| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The U.S. Navy has no overall requirements process for designing a Fleet, and it needs one-desperately.
The Navy finds itself caught in the perfect storm between the cost constraints of the national budget environment and the capability demands of globally proliferating counter-naval technologies. At present projected budget levels, if we continue our current processes for setting the design requirements of future ships and aircraft, the service's size will shrink over the next two decades to about two-thirds of today's force-structure goals of 306 ships and 3,000 aircraft. Unless we find more efficient ways to generate forward deployments out of this fleet, the Navy's forward posture-its key contribution to national strategy and joint U.S. military capability-will shrink to far less than the 100 deployed ships typically used to deliver global capability. This is not the right path.
It is time to rethink how we will design the future Fleet in a way that rebalances affordability, platform capability, and deployment processes. We must build it as a whole instead of continuing to "let it happen" one platform requirements decision at a time.
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