Advances in technology and a tight budget environment mean the U.S. military must be more innovative to remain competitive, according to a Navy strategy document released Tuesday.
For the first time in 25 years, the U.S. military must compete with technologically-capable powers like China and Russia, whose navies are “operating with a frequency and in areas not seen for almost two decades.” While conflicts with these countries have not reached the level of traditional warfare, they are engaging in actions that threaten the U.S. in space, cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum, writes Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson in his first plan for the Navy since taking over in September.
At the same time, advances in technology have made it so that weapons and vehicles that were once only available to large, state actors are now accessible to everyone. And the restrictive budget means the U.S. can not buy its way out of this shrinking technology gap.
“The challenges the Navy faces are shifting in character, are increasingly difficult to address in isolation and are changing more quickly. This will require us to reexamine our approaches in every aspect of our operations,” Richardson writes in “A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority.”
To address these challenges, Richardson describes his plan to “strengthen naval power.” His first priority is modernizing the undersea leg of the nuclear triad with the Ohio-class replacement, an asset he wrote is “foundational to our survival as a nation.”
Richardson also says he will work with the Marine Corps to develop more options for responding to threats, including threats of long-range precision strikes, look at alternative fleet designs that include both manned and unmanned systems and rethink the organization of the U.S. Fleet Forces Command and the Pacific Fleet to better allow leaders to send sailors to conflicts, if needed.
The document also stresses the need to make Navy labs more engaged with the private-sector research and development institutions, a priority of Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
“Our competitors are focused on taking the lead — we must pick up the pace and deny them. The margins of victory are razor thin — but decisive!” Richardson wrote.
