Facing down an assertive China and resurgent Russia, the Navy is overhauling its strategy development, education and wargaming offices.
By Paul McLeary
WASHINGTON: Looking for new ways to accelerate its nascent modernization push, the Navy has set up a new Warfighting Development office that will blend force planning, strategic thinking, and officer education under one roof.
The push comes at a heady time for the Navy, as the service settles in under its fourth civilian secretary in seven months while continuing work on its 30-year shipbuilding plan — which was due to be sent to Congress almost four months ago — along with a major rethink to a new force structure plan rejected by Defense Secretary Mark Esper earlier this year.
The force structure plan is aimed at plotting the way to grow the fleet through a mix of smaller, often unmanned, vessels, while retaining the ability to defend US interests against Chinese and Russian naval modernization.
It’s a tall order at a time of flat or declining budgets and rapidly emerging offensive and defensive weaponry that have eroded the traditional US superiority at sea, but all the more reason, Navy leaders say, for the new focus on strategy and education in its ranks.
Vice Adm. Stuart Munsch, head of the Warfighting Development (N7) office, said he sees the present moment as akin to the post-Vietnam years. “We were a Navy then that was focused on power projection ashore against a nation that didn’t have much in the way of naval capability, namely Vietnam,” he told reporters earlier this week.
“We saw the future coming, and knew we would have to change the Navy to be more focused on sea control against a Navy that had considerable capability, and that was the Soviet Union.”
Today, after 20 years wholly focused on ground wars in the Middle East, Munsch said there’s again the “need to shift to sea control against an adversary with considerable capability, namely China.”
Munsch’s team is also looking to reinvigorate wargaming at the Naval Postgraduate School, and said it’s kicking off a program of gaming he called “the most advanced and most significant wargaming we have done since the 1930s.”
Those wargames will influence future operations, though will be too late to influence the raft of strategic documents slated to be released this summer and fall.