet to be acknowledged: that the global war on terrorism, rather than distracting the military from performing humanitarian deeds, has made it far more effective at them. This is worth bearing in mind, especially now that President Bush's request for $82 billion in emergency military spending has re-opened the argument over Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's longstanding plan for remaking the armed forces as a leaner, more flexible military machine.
The fact is, the Navy of the 1990's could not have responded nearly as quickly and efficiently to the tsunami as did the post-9/11 one. This is largely because of structural changes made to fight the war on terrorism.
A decade ago, our carrier battle groups mainly did planned, six-month-long "pulse" deployments. Since 9/11, the Navy has put increasing emphasis on emergency "surge" deployments, in which carriers, cruisers and destroyers have to be ready to go anywhere, anytime, to deal with a security threat. The new strategy explains why, in late December, the Abraham Lincoln strike force was able to so quickly leave Hong Kong for Indonesia at a best speed of 27 knots.
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I know this is an op-ed but I'm posting this because I thought he did a good job of explaining the changes the DoD has gone through over the last 10 years or so, with a current example of why these are good things. While he misses that most of these changes were well in motion during the 1990s, they were only beginning to be implemented then, and by now things like the land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have understandably taken much of the spotlight. So these changes have gone largely unnoticed.
The idea behind sea swaps isn't anything new though. He didn't mention it, but every one of our ballistic missile submarines has two identical crews - a blue one and a gold one (
example). When one of the boats comes back from deterrent patrol, one crew debarks, the other moves aboard, and the boat departs for another patrol in a matter of a few weeks. This is important, especially for FBM subs because of their strategic importance. Manpower endurance has always been the limiting factor behind how long a ship can be deployed, rather than machinery endurance. So by removing that limitation, you have increased uptime drastically as most ships and submarines only need to enter drydock and depot level maintenance every 2-3 years. Now they have extended the tag-team crewing to the surface fleet and it seems to be working rather well.
Having a lighter and more flexible (yet even more powerful) military has been a goal of ours since the USSR went away. Now that it is catching up with current events we are seeing why it is a good thing to have, even if seeing half the fleet turned into gardening tools makes me get all misty.
--but it is an interesting idea at least. I know that the planes were a bit of a pain to get geared back up again if they had a long downtime so in concept this would be a good thing but geeze it is a bit like using another person's toothbrush 
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