For almost three decades, CSBA has been a reliable source of independent, path-breaking research focused on the future of defense.
The heart of CSBA is our staff of uniquely qualified defense experts who conduct in-depth strategic and budgetary analyses.
Bryan Clark and Jesse Sloman’s study examines the changing environment for amphibious operations, new operating concepts needed to be effective in the emerging environment, and implications for ships, surface and vertical connectors, naval aviation, unmanned systems, sensors, communications and weapons.
In anticipation of combat with more capable adversaries, U.S. amphibious forces will require greater reach and lethality. A study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments proposes, inter alia, enhancing the aviation elements in the ARG/MEU, providing both amphibious ships and landing force with long-range fires and improving air and missile defense capabilities.
The most likely scenario would be a modified version of the America-class big-deck amphib that would add two catapults to launch aircraft, similar to World War II-era straight-deck escort carriers.
However, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow who focuses on naval issues at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said the funding doesn’t do enough to help with modernization. It will “basically allow the Marines to operate at the readiness they have been over the last few years,” he told National Defense. “It addresses some of the readiness shortfalls … but what is doesn’t do is really help them with their modernization problems.”
McCain praised the conclusion of both the CSBA and MITRE studies that the Navy should halt procurement of Littoral Combat Ships and future frigates as soon as possible, and instead move toward a more powerful small surface combatant design. McCain has been a frequent critic of the LCS program. McCain was particularly impressed by the "comprehensiveness" of the CSBA study, according to his statement. He said CSBA's study should be the "starting point for the new administration's review of naval forces." President Trump campaigned on a goal of building the Navy from its current size of about 270 ships up to 350 vessels. "It proposes necessary new strategic, operational, basing, and force structure recommendations that deserve immediate consideration by Navy leaders," McCain said. The CSBA study makes a host of recommendations, perhaps most notably moving away from the Navy's current basing strategy and instead creating a forward deployed set of "deterrence forces" to be augmented with a "maneuver force" in the event of a crisis.
Another alternative structure, developed by Bryan Clark at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, proposes a fleet architecture “to provide the United States an advantage in great power competition with China and Russia or against capable and strategically located regional powers such as Iran.”…
The root of the CSBA study was based on how the U.S. would face armed conflict with China or Russia, which are “probably going to be the defining characteristics of the Navy of the future,” lead author Bryan Clark told USNI News on Friday. The study plays up the speed to which expeditionary forces can arrive in conflict areas and spreads out the Navy’s offensive power away from a few heavily armed carrier strike groups. The plan includes light carriers paired with amphibious ready groups and full-sized air defense-capable multi-mission frigates and introduces a new small anti-ship guided-missile corvette to give the enemy more targets to handle in a major conflict. For example, the corvette, which could resemble the small Visby-class used in the Swedish Navy, would field a limited air defense capability like the Enhanced SeaSparrow Missile and four to eight anti-ship missiles.
