What to Watch 2023: A Growing Navy, If You Can Keep It…​

By Benjamin E. Mainardi

The passage of the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and subsequent appropriations legislation in December of 2022 institutionalized two nascent sea changes in naval policy. The much–debated Congressional Commission on the Future of the Navy, imbued with the mission to study and make policy recommendations on naval force structure needs and the industrial base to support it, has been signed into law. Equally promising, the inclusion of the “Gallagher Amendment” (H.R. 7900, Sec. 912), “Clarification of Peacetime Functions of the Navy,” amending the Title 10 missions of the Navy, has afforded long overdue recognition of the Navy’s peacetime role in supporting national security.

Particularly through the latter, Congress has taken a step towards helping the U.S. Navy right decades of misalignment between its mission and its structuring. While the Navy has always had combat operations on its agenda, the day-to-day function of the force is not simply musing about how to prosecute war at sea. Rather, the Navy routinely deploys approximately 100 vessels abroad which help to protect maritime commerce and sea lines of communication. Crucially, this forward naval presence is a tangible projection of power. All such activities conducted by forward naval forces, from freedom of navigation operations to deepening cooperation with allies, further American interests and afford policymakers unparalleled flexibility in responding to crises while promoting conventional deterrence of regional adversaries.

While it has been argued that maintaining the presence mission is degrading the readiness of the force, this argument ignores that presence’s impact on readiness is less about executing the mission than doing so at the preexisting level within constrained budgetary environments that have valued presence but not enough to resource the needs of maintaining it alongside other line items. Thus, the issue is that the Navy’s existing size is not scaled to its rate of deployments; a scale developed in the 1970s and 1980s when the Navy fielded over 500 vessels, compared to today’s roughly 300. Stopgap measures, like the Optimized Fleet Response Plan, have proven insufficient in resolving this structure-mission mismatch.

The altering of the Title 10 language of the Navy’s mission to recognize the value of peacetime operations is an important step forward, offering an opportunity to justify increased resources in support of this vital function of the force. This victory, however, may be short-lived as Washington anxieties over the ability of the service to combat China as a peer opponent continues to mount. Indeed, this has been one of prime drivers for the establishment of the Commission on the Future of the Navy.

It remains, however, that the U.S. Navy is not currently sized nor resourced to effectively maintain its peacetime operations and scale of deployments or to be sufficiently deter and defeat China at sea. As such, the two major changes to naval policy brought about by the 2023 NDAA may prove a double-edged sword by encouraging the service to pursue two seemingly different missions. Of course, they are not inherently contradictory. Generally, bigger fleets win wars, but they also empower states to act with rapid and global reach. The peacetime presence mission compliments ultimate combat readiness by forging sailors experienced in operations at sea but only when executed with sufficient capacity to allow for the necessary stand-down times for crews and maintenance periods for platforms so as to not overwork them. Moreover, presence and the activities forward forces conduct contribute to active deterrence.

Thus, both the Commission and Title 10 change are welcome opportunities for the service to grow. It is now on the shoulders of the Navy, however, to develop sufficient plans for shipbuilding and modernization, work with the Commission to ensure transparency and its effectiveness, and cogently argue for how the service’s operations synergistically achieve the missions of the force and the resources needed to not only maintain but grow them.

Benjamin E. Mainardi is an analyst at the Center for Maritime Strategy. He holds a master’s in War Studies from King’s College London. His primary research interests are in strategic studies 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.