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Work would add to the list of Marines in Trump’s administration. A retired colonel, he served 27 years as a field artillery officer before leaving active duty in 2001. He became an influential Washington defense analyst, serving as a senior official with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
This paper assesses the adequacy and affordability of current US Navy plans in light of current trends in naval warfare, expected future budget environments, and, most importantly, the likely operational demands associated with three enduring, long-term strategic challenges. These challenges are: defeating both the Sunni Salafi-Takfiri and Shia Khomeinist brands of violent Islamist radicalism; hedging against potential challenges posed by authoritarian capitalist states such as China and Russia; and preparing for a world in which there are more nuclear-armed regional powers. After conducting this assessment, the report lays out recommended changes to the current Navy plans in order to envision a future fleet that is both more capable and more affordable.
The United States is currently in a situation comparable to the one it confronted in the early days of the Cold War, when US civilian and military leaders were faced with a new and daunting challenge in the form of the Soviet Union. To address this challenge, a long-term national strategy to preserve American security was developed. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the United States entered a period of relative calm — a “unipolar moment” in which its power was unrivaled and emerging threats to its security had not yet fully formed. Unfortunately, that period has been succeeded by a more dangerous era, as the United States now confronts several formidable challenges that may grow even more threatening in the years to come. The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the three existing and emerging strategic challenges that are most likely to preoccupy senior decision-makers in the coming years:
Ever since Thucydides recorded the dramatic fall of Athens’ vaunted navy at Syracuse in 413 BC, naval warfare has been marked by abrupt competitive shifts. Intense geopolitical and maritime rivalries between well-financed seafaring nations, the emergence of new operational challenges for established naval powers, and the novel incorporation of advanced technologies in naval weapons and ship designs have all repeatedly spurred transformations that have redefined naval warfare.
A thorough review of the forces impelling current naval transformation efforts, the arguments for and against small combatants made during the Streetfighter debates, the Navy’s broader transformation plans, the potential role of small combatants in the 21st century “Assured Access Navy,” as well as the design goals for the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship leads to the following proposition: small network combatants have an important role to play in 21st century naval warfare, and the reconfigurable Littoral Combat Ship may make important warfighting contributions as part of the Navy’s 21st century “Total Force Battle Network” (TFBN).
