Congress Should Demand a Maritime Strategy​

By Dr. Steven Wills

The most recent Compromise 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has several positive benefits for the navy including a larger shipbuilding budget, and the incorporation of the amendment proposed by Wisconsin Representative Mike Gallagher to clarify the service’s peacetime requirements. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday’s 2022 Navigation Plan and its attendant Force Design 2045 seem the right mix of manned and unmanned ships going forward and the 2023 NDAA seems a good first step on the long road to achieving those numbers.

Ship counts in the absence of strategy and risk assessment, however, have in the past fallen victim to budget cuts when convenient for a presidential administration or Congress. If defense-minded legislators really want to help the navy to grow to better prepare for the Chinese challenge, then it ought to act further in terms of Navy strategy. Congress should demand that the Navy provide a joint maritime strategy with input from the Marine Corps, Coast Guard and other services, on a regular interval, the force design needed to accomplish the strategy, the budget path to achieve and maintain the appropriate number of ships, aircraft and submarines, and finally a risk assessment of what could happen if Congress fails to appropriately fund the maritime services to the level demanded by the strategy, The best example for how to do this is the 1980s Maritime Strategy of the Navy and Marine Corps that helped to set the stage for the conclusion of the Cold War.

The 1970s as a Prelude

The 1980s Maritime Strategy and its associated 600 ship navy were the culmination of Navy planning, force design and analysis going back to Admiral Elmo Zumwalt’s “Project Sixty” path forward for the service in 1970. Over the course of that decade the Navy made many choices in force structure components. For example, choosing the nuclear-powered carrier over another conventional flattop and choosing what became the CG-47 Ticonderoga class cruiser over a larger and more expensive nuclear-powered strike cruiser. These choices helped build elements of the 600-ship navy. At the same time, the Navy developed concepts for better using its ships, aircraft and submarines against the Soviet Navy that culminated in the first Maritime Strategy of 1982. The Marine Corps also refined its concepts over the decade to field an “Amphibious” strategy in the 1980s as well. Over the decade, the Navy also retired almost all its Second World War-era ships and inaugurated the familiar force of the 1980s, 1990s, and the first decade of the 21^st century.

Action in the 1980s

Thanks to the choices and development in the 1970s, the Navy was ready to implement the Forward Maritime Strategy developed by Secretary John Lehman, the Chief of Naval Operations Staff, numbered fleet commanders, and other strategic thinkers. The Service could now build to 600 ships as the key choices in force structure had been made. Secretary Lehman, the Chiefs of Naval Operations of that decade, and the Commandants of the Marine Corps also adopted a full, united front when appearing before Congress in support of the strategy and 600 ship navy.

June 1985 House Armed Services Committee Hearing documents.

The logic of this was simple. The services presented a maritime strategy and attendant 600 ship navy concept that had been developed in large part through the recommendations of the numbered Navy Fleet Commanders and Marine Amphibious Force leaders that then (and now) would be the operational commanders in war. The strategy required 600 ships and had defined phases of operations as a guideline for operational commanders to follow. 600 ships were considered a minimum force level and Navy leaders briefed the risks associated with a smaller force. Finally, there was a budget path forward to achieve and sustain the 600-ship force over time. All this made for a very successful, forward deployed Navy, whose aggressive exercise program is credited by multiple sources as playing an outsize role in ending the Cold War.

How can Congress Help the Navy to Achieve Similar Results Today

In the long calm of the end of the Cold War, the Navy shrank from 550 ships in 1991 to less than 290 today. Its maritime strategy was put “on the shelf” and in its place a series of individual, often unconnected CNO vision statements became more about protecting existing navy force structure from cuts then charting a future course to prepare for yet unseen threats. The Navy supported operations ashore including the Global War on Terror (GWOT) much as it supported the Korean and Vietnam Wars in the 1950s and 1960s in the absence of a strong Soviet navy.

Since 2010, however, the Chinese Navy has emerged as a new peer adversary much as the Soviet Navy did in the later 1960s and early 1970s. The Navy is again engaged in making choices about future force structure, including such decisions as how many unmanned ships should populate the fleet and what existing forces, like the Zumwalt class destroyers and littoral combat ships, should be retained or retired. The late Cold War fleet is also rapidly disappearing in this decade with the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates, Spruance class destroyers, and other ships of the 1970s and 1980s gone, and the iconic but rapidly aging Ticonderoga class cruisers, and perhaps early Arleigh Burke class destroyers soon to follow.

The problem now is that for many leaders in the Navy, operational maritime strategy is a near-dead language like Latin and spoken only by a small number of coded naval strategists and civilian analysts. History suggests that having a global, operational level of war maritime strategy can help focus the naval services on their missions and force structure. Congress can help build a “new generation of warrior admirals” by demanding that the CNO and Navy staff (OPNAV) create and brief to the armed services committees an operational level of war maritime strategy that is sourced from the four- and three-star Navy and Marine Corps leaders that will operationally command those forces in peace and war. This strategy should be regularly updated and re-briefed to the legislature every three years. The associated shipbuilding plan, whether 30 years or a more flexible 10-year plan could be tied to the strategy report.

Real Change is Hard

Sometimes change must be forced, and changing the course of the Navy was hard and akin to moving an aircraft carrier by hand. Concerned members of Congress can help by demanding that the Navy provide the same level of information about its strategy for peace and war as it does in its 30-year shipbuilding plan. The likely “National Commission on the Future of the Navy” that is a part of the 2023 NDAA should take up the need for a regular report on the Navy’s operational strategy and associated fleet force structure as one of its first acts.

Dr. Steven Wills is the Navalist at the Center for Maritime Strategy. His research and analysis centers on U.S. Navy strategy and policy, surface warfare programs and platforms, and military history.

The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.