Restoring American Seapower: A New Fleet Architecture for the U.S. Navy

Key Chapter Title List

1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
3. Emerging Great Power Competition
4. Future Fleet Operational Concepts and Methods of Warfare
5. Organization of the Deployed Fleet – Deterrence Forces and Maneuver Forces
6. Naval Posture
7. New Ships, Unmanned Vehicles, Weapons, Sensors, and Mission Systems
8. Implications for Naval Aviation
9. Readiness and Training Cycle
10. Proposed Fleet Composition and Implementation
11. Conclusions and Recommendations

Document Introduction

This report was published in a revised version by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in 2017, aiming to address the fundamental shift in the U.S. national security environment since the end of the Cold War. The report begins by stating that the United States is entering a new era dominated by great power competition. The continuous enhancement of Chinese and Russian military capabilities and their willingness to challenge the international order are replacing transnational terrorism as the primary concern for U.S. military planners. This shift requires the U.S. Navy to fundamentally adjust its fleet architecture, operational concepts, deployment posture, and readiness processes.

The core argument of the report is that the U.S. Navy needs to transition from an "existence-based" fleet emphasizing "efficiency" over the past three decades to a "deterrence-based" fleet emphasizing "effectiveness." Facing the ability of potential adversaries like China and Russia to use "reconnaissance-strike complexes" and "gray zone" tactics to seek rapid faits accomplis, the traditional "punishment-after-the-fact" deterrence model is no longer sufficient. The report advocates for a return to the Cold War-era concept of conventional deterrence through "denial and punishment," which relies on forward-deployed naval forces capable of rapidly thwarting an aggressor's objectives in the early stages of a conflict or compelling them to cease aggression by attacking their high-value targets.

To achieve this strategic shift, the report proposes a new fleet architecture. This architecture divides the forward-deployed fleet into two main components: regionally tailored "Deterrence Forces" and widely deployed "Maneuver Forces" in the Indo-Pacific region. Deterrence Forces consist of surface action groups, submarines, and amphibious ships, focusing on providing rapid, high-volume initial strike capabilities in specific geographic areas (such as the East China Sea, South China Sea, Baltic Sea, etc.) to deter or delay adversary aggression. Maneuver Forces are centered around two carrier strike groups, possessing the capability to sustain medium-intensity combat operations over a longer period. They are intended to follow and sustain operations after the Deterrence Forces and provide strategic flexibility across the theater.

At the operational concept level, the report elaborates on seven key areas requiring new concept development to adapt to high-intensity contested environments: Air and Missile Defense, Electromagnetic Spectrum Warfare, Anti-Submarine Warfare, Undersea Warfare, Surface and Strike Warfare, Mine Warfare, and Amphibious Warfare. A common characteristic of these concepts is the extensive integration of unmanned systems to extend sensor and weapon ranges, while emphasizing distributed operations and commander autonomy in communications-degraded environments.

The report ultimately translates the aforementioned strategic, conceptual, and posture requirements into a specific fleet composition proposal. The proposed fleet includes 340 manned combatant ships calculated under current rules (totaling 382 manned vessels), along with 40 Extra Large Unmanned Surface Vessels (XLUSVs), 40 Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (XLUUVs), and a large number of unmanned aerial vehicles and maritime patrol aircraft. The report estimates that the shipbuilding and operational costs of implementing this architecture would be approximately 10-20% higher than the plan outlined in the Navy's FY2017 budget draft but argues this is a necessary investment to maintain U.S. competitive advantage.

The analysis in this study is based on the results of a series of integrated workshops, wargames, and exercises. It employs a modified requirements generation method, starting from the future strategic environment and operational concepts to inversely derive the required fleet capabilities, posture, and size. This approach aims to break the circular logic of the current force structure assessment process, providing an innovative and executable path for the Navy to maintain maritime superiority in the era of great power competition in the 2030s.