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ALNAV 005/20

MSGID/GENADMIN/SECNAV WASHINGTON DC/-/JAN//

SUBJ/SECNAV VECTOR 6//

RMKS/1.  Maritime power is an essential element of the National
Defense Strategy, and as we look to a future of greater global trade and 
greater unpredictability, it has never been more critical to the success of 
our nation.  For the past several years the debate over defining what 
enhanced naval power really means has centered around the aspirations for a 
355 ship Navy.  Today, this 355 ship goal is the law of the land, as outlined 
in the bipartisan Securing our Homeland by Increasing our Powers on the Seas
Act, signed into law by President Trump in 2018.  
The 355 target goal was based on our 2016 Force Structure Assessment (FSA), 
which recommended not only a total number of ships but also the capabilities 
required to address emerging security threats.  We have been working towards 
this goal over the last several years, but I am not satisfied with the 
progress we have made in terms of reaching it within a reasonable and 
strategically relevant timeframe.  As a result, I have asked Navy and Marine 
Corps leadership to come up with a plan to reach this goal within the next 10 
years.
To develop this plan, we will be relying upon the Integrated Naval Force
Structure Assessment (INFSA).  The INFSA will be the first time the 
Navy-Marine Corps team has ever worked together to create a truly integrated 
naval force design.  Despite some erroneous recent reporting, all of these 
initial plans reflect a continued net increase in ships in Fiscal Year (FY) 
21 towards our goal of 355 vessels or more, not a decrease.  As we develop 
the plan, I believe it is important for all of us to reflect upon, and 
embrace, the rationale for why a larger and more capable naval force is 
required for our nations security, and the challenges we face in getting 
there.

2.  The Simple Mandate for a Larger, More Capable Navy:  Today, our
Navy is less than half as large as when it last faced a major peer competitor 
in the late 1980s.  Meanwhile, U.S. gross domestic product has grown from $5 
trillion in 1988 to $19.5 trillion.  Our trade by sea has since tripled, from
$230 billion to over $880 billion.  Almost the entire internet and trillions 
of dollars in trade are carried today on a largely unsecured network of 
undersea cables.  Four decades later, we simply have a lot more to protect 
from increasingly capable maritime adversaries who will present challenges to 
our economic security and indeed, our very way of life.  Our global 
competitors and adversaries continue to grow their naval forces, and they are 
expanding their areas of operations and collaboration with each other.  
Chinas battle fleet, for example, has grown from 262 to 335 surface ships 
over the last decade, and Chinas commercial shipbuilding grew over 60% from 
2007-2017.  Russia continues to invest in advanced submarines with stealth 
capabilities, and other nations such as Iran, North Korea, and non-state 
actors are exploiting asymmetric capabilities to create instability and 
uncertainty on the global maritime commons.

3.  Math is a Stubborn Thing - And It is Our Biggest Challenge: The climb to 
an ultimate force structure consisting of 355 ships as articulated in 2016 is 
a steep one.  We currently stand at 293 ships, up from 275 just a few years 
ago.  To reach, and more importantly sustain, a 355 ship force within a 
reasonable timeframe could require an additional $20-30 billion in the Navy?s 
annual budget of approximately $160 billion.  The simple fact is that a fleet 
of 30% more ships is going to require a much bigger topline to build, man, 
operate, and sustain.  The mathematical truth is that based on current budget 
expectations, we can only build and sustain approximately 305 ships by 
traditional measures of what counts as a battle force ship.  Therefore, we 
are compelled to look at the 2016 FSA 355 ship goal differently, and to 
redefine whether that number is relevant to what it truly means to serve as 
an effective integrated future naval force.  This is the work of the INFSA 
team as lead by Vice Admiral Jim Kilby, USN (OPNAV N9) and Lieutenant General 
Eric Smith, USMC (Deputy Commandant, Combat Development and Integration).  
Their mandate is to design a force structure that is both creative and 
relevant to the emerging, more complex, maritime security environment.

4.  How Agile and Creative Thinking Can Help: In reexamining our 355 ship 
goal, we must consider how to shift costs away from high-end platforms to a 
larger number of smaller, but still highly capable ships.  In FY18 dollars, 
the average cost of a ship during the Cold War 600 ship Navy era was 
approximately $1 billion.  It is now twice that. This trend is not 
sustainable, so we must shift the cost curve on all of our ships in the other 
direction and they must deliver the distributed capabilities we require.  
Such a shift could allow broader presence, reduced manning, and longer reach 
through a significant increase in hypersonic weapons, greater stealth, and 
advanced anti-ISR capabilities.  All this must be achieved through lower 
acquisition and sustainment costs a strategic imperative.  
We are also considering how unmanned surface and subsurface platforms not 
traditionally counted as battle force ships (mostly because they have never 
existed at scale) should figure into our force mix.  These platforms will not 
only allow us to distribute and conceal lethality, but also do so at reduced 
cost and in ways multiplied through its integration and interdependencies 
with the Joint Force.  
Whether it consists of 305 ships, 355, or 500, it is difficult to imagine a 
future scenario in which American naval power will not be the critical piece 
of an integrated multi-service, multi-domain national security campaign for 
lasting peace and prosperity.

5.  The Ship Count Matters, But Ultimately YOU Matter More:  In the end we 
must all understand that American seapower can?t be defined merely by ship 
counts or hardware.  It depends far more upon the talented people who build 
them, maintain them, crew them, and make them ready to fight, repeatedly and 
sustainably.  Yes, we want to lead with technology and a necessary number of 
gray hulls, but we also must continue to outpace our competitors by fully 
investing in gray matter the skill and innovation our uniformed and civilian 
teams must deliver to form the most capable, best educated, fully integrated, 
and most professional naval force in the world.  Without that, our ship 
count, and ship mix, will be irrelevant.  YOU must be our enduring 
competitive advantage.

6.  From my perspective, there is no question that as a nation we must 
urgently commit to invest in significantly more naval power.  Our Navy and
Marine Corps team is at work to define more precisely what that naval power 
might look like, whether the 355 ship goal is sufficient when considering 
alternate force mixes, and how we are to achieve it affordably within a 
timeframe that is relevant to the threats we face today and into the future.  
Finally, we should all recognize that this determination demands a broader 
national discussion, not simply one held within the halls of the Department 
of the Navy or the Pentagon.  When it comes to the primacy of naval power we, 
as a nation and a Navy-Marine Corps team, have never given up the ship - and 
now is not the time to start.

7.  SECNAV Vectors are released each Friday to the entire DON.  Previous 
Vectors can be viewed https://navylive.dodlive.noclick_mil/2020/01/02/secnav-
vectors/.


8.  Released by the Honorable Thomas B. Modly, Acting Secretary of the 
Navy.//

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