USNI Proceedings – After the Cold War, the United States led the way in nuclear nonproliferation, including voluntarily giving up tactical nuclear weapons at sea. In recent years, Russia, China, and other nations have highlighted an unfortunate need to bring those weapons back.

War on the Rocks – As Washington enters an era of great power competition, it can gain valuable insights from the Navy’s interwar success in conducting peacetime operations while still preparing for war. This means thinking about, talking about, actively developing new doctrines for, and understanding how to plan the complex needs of the peacetime missions of the Navy and Marine Corps. 

Defense News – Decommissioning the Littoral Combat Ships early amounts to a loss of almost $7 billion based on analysis by Defense News using data from the Congressional Budget Office. But experts say the opportunity cost is more significant as the Pentagon prepares for a potential war with China, which in the last 20 years has built extensive anti-access, area denial defenses to keep ships like the LCS away from its shores.

Navy Times – A multi-billion dollar effort to modernize the warships has not gone as planned

CIMSEC – The CNO can accelerate the Navy’s journey to achieve a robust hybrid fleet by directing a down-select of MUSV candidates and establishing programs of record. The U.S. Navy can diversify its capabilities and make itself more competitive for great power challenges by accelerating its adoption of unmanned vessels.

CIMSEC – The U.S. Navy’s human resources (HR) policies are failing, and not because the policies themselves are ineffective, but because of their poor digital implementation.

CIMSEC – In the pursuit of maritime superiority, the U.S. Navy must prioritize the education and empowerment of its enlisted Sailors. These dedicated individuals are the backbone of the U.S. Navy, and their success directly contributes to the U.S. Navy’s overall readiness and effectiveness. By reinforcing and expanding educational opportunities for enlisted Sailors, the U.S. Navy can ensure that they become full, active, and informed participants in the mission. This investment in education will not only benefit the enlisted Sailors themselves, but will also strengthen the U.S. Navy as a whole, ensuring its readiness for the challenges of the future.

CIMSEC – The way ahead involves campaigns of learning focused on pressing operational problems. These campaigns would be orchestrated by a General Board-type entity, involving close interactions among OPNAV, the Naval War College, the Naval Postgraduate School, the Systems Commands, and the fleet. These campaigns would focus the attention of the fleet, and enhance its competitive advantage by virtue of being a superior learning organization.

CIMSEC – The U.S. Navy faces myriad challenges in a dynamic multipolar world, yet risks a sclerotic response to threats. This is most apparent in the surface force where a predilection for high-end multi-mission platforms risks an unbalanced fleet unable to meet threats across the spectrum of conflict. To rectify this, the Navy must recommit to the vital role of small ships in meeting its obligations.

CIMSEC – Given how 20 to 30 percent of the fleet’s platforms could be replaced by 2045, a thoughtful and imaginative force design process must go beyond measuring the relative importance of existing and planned platforms and capabilities. The Navy needs to divorce itself from its affinity of conceiving capability as a function of traditional naval platforms, such as surface combatants or range-hobbled carrier air wings, and pursue a more holistic concept.

CIMSEC – With an increasingly complex strategic environment, and a fleet struggling to meet its many operational requirements, the next CNO must strive to find new ways to capitalize on allied naval capabilities to succeed at sea. Prominent options include strengthening naval cooperation with partners to ensure a permanent presence in all strategically relevant theaters, and bolstering the sharing of naval knowledge among allied naval war colleges.

CIMSEC – My recommendations to the next Chief of Naval Operations are based on the difference between the kind of navy we have today and the kind of navy our nation needs. Today we have a forward-based navy, not an expeditionary navy. This distinction is important for remaining competitive against modern threats and guiding force design.

Defense News –  Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced initiatives aimed at making the service more responsive to warfighter challenges: the creation of the Disruptive Capabilities Office to quickly apply new technologies to operational problems, and a pilot program that would help programs of record be more agile.

CIMSEC – It is not enough for the U.S. Navy to focus on projecting power ashore at specific times and places, supported by sea control. The Navy, in conjunction with allies, must create a capability to command the sea that China dares not challenge. This calls for capabilities and methods that are much more than just iterations upon current trends and legacy systems. The U.S. Navy must conduct urgent investigations and research into what novel capabilities and warfighting concepts can offer enduring command of the sea, and develop both a global maritime strategy and derivative fleet design based on the most promising approaches.

The Drive – The US Navy is looking for ways to launch and recover advanced drones from aboard everything from expeditionary sea bases to destroyers.

CIMSEC – There are two key areas that, if addressed strategically, can enhance the effectiveness of our Navy – empowerment of division officers and stability for our sailors.

Reuters – The U.S. Navy is carrying out the biggest overhaul of its top-secret undersea surveillance network since the 1950s as China’s naval power surges and new technologies are fast reshaping maritime warfare. Beijing has similar plans of its own.

CIMSEC – The ability to harness and use AI is critical, but Navy culture must change to realize its potential. Military members must remain the masters – never the servants – of technology.

CIMSEC – Despite enlistment bonuses, recruiter rodeos, a renewed focus on influencers, and modest policy changes from PERS, the U.S. Navy continuously fails to keep Sailors from walking out the door and to convince would-be recruits from stepping in. This problem has gotten so severe that the Navy is on target to miss recruiting goals by over 7,000 personnel for FY23, and gapped billets at-sea continue to exceed 750. This shortage will continue as overworked enlisted Sailors leave, refusing the possibility of being sent TAD on additional deployments, and officers resign, rejecting uncertain billet assignments.

CIMSEC – The Get Real Get Better initiative has been a near-term effort to increase the effectiveness of how Sailors do things, to include problem-solving – which could be described as the science of warfighting. To holistically improve Sailors, the “Navy-wide culture renovation” must also inculcate learning strategies – the art of warfighting. A supplement or revision to NDP-1, tentatively entitled Naval Warfighting, would accomplish this by integrating the art and science of warfighting into an enduring doctrine on learning strategies.

CIMSEC – The U.S. Navy is now at a force design and readiness crisis point not seen since Admiral Elmo Zumwalt took the helm in 1970. Admiral Lisa Franchetti should take the initiative to develop a comprehensive, operational level of war maritime strategy that will determine fleet missions, which will subsequently inform a specific fleet size and force design.

War Zone – The SEWIP Block III alters the Arleigh Burke destroyer’s appearance fairly dramatically via huge new extensions onto its superstructure.

Defense News – Four unmanned ships are now operating out of Japan for the first time, as part of the U.S. Navy’s Integrated Battle Problem 23.2 exercise aimed at folding these unmanned vessels into routine fleet operations.

CIMSEC – If used unwisely, without a solid understanding of what decisions machine learning (ML) will support, the joint force may be playing a rigged game against a peer adversary. ML-enabled capabilities can absorb large amounts of data, process and organize it, and generate insights for humans who work at a relative snail’s pace. However, these nascent tools cannot reason and interpret words or events as a competent military professional can. As strategic competition between the United States and China intensifies over Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Russian-Ukraine war, and other geopolitical issues, American political and military leaders must develop a better understanding of when and how to use ML to support joint force planning, execution, and assessment in combat, lest U.S. service members pay an ungodly sum of the butcher’s bill.

CIMSEC – The robotic age of warfare enables a much closer relationship between international partners using smaller, more numerous systems for maritime security and creating a lethal warfighting advantage by increasing surveillance, targeting, and weapon capacity in critical regions.¹³ Leveraging this relationship is the basis for a maritime strategy to maintain integrated forces with partners forward, while retaining major elements of the traditional fleet to preserve sea control along the ocean’s logistics lines. It can become the maritime component of a maritime nation’s national strategy, executed through a well-planned and worldwide integrated naval campaign.