It’s the Navy’s World Now: Preserving the Right Army Force Structure in an Era of Seapower’s Strategic Primacy
Brandon Morgan | 01.12.21
The People’s Liberation Army Navy is rapidly growing in size, capability, and demonstrated aggression—with no apparent signs of slowing down. China’s continuous construction of Type 052D destroyers, Type 055 cruisers, a third aircraft carrier, and several more frigates—combined with increasingly aggressive maneuvers meant to intimidate its neighbors—increases the challenge for the US Navy to effectively respond in a geopolitical crisis with China in the Indo-Pacific. Meanwhile in the United States, a ballooning national debt, exacerbated by an uncontrolled pandemic, threatens to flatten, if not decrease, the US military budget in the years to come. With China as the 2018 National Defense Strategy’s pacing threat and the Indo-Pacific region as the corresponding theater of operations, analysts—and even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—have acknowledged that the Army must be prepared to adapt to a supporting role to the Navy’s strategic primacy in the years to come.
While the Army must rightly fight for its appropriate share of the defense budget to meet its mandate under the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the comments from the senior-most US military officer—an Army officer—must be taken seriously by planners. At a minimum, the Army would be wise to plan to meet its NDS-derived mission requirements with a reduced budget. With proper planning and analysis, the Army can determine where it can assume and mitigate risk toward its enduring strategy should it be forced to reduce its budget. Some observers conclude that in upcoming fiscal year budget battles, the Army and Air Force must be prepared to sacrifice up to $10 billion per year to support the Navy’s Battle Force 2045 plan calling for five hundred manned and unmanned vessels to combat rapidly growing Chinese naval capabilities. In a worst-case scenario in which DoD looks to the Army to provide a majority of that $10 billion annually, it would be prudent for the service to have a plan that preserves capability and the force structure that is most closely matched with the Army’s mission requirements. This analysis is based on such a scenario and assumes a requirement to find 75 percent of the funds necessary to implement Navy shipbuilding plans, or around $7.5 billion, in the Army budget.
https://mwi.usma.edu/its-the-navys-world-now-preserving-the-right-army-force-structure-in-an-era-of-seapowers-strategic-primacy/
