Category Archives: Force Structure

Force Structure

Mass Drones to Save Missiles: A High–Low Mix for the Pacific

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By Connor Keating

 The future of conflict in the Western Pacific will hinge on sustaining firepower over vast distances with finite magazines and vulnerable logistics. The Russia‑Ukraine war and much of history show that victory has never relied on a small inventory of exquisite, high‑cost weapons.1 Instead, success increasingly rests on combining massed, affordable drones with a more limited stock of precision‑guided munitions—a munitions‑centric high–low mix. To deter and, if necessary, defeat aggression, the U.S. should build a mix of long‑range, payload-modular drones. This approach is about designing an economically favorable, attrition‑resilient strike architecture that forces an adversary into unfavorable cost‑exchange ratios.

Originally a Cold War concept that paired high‑ and low‑end manned platforms against the Soviet Union, the high–low mix has re-emerged in a new form centered on munitions rather than platforms. A munitions‑centric high–low mix forces adversaries to choose between defending against slow, numerous drones or conserving interceptors for higher‑end threats, thereby creating gaps in their air defenses.2 In a theater defined by extended supply lines and constrained magazines, such a mix will be essential to sustaining combat power and imposing escalating costs on the People’s Liberation Army.

Lessons from Ukraine

At the onset of the war, Russia relied heavily on conventional combined arms but quickly transitioned—much as Ukraine did earlier—to a new toolset of drones to contest the land, sea, and air domains. Two lessons stand out for U.S. planners preparing for a conflict in the Pacific.

First, Ukraine has effectively combined maritime drones with traditional missiles and employed “mothership” drones to extend range at sea. The integration of sea drones with missile air defense systems significantly degraded Russia’s presence in the Black Sea by simultaneously threatening ships and their helicopter escorts.3, 4 The operations in the Black Sea demonstrate how relatively inexpensive unmanned systems, when integrated with existing traditional weapons, can constrain an adversary’s freedom of action and impose enduring costs.

Second, and most importantly, both sides utilized one‑way attack drones in conjunction with precision munitions to saturate and exhaust air defenses. Russia pummeled Ukraine with long-range drones, depleting valuable interceptors and straining Ukrainian air defense.5, 6 This pattern would likely repeat in any high‑intensity air and maritime campaign in the Western Pacific. Therefore, the grinding stalemate in Ukraine is less a model to emulate than a warning of the nature of future war.

Requirements for a Pacific High-Low Mix

In the Pacific, drones will require operational ranges approaching 2,000 nautical miles to be meaningful, with a minimum of 100 nautical miles for tactical systems if basing rights near key terrain can be established. Longer‑range systems provide greater operational leverage but will substantially increase costs and reduce temporal fires volume (the weight of effects delivered per unit of time). With these facts in mind, three key requirements emerge.

First, missiles and drones must be deployable from land, sea, and air. Cross‑domain employment or launch-system interchangeability reduces platform-specific dependencies and mitigates the need for extreme‑range systems that may arise in a contested single domain. Interchangeability will streamline supply chains and logistics, as a munition can be fired from multiple platforms with minimal modification, usually with a simple software update.7 The Harpoon anti-ship missile illustrates this principle by being employable from surface, subsurface, and airborne platforms. A surface launch from a ship or ground launcher achieves greater than 70 nautical miles. From an aircraft, the effective range is boosted by the aircraft’s range, often over 500 nautical miles, and can be extended via aerial refueling.8 The same logic should guide the integration of drones against integrated air defense systems.

The risk posed by Chinese long‑range ballistic missiles will likely push the effective denial boundary for surface forces greater than 1,000 nautical miles.9 The U.S. faces a shortfall in strategic sealift capacity, and any Pacific campaign will expose sustainment ships and aircraft to long‑range strike.10 To reduce risk, sustainment forces may be pushed even further from the fight. To sustain combat power, mass must be delivered efficiently and quickly at acceptable risk levels. Taken together, these constraints imply that the U.S requires families of drones binned by range: shorter‑range systems that exploit forward bases near key terrain and longer‑range systems that can operate from well outside threat weapons’ reach.

Because of the ranges involved, purpose‑built drones for the Pacific theater will be more expensive than those used in Europe or the Middle East. In Ukraine, Shahed or Geran drones, with ranges of up to roughly 1,600 nautical miles, provide Russia with coverage of the entire battlespace with multiple routing options, offering significant operational flexibility at relatively low cost.11 By comparison, a similar drone launched from Guam would be on a straight-line attack, approaching its maximum range.

Long-range drones typically use small reciprocating engines and thus avoid some of the solid‑rocket‑motor supply‑chain constraints that affect missiles, as well as the technical complexity associated with gas turbines.12 LUCAS, a new one‑way attack drone reportedly based on the Iranian Shahed‑136, has an estimated range of approximately 1,500 nautical miles and may be among the most promising near‑term options.13 Other candidates include systems such as Altius and Barracuda, with ranges from roughly 100 to over 500 nautical miles.14, 15, 16 While the exact design line between drones and cruise missiles may be blurred, their ability to carry multiple payloads and operate autonomously places them conceptually within the drone portion of the high–low mix. Forcing an adversary to divert resources or believe that one effort is more important than another can have far-reaching strategic effects.

For example, expending large numbers of expensive interceptors against relatively cheap drones increases an adversary’s defensive missile expenditures and creates temporary windows when their air defenses are saturated. During those windows, U.S. forces can employ exquisite missiles against high‑value targets at lower risk, as already seen in Ukraine.17 This tactic increases the effectiveness of individual exquisite munitions and, over time, reduces the cost per target of the combined effect. It also forces adversaries into persistently unfavorable spending patterns and increasing long‑term operational costs. This may potentially force a shift in money or production away from other key weapon systems to fill gaps in air defenses.

For example, the conflict between Israel and Iran following the October 7th attacks. Across three major engagements in October 2024, April 2025, and June 2025, Iran employed more than 1,000 drones and 500 missiles.18 By the end of the exchange, reports indicated that Israel was running critically low on interceptors, and the U.S. had significant shortages of THAAD missiles, while Iran was assessed to still have thousands of missiles and drones remaining in its inventory.19, 20

Moreover, Iranian attacks became increasingly effective over time. By the final round of strikes, more than 60 missiles were impacting Israeli territory—over twice the number that got through in the initial October attack.21 The most consequential aspect of this campaign was not the tactical success but the operational effects Iran achieved. The time and cost required for Israel to repair infrastructure and replenish high-end interceptors are many times greater than the expense of the relatively low-cost, improvised missiles and drones that Iran employed. Iran consumed valuable maintenance hours and sortie-generation capacity that would otherwise support offensive strike missions. If Iran possessed a more capable air force, this kind of coercive, resource‑draining approach could be decisive in shifting the operational balance in its favor by steadily degrading Israel’s ability to generate credible offensive power.

The core operational lesson is that a sustained high–low mix can impose continuous defensive burdens, consume precious economic capital, and erode an opponent’s ability to sustain offensive operations. For the Indo‑Pacific, U.S. and allied forces must be prepared to wage a drawn‑out contest in which the key question is not who fields the most exquisite platforms on day one, but who can afford to keep firing on day one hundred.

The U.S. fields broad capabilities but limited depth in its weapons inventory. A perfect example is the U.S. pursuit of hypersonic weapons since the early 2000s, with little advancement in programs’ operational numbers despite Russia and China likely now fielding operational systems at scale.22 The simple fact regarding U.S. weapons is this: specialized but less scalable than many of their potential adversaries. That creates limits and risks for the platforms that provide the “punch” in potential conflict. To remain competitive, U.S. planners should prioritize modular, cross‑domain-capable drone and missile platforms that can be field-modified and mass‑produced, with an emphasis on range, speed, and flexibility.

Sustainment and Modularity for the High-Low Mix

Modern war is a voracious consumer of munitions. Therefore, the ability to conduct sustainment at scale is critical. Containerization for transport and employment should be the baseline requirement for any drone adopted into U.S. military service. Standardized launch containers can be dispersed on ships, barges, trucks, and austere airstrips across the theater. This distribution complicates adversary targeting, reduces the risk of preemptive strikes on centralized depots, and eases movement into the theater, potentially allowing contracted non-traditional shipping to carry containerized drones and freeing dedicated military sealift for other cargo. The CONSOL concept, in which fuel from civilian tankers is delivered to U.S. Navy oilers and warships, could serve as a model for sustaining containerized drones with minor modifications.23 In practice, this would allow containerized drones to move through commercial and military logistics channels much like fuel or standard cargo, enabling surge munitions flows into the theater without overexposing scarce sealift and major logistics hubs.

The final key enabler is the use of modular drone payloads. A common airframe that can be configured as a jammer, decoy, sensor, or one‑way attack munition allows commanders to tailor each salvo to the mission. Existing systems already demonstrate this potential, carrying payloads ranging from electronic‑attack packages to surveillance sensors.24, 25, 26, 27 Modularity achieves two ends. First, it reduces sustainment risk by minimizing the number of unique systems or components that must be transported into the theater. Second, it increases the probability of a salvo’s success by integrating jammers, decoys, and attack drones into a single, coordinated attack. Determining the optimal drone-to-missile mix requires experimentation to identify force packages that achieve the desired outcomes at minimal cost. Modularity also improves cost‑exchange performance by allowing commanders to reconfigure existing airframes for new tasks rather than fielding separate, specialized systems for each mission set.

Drone-from-Drone and Mothership Concepts

Recent testing of a Switchblade 600 one‑way attack drone launched from a larger MQ‑9A Reaper, the same drones synonymous with the War on Terror, illustrates how drone‑from‑drone concepts can extend the reach and responsiveness of unmanned systems.28 Because the MQ‑9 has roughly twice the speed and greater range than a LUCAS‑type drone, this approach could increase engagement options and compress timelines.29

A more resilient system would include theater‑range modular drones and a dedicated mothership, such as the MQ-9 or other long-range drone, which would carry shorter‑range attack drones. Modular theater drones conduct missions requiring greater payload and power, such as jamming. This nested architecture reduces dependence on manned, high‑value platforms and provides additional means to generate the force mass required to penetrate layered defenses.

Mothership concepts introduce additional command‑and‑control and deconfliction challenges that will require rigorous experimentation and wargaming before adoption at scale. Yet if implemented effectively, they would confront adversary commanders with overlapping dilemmas: theater‑range modular drones launched from ground, sea, or air; shorter‑range munitions deployed from motherships; and exquisite missiles capable of rapid, penetrating strikes. Together, these elements complicate air defense planning and increase the likelihood that some portion of each salvo reaches its targets. Crucially, the U.S. must not lose sight of the fact that China is also experimenting in this field. To maintain its edge, the U.S. must begin rapid live‑fire experimentation to formalize doctrine, create feedback loops for software, and refine command‑and‑control architectures for the inevitable drone‑on‑drone fights.

Conclusion

A future war in the Western Pacific will not be decided by which side fields the most exquisite platforms on the opening day of combat, but by which side can afford to keep firing on day one hundred. The U.S. is currently organized around a force-and-munitions paradigm that assumes short, decisive campaigns that do not exist in reality. Against a peer with a large, industrialized economy and an asymmetric approach designed to circumvent U.S. short-range precision strike, the result is likely paralysis if not outright defeat.

This is not a call for more technology for its own sake, but for different economics in how we design and employ firepower. Containerized, cross‑domain‑launchable drones; modular payloads that can be rapidly reconfigured between jamming, sensing, decoy, and strike; and drone‑from‑drone or mothership concepts that multiply the reach of each sortie—all are tools for building a strike architecture that can absorb attrition and generate effects at scale.

If the U.S. fails to make this shift, it risks entering a Pacific conflict on China’s terms: overextended logistics, shallow magazines, and a force trapped in a defensive, interceptor-driven pattern of expenditure. But if senior leaders move now and implement the suggested changes, the balance changes.

The choice, then, is straightforward. The U.S. can continue to organize its Pacific posture around a shrinking set of exquisite platforms and munitions and hope they survive long enough to matter. Or it can accept that the defining contest of a Western Pacific war will be industrial and economic output at scale. The window to make that choice is closing fast.

Lieutenant Connor Keating commissioned from the Virginia Tech NROTC and served aboard a forward-deployed destroyer in Yokosuka, Japan. On shore duty, he was a protocol action officer to the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is an integrated air-and-missile defense warfare tactics instructor and participated in the Naval War College’s Halsey Alfa Advanced Research Project as a resident student.

References

1. Trevor Phillips-Levine, Andrew Tenbusch, and Walker D Miles. “Gilded Capability: Overinvestment and the Survivability Paradox.” War on the Rocks, February 12, 2026. https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/gilded-capability-overinvestment-and-the-survivability-paradox/.

2. Trevor Phillips-Levine. “Return of the Gunfighters.” Behind The Front, August 15, 2024. https://behindthefront.substack.com/p/return-of-the-gunfighters.

3. Mark Temnycky. “Ukraine Has Innovated Naval Warfare – Center for Maritime Strategy.” Center for Maritime Strategy – Center for Maritime Strategy, July 25, 2025. https://centerformaritimestrategy.org/publications/ukraine-has-innovated-naval-warfare/.

4. Stefano D’Urso and Andrea Daolio. “Ukrainian Surface Drone Equipped with R-73 Air-to-Air Missiles Shot down Russian MI-8 Helicopter.” The Aviationist, January 1, 2025. https://theaviationist.com/2024/12/31/ukrainian-magura-usv-r-73-vs-mi-8-helicopter/.

5. Matthew Bint and Fabian Hinz. “Russia Doubles down on the Shahed.” The international institute for strategic studies, April 14, 2025. https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/military-balance/2025/04/russia-doubles-down-on-the-shahed/.

6. Vytis Andreika. “Russia’s Changes in the Conduct of War Based on Lessons from Ukraine Adapting Technology, Force Structures, and the Defense Industry.” Military Review, 5, 105, no. September-October 2025 (September 2025): 109–24. https://doi.org/Professional Bulletin 100-25-09/10.

7. Trevor Phillips-Levine and Andrew Tenbusch. “Allied Arsenal: Building Strength through Shared Production.” War on the Rocks, July 22, 2025. https://warontherocks.com/2025/07/allied-arsenal-building-strength-through-shared-production/.

8. No author. “AGM UGM RGM-84 Harpoon Anti Ship Missile SSM SLAM-ER.” n.d. www.seaforces.org.https://www.seaforces.org/wpnsys/SURFACE/RGM-84-Harpoon.htm.

9. No author. “Missiles of China | Missile Threat.” 2018. Missile Threat. 2018. https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/china/.

10. Andrew Rolander. “The Dangerous Collapse of US Strategic Sealift Capacity | the Strategist.” The Strategist. March 25, 2025. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-dangerous-collapse-of-us-strategic-sealift-capacity/.

11. Joe Emmett, Trevor Ball, and N.R. Jenzen-Jones. n.d. Review of Shahed-131 & -136 UAVs: A Visual Guide. Open Source Munitions Portal. Open Source Munitions Portal. Accessed February 12, 2026. https://osmp.ngo/collection/shahed-131-136-uavs-a-visual-guide/.

12. Theresa Hitchens, “With the Boom for Solid Rocket Motors for Missiles, a Perilous Crunch in the Supply Chain,” Breaking Defense, January 12, 2026, https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01/with-the-boom-for-solid-rocket-motors-for-missiles-a-perilous-crunch-in-the-supply-chain.

13. No author. “US Develops Lucas Kamikaze Drone to Surpass Iranian Shahed as Loitering Munitions Become Core to Future Warfare.” US develops LUCAS kamikaze drone to surpass Iranian Shahed-136 as loitering munitions become core to future warfare, July 18, 2025. https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/us-develops-lucas-kamikaze-drone-to-surpass-iranian-shahed-136-as-loitering-munitions-become-core-to-future-warfare.

14. Shield AI, “V-Bat,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://shield.ai/v-bat.

15. Anduril Industries, “Altius,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://www.anduril.com/altius.

16. Anduril Industries, “Barracuda,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://www.anduril.com/barracuda.

17. Hugo Bachega, “Russian Air Strikes Get Deadlier and Bigger, Hitting Ukraine’s Very Heart,” BBC News, September 9, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrqwpee05ro.

18. Sam Lair. “Shallow Ramparts: Air and Missile Defenses in the June 2025 Israel-Iran War – Foreign Policy Research Institute.” Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 17, 2025. https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/10/shallow-ramparts-air-and-missile-defenses-in-the-june-2025-israel-iran-war/.

19. Ibid.

20. Rising, David, and Sam Metz. “Iran’s Military Degraded by 12-Day War with Israel, but Still Has Significant Capabilities.” AP News, February 13, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/iran-israel-us-trump-military-carrier-war-931c25411eeef7d8cee679b3544b792a.

21. Sam Lair. “Shallow Ramparts: Air and Missile Defenses in the June 2025 Israel-Iran War – Foreign Policy Research Institute.” Foreign Policy Research Institute, October 17, 2025. https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/10/shallow-ramparts-air-and-missile-defenses-in-the-june-2025-israel-iran-war/.

22. No author. “Hypersonic Weapons: Background and Issues for Congress.” February 20, 2026. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45811.

23. Sarah Burford. Review of Tanker Ships Deliver Fuel to MSC Ships via CONSOL in Support of RIMPAC 2022. U.S. Navy. U.S. Navy. July 25, 2022. https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/News-Stories/Article/3103496/tanker-ships-deliver-fuel-to-msc-ships-via-consol-in-support-of-rimpac-2022/.

24. No author. “US Develops Lucas Kamikaze Drone to Surpass Iranian Shahed as Loitering Munitions Become Core to Future Warfare.” US develops LUCAS kamikaze drone to surpass Iranian Shahed-136 as loitering munitions become core to future warfare, July 18, 2025. https://armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2025/us-develops-lucas-kamikaze-drone-to-surpass-iranian-shahed-136-as-loitering-munitions-become-core-to-future-warfare.

25. Shield AI, “V-Bat,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://shield.ai/v-bat.

26. Anduril Industries, “Altius,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://www.anduril.com/altius.

27. Anduril Industries, “Barracuda,” accessed January 26, 2026, https://www.anduril.com/barracuda.

28. No author. “AV Switchblade 600 Loitering Munition System Achieves Pivotal Milestone with First-Ever Air Launch from MQ-9A.” AeroVironment, Inc., September 10, 2025. https://www.avinc.com/resources/press-releases/view/av-switchblade-600-loitering-munition-system-achieves-pivotal-milestone-with-first-ever-air-launch-from-mq-9a.

29. No author. “MQ-9 Reaper.” Air Force, January 2025. https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104470/mq-9-reaper/.

Featured Photo: A U.S. LUCAS drone on a tarmac in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. Wikimedia Commons.

Force Structure

A Concept of Operations for Achieving a Navy Fleet of 500 Ships

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By Captain George Galdorisi

The U. S. Navy stands at the precipice of a new era of technology advancement. In an address at a military-industry conference, the then-U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, revealed the Navy’s goal to grow to 500 ships, to include 350 crewed ships and 150 uncrewed maritime vessels. This plan has been dubbed the “hybrid fleet.” In an address at the Reagan National Defense Forum, his successor, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, cited the work of the Navy’s Unmanned Task Force, as well numerous exercises, experiments and demonstrations where uncrewed surface vessels were put in the hands of Sailors and Marines, all designed to advance the journey to achieve the Navy’s hybrid fleet.

More recently, other speeches and interviews addressing the number of uncrewed surface vessels the Navy intends to field culminated in the issuance of the Chief of Naval Operations Force Design 2045, and subsequently the Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy, both of which call for 350 crewed ships and 150 large uncrewed maritime vessels.  These documents provide the clearest indication yet of the Navy’s plans for a future fleet populated by large numbers of uncrewed surface vessels (USVs).

The reason for this commitment to uncrewed maritime vessels is clear. During the height of the Reagan Defense Buildup in the mid-1980s, the U.S. Navy evolved a strategy to build a “600-ship Navy.” That effort resulted in a total number of Navy ships that reached 594 in 1987. That number has declined steadily during the past three-and-one-half decades, and today the Navy has less than half the number of ships than it had then. However, the rapid growth of the technologies that make uncrewed surface vessels increasingly capable and affordable has provided the Navy with a potential way to put more hulls in the water.

However, the U.S. Congress has been reluctant to authorize the Navy’s planned investment of billions of dollars in USVs until the Service can come up with a concept-of-operations (CONOPS) for using them. Congress has a point. The Navy has announced plans to procure large numbers of uncrewed systems—especially large and medium uncrewed surface vessels—but a CONOPS, in even the most basic form, has not yet emerged. Additionally, while the composition of the future Navy’s crewed vessels is relatively well understood—based on ships being built and being planned—what those uncrewed maritime vessels will look like, let alone what they will do, has yet to be fully determined.

That said, the Navy has taken several actions to define what uncrewed maritime vessels will do and thus accelerate the journey to have uncrewed platforms populate the fleet. These include publishing an Unmanned Campaign Framework, standing up an Unmanned Task Force, establishing Surface Development Squadron One in San Diego and Surface Vessel Division One in Port Hueneme, CA, and conducting a wide range of exercises, experiments and demonstrations where operators have had the opportunity to evaluate uncrewed maritime vessels.

All these initiatives will serve the Navy well in evolving a convincing CONOPS to describe how these innovative platforms can be leveraged to achieve a hybrid fleet and gain a warfighting advantage over high-end adversaries. Fleshing out how this is to be done will require that the Navy describe how these platforms will get to the operating area where they are needed, as well as what missions they will perform once they arrive there.

A key part of this evolving CONOPS will involve integrating crewed ships and uncrewed maritime vessels. This means that both will need to operate as a synergistic fighting force, not all merely steaming together to perform a mission. This will require leveraging emerging technologies that can connect these platforms in a fashion now called man-machine teaming.

U.S. Navy’s Commitment to Uncrewed Maritime Vessels

 It is beyond the scope of this article to attempt to detail the reasons for the precipitous decline in the number of crewed ships. Indeed, the most recent Navy Long-Range Shipbuilding Plan details 19 ship decommissionings during this fiscal year, more than the number of ships being commissioned. Many—especially the U.S. Congress—have encouraged the Navy to increase the number of ships it fields. Add to this such factors as the increasing cost to build ships, and especially the cost to man these vessels (Seventy percent of the total ownership costs of surface ships is the cost of personnel to operate these vessels over their lifecycle), and the fact that the Navy is literally wearing these ships out more rapidly than anticipated in order to meet the increasing demands of U.S. Combatant Commanders, and it is easy to see why the Navy has difficulty growing the number of crewed surface vessels. 

The rapid growth of the technologies that make uncrewed surface vessels increasingly capable and affordable has provided the Navy with a potential way to put more hulls in the water. To support these goals regarding large numbers of uncrewed maritime platforms populating the Fleet, the Navy established an Unmanned Task Force to provide stewardship for Navy-wide efforts to accelerate efforts regarding uncrewed systems. From all indications, it seems that for the U.S. Navy, the intent is to go all-in on uncrewed maritime vessels and field a hybrid force of crewed ships and uncrewed maritime systems. Importantly, the intent is to have these uncrewed systems work in conjunction with manned platforms and achieve the goal of manned-unmanned teaming.

In a presentation at a Center for Strategic and International Studies/U.S. Naval Institute forum, Vice Admiral Jimmy Pitts, deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting requirements and capabilities (N9), put the focus on uncrewed maritime systems in these terms: “We are leading the way with unmanned systems. We are leveraging the success of the Navy’s unmanned task force as well as the disruptive capabilities office. Our goal is to get unmanned surface system solutions to the Fleet within the next two years.” Admiral Pitts went on to ask the questions: “What will unmanned systems do operationally? How will they get to the war at sea and littoral operating areas? How will they stay in those areas and remain ready for conflict?”

In an article in U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander, Admiral Samuel Paparo, put the emphasis on scaling robotic and autonomous systems in an operational context, noting:

The CNO is focusing on rapidly developing, fielding, and integrating UxSs. These systems will augment the multi-mission conventional force to increase lethality, sensing, and survivability. Project 33 [part of the Navigation Plan] will allow the Navy to operate in more areas with greater capability. Unmanned systems provide the ability to project fires and effects dynamically, at any time, from multiple axes, and with mass.

Recognizing that the United States is in an “AI arms-race” with our peer adversaries, a report by the Navy’s Science and Technology Board: The Path Forward on Unmanned Systems, advises the Navy to fully leverage AI-technologies, noting: “As they design, develop and acquire new systems, DON will want to take advantage of rapidly changing technology such as AI and autonomy.” This builds on the Navy’s desire to lower total operating costs by moving beyond the current “one UxS, multiple joysticks, multiple operators” paradigm module that exists today.

A Concept of Operations for Getting Uncrewed Surface Vessels to the Fight

The concept of operations proposed is to marry various size surface, subsurface and aerial uncrewed vehicles to perform missions that the U.S. Navy has—and will continue to have—as the Hybrid Fleet evolves. The Navy can use evolving large uncrewed surface vessels as a “truck” to move smaller USVs, UUVs and UAVs into the battle space in the increasingly contested littoral environment. The Navy has several alternatives for this platform:

  • The Navy’s program of record LUSV. The Navy envisions these LUSVs as being 200 feet to 300 feet in length and having full load displacements of 1,000 tons to 2,000 tons, which would make them the size of a corvette.
  • Unmanned Surface Vessel Division One (USVDIV-1) has stewardship for two surrogates for LUSVs, the Ranger and Nomad, as well as two MUSV prototypes, Sea Hunter and Seahawk. The Navy was sufficiently confident in the operation of its LUSV and MUSV prototypes to deploy them to a recent international Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise.
  • The MARTAC T82 Leviathan, a scaled-up version of the T38 Devil Ray, is an MUSV capable of either carrying an approximately 35,000-pound payload or, alternatively, carrying smaller craft and launching them toward the objective area.

While there are a plethora of important Navy missions this integrated combination of uncrewed platforms can accomplish, this article will focus on two: intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and mine countermeasures (MCM). There are many large, medium, small and ultra-small uncrewed systems that can be adopted for these missions.  The technical challenge remains that they must be designed to ensure that the multiple sized UxSs associated with these missions can be adapted to work together in a common mission goal. 

Rather than speaking in hypotheticals as to how uncrewed vessels might be employed for these two missions, this article will offer concrete examples, using COTS uncrewed systems that have been employed in recent Navy and Marine Corps events. In each case, these systems not only demonstrated mission accomplishment, but also the hull, mechanical and electrical (HME) attributes and maturity that Congress is demanding.

While there are a wide range of medium uncrewed surface vessels (MUSVs) that can potentially meet the U.S. Navy’s needs, there are three that are furthest along in the development cycle. These MUSVs cover a range of sizes, hull types and capabilities. They are:

  • The Leidos Sea Hunter is the largest of the three.  The Sea Hunter is a 132-foot-long trimaran (a central hull with two outriggers). 
  • The Textron monohull Common Unmanned Surface Vessel (CUSV), now renamed MCM-USV, features a modular, open architecture design.
  • The Maritime Tactical Systems Inc. (MARTAC), catamaran hull uncrewed surface vessels (USV) include the Devil Ray T24 and T38 craft.  The two Devil Ray USVs, along with their smaller MANTAS T12 USV, all feature a modular and open architecture design. 

All of these MUSVs are viable candidates to be part of an integrated uncrewed solution CONOPS. I will use the MANTAS, Devil Ray and Leviathan craft for a number of reasons. First, they come in different sizes with the same HME attributes. Second, the Sea Hunter is simply too large to fit into the LUSVs the Navy is currently considering. Third, the MCM-USV is the MUSV of choice for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Mine-Countermeasures Mission Package, and all MCM-USVs scheduled to be procured are committed to this program.

If the U.S. Navy wants to keep its multi-billion-dollar capital ships out of harm’s way, it will need to surge uncrewed maritime vessels into the contested battlespace while its crewed ships stay out of range of adversary anti-access (A2/AD) systems. This will require robust command and control systems,

Depending on the size that is ultimately procured, the LUSV can carry several T38 Devil Ray uncrewed surface vessels and deliver them, largely covertly, to a point near the intended area of operations. The T38 can then be sent independently to perform the ISR mission, or alternatively, can launch one or more T12 MANTAS USVs to perform that mission. Building on work conducted by the Navy laboratory community and sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, the T38 or T12 will have the ability to launch unmanned aerial vessels to conduct overhead ISR.  

For the MCM mission, the LUSV can deliver several T38s equipped with mine-hunting and mine-clearing systems (all of which are COTS platforms tested extensively in Navy exercises). These vessels can then undertake the “dull, dirty and dangerous” work previously conducted by Sailors who had to operate in the minefield. Given the large mine inventory of peer and near-peer adversaries, this methodology may well be the only way to clear mines safely.

Operational Scenario for an Integrated Crewed-Uncrewed Mission

This scenario and CONOPS are built around an Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) that is underway in the Western Pacific.  The ESG is on routine patrol five hundred nautical miles from the nearest landfall.  An incident occurs in their operating area and the strike group is requested to (1) obtain reconnaissance of a near-shore littoral area, and (2) determine if the entrance to a specific bay has been mined to prevent ingress.  The littoral coastline covers two hundred nautical miles.  This area must be reconnoitered within twenty-four hours without the use of air assets.

Command staff decides to dispatch the three LUSVs for the mission.  Two LUSVs are each configured with four T38-ISR craft and the third LUSV is configured with four T38-MCM vessels. The single supervisory control station for the three LUSVs is manned in the mothership.

The three LUSV depart the strike group steaming together in a preset autonomous pattern for two hundred and fifty nautical miles to a waypoint that is central to the two hundred nautical mile ISR scan area, two hundred and fifty nautical miles from the shore.  At this waypoint, the LUSV will stop and dispatch the smaller T38 craft and then wait at this location for their return.   Steaming at a cruise speed of twenty-five knots, the waypoint is reached in about ten hours.

  • Two T38-ISR craft are launched from each of the two LUSVs. The autonomous mission previously downloaded specifies a waypoint location along the coast for each of the four craft. These waypoints are fifty nautical miles apart from each other, indicating that each of the four T38 craft will have an ISR mission of fifty nautical miles to cover.    
  • Two T38-MCM craft are launched from the third LUSV. The autonomous mission previously downloaded has them transit independently along different routes to two independent waypoints just offshore of the suspected mine presence area where they will commence mine-like object detection operations.
  • In this manner, each of the six craft will transit independently and autonomously to their next waypoint which will be their mission execution starting point.
  • Transit from the LUSV launch point, depending on route, will be about two hundred and fifty to three hundred nautical miles to their near-shore waypoints. Transit will be at seventy to eighty knots to their mission start waypoint near the coast. Transit time is between four and five hours.
  • The plan is for each of the T38-ISR craft to complete their ISR scan in four to five hours each and for the two T38-MCM craft to jointly scan the bottom and the water column for the presence of mine-like objects in four to five hours at a scan speed of six to eight knots.

The MANTAS and Devil Ray craft transit to the objective area and conduct their ISR and MCM missions. The timeline for the entire mission is as follows:

  • LUSV detach strike group to T38 launch point and launch six T38: – 10-12 hours.
  • T38 transit from launch point to mission ISR/MCM start waypoints: – 4-5 hours.
  • ISR Mission and MCM mission time from start to complete: – 4-5 hours.
  • T38 transit from mission completion point back to LUSV for recovery: – 4-5 hours.
  • LUSV recover T38s and return to strike group formation – 10-12 hours.

Even with the ESG five hundred nautical miles from shore, the strike group commander has the results of the ISR and MCM scan of the shoreline littoral area within approximately twenty-four hours after the departure of the LUSVs from the strike group. 

A Bright Future for Uncrewed Surface Vessels

This is not a platform-specific solution, but rather a concept. When Navy operators see a capability with different size uncrewed COTS platforms in the water successfully performing the missions presented in this article, they will likely press industry to produce even more-capable platforms to perform these tasks. This, in turn, will enable the Navy to field a capable Hybrid Fleet that will be the Navy’s Future Force.

While evolutionary in nature, this disruptive capability delivered using emerging technologies can provide the U.S. Navy with near-term solutions to vexing operational challenges, while demonstrating to a skeptical Congress that the Navy does have a concept-of-operations for the uncrewed systems it wants to procure. 

Captain George Galdorisi (U.S. Navy – retired) is a career naval aviator and national security professional. During his 30-year career he had four tours in command and served as a carrier strike group chief of staff for five years. Additionally, he led the U.S. delegation for military-to-military talks with the Chinese Navy. He is the Emeritus Director of Strategic Assessments and Technical Futures at the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific. He is the author of seventeen books, including four New York Times bestsellers. His most recent novel, Fire and Ice, was eerily prescient as it foresaw Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Featured Image: T38 Devil Ray USV

Feature Image Credit: Martak

Force Structure

Navy Force Planning with a Pertinacious Marine Corps

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By Bruce Stubbs

“A requirement is a requirement, pure and simple.”
—Lieutenant General Karsten Heckl, USMC 

“One man’s requirement is like another man’s wish.”
—Admiral Frank B. Kelso II, USN (retired)

A Team of Rivals

The United States Marine Corps has an outsized effect on Navy force planning. While the Navy and the Marines exhibit a sincere and genuine single team spirit conducting global naval operations, they are a fierce team of rivals when determining the requirements for amphibious ships (also known as “amphibs”), which the Navy funds for their construction and operation.

Soon after becoming Marine Corps Commandant, General David H. Berger announced a headline-grabbing transformation of the Corps in his July 2019 Commandant’s Planning Guidance. In its new role, the Marines would operate inside actively contested maritime spaces to conduct sea denial and assured access missions with a particular focus on the Indo-Pacific theater. In March 2020 Berger further explained his concept in Force Design 2030. Berger’s guidance declared that the Navy’s large amphibs were too vulnerable and too expensive to risk in combat, the Marines’ requirement for 38 or 34 large amphibs was no longer valid, and the Marines had a new requirement for small, agile amphibs.

His unprecedented, if not historic, transformational initiative sparked a yearslong controversy over two inter-related issues. First, Force Design 2030 punctured the Corps’ rationale for Navy’s large amphibs, which the two sea services refer to as either “big deck” or “small deck” ships. Second, the initiative handed the Navy a multi-billion dollar bill to construct and operate a new class of amphibs designated eventually as the Medium Landing Ship. 

Issue#1: Number of Large Amphibious Ships

Shifting Requirements

From Berger’s determination that large amphibs were too vulnerable and too expensive, it logically followed what Mark Cancian, an analyst at the Center for Security and International Studies and a retired colonel of Marines, concluded. If the Marines believed their “future lay in small amphibious ships, then the Pentagon should limit the building of large amphibious ships.” The Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office—a powerful analytical office reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense—took notice of this contradiction in the Marines’ transformation planning.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Marines’ requirement for large amphibs has been an issue for the Navy. Former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates (2006-2011) in May 2010 explained why: “We have to take a hard look at where it would be necessary or sensible to launch another major amphibious landing again – especially as advances in anti-ship systems keep pushing the potential launch point further from shore.… what kind of amphibious capability do we really need to deal with the most likely scenarios, and then how much?”

Echoing Gates’ arguments, Jerry Hendrix, a senior fellow at the Sagamore Institute and a retired Navy captain, stated that the Marine Corps has “been less than convincing on the role of amphibs in the future fight” and the need for joint forcible entry and amphibious assault. He observed, ” … outside of beaches on the Korean Peninsula … where [are they] going to be doing amphibious assault … what [is] the argument” for this capability? According to Cancian, the Marines have not “offered a strong wartime rationale for 31 large amphibious ships.”

Trump’s Defense Secretary Wants Fewer Large Amphibious Ships

By early 2020, it appeared Secretary of Defense Mark Esper had determined that the requirement for opposed amphibious landings was diminishing. He wanted a warfighting strategy to drive amphibious force planning, not a peacetime forward presence strategy. So, Esper directed his staff to conduct a new amphib study as a component of a larger study on the Navy’s total ship requirements. Completed in October 2020, the Future Navy Force Study served as the basis for the first Trump administration’s last Navy shipbuilding plan, submitted to Congress in December 2020. Esper’s unprecedented tasking of his staff to conduct this study resulted in the Navy losing control over its force planning efforts for about eight months.

This plan had dire consequences for the Marines. It reduced the number of large amphibs by calling for a range of 9 to 10 “big deck” ships and a range of 52 to 57 for all other amphibs. Ronald O’Rourke, the respected Congressional Research Service analyst, suggested that this range could be divided into 19 or fewer “small deck” ships and 28 to 30 of the new Light Amphibious Warship. The combined total of “big deck” and “small deck” ships would be well under 30, which was unacceptable to the Marines. 

Biden’s Navy Secretary Also Wanted Fewer Large Amphibious Ships and Another Study

On June 17, 2021, new Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro released the fiscal year 2022 shipbuilding plan. It called for 8 to 9 “big deck” amphibs, 16 to 19 “small deck” amphibs, and 24 to 35 new Light Amphibious Warships, which in 2024 the Navy redesignated the Medium Landing Ship. Also in June, the Navy and the Marines completed another amphib study which determined a requirement for 28 to 31 large amphibs. For the Marines, “31-amphibs” became their red-line for large amphibs, contradicting the Secretary’s range of 24 to 29 in the fiscal year 2022 shipbuilding plan.

In September 2021 Del Toro directed another evaluation of amphibious ship requirements called the Amphibious Force Requirement Study for delivery by March 2022. (Del Toro delayed submitting this study to Congress until December 2022.) By February 2022, Admiral Michael Gilday, the Chief of Naval Operations, publicly stated that the fiscal year 2023 shipbuilding plan would include, “probably nine big deck amphibs and another 19 or 20 [“small deck” ships] to support them.” Gilday’s numbers indicated a range of 28 to 29 for the large amphibs. A few months later, Del Toro released the fiscal year 2023 shipbuilding plan in April, presenting an unhelpful package of three alternative plans for a range of 7 to 9 “big deck” ships and 15 to 26 “small deck” ships for a total between 22 to 26 by fiscal year 2045. The reduction in large amphibs would prevent the Marines from simultaneously deploying three Marine Expeditionary Units.

While the Biden administration signaled it did not fully support the Marines’ requirements, some in Congress did. Representative Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) and Representative Rob Wittman (R-Va.) introduced a bill to maintain 31 large ships. In late July 2022, Gilday released his Navigation Plan 2022 which called for 31 large amphibious ships and 18 Light Amphibious Warships.

Congress Is Incensed and Supports the Marines

By April 2022, Congress still had not received Del Toro’s Amphibious Force Requirements Study. A dispute, which became a stand-off between the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office and the Navy, caused the delay. This office wanted the Navy to reconsider portions of the report, but the Navy declined, and so the study languished. By December, Congress had had enough and passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 with a statutory requirement for not less than 31 large amphibs, including 10 “big deck” and 21 “small deck” ships. This Act also required the Navy Secretary to ensure that the Commandant’s views are given appropriate consideration before a major decision is made by an element of the Navy Department outside the Marine Corps on a matter that directly concerns amphibious force structure and capability. In addition, the Act assigned directed responsibility to the Commandant for developing the requirements relating to amphibs. Del Toro finally sent the classified Amphibious Force Requirements Study to Congress in late December 2022. No sooner than Congress received this study, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin directed a “redo” with little Navy objection, which according to Politico, increased the Marines’ frustration.

Navy Secretary Announces an Amphibious Strategic Pause

Del Toro publicly stated in February 2023 that the Navy was taking a “strategic pause” from buying the “small deck” ships. He explained that the Navy needed additional time to determine the mix and number of amphibs before resuming procurement. The Secretary’s announcement was somewhat disingenuous as the Secretary had already initiated a de facto strategic pause in his April 2022 submission of the fiscal year 2023 shipbuilding plan and the fiscal year 2030 budget. According to Politico, the Marines were furious over this outcome. Gilday explained that lack of funding was the “driving issue” for the decision not to fund any more of these $1.8 billion “small deck” ships.

Congress Intervenes Again for the Marines

By April 2023, Del Toro’s strategic pause not to buy “small deck” amphibs had greatly annoyed the Senate Armed Services Committee. A month later the Committee reproached Del Toro in a June 13th letter for not responding to its questions regarding the Navy’s non-compliance with the statutory requirement to maintain 31 large amphibious ships. The senators saw no planning in the Navy’s fiscal year 2024 shipbuilding plan to achieve this force-level goal. Co-signed by 14 Democratic and Republican senators, the letter stated, “The Navy’s current plan not only violates the statutory requirement, but also jeopardizes the future effectiveness of the joint force, especially as we consider national security threats in the Indo-Pacific.” The letter continued that the Del Toro had until June 19th to respond with an updated shipbuilding plan for fiscal year 2024, and a pointed reminder that the 31-ship requirement “is not a suggestion but a requirement based on the assessed needs of the Navy and the Marine Corps.” In early August USNI News reported that the strategic pause was still in effect. At her September 2023 confirmation hearings to become the 33rd Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti endorsed the Marines’ requirement for 31 large amphibious ships.

Congress Helps Thwart an “Existential Threat” from the Navy Secretary

As the Marines entered 2024, the debate over the number of large amphibious ships remained unresolved. Lieutenant General Karsten Heckl, Deputy Commandant for Combat Development and Integration, called the amphib shortage the Marines’ “single biggest existential threat.” In March, the Defense and Navy Departments eliminated this threat by ending the two-year “strategic pause” for procuring “small deck” amphibs. The Navy’s budget submission for fiscal year 2025 and its fiscal year 2025 shipbuilding plan, both approved by the Defense and Navy Departments, included the procurement of “small deck” ships. In addition, these documents commenced the procurement of a new class of Medium Landing Ships. The Biden Administration had caved to Congress and ended the almost two-year strategic pause.

Issue #2: The Unaffordable and Unsurvivable Ship

Marines Give The Navy A Shipbuilding Bill

Berger’s guidance called for a new class of Navy amphibious ships that were “smaller, more lethal, and more risk-worthy platforms” to shuttle Marines around archipelagic islands. The Marines would “shoot” anti-ship cruise missiles from one island and then “scoot” to another island using the new amphibs as “water taxis” to “shoot” once more. In 2020 the Navy designated this new amphib as the Light Amphibious Warship. The Navy anticipated procuring a class of 28 to 30 ships with a crew of “no more than 40 Navy Sailors” at a “unit procurement cost of less than $100 million.”

Almost immediately the Navy and the Marine Corps clashed over the ship’s capabilities and costs. The Navy wanted a “survivable ship,” while the Marines wanted an operational ship as fast as possible, as well as one built to civilian standards and not military standards to reduce construction costs. Their disagreement delayed the delivery of first ship to “fiscal year 2023 and then to fiscal year 2025.” By January 2024, the Navy released its request for proposals for the first six of these new class of ships for delivery in 2029. The Navy asked for a ship that could lift 75 Marines and 600 tons of equipment with a “cargo area of about 8,000 square feet, a helicopter pad, a 70-person crew, spots for six .50-caliber guns and two 30mm guns.” The Navy also wanted the ship to be under 400 feet long, a draft of no more than 12 feet, a 14-knot endurance speed, and roll on/roll off beaching capability.

By April 2024, the Navy had re-designated the ship as a Medium Landing Ship with an increased estimated unit procurement cost of roughly $150 million in constant fiscal year 2024 dollars for the first 8 ships and a class size of 35 ships by 2043. The Navy estimated that 55 of these ships would “cost less than $200 million per ship, on average.” The Congressional Budget Office, however, projected the average cost at $350 million per ship.

In December 2024, the Navy received industries’ responses to its January 2024 request for proposals. After seeing the costs, the Navy immediately canceled its request. Gobsmacked, Nickolas Guertin, the assistant secretary of the navy for research, development and acquisition, stated the request for bids, “came back with a much higher price tag. … we had to pull that solicitation back and drop back and punt.” In January 2025, the Navy punted and began looking for “existing, private-sector designs” requiring minor modifications for conversion at a small cost.

In 2025, Unanswered Questions Remain About the New Amphibious Ship

The central issue about the procurement of the Medium Landing Ship remains its construction cost, which is dependent on whether the Navy builds the ship to commercial or naval warfare standards, which is, in turn, dependent on the ship’s final operational concept. Building to commercial standards lowers construction costs. The operational concept remains unclear whether these ships will operate in a benign environment. Will they only operate in the pre-crisis phase or after hostilities have commenced and these ships find themselves in contested waters? Moreover, if the Marines intend to resupply its forces as well to relocate them during the conflict, it is highly likely that these ships would be vulnerable to detection and attack.

Consequently, the Navy will have a mission requirement to protect and sustain the Marines operating as stand-in forces, placing another demand on the Navy to provide forces while also conducting other high priority missions (see Table 1). In April 2024 the Congressional Budget Office reported that “A ship that is not expected to face enemy fire in a conflict could be built to a lesser survivability standard, with fewer defensive systems than a ship that would sail in contested waters during a conflict.”

Table 1: A comparison of potential missions for the Department of the Navy during a conflict over Taiwan, divided into missions shared by the Navy and Marine Corps and missions that would be assigned to predominantly Navy forces. (Author graphic)

Perhaps in an attempt to strengthen the argument that the Navy should construct these ships to commercial standards, the fiscal year 2025 shipbuilding plan did not classify the Medium Landing Ship as an “amphibious warfare ship.” Instead, in a puzzling decision it was categorized as a “command and support” vessel, despite its requirement to land Marines on beaches to conduct kinetic operations.

Wrap-Up

The Navy and Marine Corps Have Different Priorities and Agendas

The Navy and the Marine Corps co-exist on some important core common tasks and viewpoints, reinforced by established historical, political, legal, and bureaucratic frameworks. The Marine focus on forward presence, forcible entry, and expeditionary warfare employing the Navy’s amphibs. Whereas for the Navy, expeditionary warfare is merely one among many Navy warfare functions to include anti-air warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, anti-submarine warfare, strike warfare, special operations warfare, mine and countermine warfare, electronic and information warfare, strategic deterrence, combat logistics, and sealift for Joint Force logistic sustainment. For the Marines, amphibs are a priority. For the Navy, however, ballistic missile submarines, attack submarines, aircraft carriers, large surface combatants, small surface combatants, auxiliary ships, logistics ships, oilers, and minesweepers are all priorities as well as amphibs (see Table 2). 

Table 2: A comparison of ship acquisition priorities between the Navy and Marine Corps. (Author graphic)

The Navy does not get to focus on just one type of ship and it is responsible for a wide range of warfighting functions. In contrast, the Marine Corps has a much narrower set of responsibilities. When force structure priorities differ between the Navy and Marines, the Navy finds itself in an awkward position between one side—composed of the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Defense, and the Department of the Navy—and the other side comprised of the Marines and Congress. Such triangulation can lead to an almost unmanageable situation whereby the Navy loses control of the planning for its future, which actually occurred in 2019. 

Gilday noted that the Navy “must prioritize programs most relevant” to a conflict with China. What can be more relevant to a conflict with China than logistics, especially with a U.S. Navy conducting distributed operations, likely without the availability of Guam. Lines of communication will stretch for thousands of miles from the U.S. homeland to the operating areas. These sea lines of communication, as well as U.S. ports, will require protection because China has the means and the will to interdict and sever these lines to isolate U.S. fighting forces and prevent their sustainment. Logistics ships to sustain combat operations, submarine tenders to rearm submarines, and oilers to refuel the Navy’s distributed forces across the vast Pacific distances may be more needed by the Navy than a new class of 35 amphibs. In February 2024 Admiral Samuel J. Paparo, Jr., then the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, stated that the Navy’s Combat Logistics Force, which supports and sustains the Navy’s distributed maritime operations with “beans, bullets, and black oil” is operating on “narrow margins” with insufficient ships for a war with China. He specifically cited inadequate numbers of oilers. Admiral Paparo also noted that the Chinese consider the U.S. Navy’s logistics capabilities a critical vulnerability with his statement that “When we run [war]games, the red team goes for the Combat Logistics Force every single time.” The Navy’s lack of strategic guidance hindered a comprehensive understanding of this and other thorny force planning issues, consequently strategic force priorities were often set on the fly.

The differences between the two sea services are real, and relations about Department of the Navy funding priorities have often been fractious and kept in-house. A major exception underscoring this sometime discordant relationship occurred in December 1995. General Carl E. Mundy, Jr., U.S. Marine Corps (retired), who served as Commandant, fired a salvo at the Navy for allegedly short-changing the Marine Corps for its fair share of the Navy Department’s budget. Admiral Frank B. Kelso, II, U.S. Navy (retired), Chief of Naval Operations (1990-1994), reminded Mundy that the Marines cannot ignore the “total requirements of the Navy” beside supporting the Marines in the “littorals.”

Conclusion

When the Marines believe their future is in jeopardy, which certainly was the case with this confrontation over 31-large amphibs and the fight for 35 new smaller amphibs, the Marines do not hesitate to seek Congress’ intervention on their behalf. Besides calling the reduction in large amphibs an existential threat to the Marines’ existence, General Heckl thundered, “Our identity is elemental to who we are as Marines. We are soldiers of the sea. We are the nation’s naval expeditionary force. And we just can’t lose that.” His statements reflected the Marine Corps’ laser focus on its own force structure, rather an appreciation of the bigger picture.

Advocates for any of the services can sometimes believe so passionately in the potential effectiveness of their particular service with its “unique” weapon systems, ships, or aircraft that “they find it difficult to appreciate the fuller pattern of a future war and the unforgiving priorities dictating resource allocation.” Their degree of identification with their service may “discourage viewpoints and thinking oriented toward the best interests” of the Joint Force as a whole.” The Marines’ success in setting the goal of 31 large amphibs and a new class of amphibs illustrates the powerful influence the Marines can and will exert over the Navy’s force planning process to achieve their objectives. The nation can only hope that the recent outcomes in amphib numbers that the Marines have achieved in coordination and cooperation with congressional and industrial influence will produce the desired benefit to America’s national defense, and not shortchange other high-priority requirements.

The Marine Corps has a well-deserved special place in the hearts of Congress and the American people—a sentiment that can defy the logic of Navy force planning, and the intentions of any administration to prioritize the nation’s defense requirements. The Marines—thanks to Congress—have a big vote in Navy force planning. Short of the Marine Corps becoming an independent armed service outside the Department of the Navy, the Navy, as best as it can, just has to live with a pertinacious Marine Corps — or it can borrow a page from the Marine Corps’ playbook. 

Prior to his full retirement as a member of the U.S. senior executive service, Bruce Stubbs had assignments on the staffs of the secretary of the Navy and the chief of naval operations from 2009 to 2022. He was a former director of Strategy and Strategic Concepts in the OPNAV N3N5 and N7 directorates. As a career U.S. Coast Guard officer, he had a posting as the Assistant Commandant for Capability (current title) in Headquarters, served on the staff of the National Security Council, taught at the Naval War College, commanded a major cutter, and served a combat tour with the U.S. Navy in Vietnam during the 1972 Easter Offensive. The author drew upon his forthcoming publication, Cold Iron: The Demise of Navy Strategy Development and Force Planning, to compose portions of this commentary.

Featured Image: Ships of the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group sail in formation.  (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Corbin J. Shea/Released)

Force Structure

The Dreadnought after Next

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The following is the 1st Place, Gold Prize-winning essay of the First Sea Lord’s Essay Competition and is republished with permission. Read it in its original form here.

By Chris O’Connor

In 1906, the battleship HMS Dreadnought was commissioned. An engineering marvel at the time, it completely changed the playing field of naval warfare and made previous classes of battleships and armoured cruisers obsolete overnight. Its advantage was not new technology but using technologies in a new combination that had never been done before. It created such an epochal shift in warship design that the battleships built preceding it were retroactively described as ‘preDreadnoughts.’1 In the next couple of years, a new HMS Dreadnought will go to sea. It will contain technologies that were the realm of science fiction when the battleship Dreadnought was commissioned – leveraging the atom for electrical power and weapons, operating with thinking machines, and using sound and radio waves to detect targets unseen by the eye.

The change of technologies between Sir Jackie Fisher’s Dreadnought of 1906 and its namesake two generations later (with the nuclear-powered attack submarine of the same name in between) did not make warships obsolete, rather, it completely changed the perception of what a warship was. Submarines were not considered ‘warships’ by many in the Royal Navy at the turn of the 20th century – when Sir Jackie experimented with them as the Commander-in-Chief of Portsmouth. Dismissed as ‘Fisher’s Toys,’ they were considered ‘unmanly, unethical, and ‘un-English.’2 If this sounds familiar, it is because this same kind of thinking, a fear of the new technology being so different that it is not ‘right,’ is used today to describe uncrewed platforms and other autonomous systems instead of ships operated by stalwart human sailors. The battleships of today are museums and not the capital ships of nations because they were overcome by new technologies and operational concepts. Warships still exist, but they are markedly different.

This historical perspective of maritime warfare innovation calls for a rephrasing of ‘will warships be obsolete?’ Instead, we should ask ourselves ‘What will make current warships obsolete?’ That way, we can examine the technologies that are just coming to the fore and begin thinking now about how warships will evolve, and yes, their form and function will not look like anything before.

Modern missiles and Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) alone will not bring about this change. New anti-ship missiles with longer ranges, smarter seeker heads, and hypersonic speeds will certainly force operational changes and necessitate new countermeasures for warships on the surface (and eventually below the surface). DEW will be part of every physical domain of warfare, as laser and microwave weapons will be employed from everything from satellites to Marines on the ground. These weapons will lead to an evolution in warship design to add magazines and launchers for the new missiles and increased power generation for the DEW. These ideas are all rolled into the ‘Dreadnought 2050’ concept that was publicised in 2015,3 but in the intervening years between then and now, a new forcing function has emerged that will cause a drastic rethink about the concept of a ‘warship.’

The new paradigm in naval warfare will be triggered by the simple fact that a warship of any size will no longer be able to hide on the surface of the oceans. Persistent multispectral sensing from space with military and commercial satellites already complicate efforts to create uncertainty for potential adversaries. Imagery taken daily of bases and harbours can discern with ever greater clarity the readiness and deployment schedules of navies. This pales in comparison to the ramifications of when these constellations of satellites are aided by deep learning algorithms that will be able to provide daily positions of warships at sea. In just the past year, Russian military equipment aiding the Kremlin in its invasion of Ukraine and a Chinese spy balloon were both tracked by these revolutionary means – satellites from the commercial company Planet feeding their image sets to generative artificial intelligence.4

When surface warships can be tracked this way, they will be constantly targeted and will most likely lose the element of surprise. Submarines are safe from this technology, for now. Even if a ship was able to develop some sort of countermeasure to hide itself and its various signatures (to include its wake), modern ships still rely on fuel for their engines, parts for their systems, and food for their crew. A carrier strike group (CSG) or surface action group (SAG) will give away its location simply through the replenishment ships they require to operate. To win the fight in this sensing environment, the warship will not be over a hundred metres long with scores of people onboard, it will have to be altogether different.

A warship is nothing more than a cluster of capabilities working in concert to fight. Sensors, weapons, propulsion, command and control, communications, and decision-making processes all linked together with a common set of missions and its embedded tasks. Modern warships have all of most of these functions physically located in one hull, but they do not have to be. Instead of a large ship that has offloaded weapons and sensors (like an aircraft carrier), a warship of many small optionally crewed systems would replace that big ship altogether. If hit with a hypersonic missile or fried with a microwave pulse, the ship would be able to reconstitute with varied components.

The crew and command structure would look very different, too:

“A small crew would embark a ship, or series of ships, serving in a variety of modalities as expert controllers, emergency maintainers, and expeditionary operators…moving from independent expeditionary command with a manned crew, to embarking on a mothership or series of motherships supporting unmanned operations.”5

These smaller distributed ships will build up to units that will have humans on the loop but will have to rely on autonomy to do a lot of the fighting. In doing so, a navy will be built of units that are closer to an aviation squadron with one commander, whose span of control is over many smaller assets. These together will be the ‘warship’ that will adapt every time they are employed, as the systems learn from past operations and enemy activity and will swap out with others of different payloads. The evolving capability would be akin to changing the battleship HMS Dreadnought’s turrets every underway – that is how integral these smaller vessels will be to the coherent whole of the unit. There are two benefits to this model; one, the ‘distributed force will pose a vast array of interlocking firepower, making it less clear to the adversary which elements… pose the most pressing threat,’ and two, ‘impos[ing] more kill chains for the adversary to manage.’6 This way of fighting at sea will be the only way to manage when larger warships will be rendered obsolete by their signatures.

When Sir Jackie Fisher recognised the disruptive potential of submarines he did not care if they were cowardly or underhanded, he only cared that they worked.7 He had the clarity of vision to examine warfare from the undersea while working on a super battleship that would be revolutionary in its own right. He was quoted as saying “I don’t think it is even faintly realised that the immense impending revolution with which submarines will effect as offensive weapons of war.” The crewmembers of the two submarines named Dreadnought realised this revolution. How soon will we realise the revolution of autonomous systems that will lead to a warship of the future – the Dreadnought after next?

Cdr. Chris O’Connor is a U.S. Naval Officer at NATO Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe and Vice President of CIMSEC.

These views are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the official views of any government or department.

References

1. Jesse Beckett, ‘The Enormous Early 20th Century Pre-Dreadnought & Dreadnought Battleships’, War History Online,
25/03/2021, https://bit.ly/3pRpS6K.

2.  Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Random House
Publishing Group, 1991).

3. Franz-Stefan Gady, ‘Dreadnought 2050: Is this the Battleship of the Future?’, The Diplomat, 07/09/2015,
https://bit.ly/45iFgJL.

4. Patrick Tucker, ‘A “ChatGPT” For Satellite Photos Already Exists’, Defense One, 17/04/2023, https://bit.ly/3IqtGTa.

5. Kyle Cragge, ‘Every Ship a SAG and the LUSV Imperative,’ CIMSEC, 02/03/2023, https://bit.ly/3Mpb32X.

6. Dmitry Filipoff, ‘Fighting DMO, Pt. 1: Defining Distributed Maritime Operations and the Future of Naval Warfare’, CIMSEC, 20/02/2023, https://bit.ly/42Vj0Ea.

7. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 1991).

Featured Image: ATLANTIC OCEAN (Sept. 23, 2019) Royal navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) transits the Atlantic Ocean, Sept. 23. (Photo courtesy of HNLMS De Ruyter)