Volume 7, Issue 4, Winter 2022 7 potentially disruptive technologies on the horizon seems like a recipe for disaster. Left of Battle, or Right of Battle? The story of the response to the Yamato highlights the role of analysis as a tool to conduct a net assessment of competing weapons systems, to explore doctrine and to a certain extent strategy, allowing officers to gain some foresight into likely combat outcomes. While it cannot predict the future with accuracy, analysis can identify the factors that are likely to drive battlefield outcomes in certain directions. In other words, analysis would allow one to predict not only that the Montana would defeat the Yamato, it also would have predicted that an aircraft carrier could have accomplished the same feat without suffering any damage in return. By the late 1930s, Navy-shipbuilding plans called for the construction of no less than 17 new battleships in four progressively larger classes and a six new battle cruisers to boot – the plan to build 23 new capital ships was the Navy’s answer to the looming threat of war in the Pacific.[viii] What is remarkable is how quickly the Navy abandoned the battleship and how quickly the locus of bureaucratic power in the Navy shifted from the battleship admirals to the aviation community. Current U.S. Navy efforts to outpace the growth of peer competitors’ increasing anti-access and area denial capabilities loosely parallel earlier efforts to trump the Yamato. The Navy, for example, is looking to increase numbers quickly. The Pentagon has been upgrading amphibious assault ships to carry about 20 F-35s each, increasing the number of platforms that carry aviation strike assets.[ix] The Navy also is looking to increase the effective firepower of existing Nimitz-class aircraft carriers by equipping them with new MQ-25 Stingray autonomous tanker aircraft, a move which should increase the strike range of the carriers’ air wings. In a manner that also is reminiscent of the early days of carrier aviation, the Navy also is experimenting with a several new technologies, for instance, the Sea Hunter autonomous vehicle, to gain operational experiencewithapotentiallydisruptiveweapon. So far, an “Admiral Yarnell” has not emerged to provide an innovative demonstration of one of these technologies, but eventually some new technology will emerge as a frontrunner in the race to develop an asymmetric, disruptive weapon. History also suggests that Navy officers will be aware of this new technology because they will be involved in its weaponization. As one anonymous reviewer also observed, given the myriad of existing commands, Pentagon bureaus, and surface ship, aviation, and submarine warfare “barons,” it is difficult to believe that the left of battle problem involving new technology is not being addressed by the U.S. Navy. Indeed, the element in the Pentagon’s Navy staff charged with conducting analysis – OPNAV N81, the “Assessment Division” – is filled with some of the best operations analysts in the world. Nevertheless, many of these activities, especially in the Pentagon, use analysis to justify budget requests or programmatic decisions to Congress, they focus on optimizing effectiveness and minimizing cost across systems that have already been selected for production. [x] Additionally, as Thomas-Durrell Young has noted, the Navy lacks the organization and staffing to direct all of this analysis towards agreed upon end states or to identify and present strategic choices to senior Navy officers.[xi] In a sense, N81 possesses an unparalleled capability to demonstrate budget optimization, but is less likely to offer tactical, operational and strategic assessments of novel technologies or experimental systems. More than one Navy admiral has noted that analysts often fall in love studying a problem without devising workable solutions to their object of affection. Nevertheless, the “left or right of battle” issue needs to be better recognized by Navy strategists and planners when it comes to the art and science of selecting weapons and platforms. When employed to assess known technologies in specific strategic, operational, and tactical contexts, analysis can highlight cost-effective ways to defeat opposing systems long before battle occurs and planners will be willing to integrate these solutions into the Fleet – winning “left of battle” is an obtainable goal. The important caveat here is that analysis is often wielded by bureaucratically dominant elements of an institution in a way to preserve the dominance of their preferred weapons and practices. When asymmetric, disruptive technologies and weapons are involved, analysis carries less weight because it appears grounded in unrealistic or unproven strategic, operational, or tactical assumptions. Analysis of asymmetric, disruptive weapons can still carry the day, but analysis appears to hold sway “right of battle,” when recent experience makes analytic findings appear not only cut and dried, but a bit overtaken by events. The Yamato case demonstrates that left of battle victories can be achieved when they involved relatively symmetrical technologies in well understood weapons systems. Nevertheless, it also suggests that analysis faces a much tougher right of battle problem – the last obstacle confronting the integration of new weapons derived from asymmetric, disruptive technology. Solving the right of battle problem can govern which opponent delivers a proof of concept demonstration in the next battle at sea. Failing to solve the problem can undermine deterrence, especially if risk-acceptant opponents are willing to gamble on new weapons to upset the balance at sea quickly. Winning Left of Battle: The Role of Analysis James J. Wirtz
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