Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority

Great Satan's Navy unleashed a spirited PDF'ing bit about ensuring America has the brain power will power and fire power to keep way ahead of rapidly changing threats from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and global terrorists, control freaks and general purpose jerks.

"A Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority" (PdF)

Russia and China had a growing arsenal of high-end weapons, many of which were focused on American vulnerabilities. Indeed, both cats are also engaging in "coercion and competition below the traditional thresholds of high-end conflict," while exploiting "the weakness of accepted norms in space, cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum."

Here's a few money shots:

I. Maintain and modernize the undersea leg of the strategic deterrent triad. This is foundational to our survival as a nation.

II. In partnership with the Marine Corps, develop concepts and capabilities to provide more options to national leaders, from non-conflict competition to high-end combat at sea. Operations short of conflict should be designed to contain and control escalation on terms favorable to the U.S. Combat at sea must address “blue-water” scenarios far from land and power projection ashore in a highly “informationalized” and contested environment. 

 All scenarios must address the threat of long-range precision strike. Test and refine concepts through focused wargaming, modeling, and simulations. Validate these concepts through fleet exercises, unit training and certification.

III. Further advance and ingrain information warfare. Expand the Electromagnetic Maneuver Warfare concept to encompass all of information warfare, to include space and cyberspace.

IV. To better meet today’s force demands, explore alternative fleet designs, including kinetic and non-kinetic payloads and both manned and unmanned systems. This effort will include exploring new naval platforms and formations – again in a highly “informationalized” environment – to meet combatant commander needs.

V. Examine the organization of United States Fleet Forces Command, Commander Pacific Fleet and their subordinate commands to better support clearly defining operational and warfighting demands and then to generate ready forces to meet those demands.

VI. Examine OPNAV organization to rationalize our headquarters in support of warfighting requirements.