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Information Warfare

New Organization, New Rules: Information Warfare Can Thrive in the New OPNAV

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By Adam Reiffen

Working afloat and ashore, the U.S. Navy’s Information Warfare Officers engage adversaries, create plans, connect circuits, and drive operations around the world every day. In May 2026, the Information Warfare Community was directed by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) to reorganize itself within the Pentagon, a large-scale change to the manning, funding, and authorities required for global operations. When taken with the December 2025 creation of the Information Warfare Line designation, the current moment marks a generational opportunity for broader community to make the changes necessary to take its hard-earned and permanent place among the Navy’s elite warfighting communities. The Navy’s Information Warfare community will need clear focus, strong leadership, and decisive action to make best use of the new paradigms wrought by administrative change, starting at the highest echelon of Navy command.

On May 21, 2026, the Chief of Naval Operations released Naval Administration Directive 123/26, “Realignment of OPNAV N2N6 Responsibilities,” a title which perhaps undersells the importance of its contents. The directive is the first major realignment of the Navy’s Information Warfare Officers and their roles on the Navy’s top Pentagon staff since 2009 and lays out a series of significant changes in the short and long term across every community designator. The message begins with a useful discussion of the community’s history that ties its past orientation to the present day. In 2014, Navy Information Forces was established as the Type Commander tasked with administering community training, manpower, tactics, readiness, and fleet integration within a constantly evolving number of fields. Left unsaid in the message is the community’s raison d’être: The ability to consolidate and streamline the man, train, and equip missions across subspecialities as varied as intelligence, cryptology, oceanography, communications systems, and cyber warfare.

Operationally, each discipline benefits from the skills of the others, and the community is stronger by virtue of its size, resourcing, and impact. The composite structure of the former Naval Operations (OPNAV) for Information Warfare (N2N6) reflected this reality, if imperfectly in spots, and the community’s early identity benefitted from OPNAV and the Navy Information Forces working together to promote and professionalize the newly formalized community. For example, OPNAV resourced the Warfare Tactics Instructor program, giving the Information Warfare community their own professional tacticians to develop tactics, techniques, and procedures for the Fleet. And when Navy Information Forces was given responsibility for overseeing Maritime Operations Center resourcing across all numbered fleets, OPNAV worked in tandem to expedite resourcing. The previously mentioned new administrative changes fundamentally upend that structure, and senior leaders must be attuned to historical approaches to resourcing requirements.

After establishing the background of Navy Information Warfare, the Chief of Naval Operations’ (CNO) message sets two principal directives for the OPNAV staff. Taken in order, the first change is the separation of intelligence functions, including support to plans, policy, and strategy, from Information Warfare requirements and capabilities. Under the previous construct, the three tenets of Navy Information Warfare–battlespace awareness, assured command-and-control, and integrated fires–were collectively housed under a single OPNAV staff code. A newly-created position, Assistant Deputy CNO for Information Warfare (IW) Requirements and Capabilities, “…will serve as the principal advisor to the CNO on IW policy and lead policy matters pertaining to information technology, space, and cyber and will serve as the Department of the Navy, Deputy Chief Information Officer Navy.”

More technically oriented functions like cryptology, oceanography, and information technology shared common cause within the Information Warfare community, bound by their shared emphasis on technology, natural sciences, and history within the Navy. Therefore, moving these technical fields into their own section within the Naval Operations (OPNAV) staff flows logically; it bins the complementary skills and interests of their practitioners in a dedicated lane to work on critical issues unique to their communities. For instance, senior leaders have directed the force to roll out artificial intelligence tools and speed the adoption of other digital technologies. The technical experts within Information Warfare are on the front lines of those critical changes; integrating and streamlining their work within the new directorate will hopefully provide the best circumstances to expedite progress.

Intelligence professionals rely on the technical acumen of these Information Warfare communities for collection, processing, and dissemination of information, but do not themselves necessarily possess the same technical mastery over the disciplines in question. For its part, the Intelligence component of the community will now report to the Deputy CNO for Intelligence, Operations, Plans, Strategy, and Warfighting Development for “operational intelligence support, intelligence production prioritization, and policy clarification and changes.” As the old adage goes, “intelligence drives operations, and operations inform intelligence.” We see this in the Fleet and Joint Force increasingly, as space-based systems, cyber effects, and electronic warfare have played central roles in recent and ongoing campaigns. OPNAV’s new structure now affirms this at the highest levels of Navy decision-making. Furthermore, integration with the Plans, Policy, and Strategy directorate ensures Intelligence is integrated directly into strategic planning for future operations. The Plans, Policy, and Strategy Directorate’s output directly informs and begets requirements, which are needed to generate authorities and funding. If operational relevance is the goal, Naval Intelligence only stands to benefit from this reorganization.

Still, for the first time in nearly two decades, there will be an administrative division between Information Warfare officers on the OPNAV staff, and the community must avoid creating conflict by failing to clarify mission, functions, and tasks. A schism within senior Information Warfare leadership at the OPNAV level would run counter to the increasing degree of the community’s integration and prominence in the Fleet today. After the Navy released message 094/24 that broke Information Warfare officers out of their previous Restricted Line status, a designation for technical specialties who officers are precluded from command at sea, Navy Information Forces has worked to define what it now intends IW officers to be. Notably, these efforts include establishing opportunities for IW officers to command at sea. The Information Warfare Squadron concept is in pilot right now with the first community’s officers serving as independent warfare commanders afloat vice holding staff positions. If successful, this would mark the beginning of a future in which the Information Warfare realizes its decades-long goal of operational autonomy. Rearranging OPNAV staff Information Warfare functions seeks to align the highest echelons of Navy strategic decision-making with operational and tactical objectives, not the least of which being resourcing and sustaining Information Warfare squadrons across the Fleet. Senior leaders must promote that unity of effort as personnel transition to new roles, responsibilities, and workflows within the Pentagon to ensure that the community’s capabilities, personnel, and effects are synchronized and deployed to maximum efficacy across the Fleet–especially if the community’s individual specialties are well served by splitting up across the OPNAV staff. The organizational rearrangement brings danger that OPNAV and Navy Information Forces can run in opposite directions. Mitigations must be put in place to ensure operational requirements continue to be captured and reflected in program development, even if the requirement is from an Intelligence analyst and the program is “owned” by another directorate.

The second directive in the new administrative guidance has the greatest potential to change Navy Information Warfare’s capabilities and standing within the service. Unrestricted Line communities–traditional naval operators in surface ships, aviation, subsurface, expeditionary forces, and special warfare–have dedicated branches within the office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Warfare Systems, or OPNAV N9. OPNAV N9 is the resource sponsor and requirements manager for each of these warfare areas, essentially determining what the Navy needs, how much money will be required to meet those needs, and serving as a central node for coordinating and integrating all of the analysis and oversight needed to turn spreadsheets into ships and memos into missiles. Each warfare area is broken out into a subordinate element—Expeditionary Warfare is N95, Surface Warfare is N96, Undersea Warfare is N97, Air Warfare is N98—and collectively they are known as the “High Nines” on the OPNAV staff.

Previously, similar functions for Information Warfare communities were performed within the now-defunct OPNAV N2N6. Information Warfare is now split between OPNAV Intelligence (N2) and Information Warfare Requirements and Capabilities (N6N9). These entities are focused on resourcing and requirements for each of Information Warfare’s distinct specialties. Following this year’s administrative realignment, Information Warfare has its own dedicated resource sponsorship and requirements office: N99. This marks a promotion for Information Warfare, putting the community and its portfolio—Tactical and Enterprise Networks, and Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3); Oceanography and Navigation; IW Resources and Manpower; Intelligence Capabilities; Integrated IW Fires; and IW Future Capabilities—on as close to an equal footing as it has ever been to its Unrestricted Line peers. The new N99 office will not report directly to the OPNAV Warfighting Requirements and Capabilities (N9) office like its sister branches do, which does keep Information Warfare somewhat siloed from other communities. But when taken together with new opportunities for command at sea, Information Warfare Officers and their mission areas have never had so much visibility or influence within the Navy. A major issue for now, however, is that the number of billets available for Information Warfare requirements officers on the OPNAV staff remains largely unchanged. This means that in the near term, the newly-established N99 will likely perform the same job as its previous incarnation but in a different part of the org chart. This means a bigger pool of officers hunting for resources but with the same number of IWOs. Without significant manpower changes from Millington that realign the operational and staff rotations in officer careers, IW is liable to lack firepower in these resourcing fights.

Less heralded but no less important are the professional development and career progression opportunities now available for Information Warfare Officers. In the long term, this change may prove among the most profound of the whole realignment effort. There is a tongue-in-cheek aphorism that appropriation is governed by the Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules. Unrestricted Line communities have built their officers’ career progressions with requirements officer and financial management tours. These key roles are delineated in official career path guidance promulgated by Navy Personnel Command, called out in promotion board precept language, and reserved for high performers who are often recruited and talent managed. The net effect is that trained personnel bring their critical expertise to the Navy’s seemingly endless stream of key requirements and resourcing discussions, ensuring their communities are best represented when budgeting. The Information Warfare community will stand to gain from prioritizing the billets and officers that fight for these resources. 

By carving out its own “High Nine” within the OPNAV staff, Information Warfare can push to achieve parity in both job execution and career trajectory with Unrestricted Line for officers assigned to N99 billets. Navy Information Forces and Personnel Command must first address inventory problems for Information Warfare officers at the O-4 to O-6 ranks, where numbers thin out dramatically. A retention bonus would surely help, but a more cost-effective solution would be to fix the billet structure for a career trajectory that better balances operational and staff roles. Information Forces and Personnel Command should then begin to call out requirements officer and financial management positions by name in board precepts to ensure upwardly mobile and successful officers are assigned to them. Subsequently, they should expect those officers to both excel in their work and be competitive for future promotion to positions of authority. This could begin to look more like the “golden path” that defines traditional officer careers. Common career markers like requirements, financial management, and OPNAV staff jobs bridge the cultural and operational differences between officers in otherwise separate communities and provide a common framework to build leaders in the Fleet. For their part, N99 officers should integrate into the rhythm and pace of their directorate counterparts, using that organizational parity to give Information Warfare programs their best shot in budget battles. Also, the new N99 can and should create its own culture internal to the organization to both breathe life into its daily tasks and project an image of unity and identity out to the rest of the Navy staff.

NAVADMIN 123/26 affords the Information Warfare Community a once-in-a-generation chance to overhaul its officer career paths and shift attention to resourcing and requirements, changes that would yield significant long-term benefits for both the community and its personnel. Information Warfare remains a growth industry within the Navy, and for good reason. As the Fleet generates, processes, analyzes, and demands more information to plan and execute operations worldwide, Information Warfare personnel are poised to meet those needs and innovate to fight and win our nation’s wars at sea. The challenge now is ensuring we continue to modernize resourcing, requirements, and mission sets without losing the advantages the community gained by forging a unified effort over the past two decades. The threat of intra-community drift is real and requires proactive leadership, clear guidance, and consistent cross-specialty engagement to ensure that administrative separation does not lead to operational and cultural divorce. The realignment of responsibilities outlined by the Navy’s recent administrative updates has extraordinary potential to both facilitate and make permanent those changes, but Information Warfare must strike while the iron is hot to build the kind of weapon system it can wield with great skill and confidence for years to come. If Information Warfare’s many communities can remain united through these changes, they–and the Navy–will be stronger than ever.

Lieutenant Commander Adam Reiffen is an Intelligence Officer currently serving in the Wargaming Department of the Naval War College. He previously served as a Federal Executive Fellow at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs, as well as a Requirements Officer at OPNAV N2N6.

The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the views or policy of the U.S. Department of War, the Department of the Navy, or the U.S. government. No federal endorsement is implied or intended.

Featured image: A U.S. Sailor stands watch in the combat information center aboard Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG 75), June 8, 2026. (U.S. Navy photo)

Maritime Law

Discipline as a Tool to Achieve Readiness: A Utilitarian Approach to Discipline

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By Lieutenant Colonel Pete Combe, USMC

The goal of this article is to articulate one past commander’s approach to discipline, with a focus on improving operational readiness.  The author does not mean to imply that other O5 and O6 commanders pursue discipline for solely punitive reasons.  Rather, this is an attempt to articulate an approach built on rehabilitative potential and getting Marines “back in the fight.”  The framework discussed will rely largely on a “utilitarian” theory of discipline – one in which each decision a commander makes, and each punishment imposed on a Marine serves some larger purpose.1 

In this framework punishment does not exist for punishment’s sake, but serves some goal.  The article will proceed in four parts.  First, a description of the purpose and theory of discipline under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).  Second, a discussion of military theories of sentencing and their utilitarian value.  Next, outlines a utilitarian framework and potentially useful rules of thumb in  applying that framework using non-judicial punishment (NJP) as a demonstrative.2  Finally, a brief discussion of how to connect punishments to utilitarian principles.

1. Nature and Purpose of Military Law

The statutory mission of the United States Marine Corps is “… to provide fleet marine forces of combined arms, together with supporting air components, for service with the fleet in the seizure or defense of advanced naval bases and for the conduct of such land operations as may be essential to the prosecution of the naval campaign.”3  In short, the mission of the Marine Corps is to provide ready forces which are organized, trained, equipped, and staffed to conduct operations.4  With this larger mission in mind, the goal of any subordinate commander is to conduct operations as directed, and necessary to that end to maintain her unit at the peak of operational readiness.

One responsibility of commanders that is relevant to ensuring operational readiness is the use  of measures to impose appropriate administrative or disciplinary sanctions in response to substandard performance or misconduct.  These can range from purely administrative measures such as written counseling5 or extra-military instruction,6 through courts-martial.  Regardless of the tool employed, the purpose of military law is to “promote justice, deter misconduct, facilitate appropriate accountability, assist in maintaining good order and discipline, promote efficiency and effectiveness, and thereby strengthen the national security of the United States.”7  This broad statement of purpose encompasses a number of goals, both utilitarian and retributive, in order to serve the broader “strengthen[ed]…national security purpose” which exist exists outside any perceived need to punish the accused for the sake of punishment.8

There are other offices within the military disciplinary system that exist to deal with offenses of such heightened severity that punishment for the sake of punishment could be the most appropriate theory of discipline.9  The Offices of Special Trial Counsel come readily to mind, as they are tasked with making referral decisions and prosecuting the most serious offenses such as homicide, sex offenses, crimes involving harm to minor children and domestic partner abuse.10  For these types of serious offenses, retributive justice is a more viable theory than utilitarian for reasons beyond the scope of this piece.11

However, for many of the less serious offenses, I offer that retributive theories of punishment should not weigh in a commander’s calculus.  Non-Judicial Punishment (NJP) in particular is a commander’s tool, and one exercised solely within the discretion of the commander.12  Non-Judicial Punishment provides a commander with a broad range of disciplinary approaches to address minor offenses for which court-martial is not necessary to meet the needs of justice.13 NJP is intended to maintain good order and discipline, and promote positive behavior changes14 without the stigma of a court-martial conviction.15  It is this commander’s opinion that NJP is appropriate where the “needs of justice,” do not require punishment of the accused for the sake of punishment alone.  Rather, NJP is an appropriate tool where the circumstances of the offense and offender favor the primary goal of achieving positive change.16

II. Military Theories of Sentencing

The military justice system recognizes five theories of sentencing or punishment:17

  • Rehabilitation of the accused.
  • Incapacitation of the accused to further offend, sometimes couched as protection of society.
  • Maintenance of good order and discipline.
  • General18 and specific.19
  • Punishment of the accused.

Of these theories, the first four are primarily or solely utilitarian in nature – they serve a larger, if somewhat abstract or intangible, purpose aside from the imposition of punishment itself.20  The last is expressly retributive.

I argue that a purely retributive approach for cases of less serious offenses is both unnecessary and inconsistent with the policies governing NJP.  As previously expressed, NJP is intended to address minor misconduct for which permanent incapacitation is not required.  The purpose of NJP is to bolster military efficiency and good order and discipline, while returning Marines  who have demonstrated rehabilitative potential “to the fight.”  With that in mind, how then to apply a framework focused on achieving positive goals on behalf of both the individual Marine and the unit?

III. The Framework

I argue that the commander should ask three questions in assessing potential courses of disciplinary action, and that the first question embraces a theory of sentencing other than punishment.  Rehabilitation. 

A. Determining an Appropriate Forum

The three questions I ask of my staff and subordinates, are as follows:

  • Does the accused have potential for further useful service in his current assignment?
  • Does the accused have potential for further useful service in the Marine Corps, but in a different assignment?
  • If the answer to either question above is “no,” how do I go about creating a vacancy so that my unit can obtain another willing and motivated Marine?

Once those three questions are answered, the appropriate disciplinary forum is readily apparent.  If a Marine has the potential for further useful service in a special duty assignment, then administrative counseling alone may be sufficient.  If a Marine has the potential for further useful service in the Marine Corps, but not in a special duty assignment then relief for cause may be sufficient.21  Even if a Marine has potential for further useful service, NJP may still be appropriate.  The goal is simple.  So long as the Marine has the potential for further useful service, how do we go about realizing that potential? 

However, I contend that only by considering rehabilitative potential at the outset can a commander determine  the appropriate course of action.22  Imagine a commander neglecting to consider rehabilitative potential, and referring a Marine to a special court-martial at which the Marine is sentenced to a punitive discharge.  Even if the commander believes the Marine has rehabilitative potential, and would welcome the Marine back into her unit, she has lost that decision space.  The commander should also consider the “demand for court-martial,” should a Marine exercise their right to refuse NJP.23 In the event the accused refuses NJP, the commander must consider what actions to take.  Is court-martial appropriate, though not required?  Could the commander proceed with purely administrative actions such as relief for cause or administrative separation?

B. Assessing Rehabilitative Potential

How then to assess a Marine’s ability to return to productive service in either the unit, or the Marine Corps?  One needn’t start from zero – as there are a number of rehabilitative factors described in law and policy.24  These factors bearing on rehabilitative potential can generally be grouped into three categories: offender specific, offense specific, and unit impact related factors.

Offender specific factors relate to the accused’s past performance and future potential.  These can include individual character observed over time, the accused’s performance of duty, the accused’s moral fiber,25 the willingness or determination of the individual Marine to be rehabilitated; past instances of misconduct by the accused26 the impact of NJP on the Marine, and whether the accused has accepted responsibility for his actions.27

Offense specific factors include the nature and severity of the offense, which is a particularly relevant factor when determining appropriate forum.  Other offense related factors should include the accused’s role in the offense – was the Marine the principal offender, or did he aid or abet another?  Was the accused somehow induced to commit the offense by another more culpable person, or was the Marine naturally predisposed?28  In addition to taking corrective action at an organizational level, if the commander cannot put in place appropriate guardrails to mitigate against the same offense by another then a punishment consideration based upon the goal of general deterrence may be appropriate.29

Finally, unit wide considerations should also inform the appropriate punishment.  Perhaps the accused cooperated with the commander or law enforcement in investigating and addressing other offenses within the unit.30  While less concrete, there may be instances in which a certain disciplinary measure is appropriate to enhance good order and discipline within the unit.

In many cases this concept of rehabilitation is procedurally “built in.” In many instances a Marine must be counseled concerning shortcomings, provided an adequate time to rehabilitate, and then only if failing to do so can the Marine be processed for separation.31  Once the commander determines on a course of action – in our case, NJP – then I argue that the commander should focus on the four utilitarian theories of punishment discussed above: rehabilitation of the accused, incapacitation of the accused to reoffend, preservation of good order and discipline, and general and specific deterrence.

C. Nature of Punishments and Connection to Utilitarian Principles

Once the commander has assessed that the accused Marine has the potential for further useful service, but that imposition of NJP is still appropriate then she should consider what form of punishment is appropriate.  Punishment should be aimed towards the four utilitarian principles.  While the range of punishments available to the commander at NJP are not particularly severe, most utilitarian sentencing theorists argue that punishment should be no more severe than necessary to achieve the goals (deterrence, rehabilitation of the accused, or incapacitation of the accused) the sentencing authority seeks.32  Furthermore, while concepts of restorative justice aimed at restoring victims to a status quo ante have gained traction in civilian systems and certain administrative proceedings, the NJP process provides no function to achieve restorative justice.33

In crafting an appropriate sentence, it may help to consider which forms of theories best support a particular utilitarian theory of sentencing.  An admonition or reprimand may best support specific deterrence.  Restraints on liberty may best support general deterrence, and incapacitation of the accused from offending in the near future.  Reduction in grade is a visible action that may contribute to general deterrence, as well as preservation of good order and discipline.  The commander imposing NJP should carefully consider what forms of punishment will best achieve her goals.  This framework and concepts hold true for other administrative and disciplinary matters within the scope of the commander’s discretionary authority.

IV. Connecting Punishments to Utility

Assume at this point, following the rubric above, the commander has assessed the Marine’s rehabilitative potential, and whether to proceed with some form of discharge or administrative reassignment.  However, NJP does have lasting consequences and will remain in a Marine’s record for the remainder of their career.34  This is likely to have significant impacts on a Marine’s future opportunities for promotion or special duty / screenable assignments.35 Accordingly, the commander should carefully weigh the appropriate punishments, and give consideration to suspension, mitigation or remission and set-aside. 

A commander may suspend part of a sentence at NJP, declining to impose that sentence at the current time but retaining the option to impose any suspended portion of the sentence at a later date if the Marine commits further misconduct. The impact of a suspended punishment which is not later imposed is effectively no punishment – the suspended portion ceases to exist if the Marine stays out of trouble for an appropriate length of time (ordinarily 6 months).  The same is true if a punishment is remitted or set aside after imposition.36  Similarly, just because a commander considers a Marines case at NJP, does not mean that the commander must impose any punishment.  The commander may determine after hearing the evidence, that the Marine did not commit the charged offense(s), or that the misconduct is so minor as to warrant no imposition of punishment. 

These concepts can seem amorphous or difficult to pin down in the abstract.  Accordingly, a series of hypothetical examples which emphasize different theories of sentencing as appropriate to each individual case may be illustrative.  Each hypothetical case below is intended to highlight how a different theory of sentencing may appropriately contribute to utilitarian goals, getting Marines back into the fight, and ultimately bolstering readiness.

A. Staff Non-Commissioned Officer Fraternization

Hypothetical:  A Staff Non-Commissioned Officer (SNCO) assigned as an instructor at a formal school is suspected of violating a lawful general order which prohibits unduly familiar relationships with student personnel.  The SNCO has been counseled previously for non-sexual instances of unprofessional conduct with students, across several classes / school years. 

What punishment is appropriate from a deterrent standpoint?  In terms of specific deterrence, a verbal or written reprimand appears unlikely to deter the SNCO from offending further.  He’s already on notice that his conduct is unacceptable.  Thus, the commander should consider what punishment is apt to have a deterrent effect.  Restraints on liberty and forfeiture of pay are both available options. However, their deterrent effect on the SNCO is not entirely clear.

In this case the interests of good order and discipline are directly impacted by the accused’s position.  Removing the SNCO from his position, including any direct contact with students is likely an appropriate administrative measure.  Administrative removal and punishing the SNCO to restriction – including twice-daily check-ins with all other Marines on restriction – will send a powerful message to the unit.  All are subject to discipline, regardless of their grade or position.37

Restraints on liberty, coupled with administrative reassignment may also work to incapacitate the SNCO from offending in the future – at least in the short term.  By restricting the SNCO to locations in which students are not likely to be, along with administratively reassigning him to a role that has no contact with students, his access to students will be curtailed. 

If the commander determines that the SNCO lacks rehabilitative potential in the school environment, then a range of options including removing the Marine from the particular school either for the Good of the Service (GOS) or Relief For Cause (RFC) may be appropriate.38

B. Non-Commissioned Officer DUI

Hypothetical:  A Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) with a history of alcohol related incidents is ticketed, but not yet convicted, for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) out in town.  The NCO has no prior history of DUI, nor do prior alcohol related incidents involve violence.  After initial actions including Substance Abuse Counseling Center assessment and treatment, the command must assess whether to proceed with NJP.39

Is an admonition or reprimand formally imposed at NJP likely to deter the NCO from further DUI or other alcohol related incidents?  As a threshold matter, it would appear not.  Aside from the imposition of NJP itself, there is no directly foreseeable link to remaining available punishments (restraints on liberty, reduction in grade, forfeiture of pay) and specific deterrence.

The interests of good order and discipline may also require that this NCO be removed from his position administratively.  In particular, if the NCO has a security clearance, his repeated irresponsible consumption of alcohol may impact his eligibility for access to classified information.40  However, from a disciplinary standpoint the visibility of the NCO’s conduct will likely be an important factor to consider.  If he is an NCO In Charge (NCOIC), then removal from his position or reduction in grade may be appropriate. 

The NCO here may be rendered incapable of further abusing alcohol either by restriction, or by limiting his disposable income by forfeiture of pay.  In conjunction, this may work to limit the NCO’s ability to commit the same or similar misconduct in the future. 

Should the commander decide that the NCO does not have rehabilitative potential, then the commander may choose to recommend separation of the Marine for failure of alcohol rehabilitation.41 

C. Non-Commissioned Officer on Barracks Duty

Hypothetical:  An NCO assigned overnight barracks duty falsifies logbook entries indicating that she made her required rounds.  The greater weight of evidence indicates that not only did she fail to make her rounds, but that she left her post without authorization.  Her whereabouts during this time are unknown.

Whether an admonition or reprimand is likely to deter the NCO from similarly offending in the future may depend on the circumstances of her absence from post.  For example, assume she is a single mother, who during the course of questioning freely admitted her misconduct, and explained that she left because pre-arranged childcare fell through. 

This case on its surface has a direct connection with good order and discipline, through the regular maintenance and accurate logging of security posture in the barracks.  However, in the circumstances described involving childcare, there are likely better ways to reinforce good order and discipline than through severe punishment.

D. Thoughts on General Deterrence

In theory, any sufficiently visible form of punishment serves general deterrence.  The concept of general deterrence is also closely related to the preservation of good order and discipline.  If Marines are aware of their fellow service member’s misconduct, and there is a visible consequence for that misconduct, this serves general deterrence.  If Marines are sufficiently deterred, this bolsters good order and discipline.

Commanders may also maximize the effect of the NJP proceeding itself.  This may include “command observers” during the NJP, to demonstrate to Marines that the commander is fair, impartial, and approaches the proceedings with integrity.42  If the accused requests witnesses be present, then the commander may permit those witnesses to remain in the room while the commander considers the evidence and makes a final decision.43  The commander may also provide the unit senior enlisted advisor a chance to address those present.  However, if deviating from the NJP guide in the JAGMAN,44 the commander should closely coordinate with the senior enlisted advisor and servicing Staff Judge Advocate to avoid any impermissible actions.45

Commanders should consider publication of the results of NJP to their units.46  The intent is not to embarrass the accused, but to show all Marines how the commander addresses misconduct.  Publication can also be used as a teaching tool for other Marines, and highlight where even “good” Marines may succumb to outside pressures.  Publication should be anonymized by removing the name of the Marine and the specific subordinate unit or section.  However, the publication should provide sufficient facts so that unit members can understand the misconduct and any mitigating factors.

V. Conclusion

Ultimately, this framework is about accomplishing one overarching goal – bolstering operational efficiency through exercise of the tools at a battalion or regimental commander’s discretion.  However, I argue that below the level of a court-martial punishment alone as a theory of sentencing has no place.47

At the root of this approach is a simple question, that should be foundational to formulating an appropriate punishment: does the accused have the potential for further useful service?  With this question as a basis, commanders can craft appropriate punishments at NJP, and either return good Marines to the fight, or create a vacancy for another willing volunteer.

Lieutenant Colonel Pete Combe is currently assigned as the Staff Judge Advocate, Marine Forces Reserve / South.  This article is informed by his career as a Marine Judge Advocate, and his experience as the Commanding Officer, Region 5, Marine Corps Embassy Security Group from 2024 to 2026.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not intended to reflect or convey any official policy of the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

References

1. While this article uses the term “Marine,” one may well substitute the Service neutral term “servicemember,” or for that matter Sailor, Soldier, Airman, Guardian, or Guardsman.

2. Why non-judicial punishment (NJP) pursuant to Article 15 of the U.C.M.J.?  Because, when accepted by the Marine it is truly the only form of statutory punishment under the U.C.M.J. which is wholly within the discretion of the Commander.

3. 10 U.S.C. § 8063.

4. 10 U.S.C. §§ 161, 162.

5. Marine Corps Order 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶ 6105.

6. JAGINST 5800.7G w/CH-2, ¶0103.

7. Manual for Courts-Martial (2024 ed.), I-1 (emphasis added).

8. See, e.g., Charles L. Pritchard, Jr., Punished as a Court-Martial May Direct, The Army Lawyer, 33 (December 2015).

9. One viable theory where the other four theories of sentencing may also play a role in crafting an appropriate sentence.

10. 10 U.S.C. 824a; 10 U.S.C. 1044f.

11. Pritchard, Punished as a Court-Martial May Direct, 35.

12. This in contrast to Administrative Separation Boards which include members, and generally an outside “separations authority.”  See. MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶1603.  Also, for courts-martial in which counsel, military judges, and panel members will play significant roles – and in which the commander must abandon desire for a specific result, and instead work to ensure the integrity of the process.

13. MCM, V-1.

14. I would argue that the use of the plural “servicemembers” here indicates the intent to effect positive behavior changes on the part of the accused, and others.

15. Id.

16. Pritchard, Punished as a Court-Martial May Direct, 35.

17. Pritchard; DA PAM 27-9.

18. Deterrence of others from committing the same or similar offense(s) in the future.

19. Deterrence of the accused from committing the same or similar offense(s) in the future.

20. Pritchard.

21. Relief for Cause (RFC) is a term of art used in Marine Corps screenable billets, and encompasses removal from a “screenable” billet prior to the expected / designated end of tour.  RFC is ordinarily used when a Marine’s conduct falls below that expected of a Marine in a high visibility assignment, and can either follow or be independent of NJP.  See, generally MCO 1326.6 w/CH-1, and MCO 1300.8 Chapter 3.

22. Obviously other factors will weigh in, such as the severity of the offense, impact to the unit, etc.  There are clearly offenses of such seriousness than rehabilitative potential should not be a consideration in determining an appropriate forum.

23. MCM, V-2.

24. See, for instance, MCM II-148 (RCM 1001(b)(5)); MCM V-1; DA PAM 27-9, pp. 116, 2051; MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶ 6309.

25. Though not entirely clear from the DA PAM 27-9 paragraph what this entails, perhaps it includes rescuing multiple students from grindylows in the Black Lake a la, Harry Potter.

26. MCM, V-1 (para. 1.d).

27. DA PAM 27-9, p. 2051.

28. Id.

29. A particularly useful tool for general deterrence, and one used by the author, is to publish the results of performance and misconduct proceedings (sufficiently anonymized to avoid the potential for embarrassment or humiliation) as a means to bolster the general deterrent effect.  See., e.g., JAGINST 5800.7G w/CH-2, ¶ 0115.

30. DA PAM 27-9, p. 2051.

31. MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶6105.  See, e.g., MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶¶ 6205 (Entry-Level Performance and Conduct), 6210.2 (Minor Disciplinary Infractions), 6210.3 (Pattern of Misconduct) – all of which require counseling and consideration of the rehabilitative guidelines discussed in ¶6105.  Contrast, for example, with ¶¶ 6210.4 (Sexual Misconduct), 6210.5 (Drug Abuse), 6210.6 (Commission of a Serious Offense), or 6210.8 (Sexual Harassment) – none of which require said counseling and consideration, and for some of which processing for separation is mandatory upon substantiating the conduct.

32. Bentham, supra, CH XIV, pt. XIII, “punishment ought [not] be more than what is necessary.”

33. See, e.g., MCO 5354.1G, Chapt. 7 and the discussion of informal resolution through conflict management (mediation) between a victim and accused in instances of sexual harassment.

34. MCO 5800.16, Vol. 14.

35. MCO 1326.6 w/CH-1.

36. MCM, V-7,8.

37. Though speculative, a SNCO in a special duty assignment may find acceptance of NJP preferable to either risking a court-martial, or being relieved for cause from that special duty assignment.

38. See, generally, MCO 1000.6 and MCO 1326.6 w/CH-1.

39. See, MCO 5300.17A.  The command will also potentially be required to initiate separation proceedings pursuant to MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶ 6209 – thought the commander may recommend retention if assessing the Marine has rehabilitative potential.

40. 32 C.F.R. 147.2.

41. MCO 1900.16 w/CH-2, ¶ 6209.  Separation processing may be mandatory at this point, but the commander may still recommend that the Marine be retained.

42. JAGINST 5800.7G w/CH-2, ¶ 0110.c.

43. MCM, V-3.

44. JAGINST 5800.7G w/CH-2, App. A-1-f

45. See, e.g., 10 U.S.C. § 837.

46. JAGINST 5800.7G w/CH-2, ¶0115.

47. And perhaps even at any level below a general court-martial.

Featured image: A U.S. Navy staff judge advocate questions a witness in a mock trial. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Elizabeth Davis)

Information Warfare

Russia’s Drone Machinations: Reflexive Control and Cognitive Warfare in the Maritime Domain

1 Comment

By Catherine Marie Abbott

A version of this article was originally published by the Center for Maritime Strategy, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank and research institution dedicated to studying maritime issues and their context within wider American national security policy. This article is republished with permission.

Reflexive Control in the Maritime Domain

Originating in 1960s Soviet strategic military doctrine, reflexive control (RC) allows the user to employ and orchestrate manipulative tactics, including disinformation, deception, overload, provocation, and distraction, to compel adversaries to voluntarily adopt courses of action favorable to the user’s interests. Since the intensification of the Ukrainian-Russo War and NATO’s extended support to Ukraine, Russia has attempted to reconfigure the environment’s balance of power and assess the limit of the alliance’s collective deterrence.

The Federation, using its fleet of shadow tankers as a tool for asymmetric coercion, has leveraged the vessel’s plausible deniability to enable drone incursions for reconnaissance against the Western alliance. Flyovers have reportedly occurred in proximity to civilian areas, airports, critical infrastructure, and military installations, with at least 39 drone-related incidents between September 2025 and October 2025, and a suspected incident as recent as June 2026. Despite being generally interpreted as surveillance operations, drone incursions launched from naval platforms have received limited attention as instruments of cognitive warfare designed to alter NATO’s decision-making and induce strategic miscalculations.

Cognitive Warfare: Leveraging Plausible Deniability in the Maritime Domain

Russia’s augmented strategy leverages grey-zone asymmetry to conduct cognitive warfare against allied states by exploiting maritime legal safeguards and persistent drone activities. Notably, cognitive warfare, according to NATO, is deliberate strategic synchronized use of military and non-military to influence human cognition, degrade rational decision making, and secure a cognitive advantage over an adversary. Within this context, cognitive warfare specifically targets allied rational processing, strategic beliefs, and threat perceptions under the cover of constant, exploitable intrusions. In recent years, drone technology has fundamentally altered the calculus of modern conflict, allowing comparatively weaker states to counteract the air superiority of major powers through inexpensive, adaptable, and deniable means. While the vast majority of drone incursions occur along NATO’s eastern flank, with Russian and Ukrainian assets encroaching on Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and Romania, these instances are widely recognized as spillovers from the adjacent conflict. Notably, these incursions require sustained and aggressive air policing operations, as well as increased investment in NATO anti-drone capabilities.

However, unlike these generally regarded accidental land-border spillovers, drone operations launched from maritime platforms represent deliberate psychological efforts to impose societal distress and sow distrust between citizens and state authorities. Russian-affiliated sanctioned vessels such as Astrol 1 and Pushpa have been observed launching and operating airborne assets into NATO airspace. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has noted the use of these civilian-marked vessels for reconnaissance and potential sabotage coordination. Notably, when navigating in the Baltic Sea, shadow vessels operate exclusively within international waters and the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of European littoral nations, using the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as an international legal shield against allied interdiction and seizures, effectively weaponizing international law to conduct cognitive warfare with near impunity.

NATO continues to contend with shadow vessels, with varying solutions and effects, including increased sanctions and barring known sanctioned vessels from accessing allied ports. However, the primary nexus constraining interdiction and seizure efforts being the region’s strict adherence to international conventions. Accordingly, UNCLOS does not permit seizure or interdiction operations and obligates states to allow freedom of movement on the high seas, with vessel authority delegated to the designated flag state. Shadow vessels notoriously employ deceptive tactics to maintain plausible deniability on the international stage, including opaque and decentralized ownership structures, shell corporations, flags of convenience, and opportunistic flag registrations. By amalgamating the legally insulated fleet into a nearly impenetrable mothership for drones, Russia can maintain plausible deniability while leveraging drones as an exploitable means of regional coercion.

Altering NATO’s Decision Calculus

Viewing itself as diametrically opposed to the West, Russia has leveraged a cumulative cognitive warfare diaspora, including deniable offensive cyber campaigns, misinformation operations, and the weaponization of existing migration pressures, to destabilize Western states and diminish institutional trust. Ideologically, Europe has exhibited political fragmentation, with NATO member states such as Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic shifting toward illiberal democratic models. Through these targeted efforts, Russia seeks to influence and exploit the vulnerable domestic political environments of NATO member states in ways that weaken alliance cohesion and reduce sustained support for Ukraine.

Because Russia’s RC strategy operates just below NATO’s Article 5 threshold, the Kremlin can observe and evaluate NATO’s collective responses, operational timelines, and escalation thresholds. Since the onset of the Ukrainian-Russo War in 2022, and following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO has dynamically increased its kinetic deterrence posture. In conjunction with initiatives such as Eastern Sentry, the NATO Force Model, and the Allied Reaction Force, NATO has adopted a deterrence-oriented defensive posture, increasing conventional presence along its eastern flank. While these efforts strengthen deterrence, this shift from crisis management toward sustained territorial defense increases the frequency of NATO-Russia interaction, raising the probability of strategic miscalculation within a persistently contested operational environment.

Notably, maritime-enabled drone incursions function as a key instrument of Russia’s RC strategy to diminish institutional trust and generate perceptions of insecurity among NATO allies. Russia’s maritime hybrid campaign has coincided with repeated damage to subsea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea domain, alongside sustained surveillance and mapping of NATO’s critical undersea infrastructure (CUI) as pre-crisis preparation. Repeated incursions conducted via shadow fleet vessels function as observable probes that evaluate NATO’s deterrence, attribution capacity, and response timelines within the gray-zone threshold. Despite increased defensive measures, the persistence of such incidents may erode perceptions of institutional reliability and alliance security guarantees.

If NATO responds to persistent gray-zone activities with kinetic measures, it risks reinforcing the central dilemma of RC: restraint is interpreted as strategic weakness and an inability to provide security guarantees, while escalation enables Russia to frame NATO as the aggressor, thereby reinforcing broader narratives of anti-Western sentiment, hostility, and escalation.

Strategic Considerations for NATO

While NATO has undertaken significant aggressive efforts to counter Russia’s shadow fleet activities, including initiatives such as Baltic Sentry and the Nordic Warden System, these mechanisms primarily focus on protecting CUI and monitoring suspicious maritime activities. Notably, these strategies do not address the vessels as drone-enabled platforms, requiring NATO to consider initiatives targeting maritime-enabled drone incursions.  

Firstly, NATO cannot allow maritime-drone-enabled incursions to become a normalized non-kinetic activity. If left unchecked, Russia will perceive the passivity as permissive, emboldening the Federation to test alliance resolve through escalating behavior. Russia’s reflexive control strategy primarily relies on sustained ambiguity to reconfigure the decision-making calculus of a target; therefore, such incursions are likely to continue, if not exacerbate, over time to achieve its salami-slicing tactics to gradually reduce alliance credibility and security apparatus without invoking Article 5. Accordingly, NATO requires a comprehensive attribution mechanism addressing continual unauthorized drone activity, including a coordinated identification system linking vessels to drones, as well as non-kinetic interception strategies such as leveraging radio frequency jamming to diminish links between drones and pilots. Coastal states maintain sovereignty over their territorial sea and the above airspace, providing a legal basis for states to regulate unauthorized aerial activity within territorial waters.

Simultaneously, NATO must continue to expand legal efforts to address shadow vessels. Although, according to UNCLOS, surveillance conducted by vessels operating within a coastal state’s EEZ is not inherently prohibited, with its legality depending on the activity conducted and the status of the vessel permitting it. Shadow fleet vessels equipped with specialized surveillance systems, military-grade communication equipment, or drone launch capabilities may challenge their designation as ordinary commercial vessels, especially when operating in proximity to CUI. Given that civilian vessels under UNCLOS do not maintain equivalent sovereign protections afforded to military vessels, NATO member states should reassess whether vessels engaged in state-directed intelligence collection or military support activities can continue to benefit from the legal assumptions afforded to legitimate commercial actors.

Conclusion

Russia is leveraging multi-domain campaigns as part of its greater RC strategy. While not actively seeking conventional warfare with the Alliance, it is simultaneously defining the informational and operational environment in ways that preserve escalation optionality and strategic positioning in the event of a near-peer conflict. In this sense, Russia’s maritime-enabled RC has increasingly determined NATO’s decision-making environment through sustained uncertainty and ambiguity by leveraging regional vulnerabilities and international frameworks. Given the fragmented and expansive nature of the maritime domain, NATO is likely to contend with this challenge over an extended period, as efforts to constrain shadow vessel fleet activity are offset by Russian adaptation through vessel reconstitution. Currently, Russia is incorporating known sanctioned vessels, such as Pushpa, now Feniks, into its naval directory while continuing to acquire new tankers for shadow fleet activities, sustaining conditions that enable sanctions evasion, infrastructure disruption, and its maritime-enabled drone incursions as part of its larger RC strategy.

Catherine Marie Abbott holds a master’s degree in security policy studies from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, specializing in maritime security, intelligence analysis, and counterintelligence. Her research primarily focuses on maritime logistics, emerging technology, and intelligence processing, with a distinct focus on analyzing overlooked variables and externalities that disrupt strategic decision-making.

The views and opinions are those of the author and do not reflect or represent those of her employer or any other organization with which she is affiliated.

Featured image: The Tactical Resupply Vehicle-150 lands on the beach after a series of contested logistics experimentations from ship to shore as part of Project Convergence-Capstone 4 at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Feb. 29, 2024. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Howard Lee)

Maritime Security

Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance in the Western Hemisphere

7 Comments

By Bruce Stubbs

I. Introduction

The United States should designate the U.S. Coast Guard as its lead agency for maritime security in the Western Hemisphere. In military command and control terminology, this would make the Coast Guard the “supported” service with all other armed services and federal agencies as “supporting” services. Such a designation would reverse the customary approach for the Navy to lead at sea, but this reversal is long overdue.

Restoring America’s maritime dominance in the Western Hemisphere aligns with the 2025 National Security Strategy and the 2026 National Defense Strategy.1 The former directs a reconsideration of the U.S. military presence in the Western Hemisphere. It specifically calls for “a more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence to control sea lanes, to thwart illegal and other unwanted migration, to reduce human and drug trafficking, and to control key transit routes in a crisis.”2 The latter declares that “the U.S. military’s foremost priority is to defend the U.S. Homeland” through securing the U.S. border, countering narco-terrorists, and securing key terrain.3

These two strategic documents frame their guidance for the entire Western Hemisphere to reflect what the strategies describe as a renewed emphasis on limiting external influence in regional affairs. Their specific objectives and tasks, however, are primarily oriented toward operations in U.S. Homeland Seas. This term is used here to refer to the four maritime approaches to the United States, the Arctic, Caribbean, Eastern Pacific, and Western Atlantic. This commentary examines the structural and operational impediments that impair fully achieving these national policies. It also explains why a more suitable maritime presence in the U.S. Homeland Seas must begin with the U.S. Coast Guard.

Of note, presence itself is not a mission. Presence is no more than the geographic location on the globe where the Navy conducts its five core functions. The term, “maritime dominance,” is used to refer to the sustained ability to monitor, control, and enforce law and sovereignty across the U.S. Homeland Seas, vice naval superiority over a peer competitor. The article advances two arguments. First, maritime security in the Western Hemisphere is fundamentally a persistence problem, not a warfighting problem. Second, and more consequentially, the Coast Guard should be the supported service for the mission and lead its command architecture.

II. The Security Challenges of the Western Hemisphere and the U.S. Homeland Seas

Although the two national strategies employ different terminology, both state similar objectives: secure the U.S. maritime approaches, suppress illicit activity, protect U.S. borders, and ensure control of critical sea lanes during a crisis. Notably, these objectives predominantly emphasize maritime security vice military force, except for the control of key transit routes. Threats to these strategies’ objectives fall into two distinct categories that require different operational responses.

The first category consists of external military threats principally posed by China, Russia, and their state-linked actors. In practice, however, these threats manifest only intermittently in the Western Hemisphere. Consider the June 2024 deployment of the Russian Yasen-M-class nuclear-powered attack submarine Kazan (K-561) to the Caribbean. Armed with Zircon hypersonic and Kalibr cruise missiles, it illustrates the operational character of this threat category.4 To address this category of threats, the Navy’s principal mission in the Hemisphere is Homeland Defense including deterrence against external military aggression and strategic coercion.5 Because such adversary activities are episodic rather than persistent, the Navy does not maintain a continuous at-sea operational presence across the U.S. Homeland Seas. Indeed, U.S. Fourth Fleet has no permanently assigned forces and primarily functions as a coordinating headquarters. Its area of responsibility encompasses the Caribbean Sea and the waters surrounding South America.

The second category consists of persistent maritime security threats within the Homeland Seas themselves. These include illegal migration, narcotics trafficking, illegal fishing, transnational criminal activity, and other illicit uses of the maritime domain. These activities undermine U.S. sovereignty, border security, and regional stability. To address this category of threats, the Coast Guard conducts continuous homeland security centered on maritime security activities to deter and defeat non-military threats.6 The Coast Guard is a unique service, both an armed force and a federal law enforcement agency. As the Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao stated before the House Armed Services Committee in May 2026, “Border security is national security.”7 This formulation explicitly links maritime security operations in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific to the defense of the U.S. border and the protection of the American homeland.

Broadly speaking, the Navy employs high-end warfighting assets to deter infrequent military threats, whereas the Coast Guard employs maritime security-oriented forces and legal authorities to counter persistent maritime security threats. This distinction does not mean the Navy never conducts maritime security operations or that the Coast Guard does not contribute to military missions. Rather, it reflects the focus and operational specialization of each service. The Coast Guard’s comparatively affordable platforms, law enforcement authorities, and persistent presence make it the most operationally suitable maritime force for day-to-day security operations throughout the Hemisphere. Consistent with these differing missions, the Navy and Coast Guard maintain separate command-and-control structures for operations at sea.

III. Background: Operation Southern Spear

In August 2025, the Joint Force began Operation Southern Spear to detect, disrupt, and degrade transnational criminal and illicit maritime networks in the Western Hemisphere.8 The operation served purposes beyond counter-narcotics. It provided the coercive maritime presence that shaped conditions for the subsequent capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January 2026. Southern Spear was complemented by Operation Absolute Resolve, which extended homeland defense and maritime interdiction operations across the Western Hemisphere. That effort reflected the broader operationalization of the Navy’s homeland defense, counter-narcotics, and regional maritime security missions in the approaches to the United States.9 

The administration designated major Latin American drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, declared a Non-International Armed Conflict, and authorized military force, including kinetic strikes against narco-terrorist vessels at sea.10 In their September 2025 report, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,” Mark Cancian and Chris Park, analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, assessed Southern Spear. They noted that at its peak, the operation concentrated 38 percent of all Navy ships underway in the Caribbean. That force included the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group, multiple guided-missile destroyers and cruisers, and a Littoral Combat Ship.11 MQ-9 Reapers operating from Puerto Rico and AC-130J gunships operating from El Salvador conducted lethal strikes against cartel maritime targets.12 By March 2026, the Defense Department reported a 30 percent reduction in drug vessel movements in the Caribbean and 25 percent reduction in the Eastern Pacific.13

Southern Spear demonstrated both the effectiveness and the limits of the existing architecture. It produced measurable results against cartel maritime networks. It also exposed the strategic costs of relying upon high-end naval combatants and improvised command structures for a mission that never ends.

IV. The Structural and Operational Impediments

Several significant structural and operational impediments exist that inhibit a more suitable U.S. maritime presence in the Western Hemisphere and U.S. Homeland Seas.

Impediment 1: Force Structure, A Navy Mismatch and a Coast Guard Insufficiency

The Navy’s existing force structure is optimized primarily for high-end deterrence and warfighting missions against peer and near-peer adversaries rather than for sustained maritime security operations in the Western Hemisphere. Carrier strike groups, amphibious ready groups, and guided missile destroyers can perform maritime security missions, but they were designed principally for power projection, sea control, and expeditionary warfare. In December 2025, defense analyst Peter Singer estimated that the U.S. forces committed to Southern Spear cost at least seven times the annual revenue of the cartels they were targeting. They cost thousands of times more than the value of the individual speedboats being destroyed.14 Cancian and Park reached a similar conclusion, describing the operation as “swatting flies with golden hammers” but the “long-term military solution is to beef up the Coast Guard” rather than relying upon scarce fleet combatants.15 The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral Daryl Caudle, agreed and stated in March 2026, “I don’t need the carrier to do maritime interdiction. I want to reserve the carrier for power projection and deterrence in the theaters that really need that capability.”16

The Coast Guard’s insufficiency crisis is not a separate problem from the persistence argument. It is what a persistent requirement looks like when it is chronically underfunded. Persistence cannot be surged. It must be built, crewed, and sustained years ahead of need, which is precisely what decades of episodic funding failed to do. The Coast Guard has a force structure optimized for maritime security operations. But it has historically lacked sufficient capacity to achieve a decisive operational tipping point against non-military threats. The Coast Guard’s own fleet mix analysis concluded that its planned fleet would provide only 61 percent of the cutters required to fully execute statutory missions.17 Acting Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard Kevin Lunday stated in April 2025, “When a National Security Cutter pulls into port, we do a controlled parts exchange, which is a fancy term for cannibalizing our readiness. No ship gets underway without stripping another for parts. You can only cannibalize your readiness for so long in that downward death spiral and that’s where we’re at.”18 Three major cutters had been laid up because the service lacked sufficient enlisted personnel to crew them. In the following month, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem bluntly stated in Force Design 2028 that the service, “can no longer reliably protect the American people and our Homeland,” is “less ready than at any time since the end of World War II,” and is “fragile, in crisis, and on a path to failure without sustained investment.”19

Congress and the President heard the Coast Guard’s distress call. In July 2025 the reconciliation act provided the Coast Guard a one-time appropriation of $24.6 billion.20 This was its largest single investment in the service’s history. This act funded 17 new icebreakers, 21 new cutters, over 40 helicopters, and six C-130J aircraft through fiscal year 2029. Next came the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025 which authorized end strength growth to 60,000 personnel by fiscal year 2028.21 These investments were precedent-setting and halted the Coast Guard’s immediate decline. But ships take years to build, and trained, experienced personnel cannot be generated overnight. The Offshore Patrol Cutter program remains years late and billions over budget.22 The capability gap documented in 2025 will not close before the end of this decade, and the command architecture deficiencies that money alone cannot fix will remain unresolved.23

The Coast Guard’s major cutter recapitalization programs illustrate the scale of the problem. The Offshore Patrol Cutter program, the service’s highest acquisition priority, replaces aging 210-foot and 270-foot medium-endurance cutters. It remains years behind schedule and billions over budget following shipyard failures, production delays, and contract restructuring. The Polar Security Cutter program has experienced similar delays. Those delays are slowing the recapitalization of the nation’s aging icebreaker fleet at the very moment Arctic competition within the Homeland Seas is intensifying.24 These acquisition difficulties are not merely procurement problems. They directly constrain the Coast Guard’s ability to generate the persistent maritime presence the National Security Strategy now demands across the U.S. Homeland Seas.

Impediment 2: Command and Control Gap

No single commander owns the Western Hemisphere maritime security mission continuously across the spectrum spanning routine operations, crisis response, deterrence operations, and kinetic escalation. The United States does not possess a unified operational maritime security command architecture for the Western Hemisphere. Instead, maritime security, deterrence, interdiction, homeland defense, detection and monitoring, and kinetic strike operations are divided among multiple commands. Authorities overlap, geographic boundaries are inconsistent, and operational relationships shift as missions escalate. Coast Guard Atlantic Area, Pacific Area, and subordinate regional commands, formerly the district commands, maintain the only continuous maritime security operational presence across the U.S. Homeland Seas. But they are not joint maritime commanders, and their operational boundaries do not align with Navy fleet geography. Navy Second Fleet, Third Fleet, Fourth Fleet, Fleet Forces Command, and Naval Forces Northern Command have homeland defense and deterrence responsibilities, but none maintains continuous responsibility for the full maritime security mission.

As operations escalate, command relationships shift again. Southern Spear exposed the consequences of that fragmentation. The Department of Defense established Joint Task Force Southern Spear as a parallel headquarters to direct kinetic strike operations against cartel maritime targets rather than assigning the mission to an existing command. That decision was an implicit admission. No existing organization possessed the authority, operational scope, or unity of command required to execute the full Western Hemisphere maritime security mission from routine maritime security operations through theater-level deterrence and kinetic action.

Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-S) illustrates both the effectiveness and limits of the current architecture.25 Built principally for detection and monitoring under 10 U.S.C. §124, it integrates intelligence, coordinates surveillance, tracks targets, and cues interdiction opportunities across multiple agencies and partner nations. What it was never designed to do is command permanently assigned maritime forces, conduct sustained maritime operations, or maintain continuous operational responsibility for the broader maritime security mission. Coast Guard cutters conducting counter-drug patrols generally remain under Atlantic Area, Pacific Area, and subordinate district command relationships rather than being assigned under JIATF-S operational control. The problem, therefore, is not JIATF-S itself. The problem is a larger maritime security architecture that relies upon coordination among multiple headquarters rather than continuous operational command accountability.

The Navy’s increasing emphasis on “coordinated deterrence” within the Homeland Seas reflects the operational reality. Maritime security, deterrence, intelligence integration, and interdiction activities are now deeply interconnected across multiple commands and agencies.26 That framing, however, implicitly acknowledges the fragmentation the current architecture produces. Southern Spear demonstrated that coordination mechanisms, however well-intentioned, remain insufficient substitutes for continuous operational command accountability when missions escalate from routine interdiction into theater-level deterrence and kinetic action.

Impediment 3: Coast Guard Kinetic Limitations

The Coast Guard remains highly effective in interdiction, boarding, and law-enforcement operations at sea and the use of disabling fires. But it does not possess the organic capability to conduct independent lethal kinetic strikes against maritime surface targets.27 Its aviation assets are designed for surveillance, pursuit, and disabling fire, not deliberate target destruction. Likewise, major cutters are not configured to integrate within joint kill chains involving MQ-9 Reapers, AC-130J gunships, or other theater strike assets employed for destructive kinetic effects. Southern Spear demonstrated that once operations escalated from maritime interdiction into deliberate lethal strikes against narco-terrorist vessels, the Coast Guard could not independently execute lethal strike operations.

More fundamentally, Coast Guard force structure, training pipelines, legal authorities, and operational culture are oriented toward maritime security, law enforcement, and maritime governance rather than sustained offensive strike operations. This approach allows the Coast Guard to “capture and interrogate cartel members, collect evidence, and prepare case packages for criminal prosecution.”28 When operations require destructive kinetic effects, escalation dominance, or politically sensitive lethal force employment, those capabilities reside within the Department of Defense. The establishment of Joint Task Force Southern Spear under a three-star joint commander to oversee kinetic strike operations against cartel maritime targets reflected the operational and institutional sensitivity surrounding those missions. This is a limitation of the Coast Guard’s design, not a shortfall to be corrected. It is the reason the command architecture must be able to draw Navy strike authority on demand, the requirement taken up in Recommendation 3.

V. Implications

Implication 1: Why a More Suitable Maritime Presence in the Western Hemisphere Starts with the U.S. Coast Guard

Since the end of the Cold War, Russian nuclear-powered submarines have deployed into the Caribbean and off the U.S. East Coast. Combined Chinese-Russian surface action groups have operated near Alaska and within the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone.29 Chinese naval vessels have repeatedly transited near the Aleutian Islands, while Russian intelligence collection ships have operated near Hawaii and critical U.S. undersea infrastructure.30 These operations are strategically significant and require credible Navy deterrence and response capability. Yet they remain episodic rather than continuous. They appear periodically as demonstrations of military power, strategic signaling, intelligence collection, or geopolitical coercion rather than as a permanent daily maritime presence challenge.

The operational response to many of these incidents also revealed a broader institutional reality. In numerous cases, the first American surface asset to detect, monitor, shadow, or respond to Russian and Chinese naval activity near U.S. waters was not a Navy ship but a Coast Guard cutter. Coast Guard cutters such as Kimball (WMSL-756), Stratton (WMSL-752), and Healy (WAGB-20) routinely encountered and monitored foreign naval vessels. They did so because the Coast Guard already maintains the persistent day-to-day maritime presence across the U.S. Homeland Seas.31 The Navy retains the indispensable role for deterrence, escalation dominance, and high-end warfighting against military threats. But the persistence requirement in the Western Hemisphere is fundamentally different. Beyond episodic Russian and Chinese naval deployments, the United States still confronts constant maritime security threats on a daily basis. These threats involve narcotics trafficking, illegal migration, sanctions evasion, illegal fishing, criminal organizations, and sovereignty enforcement. The Navy responds episodically to military threats. The Coast Guard operates continuously against persistent maritime security threats. That enduring operational reality is why the National Security Strategy’s call for a more suitable maritime presence in the Western Hemisphere must start with the U.S. Coast Guard.

Implication 2: Persistent Maritime Security Is the Wrong Mission for High-End Naval Combatants

As discussed above, the Navy portion for a more suitable presence is episodic rather than persistent. It does not generate a continuous daily warfighting presence requirement across the Homeland Seas. The persistent operational requirement in the Western Hemisphere is maritime security against narcotics trafficking, illegal migration, sanctions evasion, illegal fishing, criminal organizations, and sovereignty violations. That requirement exists every day regardless of whether Russian or Chinese naval forces are operating nearby.

Caudle’s May 2026 posture testimony before the House Armed Services Committee reinforced this distinction. He emphasized the Navy’s contribution through domain awareness, coordinated deterrence, advanced surveillance, and maritime interdiction support.32 The operational activities he described — detection, monitoring, and interdiction augmentation — are enabling and supporting functions appropriate to the Navy’s episodic role. They are not an argument for continuous fleet-centric naval presence across the Homeland Seas. Caudle’s own framing of Homeland Defense operations implicitly recognizes that the Western Hemisphere mission is fundamentally a persistent maritime security campaign requiring selective naval augmentation rather than permanent high-end naval concentration.

The Navy’s force structure is not the economical or sustainable instrument for that persistent maritime security mission. Carrier strike groups, amphibious ready groups, cruisers, and destroyers can conduct maritime security operations effectively, but they were designed principally for deterrence and high-end warfighting against state adversaries. Using them for routine maritime security patrols imposes substantial operational and opportunity cost while degrading readiness for the high-end missions only the Navy can perform. The Ford Carrier Strike Group departed for operations against Iran before the counter-narcotics mission was complete. The maritime security requirement outlasted the availability of the Navy forces assigned to execute it.33 Persistent maritime security is not a surge requirement. It is a standing operational requirement, one that high-end naval combatants are too scarce and too expensive to sustain indefinitely.

The Navy also lacks the legal authorities the mission requires. In a recent year 59 percent of Coast Guard drug interdictions relied on bilateral agreements that Navy crews cannot invoke and Navy ships cannot execute.34 That limitation is one of legal authority, not capability. The power to board, search, seize, and arrest on the high seas belongs to the Coast Guard by statute (14 U.S.C. § 89). The Posse Comitatus Act bars Department of Defense personnel from exercising it. When a Navy warship conducts a counter-narcotics boarding, it does so only because a Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment is embarked for that purpose (10 U.S.C. § 279). The boarding proceeds under Coast Guard authority and command. Navy personnel may take part only in support, and only under that command. The arrangement proves rather than refutes the point. The Navy can surveil, track, intercept, and escort, but it cannot independently execute the law-enforcement core of the maritime security mission. To board, search, seize, and arrest, it must embark Coast Guard personnel and operate under Coast Guard authority.

The Navy’s institutional culture and force-structure history reinforce the same conclusion. As Admiral Michael Mullen, the CNO, stated in 2006, “Your Navy remains first and foremost a warfighting, seagoing service.”35 That orientation is correct and necessary, but it is precisely why the persistent maritime security mission should not compete for the Navy’s scarce high-end capacity. Furthermore, that institutional orientation has repeatedly transformed lower-end maritime security platforms into increasingly expensive fleet combatants optimized for warfighting missions. The Littoral Combat Ship proved operationally constrained and insufficiently survivable. The Constellation-class frigate evolved toward a smaller version of a Burke-class destroyer. It steadily lost the affordability and operational simplicity that originally justified the program. Secretary of the Navy John Phelan canceled the Constellation-class frigate and decided to base the Navy’s replacement frigate on the Coast Guard’s Legend-class hull. That choice reflected a broader institutional reality. The Navy will prioritize warfighting capability over persistent maritime security optimization, because warfighting is its core institutional purpose.36 The Western Hemisphere’s enduring maritime security requirement therefore starts with the Coast Guard, while the Navy remains the indispensable but episodic instrument for deterrence and combat operations against military threats.

Cancian and Park in their report concluded that Coast Guard cutters are better suited, much cheaper while “Navy destroyers have systems and capabilities for a great power conflict … are useless for counter-drug operations.”37 They produced Table 1 to compare the Navy’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyer with the Coast Guard’s National Security Cutter and proposed Offshore Patrol Cutter. The table graphically shows this mismatch.

Table 1: Comparison of a Destroyer and Coast Guard Cutters

Used with permission: Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,” 8 September 2025, Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The comparison shows that the Coast Guard’s cutters deliver greater persistence and lower operating cost while giving up only capabilities unnecessary for most maritime security missions.

Implication 3: Coordination Is Not Command

The Western Hemisphere maritime security mission distributes responsibility across multiple commands, but accountability is not centralized anywhere. No single commander owns the mission continuously across routine maritime security operations, crisis response, deterrence operations, and kinetic escalation. Instead, the United States relies upon a system of overlapping service authorities, interagency coordination mechanisms, shifting operational relationships, and temporary task forces that function adequately during routine interdiction operations but become increasingly fragmented as missions expand in scale, complexity, or violence.

Southern Spear exposed the operational consequences of that architecture. Once operations expanded beyond detection, monitoring, and law enforcement interdiction into theater-level deterrence and kinetic strike operations, existing command relationships proved insufficient. The Department of Defense established Joint Task Force Southern Spear as a parallel headquarters rather than assigning the mission to an existing standing command. That decision revealed three related deficiencies in the current architecture.

The first is assignment. Western Hemisphere maritime security is a continuous responsibility, but no document assigns it continuously to any commander. The Unified Command Plan distributes elements of the mission across geographic and functional commands without making any one commander accountable for the whole. A mission treated as a finite operation will require a new headquarters each time it escalates, and that headquarters will begin its work without the relationships, the authorities, and the practiced habits of a command that has owned the mission all along.

The second is authority. A task force established for a defined operation receives the authorities required for, but limited to, the operation, based on the way the mission is stated. Western Hemisphere maritime security requires statutory law enforcement authority on any given day, and that authority resides in the Coast Guard rather than in a joint task force assembled for a campaign of finite duration.

The third is command relationships. The task organization relied on support relationships among headquarters that retained their own priorities and their own chains of command, an arrangement adequate for coordinating routine interdiction but insufficient for operations that combine law enforcement, deterrence, and kinetic strike. Those operations require tactical control or operational control over assigned forces, exercised by a commander accountable for the outcome.

Together these three deficiencies reveal the requirement for a continuously accountable operational maritime command structure capable of integrating maritime security, deterrence, and kinetic operations across the full spectrum of competition, crisis, and conflict.

Maritime security in the Western Hemisphere is not an episodic contingency mission but a continuous operational requirement spanning all four U.S. Homeland Seas. Those threats evolve from routine law enforcement problems into strategic security challenges with little warning. A command architecture built primarily around coordination rather than continuous operational accountability risks fragmentation precisely when unity of command becomes most important.

VI. Recommendations

Recommendation 1: Sustain the Investment in Coast Guard Maritime Security Capacity

This first recommendation is not a call to spend more. It is a call to fund persistence the way persistence must be funded, as a permanent and predictable commitment rather than a one-time rescue. A persistent mission financed by episodic appropriations will always decay between crises. The $24.6 billion reconciliation appropriation signed in July 2025 and the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025 represent the most significant investment in the service’s history. They are a long overdue recognition that decades of chronic underfunding had driven the Coast Guard to the lowest point of readiness since World War II. The investment is substantial and has altered the Coast Guard’s trajectory. But one-time mandatory spending is not a sustained shipbuilding program. Shipyards cannot expand production capacity, train skilled workforces, or invest in facilities on the basis of a single appropriation. The Coast Guard’s Offshore Patrol Cutter program is already years late and billions over budget. That delay reflects the stop-and-start funding history that reconciliation money alone does not correct.

In 2026 the Coast Guard (and the Navy) need a modern version of the famous Vinson-Trammell Act of 1934. That act built the Navy that won the Second World War and accomplished a lot more. The Act was built on three profound shipbuilding policies that would prevent today’s Coast Guard and Navy from lurching from one shipbuilding crisis to another.38 First, the United States must build and maintain a fleet of modern cutters and combatants sustained through a continuous replacement schedule that prevents block obsolescence. Second, sufficient replacement programs must be financed from year to year to maintain continuous force generation and lower costs through repetitive construction. Third, the sequencing establishes maritime security and warfighting requirements first, and affordability is considered only afterward. If the budget does not support the requirements, then the selected means for the mission must change. This does not mean these three policies alone define the Coast Guard and Navy’s force structures. Naval War College professor Anand Toprani has noted that “political and budgetary realities played an equal role as strategic imperatives in shaping the size of the U.S. Navy.”39 In his research, Toprani concluded that “resource constraints are never absent from decisions about the size and composition of the military even in wartime.”40 The intent of these three policies is to ensure in the final analysis that if the budget does not support the strategy, then either the means or the ends must change. The abandonment of these three shipbuilding policies after the Cold War produced the slow-motion crisis whose full consequences Southern Spear made visible. Restoring them requires Congress to treat the Coast Guard and the Navy recapitalization not as a supplemental emergency measure but as a permanent annual commitment embedded in their base budget.

Congress should therefore sustain and expand the Fiscal Year 2027 budget request’s $2.1 billion increase for the Coast Guard as a floor, not a ceiling.41 The Offshore Patrol Cutter program, Polar Security Cutter program, and Arctic Security Cutter program, along with the cutter workforce and aviation fleet, should be funded at levels sufficient to sustain persistent maritime security operations across the U.S. Homeland Seas on a continuous basis. The objective is not merely to address the current crisis through a single appropriation, but to prevent the recurrence of similar readiness and recapitalization failures in the future.

Recommendation 2: Reserve High-End Naval Combatants for Warfighting and Deterrence

Persistent maritime security in the Western Hemisphere should not be sustained primarily with high-end naval combatants optimized for major warfighting against state adversaries. Carrier strike groups, amphibious ready groups, cruisers, and destroyers can execute maritime security missions. But Southern Spear demonstrated the substantial strategic and operational costs of using scarce fleet combatants for a mission that is continuous rather than episodic. Every high-end naval combatant assigned to routine maritime security patrols in the Caribbean or Eastern Pacific is one less asset available for deterrence and warfighting missions elsewhere.

The Navy should therefore remain the force employed episodically for deterrence and combat operations against military threats in the Western Hemisphere, while the Coast Guard provides the persistent maritime security presence against non-military threats. Navy forces should support Coast Guard-led maritime security operations when military capability, escalation management, or destructive kinetic force is required, not substitute routinely for the continuous maritime presence mission itself.

The Navy’s force structure experience over the past two decades reinforces the same lesson. As Implication 2 described, the Navy’s own force-structure history with the Littoral Combat Ship, the Constellation-class frigate, and ultimately a future frigate based on the Coast Guard’s Legend-class hull shows how persistently the service converts affordable presence platforms into expensive combatants.

But Southern Spear demonstrated that no Navy force structure solution should be expected to absorb a mission better matched to the Coast Guard. None of this diminishes the Navy’s role in the Western Hemisphere, but, instead clarifies it. The Navy remains the indispensable instrument for deterrence, escalation dominance, and combat against military threats that no other service can perform. This is an argument about the mission assigned to each service, and the persistent mission is not the Navy’s.

Recommendation 3: Establish Continuous Maritime Command Accountability

The United States requires a standing maritime security command structure with continuous accountability across the U.S. Homeland Seas rather than fragmented coordination among multiple headquarters. The current architecture distributes maritime security, deterrence, interdiction, homeland defense, detection and monitoring, and kinetic strike operations across overlapping commands with shifting authorities and inconsistent geographic boundaries. That structure can coordinate routine operations adequately, but Southern Spear demonstrated that it becomes increasingly fragmented as missions escalate from law enforcement interdiction into theater-level deterrence and kinetic operations.

The future maritime security command and control architecture for the Western Hemisphere should draw upon the relevant lessons demonstrated by the Cold War Maritime Defense Zones and Joint Interagency Task Force South.42 Those lessons show that continuous maritime security operations require enduring joint command relationships operating under unified operational accountability. Joint Interagency Task Force South already integrates intelligence, surveillance, detection and monitoring, interdiction coordination, interagency participation, and multinational cooperation under Coast Guard leadership. Southern Spear demonstrated that the next requirement is to extend those principles beyond detection and monitoring into a standing maritime security command structure. That structure would integrate maritime security operations, deterrence support, and escalation management across the Homeland Seas. The objective is not to create another temporary task force or additional coordinating headquarters. It is to establish continuous operational accountability for a mission that now spans a spectrum of routine maritime security operations, crisis response, deterrence activities, and kinetic escalation.

Several designs could deliver that accountability: a strengthened JIATF-S elevated to a standing operational command; a Western Hemisphere maritime component commander; reestablished Maritime Defense Zones adapted to current geography; or a dual-hatted Navy–Coast Guard commander. This commentary does not prescribe a final structure, but the controlling principle should narrow the field. Because the mission is persistent and law-enforcement-centric for all but episodic intervals, the standing command should be Coast Guard-led, with Navy forces placed under its tactical control or operational control when military capability or escalation management is required. How that command aligns with existing combatant commands, numbered fleets, and Coast Guard Areas is a joint force-management question. But the alignment should follow the persistence of the mission rather than the convenience of existing fleet geography.

This recommendation deliberately reverses a long-standing assumption that U.S. maritime commands in the Western Hemisphere should be Navy-led.  The Coast Guard must lead this command for reasons that already exist in fact rather than aspiration. It alone holds the statutory law enforcement authority that the Western Hemisphere mission requires every day. It already maintains the only continuous operational presence across the Homeland Seas through its Atlantic Area, Pacific Area, and regional commands. It operates the nation’s only icebreakers, which means polar maritime dominance runs through the Coast Guard and no other service. And through the National Fleet Policy, signed in 1998, the Coast Guard and Navy have spent decades deliberately building common command, control, and communications systems. They built those systems precisely so that their forces can integrate when the mission demands it. The supported-supporting relationship recommended here does not invent a new partnership. It merely proposes to formalize one the Coast Guard and Navy have practiced for a generation, and it assigns the lead to the service that already owns the persistent mission, the authorities, and the continuous presence the mission requires.

VII. Conclusion

The 2025 National Security Strategy calls for a more suitable Coast Guard and Navy presence in the Western Hemisphere. The 2026 National Defense Strategy states plainly that the U.S. military’s foremost priority is to defend the homeland. That priority includes defending America’s interests throughout the Western Hemisphere. Together they establish a clear strategic direction to build the maritime forces and command structure capable of executing this mission permanently rather than improvising it episodically.

The Southern Spear campaign tested the existing architecture and found it wanting. The operation disrupted cartel maritime networks and demonstrated the value of integrated maritime, intelligence, and kinetic operations. It also exposed the costs of relying upon high-end naval combatants for missions requiring persistent maritime security presence, law enforcement authorities, regional partnerships, and long-duration operational endurance.

The campaign reinforced a broader institutional reality visible throughout American maritime history. The Navy is optimized for deterrence, warfighting, and preparation for major conflict against state adversaries. The Coast Guard is optimized for persistent maritime presence across the U.S. Homeland Seas. It achieves that presence through a combination of military authority, law enforcement authority, partner engagement, and sustained offshore operations. Southern Spear demonstrated that the mission requires each service to perform the role it was institutionally designed to execute.

When Coast Guard boarding teams enforce sanctions against Russian and Venezuelan oil tankers in the Eastern Atlantic, they are not merely conducting inspections but executing American strategic policy. When Coast Guard icebreakers operate in the Arctic, they are not merely breaking ice but asserting U.S. sovereignty against Russian and Chinese expansion. When Coast Guard cutters enforce fishing laws across the 4.38 million square miles of the U.S. exclusive economic zone, they are not merely protecting fish stocks but defending sovereign American resources against foreign poaching fleets operating inside the Homeland Seas. When Coast Guard cutters conduct naval diplomacy throughout the Caribbean, they are not merely training counterparts but strengthening U.S. influence and regional partnerships in ways no high-end Navy destroyer can replicate. This is what a more suitable maritime presence looks like. This is why it starts with the Coast Guard.

Restoring America’s maritime dominance requires resourcing the Coast Guard as America’s persistent maritime security instrument, preserving the Navy’s high-end warfighting capacity for global deterrence, and organizing both services within a permanent maritime security architecture suited to the operational realities of the Western Hemisphere. Achieving that objective requires removing the structural and operational impediments Southern Spear exposed.

Bruce Stubbs had assignments on the staffs of the secretary of the Navy and the chief of naval operations from 2009 to 2022 as a member of the U.S. Senior Executive Service. He was a former director of Strategy and Strategic Concepts in the N3N5 and N7 directorates. As a career U.S. Coast Guard officer, he had a posting as the assistant commandant for capability 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.

Notes

1. President Donald J. Trump, Executive Order 14269, “Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance,” 9 April 2025.

2. U.S. Department of State, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, White House, 4 December 2025.

3. U.S. Department of Defense, 2026 National Defense Strategy, Washington, D.C., 23 January 2026.

4. Sam LaGrone, “Russian Nuclear Sub, Frigate with Long Range Land Attack Missiles Operating Off East Coast,” USNI News, 11 June 2024.  

5. The definition of homeland defense is: “The military protection of United States sovereignty and territory against external threats and aggression or, as directed by the President, other threats.” Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, The Joint Staff, June 2025, page 78. The definition of deterrence provided by: GEN David H. Berger, USMC; ADM Michael M. Gilday, USN; and ADM Karl L. Schultz, USCG, Naval Doctrine Publication 1: Naval Warfare (NDP-1), April 2020.

6. The definition of homeland security is: “A concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the United States and to reduce our vulnerability to terrorism, major disasters, and other emergencies.” Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, The Joint Staff, June 2025, page 78. The definition of maritime security provided by: GEN David H. Berger, USMC; ADM Michael M. Gilday, USN; and ADM Karl L. Schultz, USCG, Naval Doctrine Publication 1: Naval Warfare (NDP-1), April 2020.

7. Hung Cao, Acting Secretary of the Navy, Statement on the Department of the Navy Posture Before the House Armed Services Committee, 14 May 2026.

8. Diana Roy, “The U.S. Military Campaign Targeting Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro: What to Know,” Council on Foreign Relations, 3 January 2026.

9. Admiral Daryl L. Caudle, U.S. Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, Statement on the Posture of the United States Navy Before the House Armed Services Committee, 14 May 2026.

10. Diana Roy, “The U.S. Military Campaign Targeting Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro: What to Know,” Council on Foreign Relations, 3 January 2026.

11. Mark F. Cancian and Chris H. Park, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,” Critical Questions, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 8 September 2025.

12. Howard Altman, “CV-22B Osprey, MC-130J Commando II Special Ops Aircraft Deploy To Puerto Rico,” The War Zone, 23 December 2025.

13. Heather Mongilio, “U.S. Forces Strike Suspected Narco Boat in the Eastern Pacific,” USNI News, 20 March 2026.

14. Peter W. Singer, “Sinking Speedboats With a Supercarrier: The Lopsided Cost of Operation Southern Spear,” Defense One, 7 December  2025.

15. Cancian and Park, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,”8 September 2025.

16. Lee Willett, “CNO: New Surface Ship Classes Reflect US Navy’s New Force Structure and Global Output Needs,” Naval News, 12 March 2026.

17. Heather MacLeod, Director, Homeland Security and Justice, Government Accountability Office, Statement on the Coast Guard: Actions Needed to Address Challenges that Hinder Maritime Security Operations Before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Maritime Security, Committee on Homeland Security, House of Representatives, GAO-26-108901, 3 February 2026.

18. Sam LaGrone, “Reconciliation Bill Calls for $14.6B in Coast Guard Cutters, New Arctic Icebreakers,” USNI News, 29 April 2025. “The supplemental is more than the Fiscal Year 2025 Coast Guard budget request of $13.8 billion and more than 10 times the cutter budget of $1 billion in current budget proposal. The new cutters are part of an overall $22.5 billion supplemental to the Coast Guard’s bottom line that also includes $3 billon for new aircraft and billions more for shoreside infrastructure, according to the bill. If ratified, the Coast Guard has 90 days to submit a proposal with timelines for deliveries.”

19. Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, Force Design 2028, Introduction, Executive Report, Department of Homeland Security, Released 28 May 2025.  

20. U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, Press Release, “U.S. Coast Guard Receives Historic Investment to Rebuild Under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill,” 4 July 2025. [Budget Reconciliation Act of 2025 (H.R. 1)].

21. H.R. 4275: 119th Congress: Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2025.

22. Caitlyn Burchett, “Eastern Shipbuilding Halts Work on Coast Guard Cutter Program, Cites Financial Strain and Program Conditions,” USNI News, 18 November 2025. United States Government Accountability Office Report to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives November 2025 Offshore Patrol Cutter Coast Guard Should Gain Key Knowledge Before Buying More Ships GAO-26-107583.

23. United States Government Accountability Office, Report to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, June 2023, “Coast Guard Acquisitions: Offshore Patrol Cutter Program Needs to Mature Technology and Design,” Revised on August 1, 2023 to reflect shipbuilder’s correct percentage construction completion as of October 2022. Correction is on report page 37. GAO-23-105805

24. Nick Blenkey, “GAO Looks at What’s Gone Wrong With the Coast Guard’s OPC and PSC Programs, MarineLog, 31 July 2023.

25. Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) was started on February 22, 1989, under President Ronald Reagan’s administration as part of its anti-drug enforcement policy. Specifically, the U.S. Department of Defense was tasked to establish a joint task force (JTF) to conduct detection and monitoring operations to support law enforcement disruptions of cocaine and marijuana trafficking in the Caribbean, thereby preventing these drugs from reaching the United States. The joint interagency task force model was established in 1994 to strengthen collaborations among federal and international partners. As a result, the task force in Key West – then known as JTF-4 – was renamed JIATF East. JIATF South, which was originally located in Panamá, was merged into JIATF East in Key West in 1999. The name was changed to Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-South) in 2003. Its mission, in conjunction with Partner Nations, leverages all-domain capabilities to target, detect and monitor illicit drug trafficking in the air and maritime domains, within the Joint Operating Area, facilitating interdiction and apprehension to reduce the flow of drugs and degrade & dismantle Transnational Criminal Organizations.

26. Caudle, Statement on the Posture of the United States Navy Before the House Armed Services Committee, 14 May 2026.

27. Stephen Smith, “U.S. Coast Guard Offloads $63 Million of Cocaine After Shootout at Sea Sinks Suspected Drug Smuggling Boat and Crew,” CBS News, 7 June 2024.

28. Cancian and Park, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,”8 September 2025.

29. Dzirhan Mahadzir, “Russian, Chinese Warships Operated Near Alaska, Say Senators,” USNI News, 6 August 2023.

30. Nathaniel Herz, “Inside the U.S. Coast Guard’s Aleutian Encounter With China’s military — and What It Means,” Northern Journal, 12 July 2024, and Barbara Starr and Oren Liebermann, “US Coast Guard Monitoring Russian Military Vessel Near Hawaii, CNN, 15 January 2022.

31. “Chinese Warships Spotted off Alaska Coast, US Coast Guard Says,” The Guardian, 11 July 2024. “U.S. Coast Guard Watching Uptick in Russian, Chinese Navy Activity Near Alaska, Reuters, 27 September 2024. Rana Foroohar, “10 Days with the US Coast Guard on the New Arctic Front Lines,” Financial Times Magazine, 8 February 2025.    

32. Caudle, Statement on the Posture of the United States Navy Before the House Armed Services Committee, 14 May 2026.

33. Sam LaGrone, “Carrier Ford’s Extension to the Middle East Could Break Recent Deployment Records, USNI News, 13 February 2026.  

34. United States Government Accountability Office, Report to Congressional Requesters, “Coast Guard Actions Needed to Improve Maritime Interdictions,” GAO-26-107440, January 2026.

35. Michael G. Mullen, Admiral, U.S. Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, Opening Statement, Before Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate, Department of Defense Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2007, 15 March 2006.

36. Sam LaGrone, “Navy Cancels Constellation-class Frigate Program, Considering New Small Surface Combatants, USNI News, 25 November 2025.

37. Cancian and Park, “Going to War with the Cartels: The Military Implications,”8 September 2025.

38. Charles F. Elliott, “The Genesis of the Modern Navy,” USNI Proceedings, Vol. 92/3/757, March 1966.

39. Anand Toprani, “Was the 600-Ship Navy a Chimera? Budgets, Force Structure, and the Political Realities Behind Reagan-Era Naval Strategy,” Journal of Strategic Studies, June 24, 2024, p. 3.

40. Anand Toprani, “Was the 600-Ship Navy a Chimera? Budgets, Force Structure, and the Political Realities Behind Reagan-Era Naval Strategy,” p. 8.

41. Stew Magnuson, “SEA-AIR-SPACE NEWS: Best of Times, Worst of Times for Coast Guard Budget,” National Defense, 22 April 2026.

42. James R. Boma, “Troubled Waters Off the Land of the Morning Calm: A Job for the Fleet,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 42 No. 2, 1989.

Featured image: Crew members aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro, a 418-foot national security cutter, and its small boat transit the Gulf of Mexico, Feb. 12, 2017. (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Seaman Courtney Fussell)