Seth Cropsey
The U.S.-led naval operation in the Red Sea may be strategically listless but, operationally, the U.S. Navy has demonstrated its combat skill. American sailors have defended themselves and merchant shipping against a range of anti-ship threats, including missiles, drones and fast boats.
The issue, however, is sustainment. The Middle East crisis has placed extreme stress on the fleet, particularly its personnel. As China menaces Taiwan, Russia savages Ukraine, and the Middle East threatens to slide into cataclysm, the U.S. must expand its surface fleet or risk being overstressed.
The Surface Navy is the unsung linchpin of American grand strategy. Supercarriers can deliver as much combat power as national air forces; nuclear-powered attack submarines can evade hostile reconnaissance, conduct intelligence activities, and penetrate enemy strike networks as a premier war-fighting tool. And the guided missile submarines of the “Silent Service,” armed with 154 land-attack cruise missiles, are the best-armed conventional assets in the world.
However, the surface fleet ties everything together. Absent its complement of surface combatants, the carrier is vulnerable to missile attack. Submarines can penetrate enemy defenses but cannot provide the presence of surface warships — nor can they, apart from the heavily-armed Ohio-class guided missile submarines (SSGNs) field the same number of strike implements, let alone organic air defenses.
The past four decades have seen a decline in surface fleet numbers and overall fleet size. In 1987, the Navy had nearly 600 ships, including 36 cruisers, 69 destroyers and 115 frigates, the latter crucial for escort and presence operations akin to the ongoing Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea and to executing strikes against the Houthi’s since last week. This number contracted to the mid-280s from 2005 onward, with a 279-ship nadir in 2009.
The fleet has expanded since then to 299 ships, but the surface fleet in particular has stagnated. The U.S. added two dozen-plus large surface combatants between 2005 and today, almost all Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. But there are no longer small surface combatants, the Perry-class frigates that conducted Operation Earnest Will in the 1980s having been retired or sold. Their replacement, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), has notable flaws, including high cost and limited armament; a victim of the strategic listlessness that characterized the 2000s, the LCS is being withdrawn from service — some, after just five years.
The result is increasing operations for the most flexible, visible elements of the fleet, its large surface combatants and carriers. The Navy’s 11 supercarriers deploy in nine carrier strike groups (CSGs), with the other two in various states of overhaul or testing. The George Washington returned to the fleet after a five-year overhaul in May 2023 and is undergoing sea trials; the second Ford-class carrier, the John F Kennedy, will not reach the fleet until 2025. Of the remaining nine strike groups, eight are based in the U.S.; the ninth, the Reagan, is home-ported in Japan.
Four strike groups are currently deployed: the Ford on an extended deployment in the Mediterranean, the Eisenhower in the Red Sea, the Vinson and Reagan in the Indo-Pacific. With two carriers under overhaul or on sea trials at any given time, to have four of the remaining nine underway places extreme stress on the fleet.
It is a testament to the surface combatant force in particular that such deployments can be sustained. The surface fleet has faced several daunting operational issues since the 2000s, including multiple collisions caused by manpower constraints and limited training, rusting hulls due to insufficient maintenance, and a high operational tempo that has caused personnel attrition. The fact it has preserved U.S. presence and conducted combat operations in the Middle East despite a decade of stress is a testament to the underlying quality of the Arleigh Burke destroyers and their crews.
However, the U.S. remains at a peacetime operational tempo, despite the extended deployments to the Mediterranean and limited combat operations in the Red Sea. The U.S. is not actively at war in the Med, while Ukraine’s combat skill — despite limited Western support — has crippled Russia’s ability to project power and will limit Russia’s threat in the next two to five years, perhaps longer if Ukraine is integrated into the U.S.-led European defense system.
Yet war is probable in the Middle East. U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria have been attacked more than 100 times since Oct. 7; Yemen’s Houthis remain a threat to Red Sea shipping and may require a larger military response from Washington. Iran has sparked the current crisis to stress the U.S. position in the Mideast, with the hope of ejecting it from the region, destroying Israel, and achieving Islamic dominance.
The U.S. must resist this campaign or risk unravelling its broader Eurasian position. Iran and its allies are not so much deterred as biding their time, hoping to spark a rupture between the U.S. and Israel that presents a strategic opportunity for expansion. A persistent U.S. presence is therefore needed not simply for deterrence but for combat.
Meanwhile, China menaces Taiwan, with President Xi Jinping again declaring that Beijing will “reunify” it with the mainland. This as China is conducting the world’s largest military buildup since the 1930s, with a distinct air-naval element that will enable an amphibious assault on Taiwan, if not combat farther into the Pacific.
Although Russia is highly unlikely to defeat Ukraine conventionally, poor political choices and a lack of Western resolve may enable a compromise peace that prevents the solidification of the Western defense system with Ukraine incorporated into it, allowing Russia to pose a major conventional threat by the late 2020s. All this speaks to the demand for a larger U.S. military in general. But the surface fleet is the most stressed part of the force, with almost no margin for error.
If conflict begins in the Indo-Pacific, there is a serious possibility that the combination of combat attrition and secondary crises will rapidly erode our surface fleet, cutting the carrier force to eight or fewer ships and the large surface combatant fleet to 40 or 50. That would make our strategic position elsewhere in Eurasia extraordinarily difficult to sustain.
The solution is to revitalize the surface fleet and rebuild naval combat power. Three steps are needed.
First, the FY2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) must include a dramatic expansion of the Navy’s shipbuilding account. Ideally, it would commit to a Flight IV run of Arleigh Burke destroyers and enable the Bath Iron Works and Ingalls shipyards to justify long-range investment to launch an average of four ships per year. It should also fully fund Arleigh Burke modernizations; the hulls are sound and can be deployed for the long-term with limited changes.
Second, the Navy must home-port at least one other carrier in a Eurasian combatant command, ideally in EUROCOM’s area of responsibility (AOR). It would reduce transit time to deployment, decrease the strain on sailors and their families, and enable the nucleus of a rapid-response naval force for Eurasian crises.
Third, and most controversially, the U.S. should keep its Nimitz-class carriers in the fleet for another two to three deployment cycles, delaying initial retirements until at least 2029. This primarily impacts the first three ships in the class, the Nimitz, Eisenhower and Vinson; the first is due to leave the fleet in FY2025. By keeping these ships at least until the Enterprise is commissioned in 2028, and ideally until the Doris Miller is commissioned in 2032, the Navy can increase its margin of safety, reduce operational stress and enable a wartime surge.
The surface fleet is the core of the Navy’s combat abilities. Events around the world — including the U.S. strategic interest in safeguarding chokepoints in the Red Sea and elsewhere — increasingly show the necessity of hardening and expanding that core.
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