The Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy set sail on a following sea of supportive calls, emails, and letters. The urgent cause of our nation’s maritime power resonates from commercial districts to the cargo terminals. With our ideal location inside the capital beltway, we will gather a coalition of maritime-minded business leaders, think tanks, concerned citizens and congressional leadership to drive the sea changes our maritime future needs. 

Accordingly, I spent the first week in full “startup” mode, launching the office off the blocks while interviewing CMS candidates, fielding phone calls and taking CMS’s message on the road. I had the pleasure of introducing our mission and vision on two popular podcasts hosted by Francis Rose of Fedscoop and Walker Mills of Sea Control (affiliated with the Center for International Maritime Security, or CIMSEC). Both interviews will give you an idea of where we want to take CMS in the months and years to come

Meanwhile, over the Thanksgiving break, I had some time to reflect on the past and the future as CMS endeavors to become a strong advocate of America’s maritime power.  In fact, just last month, I keynoted at Deep Blue 2021, a Canadian maritime conference. In preparing for my remarks, I harkened back to an assignment I undertook in the Pentagon in 1997 — a reflection indicative of the predictive errors that led how our maritime project decayed to its current state.

As a member of the staff of Dr. Paris Genalis, director of naval warfare in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology (USD A&T), I served as a government adviser for the Defense Science Board Task Force on Submarines. The DSB’s team of talented, bi-partisan scientists, industrialists, civilian policy makers and uniformed services representatives chartered to decide the direction the nation would take in our next generation of submarines.

The task force first needed a vision of the future resolving what capabilities our next generation submarine required. Over its first few months, the task force embarked on a mini futures study to predict the security environment in the maritime domain in 2020 and beyond. It’s worthwhile to examine some of their conclusions, assess the accuracy of their predictions and then assess how we have done as a nation in responding to future threats. 

The task force began with a prediction of the type of battlefield trends the military would face in 2020 and beyond. They envisioned:

• Multiple, simultaneous and shifting geographic foci
• Greater requirements for stealth, agility and self defense
• Proliferation of technology in sensing, guidance and targeting significantly increasing weapons effectiveness for all parties
• More effective coordination of sensors and shooters over longer ranges would allow smaller forces to conduct precision strike from greater distances
• Mission diversity would increase, requiring a greater variety of warfighter skills and tradecraft
• Reduced decision cycle would decrease warning time, intensifying the need for rapid response capabilities. 

Twenty three years ago, the task force’s future military trend predictions were spot on. We are deterring and defending against multiple adversaries on multiple axes in complex competitions which threaten to explode into conflicts fought over extreme standoff ranges. Agile hypersonic weapons and stealthy, long-range and accurate weapons in the hypersonic family of missiles slash commanders’ available warning time and necessitate the evolution from simple Aegis-like decision systems to artificial intelligence assistance to the warfighter’s decision cycle. 

The nature of the battlefield determined, the task force imagined the Navy’s role in 2020. A quick review of the U.S. Navy’s latest maritime strategy paper, “Advantage at Sea,” reveals the DSB’s assessment of the Navy’s mission priorities in 2020 and beyond was remarkably similar.  You can read them at this link to “Advantage at Sea.”

Unfortunately, like many other future studies of the same era, the DSB’s geopolitical analysis of the “World from DoD’s Perspective — in the next 10 to 20, then 50 years” fell lethally short — wrong by either misestimation or misplaced optimism.

In 1998, the DSB predicted America would face “no plausible strategic competitor” in 10 to 20 years, beset instead by an increasing number of diffuse regional threats. This was dead wrong, even though the signs were predicted. The DSB noted the one-sided superiority of U.S. weapons systems will be reduced, that traditional alliances will become weaker and American overseas basing would decrease with more restrictions or national caveats on their use. DSB understood and reported technology diffusion would make our deterrence more challenging, especially as regional conflicts drew focus — all devastatingly true. Despite these trends, looking to the future from the heights of American power, we couldn’t conceive of a strategic adversary emerging before 2050.

While the DBS was dead wrong in its prediction of “no plausible strategic competitor” by 2020, the DSB was far from alone in banking on continued American global hegemony for another half century. Our inability as a nation to predict these threats 20 years ago suppressed our ability to act. America singularly focused on its fight against violent extremism across the Middle East and Africa to the exclusion of all else, assuming our competitive advantage would last. As we lay entrenched, other’s stole a march on us, filling the vacuums we left and grasping at the mantles we let droop.

So where do we go from here? Our strategic competitor out-paced our predictions by 30 years; and 20 years of counter-insurgency stymied our recognition and reaction. More than our future investments, our investment now must bias toward sea, air, space and the enabling signals domains. According to the Congressional Research Service, China will increase its fleet to 425 ships by 2030, with six carriers by the mid 2030s. The U.S. Navy will globally disperse only 300-305 ships, while the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) sits en masse on the WESTPAC doorstep. Even if estimations of the PLAN threat are overwrought, which they are not, a recapitalization of the fleet and bets on commercial maritime power still provide guaranteed economic improvement and a mobile deterrent hedge against any forward threat against American national interests.

Efforts like the $25 billion Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan must be accelerated to improve the maritime industrial base over a decade, not two. We need the capability and capacity to build, modernize and repair our ships now. Doing anything less will leave our Sailors and national security within a lethal margin for potential defeat from which there will be no second chances.

Let’s act now and restore the great reserve of sea power our nation needs, sooner than later!   

The DSB Report summary was published online in 1998 by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC).

Last week I was pleased to christen the Navy League of the United States’ new platform for naval thought and advocacy, the Center for Maritime Strategy. As first dean and plank owner, our voyage for sound maritime strategy begins with the commissioning crew and our institutional sea trials into 2022.

From the maritime logistics crisis to adversaries embracing Mahanian lessons forgotten by America, the urgency of a public embrace of sound maritime thought and is at a 30-year high. For that reason, Navy League National President David Reilly notes, “Policy development and advocacy are the main reasons for the Navy League’s existence, and we are stepping up our activity in these areas to meet the requirements of 21^st century maritime power.”

Dave and I are shoulder-to-shoulder in the center’s role reinvigorating the league’s position as Theodore Roosevelt’s own flagship for bringing critical maritime issues to the forefront. I am reminded of author Robert Kaplan’s assertion in his book, “Asia’s Cauldron,” that we are living in “a naval century.” The term naval implies not merely a conventional Navy’s importance, but sea power’s far greater military and commercial measure the Navy enables and protects. For this reason, the Center for Maritime Strategy will serve as an advocate for the full scope of American sea power: the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Military Sealift Command, Merchant Marine, our shipping industry at sea and ashore, our shipbuilders, and the industrial base that produces and maintains our ships across the military and commercial spectrum.

As Mahan notes, sea power is as much a measure of “the number following the sea” as those upon it plying and protecting 90% of our trade. To that end, the center will be focused on policy research and advocacy efforts across a broad spectrum of issues that impact the United States’ position as a maritime nation. Although not all encompassing, the long-term goals of the Center will be to Listen, Learn, Educate and Lead by:

• Cultivating understanding of the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine as contributors to American security and prosperity. This effort will be led by the Center for Maritime Strategy’s new cadre of full-time maritime policy experts and part-time adjuncts dedicated to policy research.
• Educating and engaging congressional and executive branch officials on the insights and recommendations derived from that research.
• Providing expert congressional testimony on relevant aspects of American maritime power. Actively participate in national security symposia, forums, and conversations.
• Creating and distributing general purpose summaries of research projects and other products for the education and support of Navy League members nationwide.
• Leveraging existing and emerging media channels to disseminate expertise and policy information in real-time, including expert commentary and advocacy on podcasts, television, radio, and the internet.

Our National Vice President and former CNO, Admiral John Richardson, hailed, “The Navy League’s Center for Maritime Strategy will be the go-to place for maritime strategic thought, policy recommendations and informed advocacy. I’m excited about this initiative to boost the Navy League’s citizen voice and help strengthen the United States as a maritime nation.”

I welcome the Navy League’s citizen voices to assist the center in navigating the way forward.  We look forward to collaboration and partnership with other like-minded think tanks and institutions that support our national security objectives and maritime commerce. Recounting the words of John Paul Jones, I invite you:

Sign on… and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me. 

To those who are not yet members of the Navy League, this invitation extends as well. Members receive an insider’s perspective on the Center for Maritime Strategy and up-to-the-moment information on our next Sea-Air-Space Exposition in April 2022. Last August’s Sea-Air-Space brought over 170 speakers and a record 17,000 participants to National Harbor, Maryland, for three days of seminars and discussions with active-duty members of the sea services, retirees, and members of the industrial base.

Speakers, moderators and participants tackled the tough issues we face in the maritime domain in order to identify problems, share information and find solutions. Next year’s exposition will be even better and the Center for Maritime Strategy will be at the forefront of the discussions. I hope to see you on the stage or in the audience — and together, we can regain our sea legs for this “naval century.”