The Future of the US Navy - Massenbach-Letter · The Future of the US Navy Page 2 Foreword “H ow big a naval force does the U.S. need? Increased competition between the U.S., China,

MAY 2017 EBOOK

The Future of the US Navy

Page 2The Future of the US Navy |

Foreword

“How big a naval force does the U.S. need? Increased competition between the U.S., China, and Russia are bringing this ever-

simmering debate to a boil. Several big think-tank studies have emerged in the past year to argue that today’s 275-warship fleet is insufficient, woefully insufficient, or dangerously insufficient.

In December, the Navy released its own take. After discarding various ways one might calculate the “proper” size of the fleet — like the 653 ships that would be needed to fill all outstanding requests from U.S. combatant commanders — Navy planners arrived at a number: 355 ships. That jibed with, and even slightly exceeded, then-president-elect Donald Trump’s own vow to rebuild the Navy to a 350-ship force, a level unseen since 1988.

Cost, of course, is the obstacle; more ships would naturally require more money. How much more money? Under their current budgets, the naval services are unable to keep up with required maintenance and training.

In April, the number-crunchers at the Congressional Budget Office returned with their best guess: building a fleet of 355 ships would require an average of $26.6 billion (in 2017 dollars) per year for three decades. That would be nearly two-thirds more (again, in real terms) than the average annual shipbuilding expenditure over the past 30 years. The Navy seems unlikely to get that kind of money.

And in May, Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, offered his own thoughts in a nine-page white paper: 355 ships is the right size — but the 2040 target is about two decades too late. America’s competitors are building navies that outstrip our own, he writes, and so it’s time to challenge all assumptions and start turning out better, more flexible ships and aircraft for far less money and time. We’ll lead off this ebook with a look at his vision.

Bradley PenistonDeputy Editor, Defense One

http://csbaonline.org/research/publications/restoring-american-seapower-a-new-fleet-architecture-for-the-united-states-

https://news.usni.org/2016/12/16/document-summary-navys-new-force-structure-assessment

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/03/trumps-bigger-military-wont-necessarily-make-us-stronger-or-safer/136212/?oref=d-river


New technologies — autonomy, networking, 3D printing, and more — are changing naval warfare “like moving from sails to

steam, wooden ships to iron hulls, like the advent of nuclear propulsion,” and the U.S. Navy needs to move a lot faster to keep up, says Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson.

“The pace at which potential competitors are moving demands that we in turn increase the speed at which we act” to develop a larger and more capable fleet, Richardson writes in a much-anticipated white paper. “We need this more powerful fleet in the 2020s, not the 2040s.”

Richardson spoke to reporters Monday, ahead of the Wednesday release of the nine-page white paper. He alluded to recent think-tank reports plus a Navy-led one that have argued for a fleet of about 355 ships, far more than the current 275 and, indeed, the three-decade target of 308.

“More numbers are necessary, but not sufficient,” he said by phone from Singapore. “We need a bigger fleet but a different fleet.”

Richardson said all future ships must be built to accept upgrades with ease and alacrity. New

designs should include a hull and powerplant that will last a service lifetime, but “the rest of the ship, we’ll build to modularize and modernize.”

Didn’t the Navy try that with its littoral combat ships, now plagued by breakdowns and far short of the modularity vision?

“LCS was very complex,” Richardson responded. “The technology has come to the point where we can do that with much more agility. Even in LCS, we’ve done a lot to decomplexify operations, with new crewing and operational concepts.”

In the white paper, he writes that the U.S. industrial base has the capacity to build 29 more ships and some 300 more planes than currently planned over the next seven years. But at what cost? In February, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan — the one that gets to 308 ships by 2046 — would cost an extra $5 billion a year. That’s about one-third more than current budgets allow.

Richardson declined to say how much his accelerated plan would cost, saying only that he thought the total would be “far less than CBO

We Need a Bigger, Better Fleet Far Sooner Than You ThinkAdm. John Richardson lays out an urgent vision for meeting the 21st century’s sail-to-steam moment.

By Bradley Peniston


Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson holds an all-hands call aboard the littoral combat ship USS Coronado (LCS 4), pierside in Singapore on May 16, 2017. U.S. NAVY / MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 1ST CLASS NATHAN LAIRD

predicted, but more than we have in traditional [shipbuilding] accounts.”

How will that be possible? By rethinking everything, he suggested: building ships more cheaply, extending the life of today’s ships and aircraft, and boosting the capabilities of existing ships, planes, submarines, and unmanned vehicles through networking, robotics, and more.

“We need to challenge the assumptions,” the CNO said. “Linear approaches are going to get us to this [future] navy too late.”

That sounds a little like the approach fostered by the Defense Department’s Strategic Capabilities

Office, which works with the services to give existing weapons “surprising new capabilities,” in the words of former Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Much of the SCO’s work remains classified — that would be the “surprise” part — but its poster child is a naval project: retrofitting the SM-6 anti-air missile to sink ships.

History suggests big surges in naval shipbuilding don’t last more than a few years. Reagan’s naval buildup didn’t outlast his first term, one reporter noted on the conference call.

Richardson’s response: “It lasted only three years, but we’re still coasting on that surge.”


President Trump visited Newport News at the beginning of March to deliver a speech aboard the soon-to-be commissioned

USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier. It provided a timely reminder of his campaign pledge that he would increase the size of the fleet from the current figure of 272 to 350 ships over the next three decades. This is significantly more than the Obama-era plans to increase the fleet to 308 ships.

How this decision fits with any broader grand strategy is unclear. Critics have debated whether Trump has one. Indeed, a recent New York Times story suggested the growth of the military may simply be for the purpose of possessing raw military power rather than part of any serious strategizing.

Trump’s decision to focus on building a more powerful global Navy, however, fits with a longstanding American strategic tradition. It dates back to naval officer and historian Alfred Thayer Mahan’s classic “The Influence of Seapower on History,” which was written on the cusp of America’s emergence as a global power at the end of the 19th century. In Mahan’s vision, a great Navy

would promote America’s commercial interests at home and abroad. It was, and for many still is, the foundation of any “grand strategy.”

But a key question remains: Does Trump’s specified goal of 350 ships meet the needs of the nation in the 21st century? How does this fit into a strategic vision for U.S. security?

Why 350 ships?The new budget proposal reportedly calls for increasing the 2018 Defense Budget by US$54 billion. This won’t itself pay for an ambitious expansion of the Navy. The USS Gerald R. Ford alone cost about $13 billion. It will, therefore, take many years of spending to move building projects forward. But as the Trump administration’s plans, if enacted, make clear, buying more ships will mean cuts to foreign aid, environmental protection and a series of regulatory agencies. These are choices that have been roundly criticized by former military officials and senior policymakers.

Moreover, there are few civilian officials available to answer the question of what purpose

What’s the Purpose of President Trump’s Navy?Does the president's specified goal of 350 ships meet the needs of the nation in the 21st century? The answer is not yet clear.

By Simon Reich

& Peter Dombrowski


the Navy’s growth serves. That is because there is currently a dearth of administrative appointments to key leadership positions in the Navy and the Department of Defense. So there is no evident strategy to justify this new target.

The man initially anointed by the Washington rumor mill as the next secretary of the Navy was ex-congressman Randy Forbes, formerly of the Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces of the House Arms Services Committee and a vocal supporter of American naval power.

Forbes was passed over in favor of Phillip Bilden, a businessmen with ties to both the Army and the Navy. Bilden, however, withdrew from consideration when it became clear that ethics rules would require him to disentangle himself from his extensive business holdings. The vacuum remains unfilled. Now, in a strange turn of events, Forbes is once again in the running.

Meanwhile, the preferences of the new Secretary of Defense General Mattis and National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster regarding the size, shape and purposes of the Navy are unknown.

Both are well-read, broadly educated, deep thinkers on U.S. and global security. But both participated in ground wars in the Middle East. They are therefore assumed to be advocates of land forces, not naval power. In the past, they have focused on conventional wars, counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, rather than maritime challenges.

The Navy’s viewEven in normal periods, fleet design is a complicated bureaucratic dance with budgets, internal procedures and external interventions from Congress to be negotiated.

In times of crisis or great political change, the strong preferences of presidents, their advisers and the civilian leaders or the military services can play a decisive role. Most famously, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, at the behest of President Reagan, championed a 600-ship Navy to counter the rapidly growing Soviet fleet and threats to Europe, the Far East and elsewhere.

Even before candidate Trump shined the spotlight on the Navy, the service was, of course, planning for the future.

The Navy released its latest vision statement, “A Design for Maritime Superiority,” in January 2016. It resoundingly defended the ideal that the United States is a maritime nation and a premier naval power, specifically naming China and Russia as potential aggressors on the high seas. It didn’t specify a target fleet size although the documents could be construed as justifying the sort of overall budget growth proposed by Trump.

Still Congress, forcefully egged on by Representative Forbes, who felt the Obama administration and the Navy itself were neglecting naval strategy, mandated three independent studies to examine the future fleet. Interestingly, when completed, none of the three alternatives proposes anything like a 350-ship fleet by 2030,


despite errant reports to the contrary.Recent news reports suggesting that the

alternative fleet architecture proposed by the think tank the MITRE Corp. called for over 400 ships misinterpreted the study. In fact, the MITRE authors recommend a far smaller fleet because they explicitly recognize the costs of building up to such a large number.

All three studies focus on new war-fighting concepts such as distributed maritime operations, new types of platforms including unmanned systems and new technologies including rail guns (that can repeatedly launch a projectile at more than 5,000 miles per hour). Capacity and fleet size are obviously not the same thing, despite the current focus on numbers of ships.

The point is that analysis underpinning the Navy’s own vision for the future is different from that of the new president.

To date, the president has concentrated on the overall number of ships while the Navy and the congressionally mandated studies focused on war-fighting capabilities and war-fighting concepts. What is missing from the president’s target of a 350-ship Navy is an underlying strategy – one that links what is proverbially called the “ways, means and ends” necessary to defend American interests on the high seas.

Working outward, the national security community, the public and indeed America’s allies and adversaries need to understand the

logic underlying any historic naval buildup. A clear statement regarding the primary threats facing the U.S., the types of adversaries it will face and the nature of future conflict would help explain why the American taxpayer is investing so much national treasure in the military services.

After all, if Russia is not the enemy, and we don’t need a big Navy to defeat the Islamic State, then why spend so much?

‘Military operations other than war’So far, Trump has not offered an answer for the nation to rally behind and to reassure his critics.

In its absence, experts have sought reassurance in the president’s fragmentary and sporadic pronouncements to support their own vision. Neo-isolationists have cheered his efforts to close American borders. Others have warmed to the notion that he has suggested our allies assume more responsibility for their own defense. Even proponents of old-fashioned primacy have sought luster by interpreting the president’s defense buildup as a return to the unilateralist days of American military prowess through intervention.

Our own research suggests that the truth is that none of these grand visions may apply. The Navy, and indeed the other military services, face a growing demand for their services. They are now being asked to perform an increasing


number of functions that are not associated with fighting wars.

The military even has a term for it: “MOOTW” (military operations other than war). And the U.S. Navy’s MOOTW ranges from conventional war-fighting against other countries’ navies to policing the globe against pirates, drug flows and the smuggling of nuclear materials, humanitarian assistance and even fighting Ebola in Africa. These activities consume much of the Navy’s time. And their increasing demands require increased resources. Military budgets therefore often reflect the requirements entailed in providing these services as much as the

need to conform to any one image.Of course, congressional democrats may yet

scuttle plans for an enlarged Navy. Alternatively, the president may move beyond discussing discrete missions to a more coherent grand strategy – perhaps tutored by his new senior military appointments – that justifies acquisition decisions.

The types of ships (and aircraft, and unmanned systems and equipment) purchased in the coming years will make sense only if they are employed in an operationally coherent manner. Only then will the American public be able to judge if the trade-offs made to fund such an enterprise were worth it.

President Donald J. Trump gives a thumbs-up to the audience after his tour of Pre-Commissioning Unit Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), March 2, 2017. MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST SEAMAN CONNOR LOESSIN


Last December, after a Chinese military vessel stole a U.S. sub drone in the South China Sea, military watchers debated whether to call

it an act of war. The Pentagon sounded a more reserved note and simply asked for the drone’s return. The incident will likely not be the last.

The U.S. Navy and others from around the world are steaming ahead with plans to fill the seas and the skies above them with drones. Because robots can stay on the water (or above or under it) longer than can sailors, enduring harsh conditions that humans cannot while consuming

fewer resources, they’ll play an increasingly large role in future operations.

The defense industry is rushing to help. This year’s edition of the annual Sea-Air-Space conference, one of the world’s largest showplaces for naval and maritime weapons and equipment, featured a far larger assortment of naval drones than even last year. Here’s a sampling of the check innovative new robots of varying size, shape and smarts that could be making their way to a contested body of water near you.

The Five Coolest Drones from America’s Biggest Naval Arms ShowNew drones above and beneath the waves will change the way navies sail and fight in contested waters.

By Patrick Tucker


If Batman had an ocean drone, it would probably look like the Man Portable Tactical Autonomous, or MANTAS, robot from Booz Allen Hamilton and Maritime Tactical Systems. Just 98 inches long, the MANTAS can achieve a top speed above 60 knots. An operator with a tablet or smartphone can set waypoints or instruct it interdict oncoming vessels. Depending on the sensor payload, you can use it to hunt for enemy submarines or possibly mines. Or just strap explosives to it and use it like a fancy Bat-torpedo.

At Sea-Air-Space, the all-black drone was set up next to the booth of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, which will be showing off the MANTAS and nearly 100 other new amphibious technologies at a late-April exercise in San Diego.

The MANTAS from Booz Allen HamiltonMANTAS


Liquid Robotics, a Boeing subsidiary, bills its Wave Glider as the first robot driven by a unique combination of wave energy and solar power. The drone has a floating solar sled connected to a finned tube underneath. The fins push against water, creating forward momentum in somewhat the same way that manta rays use waves to glide. That allows the drone to stay out on the water, collecting data on subs, mines, or the ocean itself for up to a year without fuel.

Military funding — from the Office of Naval Research, or ONR, and the CIA’s investment arm In-Q-Tel — helped Liquid Robotics get its start.

Yet it took a long time (and help from Boeing) to draw the Navy’s interest. Last April, founder and CEO Gary Gysin told us of his frustrations with the pace of Pentagon acquisitions. “We’re in almost every country in Asia. And they make decisions, rapid decisions. And we’re in selling our platform. And if we’re in selling our platform and we’re not selling it to our government at the same pace, that worries me,” he said.

Just wait until the Chinese navy starts stealing his drones.

WAVE GLIDER The Wave Glider from Liquid Robotcs


The Flying Sea Glider from ONRFLYING SEA GLIDER

Because a bird can move above water a lot faster than most fish can move beneath it, the Navy has expressed interest in drones that can be dropped from planes, skim the surface, and then dip beneath the waves. ONR, which has been working on such a drone since 2015, calls the program the Flying Sea Glider. (We described it as the duck drone, which is much better.)

The program’s newest test sub, on display at Sea-Air-Space, showed a revamped buoyancy engine and cleaner lines. ONR is currently working on a larger version that could of splash down at 100 nautical miles per hour, then cruise 200 meters below the surface.

Aircraft carriers make big targets, so the military is looking to put strike aircraft, in drone form, aboard smaller ships. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is working with ONR and Northrop Grumman on a helicopter drone that can take off and land autonomously from a craft as small as a Littoral Combat Ship. Called the Tern, it’s intended for intelligence-surveillance-and-reconnaissance out to 600 nautical miles, or for strike missions of somewhat (and undisclosed) reduced ranges, carrying a 500-pound payload. The weapon’s makers plan a full-scale flight launch in 2018.

TERN The Tern from DARPA, ONR, and Northrop Grumman


“We are laying the path forward” for the future of hybrid electric flight, said DARPA program manager Ashish Bagai.

Military leaders routinely emphasize that they don’t expect drones to replace sailors in every situation. “We emphasize this is not a competition between manned and unmanned. This is complimentary,” Rear Adm. William Merz, the Navy’s director for undersea warfare, said Wednesday. “I don’t have a [concept of operations] for unmanned. I have a con-op for the undersea, the entire domain.”

Unmanned and robotic systems are just playing an ever-larger role in those battle plans.

Unlike previous iterations, this year’s Sea-Air-Space offered no blockbuster announcements of new and incredible research-and-development programs. Still, DARPA and Aurora Flight Sciences said a one-fifth-scale version of its experimental, multi-rotor helicopter drone had completed flight tests, clearing the way for the construction of a full-size, 1,200-pound, 61-foot-wingspan version for testing by next year.

Dubbed the the VX-24A, the bizarre-looking drone uses propellers spinning at incredibly high speeds to lift the drone from its ship or helipad and then push the plane through the air as the propellers tilt forward, similar to a V-22 Osprey. But the multiple propellers add a stability that the Osprey lacks.

The XV-24A’s most important innovation is the hybrid electric distributed propulsion system. Three Honeywell generators driven by a big Rolls Royce engine produce three megawatts of power. But the lift fans only require one megawatt to pull the drone off the ground. That energy surplus opens up the potential for additional sensors, more powerful computers, or, as technology improves, possibly lasers.

The Lightning Strike from Aurora and DARPAXV-24A


The U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding office has a new weapon in its effort to efficiently allocate personnel, resources and budgetary

dollars: software.The Navy’s Program Executive Office for

Integrated Warfare Systems—which Chief of Staff Greg Thomas described to Nextgov as the office “that turns ships into warships”—transitioned in recent years from human intuition to a software-based approach to make complex resource and human capital allocation decisions.

Thomas said PEO IWS—which has 450 employees and oversees 60 programs and 12 lines of business, such as radar, combat systems and navigation—was drowning in complexity. Making strategic and resource allocation decisions across sometimes stovepiped organizations and defending them to overseers was becoming a major challenge. It reached a tipping point about two years ago, Thomas said.

“What we wanted to do was figure out a way to get more rigor and granularity and analysis supporting why we have the people we have, and why we have them doing what we’re doing,” Thomas said.

PEO IWS turned to an analytics tool and visualization platform from Arlington, Va.-based Decision Lens, opting for a system that allows deputy program managers to run risk-based simulations based on various input parameters. In other words, computers model where some of the agency’s budgetary and human resources ought to go and spit out visualizations regarding how singular decisions impact the organization as a whole.

For example, the software can help executives decide whether it makes sense to assign large

How the Navy’s Warship Shop Uses Data to Do More with LessA Navy program office turned to an analytics and visualization tool to help optimize complex tasks.

By Frank Konkel

“What we wanted to do was figure out a way to get more rigor and granularity and analysis supporting why we have the people we have, and why we have them doing what we’re doing." Chief of Staff Greg Thomas


farm teams of less experienced employees to specific projects, or whether a smaller “lean and mean” team of highly experienced professionals is better suited for the job. It’s not just a dollars and cents that are factored in, either. Parameters might include the political sensitivity of a project or its cost, employee roles and whether functions are better left stove-piped. The software can also output where human resources should be removed and reassigned elsewhere, and what levels of exposure the organization should expect based on personnel move.

Importantly, Thomas said there’s a visual component that changes based on any input.

“Risk is quantified,” Thomas said. “We’ve got a meter, and when you make a change, you can see how the meter swings. If you add risk to the meter, it’ll swing and program managers will shy away from it. It’s taken our complexity and functions and our roles and integrated it into a single way of looking at things.”

Simulations can be run regularly to better assess short-term decisions, and Thomas said they’re also used by deputy program managers to make their case.

“Every deputy has to come in and say, ‘this is my number, this is how I’m organized, how I’ve shaped the organization and how I am now,’” Thomas said.

The USS Detroit (LCS 7), one of the United States Navy's newest warships, during trials near Marinette, Wisc., July 14, 2016. US NAVY PHOTO COURTESY OF LOCKHEED MARTIN-MICHAEL ROTE


“It’s made us more consistent and more rigorous without adding a huge burden.”

PEO IWS had an existing relationship with Decision Lens, using its software for budget prioritization, so Thomas said expanding the partnership to include big data-based human capital planning wasn’t difficult.

“We’ve taken [this software] farther on human capital than we ever did with budget prioritization,” Thomas said. “We always felt like we were under-resourced—like we didn’t have enough people. Now, we’re able to be more efficient with that squeeze on us and making better use of the people do have.”

The Navy’s move toward a software-based approach to strategic decision-making mirrors concurrent efforts across the federal government, according to John Saaty, who cofounded Decision Lens with his brother in 2005. Saaty told Nextgov the company now sells software to 60 different federal agencies, with its status

as a FedRAMP-approved software-as-a-service provider helping business.

Saaty said federal government’s enormous problem regarding waste, fraud and abuse, as well as increasingly tight budgets, have driven many agencies to turn to advanced software for strategic decision-making rather than a combination of “Microsoft Excel and people doing institutionalized manual processes and chasing their tail.”

Saaty likens the government’s challenges in strategic decision-making to those faced by professional sports teams. The team could draft a player based on hunches and limited data provided by scouts, or it could input a collection of quantitative data (such as 40-yard-dash time) and qualitative information (leadership skills, fit with team or behavior) “to prioritize what is best for the team and select the best player in the draft.”

Government, Saaty said, can do the same thing, “matching up talent with their most important, complex programs.”


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When President Trump meets this week with his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, he’ll be engaging with a

leader who commands an increasingly disciplined and persistent information-warfare force.

In December 2015, the Chinese military stood up a Strategic Support Force as part of a larger series of reforms. Essentially a Chinese version of U.S. Cyber Command, the new force focuses on war in the electromagnetic spectrum, space, and cyberspace. “All these are the new fields that determine whether the PLA can win in the future battlefield,” Chinese officials told state media.

The new force’s key focus is building capabilities to disrupt U.S. military operations, according to Martin Libicki, who leads cybersecurity studies at the U.S. Naval Academy. In January China announced that the country will develop the world’s first exascale super computer by the end of the year.

The move follows years of steady and incremental improvements in information operations, Vice Adm. Tim White, commander of the U.S. Cyber National Mission Force, said Tuesday

at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference. “They are building what I would call campaigns. They are being very thoughtful about it and being purposeful in their approach and there is some design that they are organizing themselves,” he said of adversarial nations such as China but also Russia. “It’s not just a single mission, point of time, or place. It’s interwoven together to achieve a national purpose.”

By contrast, White worries the U.S. military is thinking too defensively. He believes the Pentagon should work toward a more disciplined, consistent response, and shift from a “broadly reactive” posture “to something we are doing something as a result of our own campaign and planning efforts.”

“They’re on the field and we are figuring out how to get on that field,” White said. “What nations are doing in this space, it’s more coordinated. It’s more interoperable from their perspective. It’s more structured and it’s more integrated.”

Industrial espionage from China appears to have waned since Barack Obama and Xi signed an agreement in September 2015. But attacks have not vanished entirely. Between March and May of

China’s Information Warriors Are Growing More Disciplined, Say US Cyber LeadersAnd some U.S. cyber leaders worry that the American military’s approach is too reactive and defensive.

By Patrick Tucker


last year, Chinese hackers deployed a backdoor into a government services company, stole important credentials, and attempted to gain access to U.S. military secrets, according to the FireEye cyber security group.

Without speaking specifically about that incident, Vice Adm. Jan Tighe, deputy chief of naval operations for information warfare and the director of naval intelligence, said that many of the attacks, pings, intrusion attempts and probe “appear to be part of deliberate campaigns” of adversarial nation-state activities against Western targets.

How to fight them off? The head of U.S. Cyber Command, Adm. Michael Rogers, has suggested giving more authority to lower-ranking service personnel. The Navy anticipates that all 40 of the Navy’s cyber mission force teams will reach full operational capability by 2018.

Navy leaders at Sea-Air-Space also said artificial intelligence would play a bigger role in attacking and defending networks.

“I would not say we see new and exquisite DARPA-like capabilities yet,” emerging out of China in terms of artificial intelligence specifically for information warfare, according to White. “But I do think it will be inevitable because you’re not constrained by physics.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. military is exploring the use of cognitive computing and deep learning to better understand network vulnerabilities and predict attacker behavior, according to Vice Adm. Michael Gilday, who leads the Navy’s 10th Fleet and Cyber Command, in accordance with phase II of the Command’s strategic plan to 2020, first laid out in 2015.

Marine Maj. Gen. Lori Reynolds, the commander of Marine Forces Cyber Command also maid a plea to industry. “Anything we can do to automate the intelligence cycle that’s the right investment,”

But Military cyber leaders say that the United States and China will likely put artificial intelligence to different uses in information warfare. Automation can and probably should take over much defensive work to better keep up with the speed of attacks. But the use of offensive cyber weapons will still involve human decision making for the United States military. They could not guarantee the same of China.

“AI can absolutely tighten your ability to make a decision inside your enemy’s ability to make a decision,” said Gilday.

Defense One asked Gilday and Tighe if they were seeing adversarial nations attempt to automate the use of offensive cyber weapons. They declined to respond.


The venerable Tomahawk cruise missile, used in conflicts big and small since 1991, took center stage once again in an April 7

strike that rained some five dozen of the weapons upon a Syrian airfield believed to have launched a chemical attack. But its end is in sight, if not exactly imminent.

The U.S. Navy, which currently has some 4,000 Tomahawks, plans to stop buying the venerable weapon in the next few years. Service leaders haven’t fully articulated their plans to replace it, but they have started talking about the need for a “Next Generation Land Attack Weapon” slated to enter service more than a decade hence.

In 2014, then-Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley (now the Navy’s acting secretary) told the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee that the next-generation weapon could be an upgraded Tomahawk or a different weapon.

“[W]e are moving forward with development of what has been referred to as next-generation land-attack weapon,” Stackley said. “And the key

elements of that weapon will be its increased lethality, survivability beyond what Tomahawk brings today.”

More recently, in October, the Navy asked defense firms to provide information about technologies they are working on that could be used in these future weapons.

The Navy said it would use the information “to analyze individual and combinations (Family of Systems (FOS)) of existing weapons, modifications to existing weapons, ongoing demonstration efforts, new weapon designs, and enabling capabilities to determine the most cost effective manner in which to achieve an optimal level of operational capability with an acceptable level of operational risk.”

In the meantime, the Navy plans to upgrade much of its existing stockpile, enabling it, for example, to sink ships. That kind of capability expansion in line with an overall Pentagon drive to make existing weapons more flexible. Last year, Navy officials announced they had quietly modified the SM-6, an interceptor built to shoot

The US Is About to Stop Buying Tomahawk Missiles, Like the Ones That Hit SyriaBut it’s planning to upgrade its existing stock — and lay the groundwork for a next-generation cruise missile.

By Marcus Weisgerber


down aircraft and missiles, to sink ships.Both the Tomahawk and SM-6 are built by

Massachusetts-based Raytheon, whose shares rose in trading on Friday.

Last year, the Navy asked Congress for $187 million to buy 100 new Tomahawks. Last month, the Trump administration asked lawmakers for $85 million to buy an additional 96 missiles.

Budget documents show the Navy has purchased more than 8,000 Tomahawks overall.

Todd Harrison, a defense budget expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said it would cost the Pentagon about $89 million to replace the 59 Tomahawks that stuck Syria early Friday morning local time.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Mustin (DDG 89) fires a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile during a 2014 exercise. MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 2ND CLASS DECLAN BARNES


Submarines are designed with one primary aim: to travel underwater. But when it comes to foreign vessels operating in the vast

waters it claims, China doesn’t much like that idea.According to state media reports posted last

week, Beijing is drafting a revision to the nation’s maritime “traffic safety” law. While in Chinese waters, according to the changes, any foreign submarine would be required to stay surfaced and display its national flag. It would also need to get approval before entering Chinese waters, and report to maritime management authorities. China would reserve the right to bar or expel foreign ships deemed to threaten “traffic safety and order.” Ships entering Chinese waters without approval could be fined more than $70,000.

One big problem: China claims nearly all of the contested South China Sea—with its strategic shipping lanes, rich fishing grounds, and oil and gas deposits—as its own territory, based on its nine-dash line. That claim was shot down last July by an international tribunal ruling under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). But Beijing is sticking with it.

Another problem is that what most countries consider international waters, China views more as territorial waters.

Under prevailing international norms laid out by UNCLOS, a country’s territorial sea extends out 12 nautical miles (22 km, 14 miles) from the coast. Here a country is free to set laws and regulate use, though a foreign military vessel can still make “innocent passage” whereby it does nothing threatening and carries on its way.

After that is a contiguous zone (another 12 nautical miles) where a nation can continue

Now China Wants All Subs in the South China Sea to Ask Permission, Surface, Show FlagBeijing's proposed revisions to maritime law, if adopted, could set up a nuclear naval confrontation with the United States in international waters China claims to own.

By Steve Mollman


setting some laws. Beyond that is the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Extending out 200 nautical miles (370 km, 230 miles), the EEZ is considered to be international waters under UNCLOS, though within it a nation has sole rights to extract natural resources from the waters (for example, fish) and below the seabed (including oil and natural gas).

China is among a small group of nations that interprets UNCLOS to mean (pdf, p. 16) it can regulate foreign military vessels within its EEZ. Under the proposed rules revisions, foreign submarines would be prohibited from serving their purpose well beyond China’s coastal waters and throughout most of the South China Sea.

“China’s waters are open to foreign ships as long as they do not damage the waters’ safety, order, or China’s sovereignty,” Yang Cuibai, a law professor at Sichuan University, told the Global Times. China, he added, should take the lead in establishing legal order in the Yellow Sea, the East

China Sea, and the South China Sea. According to the hawkish tabloid, the revisions will take effect in 2020.

Beijing would likely ignore any international rulings or statements against the new regulations, just as it dismissed the tribunal’s decision last July.

China wouldn’t necessarily enforce its new rules immediately. In 2013, Beijing declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, requiring foreign aircraft—even if in international airspace—to identify themselves to Chinese authorities. The country has done little to enforce the ADIZ, but establishing it was an important first step that will make enforcement—when it comes—somewhat easier for Beijing to justify.

Likewise, the proposed submarine rules might go unenforced for years, until they are eventually used as justification for interfering with foreign vessels.

The Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Columbus (SSN 762) pulls into port at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, May 8, 2014. US NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 3RD CLASS LIAM KENNEDY


It’s been no secret that the F-35’s nine-figure price tag has been falling, but measuring that drop has been difficult.Moreover, when Pentagon officials and

Lockheed Martin executives discuss the cost of the Joint Strike Fighter, they’re generally talking about the Air Force’s F-35A variant — down 60 percent since the first two jets were ordered in 2007 — and not the Marine Corps’ short-takeoff-vertical-landing F-35B or the Navy’s carrier-borne F-35C.

So we gathered data from Pentagon budget documents and other sources, and charted the cost of all three versions, from the first purchase in 2007

to the latest deal announced earlier this month.The data show that the more complex B and

C models were never as pricy as the first few A jets, which rolled off the line at a cool $297 million apiece. (All figures are given in 2016 dollars.) But while the A has gotten cheaper with each succeeding purchase — in December, a batch sold

Charted: Here’s How the Cost of Each Version of the F-35 is ChangingThe per-plane cost for the Navy and Marine Corps variants both rose before falling.

By Marcus Weisgerber

& Caroline Houck


for $95 million apiece — the B and C have seen their prices rise and fall. As expected, both remain more expensive than the A.

Overall, the price of the B has dropped from more than $226 million in 2008 to $123 million today; the C, from $196 million in 2010 to $122 million.

These figures reflect the flyaway cost of each plane: the price of the airframe, engine, electronics, and other associated costs — basically, the amount it takes to purchase and assemble the parts.

There are other ways to calculate the “true” cost of an F-35. You can include all the design and development work that took the aircraft from idea

to production model, or throw in maintenance, planned upgrades, and long-term operating costs.

For years, prime contractor Lockheed Martin — would simply tout the cost of the airframe itself, sans engine and other fees that added tens of millions of dollars to the cost of each plane.

For the past four years, the F-35 program office began releasing figures that they say are a more accurate representation of the true cost, a value that includes the airframe, engine and other fees.

So far, Lockheed has taken orders for 354 F-35s, including 267 for the U.S. military and the rest for various allies. In sum, those jets cost more than $45 billion, about $35 billion for the American planes and $10 billion for the foreign ones.


About the Authors

FRANK KONKEL Frank Konkel is the editorial events editor for Government Executive Media Group and a technology journalist for its publications. He writes about emerging technologies, privacy, cybersecurity, policy and other issues at the intersection of government and technology. Frank also runs Nextgov’s Emerging Tech blog. He began writing about technology at Federal Computer Week and previously reported on local and state issues at daily newspapers in his home state of Michigan.

PATRICK TUCKER Patrick Tucker is technology editor for Defense One. He’s also the author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? (Current, 2014). Previously, Tucker was deputy editor for The Futurist for nine years. Tucker has written about emerging technology in Slate, The Sun, MIT Technology Review, Wilson Quarterly, The American Legion Magazine, BBC News Magazine, Utne Reader, and elsewhere.

Peter Dombrowski Professor at the Center for Naval Warfare Studies

Simon Reich Professor in the Division of Global Affairs

Caroline Houck Atlantic Media Fellow at Defense One

Steve Mollman Asia Correspondent, Quartz

MARCUS WEISGERBER Marcus Weisgerber is the global business editor for Defense One, where he writes about the intersection of business and national security. He has been covering defense and national security issues for more than a decade, previously as Pentagon correspondent for Defense News and chief editor of Inside the Air Force. He has reported from Afghanistan, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, and often travels with the defense secretary and other senior military officials.

Documents

The Future of the US Navy - Massenbach-Letter · The Future of the US Navy Page 2 Foreword “H ow big a naval force does the U.S. need? Increased competition between the U.S., China,