The Navy currently is composed of approximately 290 ships centered around 11 nuclear aircraft carriers. The responsibilities outlined in the strategy suggest a larger Navy of approximately 350 manned ships and 12 flattops.
The aircraft carrier remains an incredibly flexible platform due to the infinite changes possible in its main battery air wing.
The Navy has other options for adding more firepower at sea rather than returning the battleships for yet another period of active duty.
An accurate digital twin could guide Navy maintenance and avoid the costly surprises often found when shipyard workers open sections of a ship below deck and behind bulkheads.
Russia and China encourage the kind of dangerous behavior at sea not seen since the Cold War.
The Navy’s program executive office for unmanned systems and small combatants is potentially on the chopping block. That’s a bad idea.
When compared with similar and more expensive U.S. warships, foreign vessels have come up remarkably short in combat capability.
Introduction of smaller, unmanned ships as an adjunct to the existing Navy fleet solves the problem of large ships not able to distribute combat capability.
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.
If the nuclear triad is to remain viable into the 21st century, then all three of its elements ought to endure the same level of programmatic scrutiny. The Air Force’s troubled Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile is one such program that demands greater scrutiny.
China has been in pursuit of a carrier aviation capability for nearly 40 years, using every imaginable method to acquire carriers via deception, amusement park attraction and finally domestic carrier production.
While the United States should not be in the business of fighting the Houthi movement in Yemen, U.S. joint forces can step up their operations and inflict significant defeats on the group to force them to cease attacks on merchant trade.
The recent sinking of a Russian navy ship was a solid victory for Ukrainian forces. But it’s a lot more about Russian failures rather than the success of uncrewed drones. The U.S. Navy can learn lessons.
What is missing in the discussion about the right size Navy needed to counter growing threats is a defined maritime strategy, a type of document not used by the service since the end of the Cold War.
The U.S. Ready Reserve Fleet of cargo and fuel ships that move military gear around the world when needed for a conflict is in serious need of an upgrade. The fleet is aging and generally not ready for war.
The nation’s mine infrastructure is facing a historic nearly-40 plus year period of neglect and under-investment since the end of the Cold War. This decay also includes industrial capacity, explosives, training, infrastructure, ships and personnel.
The Navy has struggled over the past quarter century to implement changes in a challenging budget environment. The evidence of struggle is clear.
Given the unpopularity of the Ukraine War, and the attempted revolt/protest of Wagner group Russian mercenaries, could the Black Sea Fleet by ripe for another grand and embarrassing naval mutiny?
There is a big mismatch between the Biden administration’s new National Defense Strategy and its push for forces to be equipped for global campaigning and the current projections for the U.S. Navy. The conventional manned fleet, the combat logistics force and the developing unmanned side of the Navy all need additional support to meet the NDS’s campaigning requirements.
