Hunter Stires

Hunter Stires is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy.  He served as the Maritime Strategist to the 78th Secretary of the Navy, where he was recognized for his work as one of the principal architects of the Maritime Statecraft strategy to rebuild America’s comprehensive maritime power, both commercial and naval.  He serves as the Project Director of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Maritime Counterinsurgency Project and as the Founder and CEO of The Maritime Strategy Group.  Mr. Stires was an affiliate of the U.S. Naval War College for more than a decade, serving in his most recent affiliation as a Fellow of the John B. Hattendorf Center for Maritime Historical Research from 2017 to 2025.  He has previously served in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and in several positions in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, including in the OPNAV N96 Surface Warfare Directorate, OPNAV N95 Expeditionary Warfare Directorate, and OPNAV N522 Navy Irregular Warfare Group.  He also has experience in the U.S. commercial maritime sector, having worked in a corporate strategy role for a U.S.-flag shipping company which operated Roll On/Roll Off ships supporting worldwide strategic sealift of U.S. government and military cargo as well as a diverse portfolio of tankers, bulk carriers, Offshore Supply Vessels, and inter-island landing craft in both domestic and international trade.

A graduate of Columbia University, Mr. Stires has been published widely, with his work appearing in outlets including the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, the Naval War College Review, Defense One, The National Interest, the Center for International Maritime Security, as well as the Center for Maritime Strategy’s journal, The MOC.  He has been recognized twice with the U.S. Naval Institute’s General Prize.  He was awarded 1st Prize for “The South China Sea Needs a ‘COIN’ Toss,” published in Proceedings in May 2019; his subsequent prize-winning piece, “Win Without Fighting,” was published in June 2020.  His article in the Summer 2019 issue of the Naval War College Review, “‘They Were Playing Chicken:’ The U.S. Asiatic Fleet’s Gray-Zone Deterrence Campaign against Japan, 1937-40,” was selected for inclusion in the Newport Papers monograph Deterrence. Mr. Stires’s perspective has been quoted in a wide range of U.S. and international outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, the Navy Times, Vox, War on the Rocks, The National Interest, 19FortyFive, gCaptain, The Maritime Executive, Blue Economy, Breaking Defense, the Australian Naval Institute, The Strategy Bridge, Ilta-Sanomat, Iltalehti, the Liberty Times, Rappler, and the South China Morning Post—as well as the Chinese language edition of the Global Times.