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)

Notes to the New Administration Week

By Peter Dombrowski

Even citizens who rarely follow naval affairs are likely aware of the troubles the United States Navy has faced over the last decade. The service has suffered scandals from the Fat Leonard affair to the dockside fire that destroyed the Bonhomme Richard. Even worse, there is a growing sense that the USN has been surpassed in numbers of ships and vigor by the PLA Navy. Meanwhile the Houthis have thumbed their noses at American power in the Red Sea, the Navy has expended hundreds of munitions without yet deterring or degrading Houthis capabilities sufficiently to allow commercial shipping to resume at normal levels.

To begin the long voyage back, the new administration must insist that the Navy write a new maritime strategy in the spirit of the famous Maritime Strategy of the 1980s. In the words of former Reagan administration Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, “A critical lesson from the Maritime Strategy is that the Navy must restore credibility with Congress and the public that it knows what kinds of ships, aircraft, and technologies are needed.” And, of course, Congress must ensure that budgets allow current shipbuilding plans are fulfilled.

A new maritime strategy must be far more ambitious than the strategic visions offered by the last several chiefs of naval operations. Since the Cooperative Strategy for 21^st Century Seapower and Advantage at Sea, the navy’s strategic documents (FRAGOs and NAVPLANS) have been small bore, inwardly focused, and not easily understandable to members of Congress or the America public.

The Trump administration’s civilian naval and defense department leaders must encourage the Navy to develop a compelling service vision by paying attention to the following prerequisites for sound strategy development.

Audience. A new strategy must focus on a handful of core audiences, such as the American people, their elected representatives, and the new president. Recent service documents have tried to address too many potential stakeholders—sailors, Navy families, international partners and rivals, the Department of Defense, and the naval industrial sector. But this dilutes the impact of the documents.

Process. Strategy development should be deliberate, it should be inclusive, and it should not be outsourced to contractors. Like all successful organizations, the Navy should prioritize and own its new maritime strategy.

Enduring. If the Navy makes an effort to meaningfully commit a new strategy, then the strategy must be able to shape the Navy for a decade or more. With the support of the incoming Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations must draw upon the next generations of leaders so that they become plank holders in the new vision. A new CNO should not simply upend the past CNO’s strategic guidance without sufficient reason.

Embedded. The Navy strategy must closely mesh with the new administration’s National Security and National Defense Strategies. Otherwise, it will be dead on arrival and of little value for Navy supporters in Congress or the intermittently attentive public.

Implemented. One grave criticism levied against most Navy strategies since the Reagan era’s Maritime Strategy is that they have had negligible impact on how the Navy actually operates much less how it mans, trains, and equips its forces. A new strategy must be operationalized to direct and accountable implementation.

Tri-service. The U.S. Navy should collaborate with the United States Marine Corps and the United States Coast Guard to write a comprehensive vision for the three sea services.

Truthful. The Navy must honestly confront its evident shortcomings while proposing realistic ways and means to remedy them. The released strategy must be accompanied by classified annexes fully informed by current intelligence assessments, realistic budget projections, and emerging operational concepts.      

No one is naïve enough to believe that a service-level strategy can solve the many problems facing the Navy. But an ambitious new maritime strategy will help the Navy raise more resources, generate positive attention from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and win appropriate congressional guidance to set the Navy on the right course for the coming decade. If the Navy is to meet the pacing threat posed by the PLA Navy, it must rally public support, galvanize Congress, and convince the world that the United States fully remains the world’s premier naval power.

Peter Dombrowski is the the William B. Ruger Chair of National Security Economics in the Strategic and Operational Research Department of the U.S. Naval War College.

The views expressed here are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Naval War College or any other U.S. government department or agency.

Featured Image: ATLANTIC OCEAN (June 27, 2012) The amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1) steams alongside coalition partner ships during a formation sailing event while participating in the War of 1812 Fleet Exercise. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Petty Officer 2nd Class (AW/SW) Gretchen M. Albrecht/RELEASED)

Notes to the New Administration Week

By Chris Huff

The AUKUS security agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States represents a bold and necessary initiative to counter evolving threats to U.S. security. This agreement strengthens international alliances by expanding the presence of advanced, conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines and improving the U.S. naval submarine industrial base. While a strategic success with long-term benefits, AUKUS has introduced challenges due to increased costs, resource competition, and extended production timelines for Virginia– and Columbia-class submarines. These issues have adversely affected the Navy’s amphibious fleet, undermining the Marine Corps’ ability to maintain readiness and execute its vital global responsibilities.

Pillar I of the AUKUS agreement requires the annual production of one Columbia-class submarine and two Virginia-class submarines, known as the 1+2 workload. This demand has significantly strained the submarine industrial base, exacerbated by a redesign of the Virginia-class submarine that increased production costs. According to the Congressional Research Service, future production timelines for both submarine classes are expected to be longer than initially projected. In response, Congress has allocated additional funding to strengthen the industrial base, demonstrating a strong commitment to defense collaboration with allied nations. This funding aims to meet the increased demand for nuclear-powered submarines, a key element of AUKUS.

However, these efforts have inadvertently impacted amphibious ship readiness, jeopardizing the Marine Corps’ ability to provide critical mobility and deploy as a lethal, rapid-response force. Since the enactment of AUKUS, multiple Marine Expeditionary Unit deployments have been delayed, creating operational gaps and reducing the forward presence of Marine forces. These delays are largely due to the prolonged maintenance required to repair amphibious ships, which have suffered years of neglect while supporting continuous deployments during the War on Terror. The costs of these repairs have steadily increased, and competition for financial resources within the Navy remains intense.

Meanwhile, commitments to allied nations have prioritized the Virginia-class submarine, diverting and ensuring resources necessary for its construction are available. The Virginia-class program has experienced significant cost overruns, amounting to $967 million under the 2024 budget request and $4.644 billion under the 2025 request through 2028, reflecting a staggering 385 percent year-over-year increase. The Congressional Budget Office also included $3.48 billion in the administration’s 2025 request for an anomaly in the fiscal year 2025 continuing resolution specific to Virginia-class production. To address these financial shortfalls, the Navy has reallocated funds within its budget to meet the requirements of its highest-priority vessels, including at the expense of the amphibious fleet. Projections from the Congressional Budget Office indicate that cost overruns for the Virginia class submarine will increase by an additional $849 million through 2029.

The focus on high-priority submarines and the resulting reallocation of funds have severely impacted the readiness of the amphibious fleet. The maintenance backlog and diminished funding for amphibious ships pose significant risks to strategic deterrence and limit the Marine Corps’ ability to respond to global crises. These challenges underscore the urgent need for increased funding to sustain current readiness and support the future acquisition of amphibious ships.

The Government Accountability Office stated in a December 2024 report to the House Committee on Armed Services that the Navy is likely to face difficulties meeting the statutory requirements to have at least 31 amphibious ships in the future given the age of many ships and other factors. Additional funding in the fiscal years 2026 and 2027 National Defense Authorization Acts, beyond the existing budget, is essential to address these challenges.

The increased funding would facilitate the procurement of new amphibious ships and expand industrial capacity for maintaining existing amphibious vessels, including service life extension requirements. The president’s endorsement of the Navy’s 381-ship goal is an important step that could formalize this target into policy, aligning with the requirements outlined in 10 U.S.C. 8062(b). Such support would enable the acquisition of additional amphibious ships and sustainment of the fleet, ensuring the Marine Corps can provide persistent global deterrence and remain ready to execute any mission.

Prioritizing funding to enhance current amphibious ship readiness is critical. Strengthening these capabilities ensures the Marine Corps can fulfill its role as the nation’s expeditionary force, prepared to deter aggression, respond to crises, and execute strategic objectives. By balancing the demands of AUKUS with the needs of the amphibious fleet, the United States can maintain a versatile and resilient naval force capable of meeting today’s challenges and tomorrow’s uncertainties.

Chris “Rocket” Huff is a Major in the United States Marine Corps.

The views presented are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views or positions of the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, and the Department of Defense.

Featured Image: NORFOLK, Va. The San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock USS New York (LPD 21) arrived at Naval Station Norfolk, Nov. 22, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo)