Notes to the New Administration Week

By Shelley Gallup and Ben DiDonato

In past wars, small and well-armed ships have been a necessary complement to the large, multipurpose ships that dominate today’s U.S. Navy. China on the other hand utilizes a full range of maritime capabilities to outmaneuver the U.S. fleet. These ships can easily overwhelm the navies of smaller nations, like the Philippines, creating an unsustainable demand signal for support from large U.S. ships.

Scholars and engineers at the Naval Postgraduate School have developed a bi-modal fleet concept featuring a mix of small sea denial and large sea control vessels to correct this weakness. The key to implementing this strategy is the LMACC, or Lightly Manned Automated Combat Capability. This small warship combines autonomy, AI, resilient communications, and passive cloud-based sensor fusion to fight inside the Chinese engagement envelope. It is intended to operate within a scalable, networked flotilla alongside a variety of unmanned systems as well as Marines ashore. This will extend their Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) doctrine into a more lethal and agile combined arms force able to overcome China’s capabilities. Furthermore, the features that make LMACC ideal for supporting Marines deep inside the first island chain also allow it to take on lower-intensity missions, such as special operations support and maritime patrol, making it an ideal choice for supporting President Trump’s stated goal of countering the cartels in the Gulf.

Unlike truly unmanned vessels, LMACC can be built today to affordably grow the fleet. It consists almost entirely of fielded systems and most preliminary design work is already done. Pre-covid estimates put the series production cost at about $100 million and its small size allows it to be built in struggling shipyards too small to build current warships. Furthermore, the human crew eliminates the legal and technological risks of unmanned systems. They can override the AI whenever needed and repair equipment that breaks down unexpectedly, building more confidence into these systems and informing future designs.

LMACC will also serve a critical function in developing future leaders. In today’s destroyer-centric surface fleet, platform command opportunities are mostly only available after more than a decade of service. LMACC is intended as an O-3 command, affording naval officers an opportunity to command earlier in their careers and develop critical leadership skills, including initiative, adaptability, and tactical acumen. Autonomous systems will become increasingly important, but cultivating command skillsets earlier in careers is a key benefit that smaller platforms bring to fleets.

Small warships have a long history in the U.S. Navy and are poised to offer an evolutionary leap in capability. Small, highly automated, lightly crewed, blue water warships will help offset the capabilities of competing fleets and ensure enduring maritime superiority for the U.S. Navy. It is time to fund and build a prototype of the LMACC and its flotilla of innovations.

Dr. Shelley Gallup is a retired surface warfare officer. As an Associate Research Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, Dr. Gallup has spent 25 years assisting the Navy in developing large-scale experiments at sea. His current work includes research in human-machine partnerships, the role of emergence in combat at sea, and leads the small warship LMACC project at NPS. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Ben DiDonato is a volunteer member of the LMACC team. He is responsible for LMACC’s armament and most engineering work. He has provided systems and mechanical engineering support to organizations across the defense industry from the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) to Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, working on projects for all branches of the armed forces. He currently serves as vice president of technology for Expanse Laboratories Corporation, a startup developing novel physical encryption technology. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Featured Image: LMACC design screenshot courtesy of Ben DiDonato.

Notes to the New Administration Week

By Christopher Costello

The United States needs a true, comprehensive maritime strategy. It takes the form of an interconnected effort that recognizes that seapower does not flow from naval power alone and the conditions under which the U.S. developed into a great maritime power have shifted. Readjustment is necessary. The Trump Administration and 119^th Congress have an opportunity to align political will and draft a comprehensive maritime strategy to guide agencies towards the lodestar of rebuilding all facets of maritime power.

The new administration should focus on shipbuilding, seafaring, and sway. Economic power is the root of American prosperity, yet the U.S. has grown dependent on an open, globalized manufacturing and shipping environment that is now threatened by revisionist powers. To counter that threat, American shipbuilding needs to be prioritized with infrastructure investment coupled with funding for port and waterway improvement. The new administration can incentivize industry to continue to expand relationships with various maritime stakeholders and encourage a new approach to procurement that can help revive a once world-class program of innovation, design, and manufacture.  

Seafarers and those who enable them need to be incentivized, including skilled vocational training programs across the nation to grow mariner capacity. Bolster the Merchant Marine Academy and ensure the state maritime academies and merchant mariner training institutes have the support necessary to add additional seafarers to the fleet. Apprenticeships and skilled vocational training should be as prolific and prescriptive as undergraduate admissions programs and internships. Seafaring should be incentivized to be a stable, remunerative career field, not a solitary sojourn to endure before heading ashore to literal greener pastures.

Lastly, the national maritime strategy must have sway – the ability to coordinate the soft power of influence with the hard power of economic, political, and military policy. The Department of Transportation, MARAD, the Federal Maritime Commission, U.S. Transportation Command, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Coast Guard require political support to elevate their efforts into the worthy national maritime enterprise this country deserves, akin to the attention and funding of the military sea services.

A cohesive and committed maritime strategy that emphasizes shipbuilding, seafarers, and sway will support the upcoming National Security Strategy and help mitigate key shortfalls in the National Military Strategy and various service strategies. Members of the 118^th Congress already pitched for the creation of a new council and position to oversee a maritime strategy, and the time to act is now.

Christopher Costello, PhD is an Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College.

The views expressed in this article are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, or the United States.

Featured Image: ARC Integrity (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Notes to the New Administration Week

By Commander Ander S. Heiles, USN

The United States is unprepared to face its greatest maritime challenge since World War II. For the first time since 1945, a peer competitor threatens America’s naval supremacy and dominance in global trade. China now commands the world’s largest combat fleet and a merchant marine with over 7,000 vessels that dominate international shipping lanes. Naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan warned of this scenario in 1890, arguing that national power rests on sea power – the integration of combat and commercial maritime strength to secure a nation’s interests.¹ Yet today, the U.S. lacks a comprehensive maritime strategy.

Despite this growing threat, the current tri-service maritime strategy, Advantage at Sea (2020), focuses narrowly on combat capabilities only, emphasizing “sea control” without mentioning “sea power” or commercial maritime activity.² Similarly, the Chief of Naval Operations’ 2024 Navigation Plan prioritizes sea control but ignores the broader foundation of maritime power.³ These documents reflect a fundamental departure from Mahan’s vision that national maritime power requires both combat and commercial capabilities to work in concert.

This conceptual blindspot has created not just a maritime crisis but a national security crisis. While America has focused solely on maintaining naval superiority, China has pursued Mahan’s comprehensive approach to national power through sea power. Since 2004, as the PLA Navy grew by 71 percent, China’s merchant fleet expanded by an astounding 372 percent, following Mahan’s principle that commercial strengths form the foundation of national power.

Neglecting commercial maritime capabilities has dire consequences. The U.S. Merchant Marine has declined by 93 percent, from 2,900 vessels in 1960 to under 200 today. Once handling 60 percent of global trade, U.S.-flagged ships now carry just two percent of the nation’s own overseas commerce. This collapse has led to a shortage of 1,800 credentialed mariners, creating a critical personnel gap. Strategically, the implications are severe. Controlling key maritime chokepoints like the Panama Canal is marginally useful if America lacks the merchant ships to leverage them.

The incoming administration must prioritize three key actions to restore U.S. sea power. The first is to develop a comprehensive National Maritime Strategy, which would treat the Merchant Marine as vital to national security, equal to naval power, and embrace Mahan’s principle that commercial maritime strength underpins naval capability. Second, revitalize U.S. shipbuilding and invest and incentivize U.S. shipyards. Only five U.S. yards can build large commercial vessels, while a single Chinese yard surpasses all U.S. capacity combined. Finally, the mariner shortage can be addressed by expanding training programs and introducing incentives to attract and retain civilian mariners.

The administration faces an urgent choice – continue America’s narrow focus on naval power or comprehensively rebuild the commercial capability Mahan identified as essential to national power. By restoring the balance between combat and commercial maritime capabilities, the U.S. can secure its position in the era of great power competition.

Commander Ander Heiles is a student at the Joint Advanced Warfighting School in Norfolk, VA. He commanded USS Monsoon (PC 4) and is the Prospective Executive Officer (P-XO) for the Naval Talent Acquisition Groups (NTAG) Empire State.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official positions or opinions of the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

References

1. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783 (New York: Dover Publications 1987).

2. U.S. Department of the Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Coast Guard, Advantage at Sea: Prevailing with Integrated All-Domain Naval Power (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2020), https://media.defense.gov/2020/dec/16/2002553074/-1/-1/0/triservicestrategy.pdf.

3. U.S. Department of the Navy, CNO NAVPLAN 2024 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Navy, 2024),  https://www.navy.mil/Portals/1/CNO/NAVPLAN2024/Files/CNO-NAVPLAN-2024.pdf.

Featured Image: A container ship passes under the Golden Gate Bridge. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Notes to the New Administration Week

By Joseph Mroszczyk

The new administration must urgently focus its efforts on strengthening the U.S. military’s combat credibility in the Western Pacific through investments in capabilities that enable at-sea and distributed logistics. To deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from aggression against Taiwan, the U.S. military must demonstrate it can effectively sustain combat at great distances and across a distributed force.

Many have documented the various shortcomings of the U.S. Navy and the entire Joint Force when it comes to the ability to effectively sustain combat forces in a long-duration, high-end fight in the Western Pacific. The Department of Defense wrote as part of its Pacific Deterrence Initiative fiscal year 2024 budget request that “Current theater logistics posture and capability to sustain the force are inadequate to support operations specifically in a contested environment.” Writing in Joint Force Quarterly in November 2024, Lieutenant Colonel Zachary S. Hughes argued “logistics will be the key determinant of success in any U.S.-China conflict,” but that the Joint Force must urgently address logistics gaps to avoid becoming a “paper tiger.” Former Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said in 2023 that, “Without question, logistics rises to the top in terms of priorities.”

While there are myriad problems to address, from ashore infrastructure to the defense supply chain to inventory of munitions to numbers of surface connectors, the new administration must focus its efforts on providing warfighters the best chance of staying in the fight. One important way to do this is to continue funding the development of a vertical launch system (VLS) reload-at-sea capability—known as Transferrable Reload At-Sea Method (TRAM)— which would allow naval combatants to remain in-theater and close to the fight while reloading instead of having to pull back and return to a port to reload, a process that can take days if not weeks. While fighting Houthi rebels from the Red Sea recently, U.S. Navy combatants have had to withdraw from the fight for weeks in order to reload. This may not be viable in a fight with the PRC in the Pacific.

The Navy demonstrated this TRAM capability for the first time in October 2024 and Secretary Del Toro noted the Navy is on track to begin fielding it in two to three years. That may be too late. More needs to be done to get this capability to the fleet at speed and adopted at scale on a shorter timeline.

Other capabilities like expeditionary battle damage repair, expeditionary medical capabilities, and containerized consolidated cargo replenishment at sea (CONSOL) kits would similarly enable the type of distributed sustainment required in the Pacific theater with a distributed Joint Force. The Navy plays an important role in this sustainment effort given the vast maritime terrain in this theater, so it must lead the effort in re-thinking the model of sustainment and developing the concepts and solutions required to sustain the warfighter. Enhancing the ability to sustain a war with the PRC in the Pacific may offer the best chance at deterring war altogether.

Joseph Mroszczyk is an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College. He is also an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve where he has mobilized in support of Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa in Djibouti. He has previously worked at the Department of Homeland Security, for the U.S. Army Human Terrain System program in Iraq, and as the senior manager for intelligence at Global Rescue, an international risk and crisis management company.

The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the official views, policies, or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense or its components, to include the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.

Featured Image: Central Command Area of Responsibility (Apr. 20, 2003) The Military Sealift Command, fleet oiler USNS Kanawha (T-AO 196) refueling probe pulls away from the guided missile destroyer USS Mitscher (DDG 57) concluding part of an underway replenishment. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Journalist Alan J. Baribeau)