It’s time to fix the frigate, and produce it in numbers, even at the expense of the larger DDG, and pair all manned combatant ships with unmanned “sidekicks.”
A number of severe readiness challenges continue to affect the Navy, in terms of its vanishing cruiser force, crippling redesign of the Constellation-class frigate, poor readiness of the amphibious fleet and problems with the Landing Ship Medium program.
The Navy may need to produce prototypes and deploy them to combat zones like the Red Sea in order to make rapid decisions in shipbuilding acquisition.
The Navy has had long-established conventions for naming ships. But the Navy has increasingly named warships for living people, including political figures, which has become a divisive issue. The next Navy secretary needs to get control of the dysfunctional naming process and restore a sense of order.
With the looming prospect of war with China in the near future, it’s time to focus on what the U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships can do for the Navy and Marine Corps.
The next Navy secretary should create a group of upwardly mobile Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine captains and Marine Corps colonels to experiment with new concepts of naval strategy and operations. The increasing tensions with China demand it.
Among the first actions it takes in the Pentagon, the incoming Trump administration should commission a top-to-bottom review and reform of the Navy bureaucracy that develops new warships.
The next U.S. president will be faced with a stark choice – whether or not to rebuild what was once a vital commercial merchant marine fleet to support U.S. trade interests around the globe and buttress U.S. military operations when needed.
The Navy’s more diverse ecosystem of maintenance has seen its shipboard, tender-based and local-homeport components decimated since the end of the Cold War. Bringing back a maintenance and repair system at multiple levels might ease the burden on shipyard-level maintenance and repair.
Neither commission is headed by a senior retired military officer or a senior civilian who has the credentials to promote meaningful recommendations and persuade government bureaucracies to act. A senior leader is essential to spur change.
