Notes to the New CNO Series

By Jason Lancaster

Despite U.S. and allied development aid contributions dwarfing PRC contributions in the South Pacific, the PRC has made significant regional gains in influence. PRC competition means the region can no longer be treated as a geostrategic backwater. Its 14 countries are small but their economic exclusion zones cover 20 percent of the earth’s surface, and their locations are strategic geography in the Pacific.

The U.S. Navy has sporadically engaged in sports diplomacy with USNA rugby teams and visiting ships. It should make sports diplomacy more systematic and enduring. The U.S. Navy should invest in regular rugby matches in the South Pacific as part of global competition with the PRC.

The region craves attention that the U.S. has seldom given. No U.S. president has ever visited a Pacific Island country. President Clinton hosted the last Pacific Island Leader, while PRC President Xi Jinping has visited Papua New Guinea and Fiji, and hosted many leaders one-on-one in Beijing. A regular sports diplomacy routine can provide a gateway for key leader engagements by creating high-profile events that earn the broader attention of the South Pacific population. Australia signed an agreement with Papua New Guinea providing $600 million Australian dollars for a National Rugby League (NRL) Expansion team in Port Moresby in 2028. Shortly after the agreement, Papua New Guinea signed defense agreements with Australia, suggesting a confluence of interests and engagements.

Sports diplomacy is a method of building relationships and fostering understanding. Many people in the South Pacific love rugby and it provides an opportunity for the U.S. Navy to engage with Pacific Island communities. U.S. Naval Academy Rugby Teams conducted a Pacific Rugby Diplomacy tour in 2024 and played multiple games in Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. There was no news of a tour in 2025, but there is a valuable opportunity to compete with the PRC for Pacific Island youths. The U.S. could host Pacific Island teams in the U.S., such as for the Australian NRL’s annual Las Vegas Rugby weekend.

U.S. sailors of Pacific Island descent could travel to watch games in the countries of their descent from the stands. This allows U.S. Navy sailors to better engage with locals in the stands. This helps put faces to nations and mesh lifestyles and philosophies. The Royal New Zealand Navy sends sailors of Pacific Island descent to visit those islands for military memorial days like ANZAC Day.

President Trump has demonstrated interest in athletic events, especially the U.S. hosting of Olympic and World Cup events over the next few years. Navy rugby matches with Pacific Island teams are an excellent way to provide the administration with exciting and high-profile opportunities to engage with leaders in countries vital to U.S. interests. The PRC can build stadiums, but does not field competitive rugby teams, while the U.S. Navy does. The Navy can use sports diplomacy to demonstrate presence and benefit U.S. regional interests.

Commander Jason Lancaster is a Surface Warfare Officer. He has served at sea in destroyers, amphibious ships, and a destroyer squadron. Ashore he has served as an instructor at the Surface Warfare Officers School, on the N5 at Commander, Naval Forces Korea, and in OPNAV N5, and is the Operations Officer for the Joint Staff J-7 Joint Deployment Training Center. He holds Masters’ degrees from the National War College and the University of Tulsa and completed his undergraduate work at Mary Washington College.

Featured Image: U.S. Naval Academy rugby players compete against Samoan players during the USNA Rugby Diplomacy Pacific Islands Tour in Samoa. (Photos by U.S. Embassy in Samoa)

Notes to the New CNO Series

By James Kraska

The U.S. Navy must rebuild its capacity to shape and influence international maritime law. Since the first Code of Naval Warfare was published at the U.S. Naval War College in 1900 through the negotiations of the Law of the Sea Convention in the 1970s, the U.S. Navy was a thought leader in establishing and upholding the global rules of the game, producing influential scholarship, participating in international meetings alongside the Department of State, and engaging with counterparts around the world. In 1979, the United States launched the Freedom of Navigation program to ensure unimpeded global access to the world’s oceans.

These efforts have diminished greatly as both the aptitude or expertise of naval officers to articulate a vision for the legal order of the oceans and the bandwidth of the Navy to influence maritime law have declined in recent decades. The number of experts has dwindled from formerly dozens throughout the Navy and the U.S. government to a handful today. The reasons for this shortfall are manifold: U.S. hubris in thinking that the rules-based order of the oceans it shaped during the Cold War will continue as a matter of its own logic, failure to recognize and respond effectively to opposing views of maritime law from European states, developing countries and China, and since the Clinton Administration, deference to competing priorities like protection of the marine environment and climate change at the expense of naval and operational equities.

The consequences of ignoring naval and defense interests in maritime law are grave, as the rules for operating at sea during peacetime and armed conflict are shaped by other nations, officials, and scholars with different priorities. The Chief of Naval Operations has an opportunity to revitalize the Navy’s expertise and influence in international maritime law. First, mandate the law of the sea and the law of naval warfare are added to the core curriculum of the U.S. Naval War College, the Navy’s “home of thought.” In decades past, U.S. and international students received one week of instruction in all areas of international law, now it is three hours. Actively teaching maritime law throughout the force must be a priority.

Second, engage purposefully in the legal preparation of the battlespace by engaging in the numerous bilateral and multilateral negotiations on maritime law to ensure new rules do not restrain naval commanders in peace and war. The International Committee of the Red Cross, for example, which is heavily subsidized by the United States, is working to restrict the use of autonomous warships during armed conflict, the very same platforms envisioned for the future force.

Third, rebuild maritime law expertise and train the force in the law of the sea and the law of naval warfare. Much of our collective experience in international law is from the ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not operations at sea. We should refocus on the laws that apply throughout the global commons – sea, air, and space – that surround our Homeland and connects us to allies in Asia and Europe.

James Kraska is Charles H. Stockton Chair of International Maritime Law and Department Chair of the Stockton Center for International Law at the U.S. Naval War College and Visiting Professor of Law and John Harvey Gregory Lecturer on World Organization at Harvard Law School, where he teaches a popular course on the International Law of the Sea. Professor Kraska served more than 20 years as a U.S. Navy officer and judge advocate, as a legal adviser with U.S. Seventh Fleet and U.S. Pacific Command task forces and in the Pentagon, where he was Director of International Negotiations Division and Oceans Law and Policy Adviser on the Joint Staff. His forthcoming book, Marine Technology, Ocean Governance, and the Law of the Sea (with Khanssa Lagdami), is being published by Cambridge University Press. He is co-author (with “Pete” Pedrozo) of Disruptive Technology and the Law of Naval Warfare‘ (Oxford University Press).

Featured Image: A cargo ship transiting San Francisco bay (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Notes to the New CNO Series

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 understands this and utilizes a full range of maritime capabilities to outmaneuver us. These ships can easily overwhelm the navies of smaller nations, like the Philippines, creating an unsustainable demand for support from our large ships, which are often disproportionate to the task at hand.

Our submarine and naval aviation forces are the best in the world, but our surface fleet is facing serious challenges. We do not have nearly enough destroyers to provide deterrence in the Pacific and other areas of the world. A recent CIMSEC article outlines the global growth of China’s dual naval and maritime militia forces, who are creating new demand signals for U.S. naval presence. We must begin to rethink end strength because numbers have a quality all their own. The LCS cannot take up the slack, and the Constellation class will take too long to build and there will be too few of them.

We also lack the logistics support needed for sustained operations and the tyranny of distance is very real. The answer is not to build more large logistics vessels, which will require escorts we do not have, but to reinvent what logistics means in this modern age, where range and endurance are ever more meaningful. Future warships can eliminate much of this problem through longer endurance and the ability to refuel at almost any civilian port to minimize the need for resupply. Small warships can also provide unique personnel logistics support by carrying Marines into harm’s way.

While AI and autonomy are advancing, these technologies are not yet suitable for many forms of deterrence and warfighting without human oversight. They are in a co-evolutionary period with crewed vessels, so the best path forward is to build manned ships on the AI and autonomy technologies being developed for USVs. This will dramatically reduce crew requirements and let us build a better understanding of these technologies for future applications.

To solve this problem, we should build smaller, well-armed, and lightly manned warships that can sustain persistent operations. Our proposed lightly manned warship design – LMACC – will help solve this problem by bringing in smaller U.S. shipyards to increase competition and capacity. The Lightly Manned Automated Combat Capability is a program at the Naval Postgraduate School. CONOPS have been written and are the subject of technical reports. It has produced theses, journal articles, fundamental and applied research, and an operationally-validated warship design that can be built in large quantities for less than $200 million per platform, today. The design includes the remedies described above, can support USMC littoral operations, and provides affordable capacity for missions like countering the cartels.

The crew of approximately 25 provide the decision making necessary for combat and deterrence. They are intended to work with the larger unmanned surface vessels in a 5G cloud-based infrastructure independent of satellite data or GPS positioning. These innovations are currently being tested and further refined at NPS.

LMACC will serve a critical function in developing future leaders. In today’s destroyer-centric surface fleet, platform command opportunities are 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, risk taking, and tactical acumen. Autonomous systems will become increasingly important, but cultivating warrior skillsets early will always be central to victory.

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 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 spgallup@nps.edu.

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 benjamin.didonato@nps.edu.

Additional information can be found on the LMACC website: https://nps.edu/web/LMACC

Featured Image: LMACC design screenshot courtesy of Ben DiDonato.