The Defense Department must ditch its delusional approach to climate

Five senior officials in the Department of Defense (DOD) proudly explained in an op-ed last month why they attended the United Nations climate conference in Dubai, known as COP28. They cited the Biden administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy which calls climate change “the existential challenge of our time,” as well as the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which states that climate change creates new geopolitical threats and increases demands on the force while straining bases, equipment and readiness.  

The problem with these claims, as well as the assumptions in the various climate action plans put forth by the Pentagon, is that they are too vague to make sound investment decisions; lack the analytical rigor required by standard defense risk analyses; and, in some cases, are based on totally inaccurate assessments about what is occurring with the planet’s climate. 

I am not disputing that climate change is a critical consideration in discussions about national security. Take the Arctic, for example, where warming-induced sea ice loss is opening new shipping lanes and access to natural resources, enticing both China and Russia to become more assertive in the region. 

The DOD’s emphasis on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to mitigate climate change is a misplaced priority. A more impactful approach for the U.S. military is to focus on adapting to the changes already occurring in the geophysical Earth system, so that we are able to prevail in any operating environment. 

Even though I have written about this before, I am compelled to double down on this point because the international security situation has degraded so severely in recent months. Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to destabilize Europe, with waning support in Congress; another war between Israel and Hamas has further antagonized an increasingly belligerent Iran, while strikes by the latter’s proxies on U.S. assets in the Middle East persist unabated, with only a tepid response from the White House. Along with the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, these point to the embarrassing new reality that America is no longer feared or respected as a superpower. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping removed all doubt earlier this month at the leaders’ summit in San Francisco when he warned President Biden in no uncertain terms that mainland China will reunify with Taiwan. His directness was especially alarming as he said so in person and on American soil. 

Such is the national security nightmare that was the backdrop in Dubai for DOD leadership to discuss climate change, which notably has had no influence on the genesis and evolution of these threats. 

What the U.S. military needs is not emissions-reducing electrification, which will do nothing to deter a coal-hungry China. Instead, our armed forces must focus on preventing climate-related effects to our warfighting capabilities, as well as using knowledge of the geophysical environment for tactical, operational and strategic advantage. Actions the department can take right now to address this need capabilities include: 

Augmenting environmental satellite acquisition. A top climate consideration in military operations is weather. Severe storms impede movement, degrade sensor and weapon performance, interfere with communications and create a risk to the safety of personnel. Conversely, superior weather prediction can enable commanders to make better decisions faster than the adversary. Environmental satellites have become essential tools for real-time weather monitoring and assimilation of high-resolution data into numerical models to improve forecasts.  

But DOD weather satellite programs have had difficulties; this was clearly evident when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was asked to transfer two of its spare satellites to the department in 2020 and 2023. The Pentagon can avoid the cost overruns and schedule delays of the past by directly purchasing satellite data from an increasingly capable commercial weather industry. 

Deploying ocean buoy networks at scale. The main maritime consideration in the DOD climate plans is sea level rise, which must be understood for the long-term risks it poses to coastal installations. However, far more important for operational effectiveness is an accurate understanding of ocean currents, sea state, the seafloor, ambient noise and the physical properties of seawater. Heavy seas can damage surface ships, high currents may force Naval SEAL teams to abort some missions, and an incomplete understanding of anticipated sonar performance, which seawater ocean density affects, will greatly increase the risk of submarine counter-detection. Ocean models are used to predict these conditions, but they must be fed by data from satellites and a highly sparse network of ships and in-situ sensors.  

Because both houses of Congress and leading security analysts are concerned that the U.S. Navy lacks the number of platforms required to defend Taiwan from an invasion by China, the service must turn to ocean data as a force multiplier. Here too, a solution exists in the private sector, where global networks of low-cost ocean data buoys have been deployed and adapted with different sensor configurations to support the shipping industry and NOAA. The Navy has just begun a public private partnership to research this capability, but the time is now to scale up such networks and transition them to operations. 

Expanding drone adoption in all domains. While satellites and buoy networks have proven their worth to the U.S. military already, the war in Ukraine has demonstrated the transformational value of drones on the battlefield. Uncrewed arial, sea and ground platforms have provided Ukraine an asymmetric advantage over a numerically superior foe.  

In the areas of climate, weather and ocean observations, all domain drones are advancing our understanding of hurricanes; long range underwater glider robots are giving us a glimpse of the ocean’s fine scale features; drone boats are mapping the 75 percent of the global seafloor that has yet to be surveyed with modern multibeam sonar — particularly relevant in view of the two U.S. submarines which collided with uncharted seamounts in 2005 and 2021. The undersecretary of Defense recently announced the establishment of the Replicator Program to field thousands of attritable, all domain, autonomous systems to counter China. The DOD will come closer to achieving that purpose if meteorologic, oceanographic and hydrographic drones are included in the program. 

The political appointees in the Pentagon who attended COP28 stated that energy-resilient installations, hybrid-electric tactical vehicles and shipboard fuel efficiency measures will make our military a more agile, stronger and lethal fighting force. Such a claim is not only nonsense, it is also a delusional and dangerous distraction to meeting the urgent need to prepare for the defense of Taiwan. To this end, the DOD needs to ditch its emissions reduction directives and invest in climate related capabilities that increase combat power.  

Rear Adm. (ret.) Tim Gallaudet is the CEO of  Ocean STL Consulting, LLC, former acting and deputy administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and former acting undersecretary and assistant secretary of Commerce. Prior to NOAA, he served as an oceanographer in the U.S. Navy, completing his career as the commander of the Navy Meteorology and Oceanography Command and director of the Navy’s Task Force Climate Change.