Notes to the New Administration Week

By Claude Berube

The Navy needs to reform its education by merging the commissioning sources of the U.S. Naval Academy, ROTC, and Officer Candidate School. This recommendation is based on current conditions, educational opportunities for midshipmen, and cost savings. Commissioning of U.S. Navy midshipmen (“mids” weren’t allowed to commission as Marines until the 1880s) has changed since the early republic, from at-sea training to the U.S. Naval Academy as the sole source of commissioning, to it changing from a two- to four-year program, to accreditation and the first bachelor’s degree awarded with the class of 1933. Other commissioning sources were created in the early twentieth century given emerging threats, including the Navy Reserve, the Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), and Officer Candidate School (OCS).

Proposed changes in the mid-twentieth century were not successful. Various attempts were made to move or create additional academies in Chicago, Washington state, Los Angeles, and the Gulf of Mexico. A women’s naval academy was proposed by congress in WWII. In 1945, the House and Senate Naval Affairs Committees considered the proposal, which was opposed by House Chair Carl Vinson due to cost and internal naval rivalries that would emerge with competing naval academies. But today is not WWII.

Today, the Academy graduates approximately 1,100 midshipmen annually when the fleet has fewer than 300 ships. USNA is graduating nearly three times the number of officers as it did in 1933 when the navy had 311 ships and nearly twice the number as in 1943 when the Navy had approximately 3,900 vessels. The U.S. Navy will never return to WWII ship numbers, nor is it expected to exceed 300 in the foreseeable future despite the promises of the past two decades. Consequently, adaptation is required in this environment.

The average cost of U.S. college tuition is $35,000. For Navy ROTC colleges and universities, the average tuition and fees range from $25,000 for in-state students and $37,500 for out-of-state students. The cost to educate each midshipman in reportedly at least three times that amount annually. In addition, the four-year Academy program largely insulates midshipmen from exposure to other cultures and experiences (except for a few programs such as a semester abroad).

The Navy should have one commissioning source – the U.S. Naval Academy. But it should be adapted to benefit from other educational programs and experiences domestically. All applicants would still go through a congressional nomination process and reviewed by the admissions board. This would give members of congress even more opportunities to nominate qualified students. Those accepted would participate in a plebe summer and then be distributed to the current ROTC programs throughout the United States for a period of two years during which time they would be supervised and evaluated by the current ROTC structure for ensuring potential as an officer. At the end of the two years, those students meriting continuation would arrive at Annapolis as a two-year school for completing their bachelor’s degree with a focus on service-specific needs.

This process would reduce the cost of educating midshipmen through other tuition programs, eliminating courses at the Academy that are already offered at civilian schools, and reduce administration, staff, and faculty positions. It would focus the sole commissioning source on warfighting. It would also create a more experienced junior officer benefiting from the diversity of cultures and education better prepared to face today’s international challenges with all officers having a common two-year experience in Annapolis.

Claude Berube, PhD, is a retired Navy Commander and taught for nearly twenty years at the U.S. Naval Academy. Among his nine books are A Call to the Sea, On Wide Seas, and Rickover Uncensored. He is a CIMSEC Senior Editor.

Featured Image: ANNAPOLIS, Md. (June 27, 2024) Midshipman candidates from the class of 2028 listen to remarks from the Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro during Induction Day 2024. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class William Bennett IV)

Notes to the New Administration Week

By Brian Kerg

The People’s Republic of China is vastly outpacing the United States in terms of shipbuilding and deployed and afloat naval power. Ship-for-ship, munition-for-munition, China has gained dominance in this area and is set to increase the gap between China and the U.S. This will grant China the increased ability to apply military pressure throughout the seas adjacent to it, adversely impacting U.S. interests, and the interests of allies and partners. If China remains unchecked, the U.S. will be seen as an increasingly unreliable security partner, assurance of allies and partners will erode, and the U.S. will be regionally boxed out as China reshapes the international order in its favor.

While the U.S. must seek to close this gap in conventional naval power such as surface combatants and other ships, doing so is a systemic challenge that will take years and likely decades to achieve, even with the political will and economic resourcing to do so.

The U.S. cannot afford to wait decades to conventionally offset the military advantage of China at sea and protect its interests. Instead, the U.S. can quickly regain advantage asymmetrically by putting the right fit of combat credible military power at key maritime terrain now. While it may take the U.S. years to build a single ship, it can raise, man, and equip ground forces optimized for operations on key maritime terrain at the speed of relevance, raising minimally required forces in under a year. Such forces, once raised, can achieve asymmetric and decisive strategic deterrent effects through permanent deployment to decisive points within the territory of U.S. allies such as Japan and the Philippines, and partners such as Taiwan.

Whether permanently based forward (a cheaper, more sustainable option) or with forces persistently deployed on a rotational basis (a more expensive, but often more diplomatically palatable solution), the U.S. must increase its footprint of ground-based, stand-in forces and keep them in position where they can project fires and effects into the littorals and secure their positions. This will enable them to present a credible check on Chinese naval power and military pressure. Doing so requires the growth of the authorized end strength of those ground forces in question, and diplomatic arrangements with allies and partners to make such basing acceptable.

Critically, the authorized end strength of such forces within the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army must be raised to account for the forces in question. Current end strength remains assigned or otherwise fenced off for current U.S. security commitments, and is arguably overstretched already. Simply redeploying elements of the current force will stretch the force too thin, creating a brittle, hollow force rather than the resilient, credible force intended. To meet the need, these additionally raised formations must be littoral in mission and capability, such as those in the Marine Littoral Regiments and the Multi-Domain Task Forces.

In addition, diplomatic arrangements must account for their permanent deployment. Simply housing additional forces in the continental United States offers no check against China, especially when lines of communication are contested in conflict. Regarding Japan, the Defense Posture Review Initiative must be re-assessed with the government of Japan. Rather than moving U.S. forces out of Japan, they should be re-introduced and increased. With the Philippines, permanent U.S. basing arrangements must be reestablished, as they were prior to 1992. Finally, and while most diplomatically difficult it will prove most militarily critical, a U.S. ground force must be placed in Taiwan, whether in the manner of the former U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group-Taiwan, or the U.S. Taiwan Defense Command. Political escalation could be avoided by doing so as a defense service vice an overt military organization.

China’s naval dominance has arrived and will only grow. The U.S. must seek to regain naval dominance over the long term, but this goal is likely out of reach for decades. To regain U.S. security advantage vis-à-vis China now, the U.S. must raise and permanently deploy the right ground formations to key maritime terrain as soon as possible.

Brian Kerg is an operational planner and a Non-Resident Fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is also a 2025 Non-Resident Fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a 501(c)3 partnered with Princeton’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent the positions or opinions of the US Marine Corps, the Department of Defense, or any part of the US government.

Featured Image: U.S. Marines with 3d Littoral Combat Team, 3d Marine Littoral Regiment, 3d Marine Division, U.S. Soldiers with 25th Infantry Division, and Philippine Marines, with Battalion Landing Team 10, secure a landing zone during a joint, bilateral, littoral campaign as part of Balikatan 23 on Basco, Philippines, April 23, 2023. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Patrick King)

Notes to the New Administration Week

By Captain Robert C. Rubel, USN (ret.)

The Navy is busy incorporating new technology into its fleet design, but is not paying commensurate attention to developing the officers who will fight that new fleet.

The Naval War College was the critical engine that drove the warfighting education of the officer corps that designed, perfected, and fought the fleet that produced victory at sea in World War II. But today, the college has become moribund in terms of its relevance to the emerging warfare environment. The current curriculum structure was adopted in 1972 when geopolitical and operational conditions were far different than today. In 1972, Rear Admiral Stansfield Turner imposed a new curriculum on both the senior and junior courses, one that emphasized academic rigor and focused on national strategy and policy. This curriculum remains in place, now heavily augmented by joint education requirements.

After World War II, the combination of American naval supremacy, the advent of nuclear weapons, and the maritime strategy of sustained forward deployments around the periphery of Eurasia served to sideline the Naval War College. In that environment the Bureau of Naval Personnel ceased assigning officers with the highest potential as students, making the college an unattractive career move for aspiring officers. Internally, research and teaching became largely separated, a situation that still exists to this day.

Wargaming, the core of the college’s teaching prior to WWII, is no longer heavily featured in the curriculum. Instead, the college now mostly focuses on providing joint education requirements and master’s degrees. Support to the fleet is provided by multiple branches, but the college still fails to be an engine of innovation and officer development as it once was. The modern college has drifted far from what it was in the decades before World War II.

The tool for revitalizing the Naval War College into a major engine of officer warfighting education exists in the form of the Halsey Groups, small advanced research programs based on rigorous classified wargaming that have been in operation since the early 2000s. But these classes are currently far too small to produce enough graduates that create a critical mass of officers with intensive wargaming experience. These classes and their procedures should be scaled up and used as the basis for a new junior course at the college that is strongly incentivized by the personnel system. Such a course could produce a hundred or more graduates per year that investigate warfighting concepts, campaign plans, and fleet designs through iterative wargaming, much like their interwar-period ancestors who would go on to win World War II.

The most recent high-profile Navy professional military education study, the Education for Seapower (E4S) study, focused on high-level strategic thinking and failed to recognize the importance of warfare education or the attendant research needed. Warfighting education is a prerequisite for developing higher-level strategic thinking later in an officer’s career. Moreover, while only a few officers have the opportunity to engage in high-level strategy, most officers occupy warfighting positions at some point in their careers.

Small groups such as the Strategic Studies Group, Deep Blue, and others have largely failed to achieve influence over Navy warfighting development regardless of the merit of their ideas. What is needed is a critical mass of officers with rigorous wargaming and research experience populating fleet units and staffs, like what occurred in the years from the Naval War College’s founding up to World War II. However, the college in recent times has demonstrated little interest in updating its core courses or expanding its wargaming programs to replicate its interwar-period success. Therefore, clear direction from OPNAV and SECNAV is required.

Robert C. Rubel is a retired Navy captain and professor emeritus of the Naval War College. He served on active duty in the Navy as a light attack/strike fighter aviator. At the Naval War College he served in various positions, including planning and decision-making instructor, joint education adviser, chairman of the Wargaming Department, and dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. On occasion he served as a special adviser to the 31st Chief of Naval Operations. He has published over thirty journal articles and several book chapters.

Featured Image: SOUTH CHINA SEA (Jan. 12, 2025) Lt. Clint Vance, of Montana, signals an F/A-18F Super Hornet, assigned to the “Bounty Hunters” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 2, to launch from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Nate Jordan)

Notes to the New Administration Week

By Walker Mills

The last two presidential administrations have presided over a shift to an increasingly confrontational relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the new administration appears ready to continue that trend, if not accelerate it. Senior military leaders especially have been alarmingly clear about likelihood of a potential conflict with the PRC over Taiwan. From “the Davidson Window” to even more specific warnings about a war in 2025, the Pentagon has been sounding the alarm.

But unfortunately, there has been an outsized focus on a “short sharp war” rather than a protracted conflict, or even a narrower focus on the first “72 hours” of a conflict.  Winning a war between great powers in only hours or days is an attractive goal, but it is also ahistorical.

There is no reason the U.S. military should expect a conflict with the PRC to be short, or to be won quickly. Rather, history tells us the opposite. Why would we expect the world’s most populous country and the second-largest economy to back down after only the opening salvo of a war it started, even if the opening round went poorly?

The most important lesson from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is not about drones or the continued viability of armored maneuver. It is the reminder that wars will almost inevitably continue long after the combatants expected them to end – creating acute shortages of troops and materiel that threaten strategic collapse.

Both Russia and Ukraine initially slow-rolled conscription efforts for political reasons, and those decisions had significant negative effects on the battlefield. In the material realm, neither country is able to keep up with the battlefield usage of shells, tanks, drones and other equipment. In Russia’s case, it has been forced to draw from decades-old stocks of armored vehicles and has been forced to turn to Iran and North Korea for weapons, while also luring recruits from faraway countries like Yemen and Nepal to fill out its depleted ranks. Ukraine for its part is still overcoming a critical period of “shell hunger” and is heavily reliant on Western support for weaponry ranging from tanks to cruise missiles.

If there is a silver lining, it is that discussions about protraction are becoming increasingly common inside and outside the military. In the words of one Navy officer, focusing on a short sharp war is a “loser’s gambit,” and from a Marine, it is “short-sighted.” But a recognition of the reality we face is only the beginning.

The incoming administration needs to take concrete steps to prepare the sea services for a multi-year conflict by ensuring they have the right mix of capabilities for a long war, can rapidly generate new combat forces, and can keep existing forces well-equipped to keep up the fight. The services need to ensure they can draw from well-organized and resourced reserve components that are fit for the purpose of supporting the active-duty component in a major conflict. And, just as importantly, the services need to ensure they can rapidly generate combat power from new recruits, or potentially even draftees. This will ensure that the Navy and Marine Corps are ready not just to “fight tonight,” but to fight tomorrow, and the next year too.

Walker D. Mills is a Marine infantry officer and MQ-9A “Reaper” pilot. He is a co-host of the Sea Control podcast and a Senior Editor at CIMSEC. He is also a Co-Director of the Irregular Warfare Initiative’s Project Maritime.

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

Featured Image: U.S. Marines with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, observe their surroundings during a small boat raid at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, California, Sept. 10, 2019. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Brendan Mullin)