The world’s largest navy has spent the last few years feeling like it was being put in check.
China and Russia have heavily invested in anti-access technologies aimed at holding its main force-projection assets — aircraft carriers — at risk. Now the U.S. Navy and the upper ranks of the military are preparing to take back control of the game board, and it’s
looking to unmanned technologies to help.
The
U.S. surface fleet has for the past few years sought to flip the script on actors such as China. The fleet aimed to move from a role of simply defending the carrier to going on the offensive.
The goal was to spread out over a wide area to strain Chinese intelligence and reconnaissance assets and thereby exercise a degree of sea control in places such as the South and East China seas that China seeks to deny with long-range, anti-ship missiles and an ever-growing fleet.
Initially, the push was to add big surface combatants to hold down the Navy’s hefty commitments for peacetime presence while maintaining enough firepower to both defend themselves and project power in an anti-access environment.
But that’s changing.
The Navy plans to spend this year taking the first few steps into a markedly different future, which, if it comes to pass, will upend how the fleet has fought since the Cold War. And it all starts with something that might seem counterintuitive: It’s looking to get smaller.