Misaligned by Design: Structuring the U.S. Navy Post-Cold War
By Benjamin E. Mainardi
February 25, 2023
Among the most clamorous debates in the national security community is that surrounding the U.S. Navy’s force structure and shipbuilding plans. Not without reason, critics from both sides of the aisle in Congress, think tankers, and members of the Administration have levied many charges against the Navy’s future force planning. Certainly, the Navy itself has muddied the waters with multiple, overlapping force structure goals.
To a degree, one can point to the turmoil of the previous administration and the generally tepid perspective of the current as hampering the establishment of a coherent, long-term plan for naval development. The problem, however, has much deeper roots, dating back at least to the end of the Cold War. Successive presidential administrations, congress, and navy staffs since 1991 have presided over continued naval downsizing whilst attempting to maintain the same scale of deployments and missions the force had before – in some cases, more.
Indeed, today the structure of the Navy is fundamentally misaligned with its missions. Quite simply, there are not enough ships to fulfill them. But just what are those missions and how did they evolve beyond the Navy’s means?
Missions of the Navy
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/02/25/misaligned_by_design_structuring_the_us_navy_post-cold_war_883934.html
