ARLINGTON, Va. — Nonessential port visits by U.S. Navy ships
have been cancelled and Sailors’ health aboard the nuclear deterrent submarine
force is being closely monitored, top officials said in the latest report on
combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said he believed “every port visit, with the exception of ships that need to pull in for maintenance or resupply,” had been cancelled. He was sure with “high certainty” that all ships in the Pacific Ocean were no longer making scheduled port calls and crews of ships that do make stops would be confined to the pier area while in port.

See: Ship Commissionings on Track, But Ceremonies Delayed

In a March 24 press briefing, Gilday and acting Navy Secretary
Thomas Modly announced that three Sailors deployed in the Pacific aboard the
aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt were diagnosed with COVID-19 and were
being evacuated from the carrier. It was the first appearance of the novel
coronavirus on a deployed ship at sea, Modly said, adding that all those who encountered
the three sick individuals were being quarantined aboard the Roosevelt. There
were no plans to recall the carrier or any other deployed ship, Gilday said.

“We have not missed any operational commitment in the Navy
at this time,” he said, adding that the impact to force readiness has been low
“but that’s not to say that this couldn’t spike at any given time. We continue
to watch this very closely in every ship, squadron and submarine.”

Gilday said all crews of the ballistic missile submarine
force — which forms the maritime leg of the nuclear triad of submarines,
bombers and ground-based missiles — undergo enhanced medical screenings and
14-day isolation before beginning training or deployment aboard a sub. “We have
not seen a single case yet” of COVID-19 within the submarine force, Gilday
said.

Elsewhere, two Navy hospital ships were being readied to
ease the burden on health care workers and institutions in two cities hard-hit
by the coronavirus pandemic, Los Angeles and New York, Modly said.

The hospital ship USNS Mercy, which is based in San Diego, was
doing some initial training off the coast of California and would reach Los
Angeles “within the next few days,” he said, adding that Mercy would need
another 24 hours after arriving in L.A. “to prepare for how she’ll receive
patients” before the sick are brought aboard. The USNS Comfort, based in
Norfolk, Virginia, tasked with aiding New York City’s medical services squeezed
by the surge of COVID-19 cases, is still preparing for its mission, Modly said.

Both ships will serve as referral hospitals for patients not
infected with the coronavirus to allow local medical services to focus on those
who are, Modly stressed. “They’re there to handle the overflow of acute trauma
cases and other urgent needs, and they will not be handling pediatric or OB-GYN
cases,” the acting Navy secretary said.

Because of the pandemic, the Navy has postponed, until 2021,
this summer’s Large-Scale Exercise 2020, the first of a planned return to
annual large exercises involving several strike groups. Modly said no decision has
been made yet on scrubbing Hawaii-based Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), the world’s
largest international maritime exercise that runs every two years in June and
July. 

Both Modly and Gilday said they expect COVID-19 shutdowns
will challenge work tempo at Navy and private shipyards. While the work of the
private shipyards is essential in producing and repairing ships “we are also
concerned about the health of their people. We don’t want them putting them at
risk, either,” Modly said, noting Navy officials were talking with company executives
daily.

Meanwhile, large prime contractors were, in effect, creating
task forces to monitor the supply chains “to keep all of those production lines
running and to see where we might be incurring risk out through, 2021, so that
we can then prioritize what type of work we need to do,” Gilday said.

ARLINGTON, Va. — In the first case of COVID-19 detected aboard
a U.S. Navy ship at sea, three people quarantined with the coronavirus aboard
the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Pacific Ocean have been evacuated for further
treatment, acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly announced.

“These are our first three cases of COVID-19 on a ship
that’s deployed,” Modly told a Pentagon press briefing on March 24. “We’ve
identified all those folks they’ve had contact with, and we’re quarantining
them as well,” he added.

To date, 86 cases of COVID-19 have been detected among people
connected with the Navy, including 57 uniformed personnel, 13 civilian
employees, 11 dependents and five contractors, Modly said.

The Roosevelt left its last port of call, Da Nang, Vietnam,
15 days ago and has been self-quarantined at sea for 14 days, the incubation
period of the virus, a procedure required of all Navy ships at sea since the
disease began to spread, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said. He
said it would be difficult to definitively link the outbreak on the Roosevelt
to the port visit in Vietnam.

“We’ve had aircraft flying to and from the ship, so we just
don’t want to say it was that particular port visit,” Gilday noted, adding that
enhanced medical screening of the crew was done after leaving port.

The CNO said the three Sailors who tested positive for
COVID-19 were not showing symptoms that would necessarily require
hospitalization, only an elevated body temperature and body aches. However,
leaders moved quickly to isolate them and evacuate them by aircraft to a Defense
Department hospital in the Pacific region, which Gilday declined to identify.

“We’ve begun to take a look inside the ship, how we can
isolate and contain as best we can,” Gilday said, adding there is testing
capability on the ship, including the capacity to test for non-COVID but
influenza-related incidents.

The CNO said Navy officials are working with the Roosevelt’s
commander to assess the situation both medically and in terms of the carrier’s
mission. “We’re taking this day-by-day, and we’re being very deliberate how we
do it,” Gilday said. “We are not at a position right now to say we have to pull
that ship in — or to take that ship off the front line.”

Given the busy comings and goings on an aircraft carrier,
including helicopters delivering supplies and personnel, Gilday was asked if
the Navy is planning any change in procedure for other deployed carriers. He
said there were no specifics yet but noted that after every COVID-19 case is
detected, practices and procedures are examined to determine “the dos and the
don’ts we can quickly promulgate fleetwide.”

WASHINGTON — One of the ways to counter rivals in the Great
Power Competition is to impose costs on a potential adversary. An effective way
to do that is with a big, unmanned inflatable boat, according to a top Marine
Corps commander.

The Marines are looking to reduce their exposure to
increased long-range precision fire with unmanned systems in the air, on land
and sea. In addition to accomplishing a mission without exposing troops to
danger, unmanned systems are also seen as a way to flood an adversary’s
decision-making and targeting processes with an array of low signature,
affordable and risk-worthy platforms, according to written testimony prepared
for a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing March 11.

Asked by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) to explain how the
Corps is leveraging unmanned systems to  upset
adversaries’ decision-making, Lt. Gen. Eric Smith cited the Long Range Unmanned
Surface Vessel (LRUSV), a 33-foot long rigid hulled inflatable boat that can
travel far to enemy littorals and unleash a swarm of small aerial drones.

Smith, the deputy commandant for Combat Development and
Integration, said the LRUSV had been tested at the annual Advanced Technology
Exercise last July. The autonomous boat traveled down the Inland Waterway from
Norfolk, Virginia, to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, about 200 miles, with no
one aboard, controlled from Norfolk. On arrival, the LRUSV launched a swarm of
small, expendable Raytheon Coyote drones that could either attack or observe
the target.

“That’s the kind of capability that we will provide to those forces forward,” Smith said, adding that LRUSV and other lighter, more lethal, resilient capabilities like the Remotely Operated Ground Unit Expeditionary (ROGUE) naval strike missile-firing vehicle, would be transported to overseas exercises in 40-foot long shipping containers.

“That complicates an adversary’s calculus, because if you don’t know what’s in that, it could be weights for a weight room or a lethal strike missile,” Smith said. As the Marines and their weaponry are dispersed in support of distributed maritime operations, “You impose an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance tax on an adversary,” he added.

WASHINGTON — In addition to imposing immediate travel
restrictions on personnel and forcing U.S. Navy ships at sea to self-quarantine
between visits to foreign ports, the worldwide coronavirus outbreak could be an
“impacting element” on acquisition and sustainment programs, a Department of
the Navy official said.

“We’ve been working for a long time on supply chain
integrity, and so [the virus outbreak] plays into the supply chain, understanding
our supply lines where we’ve got fragility, [and] planning forward on that,”
James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition,
told the readiness subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee on March
12.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), the readiness subcommittee chairman,
used his first question at the hearing on Navy and U.S. Marine Corps readiness not
about destroyers or shipyards but on how the sea services are dealing with the
coronavirus outbreak, which the World Health Organization on March 11 designated
as a pandemic.

Marine Corps Deputy Commandant Gen. Gary Thomas said the
Corps is reviewing disease containment plans, starting to restrict large
gatherings, implementing measures to screen and quarantine Marines when
necessary, and screening personnel in unique places “in the sense that they
bring people from all over the country, for example entry level training.”

Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Robert Burke said the Navy’s
top priority is the “well-being of our Sailors and their family members.”
He added that the Navy, along with the other armed services, is providing
support to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), being coordinated by U.S. Northern Command.

The Navy is following CDC guidance regarding minimum requirements with implementation “above and beyond those requirements as necessary to meet the unique needs of the service,” Burke said.

Ships at sea are on self-quarantine for 14 days between every port departure and arrival and are monitoring their crew for symptoms of the virus. The at-sea quarantines, first initiated in the Pacific, are now in force worldwide, Burke said. “We are very sensitive to the fact that we’re moving from place to place rapidly. We do not want to be the source of transmission of the virus,” he added.

WASHINGTON – Unlike the South China Sea and other contested
areas, the U.S. Navy does not have the
capability to conduct freedom-of-the-seas operations in the icebound waters of
the Arctic, a key Pentagon official conceded.

With only one heavy and one medium icebreaker and no Navy
ships with hulls hardened against ice, “We do have limitations in the Arctic
right now,” James H. Anderson, assistant secretary of defense for  strategy, plans and capabilities, told a readiness
subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 3 during a hearing
on U.S. military readiness in the Arctic.

The subcommittee chairman, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska),
said he doubted the Navy could today follow the route across the Arctic that
Allied supply convoys took to the Soviet Union in World War II. Sullivan noted
that previous Defense Department Arctic strategies called for protecting “our
sovereign territory, our sea lanes through Freedom of Navigation operations
(FONOPS).”

The drastic decline of sea ice in the Arctic has opened sea
lanes across the top of the world, sparking territorial disputes. Russia,
Norway, Canada and the United States all have boosted their military presence
in the Arctic at a rate not seen since the Cold War.

Last year, Russia completed a large new base at Alexandra
Island in the Franz Josef Land archipelago, while reopening and refitting seven
former Soviet bases within the Arctic Circle. Russia also has modernized its
powerful Northern Fleet. In response, the U.S. has reconstituted the 2nd Fleet,
adding the North Pole to that fleet’s area of responsibility. Last October, a
U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman, entered Arctic waters for the
first time since 1991.

Sullivan said the Navy has assured him that U.S. submarines
are all over the Arctic, but “you can’t see a sub. The whole point of a FONOP
is to demonstrate presence.”

When pressed at the hearing about conducting FONOPS in the
large stretches of the Arctic still covered by ice, Anderson said the Navy had
determined that to exercise its Arctic strategy, “they do not have a
requirement for ice-hardened ships.”

In addition to a deficit of ice-hardened hulls, Sullivan said
the U.S. lacks a strategic port on — or even near — the Arctic Ocean that could
handle repairs or refueling of large Navy or even U.S. Coast Guard vessels.

“Russia has close to a dozen or two dozen ports,” he said,
noting the closest viable port at Anchorage or Dutch Harbor, Alaska, was 1,000
nautical miles or more from Arctic waters. In addition to ports and military
bases, Russian President Vladimir Putin has 54 icebreakers, Sullivan said. “He’s
got all the cards.”

Anderson, who is performing the duties of deputy
undersecretary of defense for policy, for which he is expected to be nominated
by President Trump, said the Pentagon, under the National Defense Authorization
Act for fiscal year 2020, is assessing infrastructure needs in the Arctic to
support operational flexibility and power projection. That includes an Army
Corps of Engineers study of Nome as a possible large ship harbor. A draft
report is expected in December, Anderson said.

WASHINGTON —
Lawmakers challenged U.S. Navy leaders at a fiscal year 2021 budget hearing on how
long it will take to acquire a 355-ship fleet, how many vessels will be
unmanned and why more ships of the fleet aren’t submarines.

Acting Navy
Secretary Thomas B. Modly, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday and Commandant
of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger acknowledged the Navy Department’s
relatively flat budget request of $207.1 billion — $161 billion for the Navy
and $46 billion for the Marines — had forced hard choices in procurement and
end strength.

The budget
request slows the trajectory toward a fleet of 355 or more ships, but “it does
not arrest” that goal, Modly told the House Armed Services Committee on Feb.
27, offering his personal assurance that the Navy is “deeply committed” to
building a larger, more capable, more distributed force within a time frame of
no more than 10 years.

Both the
committee chairman, Rep.  Adam Smith
(D-Wash.), and the ranking member, Rep. Mach Thornberry (R-Texas), said they are
more interested in ships’ capabilities than numbers. “The 355 number kind of
offends me,” Smith added. “You know, you can have 355 rowboats, theoretically,
and you would have 355 ships.” Rep. Robert Wittman (R-Va.) called getting to
355 ships by 2030 “an impossible task based on the current pace.”

Modly
disagreed, but he said two things are required for the goal to become reality:
a reasonable plan and the political will. Modly’s plan starts with finding ways
to wring between $5 billion and $8 billion per year out of the existing Navy budget,
and he’s conducting a 45-day stem-to-stern review to find outdated or
unnecessary expenses for elimination. He said he would do what he could to stir
political will.

Several
lawmakers were concerned about the size and numbers planned for air, surface
and underwater unmanned vehicles.

“We have to
really accelerate our investment in unmanned platforms,” Modly said, explaining
why the Navy is seeking funding for the serial production of a large unmanned
surface vessel before prototyping and testing are complete. It would be hard to
experiment with concepts to understand how the technology will work with others
without an existing platform, he said.

Regarding
lethal unmanned aircraft, Berger said he didn’t yet know how they would operate
in cooperation with manned aircraft. He did know “we have got to move faster
than we have in the past three or four years,” he said. “We can cover a lot
more ground if it is a mix of manned and unmanned. It is also more survivable,”
by complicating targeting for enemy air defense systems, Berger said.

Rep. Joe
Courtney (D-Conn.), chairman of the House Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee,
complained about the Defense Department’s last-minute reduction in shipbuilding
accounts that led to the elimination of one of two planned Virginia-class
attack submarines from the proposed 2021 budget.

Courtney
noted that Gilday’s predecessor as CNO, Adm. John Richardson, said there was no
greater need in warfighting requirement and current inventory than the attack
submarine. With older subs scheduled to retire in coming years, the Navy will
be down to 42 attack boats by 2028. Modly said he wasn’t part of the discussion
about shifting shipbuilding money, but the elimination wasn’t helpful “because
it takes a ship out of a plan that we are driving toward.”

Gilday said
his first objective is to fully fund the new Columbia-class ballistic missile sub.
Noting the Ohio-class subs, “the nuclear seaborne deterrent that this nation
depends upon” is aging out. “We need to deliver Columbia on time for its first
patrol in 2031,” he said.

ARLINGTON,
Va. — The U.S. Coast Guard is expanding its Charleston, South Carolina, station
into a major Atlantic base and home to its newest class of cutters.

In addition
to five 418-foot national security cutters, the Coast Guard’s largest and
newest sea-going patrol vessels, Charleston will be the homeport for a
complement of yet to be built offshore patrol cutters.

“Charleston
is a first stop to nationwide investment in our service, our facilities and our
people,” Commandant Adm. Karl Schultz said in his State of the Coast Guard
address, which was live streamed from Charleston on Feb. 20.

Over the
next five years the Coast Guard plans to consolidate its campus along one
waterfront, starting with $140 million to begin upgrading shoreside facilities.
The improvements could turn Charleston into one of the nation’s largest
concentrations of Coast Guard assets and people. The port of Charleston is experiencing
unprecedented change, Schultz said, noting that by 2021, Charleston will have
the deepest harbor on the East Coast.

However, 40%
of Coast Guard buildings around the country are over 50 years old, leading to a
$2 billion backlog of facility repairs for mold, leaky roofs, flooding and
outdated building standards. The Coast Guard’s fiscal year 2021 budget request
is $12.3 billion, $77 million more than the $12.2 billion approved last
year.

There are
also problems with the agency’s 1990s-era computer hardware and software.
“Years of investment tradeoffs have brought our information technology to the
brink of catastrophic failure,” Schultz said. Over the summer, more than 95
vital systems went off-line for several days due to a single server malfunction.

To address information
technology issues, Schultz released the Coast Guard’s Tech Revolution Road Map
for digital modernization. Upgrades are planned over the next three years,
starting with increasing Coast Guard external internet speeds and doubling
connectivity for major cutters in 2020.

Communication
is also a problem in the Arctic, Schultz noted. The medium icebreaker Healy is
without reliable communications for a large part of its multimonth patrol above
the Arctic Circle. Last month the harsh environment in Alaska knocked out
communications equipment.

“As commandant, I need my operational commanders to be able to communicate with every Coast Guard asset — anytime, anywhere,” Schultz said. “We are exploring new satellite communications capabilities with the Department of Defense and industry, as well as renewing land-based communications capabilities in Alaska.” Arctic communications, however, are a “whole-of-government” issue, he said, adding “we must work together to solve our communication blackout in the Arctic now.”

The first of the 360-foot offshore patrol cutters, the Argus, is under construction with delivery planned in 2022. The OPC program calls for 25 hulls, ultimately making up almost 70% of the Coast Guard’s offshore presence.

They will replace the service’s 210-foot medium-endurance cutters and become “the backbone of our modernized fleet,” Schultz said. They will also play a critical role in the Coast Guard’s campaign against narcotics trafficking in the Western Hemisphere.

In a move to expand maritime domain awareness across the Pacific Ocean, the service is partnering with Global Fishing Watch, an international, no-profit big data technology platform that leverages satellite data to track global commercial fishing activity.

WASHINGTON — Digital modernization of U.S. Navy back-office
operations is a largely overlooked activity that can improve readiness, cut
costs and deliver educational content and training to personnel, acting Navy Secretary
Thomas B. Modly said on Feb. 21.

Participating in a panel discussion with U.S. Army Secretary
Ryan McCarthy and U.S. Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, Modly and the others were asked what
technologies were underappreciated or promised unexpected benefits.

The Army secretary cited long-range precision fires. The Air
Force secretary mentioned GPS and the other existing technologies in space that
she noted were “ubiquitous but invisible.” Modly singled out digitalization for
opening up “huge opportunities to improve our networks and how we do business
through better use of technology.”

The Department of the Navy is at least 15 years behind the
private sector in the ability “to understand where things are in our inventory
system,” Modly said. As an example, he cited an audit conducted in 2019 that
found a warehouse in Florida containing aircraft parts worth $150 million.

“We didn’t know we had the parts. We didn’t know we had the
warehouse,” he said. A week after the parts were input into the Navy’s
inventory system, there were $20 million in requisitions for those parts “for
aircraft that were down for [lack of] parts we didn’t know we had,” Modly said.

During discussion of other topics, Modly said he didn’t
think the Navy Department budget top line — or the Defense Department’s — was
likely to grow much soon. To contend with the pressures of increasing the size
of the surface force to 355 ships and improving readiness, Modly said leaders
will need to look internally to find savings “in the way we traditionally do
things” to fund the priorities outlined in the National Defense Strategy.

He said some “North Stars” point the way in the recently completed Integrated Naval Force Structure Assessment, which has not been made public. Additionally, Modly has ordered a stem-to-stern review to find savings to fill the budget gap. If 5% to 6% of the $207 billion Navy budget can be freed up, he said, “we can start moving down the path” to a 355-ship-plus Navy in the next 10 years. All three secretaries said they were cooperating with each other and industry on the development of hypersonic weapons.

However, Modly noted that moving such new technology to production is a “big, big leap.” He added that the military needs to send strong signals to industry about where it is headed. “But a lot of this technology is really new, so we have to make sure it works before we jump too far.”

ARLINGTON, Va. — The “Great Power Competition” with Russia
and China isn’t limited to winning allies in geostrategic flash points or
sailing through contested areas to promote freedom of the seas, according to
the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Near-peer adversaries “are actively exploiting other
nations’ natural resources, including fish stocks. In many cases [they are]
challenging the sovereignty of smaller or less-developed nations,” Adm. Karl
Schultz said in his annual State of the Coast Guard address, live-streamed Feb.
20 from Charleston, South Carolina.

Schultz identified China, which has the world’s largest
distant water fishing fleet, as “one of the worst predatory fishing offenders,”
engaging in Illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing (IUU). The problem goes
beyond conservation and sustainability, he said — “This is a national security
challenge warranting a clear response.”

An essential protein source for more than 40% the world’s
population, fish stocks are critical to the sovereignty and economic security
of many nations. The most conservative estimates put the annual loss to the global
economy from IUU fishing at more than $23 billion.

The Coast Guard could be a global leader in combatting IUU
fishing through international cooperation and targeted operations, Schultz
said, adding that the agency was developing a progressive IUU Strategic
Outlook, planned for release in late summer.

The United States already holds 16 counter-IUU fishing
bilateral agreements in the Pacific and West Africa. “And we are pursuing
additional agreements to help us push back against the destructive fishing
practices that are leaving vast expanses of the ocean and seabed in ruins,” he
said.

Nowhere is this more important than the Indo-Pacific, the
epicenter of global maritime trade and geostrategic influence, Schultz said.
Many Pacific Island countries — even U.S. island territories — lack the
capability to fully police their sovereign waters. Without mentioning any
country by name, Schultz said he was most concerned by a “coercive state’s
influence operations, intentions to construct dual-use infrastructure projects
and implied military threats to persuade other states to heed their strategic
agenda.”

To strengthen the community of island nations in Oceania,
the Coast Guard will continue Operation AIGA, which last year deployed an oceangoing
tender and a fast-response cutter (FRC) to Samoa and American Samoa, where they
conducted exercises with ships from the Royal Australian and Royal New Zealand
navies. By year’s end, delivery is expected of the first two, 154-foot FRCs to
be homeported in Guam.

WASHINGTON — To meet the pressing needs of the National
Defense Strategy (NDS), the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are discarding development
measures that have slowed the production of new amphibious ships and other
platforms, Marine Commandant Gen. David H. Berger said.

“We’re not going to do that,” Berger said of past procedures where “the Navy and Marine Corps figure out what we might need, then we get with industry, then we go back and forth for a couple of years.”

Instead, he told a Feb. 11 congressional forum on amphibious
warships, “We have to accelerate production now. We cannot wait four or five
years to begin.” The requirements evaluation process is already underway, and
it is teamed with industry to determine what is in the realm of possibility,
Berger added.

When he became commandant in July, Berger said his top
priority is designing a force that could meet the threat of strategic competitors
like China, which is outlined in the NDS. His Commandant’s Planning
Guidance states that Marines will be trained and equipped as a naval
expeditionary force-in-readiness, prepared to operate inside actively contested
maritime spaces in support of fleet operations. His plan calls for both force
structure and operational changes, including dispersing smaller and highly
mobile Marine expeditionary units — carried by smaller, cheaper and more
numerous surface vessels — that can move their base of operations within 48 to
72 hours.

“The capability, the lethality of a forward Navy/Marine
Corps team is the unique contribution that we have. This is what amphibious
forces bring — the ability, at the times and place of your choosing, to put
your forces where you want to, when you want to,” Berger told the Capitol Hill gathering,
which was sponsored by the Amphibious Warship Industrial Base Coalition.

In his opening remarks at the forum, retired Navy Rear Adm.
Sam Perez, the coalition’s chairman, noted that more than 70 companies in 44
states and more than 250 congressional districts provide parts worth more than
$1.4 billion for the construction of amphibious warships.

Two long-term studies — to determine how many and what kind
of ships the Navy will need in the next five to 15 years and what kind of
Marines and Sailors should man them — will be released soon, Berger said. A Force
Structure Assessment (FSA) conducted by the Navy in 2016 called for a 355-ship
fleet. A new FSA, known as the Integrated Naval FSA (INFSA), to include the new
integration of Navy and Marine Corps personnel and assets, is expected to
initiate a once-in-a-generation change in the Navy’s mix of ships. Berger said the
Corps’ work on the INFSA is done, and he’s waiting for Defense Secretary Mark
Esper and Deputy Secretary David Norquist to complete their review.

In addition to the INFSA, the Marines have conducted their own Force Design Assessment to determine the size and structure of Marine end strength. That document also is awaiting review by Esper and acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly. In his commandant’s guidance, Berger said he was prepared to reduce force structure in exchange for more modernization funding. The Department of the Navy’s fiscal 2021 budget, released Feb. 10, called for reducing the size of the Marine Corps by 2,100 to 184,100 active-duty personnel.

“We’re not getting smaller for smaller’s sake,” Berger told reporters after his speech to the amphibious group. “We need resources, and when we shrink a little bit in structure, we’re going to take that money and pour it into the Marine Corps.”