Bring Back the CNO Strategic Studies Group And Make New “Captains of War” for Renewed Competition
The MOC
By
Dr. Steven Wills
January 18, 2024
The Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group (CNO SSG) was discontinued in March 2016 as navy leadership was re-assessing how best to deal with the resurgence of a revanchist Russia and a rising China intent on operating outside global norms. Founded in 1981 as a tool through which rising Navy Captains and later U.S. Marine Corps Colonels might support development of maritime strategy, the group changed after the end of the Cold War to accomplish more specialized CNO tasking. While the missions of the post-1994 SSG might have indeed been better managed through other organizations, its original construct was remarkably effective in making the Reagan-era, 1980’s Maritime Strategy a more effective tool for deterring and if necessary, enabling naval warfare against the Soviet Union. The Center for Naval Analyses 2016 report on the activities of the first fifteen CNO SSG groups was recently given public release and will soon find its way into the academic and historical discourse of late Cold War. The release of the history of the Cold War-era CNO SSG activities is also an opportunity to call for its return in its original guise as a tool the CNO can use with the Naval War College and organizations like the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA,) to make 21st Century naval strategic concepts usable at the operational level of war.
The decade of the 1970’s may have been challenging in some ways for the navy, but three concepts that had been developing across the decade came together to enable both a new Maritime strategy and the operational concepts needed to make it a viable component of national strategy. An idea of offensive sea control developed over the decade in the wake of the Navy’s departure from power-projection ashore missions in the Vietnam war. The U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Tom Hayward in particular sought to give his forces an offensive role against Soviet Pacific targetsrather than being just a reinforcement formation for the Atlantic war through the Carter Administration’s Swing Strategy. Hayward’s thinking on offensive carrier operations stimulated more aggressive thinking across the Navy. Navy Secretary Graham Claytor and his deputy James Woolsey equally desired a more offensive navy and commissioned the Sea Plan 2000 study to determine how large the Navy should be, and what composition of ships was best suited for offensive operations.
The election of President Ronald Reagan in November 1980 made possible both additional funding for a larger Navy and the prospect for an aggressive, forward maritime strategy. What was needed however were the tools to make that larger fleet and its strategy workable. As Admiral Hayward said in April 1981, “there is no dearth of strategic thinking going on these days in your navy. What is lacking is a more useful way to capitalize upon that abundant talent with more alacrity.” To this end Hayward first established first the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College and following shortly afterward in August 1981 the CNO Strategic Studies Group, a formation of upwardly mobile Navy Captains and Marine Corps colonels led by outgoing Deputy Secretary of the Navy Bob Murray. The group would be based in Newport, RI at the Naval War College, and focus a year of effort on a pressing issue of naval warfare essential to supporting U.S. maritime strategy. Admiral Hayward personally selected the members of the group, and they worked closely with the War College faculty.
Underway, Making Navy Strategy Operational
Once formed, the first CNO SSG group took as their topic of investigation one of the primary U.S. campaign level problems in naval warfare, fighting the Soviet Navy in the Norwegian Sea. The group researched the project through wargaming different scenarios of combat in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea. They received intelligence briefings on Soviet naval strategy, traveled to the regional deployed commanders and studied their war plans. They met with and discussed forward maritime strategy with Navy Secretary John Lehman. In April, just six months into their work, the group briefed the CNO Admiral Jim Watkins on their progress, and assessed their findings in the June 1981 Global Wargame. The game evaluation was supportive of what would become the 1980’s Maritime Strategy. As described by the CNA report, this strategy would,
“Attack the Soviets’ strategy and change the nuclear correlation of forces quickly, reducing incentives for either side to escalate quickly, and increasing incentives for war termination favorable to the United States and its allies. Operational concepts featured combined arms ASW that would limit the number of Soviet submarines that could get to the Atlantic Ocean, and free U.S. SSNs to sink Soviet SSBNs and naval air defenses.”
This strategic concept was vigorously tested in a series of naval exercises across the 1980’s and described in John Lehman’s book Ocean’s Ventured. The exercises in turn helped to develop the required operational and tactical plans as well as numbers and types of warships needed to potentially combat the Soviets. 1980’s Second Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Hank Mustin described this process as one where,
“I started thinking more and more about it as the background for the maritime strategy started to emerge. As the notion that we would no longer be fighting the battle of the Atlantic in the Atlantic became extant, mainly because we thought the Russians would retreat to their bastions up in the Murmansk area and the Kola Peninsula area, the way that the Navy could contribute in the battle for Europe became very, very different.”
These arguments in turn called for distinct types and numbers of ships than had been thought of in the 1970’s. In order to save Norway, for example, from Soviet occupation and the loss of NATO’s northern flank, Mustin and CNA analysis determined that three carrier battle groups needed to be present to provide enough air support for NATO to retain Norway.
The SSG went on to analyze similar warfighting problems in the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf across its first decade of service, further contributing to the execution of U.S. Maritime strategy. In 1994 however, CNO Admiral Mike Boorda, recognizing that the Cold War was over and that the Maritime Strategy was “on the shelf” and not of use due to the disappearance of the Soviet/Russian navy, “viewed the work of the SSG in the 1990s as having become “too pol-mil and not enough mil-pol.” He changed the SSG’s charter so that from 1995 forward the SSG would be tasked with” Forming “concept generation teams” for revolutionary naval warfare concepts incorporating emerging technology.” In continued in this effort through the 2000’s and 2010’s, but increasingly in competition with other groups like Deep Blueand Project Athena that also produced technological ideas. By 2016 the SSG’s work in making naval strategy operational was in distant wake long dissipated by the Cold War’s end and the rise of the Global War on Terrorism.
Its time to Bring Back the SSG for its Original Purpose
While the Soviet Union is 30+ years in the graveyard of history, time marched forward. New great power competition with a rising China and revanchist Russia, both, and especially China with significant naval forces again calls for operational maritime strategy. In this climate it is again time to return the CNO SSG to the business of evaluating and proposing solutions to current key operational problems. The group should be based in Washington D.C. in order to keep its focus on key operational issues. It should again be led by a senior retired four star officer similar to Admiral James Hogg who led the group from 1995 to 2013, and utilize support from all naval higher education institutions, as well as organizations like Center for Naval Analyses to both train upwardly mobile Navy and now Coast Guard Captains as well as Marine Corps Colonels in strategic thinking, and then to employ them to solve the hardest operational challenges. This process helps to solve those problems and prepare future senior naval officers to exercise them at sea as Admiral Mustin did in the 1980’s and potentially use them in war. This process can both herald what John Lehman called in the summer of 1981, “a rebirth of U.S. Naval Strategy,” and create new “Captains of War” as the CNA report states.
Dr. Steven Wills, Navalist, Center for Maritime Strategy
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Dr. Steven Wills
The Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group (CNO SSG) was discontinued in March 2016 as navy leadership was re-assessing how best to deal with the resurgence of a revanchist Russia and a rising China intent on operating outside global norms. Founded in 1981 as a tool through which rising Navy Captains and later U.S. Marine Corps Colonels might support development of maritime strategy, the group changed after the end of the Cold War to accomplish more specialized CNO tasking. While the missions of the post-1994 SSG might have indeed been better managed through other organizations, its original construct was remarkably effective in making the Reagan-era, 1980’s Maritime Strategy a more effective tool for deterring and if necessary, enabling naval warfare against the Soviet Union. The Center for Naval Analyses 2016 report on the activities of the first fifteen CNO SSG groups was recently given public release and will soon find its way into the academic and historical discourse of late Cold War. The release of the history of the Cold War-era CNO SSG activities is also an opportunity to call for its return in its original guise as a tool the CNO can use with the Naval War College and organizations like the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA,) to make 21st Century naval strategic concepts usable at the operational level of war.
Figure 1: Cover of Newly Cleared CNA Study on the Cold War-era CNO SSG
Building the Strategic Studies Group 1980-1981
The decade of the 1970’s may have been challenging in some ways for the navy, but three concepts that had been developing across the decade came together to enable both a new Maritime strategy and the operational concepts needed to make it a viable component of national strategy. An idea of offensive sea control developed over the decade in the wake of the Navy’s departure from power-projection ashore missions in the Vietnam war. The U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Tom Hayward in particular sought to give his forces an offensive role against Soviet Pacific targetsrather than being just a reinforcement formation for the Atlantic war through the Carter Administration’s Swing Strategy. Hayward’s thinking on offensive carrier operations stimulated more aggressive thinking across the Navy. Navy Secretary Graham Claytor and his deputy James Woolsey equally desired a more offensive navy and commissioned the Sea Plan 2000 study to determine how large the Navy should be, and what composition of ships was best suited for offensive operations.
The election of President Ronald Reagan in November 1980 made possible both additional funding for a larger Navy and the prospect for an aggressive, forward maritime strategy. What was needed however were the tools to make that larger fleet and its strategy workable. As Admiral Hayward said in April 1981, “there is no dearth of strategic thinking going on these days in your navy. What is lacking is a more useful way to capitalize upon that abundant talent with more alacrity.” To this end Hayward first established first the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College and following shortly afterward in August 1981 the CNO Strategic Studies Group, a formation of upwardly mobile Navy Captains and Marine Corps colonels led by outgoing Deputy Secretary of the Navy Bob Murray. The group would be based in Newport, RI at the Naval War College, and focus a year of effort on a pressing issue of naval warfare essential to supporting U.S. maritime strategy. Admiral Hayward personally selected the members of the group, and they worked closely with the War College faculty.
Underway, Making Navy Strategy Operational
Once formed, the first CNO SSG group took as their topic of investigation one of the primary U.S. campaign level problems in naval warfare, fighting the Soviet Navy in the Norwegian Sea. The group researched the project through wargaming different scenarios of combat in the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea. They received intelligence briefings on Soviet naval strategy, traveled to the regional deployed commanders and studied their war plans. They met with and discussed forward maritime strategy with Navy Secretary John Lehman. In April, just six months into their work, the group briefed the CNO Admiral Jim Watkins on their progress, and assessed their findings in the June 1981 Global Wargame. The game evaluation was supportive of what would become the 1980’s Maritime Strategy. As described by the CNA report, this strategy would,
“Attack the Soviets’ strategy and change the nuclear correlation of forces quickly, reducing incentives for either side to escalate quickly, and increasing incentives for war termination favorable to the United States and its allies. Operational concepts featured combined arms ASW that would limit the number of Soviet submarines that could get to the Atlantic Ocean, and free U.S. SSNs to sink Soviet SSBNs and naval air defenses.”
This strategic concept was vigorously tested in a series of naval exercises across the 1980’s and described in John Lehman’s book Ocean’s Ventured. The exercises in turn helped to develop the required operational and tactical plans as well as numbers and types of warships needed to potentially combat the Soviets. 1980’s Second Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Hank Mustin described this process as one where,
“I started thinking more and more about it as the background for the maritime strategy started to emerge. As the notion that we would no longer be fighting the battle of the Atlantic in the Atlantic became extant, mainly because we thought the Russians would retreat to their bastions up in the Murmansk area and the Kola Peninsula area, the way that the Navy could contribute in the battle for Europe became very, very different.”
These arguments in turn called for distinct types and numbers of ships than had been thought of in the 1970’s. In order to save Norway, for example, from Soviet occupation and the loss of NATO’s northern flank, Mustin and CNA analysis determined that three carrier battle groups needed to be present to provide enough air support for NATO to retain Norway.
The SSG went on to analyze similar warfighting problems in the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf across its first decade of service, further contributing to the execution of U.S. Maritime strategy. In 1994 however, CNO Admiral Mike Boorda, recognizing that the Cold War was over and that the Maritime Strategy was “on the shelf” and not of use due to the disappearance of the Soviet/Russian navy, “viewed the work of the SSG in the 1990s as having become “too pol-mil and not enough mil-pol.” He changed the SSG’s charter so that from 1995 forward the SSG would be tasked with” Forming “concept generation teams” for revolutionary naval warfare concepts incorporating emerging technology.” In continued in this effort through the 2000’s and 2010’s, but increasingly in competition with other groups like Deep Blueand Project Athena that also produced technological ideas. By 2016 the SSG’s work in making naval strategy operational was in distant wake long dissipated by the Cold War’s end and the rise of the Global War on Terrorism.
Its time to Bring Back the SSG for its Original Purpose
While the Soviet Union is 30+ years in the graveyard of history, time marched forward. New great power competition with a rising China and revanchist Russia, both, and especially China with significant naval forces again calls for operational maritime strategy. In this climate it is again time to return the CNO SSG to the business of evaluating and proposing solutions to current key operational problems. The group should be based in Washington D.C. in order to keep its focus on key operational issues. It should again be led by a senior retired four star officer similar to Admiral James Hogg who led the group from 1995 to 2013, and utilize support from all naval higher education institutions, as well as organizations like Center for Naval Analyses to both train upwardly mobile Navy and now Coast Guard Captains as well as Marine Corps Colonels in strategic thinking, and then to employ them to solve the hardest operational challenges. This process helps to solve those problems and prepare future senior naval officers to exercise them at sea as Admiral Mustin did in the 1980’s and potentially use them in war. This process can both herald what John Lehman called in the summer of 1981, “a rebirth of U.S. Naval Strategy,” and create new “Captains of War” as the CNA report states.
Dr. Steven Wills, Navalist, Center for Maritime Strategy