Meeting In Washington, U.S. Surface Navy Mulls Lost Mojo

As the U.S. Navy surface warfare community convenes in Washington for the Surface Navy Association’s 35^th National Symposium, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro will preside over a joyless gathering, helping America’s once-intrepid warriors contend with their dwindling relevance—due, in no small part, to the surface Navy’s overall lack of leadership, vision, and strategic drive.

Fortunes have really changed for the Navy’s surface warrior. Over the past thirty years, they have suffered a precipitous fall from grace. Not so long ago, America’s sailors were Aegis-enhanced warfighters, tending the mysterious electronic glue that held the modern battlefield together. As stewards of a complex melding of all domains—spaces that ranged up from the seafloor, into the air, and further up into space—the American surface warrior enjoyed life as the sea’s apex predator (or at least, when submarines weren’t around).

That has all changed. Today, U.S. Navy dominance at sea is being contested like never before. Other Navies are better looking, better funded, and imbued with a strategic vision the U.S. Navy cannot seem to match.

Functionally, commanders of the Navy’s surface ships struggle to even know where they are in space and time, and in a GPS-denied environment, at a time when war is a matter of inches, they’ll bob about, looking as lost as new Army Lieutenants when they are deprived cell phones on the land navigation course.

At the top, the Navy’s image-obsessed command cadre struggle to keep fuel depots from leaking, ships from burning or crashing, and spend far too much of their time issuing gag orders to Public Affairs Officers or silencing critics who have the Service’s best interests at bear.

Put bluntly, America’s Surface Navy has lost the bubble.

Sharks Are Circling

The Pentagon is not waiting for the Navy to figure it out.

As the Navy struggles to get its new aircraft carrier to work, the Air Force is demonstrating how it will defend the maritime. Washington is adrift in studies, detailing how—after the U.S. Navy is sunk—Air Force QUICKSINK bombs are set to slaughter low-tech swarm vessels. For harder-to-hit platforms, the Air Force wasted no time in integrating the AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile into their heavy bomber fleet and in helping to sell the missile to other friendly Air Forces.

While the Navy initially celebrated new relevance with a three-party agreement between Australia, United Kingdom, and the U.S. (AUKUS) to explore the potential for helping Australia to acquire nuclear submarines, the Navy doesn’t want to do the hard work of actually getting something out there. The Air Force has raced into the vacuum, proposing that Australia join in purchasing the B-21 Raider, America’s new stealth bomber.

Not to be outdone, the U.S. Army—after fighting and winning little in Iraq and Afghanistan—is quietly cleaning the Navy’s clock. With the Army enjoying a long-term lock on Pentagon leadership, the Navy struggled to keep the Army from raiding Navy’s coffers. And with a huge land-war playing out in Europe, the Navy, again, is being forced to sit on the sidelines, staring hopefully at Taiwan—and passively watching the Marine Corps—the Navy’s Army—tear itself into bits over a new warfighting strategy that irks longstanding shipbuilding interests.

Far above the seas, the new Space Force is jumping right into the thick of things, surfing a wave of private-sector innovation and racing to—as the old adage goes—hold the high ground.

Even the lowly Coast Guard—with a tiny, $13 billion-dollar budget—is showing more life and relevance than America’s vast surface fleet.

What Does The Navy Need?

The Navy desperately needs a mission that extends beyond wanting to be warfighters in a war that it cannot fight. It needs to actively assume the hard and messy missions that mix diplomacy with weapons of war. It needs to show up, looking good, at boring naval reviews. It needs to look up from trying to manage floating robots and spend more time doing the mundane business of stopping drug dealers and checking fishing boats.

But the organization also must stop lying to itself. The Navy is becoming a fringe service because it has, for over a generation, been arrogant in supremacy, lazy in tech development, unaccountable for operational failures, and simply unwilling to do the dirty non-warfighting work needed to shape their budget and their battlefield. In essence, to recover it’s lost mojo, the Navy needs new leadership who have the vision, guts and drive to take the Navy in a new direction.