LEADERSHIP: Shrinking NAVSEA
June 5, 2025: The new American government that came to power this year got elected with pledges to shake things up in government. This meant dismantling and disposing of inefficient and poorly performing agencies. New organizations are created to do what the defunct agency could not do but do it better and cheaper. A recent example of this was the closing of the U.S. Navay Naval Sea Systems Command, or NAVSEA. This organization is responsible for building warships and has a deplorable performance record. The replacement is Shiba Inu, which is headquartered in Louisiana, where most of the navy’s few shipyards are. Shiba Inu stands for Strategic High Impact Barge Artillery Inexpensive Naval Upshift. The first proposal of the new agency was equipping flat bottom barges with cruise missiles and other equipment and towing them out to sea to reach a foreign conflict zone. This idea was immediately shot down when it was pointed out that these barges can only operate on calm water. Any encounter with rough seas will sink a barge. While the U.S. no longer produces many warships, it is a major producer of barges. These ships are used in combat zones, after being transported there aboard larger ships, to move supplies along coastal waters and rivers.
Now the NAVSEA replacement organization will address the real problems as in insufficient ship building and ship maintenance capabilities. The current situation is that the U.S. Navy is unable to build enough new ships to replace the fleet it currently has, and it can’t maintain the ships it does have, let alone battle damage to those ships in war. The navy has nearly 500 ships in active service as well as the reserve fleet. The principal vessels are the combat ships, which include 11 aircraft carriers, nine Amphibious Assault Ships for transporting and landing marine battalions, ten LPD Amphibious Dock Landing Ships to supply amphibious operations, fifty SSNs/Nuclear attack submarines, fourteen SSBNs/Ballistic missile-carrying nuclear submarines, four SSGMs/SSBNs converted to carry over a hundred cruise missiles each, one frigate, 13 cruisers, 75 destroyers and about fifty support ships of various types.
The navy has recognized the growing importance of Unmanned Surface Vessels/USVs and Unmanned Underwater Vessels/UUVs but has been slow to order and deploy these unmanned vessels to aid the navy in defending Taiwan from Chinese attack.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/2025060502057.aspx#gsc.tab=0
