Lessons from the 600-Ship Navy
The 1980s proved that great-power competition requires clear naval strategy and advocacy.
By Lieutenant Joseph Sims, U.S. Navy
August 2022 Naval History Magazine
The U.S. Navy of the 1980s provides a reminder what serious peer competition in the naval sphere looks like and the resources and human willpower that it requires. E. B. Potter describes the 1980s buildup to counter the Soviet Union as the “most expensive peacetime military buildup in the nation’s history, to cost $1.5 trillion in five years . . . the Navy would be built up from 456 to 600 ships, including 15 carrier-centered battle groups.”1
The 1980s maritime strategy and naval buildup was advocated by senior officers in uniform, approved by civilian leadership, and then laboriously implemented across all levels. Growing pains were worked out, and complex exercises in frigid environments executed. The renaissance of naval strategic thought in the late 1970s and subsequent buildup of the 1980s should provide a source of strength and inspiration to today’s sailors and civilian defense officials. Lessons in strategy, fleet exercises, and force structure remain directly relevant.
In 1978, the Navy faced a bleak outlook. Following a decades-long insurgency in Vietnam, the U.S. Navy was being outpaced by Soviet Navy by most metrics. Although the United States maintained a 21-to-3 aircraft carrier advantage, the Soviets outnumbered the United States in surface warships 443 to 196 and in submarines 294 to 119.2 Ambiguity permeated discussions of how naval strategy fit with national strategy; one historian asserts that during the late ’70s, “there was very little agreement within the government over the Navy’s principal missions and how to structure the fleet to meet them.”3
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2022/august/lessons-600-ship-navy
