U.S. Navy and small craft: Part II

In my last post, I explained why small boats are not as big of a threat as many pundits claim. My post may have came across as categorically opposed to all small craft. That is not the case. Instead, I shall argue that small vessels have a big role in our modern Navy, and how they can best serve our fleet.

Previously, I showed how small craft are not particularly good at combating larger vessels. However, small boats are not limited only to harassing larger ships, they can serve some very important purposes as well. These roles have historically included tasks such as patrol of the littorals, fleet scouting, counter-piracy operations, acting as a courier, escorting ships, and interception of couriers. Of these, interception of couriers (particularly drug-running craft today) and counter-piracy operations are probably the most relevant today, since scouting and patrol of the coast are already handled by aircraft and the Coast Guard, respectively, and courier operations are more effectively carried out by invisible submarines or fast jets. Although escorting convoys is an important role warships must play, it is not particularly relevant in this time of global maritime peace.

These requirements for a small warship (counter-piracy and interception of drug-runners with a minor focus on convoy escorting) are further compounded by the nature of the modern U.S. Navy. The Navy operates around the world, which requires all of its boats, including so-called littoral craft, to be able to sail in the open ocean to reach far-flung crisis zones. Further, the wide variety of threats that the Navy faces means that any warship that Navy launches must be multirole.

In addition, the need for a small warship to counter-act the threats of piracy and drug running is immediate. The Navy regularly trumpets that it exists to further freedom of the seas, and right now, the only impediment to freedom of navigation is piracy. The Navy's current fleet, which was largely designed to defeat the Soviets, is wholly inadequate for this task: most Arleigh Burke destroyers are not even equipped with the helicopters or boats necessary for stopping pirate skiffs. Further, pirate craft (and by extension, drug running vessels, which are even faster than pirate vessels) have proven that they are capable of outrunning and out-maneuvering Navy ships. The Navy's huge, billion plus dollar destroyers are also far too expensive for the task of countering piracy or drug-running.

Of course, the Navy is always several steps ahead of me: the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program, which has produced two rival ship classes: the Freedom class and the Independence class, has created vessels to address these needs. Although the two ships have received an unreasonable amount of hatred in both Navy circles and on the internet, I shall argue that they are the best boats we could have purchased, for their purpose.

The LCS ships are well suited to the tasks of countering piracy and drug traffic. Both are fast, clocking in at 47 knots for the Freedom and 44 for the Independence. This makes them the fastest ships in the Navy, and as fast as some of the boats they attempt to defeat. [1] Further, the ships are highly maneuverable: both are equipped with independently-steerable water jets, which allow the LCS to turn on a dime, an ability that has been demonstrated in sea trials. [2]. The ships are also seaworthy enough to make long voyages on their own, owing to their high stability in choppy seas [3] and their ranges of roughly 1,500 nm. [4] The ships are equipped with the latest detection equipment, and carry 1-2 helicopters as well as Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats (RHIB) for intercepting pirate, terrorist, or drug running boats.

What makes the LCS unique, however, is their weapons systems. Besides the usual weapons (a naval gun, machine guns, and a CIWS system) the ships are customizable, that is, their main armament can vary depending on the situation at hand, with customization taking less than 48 hours [3]. This allows the LCS to be a minesweeper one day, a subchaser the next, and an air-defense corvette the day after. This customization allows the LCS to fulfill its requirement of being multirole while avoiding the need to carry weapons of all types and thus be a jack of all trades: decent at everything but good at nothing. The success of customizable warships has already been demonstrated with the Royal Danish Navy's Absalon class support ships: large amphibious support vessels that have been used successfully in counter-piracy operations. [5].

Critics assail the Navy for not purchasing the excellent corvettes and patrol boats already on the market, an offense they say is particularly heinous since many corvettes and patrol boats are made here in the U.S. They further point to how useless the LCS would be if forced to fight warships from another nation. However, these arguments miss the point of the LCS: if the Navy wanted a corvette or a patrol boat, it would have bought one. Patrol boats are built to defend the coast (a task taken care of by the Coast Guard and Air Force in the U.S.), while corvettes are intended to fight in a fleet against other ships or land installations, in a manner similar to missile boats or torpedo boats. The LCS is supposed to be a fast counter piracy and drug running ship that can serve as an corvette or minesweeper in a pinch. The LCS is quick, maneuverable, and small (both in terms of overall size and draft), giving it the advantages of a patrol boat in combating small craft. At the same time, it is long range and powerful, giving it the advantages of a corvette. Finally, it has its own, unique advantages over other vessels: its capabilities are not as spread thin as those of a corvette because of its customizability.

In effect, the LCS is the perfect warship for its role. It saves money by taking the role of numerous other ships: minesweepers, fast attack craft, subchasers, patrol craft, etc. It excels in what it does because of its maneuverability, powerful armament, and speed. It can sail great distances in open seas to protect merchant vessels in times of war. And it fills a big gap in U.S. naval capabilities by providing an effective means of defeating fast speedboats and pirates.



Cites
1. http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0918/p05s01-woam.html
2. http://archive.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/060612/ships.shtml
3.Navy Littoral Comabt Ship (LCS) Program: Background, Issues, and Options for Congress. Ronald O'Rourke, Specialist in Naval Affairs. Congressional Research Service, 29 April 2011
4. http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/littoral/
5. http://politiken.dk/indland/article691125.ece

It was ok to kill al-Aulaqi

There has been a lot of controversy lately surrounding Attorney General Eric Holder's speech in which he defended the Obama administration's killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi. Holder argues in his speech that due process does not imply judicial process, i.e. a trial, since judicial process is not specified in the Constitution. Although he is correct, since the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that due process is liberty, not judicial process, this is a highly unwise argument to make, since many Americans view due process as referring to judicial process. Holder regrettably ignored the many valid and popular justifications for the legality of the killing of al-Aulaqi.

One argument leveled against the Obama administration is that al-Aulaqi was merely a terrorist sympathizer, not a combatant, so his killing was not justified under the laws of war, which only permit the killing of enemy combatants. This calls for a little background information. Al-Aulaqi, a former radical Islamic imam and al-Qaeda propagandist, was also a direct planner of terrorist attacks. In the failed Christmas Day Bombing of 2009, al-Aulaqi not only advocated for the attack, but he helped plan the attack and supply the perpetrator. As RAND counter-terrorism expert Seth Jones said, "Al-Awlaki actually helped get him [the bomber] in a jihadi camp, helped him get access to the underwear bomb and then actually walked him through [it]. He wanted [the bomber] to wait to explode [the bomb] over American airspace." He further instructed the bomber on how to evade capture. In addition, Al-Aulaqi had communicated regularly with Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man responsible for the deaths of 13 U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood, and had not only encouraged Maj. Hasan to carry out the attack, he gave Maj. Hasan his personal blessing to carry out the attack. In the words of al-Aulaqi, "[I] blessed the act because it was against a military target." Going further back, one can see ties between al-Aulaqi and 9/11. In early 2000, al-Aulaqi met with several of the 9/11 hijackers, including Khalid al-Mihdhar, both al-Hazmi brothers, and one other unidentified hijacker. In February of that same year, al-Aulaqi made four calls to Oman al-Bayoumi, who assisted the hijackers, although the FBI is confident that Nawaf al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were using al-Bayoumi's at the time. Ominously, al-Aulaqi  After the attacks, al-Aulaqi admitted to the FBI of having met with Nawaf al-Hazmi several times, although he did not tell the FBI what they discussed.

Although the above is already a fairly damning implication of al-Aulaqi in terrorism, the acts detailed above are only those in which al-Aulaqi had a direct involvement. His indirect involvement, in the form of radicalizing Muslims and then inspiring them to do terror, has had a far greater impact: he inspired or aided the Times Square bomb plot, the 2010 British Airlines bomb plot, and the 2009 Little Rock recruitment office attack, to name a few. Although some claim that al-Aulaqi acted as a journalist or commentator when he advocated violence against Americans (in the same way that O'Reilly is considered a commentator instead of a combatant despite his calls for war with Iran), this claim ignores al-Aulaqi's direct involvement in inspiring people to kill (many terrorists have cited al-Aulaqi as their inspiration), his recruitment campaigns for al-Qaeda, the fact that he both advocates and plans terror in his speeches (one of his most famous pamphlets, 44 ways to support jihad, calls on Muslims to finance and join jihadi organizations and to undergo weapons training), and his membership in al-Qaeda. These facts, particularly the last one, mean that al-Aulaqi is more similar to a military recruiter, military chaplain, or senior officer than to a journalist. These clear ties to al-Qaeda make it hard to argue that al-Aulaqi is a civilian.

There is also the legality aspect. Critics of the killing of al-Aulaqi argue that it is illegal to kill a U.S. citizen without due process. However, because the U.S. is at war with al-Qaeda, al-Aulaqi's organization, al-Aulaqi is effectively an enemy combatant. U.S. law allows for the killing of the killing of enemy combatants regardless of their citizenship, so this killing was justified. Although it can be argued that the U.S. could just call anyone a terrorist and thus justify killing them, al-Qaeda is a serious enough threat to justify calling them an enemy, as Maj. Matthew Machon and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights explain, "Statman claims that the United States is entitled to classify operations against al-Qaeda as war...based upon two specific criteria: (a) the gravity of the threat posed by al Qaeda and (b) the impracticality of coping with this threat by conventional law-enforcing institutions and methods. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Report on Terrorism and Human Rights in 2002 appears to agree[s] with the assessment of Statman." Maj. Machon is right on both fronts: al-Qaeda has killed over 5,000 Americans, and intimidation of juries and witnesses by terrorist groups plus the difficulty of finding 100% conclusive evidence of al-Qaeda membership makes trials of terrorists almost impossible.

Part (b), the impracticality of law-enforcement, applies particularly well to al-Aulaqi's case. His location in Yemen, deep in the heart of an al-Qaeda stronghold, would have made his capture difficult if not impossible. Trying al-Aulaqi would have just given him an opportunity to rant about his political beliefs for hours, and the fact that he is not a trigger-puller but a support-member in al-Qaeda would make him difficult to convict, especially since civilian courts have a tendency to clear terrorists of their charges (see: Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani).

Finally, al-Aulaqi will not set a precedent for killing Americans. In the U.S. Civil War, the Confederates were all former U.S. citizens, and yet they were killed. Indeed, some Northerners defected to the South, and yet some of them were still killed by Union troops. This precedent of the U.S. being allowed to kill Americans who try to destroy America has been around since 1861, and yet we have not been plunged into a fascist dictatorship. This proves that the U.S. only attacks organizations that pose a great threat to its security, and al-Qaeda is one of those organizations.

So to recap: al-Aulaqi was a confirmed enemy combatant who was directly responsible for several attacks on U.S. citizens and was indirectly responsible for the deaths of many others. His status as a combatant invalidates any claims he could have had to a civilian trial, and the impossibility of capturing him made the drone strike the only viable option.