Alternative Fleet

Architecture Design

Stuart E. Johnson and Arthur K. Cebrowski 

Center for Technology and National Security Policy 

National Defense University 

August 2005 
This report was mandated by Congress, which called for a study on Alternative Future Naval 

Fleet Architectures in House Report 1588, Section 216 of the National Defense Authorization 

Act for Fiscal Year 2004 

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or 

position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. 

Government. All information and sources for this paper were drawn from unclassified materials. 

Acknowledgements

This report was prepared by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of Force

Transformation (OFT) under the leadership of Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski, U.S. Navy 

(Ret). Dr. Stuart E. Johnson of the National Defense University’s Center for Technology and 

National Security Policy (CTNSP) served as Project Director. 

Much of the report’s content was provided by CTNSP analysts. Specifically, Mr. David Gompert

was the principal author of chapter two, “Strategic Context;” Dr. Richard Kugler of chapter

three, “Budgetary Challenges;” and Dr. Eli Zimet of chapter four, “Technology Opportunities.” 

Critical research was performed by Ms. Lona Stoll and Mr. Duncan Long of CTNSP and Mr. 

Scott Buchanan of OFT. The authors drew heavily on analyses conducted by the Institute for 

Defense Analyses, the Decision Support Center of the Naval War College, and the RAND 

Corporation. Captain Frank Caruso, USN, of OFT served as the executive secretary of the 

project. 

Defense & Technology Papers are published by the National Defense University Center for 

Technology and National Security Policy, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, DC. CTNSP 

publications are available online at http://www.ndu.edu/ctnsp/publications.html.

ii
Foreword 

Long experience has conditioned us to equate the preparation of the U.S. Armed Forces for the 

future with the process of “modernization,” that is, building updated versions, or new 

generations, of the equipment that our forces currently use. That experience is increasingly 

outdated. Modernization permits occasional incorporation of advances in technology, based 

mainly on military research and development, in view of actual and anticipated changes in 

enemy capabilities. The U.S. Navy has conformed to the modernization model as closely as any

Service in planning and building the next generation of ships and aircraft. 

There was an understandable logic for this approach during the Cold War when we faced an

adversary whose capabilities and operations were well understood. High priority in fleet 

development was placed on a steady, evolutionary improvement to keep pace with a relatively

well understood, steadily evolving adversary. This is no longer the case. In planning for the fleet

of the future, we must take into account that we are transiting from one global security era to a

future era that is more dynamic and consequently less predictable than the old one. This compels

the United States to be prepared to respond much more quickly than in the past to unpredictable 

changes and argues against a planning and programming strategy that is evolutionary in nature. 

A related challenge is that most of the potential future threats we face are complex, i.e., scalable 

and diverse. They come largely from groups of loosely connected networks of adversaries whose 

behavior is difficult to predict. The United States, on the other hand, presents an adversary with a

great deal of predictability, particularly in the area of naval capabilities. Ships take a long time to 

build, and once built, they tend to have capabilities and operational patterns that are locked-in 

and well known to our potential adversaries. 

In developing and using forces, including the future U.S. naval fleet, the ability to complicate 

warfare for an enemy is an important consideration. In maritime operations, factors that can 

complicate the operational problems facing an adversary include: large numbers of combat 

entities that the enemy must deal with; a great variety of platforms with which the enemy must 

contend; speed and maneuverability; different combinations of forces; distribution of forces 

across large areas; and uncertainty as to the mission and capabilities of a given platform. 

The U.S. Navy can design its future fleet platform architecture with these principles in mind. An 

alternative fleet architecture design and three examples of future fleet platform architectures are 

presented in this report. These alternative fleet platform architectures make use of modularity for

tactical adaptability to unforeseen crises and lower unit costs to increase the numbers of ships in 

the fleet. 

In addition, the alternative fleet architectures take advantage of the power of networking 

individual platforms into a system whose capabilities are far greater than the sum of its separate

parts. This network is characterized by dispersed forces that develop a high level of shared 

battlespace awareness. In turn, shared awareness within the fleet can be exploited to achieve

strategic, operational, and tactical objectives according to the commander’s intent. The network 

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can operate with increased speed and synchronization and is capable of achieving massed effects 

without the physical massing of forces required in the past. 

The U.S. Navy has the opportunity to launch itself on a trajectory that will deliver a quantum 

leap ahead in capabilities against an array of enemies—from the large highly developed 

competitor to the small but determined asymmetric adversary. 

 

A.K. Cebrowski, VADM USN (ret.) 

Former Director, Office of Force Transformation

Office of the Secretary of Defense 

Stuart E. Johnson 

Center for Technology and National Security Policy 

National Defense University 

 iv
Contents 

Foreword........................................................................................................ iii 

Executive Summary ...................................................................................... vi 

1. Introduction ........................................................................................... 1 

2. Strategic Context................................................................................... 7 

3. Budgetary Challenges........................................................................... 19 

4. Technology Opportunities.................................................................... 33 

5. Alternative Fleet Architecture Design................................................. 43 

6. Examples of Fleet Platform Architectures.......................................... 53 

7. Conclusion.............................................................................................. 74 

Appendices: 

Appendix A—Determining Capabilities Required in the Future 

 Fleet: A Decision Support Exercise .................................................. A-1 

 Appendix B—The Power of Networking ............................................ B-1 

Appendix C—Models Used to Compare Future Fleet 

 Capabilities Provided by the Alternative Architectures ................ C-1 

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Executive Summary 

This report calls into question the viability of the longstanding logic of naval force building. It 

provides a description of the opportunities that rapid advances in technology and organizational 

effectiveness offer the U.S. Navy as it looks to a demanding future. Most important, it provides 

an alternative fleet architecture design that incorporates the three broad elements of the 

Department of Defense’s transformation strategy. 

• Implementing network-centric warfare (NCW) as the new theory of war for the 

information age. 

• Broadening the capabilities base, creating coherence between force building and force 

operations, and addressing a broadening threat base. 

• Responding to falling barriers to competition by establishing a new competitive model

and new metrics. 

The report sets out to capture the spectrum of threats and the budgetary limitations with which a 

future Navy must cope; establish design principles based on meeting those future challenges and 

on taking advantage of rapid advances in technology and organizational effectiveness; and

propose an alternative to the programmed future fleet architecture. 

The analysis in Chapter 2 (Strategic Context) describes the changed security environment, 

which mandates a fleet that both broadens the Navy’s capability to preserve its strategic

advantage and makes it better suited for intervention against asymmetric threats. 

Chapter 3 (Budgetary Challenges) analyzes the Navy’s shipbuilding program and budget and 

demonstrates that it is based on optimistic, indeed risky, fiscal projections. An alternative, more 

realistic shipbuilding program needs to be developed to avoid further shrinking of the fleet and 

diminishing capability. 

Taking these two findings – the changed security environment and uncertain resources – as

imperatives for action, this report proposes an alternative: a fleet architecture built on new core 

design principles. Chapter 4 (Technology Opportunities) reviews the opportunities to be gained 

by exploiting recent technological developments. Chapter 5 (Alternative Fleet Architecture 

Design) lays out four principles that take advantage of the foregoing analyses and guide the 

design of the alternative fleet architecture: complexity, smaller ships with improved payload 

fraction, network-centric warfare, and modularity. These design principles will help the Navy 

and its defense industry partners create a future U.S. fleet that is dominant across a broad 

spectrum of missions. This includes conducting joint expeditionary operations in the “gap” and

maintaining the United States’ vital strategic advantage in the global commons of ocean (surface 

and subsurface), air, space, and cyber space. This future fleet will also be capable of influencing 

the future competitive environment for U.S. advantage. 

 vi
With this spectrum of missions in mind, examples of alternative fleet architectures are developed 

and presented in Chapter 6. They and the U.S. Navy’s programmed fleet are evaluated against 

two planning and operational challenges the Navy will face: 

• The need to participate in joint expeditionary operations. These types of operations have 

characterized many U.S. military operations conducted over the past 15 years. In the 

future, they may be conducted against either states or non-state actors, but in either case 

would be against asymmetric, irregular, and elusive enemies with an accent much more 

on the littoral areas than on the open ocean. 

• The need to maintain the strategic advantage the Navy has developed in the global 

commons. The goal may be to dissuade a would-be strategic challenger or, at a minimum, 

to prevent a capable adversary from denying us the ability to operate in any part of the

commons where we need to be. 

The analysis presented in the body of this report shows that the future naval fleet platform 

architecture need not be designed to optimize its performance against asymmetric challenges at 

the expense of its ability to confront a potential adversary capable of traditional high intensity 

conflict. Indeed, designing a fleet architecture composed of large numbers of manned and 

unmanned systems, networked together, provides coherence between building the force and

operating the force against both challenges. Such a fleet would be able to bring force to bear 

more rapidly and withstand enemy attack more effectively than the fleet architecture currently

programmed by the Navy. 

As mentioned, the alternative fleet platform architecture has been guided by four major design 

principles. 

Complexity: The alternative architecture has been designed to complicate both an adversary’s 

force planning and operations planning. In maritime operations, characteristics of naval forces

that complicate planning, decision making, and operational problems facing an adversary 

include: 

• Large numbers of platforms that the enemy must find, track, and target; 

• Great variety of forces with which the enemy must contend; 

• Fast, agile, low-signature platforms; 

• Different combinations of forces, quickly assembled and reassembled; 

• Distribution of forces across large areas for the enemy to search and cover; 

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• Platforms designed to foster ambiguity concerning their missions and capabilities; and 

• Constant experimentation with new operational concepts, thereby creating uncertainty 

among enemies as to how the fleet will operate.

Smaller Ships and Improved Payload Fraction: Advances in shipbuilding are making it 

possible for ever smaller ships to be seaworthy in the spectrum of conditions that combat fleets 

encounter. Moreover, promising research and development on smaller weapons with high 

precision and enhanced terminal effects and on smaller sensor packages is making it possible to 

package capabilities onto small ships that have been reserved to large ships up to now. Because 

of lightweight structural materials, innovative design, and sharply reduced manning, ships can be 

made faster and more maneuverable while payload fraction can increase from less than 10% to 

over 30%. 

Network-Centric Warfare: Added to the foregoing is the power that networking adds to a fleet. 

Advances in information technologies make it possible to network dispersed components of a

fleet so that the total power of the fleet greatly exceeds the sum of the capabilities of its 

individual components. 

Modularity: The alternative fleet platform architecture incorporates a generous mix of ship

capabilities. The ships make extensive use of modularity to maintain the ability to adapt to 

changing strategic or operational challenges. Separating the sensor and weapon suites from the 

hull permits the Navy to incorporate new technology into the module without taking the ship out 

of service to do so. The alternative architecture also leverages the growing capabilities of 

unmanned vehicles (UVs). 

The three alternative fleet platform architecture examples presented in Chapter 6 have been 

developed using a new competitive model, one which creates overmatching complexity at scale,

creates and preserves options, achieves higher learning rates, and employs higher transaction 

rates and faster cycle times. The new competitive model is also an integral element of a broader 

strategic approach to cost. 

Since predicting the future is all but impossible, the new force building logic manages

uncertainty by creating a breadth of capabilities appropriate across a broad range of alternative 

futures. This new logic is applicable to both force building and force operations. 

Implementation of the alternative fleet architecture should start now and should target option 

generation, short construction time, and technology insertion. The alternative further provides an 

opportunity to reinvigorate the shipbuilding industrial base. The many smaller ships, manned 

and unmanned, in the alternative fleet architecture could be built in more shipyards and would be 

relevant to overseas markets. The potential longevity of the existing fleet will sustain existing

shipyards as they move into building smaller ships more rapidly in this broader market and more

competitive environment. The shipyards would develop a competence, broad relevance, and 

operate in an environment driven by market imperatives instead of a framework of laws that

frustrates market forces. 

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As the new ships enter service and the fleet has the opportunity to experiment with new 

operational concepts (expanded network-centric warfare in particular) existing ships can be 

retired sooner to capture operations savings. At this point, the sooner the existing fleet is retired, 

the sooner the benefits of the alternative fleet architecture design will accrue. 

 ix
1. Introduction 

The challenges the U.S. Armed Forces will face over the next several decades are likely to be 

complex in nature and also extremely dangerous. The major security threats to the United States 

and our allies are expected to come largely from loosely connected transnational groups, to 

include international terrorist organizations whose members will be difficult to detect and track, 

whose capabilities will not always be fully understood, and whose behavior is hard to predict. 

The nature of future threats to U.S. interests from hostile regional powers and rogue states is also 

likely to be characterized by complexity. When attacked by terrorists, regional powers, or rogue 

states in the future, the U.S. Navy can expect to face a variety of enemy capabilities including 

mines, quiet submarines, shore-based missiles, and numerous small craft, that, taken together, 

present a highly complex challenge. 

In comparison, the United States has traditionally presented adversaries with a great deal of 

predictability in its naval forces. We take a long time to design and build our ships and, once 

built, they tend to remain in the fleet for many years with capabilities that are more or less locked 

in and well known to our adversaries. As the U.S. Navy continues the process of transformation 

to prepare for future challenges, one of its key design principles, as it develops the future fleet 

platform architecture, ought to be to create complexity for the enemy. Quite simply, the Navy’s 

aim should be to complicate planning and actual operations for our adversaries, thereby giving 

the United States a powerful advantage in future conflicts. In the maritime domain, factors that 

can complicate the force building and operational problems facing an adversary include: 

• Large numbers of platforms that the enemy must track and target; 

• Great variety of forces with which the enemy must contend; 

• Fast, agile, low-signature platforms; 

• Different combinations of forces, quickly assembled and reassembled; 

• Distribution of forces across large areas for the enemy to search and cover; 

• Platforms designed to foster ambiguity concerning their missions and capabilities; and 

• Constant experimentation with new operational concepts, thereby creating uncertainty 

among enemies as to how we will operate. 

A fleet that possesses these qualities can make planning for warfare far more complex and costly 

for enemy leaders. Specific consequences of the U.S. Navy’s ability to present future adversaries 

with more complexity include: taxing enemy surveillance, tracking, targeting, and weapons 

allocation; slowing the speed of enemy decision making; delaying the positioning or use of the 

appropriate enemy forces once decisions are made; making it more difficult for enemy forces to 

elude detection; isolating and over-matching enemy units; and producing command and control 

confusion for enemy forces, perhaps even decision overload. 
The Navy can design its future fleet platform architecture with the vital goal of complexity in 

mind. Examples of alternative future fleet platform architectures with the potential to create this 

sort of complexity for future adversaries are presented in Chapter 6. A fleet with such 

characteristics will provide a quantum leap ahead in capabilities against a spectrum of enemies 

ranging from large, highly developed competitors to small but determined asymmetric 

adversaries. This adaptability is critical. The security environment that is emerging is less stable,

more dynamic and consequently less predictable than in the past. It will surely include elements

typical of the last dozen years, challenges from hostile states or from non-state actors, e.g. 

terrorists or insurgents. U.S. interests and security will require continued joint expeditionary 

operations as an instrument of U.S. national defense policy. 

At the same time, the United States has established a dominant global strategic military position 

within which naval supremacy is a crucial component. This strategic advantage can dissuade 

adventurism and power projection by those tempted and able to mount such challenges. 

Moreover, it can be used to safeguard the use of the commons, especially the sea lanes, for 

global commerce. Key to maintaining the United States’ strategic advantage is the fleet’s ability

to operate wherever it needs to operate. This would include, but not be limited to, maintaining 

the ability to operate in the Western Pacific even if China were to attempt to deny us that 

freedom. A powerful, survivable U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater is likely to be the most valuable

military instrument for convincing China to pursue its regional (and global) interests in ways that 

do not confront U.S. power or contest the international norms that that power underwrites. 

It would be a mistake to design the future fleet with an exclusive focus on either conducting joint 

expeditionary operations or maintaining the U.S. strategic advantage through naval supremacy. 

Instead, a new approach to naval planning is required that delivers a fleet architecture that is

effective in both areas. 

The alternative fleet architecture design described in Chapter 5 includes four major design 

principles: 

• Complexity: As already discussed, through its adherence to the design principle of 

complexity, the U.S. Navy can complicate planning and actual operations for future 

adversaries, giving the fleet an important competitive advantage. 

• Smaller Ships and Improved Payload Fractions: Advances in shipbuilding are making 

it possible for much smaller ships to be seaworthy across the full spectrum of operations 

that the future fleet is expected to encounter. Promising research and development (R&D) 

on weapons and sensors is allowing the Navy to package ever more potent capabilities 

onto small ships than has been possible in the past, even the recent past. By combining

lightweight structural material, innovative design, and sharply reduced manning, a ship’s 

payload fraction can increase from less than 10% to over 30%. 

• Network-centric warfare (NCW): The rapid increase of networking and the 

development of enhanced network-centric capabilities is shifting the functionality of the 

fleet from individual platforms into an architecture through which they are able to work 

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together more effectively and with much greater shared situational awareness, speed of 

command, and decision making. A networked fleet delivers capabilities far greater than 

the sum of the capabilities inherent in its individual platforms. Moreover networks can be 

reconfigured, adapted, and improved much more rapidly and much more cheaply than a

collection of autonomous platforms. 

• Modularity: Increasing the modularity of the fleet provides additional flexibility and 

adaptability. By providing naval commanders with the ability to rapidly swap out 

modules that endow platforms with different capabilities, the fleet can adjust promptly to 

the wide spectrum of challenges it could face. 

In sum, applying the four major design principles of complexity, smaller ships and improved

payload fractions, networking, and modularity to the design of the future fleet architecture will 

go a long way towards resolving the dilemma of how to prepare for one future without 

sacrificing the capability to meet the other. It has the added advantage of complicating an 

enemy’s planning by making the character and operations of our fleet less predictable. 

 

The approach to designing a future fleet architecture along the lines described above also has the 

advantage of positioning the fleet to take advantage of the high leverage technology 

opportunities outlined in Chapter 4. Growth in processing power and high bandwidth data links 

continue to expand the capacity of networks. These same trends are expanding the utility of

unmanned vehicles to take on the difficult and dangerous tasks of reconnaissance over enemy 

territory as well as mine detection and neutralization and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) in the 

littorals. Advances in weapons effects combined with high precision in striking targets mean that

lethality once reserved for large platforms can be packaged onto much smaller platforms.

Commercial experience in standardized interfaces in lieu of standardized end products provides a 

growing body of empirical evidence for designing modules that can be swapped on and off a

platform promptly. New hull designs are enabling greater seaworthiness, higher speeds, and 

greater maneuverability of ever smaller naval combatants. 

The foregoing description of the alternative fleet architecture design and the strategic context 

within which it is applied represent more than an opportunity for the Navy. This approach, or one 

like it, is an imperative. The currently programmed future fleet architecture is dependent on a 

sharp growth in funding for shipbuilding and combat aviation. The affordability of the Navy’s 

long-term shipbuilding plan depends on five key assumptions. If one or more of these

assumptions do not hold up in the years ahead, the shipbuilding program will not be executable 

as planned. 

• DoD’s budget top-line continues to experience the real growth projected through 2011 

and beyond, and within that top-line, DoD’s procurement budgets grow strongly. 

• Supplemental spending bills will largely fund war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan so

that money does not have to be pulled out of the core DoD budget for this purpose. 

• The Navy continues to receive the share of DoD’s overall budget (and procurement 

budget) that is envisioned by its shipbuilding plan. 

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• The Navy succeeds in restraining operations and maintenance (O&M) cost growth 

through base realignment and closure (BRAC) and other measures. 

• The Navy successfully controls the over-budget construction costs of its new ships 

despite sharp cutbacks in R&D. 

None of these developments is materializing. Indeed, trends in all five areas are moving in the 

wrong direction. They are analyzed in detail in Chapter 3. Moreover, in part to fund 

procurements, the Navy is cutting its R&D funding by 25% through FY2009, thereby 

constraining the ability to suppress cost while preserving capability. As long as the focus is on

high unit cost, highly integrated, multi-mission platforms, the Navy will be faced with a fleet 

design that scales badly. Orders for new ships will shrink, unit price will rise further, and the size 

of the fleet will continue to decline, further diminishing the Navy’s flexibility and ability to take

advantage of the growing power of networking. 

This underlines the imperative of designing a fleet using cost as a strategy. Key to this is 

designing a fleet made up of lower unit cost systems. This delivers a fleet architecture that can 

scale better to increases or decreases in the resources for shipbuilding as well as provide the

ability to adapt much more rapidly to changes in the security environment. 

A new set of rules has emerged, driven by advances in technology and experiences in 

organizational behavior, which forms a basis for designing a powerful, adaptable fleet made up 

of lower unit cost elements. These fundamentals are interrelated and include: 

• Capabilities of a fleet are decoupled from platforms: Modularity and networking 

permit a new flexibility in designing a fleet architecture that decouples the capabilities of 

the fleet from the sum of the capabilities of individual platforms. 

• Power and survivability of a fleet have been decoupled from size: Advances in 

precision and high energy density warheads mean a small ship with high payload fraction 

can deliver the same military effects formerly reserved for much larger platforms. Small 

ships can also be designed with greater speed, maneuverability, and a smaller signature,

enabling them to elude detection, tracking, and strike. 

• Information has been substituted for mass: The rapid growth in the capacity to process 

and transmit information means that forces can disperse, therefore increasing 

survivability, while still massing firepower where needed. 

• Sensor proximity and persistence will drive the utility of weapons reach: Aircraft or

ships can strike targets from hundreds or thousands of miles away. Key to success on the 

future battlefield will be dispersed sensor networks that can cover a wide area. 

• Mass customization delivers greater value than mass production: Mass production of 

highly integrated platforms limits options. On the other hand, mass customization that 

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begins with a basic model, but allows system modules and other features to be changed as

advances in design occur, preserves options. 

• Networked components outperform integrated systems: Networking allows multiple 

platforms to coordinate and combine firepower and sensor capacity to deliver 

concentrated and precise effect. 

The foregoing suggests a new set of metrics for designing a future fleet architecture. Primary 

among these is the power of creating and preserving options both in designing and operating the 

fleet. In designing the future fleet architecture, the Navy could extend competition further to

include building, testing, and experimentation with more prototype designs. Likewise, expanded 

experimentation in the operational fleet would provide the commander with an expanded set of 

operational choices that would complicate the enemy’s problems in responding. 

High transaction rates in fleet development allow us to adjust to the future as rapidly, or more

rapidly, than an adversary within the dynamic and complex battlespace of the future. Transaction 

rates grow as the number of interactions with the competition and the environment grows. The 

quantity and quality of those interactions over time generates information about the battlespace

that, when distributed and acted upon, drives up learning success. 

High learning rates are essential for the Navy to maintain its effectiveness in an age where rapid

change is a key to competitive advantage. The key for the Navy is to create experiences at high

rates, to include continuing to explore options that were developed and initially rejected. The

more the Navy experiments with new ideas, the higher the rate of learning and the more quickly 

the lessons can find their way into the fleet. 

Taken together, the imperatives of a changing, dynamic strategic environment described in 

Chapter 2, the lack of adequate resources to build the programmed fleet architecture, the high 

leverage opportunities presented by advances in technology, and new rules and metrics provide 

an alternative framework for future fleet platform architecture design. 

Some specific examples of what an alternative future fleet architecture might look like are

detailed in Chapter 6. These three alternative architecture examples incorporate smaller, lower 

unit cost ships. The ships can carry different modules appropriate to the mission. Combat

aviation is carried on an increased number of small carriers. Lower cost Air Independent 

Propulsion (AIP) diesel submarines are substituted for some nuclear powered attack submarines 

(SSNs). Finally, generous use is made of unmanned vehicles to perform high-risk surveillance, 

ASW, and mine warfare operations. 

The result is an alternative fleet platform architecture with many more ships that can form a 

more robust network, disperse over a broad area for survivability, and scale up or down as 

resource availability permits. A key advantage is that such an architecture presents the enemy 

with a much more complex problem—both in his force planning and operational planning. There 

are many more entities for him to keep track of; they can move more quickly; and configuration, 

capabilities, and intent are uncertain. 

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A comparison of the fleet’s capabilities and survivability under fire is shown in Chapter 6 as

well. The analysis shows the alternative fleet to perform better than the programmed fleet 

architecture. Finally the alternative has been deliberately positioned to capture trends in

technology. As key technologies, especially information technologies, advance, the capabilities

resident in the alternative architectures can grow apace. 

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2. Strategic Context 

A New, Different, and Uncertain Era 

Setting requirements for naval capabilities and investment must take into account both that we

are transiting from one global security era, the Cold War and immediate post-Cold War, to a new 

era and that the new era is more dynamic and less predictable than the old. Reference is made to 

the Cold War because the current fleet and its design logic represent the overhang or “fossil 

remains” of that earlier era. This distinction between era transition and era instability is 

important. The shift from relatively clear requirements to different, but also fluid and less clear 

requirements, implies a change not only in what future fleet architecture will be needed by the 

U.S. Navy, but also in how it should be built and kept relevant. 

From what we have seen of it so far, the new era is sharply different from the old in terms of the 

Navy’s role in global security: 

• Global Security in the Cold War Era: The Cold War era was marked by the potential 

for all-out war at sea against a global power unwilling to yield control of the oceans to

the U.S. Navy. This pivotal planning assumption combined Alfred Thayer Mahan’s 

concept of sea power with a recognition that the U.S. Navy—particularly its aircraft 

carrier battle groups and submarine fleets—required capabilities to survive and prevail 

against an enemy fleet with formidable surface, submarine, and air capabilities. 

Accordingly, the missions for which it was designed were mainly anti-surface, antisubmarine, and anti-air warfare, as well as nuclear deterrence. In the East-West struggle, 

the world’s oceans were of strategic importance, and the Navy was America’s strategic 

answer on the high seas. 

• Global Security in the New Era: The new era, so far, involves frequent contingencies of 

a wide variety across a wide geographic arc against an assortment of adversaries, none of 

which can compare to U.S. naval or overall military strength. The spectrum ranges from 

major combat to counter-terrorist operations to semi-permissive and permissive stability

operations, e.g., peace-making, humanitarian relief, and nation-building. The need to

engage in land-expeditionary contingencies is the result of the global security interests,

responsibilities, and challenges the United States has been required to meet. In addition, 

although the U.S. homeland is less exposed to strategic attack by a rival peer, it is more

exposed to desperate and daring acts of terrorists and rogues, the best defense against

which is to find and eliminate the terrorists abroad. In such land-expeditionary

interventions, the Navy can play a vital enabling role in the success of the joint force, into

which it is increasingly integrated. Thus, while currently unchallenged on the high seas, 

the Navy must operate in littoral waters that can be made unsafe by asymmetric weapons 

and tactics of lesser powers. In sum, having been designed and built mainly as a highseas strategic instrument for an earlier era, the Navy has become an active instrument of

U.S. intervention and self-defense policies. We have designed and built one Navy and are 

operating another. 

 - 7 -
 

If we could be sure that the future will stabilize more or less along these latter lines, we could

concern ourselves only with fleet requirements for era transition, i.e., for joint land-expeditionary 

operations against asymmetric adversaries. We would spell out as exactly as possible the

characteristics of the new era, adjust requirements accordingly, and invest to meet those 

requirements. Once the fleet was refashioned according to this model of the new equilibrium,

reversion to the old paradigm of incremental modernization would work, at least until the onset

of another new era. 

However, the technological and geopolitical dynamism unleashed by the information revolution, 

the end of Soviet communism, globalization, and “9/11” are likely to be with us for some time. 

This militates against reliance on experience-based forecasts of how the new era will unfold. 

Thus, for all the recent emphasis on preparing for a long-term “global war on terrorism,” using 

the intervention in Afghanistan and counter-insurgency operations in Iraq as the principal basis 

for planning could prove to be a grave miscalculation. 

Generalizations about the new security landscape based on the first Gulf War were largely 

demolished by the Balkan wars of the 1990s and the long-term peacekeeping and peace 

enforcement missions that followed, which required the stationing of U.S. and multinational 

ground forces in Bosnia and Kosovo. Similarly, projections for the new era based on these 

recent Balkan wars were shattered by 9/11 and the lightning U.S. attacks on the Taliban and Al 

Qaeda in Afghanistan that followed in 2001-2002. The successful U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 

2003 and the rapid overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime have been followed by an 

extended period of combat, beginning in May 2003 and continuing to the present, between U.S. 

forces and our multinational partners and a potent combination of Iraqi insurgents and foreign

terrorists. These new threats to the stability of Iraq and the nature of this insurgency, located

mainly in the cities and towns of the Sunni Triangle, led to a growing requirement for U.S. and 

multinational ground forces to conduct urban operations against enemy cells. The experiences of 

our forces in Fallujah and other predominantly Sunni towns would suggest still different 

generalizations, no less likely to be invalidated by events to come. In sum, treating the last 

decade as prologue to the decades ahead is fraught with peril in setting requirements for military

capabilities—even moreso for the Navy than for the other Services, given the capital intensity

and life expectancy of a fleet. 

Nonetheless, today’s defense planning tends to take as a given that the swath of lands from the 

Eastern Mediterranean through Southwest, South and Southeast Asia to East Asia will be the 

theater of such interventions, with some additional possibility of minor intervention operations in 

trouble spots of sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean. The perceived likelihood of expeditionary 

operations against outlaw states and terrorists, combined with the difficulty of predicting where

and when they will occur, has given rise to the concept of basing land-intervention forces at sea, 

supported by ship-based attack and extended-defense capabilities. Accordingly, the Navy is 

wrestling with the challenge of transforming an essentially high-seas fleet into one that delivers

what it calls Sea Basing, Sea Strike and Sea Shield. On the assumption that the future is more or

less as just described, the Navy’s construct is a useful one for planning naval capabilities. 

Whether that construct has led to the optimum fleet architecture and naval investment program

for such a future is a different matter and a central issue of this report. 

 - 8 -
Because of era instability, however, it would be a mistake to count on this assumption for a 

matter as weighty as preparing the U.S. Navy for the future. Even if the coming decade

resembles the last one, it would be foolhardy to forecast that the challenges of 2020 or 2030 

come only from rogue states, global terrorism, and humanitarian interventions. The future Navy 

must be far more versatile than what is implied by either the old era or the period since then. 

For example, take the impact of the current conflict in Iraq. In the best case, it could make 

interventions in Southwest Asia and elsewhere less necessary by setting in motion positive 

regional political trends, deterring other hostile states, inducing regime change and isolating

terrorists. In a less good case, it could set the stage for similar interventions against intransigent

dictators seeking weapons of mass destruction and harboring terrorists. In a third case, 

international and domestic backlash against the Iraq war, if it does not go well, could militate

against overseas military interventions generally—a phenomenon known to have happened

before in modern American history. The post-Cold-War era of U.S. interventionism could end. 

Or, consider China. If Taiwan’s status is resolved peacefully or at least managed skillfully, the 

logic of cooperation between China and the United States could prevail over the logic of rivalry. 

Or vice versa. The Chinese have intensified investment in modern, advanced-propulsion 

submarines, ballistic missiles, and extended range sensors. Depending on Sino-American

relations and what becomes of Taiwan, these investments could prove benign or become

menacing to the freedom of the U.S. Navy to operate in the Western Pacific. In one case, China 

might expand investment in area-denial and its own power-projection capabilities, seeking to

deny the United States control of and extend Chinese influence across East Asian waters. In 

another, China might conclude that national success depends on avoiding confrontation and 

competition with the United States. 

In a sense, experience since 1989 has been so varied as to argue against forecasting a future 

based on that experience. Flat predictions of decades more of intervention against rogue states 

and terrorist cells seem as shaky as predictions of Sino-American confrontation. At the same

time, failing to predict at all would leave naval investment adrift against currents of bureaucratic 

inertia, special-interest politics, and technological randomness. Moreover, failing to develop 

adequate capabilities to intervene abroad would foreclose U.S. options, and failing to prepare for 

a confrontation with China could invite one. So we must make a concerted attempt to peer into

the future, or futures, as the basis for conceiving the capabilities of the future fleet and shaping 

an investment strategy with those capabilities in mind. 

 

Planning for the Unpredictable 

There are a variety of respectable methods to plan for an unpredictable future, e.g.: 

• Being very general, given that generalities are less likely to be mistaken; 

• Identifying a “space” of many futures, giving attention to the key determinants rather 

than to any particular (point) combination of them; 

 

 - 9 -
• Developing a portfolio of specific scenarios—the more the better; 

• Bracketing the range of plausible futures; and 

 

• Proceeding incrementally and adaptively toward general goals while collecting

information and observing indicators along the way that settle at least some uncertainty 

and suggest what paths to take toward those goals. 

For our purposes of generating requirements for naval capabilities, the last two methods, in 

combination, seem especially useful. It is possible to bracket the future by imagining two futures 

different enough to pose very different demands, yet both plausible. Alternative fleet 

architectures can then be drawn up and tested against the demands of each future, and if practical 

a richer set of possibilities. In this way, the alternatives can be judged both by their suitability

for one future and by their robustness across the range of futures lying between the brackets, 

e.g., a hybrid of the two futures. At the same time, the passage of time and development of 

world affairs will furnish information that may clarify the future’s general course and character.

This may, in turn, provide a basis for modifying the fleet architecture. In this light, the

architecture must be not only robust across a range of futures but also flexible by design. 

The two futures we find most suitable for planning are called Intervention and Strategic 

Advantage. They signify quite different ways of thinking about the utility of maritime power to 

the nation. Of course, the future could prove to be a combination of the two, in which case the 

suitability of the U.S. Navy for both—i.e., its robustness—would be critical. 

• Intervention Future: The Intervention future is more or less an extrapolation of the U.S. 

policy trend-line for the last dozen years, intervening in Kuwait, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, 

Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq. The premise is that U.S. interests, values and perhaps 

homeland security merit continued expeditionary military operations as a policy

instrument of U.S. involvement in the world, be it unilateral or multilateral. Military

intervention may be against either states or non-state actors, e.g., terrorist and insurgents. 

While familiar, the demands on U.S. naval forces of this future are what one would 

consider non-traditional—asymmetric, irregular, elusive, and more littoral than oceangoing. 

• Strategic Advantage Future: Strategic Advantage assumes that military intervention on 

land comes to look inefficacious or non-essential for the United States, perhaps because 

of lack of international support, increased costs, reassessment of interests, or complete 

success against current enemies. So the United States becomes less predisposed to 

intervene around the world. But it does consider it imperative to maintain a dominant 

strategic position, of which naval supremacy is a prominent dimension. The United 

States may do this to dissuade a strategic challenger, to confront one if dissuasion fails, or

to safeguard the world’s common and increasingly vital maritime trade lanes. 

Let us look at each future in more detail, and then consider the implications for fleet 

requirements and investment strategy. 

 - 10 -
Intervention 

Emphasis on land-expeditionary intervention would represent an extension of current policy. In

this future, as now, the U.S. Navy is treated as a readily usable policy instrument for enabling the

United States to project and insert joint military power, either to back up diplomacy or to act if

diplomacy fails. For an interventionist America, maritime power provides credible options to 

display resolve, exert pressure or deliver force promptly, flexibly, and without need of land 

basing—wherever, whenever, and against whatever adversary U.S. interests, values, or 

responsibilities might require. 

The utility of this policy instrument is predicated on the U.S. perception that international and

national security depend on the believable will and unmatched ability to intervene abroad, on

land, leading coalitions whenever possible. While naval power may be used on its own (e.g., to

intercept terrorists on the sea or to deliver strikes against land targets), the more demanding the 

contingency, the more likely it is that it will be used in conjunction with land forces and landbased air forces. Networking will permit increasingly integrated joint operations, with

advantages in lethality, precision, maneuverability, and survivability. 

Although the basic theme in the Intervention future is consistent with U.S. policies since the end 

of the Cold War, the demands will surely change. Adversaries’ adoption of asymmetric tactics 

and weapons, combined with their acquisition of more capable weapons, could pose new risks to 

expeditionary forces. Land-based missiles, mines, small coastal assault boats, diesel submarines,

and weapons of mass destruction could make littoral waters more dangerous, which in turn could

make naval support for land interventions more difficult. Those being intervened against may try 

to strike high-value U.S. targets, including American soil, in response to U.S. intervention, or the 

United States may intervene to preempt such dangers. The rise of sub-national adversaries will 

present new operational challenges, e.g., finding and eliminating terrorists, fighting insurgents 

hidden in the crowds and alleys of cities, and interdicting flows of fighters and arms. 

Because of likely increases in adversaries’ capabilities in the Intervention future, the U.S. Navy

would have to be more capable—lethal, survivable, sustainable, flexible, versatile, interoperable—of supporting distant joint military interventions than it is now. Building on the 

Navy-Marine relationship, the fleet could be expected increasingly to transport land forces to the

theater and onto the battlefield, and back them up with logistics, strike, and defensive capabilities 

(the Navy’s Sea Basing, Sea Strike, and Sea Shield nomenclature). Therefore, even if the future

does not change radically from the present, this is no reason to argue that the U.S. fleet does not 

need to change. While the Navy has been shifting from a focus on the conduct of “war-at-sea” to 

“strike,” this addresses only a part of the capabilities it will need to support intervention and joint 

expeditionary operations. 

Strategic Advantage 

In this alternative future, maritime power is both a contingent military instrument and an

unshakeable strategic fact—usable in the event of challenges or incidents, but useful as a 

deterrent, an expression of power, and a source of global confidence even if not used for actual 

 - 11 -
combat operations. Regardless of whether a major threat exists, U.S. geographic remoteness and 

dependence on global markets and production make naval power as strategic for the United 

States in the 21st century as it was in the 19th for the British Empire, which faced no enduring 

enemy. With its global fleet, the United States could set favorable systemic conditions – its 

standing unrivalled, its global access unimpaired, world trade and energy supply routes open, and 

mankind’s common waters secure. While less inclined to intervene with ground troops, the 

United States would retain worldwide influence from the sea. Whether viewed in classical geopolitical terms or in terms of an increasingly integrated world economy, a commanding 

maritime-based strategic position for the United States—also being the economic and 

technological leader—would guarantee U.S. and global security without requiring “routine” land 

interventions. 

More specifically, maritime supremacy could be used by the United States to dissuade military 

adventurism and power projection by those able and tempted to mount such challenges. With a

dominant navy, the United States could set conditions not only for its own strategic security and 

global interests but also to safeguard the integrated world economy. Strategic Advantage would 

ensure that the United States has supremacy in any competition or conflict in which maritime

power can be brought to bear. This could include intervention, but not as its main purpose. 

Strategic challenges could include regional hegemonic aggression, hostile power projection, 

threats to U.S. territory, and threats to vital resources and trade routes. Even if a peer challenger 

does not rise up, a variety of unfriendly actors could use the oceans to transport dangerous

materials and people, and disrupt world trade. These actors include sophisticated, well-resourced 

rogue states and non-state actors, as in the Intervention future. 

Of course, China would be of special concern, given its economic scale and dynamism, its 

technological potential, and its regional ambitions and insecurities. Even if a military factor only

in the East Asian region, the vital importance of that region to the world and the United States

give it strategic significance. Curbing Chinese attempts to use military power coercively without 

relying on threats to use land forces or to strike against China proper is largely a maritime

strategic challenge for the United States. The model of U.S. joint land-expeditionary warfare

that has been formed by the interventions of the past dozen or so years does not fit most 

scenarios of Sino-American crisis. The U.S. Navy may be the most important military

instrument for convincing China to pursue its regional and global interests in ways that do not 

confront U.S. power or contest the interests and international norms that that power serves. 

Thus, the basic premise of this future is that the land interventions of the period from 1990 to 

2004 are not necessarily indicative of the future, at least not beyond the next few years. Instead,

new conditions—an emergent China, various threats to vital trade routes of an integrated world 

economy, the declining efficacy of ground-force intervention—point to more of a grand 

maritime strategy for the United States. In this future, although the Navy would maintain

capabilities to support joint expeditionary operations on land, it would have to prepare to prevail 

decisively in hostilities on the world’s ocean commons, whether or not the other Services are 

involved. Instead of being mainly a supporting service, it would often operate autonomously or 

at least have the lead. 

 - 12 -
Implications for Requirements 

With this strategic context in mind, specific capabilities that the fleet would require in the future 

were developed. In the spring of 2004, two decision support workshops were conducted at the 

Naval War College. Workshop participants were charged with exploring how changing global

conditions can inform the Navy about the capabilities it must field to meet future challenges. 

Specifically, their primary objective was to develop a prioritized list of capabilities for the future 

fleet architecture design. These workshops are described and the results presented in Appendix 

A. Requirements that grew out of these workshops provided a foundation for the alternative fleet 

architectures presented in Chapter 6. 

The exercise of setting requirements for one or the other of these two futures does not imply that

the United States need bet all its chips (or ships) on one and dismiss the other. Certain 

capabilities will be essential in both futures. More generally, it is instructive to review the 

similarities and differences in the capabilities implied by these futures. 

Both the Intervention and Strategic Advantage demand certain capabilities: 

• Persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR): As long as the U.S. 

Navy is expected to operate worldwide, as is the case in both alternatives, the ability to 

scan and stare where necessary is important. While the Navy can depend on other 

services for ISR, it should also address it own needs and contribute to meeting those of 

other services. Thus, naval ISR should be an integral part of Department of Defense 

(DoD) national ISR. 

Additionally, the ability to collect and process large amounts of information about ships 

bound for U.S. ports is likely to be a key future role for the Navy. Working with civilian 

authorities, the Navy could well be called upon to help track and, as needed, challenge

ships on their way to the United States. 

• Access to networks for abundant information and easy command, control, and 

communications (C3): The benefits of extensive, open, broadband data networks are of 

value in any case, including as a key to exploiting ISR. Because of mobility and 

flexibility of sea-based C3, the U.S. Navy can contribute to joint C3 while satisfying its 

own needs. It must also use joint networks for access to information gleaned by the 

airborne and spaced-based sensors of the Air Force and national ISR assets. 

• Theater ballistic and cruise missile defense: Inability to protect against theater missile

threats could hamper joint-force interventions, littoral operations and sea control, inviting

adversaries to invest in precisely these weapons to hold the U.S. Navy and other forces at 

bay. Because of its flexibility, sea-based missile defense can contribute importantly no 

matter what the future holds. 

• Precision strike: Whether against land targets in support of joint forces or against seabased targets, this capability improves the lethality, economy, and discrimination of 

offensive operations and helps neutralize threats. In view of recent munitions 

 - 13 -
improvement, the chief aim is no longer greater precision, per se, but making it 

operationally decisive: 

o Prompt precision strike is important against critical fleeting targets, e.g., missile 

launchers and terrorist leaders, which could figure importantly in either future; it 

requires better ISR-C3-weapon networking, above all. 

o Discriminating precision strike, also depending on enhanced ISR-C3-weapon 

networking, will be important for delivering effects in urban and other sensitive areas.

o Large-volume precision strike may be crucial against larger opponents and requires 

continued reduction in weapon size and unit costs. 

• Versatile strike: Both futures could require operations almost anywhere and against a 

wide range of adversaries from major land power to pockets of terrorists to high-seas 

piracy to hostile power projection. This places a premium on scaleable and versatile 

strike capabilities. 

In sum, there seems to be a core of naval capabilities of value in either future (and in other

futures as well). It includes sensors and networking to enhance awareness and collaboration, 

defense against a range of missiles threats, and being able to strike with precision, speed, 

volume, and versatility. It is reasonable to conclude that these are general capabilities the U.S. 

Navy will need whatever the future holds and whatever fleet architecture is indicated. 

Preparations for the Intervention future would also stress the following capabilities: 

• Joint operating information-access and collaboration: Because joint operations are a 

necessity for land expeditions but not (or less so) for sea control, the networks needed to

conduct them are an especially high priority in this future. Ship-based joint C3 is 

attractive because of the mobility and flexibility it affords. 

• Rapid joint-force mobility: While desirable in any future, the Intervention case poses

the greater demands for strategic and theater mobility. The need for naval capacity to 

move and support large, possibly heavy ground forces is increasingly apparent, as it 

becomes harder to pin-point where forces will be needed. Speed and the ability to 

maintain distant presence in peacetime, crisis, combat, and post-combat conditions may 

be critical. 

• Access to and control of littoral waters: While desirable in both cases, littoral control 

is indispensable in a future characterized by joint expeditionary warfare. Shore-based 

missiles, submarines, mines, swarming gunboats, and suicide terrorists present an 

increasingly dangerous environment for interventions. 

• Joint-force logistics: Hand in hand with rapid joint-force deployment is the capacity to 

maintain stocks afloat, given the uncertainty of location of future contingencies. 

Moreover, the ability to transfer materials, marry them with troops, and support forces 

within a theater could be a major naval responsibility in this future. 

 - 14 -
• Forcible entry: Maritime capabilities may be critical not only for traditional amphibious

operations but for fighting from off-shore to establish, exploit and expand land 

lodgments. In this future, sea-based air-strike capabilities must include close support for

land operations. 

• Insertion, support, and extraction of special operations forces (SOF): Clandestine 

operations can require extensive sea-based transport, support, ISR, and C3. 

In sum, in addition to the core capabilities, the Intervention future places a premium on the 

capabilities to respond rapidly and to insert and sustain sizeable or specialized joint forces 

ashore, to contribute to joint strike operations, and to provide joint C3, even as near-land waters 

become increasingly infested with state and perhaps non-state threats. 

A future in which the U.S. Navy is required to stress Strategic Advantage would place a 

premium on the following capabilities: 

• Surface warfare: Capabilities to destroy surface combatants while avoiding destruction 

could become important again for the U.S. Navy. Although the high-volume, precision, 

versatile strike capabilities required in any future may suffice, more specific ones (e.g., 

fleet missiles and fleet missile-defense) could be needed. 

• Counter-power projection: To deny any challenger the ability to project power, 

surface-warfare, strike and missile-defense capabilities would be relevant, as would the 

ability to move sizeable naval forces over strategic distances with great speed to thwart 

enemy force projection.

• Undersea warfare: While littoral anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities may be 

required in the Intervention future, Strategic Advantage would require both that and 

possibly strategic ASW, capable of expansive coverage and detection of sophisticated 

(quiet) submarines that could threaten the fleet or even the homeland. 

• Strategic nuclear deterrence: An invulnerable and potent sea-based nuclear force 

would reinforce the objectives of strategic superiority and invincibility implied by a 

Strategic Advantage future.

• National missile defense: While relevant to the Intervention future (if lesser adversaries

counter the threat of intervention with long-range missiles), national missile defense is 

indispensable in a future in which the United States seeks an unassailable Strategic

Advantage. Because of its mobility and flexibility, sea-based missile defense—sensors 

as well as interceptors—can contribute significantly to national missile defense.

In sum, in addition to the core naval capabilities, the Strategic Advantage future demands forces

that can prevail against the naval surface and sub-surface forces of a large power, can control 

both open and narrow seas vital to trade, and are survivable against long-range attacks from land. 

 - 15 -
Planning for Both Futures—Not One or the Other 

 

It would be a mistake to plan for one future—even one like the present or either of the two 

futures we have postulated—to the exclusion of others. Therefore, a critical question for the 

future fleet, and for the analysis, planning, and investment to produce one, is how to prepare for 

both of these two different futures (while keeping an eye on other possibilities). Here are some

basic alternatives: 

• Plan for one future; hedge for the other: Future fleet capabilities, and thus 

investments to create them, would be deliberately biased toward one or the other future. 

However, those capabilities and investments indicated must be tested against the 

requirements for the other future. As noted, some core capabilities will be of value in 

both. Otherwise, calculated risks may have to be taken where requirements of the other 

future are unmet—risks that can be mitigated by some additional capabilities and 

investments that provide a hedge. To illustrate, if the Intervention future is favored, 

surface combatants (e.g., destroyers and cruisers) and nuclear-powered attack submarines

may be de-emphasized quantitatively but kept current qualitatively in order to permit a

form of “break-out”. Testing and hedging for the other future should take into account 

warning time—from a few months to many years—and signals in the event that initial 

expectations turn out to be mistaken. With warning time, it is easier to create options

through R&D and experimentation while deferring procurement until conditions are 

clearer. 

• Prepare for both futures with “two navies”: Depending on national priorities and 

available resources, it may be that the U.S. Navy should be prepared for both futures. 

Although there are important common core capabilities, the requirements of the two 

futures described here could be sufficiently different to warrant separate capabilities for 

each. Thus, for example, strong strategic forces ballistic missile submarines, ASW, and 

national missile defense would be justified for Strategic Advantage while the ability to

transport and support joint expeditionary forces (Sea Basing) would be justified if 

Intervention remains a national priority. Not only would the two navies be different, but

so would their respective support, technical, and industrial bases. Obviously, the Navy 

and the nation would face a trade-off between cost and risk, which of course could be 

biased toward one or the other future and shifted as events unfold. If determined to keep 

risk low in all naval missions, the costs of two navies could be far greater than current 

defense budget projections and fiscal conditions would permit. 

• Plan for both futures with common capabilities: In order to economize on cost while

addressing both futures, capabilities required especially for one but not the other could be 

kept more modest, in scale or sophistication, than in the “two-navies” option. Because of 

this, setting priorities and assessing risk would be critical, as would vigilance for signals 

of which direction to adapt. As in the other approaches, core capabilities required in both 

futures would receive priority attention in fleet architecture and investment. It would be 

a mistake to assume that the different requirements of the two futures indicated above 

(apart from the core) cannot be met well enough by the same architecture. All else being 

 - 16 -
equal, any architecture that tests well against both alternative futures should be favored 

over any that tests well against only one.

What makes fleet requirements setting and investment planning especially challenging is the fact 

that fleets have a way of outlasting eras, especially eras that end abruptly (e.g., in 1914, 1945, 

and 1989). Historically, fleets have tended to fall at least somewhat behind the times and thus 

have been used for purposes other than intended. As noted, most of today’s U.S. Navy 

platforms—nuclear powered aircraft carriers (CVNs), surface escorts, nuclear-powered ballistic 

missile submarines (SSBNs), nuclear powered attack submarines (SSNs), amphibious ships, and 

related auxiliaries—were conceived to prevail in a general war against the Soviet Union. 

Although the period since the end of the Cold War has been dominated by joint expeditionary

operations, it has been carried out by a fleet largely designed for a different purpose. The U.S. 

Navy is not optimized for an era of Intervention, though modernization has nudged it 

incrementally in that direction. 

At present, this lag has implications for setting requirements and planning investments for the 

future. Paradoxically, although the Intervention future resembles the current security 

environment, preparing for it could require more significant changes in requirements than would 

preparing for the Strategic Advantage future. This is because today’s fleet embodies types of 

capabilities reflecting the Soviet naval threat (and before that the Japanese and German naval 

threats) that are more relevant to a future Chinese threat than to maritime support for joint landexpeditionary warfare. 

Whatever the future, the U.S. Navy must be based on network principles. Networking provides 

both extraordinary advantages at any moment but also a way to cope with uncertainty and

change. The virtue of networks is that they embody more capability, or value, than the separate 

components do. Data networking has shifted functionality from individual machines (e.g., 

platforms, weapons, and other systems) into the architecture from which they get information 

and through which they work together. At the same time, networks are more easily reconfigured, 

adapted, and continuously improved than are machines. In time, any networks of machines—

including even naval platforms—can exploit these trends, as the use of the global positioning 

system (GPS) to guide weapons (e.g., joint direct attack munition [JDAM]) already shows. 

Even the rigidity of fleets—taking longer to be altered than it does for the world and 

requirements to change—does not have to be an immutable law. Just as networking can provide 

flexibility and adaptability to changing requirements, so can increasing the modularity of naval 

capabilities. Facing a fluid, complex and unpredictable security environment—“era 

instability”—argues for relying on common interfaces on a variety of platforms that can be

configured to address a range of futures bracketed by the two that we analyze in this study. This 

provides the ability to adjust the fleet as the future evolves. In sum, the architectural principles 

of networking and modularity go a long way to resolve the dilemma of planning for one future to 

the exclusion of the other or else maintaining two navies. 

 - 17 -
Conclusion 

At this juncture, it would be difficult and perhaps risky to bet on either of the two futures

indicated. Both have antecedents in today’s world. Similarly, the Intervention future calls for 

operations against asymmetric state and non-state adversaries, including terrorists and others that 

favor irregular war. But China’s clear interest in growing naval and anti-naval capabilities to 

hold the U.S. fleet at risk suggests that treating the Strategic Advantage future as unlikely or of

secondary importance could be a mistake. Therefore, we give the two futures equal weight. 

This argues against a fleet designed for one future, but hedged for the other. 

The choice between the “two-navy” approach and a single architecture to meet the needs of both 

futures boils down to how much overlap there is in requirements. We have already postulated 

that there are significant core capabilities required in both—and almost any other plausible—

futures. Beyond that, the critical question is whether an architecture that measures well against 

Intervention Requirements will measure well also against Strategic Advantage requirements. 

A fleet architecture based on network principles appears promising for different futures for 

different reasons. In particular, a networked fleet with large numbers of ships, many of them 

small, maneuverable, and fast, can operate in a dispersed yet coherent fashion. In the 

Intervention future, such a fleet would have the advantages of being able to cover a wide expanse 

of water, locate and track enemy units, and bring force to bear in many places at once. In the 

Strategic Advantage future, such a fleet would enjoy greater survivability against naval and landbased threats. In both cases, “numbers matter,” though for different reasons. This suggests the 

possibility of designing an alternative future fleet platform architecture that would be 

advantageous in either future, while actual requirements could be met by modular systems, such 

as missile defense, command and control, ASW, or land attack. 

The analysis that follows in this study examines the possibility that an alternative fleet platform 

architecture based on networking, modularity, and adaptability could meet the requirements of

both futures without requiring, in effect, two separate navies. 

 - 18 -
3. Budgetary Challenges 

Overview

Since 2002, the U.S. Navy has had on the table a long-term plan to modernize and expand its 

fleet from the 286 ships in the fleet today to 375 ships in the future. The plan’s feasibility is 

highly uncertain. A change appears inevitable. In its FY2005 shipbuilding report to Congress, the 

Navy presented possible alternative plans, one targeting a fleet of 260 ships and one targeting a 

fleet of 325 ships. The key issue facing the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Navy is that 

the available budgetary resources are unlikely to be adequate to fund the existing plan, not only 

during the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) period of 2006-2011, but also beyond Fiscal 

Year (FY) 2022. If future Navy budgets are expected to be inadequate to bring the programmed 

architecture to life, alternative fleet platform architectures will have to be considered. 

The purpose of this chapter is not to predict the future or draw a fixed blueprint for the Navy. 

Instead, its purpose is analytical: to illuminate the key assumptions, constraints, and implications 

so that impending choices can be better understood. This chapter begins by describing the 

Navy’s shipbuilding plans, including those for the long-term. It then analyzes five key 

assumptions upon which these plans are based. All five appear to be overly optimistic. 

DoD Budget Growth: DoD’s budget top-line continues to experience the real growth

projected through 2011 and beyond, and within that top-line, DoD’s procurement budgets 

grow strongly. 

y

y

y

y

y

Supplemental Funding for DoD: Supplemental spending bills will largely fund war

operations in Iraq and Afghanistan so that money does not have to be pulled out of the core 

DoD budget for this purpose. 

Navy Budget Share: The Navy continues to receive the share of DoD’s overall budget 

(and procurement budget) that is envisioned by its shipbuilding plan. 

Navy O&M: The Navy succeeds in restraining O&M cost growth through BRAC and 

other measures. 

Navy Shipbuilding Costs: The Navy successfully controls the over-budget construction 

costs of its new ships despite sharp cutbacks in R&D. 

Our analysis of the five key assumptions concludes that the affordability of the Navy’s

shipbuilding plan is far from certain. The Navy will be able to procure all of the ships in its 

current plan only if favorable trends unfold in all five areas. If unfavorable trends—a 

combination of smaller Navy procurement budgets and higher expenses for new ships—

dominate, the Navy will not be able to buy the 207 new ships now included in its shipbuilding 

program during 2006-2022, or to enlarge its fleet to 375 ships by 2022. Significantly, the 

President’s FY2006 Budget Submission cuts Navy and Marine Corps modernization programs 

by $13.7 billion during the FYDP period of 2006-2011. This is a portent of the potential 

problems for the Navy’s shipbuilding plans in the years ahead. 

 - 19 -
A problem facing the Navy (as well as the other Services) is that procurement budgets are neither 

fixed nor easily controlled. They are “elastic” and subject to outside pressures aside from 

requirements. When defense budgets rise, and other expenditures (notably personnel and 

operations & maintenance [O&M]) are held in check, procurement budgets can grow 

significantly. But when defense budgets tighten, and other expenditures are rising as they are 

today, procurement budgets suffer. Likewise, future construction costs for new ships are not 

fixed. Instead, they can rise above original estimates for a variety of reasons: e.g., new 

capabilities or higher labor costs. The combination of constraint on procurement budgets and 

rising construction costs can compel reduction in long-term shipbuilding plans irrespective of 

whether a legitimate requirement exists for these plans. 

The Navy’s Future Force Architecture and Shipbuilding Plan: 

Ambitious Goals 

DoD is seeking to move from “threat-based planning” as practiced during the Cold War, to 

“capability-based planning,” which calls for a flexible military posture able to meet a wide 

spectrum of future challenges. For the Navy, this means ensuring that the fleet has the 

capabilities to perform two broad classes of critical missions in the future: 

y Conduct expeditionary interventionist operations in the near-to-mid term; and 

y Maintain its strategic advantage in the ocean commons over adversaries that might try to

deny it access to important regions. 

New Navy Concepts and Plans. The ships in the Navy inventory as of the beginning of 2005, 

shown in Table 3-1, were designed for the Cold War and reflect its operational requirements. 

This fleet is far smaller than the posture of 550-600 ships sought for the Cold War in the 1980s, 

and is smaller than the 400+ ships endorsed by the first Bush Administration in the early 1990s. 

In 1993, the Clinton Administration, in its Bottom Up Review (BUR) study, endorsed a Navy of 

346 ships; its 1997 QDR reduced the number to 310 ships—the last DoD-authorized target. 

Carriers 12*

Amphibious Assault Ships 37 

Cruisers 23

Destroyers and Frigates 69 

Attack Submarines 54 

Other Ships 91** 

Total 286

*Does not reflect the possible early retirement of USS John F.

Kennedy 

**Includes ballistic missile submarines, combat logistics ships,

and command and support ships 

Table 3-1. Current Navy “Battle Force” Ships—2005 

 - 20 -
To strengthen its capacity to support the U.S. defense strategy, the Navy is proposing to 

modernize and to expand its existing fleet to 375 warships in the next 15-20 years. This goal is to 

be achieved by accelerating naval shipbuilding from 7-9 ships per year to a peak of 14-15 ships 

in the out years. 

The Navy judges that in the future, it will need to deploy 12 Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs), 12 

Expeditionary Strike Groups (ESGs), 9 Strike/Missile Defense Surface Action Groups (SSGs), 4 

Special Operations/Strike Units composed of converted SSGN submarines (SSGN/SOF Strike 

Units), plus Maritime Prepositioning Groups (MPGs) and logistic support assets. The 

requirement to populate these operational units with sufficient warships and support ships is the 

main analytical rationale for the Navy’s 375 ships target to be complete by the early 2020s. 

While the exact composition of the future force is flexible, Table 3-2 illustrates how it might 

take shape. 

Carriers 12*

Amphibious Assault Ships 37 

Cruisers, Destroyers, Frigates 104 

Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) 56 

Attack Submarines (SSN/SSGN) 59 

Minewarfare and Other Ships 107 

Total 375

 *Does not reflect the possible early retirement of USS John F. Kennedy

Table 3-2. Future Navy Posture of 375 Battle Force Ships—Illustrative 

Compared to today, the number of carriers and amphibious assault ships stays largely constant. 

The number of carriers is dictated by the current requirement to keep 2-3 CSGs constantly 

deployed abroad and to meet wartime surge requirements. The amphibious assault force is sized

to carry the initial echelons of 2.5 Marine Expeditionary Brigades (MEBs) and to keep 2-3 ESGs 

continuously deployed. The size of the surface combatant force is largely dictated by the 

requirement to escort CSGs and ESGs and to deploy nine SSGs. The biggest change is the 

projected acquisition of 56 Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), which will provide a capacity for

littoral operations. The future size of the attack submarine force is an uncertain variable: 

although current plans call for 55 nuclear powered attack submarines (SSNs) and 4 SSGNs, 

some studies call for a buildup to 76 submarines and others envision a drawdown to 37 

submarines. Other elements of the shipbuilding program being held constant, a drawdown to 37 

submarines would reduce the overall force to 357 ships, and an increase to 76 submarines would 

enlarge it to 396 ships. 

The Navy’s Shipbuilding Plan: Slow, Steady Expansion. To grow to 375 ships, the Navy 

plans a slow-but-steady expansion that would unfold over the next twenty years or so. Provided 

below in Table 3-3 is a projection of how this buildup is envisioned to take place according to 

the latest official Department of the Navy program. Through 2006, the Navy posture is 

forecasted to shrink slightly as older ships are retired early (despite having up to 5 to 10 years of

 - 21 -
remaining service life) to save on operating costs to free up money for acquisition. The posture is 

projected to reach and pass the currently authorized level of 310 ships by 2011. The expansion to 

375 ships is projected to be one-half complete by 2017-2018 and complete by 2022, seventeen 

years from now. Afterward, the fleet is projected to remain roughly constant in size (369-378 

ships) through 2033. 

Year Force Size Year Force Size 

2006 291 2018 346

2008 301 2020 365 

2010 308 2022 375

2012 317 2024 378 

2014 322 2026 375

2016 331 2028 372 

Table 3-3. Future Navy Posture—Gradual Buildup 

A main implication of this gradual buildup is that the rationale for a 375-ship Navy stems from 

estimated strategic requirements at about 2020 and beyond, not from operational requirements 

today. 

During the 1980s, the Navy procured an average of 17 ships per year. During the 1990s, the 

number fell to 7 per year and reached a low of 4-5 per year during 1994-1999. During 2000-

2004, the number rose slightly to 6 ships per year, and during 2005-2008 it is scheduled to 

average 8 ships per year. From 2009 onward, the shipbuilding rate is scheduled to rise, although 

the President’s FY2006 Budget Submission reduced the Navy’s program by three Virginia class

submarines and two DD(X) destroyers between FY2009 and FY2011. 

Beyond replacing aging vessels that must be retired, the Navy must also build enough new ships 

to generate force expansion at the desired rate: an average of 4-6 new ships must be added to the 

inventory each year to reach 375 ships by 2022. Table 3-4 shows the anticipated Navy 

shipbuilding rates per year from 2006 through 2032. This interaction of requirements for

replacement and expansion yields the projected shipbuilding schedule. A noteworthy feature is

that ship production starts slowly and accelerates later: it leaps upward from 9 ships in 2008 to

12 ships in 2009, and it remains at 13-15 ships through 2019. During 2020-2025, it hovers 

around 10 ships, and then declines to 7-8 ships per year from 2026-2033. The reason for this 

slow take-off is not constraints on shipyard capacity, but a constrained Navy shipbuilding 

budget. It is limited today but the Navy is counting on it rising later in this decade. The result is a 

big bow-wave of increased procurement expenses by 2009-2010 that stays high during the 

following decade. If the upward surge of funding forecast for 2009 materializes, it still will not 

translate into a comparable increase in ship inventory until 2016. During 2010-2022, 171 new 

ships are funded, but the combination of slow shipbuilding and scheduled retirements results in 

the posture growing by only 67 ships, from 308 to 375. 

 - 22 -
Year Annual Shipbuilding Year Annual Shipbuilding 

2006 7 2020 11

2008 9 2022 10 

2010 13 2024 10

2012 14 2026 7 

2014 13 2028 7

2016 15 2030 7 

2018 14 2032 7

Table 3-4. Forecasted Navy Shipbuilding Rates, 2006-2032 

The specific ships scheduled to be built are listed in Table 3-5. During 2006-2022, four carriers 

and 14 amphibious assault ships are programmed to be built. Surface combatants account for 120 

ships or 40% of the plan. Of these, 56 are LCS ships, and 64 will be DD(X) destroyers or CG(X) 

cruisers. Next, 39 SSN submarines are scheduled to be purchased by 2022, and orders to replace 

nearly the entire fleet of 55 submarines are to be placed by 2033. Funding of eight new SSBN

submarines to replace Trident boats is planned during 2023-2033. During 2006-2022, 63 support

ships are to be funded, but only 14 are programmed over the following decade. Overall, this plan

would fund 207 new ships during 2006-2022, and 87 new ships during 2022-2033, for a total of 

294 ships: enough to modernize the current fleet, enlarge it to 375 ships by 2022, and sustain it at 

about this level through 2033. 

Type of Ship Number Constructed 

2006–2022 2023–2033 Total 

CVNs 4 3 7

SSNs 39 13 52 

SSBN(X) 0 11 11

Surface Combatants 87 33 120 

Amphibious Ships 14 13 27

Logistic Ships 34 11 45 

Mine Warfare Ships 14 0 14 

Other Support Ships 15 3 18 

Total 207 87 294

Table 3-5. Navy Shipbuilding Plan 

Costs for Modernization and Expansion. Most of the warships in the program are expensive

and make this long-term expansion plan costly. The Navy estimate is that this procurement plan 

will require an average of $15 billion per year (FY2005 constant dollars) during 2006-2009, $18

billion per year during 2010-2014, and $15 billion per year throughout the period of 2010-2033. 

This estimate is based on the assumption that the Navy will successfully pursue various fundsaving (not cost saving) strategies to include split funding of new large deck ships, research and

development funding of lead ships for new classes of ships, and multi-year contracts. If this 

 - 23 -
estimate holds, the entire shipbuilding program will cost about $275 billion through 2022 and

$450 billion through 2033 (FY2005 dollars). 

Scheduled procurement of new aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships contributes $2-3 

billion per year. A bigger contributor is the cost of building new surface combatants and

submarines. The new DD(X) destroyer is estimated to have an average unit procurement cost of

$1.9 billion in FY2005 dollars. A CG(X) cruiser likely will cost more: about $2.5 billion apiece.

If a fleet of 40-50 destroyers and cruisers is bought by 2022, total costs could be in the vicinity of 

$100 billion. If the small LCS cost holds at only about $250 million apiece, a fleet of 56 vessels

will cost about $14-16 billion. If the Virginia-class submarines cost an average of $2.5 billion 

apiece, a buy of 39 submarines by 2022 will cost about $98 billion. The effect is a shipbuilding

program with costs that rise from about $10 billion in 2005 to a peak of $19 billion in 2011 and 

remain at comparably high levels for many years. 

As these cost figures suggest, the need for growing shipbuilding budgets does not derive from 

any single category of ships, but instead from several different categories acting together. The 

cost of big-deck carriers and amphibious assault ships account for only about 20% of the

expense. In order to sustain the current numbers, a new carrier must be funded every 3-4 years 

and a new amphibious assault ship, every year. Even so, the costs of buying about 5 carriers and 

20 amphibious assault ships will not be largely responsible for growing shipbuilding expenses 

during the next two decades. If one carrier and four amphibious ships are removed from the plan, 

the Navy’s total shipbuilding budget will decline by only 5% or less in this period. 

A similar judgment holds for the projected enlargement of the Navy’s inventory toward 375 

ships. This enlargement is mainly driven by the procurement of 56 LCS ships. But since these 

ships have a unit cost of only about $250 million, they account for only about $14-16 billion, or 

6%, of shipbuilding expenses ahead. The implication is that if the LCS program is cancelled and 

the fleet grows only to 319 ships, not 375 ships, the expense for shipbuilding will still be 94% as 

large as the current forecast. The same holds true for mine warfare ships and logistic support 

ships. They do not inflate the shipbuilding budget. The main drivers of growing shipbuilding 

budgets are the programs to acquire new destroyers, cruisers, and attack submarines, which total 

about 40% of the new ships being bought but generate about 70% of the costs. Their costs of 

nearly $200 billion are determined by the high unit cost ($1.9-2.5 billion for each ship) and by

the total numbers—87 ships through 2022—being bought. 

Today, the Navy is spending about $10 billion per year on shipbuilding, an account that must

cover expenses not only on new ships but also on conversions of old ships and other measures. 

Clearly the Navy’s shipbuilding budget will need to increase as its overall annual procurement 

budget of $27.7 billion in 2005 must grow in order to accommodate not only new shipbuilding, 

but also acquisition of new combat aircraft and other items. By 2011, the Navy procurement

budget is projected to grow to about $45 billion in constant 2005 dollars. The 75% real increase 

projected during 2005-2011 will enlarge the procurement funds available to the Navy provided it 

actually occurs and is sustained at the necessary levels afterward. At issue is whether it will 

actually do so. 

 - 24 -
Analysis of Five Key Assumptions Vital to the Navy’s Long-Term 

Shipbuilding Plan 

Recently the Navy reduced its shipbuilding plan for FY2006 from seven new ships to only four 

ships. This cutback was a product not of changes in long-term plans, but instead of disputes with 

Congress and OMB over whether some initial production costs can be charged to RDT&E and 

whether new ships should be fully funded in one year. Even setting this aside, larger affordability 

questions arise about not only the period through 2011, but more importantly, beyond, when the

main shipbuilding is to take place. The affordability of the Navy’s long-term shipbuilding plan 

depends on the five critical assumptions mentioned at the outset of this chapter. 

If one or more of these key assumptions do not hold up, and all are highly uncertain, the 

shipbuilding program will be under even greater pressure than currently envisioned. The five

assumptions are analyzed below with an eye on their cumulative impact on the resources that are

likely to be available for shipbuilding. 

Will the DoD budget experience the real growth now projected through 2022, and will its 

procurement budgets grow significantly? In constant 2005 dollars, the defense budget (Budget 

Authority, or BA) has risen from $329 billion in 2000 to $403 billion for 2005 (FY2005 dollars). 

DoD had planned on an increase of about 2.5% per annum to $443 billion by 2009, thereby 

providing about $40 billion of real growth. (Table 3-6 below.) If the defense budget continues 

growing by 1-2% annually in real terms after 2009 while also rising to offset inflation (estimated 

at 2.5% per year), this will further elevate it by 14-29% in real terms by 2022, thus providing a 

steady stream of additional funds much of which is planned to be channeled into investment. 

1998 2000 2002 2005 2007 2009 

Budget Authority (BA)

Current $ 258.6 290.5 345.6 402.6 444.9 488.9

Constant 2005$ 308.0 328.8 369.9 402.6 424.1 443.0* 

Outlays 

Current $ 256.1 281.2 332.1 429.6 426.9 467.9

Constant 2005$ 304.3 318.5 354.7 429.6 407.4 424.5 

*The 2009 forecast for Budget Authority (BA) assumes about 2.5% annual real increases during 2005-2009. If the annual rate of

increase is only 1% per year, the BA for 2009 will be $419 billion in constant 2005 dollars. 

Table 3-6. Trends in Peacetime DoD Budgets 

(Does not include reductions due to the President’s FY2006 Budget Submission) 

Such real increases, however, seem unlikely in the short term. For the longer term, the trends are 

not likely to change. A recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study, The Long Term 

Implications of Current Defense Plans: Summary Update for Fiscal Year 2005, forecasts only a 

total 3-4% increase in real defense spending over the entire period of 2010-2022. This amounts 

 - 25 -
to only one-third of one percent per year. The main reason for this low-growth forecast is

pressure on the federal budget from persistent deficits coupled with big increases in the costs of 

entitlement programs: e.g., costs for social security and health care which are projected to double 

in the next 10-15 years in real terms. If so, currently projected funds may well not be available 

for growing defense budgets even if DoD has a legitimate requirement for them. 

Trends in DoD’s future top-line are important because they will have a major bearing on the 

amount of funds that can be devoted to DoD-wide procurement for all services, including the 

Navy. During the 1990s new weapons did not have to be bought because inventories were

relatively modern and the threat from the Soviet Union had vanished. Today, the aging of these 

weapons and in some cases, the mismatch of their capabilities to emerging challenges makes

necessary the onset of a lengthy new period of extensive procurement affecting all services. 

DoD has been developing a new generation of weapon systems that is now poised to exit 

RDT&E and enter procurement in the coming years. This includes not only new ships, but also 

new combat aircraft, ground weapons, and supporting systems. Procurement of these new 

weapons is just beginning, and is scheduled to accelerate in 2011, thereby creating a large “bow 

wave” of procurement expenses during the following decade. In order to fund these new

weapons, DoD recently has been striving to increase its procurement budgets. During the mid1990s, DoD’s procurement budget dropped to $48 billion in constant 2005 dollars. Since then, 

the procurement budget has grown to $74.9 billion in 2005, and, before the President’s FY2006 

Budget Submission, was programmed to rise to $106 billion by 2009 (constant 2005 dollars) 

(Table 3-7). The Services have been counting on this $31 billion per annum increase to cover 

procurement of new weapons that they have programmed. 

Category Projected Expenditures Percent Increase Percent of Budget 

2005 2009 2005–2009 1990 2005 2009 

Military Personnel $106.3 $108.4 + 2.0% 27% 26% 25%

O&M $141.2 $147.2 + 4.2% 30% 35% 34%

Procurement $74.9 $105.8 + 41.3% 28% 19% 23%

RDT&E $68.9 $65.4 - 5.1% 12% 17% 14%

Construction, Housing, Other $11.3 $16.2 + 43.4% 3% 3% 4%

Total $402.6 $443.0 + 10% 

(BA in Current $ Billion) 

Table 3-7. Projected DoD Budgets and Spending Patterns 

(Does not include reductions due to the President’s FY2006 Budget Submission)

The prospect of little real growth in DoD’s overall budget during 2009-2020 means that, all other 

things remaining equal, the DoD procurement budget also will remain flat, perhaps rising to 

offset inflation but not providing the substantial growth the services have assumed in building

their long term programs. Whether annual procurement budgets of $100 billion (in constant 2005 

dollars) will be adequate to meet requirements for the coming bow wave is uncertain (details are

 - 26 -
discussed later). Equally uncertain is whether even the reduced procurement budget of about 

$100 billion can be achieved by 2009 and maintained afterward. The other major categories of 

defense expenses must also be funded. As Table 3-7 shows, the projected rise in procurement 

spending by 2009 is based partly on the assumption that expenses for military personnel and

operations & maintenance (O&M) will rise only by 2-4% in real terms. 

Is this assumption valid? There are grounds for concern. If the Army grows by 40,000 active 

troops, for example, DoD’s military personnel budget will need to rise by about $2 billion per 

year and its O&M budget will rise by another $2 billion per year. Even short of force expansion,

O&M spending could prove higher than now forecasted: the annual growth rate for 1995-2005

has been about 50% higher than the forecast for 2005-2009. If this reining in of O&M expenses 

is not achieved, there would have to be cutbacks elsewhere, most likely to procurement budgets. 

Disproportionate cuts in procurement budgets are prominent in the President’s FY2006 Budget 

Submission. 

The uncertainties ahead for the FYDP of 2006-2009 magnify when the lengthy follow-on period

of 2010-2020 is considered. If virtually no real increases in the defense budget are funded, DoD 

will be able to generate annual procurement budgets of $100 billion in FY2005 dollars only if it 

succeeds in preventing the other accounts from rising. This is unlikely. In the absence of

cutbacks elsewhere, expenses for military personnel and O&M seem likely to continue their real 

growth during 2010-2020: both categories are influenced by larger, cost-increasing changes 

taking place naturally in the national economy, rapidly growing healthcare costs to cite one. 

Even if expenses for these accounts can be held to increases of 1% annually in real terms (very 

low by historical standards), they will require an additional $30 billion by 2020, and an average 

of $15 billion annually during 2010-2020. The effect would be to put pressure on the 

procurement budgets for the decade (up to 15%): a large cutback for budgets that already are 

fully taken up by the coming bow wave. In order to avoid this fate, DoD will need to tighten its

belt in O&M and other areas. Perhaps it will do so, but until then, future procurement budgets 

will be a variable in the calculus not only for DoD as a whole, but for the Navy as well. 

Will Congressional supplementals continue to fund wartime expenses in Iraq and 

Afghanistan, or will those costs bite into the core DoD budget? Thus far, DoD’s wartime 

expenses for Iraq and Afghanistan have been funded through Congressional supplementals: $62 

billion for 2003, $68 billion for 2004, and at least a similar amount for 2005. The effect has been 

to swell total spending to about 15% higher than would be needed for normal peacetime

spending: e.g., to $441.7 billion in 2003 (current dollars) rather than the $379.6 billion originally 

requested. Because supplementals have freed DoD from drawing upon its core peacetime budget, 

it has been able to pursue modernization and most operations typical of peace time even while 

fighting two wars abroad. If the intensity of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan lessens in 

the coming years, the need for further supplementals of this magnitude will decline. But if these 

operations continue apace, or are replaced by other contingencies, total defense spending will 

need to remain higher than the programmed budgets by 15% or more. Additional supplementals

will be needed to make up the difference. 

 - 27 -
Will Congress continue to be willing to authorize supplementals to fully make up the difference 

between wartime requirements and growing peacetime budgets? If wartime expenses remain

high, Congress may prove less willing than now to fund both these expenses and fully fund the

ongoing defense program at the same time. To the extent this is the case, even a shortfall of $10-

20 billion annually could damage DoD’s investment budgets, the likely target of reprioritization, 

by draining away 7-15% of their funds. The Navy’s planned shipbuilding budget could be 

expected to be taxed as well. 

Will the Navy receive the shares of DoD’s overall budget and procurement budget 

envisioned by its shipbuilding plan? As the following table shows, the Navy has benefited 

proportionally from the growth of the DoD budget since 2000, and it is projected to benefit from

further growth through 2009 (Table 3-8). The real spending increases—averaging about 3.5%

annually for both DoD and the Navy during 2000-2009—are high when judged by historical 

standards. They have greatly increased the resources available to DoD and the Navy has received 

about 30% of the DoD budgets. The yet larger budgets projected for future years play a major 

role in the Navy’s assumption that it will be able to increase its annual procurement budget from 

$27.7 billion in 2005 to $45 billion by 2009 (in constant 2005 dollars). During 2005-2009, the 

Navy’s procurement spending will roughly match the USAF’s spending ($170 billion) and 

greatly exceed the Army’s spending of $68 billion. 

2000 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 

Current Dollars 

DoD Budget (051) $290.5 $402.6 $423.7 $444.9 $466.8 $488.9

Navy Budget $88.8 $119.2 $125.4 $130.1 $137.3 $148.0 

Constant 2005 Dollars 

DoD Budget (051) $328.8 $402.6 $413.8 $424.1 $433.8 $443.0

Navy Budget $100.2 $119.2 $122.6 $124.3 $128.1 $134.9 

Navy Share of Budget 30.5% 29.6% 29.6% 29.3% 29.5% 30.5%

($ Billions) 

Table 3-8. DoD and Navy Budget Trends: 2000-2009 

(Does not include reductions due to the President’s FY2006 Budget Submission) 

Will the Navy continue to be awarded about 30% of the defense budget not only through 2009, 

but afterward? During the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, the Navy’s share of the budget swelled 

to about 34%, but as the 1990s unfolded, it shrunk to the current level. The Navy’s need to 

modernize its inventory might qualify it to preserve an equal share of the budget in the future. 

But the other services and defense programs also need greater funds as the U.S. military

endeavors to carry out expeditionary operations in the near-to-mid term while transforming for

the long term. Over the longer term, OSD is examining the imperative of shifting its attention 

increasingly to the non-traditional challenges that have dominated military activities during the 

past decade. Resources shifted to combating non-traditional threats can be expected to reduce 

funds available for ship construction among other large capital intense programs focused on 

traditional threats. The President’s FY2006 Budget Submission takes a step in this direction. 

 - 28 -
A parallel uncertainty is whether the Navy will receive the share of DoD’s procurement budgets

that is needed to fully pursue its shipbuilding plans. The reason is not just the shrinking of the 

currently projected procurement budgets DoD-wide. It is also competition from other programs 

during a period in which costs for them may rise above current estimates. 

Will the Navy be able to restrain growth in its O&M spending? The Navy’s plan to increase 

its procurement budget in order to fund its planned shipbuilding program depends on its success

in reining in spending for Operations and Maintenance. To the extent it falls short, planned 

shipbuilding budgets will have to be cut. The stage for examining these cost-reduction efforts 

can be set by briefly examining trends within the Navy’s budget. As the following chart shows, 

the Navy’s budget is projected to grow to $134.9 billion by 2009 in constant 2005 dollars (Table 

3-9). Today, Navy spending on O&M is similar to the Army and USAF: each service spends

about $35 billion per year. The Navy’s annual per capita spending of $64,000 is lower than that 

of the Army ($69,000) and USAF ($100,000). 

2005 2009 Percent Change 

Military Personnel $36.9 $36.5 - 1.1%

O&M $35.1 $33.6 - 4.3%

Procurement $27.7 $46.6 + 68.2%

RDT&E $16.3 $11.1 - 31.9%

Construction & Housing $1.11 $2.0 + 81.18%

Other $2.1 $5.1 +242.9%

Total $119.2 $134.9 +13.2%

(BA, Constant 2005 $, Billions) 

Table 3-9. Trends in Navy Budgets, 2005-2009 

(Does not include reductions due to the President’s FY2006 Budget Submission)

During 2005-2009, the Navy’s procurement budget was slated to grow to $46.6 billion before the 

President’s FY2006 Budget Submission, an increase of $18.9 billion or 68.2%. The increase 

through 2009 depends on growth in the Navy’s total budget, but also on cutbacks in RDT&E and 

restraint in the growth of O&M spending. O&M spending is projected to decline by 4.3% in 

constant dollars, compared to the projected DoD-wide 4% increase. Both of these reductions 

reflect conscious choices by the Navy aimed at providing more funds for procurement. If the 

Navy RDT&E budget remains at current levels and its O&M spending rises by 17% (the DoDwide trend), the former will be $5.2 billion higher in 2009, and the latter will be $5.3 billion

higher. Procurement spending for 2009 would be commensurately less: closer to $36.3 billion 

instead of $46.6 billion. 

Funding cutbacks of this sort could well lead to a disproportionate reduction of the shipbuilding 

budget not only because of the top-line impact, but also because of the likely impact on how the 

Navy’s procurement budget is distributed. As shown in Table 3-10, the Navy’s current

procurement budget allocates only $10 billion to shipbuilding. The remaining $17.7 billion is 

distributed among other accounts. Fully $8.8 billion is spent on procuring aircraft, the F/A-18

E/F, the V-22 Osprey, MH-60 helicopters, and E-2C Hawkeye. Another $8.9 billion is spent on 

 - 29 -
all other procurement: ammunition, missiles, small craft, shipboard equipment, communications 

and electronics, etc. If the Navy is to fully fund its shipbuilding plan in all categories, annual 

procurement spending on new ships must rise to about $16 billion in 2009 and to $20 billion by

2011 (in constant 2005 dollars), and must be sustained at comparably high levels over the 

following years. Cutbacks in total Navy procurement budgets could lead to disproportionate cuts 

in shipbuilding because the Navy would be hard-pressed to squeeze savings out of many small

programs for secondary items and related assets and to impose proportionate reductions on its 

expensive air modernization for the Navy and Marine Corps. A 15% reduction to the Navy’s 

total procurement budget could plausibly translate into a reduction of some 25% in the 

shipbuilding budget. 

Component Funds 

Aircraft Procurement, Navy $8.8 

Weapons Procurement, Navy $2.1 

Procurement of Ammo, Navy and Marine Corps $0.9 

Shipbuilding and Conversion, Navy $10.0 

Other Procurement, Navy $4.8 

Procurement, Marine Corps $1.2 

Total $27.7

(BA, $ Billions) 

Table 3-10. Navy Procurement Budget 2005 

If the Navy’s procurement budget though 2009 were to rise by only as much as the DoD average

(i.e., by 41% rather than 68% as now planned), the Navy would have $7.6 billion less than it now 

plans to spend on procurement in 2009 and about $100 billion less cumulatively over the course 

of 2009-2022. The Navy is counting on this extra funding wedge being available. It finances 

fully one-third of its shipbuilding plan during these years. Conversely, the Navy could 

conceivably be compelled to reduce its shipbuilding plan by one-third or more if this wedge does 

not materialize. 

Are the Navy’s plans to keep a tight rein on O&M spending realistic and achievable? The need 

to address O&M spending is not unique to the Navy. The peacetime O&M budget, including the 

services and all DoD agencies, has soared to $141 billion in 2005. This has produced O&M costs 

per active serviceman of nearly $100,000, which is far above the per capita cost of $57,000 in 

1980 (measured in constant FY2005 dollars). The causes of this major increase are manifold, but 

they do not stem from any major increase in the cost of training active combat forces, which 

costs only about $25 billion annually. Thus far, DoD’s main effort to control O&M costs has 

come through Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC), which endeavors to eliminate surplus 

bases and facilities. The BRAC process, which produces increased transition costs in the near 

term in exchange for greater O&M savings in the long term, has been largely stalled for several 

years. Further savings may be possible when new BRAC measures are announced in 2005, but

even so, the impact on solving DoD’s problem of high O&M costs is likely to be helpful, but 

marginal. A larger, multi-pronged O&M effort will be needed if the Navy’s planned O&M

savings are to be realized. 

 - 30 -
The Navy stands at the forefront of DoD attempts to trim O&M spending. Its O&M budget is 

projected to fall by 4.3% through 2009, while the DoD-wide O&M is projected to increase by 

4%. If Navy O&M spending grows at a rate that matches the average DoD increase, Navy 

procurement spending could lose up to $3 billion in 2009, and $40 billion cumulatively

throughout 2009-2022. Tight economizing on O&M spending seems likely to be hard for the 

Navy because it already is more efficient in this arena than the Army and USAF, and fully 75% 

of its O&M spending is devoted to active operating forces, whose high-tempo activities will be

hard to trim in the foreseeable future. Although the Navy’s attempt to rein in O&M spending is a 

goal well worth pursuing, the risk of falling short is worth keeping in mind mainly because, in

recent years, few efforts to cut O&M spending growth have succeeded. It is even questionable if 

DoD can limit overall O&M spending increases to 4% through 2009. Whether the Navy can 

reduce its own O&M expenses by 4.3%, during a time when it likely will be operating at a high 

tempo, seems unlikely. As matters now stand, the Navy’s goal of a 4.3% reduction in O&M 

spending is a worthy aim, but a savings that cannot be counted upon. 

Will the Navy succeed in controlling the construction costs of its new ships? The projected 

costs of the Navy’s shipbuilding plan are high because the unit cost of most of its new ships is

high. The new DD(X) destroyer is projected to cost about $1.9 billion apiece, the new CG(X)

about $2.5 billion apiece and the Virginia class submarines $2.5 billion apiece. These cost 

estimates gives rise to the overall forecast that a shipbuilding plan of 207 ships is likely to cost 

about $275 billion in constant 2005 dollars. 

It is important to note that all of these cost estimates are made in the face of uncertainty: many of 

them deal with ships that will not enter production for several years and will be deployed several 

years later. In recent years, DoD has taken steps to ensure that cost criteria and goals are

incorporated into acquisition contracts. The effect has been to lessen the proclivity of new 

weapons to experience soaring costs as they move down production lines. While cost inflations 

of 75-100% may now be confined to history, this does not mean that today’s new weapons are

invulnerable to inflation. Costs can still rise for several reasons. The relatively low inflation of 

ship construction costs factored into the DoDs plans may well be exceeded. For example, raw 

materials and labor can turn out to be more expensive than originally anticipated. 

Even with a strong effort to control costs, Navy shipbuilding is vulnerable to potential cost 

inflators. Moreover, the DD(X), CG(X) and Virginia class SSNs are being designed to provide 

multiple different types of combat capabilities in one package. The need to ensure that all of the 

new weapon systems are integrated and operate together at high effectiveness opens the door to 

potential cost growth. For many ships, multiple new components are being designed, all of which 

must be integrated into a complex system. Such sweeping innovations may carry the potential of 

higher costs than originally estimated. 

If cost increases are experienced, how large might they be? This question cannot be definitively 

answered because too little is known about the new ships that will enter production in the coming 

years. Experienced naval analysts point to historical experience of an average cost increase of

25% for a new class of ships. Some programs, like the LPD-17, could even exceed this. 

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The Navy may be shortchanging its future RDT&E to maintain its procurement budgets. The

Navy is taking a risk by reducing RDT&E spending by fully 32% during a period in which the 

U.S. is entering an unstable and less predictable security environment. The Navy’s ability to 

increase capabilities in the fleet while controlling cost could be unduly compromised. In 

addition, RDT&E costs for new vessels with visionary, untested technologies that rise above 

current plans, compel at least steady, if not increased, demand for resources for RDT&E. This 

risk seems real enough to be taken seriously. The CVN-21 carrier, the DD(X) destroyer, and the 

LCS are still early enough in their RDT&E cycles for cost inflation to occur. In addition, the 

Navy’s participation in the F-35 JSF fighter program—it is seeking to create specialized CTOL 

and VSTOL models—leaves it vulnerable to increased RDT&E spending on air modernization. 

Perhaps a deep cut in Navy RDT&E will prove attainable but intuitively, an uncertain future and

the need to find ways to deliver greater capabilities at lower cost argues for a robust RDT&E 

program to ensure the Navy has options available to it to react to a dynamic security 

environment. 

Gauging the Future—Preparing for Less Optimistic Outcomes 

The bottom line is that because several fluctuating variables are at work, and their trends are

murky, no single-point forecast can confidently predict the future 10-20 years from now. That 

said, all of the issues analyzed above point toward downward pressure on the availability of 

resources for shipbuilding. 

A somewhat pessimistic, though realistic, case is that a combination of a drop in procurement

funds for shipbuilding and some cost growth could leave the Navy with only a modest growth in 

its projected shipbuilding budget. Extrapolating the trends set in motion by the President’s

FY2006 Budget Submission, the Navy could realize only about 60% of the procurement budgets 

needed to fund the current shipbuilding plan. A 40% shortfall results in a program to build about 

130 new ships, and its future fleet falls to about 300 ships, with a range of about 270-315 ships, 

depending upon the exact mix of ships to be purchased and deployed. 

The Navy has a much more numerous fleet architecture in mind. This underlines the importance 

of developing a fleet architecture underpinned by a shipbuilding program that preserves options 

to adjust rapidly in the event of a change (for the better as well for the worse) in the availability 

of resources. This points to the imperative of having ships that can be built more rapidly at a

lower unit cost. Examples of alternative future fleet platform architectures that capture these 

features are presented in Chapter 6 (Examples of Fleet Platform Architectures). 

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4. Technology Opportunities 

Introduction

This chapter highlights important advances in technology that open up new opportunities for the

U.S. Navy to design and field a powerful fleet adaptable to the broad spectrum of challenges it 

will face in the coming decades. The Navy’s ability to maintain the nation’s strategic advantage

at sea can be balanced with an ability to provide the maritime power to conduct or support 

intervention on land. To support joint expeditionary operations, the fleet must have the requisite

capabilities for control in the littorals, force projection, and support of forces on land.

The emerging theory of network-centric warfare (NCW), including the important advantages

available to the warfighter through the full or partial implementation of network-centric 

capabilities, networking at all levels of military operations, and networked behavior, provides the 

basis for one of the key design principles for developing an alternative fleet platform 

architecture. Networking allows for a modular, building block approach to military scaling with

applicability across a broad spectrum of missions. Furthermore, the architecture of a fleet with 

dispersed, networked surveillance, weapons and command and control (C2) assets means that 

platform size can be reduced, while still increasing performance through networking and 

increased numbers of platforms. As platform size is decreased, advances in precision and

terminal blast effects hold the potential to maintain firepower without losing lethality. 

Technologies are being developed to: lighten the payload, thereby extending the endurance and

range of unmanned systems; provide robust data links and integrated sensors to detect and target 

low signature threats; and provide electronic warfare (EW) technology and anti-submarine

warfare (ASW) technology tailored to threats in the littoral. 

Breakthroughs in technology provide the Navy with the opportunity to leap ahead to deliver a 

fleet far more capable than the programmed fleet. High leverage technologies and the potential 

payoff they offer the fleet are shown in Figure 4-1. 

Figure 4-1. Technology...Opportunities and Payoff

 - 33 -
The examples of alternative fleet platform architectures presented in Chapter 6 of this report 

were designed to take advantage of the short cycle times for information-based technologies. 

Figure 4-2 below shows the typical cycle times required for meaningful advances in key 

technologies useful to the Navy. Despite the fact that they have longer cycle times than areas 

such as communications, IT software, and IT components, key technology areas like primary

structural materials, propulsion, weapons, and sensors, should not be ignored. In fact, in 

materials and propulsion areas in particular, research has brought the shipbuilding community to 

an inflection point. Breakthroughs in composite materials and advanced propulsion have matured 

these technologies to the point where they are ready to be exploited in the next generation of 

ships. Accordingly, we are entering a window of opportunity to accelerate incorporation of

advances in materials, propulsion, weapons, and sensors. 

• Historic opportunity

• Time and cost 

compression

Source: Naval Research Advisory Committee 

Figure 4-2. Technology Trends and Cycle Times 

Technology Opportunities 

The principal driver for a powerful fleet that can adapt to a broad spectrum of challenges is a 

networked system that derives its power from the integration of all the elements in the network,

greatly amplifying the individual capabilities of the nodes. Advances in technology hold promise

for a networked fleet in which sensors can be distributed and integrated to sense the environment 

and provide a common operational picture. Weapon speed can be traded off against distributed 

loitering weapons or a widely dispersed set of weapons that always have a shooter near the 

target. Greater targeting precision is possible from networked sensors resulting in smaller miss 

 - 34 -
distances; hence smaller warheads suffice. Such a system is synergistic to an architecture of 

networked small ships with small weapons that maintains required target coverage. 

Technology Priorities 

The alternative future naval fleet platform architectures presented in Chapter 6 draw 

considerable power from the design concept of networking. The benefits of a networked fleet are 

derived from dispersed assets that provide broad coverage, rapid threat response, and modularity 

and scalability of assets. Technologies to achieve these benefits and that merit priority attention 

are those that enable robust and scalable networks including sensor, command and control and 

weapons elements. This leads to an accent on affordable surveillance and sensor components, 

smaller ships with longer endurance and higher payload fraction, lighter-weight weapons and 

stealthy unmanned systems. 

The following list provides priorities for high payoff technologies supporting network-centric 

fleet architectures. These technologies are subsequently described in more detail. 

 

• Networks and Distributed Capabilities. Mobile, self-forming, reconfigurable networks; 

high bandwidth secure data-links; and distributed collaborative tools for decision making. 

• Advanced Netted Sensors. Multifunction radio frequency (RF) systems, synthetic 

aperture radar, ladar, hyperspectral infrared (IR) seekers, and advanced missile seekers. 

• Innovative Hull Designs, Efficient Propulsion, Composite Materials and Robotics. 

• Unmanned Air Vehicles. 

• Underwater Surveillance and Weapons. 

• Advanced Weapons Concepts. High energy lasers (HEL), and electromagnetic launch 

(EML) guns. 

• High Risk / High Potential Payoff Technologies. Nanotechnology and biotechnology 

Technologies for the Future 

Technologies that support a fleet architecture that is networked and dispersed, incorporating 

smaller platforms with modular payloads, promise high payoff. Advances in commercial IT and 

other technology provide an opportunity to leverage. 

Networks and Distributed Capabilities. Networks are the enabling framework for future naval 

architectures. In turn, networks are enabled by the revolution in information technology, largely 

fueled by the commercial marketplace. The key to success is establishing and maintaining a

dynamic mobile network that includes information gathering, processing, and distribution. 

 - 35 -
• Mobile, Self-forming, Reconfigurable Networks: Untethered networks enable

distribution of information at high data rates across broad areas on-the-move. In an untethered network, all devices are mobile, including routers and servers. The network is 

self-organizing in an ad-hoc but transparent and energy aware fashion. 

• High Bandwidth Secure Data-links: Data and communications links provide the 

backbone for NCW. Significant recent and ongoing technology developments are evident 

in the following areas: improving bandwidth, reducing the probability of intercept, and 

multi-level security. Demands on bandwidth can also be reduced by processing data at

the sensor rather than centrally. As computing power per unit volume continues to 

increase, this approach will be increasingly effective. Laser communications offer the

prospect of greatly expanded bandwidth. Today, they must maintain line of sight 

connectivity though research on laser relay is moving to make its use practical. 

• Distributed Collaborative Tools for Decision Making: Networking can produce a

flattened command structure with a rapid decision cycle. Information can move rapidly 

out to the edge of the network, which is to the tactical-level end-user. While network 

technology provides the ability to move information rapidly outwards, allowing 

distributed decisions, it also allows for interactive decision-making throughout the 

network. High-speed decision-making and the ability to provide command and control to 

dispersed joint forces, including unmanned systems, is an operational challenge that 

technology can help to solve. Decision aids (computer-aided reasoning), human-machine 

interfaces, and collaborative tools can enable rapid decision making at the right command 

levels. 

Advanced Netted Sensors. Advanced sensors with high-speed signal- processing address the 

need for tracking, target identification and clutter rejection. Sensor technology is advancing in 

parallel with developments in semi-conductors, large scale integrated circuits, and advanced onchip signal processing. In the past the functions of surveillance, tracking, and terminal guidance 

from weapon seekers were performed sequentially with distinct systems. 

A high payoff opportunity therefore is to combine the functions of surveillance, tracking, 

terminal guidance and even fusing of the warhead through advanced multi-function sensor 

concepts and the networking or fusion of distributed sensors to provide enhanced coverage, 

resolution, and counter-countermeasures. Examples of surveillance, tracking and targeting 

technologies that hold high potential include multifunction radio frequency (RF) systems, 

synthetic aperture radars (SAR), ladars, hyperspectral infrared detectors, and advanced missile 

seekers. 

• Multifunction RF Systems: The utility of multifunction RF emitters and receivers 

would be in combining many of the antennas on a ship into fewer apertures. Currently on 

a ship every RF emitter has its own individual components. There are separate systems 

for every RF function: surveillance, fire control, navigation, EW, and communications. 

These functions cover a wide spectrum of the RF frequency band, and have different 

waveforms and power levels. Advances in wide-bandgap semi-conductors and softwarecontrolled electronically-steered arrays (ESAs) allow the sharing of functions in a 

 - 36 -
common aperture. Advantages of the concept are sharply reduced topside hardware and 

signature reduction. The concept also allows for reduced power consumption, 

maintenance and operator training. These features would further make it possible to put 

this capability on small ships. 

• Synthetic Aperture Radar: SAR and inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) have been 

developed to a level of common operational use; advanced signal processing has resulted 

in real time imagery. Future advances in SAR technology could lead to employment on a 

small UAV in which a loitering vehicle could have a SAR search and targeting mode 

reserved to large aerial vehicles today. 

• Ladar: A ladar uses the same principles as radar but uses visible or IR instead of RF. 

Application of this technique provides very high resolution that could make it very useful

in a cluttered (e.g. urban) environment. The ladar could be mounted on a loitering UAV 

to identify a target when cued by a wide area search system. 

• Hyperspectral IR Seekers: Hyperspectral seekers can provide the information necessary

to discriminate a target from a cluttered background and by collecting imagery at

multiple “lines” or frequencies providing unique signatures. Success in making this 

technology operational could provide a powerful surveillance and targeting capability in 

an irregular conflict where finding targets is typically the biggest challenge. 

• Advanced Missile Seekers: GPS guidance provides missile guidance to hit targets with 

known co-ordinates. For moving targets, or where GPS is locally denied, missile seekers 

are required to provide the end game guidance. IR missile seekers, for example, currently

employed require cryogenically cooled detectors and precision stabilizing gimbal 

systems. This translates into high cost and large volume. IR seeker research and 

development is in progress for uncooled seekers with simple pointing mechanisms to 

solve both problems. Coupled with advances in on-board signal processing, the raw 

image of a low cost seeker can be greatly enhanced. 

Innovative Hull Designs, Efficient Propulsion, Composite Materials and Robotics. The 

conceptual framework of a fleet architecture with greater numbers of dispersed networked assets 

is significantly different from the current fleet of large, highly integrated multi-mission warships.

This architecture is enabled by faster, more maneuverable ships with a high payload fraction that, 

though smaller, have sea keeping qualities previously reserved for larger ships. 

Supporting intervention on land will require special capabilities for both amphibious and 

logistics ships and Navy heavy lift aircraft. A means of morphing from the deep draft needed to 

carry big loads in the open sea to a shallow draft needed to enter shallow ports would speed the 

employment of forces. If the lighter is a separate ship, a means is required for transferring heavy 

unit loads to and from a larger ship in the open sea. An addition or alternative to lighters is 

having heavy lift aircraft that can operate from carriers or other air-capable ships. Heavy lift 

aircraft that can operate off large deck ships could provide logistics support as well as weapon 

delivery, airborne surveillance and command and control, and even airborne tanking. Research 

on jet powered VSTOL aircraft such as the AMC-X shows promise on delivering this capability. 

 - 37 -
Ship design is generally a sub-optimization of desired attributes that include speed, sea keeping

(across different speeds and different sea states), load fraction, survivability against attack, draft 

(ability to operate in shallow water), range between refueling, maintainability, and required 

operational manpower. Technological advances that address these desired attributes include 

advanced hull shapes, dynamic control for sea keeping, drag reduction techniques, stealth, 

advanced materials, propulsion and automation. 

• Hull Forms: Hull design is the dominant factor in ship speed, payload capability, sea

keeping and draft. It also is a major factor in the ship’s radar and acoustic signatures. 

Several innovative technologies address the complex optimization of speed, stability, and 

draft. The Trimaran, with a long narrow main hull to diminish wave drag, maintains its 

stability with “outrigger” hulls, whose waterplane area provides stability at the expense 

of some additional drag.

Another option to reduce wave drag is to eliminate much of the ship’s beam at the water

line by either lifting the ship out of the water or by submerging much of the hull below 

the water surface. Advanced hull forms exploiting these concepts are hydrofoils and the 

SWATH ships (Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull). Both have had successful

applications but they both suffer from high sensitivity to weight variations and, in the 

case of the hydrofoil, high dynamic loads, and in the case of the SWATH, increased 

friction because of the immersion of both hulls. 

Promising new technologies include underwater lifting surfaces with dynamic control 

that lifts the hull to reduce drag yet maintains stability in high sea states even with weight 

variations. Technologies to keep the boundary layer from becoming turbulent include 

introducing fluids into the boundary layer or even applying suction. To date none of these 

techniques has been made operational but the payoff for low friction drag could be an 80 

knot ship.

• Propulsion: While gas turbine technology is relatively mature, significant payoff for

smaller platforms could be realized in an “all electric” ship in which centrally generated

electrical power provides not only propulsion but also energy for ship operations, 

communications, surveillance, and even weapons modules. While the Navy currently has 

priority access to petroleum-based fuels, energy shortages in the future could constrain 

operations. Electric propulsion would provide more options for energy sources including 

other hydrocarbons, hydrogen derived from the ocean, or nuclear. While large 

superconducting motors are still impractical, significant advances have been made in 

permanent magnet induction motors. Electric motors do not require the heavy gearing of 

gas turbines and may be podded for advanced hull designs. 

• Materials: Incorporating lighter weight composite materials into ship structures makes

higher speed ships possible. Composites and aluminum have better strength to weight 

ratios than steel. They offer opportunities for reduced weight, have particular 

applicability to smaller ships, and have already been used in other navies. Some

composites offer uniform strength while others, based on advanced fibers, have excellent 

 - 38 -
strength in certain directions but not others. This complicates the structural design but

has the potential of yielding very strong and stiff structures that are also very light. The 

technology of composite materials, already widely used in the aerospace industry, has 

reached the point where use in ship structures with high strength to weight ratios is

practical. 

• Automation and Reduced Manning: Reduced manning on ships has significant payoffs

in reduced costs, reduced “hotel” loads affecting ship size, a higher payload fraction and 

fewer personnel at risk in high threat environments. Much of the automation employed in 

modern aviation is applicable to ship control and navigation. Computer driven dynamic

control surfaces can augment ship speed and stability. Automation can also be 

incorporated to assist decision-making, establishing networks, and in the operation of 

weapon systems. 

Unmanned Air Vehicles. Rapid response to a time-critical threat can be addressed with a 

network of loitering weapons that cover the threat area. Technology advances that are making 

long loiter time possible are: smaller size and weight of the vehicle to extend endurance, data 

links for real time targeting, high speed propulsion for response to time critical targets, terminal 

accuracy to maintain a high kill probability with a lighter warhead, and responsive ordnance to 

optimize a kill. 

Three tiers of UAVs make up today’s surveillance and targeting network. High altitude UAVs,

such as Global Hawk, provide a broad area of coverage and have long endurance but are limited 

in resolution. Mid-altitude UAVs, such as Predator, provide a balance between coverage and 

resolution and can greatly reduce the kill time by carrying weapons such as the Hellfire missile. 

Small UAVs that can operate in restrictive environments are limited by onboard power required 

for propulsion, sensors, receivers, signal processing, and data transmission. Promising

technologies to address this problem and to expand the utility of small UAVs include compact

high-density energy storage, compact high-power motors/engines, small high-resolution digital 

visible and IR cameras, data compression techniques and small high gain antennas. 

• Strike Weapons Technology: Technology holds promise for developing smaller lethal 

weapons. Key are sensors for precision terminal guidance and aim point selection and 

warheads that can be reconfigured to optimize blast, fragmentation, or penetration 

promise to enhance kill probability for a smaller missile. Progress in higher thrust-toweight turbofan propulsion and in high aerodynamic-lift body-shaping promises to 

deliver further weight reduction. 

• Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS): The concept of an unmanned combat aircraft

has progressed steadily. The first step was to take the pilot out of the cockpit to a remote

operating location. The current DARPA UCAS program goes well beyond this first step 

and is developing a netted system of vehicles whereby the system operator does not 

remotely fly aircraft but provides mission level oversight. The vehicles are smaller and 

less costly than manned aircraft. Each vehicle has considerable autonomy but is part of 

the overall system of vehicles executing a mission. The program offers to enhance our 

 - 39 -
capability for deep penetrating strike, suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), and 

high threat area reconnaissance. 

Underwater Surveillance and Weapons. Underwater surveillance in the littoral is a challenging

problem. Both active and passive sonar are limited by bottom and surface effects, reverberation 

and other phenomena. Submarines powered by Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) are very quiet 

and can stay submerged for up to two weeks. Mines constitute a serious threat to ships and 

landing craft and are readily available. Non-acoustic detection technologies are necessary for 

both of these threats. As with networked surveillance for surface targets, underwater surveillance 

can be enhanced by networking distributed sensors from surface, air and underwater vehicles. A 

critical enabling technology for underwater networking is underwater communications. 

• Underwater Surveillance: The littorals require alternative technologies for acoustic 

surveillance as well as different strategies for sensor deployment. Alternative signatures 

to acoustic include magnetic, gravitational, electromagnetic, and signatures related to the

internal wake of an underwater vehicle that can include bio-luminescence. In very 

shallow water optical techniques similar to LADAR can detect bottom mines. Advances 

in signal processing allow for enhanced search rates which have been a limiting factor in 

clearing a path for forced entry. Networking of underwater sensors provides similar

advantages to ASW as it does to Strike and AAW. Acoustic bandwidths are very narrow 

and electromagnetic signals only propagate short distances in salt water. Innovative

solutions for data links are required such as the concept of underwater “modems” with 

above surface antennas that would serve as “cell towers” in providing a network. The 

communication transmission distances from submarines, UUVs, and sensors to these 

distributed modems would be short enough to limit transmission loss and distortion in the 

littorals. 

 

• Underwater Weapons: To support operations and platforms in the littorals underwater 

weapons need to be smaller and faster than strategic heavy weight torpedoes. For short 

ranges, very high underwater speeds can be realized by utilizing supercavition in which a 

bubble of water vapor is created in front of a torpedo due to the local pressure drop in the 

water created by the high velocity flow of water over the torpedo. This vapor bubble 

greatly reduces the drag and allows very high velocities. Torpedoes fired at supersonic 

velocities into the water from aircraft can also utilize this principle. To both find and 

neutralize bottom and surf zone mines small robotic underwater crawlers are being

developed that can withstand the turbulence of the surf. Specialized explosive charges are

being developed for underwater mine clearing. 

Advanced Weapons Concepts. 

• High Energy Lasers (HEL): The Navy is pursuing research on high energy Free 

Electron Lasers (FELs) that produce frequencies better suited to propagation through the 

atmosphere than chemical lasers. As ships become “all electric,” an FEL, run from the 

ship’s power and would not require exotic chemical fuels. As long as a ship has fuel for 

power, the electric laser could fire. This provides a very “deep” magazine. An HEL might

be effective against small boats, aircraft and UAVs. A particular advantage of lasers is 

 - 40 -
that their power levels can be modulated from a warning level of energy (non-lethal) to a 

kill level. This would provide a particularly valuable capability in the littorals cluttered

environment where it is hard to distinguish a threat from a commercial or private vessel. 

A vessel that ignored a warning could be disabled or killed by the same HEL system. 

Moderate power HELs could also be effective on an airborne platform (such as a V-22). 

Targets of interest could include light vehicles (potential suicide automobiles), small 

boats, potential IEDs, or even crowd control with a wide area beam that would dissuade 

approach by intense heat. In addition to FEL’s, solid-state lasers are also candidates for 

moderate power HEL’s that also run on electric power. 

• Electromagnetic Launch (EML) Guns: The physical principle of accelerating an 

electrical conductor with an electromagnetic force is an area of intense research. If 

outstanding engineering problems can be solved the EML gun could provide a new

dimension to naval fires. An EML could accelerate a projectile to hypersonic speeds in a 

practical gun barrel length with ballistic ranges up to a few hundred miles. At these 

ranges, the EML system would be competitive with small cruise missiles but with more

firepower at reduced cost. The propellant energy is electric so the projectiles require only

guidance and a warhead. Due to the large amount of kinetic energy in the hypersonic 

projectile, damage effects could be greatly enhanced over a conventional explosive 

warhead. 

High Risk / High Potential Research Areas. A highly network-centric fleet will be a heavy

consumer of information technology and related electronic devices, advanced materials including 

structural (e.g., advanced composites), functional (e.g., semiconductors and superconductors) 

and energetic materials (e.g., explosives and propellants) and energy sources (e.g., propulsion 

and electricity). Two current areas of research that show promise of leap ahead breakthroughs in 

addressing these needs are nanotechnology and biotechnology. 

• Nanotechnology: Nanotechnology is the ability to manipulate matter at the molecular 

scale to produce advanced materials and sub-micron size devices that have the potential 

for orders of magnitude performance over current materials and devices. Examples that 

could improve the fleet’s capabilities in areas cited earlier include: 

o Highly efficient computer chips to increase processing densities well above that 

of the lithography techniques that are currently being pushed to their physical 

limits. 

o Structural materials 100 times stronger than conventional aerospace materials are 

potentially feasible by guiding the carbon deposition process to produce structural

materials with carbon nanotube strength properties. 

o High power-density nanoscale electric motor-generators operating at megahertz 

cycles for high throughput, could greatly exceed the energy density of batteries 

and fuel cells. 

• Biotechnology: This emerging technology has great potential for utility to the future 

fleet. The Navy is a prolific user of petroleum-based energy. Biomass represents a large 

potential energy resource that is currently not competitive with petroleum but may 

 - 41 -
become so as petroleum resources are depleted and biotechnology improves the 

efficiency of converting biomass to alcohol. Biomass is also universally available so if 

energy can be generated in the field, it would greatly reduce the logistics burden. Beyond 

alternative fuels, biotechnology has significant potential for new portable power sources; 

sensors for chemicals (e.g. explosives), biological agents and radiation; health 

monitoring; performance enhancement; combat identification; and camouflage and 

concealment.

 - 42 -
5. Alternative Fleet Architecture Design 

New Design Principles for Future Fleet Architectures 

Planning for military forces, particularly for naval forces, has fundamentally changed. It is not 

just that the end of the Cold War shifted the challenge faced by our military from confronting

and deterring a global military power to a series of interventions against enemies with much 

smaller classical military formations. That has been clear for some time now and the Department 

of Defense has been working to rebalance its planning accordingly. Equally significant are 

advances in technology (especially information technology) and successful experiments in new 

organizational structures that have opened up new ways of delivering military capabilities with

greater speed and effect. 

New design principles, relevant to the Information Age and the emerging theory of networkcentric warfare (NCW), have been identified to help guide the design of future U.S. military

forces, including the U.S. Navy. These design principles, the new rules set, properly applied, 

will put the U.S. Armed Forces on a path that ensures that they are well prepared to execute their

future missions. These design principles were used to develop an alternative future fleet 

platform architecture for the U.S. Navy. Additionally, new metrics have been formulated by the 

Office of Force Transformation (OFT) to assess the competence and relevance of U.S. forces to 

emerging challenges. The key elements of the new rule set and the new metrics are described in

this chapter. They point to the opportunity and imperative of designing the future fleet so that it 

rides the crest of technology trends and becomes steadily more capable relative to potential 

future adversaries as technology advances. 

Advances in technology and innovations in organization offer better ways to design and employ 

military force. The most important example is the power of networked behavior. The Navy can

design a fleet architecture made up of a network of many smaller units that taken together deliver 

a fleet with the combat power of a fleet of larger combatants while being more adaptable to the 

dynamic security environment. This performance is not derived from the physical network, but 

the co-evolution of the organization, processes, and technology in a highly interactive setting. No 

aspect is allowed to be held constant. 

The U.S. Navy can build smaller, lower unit cost combatants without compromising on combat

power because power and size have been decoupled through advances in physics that reduce the 

size of systems and advances in technology that increase the power of networks. This is 

particularly helpful against non-traditional adversaries when the U.S. needs a fast response time, 

consciously trading off the tension between the cost of speed and the value of time. Finally, the 

U.S. can increase its forces’ tactical stability by recognizing the power of the collective as well 

as by improving the survivability of individual platforms.1

 A force comprised of elements with

lower unit cost can be distributed over a larger area and achieve a network that matches the 

 

1

 For a fuller discussion, see A.I. Kaufman, Strategic Implications of Distributed Networked Naval Force Capability

(Washington, D.C.: Institute for Defense Analysis, 2004). 

 - 43 -
complexity of the adversary. Networked forces are particularly important in confronting enemies 

in a complex environment such as the littoral and provide a powerful edge in maintaining the 

strategic advantage the U.S. Navy has established in the ocean commons. 

The remainder of this section outlines the emerging rule set, which provides a foundation for 

designing a powerful, responsive, and adaptable fleet. These rules include: 

y Capabilities of a fleet are decoupled from platforms. 

y Power and survivability of a fleet have been decoupled from size. 

y Information has been substituted for mass. 

y Sensor proximity and persistence will drive the utility of weapons reach. 

y Mass customization delivers greater value than mass production. 

y Networked components outperform integrated systems. 

Capabilities of a Fleet are Decoupled from Platforms. Technological changes have enabled 

design modularity and networking, giving the Navy new flexibility in designing a fleet 

architecture that decouples capabilities of the fleet from the sum of the capabilities of individual 

platforms. 

Modular ship designs allow the Navy to choose desired systems and substitute them on and off 

ships. These modular platforms can be reconfigured to tailor the capability to focus on the 

immediate operational needs. The fleet can with the same number of total hulls, respond to a 

broader range of challenges. 

Additionally, networking allows multiple platforms, including smaller platforms, to coordinate

and combine firepower and sensor capacity to deliver concentrated and precise effect. As a 

result, capabilities are not determined, for example, by the sum of the firepower delivered by a 

flotilla of combatants, but by the combined capability of the networked fleet that grows

exponentially as the network expands. 

A networked fleet made up of many ships that can be configured to a particular mission can 

adapt to changed circumstances. This “battle network modularity” is a powerful capability in an 

era where unanticipated challenges can emerge. 

Power and Survivability Decoupled from Size. Three breakthroughs have enabled power and 

size to be decoupled. First, munitions can be delivered with much greater precision. Second, 

technological advances have reduced the size of systems and weapons required to provide a 

 - 44 -
certain effect. For example, high-energy-density weapons can multiply the explosive force of a

warhead of a given size and weight. Taken together, a smaller payload can deliver the same

military effects that formerly could only be produced by large platforms. An example of the 

effect precision munitions have had is shown in Table 5-1 below. The trend to fewer sorties (or

munitions delivered) to destroy a target allows military capability to be packaged into smaller

units. Third, networking allows smaller platforms, to coordinate and combine firepower and 

sensor capacity to deliver concentrated and precise effect. Smaller ships, as part of a netted force, 

can have the power comparable to that provided by larger platforms while preserving the 

advantage of high complexity. 

Conflict Sorties 

World War II 1000-2000 

Vietnam 20-50 

Desert Storm 1-2 

Kosovo More than one target per 

sortie 

Table 5-1. Aircraft Sorties Required to Destroy a Fixed Target

Survivability can increase as size decreases. Small platforms can be designed with greater speed, 

maneuverability, and a smaller signature than large ships. This allows them to elude detection,

tracking, and strike by an enemy rather than relying on thickness of armor for survivability. 

Moreover, their greater numbers makes it harder for an enemy to establish and maintain track on

the total force and to determine what to attack to get the maximum payoff. 

Unmanned vehicles can be designed to be even more stealthy (and can be smaller and lighter) 

because they do not have to provide the life support systems or protection to a sailor or pilot. 

Generous use of unmanned vehicles is included in the alternative future fleet architecture

examples presented in this report. 

Information Has Been Substituted for Mass. This metric refers to two aspects of military 

force: physical mass of a particular hull form, and the massing versus the dispersal of ships. 

Typical battles of the 20th century required large, heavily armored ships and tanks that could 

withstand a frontal assault against a sizable enemy. Mass – the size and thickness (and in some

cases, the doubling) of ship hulls – was essential to survivability in an era when U.S. forces had 

to be within visual range (and therefore enemy gun range) to locate and hit a target. 

The 20th century’s mass-heavy warfare follows a historical pattern between the mode of 

production and the mode of warfare. Napoleon created the levée en masse during an age of laborintense production. In the next century, the industrial-age was in full swing when first world 

nations produced military forces that drew their power from large numbers of well-armored 

platforms. Today, in the midst of the information revolution, the United States’ advantage has 

shifted to technology and information-enabled military forces. 

 - 45 -
Because the Information Age has shifted warfare dynamics, ships no longer need to mass for

defense. Historically, “the decision to mass or disperse depended not on offensive, but rather on 

defensive considerations.”

2

 With new technologies, the Navy can trade off hull mass for speed, 

networking, and interdependence. Coupled with new tactics for littoral combat, the Navy can 

achieve overmatching complexity against an adversary. The result is a force that loses nothing in 

offensive capability, since dispersed forces can create massed firepower, and one that relies upon 

its fast and fluid nature to confound an enemy’s surveillance tracking, targeting, and strike 

capacity. 

Technology has allowed U.S. forces to engage the enemy more precisely thereby requiring much 

less mass for the same military effect. For example, in Vietnam it took 20-50 sorties to destroy a 

target versus just 1-2 sorties in Desert Storm (see Table 5-1). Global positioning system (GPS) 

guidance enables remotely launched weapons to hit targets with precision largely independent of 

standoff distance. 

Finally, rather than needing a big chassis to carry a heavy and bulky magazine of munitions, 

sensors and other systems necessary for a particular mission, networking permits a comparable

system and payload to be distributed over many smaller platforms. Therefore, several ships with

smaller mass with a higher payload fraction, provided they are networked, can together deliver

capabilities comparable to a much larger ship, with the added benefits of increased adaptability, 

speed, and complexity. 

Sensor Proximity and Persistence Will Drive the Utility of Weapons Reach. The capability

of our sensors will be increasingly important to future operations. Advances in guidance systems, 

including use of GPS technology, have decoupled precision from distance. Aircraft and ships can 

strike small targets from hundreds (even thousands) of miles away with the same precision that 

only line of sight weapons could achieve till recently. This gives U.S. forces a strike capability 

that reaches as far as foreseeable conflicts require. The key is to know where the enemy is 

located. 

Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq reveal nascent elements of this important warfare shift.

Special operations personnel on the ground acted as sensors for air-delivered precision weapons

by spotting enemy forces, determining their exact locations using the global positioning system 

(GPS), and passing target coordinates directly to strike aircraft. 

Enemies in the future can be expected to attempt hiding strategies, blending forces into their 

background settings, and moving quickly and stealthily. Sensors, or better yet sensor networks, 

that can penetrate and navigate these difficult environments will permit the full exploitation of

our weapons reach in coping with irregular challenges in the future. Persistent sensing and

proximate sensing of the environment will go a long way to extending sensor reach out to where 

full use can be made of weapons reach. 

 

2 Wayne P. Hughes, Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000) p. 287. 

 - 46 -
First, advances in lighter-weight sensors, lighter-weight structural materials, and more efficient 

engines is extending the time an aerial sensor can spend over a target area from hours to days. 

Moreover, the new generation of unmanned aerial vehicles now in advanced research incorporate 

advanced stealth technologies that will make them more survivable while sensing a hostile

environment. 

Second, sensors can be distributed over a broad area and networked together to ensure that there 

are sensors proximate to all areas of interest. Sensors with very low power requirements and 

advances in managing a sensor network have made this option feasible. 

Mass Customization Delivers Greater Value than Mass Production. Traditionally, defense 

procurement followed the logic of mass production – producing large quantities of the same

thing to lower the unit cost. This method of production for the Navy resulted in many nearly 

identical ships produced over the course of decades. An example is the production of the Arleigh 

Burke Class guided missile destroyer (DDG), which started in 1985 and continues today, two

decades later. 

In the relative stasis of the Cold War, long production runs that delivered identical ships or ships 

with the evolutionary improvements over decades was tolerable. However, today we are in a 

dynamic period of change and increasing complexity. The Navy needs to be able to modify the 

capabilities of ships significantly on an as-needed basis to respond to emerging changes in the 

security environment and attendant changes in mission requirements. This makes a production 

system of mass customization far more valuable. 

The aim of mass customization is to produce goods and services that meet the specific needs of a 

sizable number of clients at costs roughly corresponding to those of standard mass produced 

goods. Advances in technology, particularly the development of programmable, computer-based 

machines, modules that conform to standard interfaces, and networked systems, have made mass

customization possible. 

An example of mass customization is a ship hull with common interfaces designed to allow the 

substitution of major systems – weapons suites, sensors or unmanned vehicles. The Littoral 

Combat Ship (LCS) moves in this direction. The LCS is envisioned to introduce a new level of 

design modularity, including configuration modularity (varied deployment of standardized 

modules, such as weapons suites, electronics, and the ship’s technical equipment), mission 

modularity (containerized weapons and equipment packages) and battle network modularity (the 

end flexibility from multiple module ships within a network).3

 In the private sector, an example 

of mass customization is DellTM computers, which start with basic models but allow customers to

modify features, such as the size of the hard drive or inclusion of a CD writer at production costs 

only modestly higher than single design mass production. 

 

3

 Robert O. Work, “Naval Transformation and the Littoral Combat Ship,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary 

Assessments, February 2004. Accessed through http://www.csbaonline.org on 10/7/2004. 

 - 47 -
As learning curve phenomenon moves to the design phase, mass customization preserves options

and flexibility in the design and production of the naval fleet of the future. By contrast, mass

production of highly integrated platforms limits our options. 

Figure 5-1 shows the cycle times of advances in key technologies. Mass customization coupled 

with modular design enables a fleet architecture to incorporate new capabilities on a cycle time

that more closely matches advances. The example fleet architectures presented in this report 

depend on a high degree of modularity to allow a steady upgrade in capabilities on a cycle time

that matches advances in communications, IT software, and IT components rather than materials 

and propulsion. 

• Globally available 

technology

• Our technological 

advantage comes from 

speed of systemization

Source: Naval Research Advisory Committee 

Figure 5-1. Technology Trends and Cycles 

Networked Components Outperform Integrated Systems. Over the last two decades, the 

United States has intervened in many smaller conflicts: Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti, 

and now Afghanistan and Iraq. The large Navy ships with tightly integrated systems, built and

designed primarily for large scale fleet-on-fleet operations against the Soviet fleet, are generally

considered too expensive to risk losing in small operations like these. Each ship houses such

concentrated, powerful capabilities that its loss would be significant. These concerns, combined

with technological progress in networking, point to an alternative way to structure the naval fleet 

architecture. More detailed information about the power of networking is provided in Appendix 

B.

Integrated system ships, such as the DD(X), combine firepower, sensor, command, stealth, and 

communications together – creating a ship that can operate autonomously. Networks, on the 

other hand, allow systems to be separated and placed on smaller, specialized platforms without 

losing the ability to create precise, coordinated effects. Networked components, because they are 

 - 48 -
specialized, can be smaller and therefore faster and more maneuverable. This in itself 

complicates the enemy’s detection, tracking, and targeting problem. Moreover, if any one 

platform is destroyed, the effect is not catastrophic. The network can adjust and reconstitute. 

Finally, the fleet structure is more flexible and therefore more complex – a key trait for success 

in an environment of dynamic non-contiguous battlefields. 

The New Metrics 

Competency Metrics. The Office of Force Transformation (OFT), Office of the Secretary of 

Defense (OSD) has developed a set of “competency metrics” to set a standard for assessing the

value of future military forces. The metrics build on changes the information revolution has

wrought and on the judgment that future conflicts will be more diverse, dynamic and nontraditional than they have been in the past. Taken together, they underline the power of

information-based activities and show the powerful coupling of the speed of information and the

speed of physical movement. 

y

y

y

y

y

y

Access—the ability to use military assets, both information and physical, at the best points

of effect in hard-to-reach locations even when denial strategies are employed by the enemy; 

Speed—minimization of response time from deliberate operational (or strategic) maneuver 

to stunning tactical swiftness; 

Distribution—the extent to which firepower, sensors, and other systems are spread over a 

diverse and geographically dispersed set of assets/platforms; 

Sensing—the ability to provide information with accuracy, timeliness, and relevance, and

especially to locate and track fleeting targets; 

Mobility—the ease and promptness by which military assets can be shifted from one

physical location to another; and 

Networking—the extent to which military assets are connected together through 

information technology that assures shared awareness and information access. 

These metrics capture the key platform and force characteristics to be emphasized in investment,

design, and procurement processes to ensure that the future fleet architecture has the capabilities 

needed for the emerging era, dominated by a dynamic security environment. Implicit in the set as 

a whole is the payoff in ensuring that the speed of physical movement is in balance with the

speed of information. Otherwise the non-contiguous battlespace will be frustrated. 

Relevancy Metrics to Drive Future Force Planning. Globalization and the information age 

have accelerated rates of change and have increased complexity and unpredictability in the

international system. That said, our inability to predict the future in detail does not mean we 

know nothing about it. For example, great power war has, for now, been taken off the table. The 

 - 49 -
United States has become so proficient in executing classical state-versus-state conflict that the 

battlefield has been shifting to smaller and smaller aggregations of combatants. 

The challenge for the immediate future is frequent contingencies of a wide variety across a wide 

geographic arc against an assortment of adversaries, none of which can compare to U.S. naval or 

overall military strength. At the same time, the eventual rise of a maritime contender with peer 

capabilities in its immediate region remains possible and has to be monitored. 

Existing processes for planning and developing new forces still largely reflect Cold War

paradigms. For that environment, gradual, incremental improvement in capabilities sufficed. The 

Office of Force Transformation has developed new metrics that drive fleet design to outcomes of 

flexibility, adaptability, and innovation, both throughout the investment and development

processes and in the final architecture design. These metrics, which safeguard relevancy of the 

force in the diverse set of possible futures are: 

y The creation and preservation of options 

y

y

y

High transaction rates 

High learning rates

Overmatching complexity at scale 

These become the prime metrics in both force building and force operations and are discussed in 

greater detail below. 

Creation and Preservation of Options. In uncertain times, when flexibility is of greatest value,

organizations, including the Navy, survive and prosper through the development and 

preservation of options. The creation and preservation of options dramatically complicates a 

potential enemy’s decision processes, broadens the base of our choices, reduces risk and defers 

regret. Practices that narrow options early should be abandoned. 

In investment and platform design, the Pentagon would be well served to end the practice of 

picking winners and losers early, in the name of efficiency. Hidden assumptions, such as 40 

years as the optimal life span of ships, must be rethought. For an entirely new type of ship, it is 

difficult to see the basis on which we might down-select to a single "best" ship design -- a

decision that destroys intellectual innovation and limits the potential of firms to compete in the

future. Instead, the Pentagon needs to extend the competition of ideas farther into processes,

thereby increasing the institutional learning that would come from testing and analyzing multiple

ship options. 

Exploration through experimentation or wargaming with new technologies or concepts is also 

important, as it can lead to new fleet designs, new tactics or new operational capabilities that 

deliver options to the commander. 

 - 50 -
High Transaction Rates. The transaction rate increases as the number of actors and the number 

of interactions with the competition and the environment increases. The quality and quantity of

those interactions over time drives up learning and success. The speed that information is 

collected, communicated, digested, and acted upon by U.S. forces powerfully accelerates the 

transaction rate. The ability to compete based on cycle time is a powerful advantage that 

suppresses the time required to create or exercise an option. It is at the heart of the concept of 

seizing the initiative in either force building or force operations. 

High Learning Rates. The achievement of high learning rates is important for preserving 

relevance in the information age and is closely coupled with high transaction rates. Achievement

of high learning rates is also correlated with distributed operations and experimentation. 

In the current acquisition system, some technologies and platforms take great lengths of time to 

move from the research and development stage to actual usage on the battlefield. The longer an 

idea takes to reach the battlefield as hardware, the shorter will be its period of usefulness. The

sooner the Navy experiments with new ideas, the more quickly it can integrate successes. This is 

particularly important because the United States faces an age where rapid learning is a key to

competitive advantage. 

Some of our adversaries are adapting and evolving at the speed of business while much of our 

military is operating at the speed of doctrine. If the U.S. is to take advantage of what the new age

offers, fast institutional learning is critical—both in force building and in operations. To create 

higher learning quality at higher learning rates, the Navy is best served by pursuing a rich mix of 

approaches to similar problems. This can include steps to foster innovative thinking, emphasize

diverse experiences as an essential qualification for leaders, ensure that experiences in the field 

are communicated widely and absorbed, and encourage experimentation in operational units as a 

regular part of peacetime operations. 

Overmatching Complexity at Scale. Complexity is the number, variety, and interaction patterns 

of entities within a system. Complexity in the physical sense is easy to understand—we like 

enemies to mass because a consolidated element has less complexity and presents a high value 

target vulnerable to our combined arms strike capability. Under the same principle, a guerilla 

force can frustrate a traditional military force because, though it has low mass and technical 

sophistication, it has very high complexity. 

The goal of our forces is to present overmatching complexity to the enemy to include overmatching complexity at scale. When the enemy manifests as individuals or small groups that

attack using guerrilla tactics, we need to have similarly small, mobile and flexible units to fight 

back. 

 - 51 -
Sea Base Concept 

The Navy’s Sea Base concept is a key organizing principle of the planned future fleet. The Navy 

describes it as the foundation from which offensive and defensive fires are to be projected. As 

enemy access to weapons of mass destruction grows, and the availability of overseas bases

declines, the Navy finds it compelling both militarily and politically to reduce the vulnerability

of U.S. forces through expanded use of secure, mobile, networked sea bases. Sea Base 

capabilities include enhanced afloat positioning of joint assets; offensive and defensive power 

projection; command and control; integrated joint logistics; and accelerated deployment and 

employment timelines. Netted and dispersed sea bases will consist of numerous platforms, 

including nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, multi-mission destroyers, submarines with Special 

Forces, and maritime pre-positioned ships. 

 

A key focus of this report is that the sea base is the sea, not the things on it. The fleet 

architecture was designed to take advantage of the dynamics of operational maneuver that 

exploit not only the land commons but the sea commons. Operational maneuver that includes

the sea surface expands greatly the maneuver space available to our forces thereby providing our 

forces with more options and complicating the enemy’s ability to maintain surveillance of our 

forces. 

 

In utilizing the sea as a base, it is important to maintain connectivity through networking, not to 

mass at the same physical location. The latter would simply recreate offshore the vulnerabilities 

of a forward garrison on land to conventional barrage attack or to attack from weapons of mass 

destruction, albeit at a somewhat greater stand-off distance. 

 

Full use of the potential of the sea as a base involves the inclusion of joint and allied forces. 

While it includes amphibious assault, it is much more than that. Modernizing old amphibious

ships and maritime prepositioning ships is only a small part of the overall concept of sea basing. 

The fleet’s ability to operate anywhere, including along the littoral breaks down the land-sea 

boundary, expanding our maneuver space, and providing multiple means of bringing military 

force to bear on the enemy. The architecture of the sea base is open so it can scale to the 

dimensions appropriate to the mission. 

 - 52 -
6. Examples of Fleet Platform Architectures 

Background 

Three powerful imperatives that drive the design of the alternative future fleet platform 

architectures presented in this chapter are described in Chapters 2, 3, and 4: 

• Strategic Context: The security environment has become increasingly dynamic and 

complex. The Navy must be ready to take part in joint intervention operations and crisis 

response while maintaining the strategic advantage it has established in the global ocean 

commons. 

• Budgetary Challenges: The programmed future fleet architecture was designed on the 

assumption that funding for naval procurement in general and for shipbuilding in 

particular would grow rapidly. Such funding growth cannot be counted upon. 

• Technology Opportunities: Advances in technology, especially information technology, 

provide the Navy with the opportunity to design a fleet of many lower unit cost platforms

that can disperse widely, gather and share large amounts of information, and bring 

precise force to bear promptly where needed. 

The new design principles for the development of the future fleet platform architectures,

including the new rules set and the new metrics, are addressed in Chapter 5, along with the 

important concept of sea basing, and the prioritized naval capabilities required by the fleet in 

the future that were developed during two workshops at the Naval War College last year. 

Taking into consideration the three imperatives, the new design principles for the fleet, the sea 

base concept, and the prioritized naval capabilities required in the future, three examples of 

alternative fleet platform architectures (labeled A, B, and C) were developed. They are 

explicitly designed to exploit the power of networking that delivers a capability that exceeds the 

sum of its component parts. Moreover, they take advantage of technology trends leading to 

greater capabilities in smaller packages. 

The example alternative architectures follow a much different trajectory than the programmed 

fleet architectures. This is not to say that the Navy has been standing still. During the nineties, 

there was a deliberate shift in the focus of the Navy program from ocean dominance (fleet-onfleet) to the capability to strike targets ashore. Moreover, the programmed future fleet 

architecture continues this trend and, if it could be funded, would result in a significantly 

modernized fleet. 

 - 53 -
Nature of the Future Fleet

The alternative fleet architectures utilize ship designs of lower unit cost. The ships make

extensive use of modularity to provide the ability to adapt quickly to changes in operational or 

strategic requirements. Accent is put on hull designs that are fast and maneuverable with a

standardized interface to allow a variety of combat modules to be exchanged rapidly. 

The architectures take advantage of networking, speed, numbers, and dispersal to deliver future

fleets that are highly capable, adaptable, and relevant to the spectrum of challenges that lie on the

horizon. With these attributes, especially networking, future fleets are empowered with 

relevance, present complexity to the adversary, preserve an increased number of options, and 

generate increased transaction rates and higher learning rates. The architectures include a 

generous component of small ships and a strategy of modularity is adopted rather than 

integration of many systems within a single hull. The “speed” of the fleet is not only the speed of 

craft motion but speed in swapping out modules on the spot to ensure relevance and to present 

complexity and uncertainty with which an enemy must contend. Such module exchange speeds

are achieved by carrying modules on larger ships that support the smaller ones forward. The 

large deck ships in the alternative architectures can be configured either to carry aviation or large 

numbers of vertical launch systems (VLS) and advanced guns (eventually electro-magnetic 

launch guns and perhaps high-energy lasers) that deliver large volumes of firepower. This 

contributes to the speed of response and as necessary to the defense of the fleet formations. 

The alternative fleet architectures presented here are designed to take advantage of extensive 

networking among spatially distributed forces. Simply put, they emphasize greater numbers of 

ships that draw their power from their ability to execute network-centric warfare (NCW). See 

Appendix B for a discussion of the power of networking and the emerging theory of NCW. 

The programmed Navy with its emphasis on large multi-mission integrated ships can also realize 

advantages from networking. Its ForceNet program includes aggressive plans to introduce as 

much of this as possible. Nonetheless, the high unit cost of programmed combatants coupled 

with reduced shipbuilding budgets will limit the size of the fleet and therefore the extent to

which it can exploit the advantages of networking. 

Programmed Fleet 

The Navy organizes its combat forces around several formations: the carrier strike group (CSG), 

the expeditionary strike group (ESG), and the surface strike group (SSG). They form the focus of 

this chapter. Nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) that are part of these formations are also

addressed. SSNs that are not part of these formations and support ships like the Combat Logistics 

Force (CLF) are not addressed in the same detail.

There are 12 CSGs, 12 ESGs, and 9 SSGs in the programmed fleet architecture, with a total of 

210 surface and 24 subsurface combatants. These include the following ship numbers and types: 

 - 54 -
• 12 nuclear powered aircraft carriers (CVNs) 

• 60 littoral combat ships (LCSs) 

• 12 fast combat support ships (T-AOEs) 

• 12 amphibious assault ships (LHDs) 

• 12 amphibious transport docks (LPDs) 

• 12 dock landing ships (LSDs) 

• 78 experimental guided missile cruisers (CGXs) 

• 12 experimental destroyers (DDXs) 

• 24 nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) 

• 282 unmanned vehicles (UVs) 

• Also included are the aviation units for these ships. 

The Navy has yet to settle on a specific program goal for UVs. The estimate of 282 given here is 

based upon the following information. The programmed fleet has 60 LCSs, and, with current 

designs, there is room on each for a maximum of three unmanned vehicles. The specific type of 

UV could vary, being unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), unmanned surface vehicles 

(USVs), or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Navy also has plans to develop UAVs for

deployment with carrier air wings, with roughly eight for each of the twelve carriers. In addition,

a remote minehunting system consisting of one UUV could be deployed on 6 of the Navy’s 

current DDG class destroyers; the same load is posited for 6 of the DDXs. The total number of

UVs in the programmed fleet could shrink or grow depending on new advances in technology 

and changing programmatic priorities. 

Alternative Fleet Architectures 

The examples of future fleet architectures are just that: examples. These alternatives were chosen 

for analytical purposes and executability, not because any particular component is necessary for 

the viability of the example architecture. The examples demonstrate that it is possible to 

construct fleet architectures made up of ships that are now being built, successful prototypes, or 

designs within the bounds of demonstrated technology. The future fleet architecture could be 

assembled from ships that, individually, are different. Hybrid architectures combining elements 

of the proposed alternatives with each other or with the programmed fleet may also be

envisioned. The key is that an alternative conform to the architecture design principles described 

in the previous chapter. 

Alternative fleet platform architectures were developed with an eye to developing the required

naval capabilities as simply as possible but in such a way that poses maximum complexity to an

enemy. The basic functional formations planned for the programmed fleet were maintained in 

designing the three alternative fleet platform architectures for analytic purposes. Existing hull 

 - 55 -
designs were used and configured in well-established ways to constitute alternative fleet 

architectures. 

The small-hulled ships are designed to accept modules that can be swapped out to configure the 

ships with the capabilities relevant to the mission at hand. A smaller number of large ships 

provide high volume firepower, aviation, troop spaces, module support at sea, and logistical 

transport as needed. 

The large ships have flat tops that accommodate systems and sensors for combat as well as cargo 

space to carry modules for the small combatants, unmanned vehicles, and space for maintenance 

and housekeeping functions. Existing concept ship designs for the alternative hull forms were 

used. The large ships in alternatives A and B are built by using a hull taken from the Maritime

Prepositioning Force Future (MPF [F]) Analysis of Alternatives (AoA)4

. The hull type used in 

this study is 57,000 tons full load displacement and 260 meters in length. For comparison, an 

LHD has a displacement of 40 thousand tons and is about the same length. 

Numbers of manned aircraft are the same in the alternative fleets and the programmed fleet. Very 

Short Take-Off and Landing (VSTOL) Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft were used on the

alternative smaller carriers, although advances in electromagnetic aircraft launching systems 

(EMALS) combined with modifications in the JSF will make it possible over time to operate a 

modified JSF off these decks very close to the Conventional Take and Off and Landing (CTOL) 

configuration. This latter version would have only a marginal penalty in range-payload 

capability. Alternatives to the SSNs in formations were diesel Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) 

submarines and unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs). The AIP submarines were substituted for 

Virginia class SSNs on a cost basis of roughly four to one. The AIP submarines would be 

brought to theater by the large surface ships. These submarines could be nuclear-powered if they 

are designed and built based upon a competitive, cost suppressing business model. 

Alternative fleet platform architectures were constructed at an equal cost to the programmed fleet 

architecture in terms of procurement costs and 30 years of operating and support costs. To 

achieve equal cost for a numerically larger surface fleet, the number of hull types was

minimized. The largest ships, those over 20,000 tons in the programmed Navy, are individually 

more survivable, once hit, than the smaller craft in the alternatives, but the alternative small 

combatants are designed to be less targetable because of their smaller signature, higher speed, 

and greater maneuverability. The alternative forces are elegant in their simplicity. While 

individually (by platform), they are less technically complicated than the programmed fleet,

collectively, these alternative fleet architectures present greater complexity to the enemy, thereby

complicating his planning. 

Descriptions of the component ships used to assemble the alternative fleet architecture are 

presented in the tables that follow. 

 

4

 CNA Report D9814, Maritime Prepositioning Force Future (MPF [F]) Analysis of Alternatives (AoA), April 2004

 - 56 -
Aviation Ship (X-AVS) 



















Used in aviation strike groups of Alternatives A and B 

Full load displacement 57,000 tons 

Concept design from Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future) MPF (F) Assessment of Alternatives 

(AoA) Study 

Supports 30 VSTOL (or modified CTOL) JSF, 6 MV-22, and 15 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in 

CSG 

Stowage and working space for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), unmanned surface vehicles 

(USVs), and modules for small surface combatants (SSC-1000s in Alternative A) 

Cranes for changing modules 

Integrated Landing Platform (ILP) for UUV and USV operations 

Speed 30-40 knots 

Crew: 50 civilian for routine ship operations and 500 Navy for warfighting functions 

Small Aviation Ship (X-CRS) 













Used in aviation strike group of Alternative C instead of X-AVS 

Full load displacement 13,500 tons 

Concept design from Naval Postgraduate School Total Ship Systems Engineering Team 2001 

Hull is surface effect ship (SES)/catamaran 

Used to support 8 VSTOL JSF, 2 MV-22, and 8 UAVs in CSG 

Speed 50-60 knots 

Weapons Ship (X-WPS) 



















Used in aviation, expeditionary, and surface strike groups of Alternatives A, B, and C 

Full load displacement 57,000 tons 

360 vertical launch system (VLS) cells 

4 trainable rocket launchers (TRLs) 

Stowage and working space for UUVs, USVs, and modules for small surface combatants (SSC-1000s 

in Alternative A) 

Support for limited numbers of VSC-100 combatants (Alternative B SSG) or aircraft or UAVs 

Integrated landing platform (ILP) and cranes 

Speed 30-40 knots 

Crew: 50 civilian for routine ship operations and 500 Navy for warfighting functions 

Support Ship (X-SPT) 

















Used in aviation and expeditionary strike groups of Alternatives B and C 

Used to support very small combatant craft (VSC-100) 

Full load displacement 57,000 tons 

Carries the VSC-100 craft and their modules 

Stowage and working space for VSC-100 craft and modules 

Cranes to lift VSC-100 on and off 

Speed 30-40 knots 

Crew: 50 civilian for routine ship operations and 500 Navy to support VSC-100 

 - 57 -
Amphibious Operations Support Ship (T-AKX) 

















Used in expeditionary strike groups of Alternatives A, B, and C 

Full load displacement 57,000 tons 

Supports 30 CH-46 equivalents or 6 VSTOL (or modified CTOL) JSF, 18 MV-22, and 3 Gyrocopter 

Heavy Lift Helos 

Cargo space for square and cube 

Working space for load configuration 

Space for UVs and modules for SSC-1000s 

Speed 30-40 knots 

Crew: 50 civilian for routine ship operations and 500 Navy for warfighting functions 

Small Surface Combatant (SSC-1000) 











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—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—





Used in aviation, expeditionary, and surface strike groups of Alternatives A 

Small, fast, modular surface combatant 

Full Load Displacement: 1,000 tons 

Speed: 40-50 knots; Crew: 22 

Fixed systems 

Multifunction radar 

Surface to Air Missiles 

Close-In Weapon Systems 

Towed Array Sonar 

Hull-Mounted Active Sonar 

CEC, IFF, EW, Thermal Imaging system 

Accommodate all fixed systems and one module 

Modules: 

ASW: Variable depth sonar, torpedoes, fire control system 

Helicopter support for SH-60 type: Weapons, sensors, fuel 

Strike: 9-cell launcher, fire control system, 3 UAVs (targeting) 

Mine Warfare: Remote mine hunting systems, acoustic counter measure system, mine 

neutralization system 

SOF: 3 rigid-hull inflatable boats 

USV: 3 unmanned surface vehicles 

SUW: Surface-to-surface missiles 

AAW: 12-cell launcher and missiles 

Modules: carried in the large ships in the formations 

Half Modules: Half of a set of modules bought for each SSC-1000 due to number of SSC-1000s and 

module availability in each formation 

 - 58 -
Very Small Surface Combatant (VSC-100) 



















—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—

—



Used in the aviation, expeditionary, and surface strike groups of Alternatives B and C 

Small, fast, modular surface combatant craft 

Carried to theater by large support ship (X-SPT) 

Payload capacity increased as less fuel carried 

Full Load Displacement: 100 tons 

Speed: 60 knots; Crew: 3 

Limited capacity for fixed systems, carries one module at a time 

Operated as a unit or in flights of two or more craft 

Modules: 

ASW-1: Variable depth sonar 

ASW-2: Towed array, torpedoes, fire control system 

Strike-1: 6-cell launcher, fire control system 

Strike-2: 3 UAVs (for targeting) 

Mine Warfare: 1 UUV, acoustic MCM system, mine neutralization system 

SOF: 2 rigid-hull inflatable boats 

USV: 2 unmanned surface vehicles 

SUW-1: 8 Surface-to-surface missiles 

SUW-2: Close-In Weapon System 

AAW: Launcher, missiles, multifunction radar 

UUV: 12 medium UUVs 

Sensors: small sensors for acoustic detection 

Half of a set of modules bought for each VSC-100 

Table 6-1. Characteristics of Alternative Proposed Ship Types 

The modular small combatants provide agility, flexibility, and speed. Two examples of small

surface combatants (SSCs) are used in designing the examples of alternative fleet architectures

presented in this chapter. As shown in Table 6-2, one is the SSC-1000, displacing 1,000 tons, 

that self-deploys to theater. The other is a very small combatant (VSC), the VSC-100, a 100-ton 

craft that is carried to theater by the support ship (X-SPT). Actual designs for these small ships 

were developed by the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and were used as the basis for

cost and effectiveness calculations. 

SSC-1000 VSC-100 

Length: 70 meters Length: 40 meters 

Payload Fraction: 15% Payload Fraction: 30%

Table 6-2. Alternative Small Surface Combatants 

Three alternatives (labeled A, B, and C) of future fleet platform architectures are presented. All

three contain a richer complement of smaller ships than the programmed fleet architecture. The 

 - 59 -
alternatives progress along a spectrum of greater numbers and a larger complement of unmanned 

systems. 

Alternative A. Three large hull ship types are used in this alternative: an aircraft carrier 

(designated X-AVS in subsequent discussions) that is smaller than programmed CVNs, a 

weapons ship (X-WPS), and an amphibious operations support ship (T-AKX). 

Each of the 12 aviation strike groups (ASGs) in Alternative A, as shown in Table 6-3, consists 

of: 

Two 57,000 ton displacement aviation ships (X-AVSs) that together support 60 VSTOL (or 

modified CTOL) Joint Strike Fighters (JSF), 12 MV-22 tilt rotor (TR) aircraft, and several 

unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); 

y

y

y

y

y

One weapons-heavy ship (X-WPS) with 360 vertical launch systems (VLS) and trainable 

rocket launchers (TRL); 

16 SSC-1000, a 1,000 tons displacement ship, that can self-deploy to the theater and can be 

configured with a variety of combat modules as the mission demands; 

Four AIP diesel submarines at costs comparable to that of one SSN (Virginia Class); and 

One fast combat support ship (T-AOE) combat logistics force (CLF) station ship for fuel 

and stores. 

For size comparison, the X-AVS aviation ship is similar in size to the new aircraft carrier 

planned by the United Kingdom, which is expected to support about 50 VSTOL aircraft. The 

existing French light aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, supports 35 to 40 aircraft at a full 

load displacement of 41,000 tons, some 70% of that of the X-AVS design. 

Programmed Carrier Strike 

Group (CSG) 

Alternative A

Aviation Strike Group (ASG) 

12 Formations 12 Formations 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

CVN 1 X-AVS 2

Aircraft 60 JSF (CV), 12 MV-22 and 8 UAV Aircraft 60 VSTOL (or modified CTOL) JSF, 

12 MV-22 and 9 UAV 

CGX 3 X-WPS 1

LCS 2 SSC-1000 16

UV 6 UV 3 USV and 18 UUV on each 

X-AVS and X-WPS 

SSN 1 AIP Submarine 4

T-AOE 1 T-AOE 1

Table 6-3. Comparison of the Programmed CSG and the Alternative A ASG 

The large ships also carry back up modules for the SSC-1000 ships. 

 - 60 -
Each of the 12 Expeditionary Strike Groups (ESGs) in Alternative A, as shown in Table 6-4, 

consists of: 

Two large hull T-AKX ships, supporting a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) carrying six

VSTOL (or modified CTOL) JSF, 18 MV-22, and three gyrocopter heavy lift aircraft, 

y

y

y

One weapons ship (X-WPS), and 

15 SSC-1000 small combatants. 

Programmed Expeditionary Strike 

Group (ESG) 

Alternative A

Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 

12 Formations 12 Formations 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

LHD, LPD and LSD 1 each T-AKX (MPF (F)) 2 

Aircraft 6 JSF (VSTOL) and 24 MV-22 Aircraft 

6 VSTOL (or modified 

CTOL) JSF, 18 MV-22, 

3 Gyrocopter Heavy Lift Helos and 

3 UAV 

CGX 2

DDX 1

X-WPS 1

UV 9-10 UV 3 USV and 18 UUV on X-WPS 

LCS 3

SSN 1

SSC-1000 15

Table 6-4. The Programmed ESG and the Alternative A ESG

Each of the nine Surface Strike Groups (SSGs) for Alternative A, as shown in Table 6-5, 

consists of: 

y One weapons ship (X-WPS), and 

y Five SSC-1000 ships. 

Programmed Surface Strike 

Group (SSG) 

Alternative A

Surface Strike Group (SSG) 

9 Formations 9 Formations 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

CGX 3 X-WPS 1

UV 3 UAV, 3 USV and 18 UUV 

on X-WPS 

SSC-1000 5

Table 6-5. Comparison of the Programmed SSG and the Alternative A SSG 

 - 61 -
In addition, each aviation (X-AVS) and each weapons (X-WPS) ship carries a package of aerial,

surface, and undersea unmanned vehicles (UAV, USV, UUV). Each package consists of three

UAVs, three USVs, and 18 UUVs. The UUV package consists of two large, four medium and 12

small UUVs. 

Alternative B. The aviation (X-AVS) and weapons (X-WPS) ships are used in the same manner 

in this alternative, but a very small combatant (VSC)-100 replaces the SSC-1000. The VSC-100 

displaces 100 tons at full load. The support ship, X-SPT, transports it and its modules to the zone 

of operations. It offloads them configured with the module relevant to the operations at hand. 

The VSC-100 combatants then return to the support ship, are on-loaded via a crane system for

general housekeeping functions and to exchange modules as required. Since the VSC-100 does 

not need a transoceanic range, fuel can be traded for modular payload bringing its payload 

fraction up to 30 percent. 

The Alternative B ASG (shown in Table 6-6) consists of: 

y Two aviation ships (X-AVS), 

y

y

y

y

y

One weapons ship (X-WPS), 

One support ship (X-SPT), 

24 VSC-100 small combatants, 

Four AIP diesel submarines, and 

One fast combat support ship (T-AOE). 

Programmed Carrier Strike 

Group (CSG) 

Alternative B

Aviation Strike Group (ASG) 

12 Formations 12 Formations 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

CVN 1 X-AVS 2

Aircraft 60 JSF (CV), 12 MV-22 and 8 UAV Aircraft 60 VSTOL (or modified CTOL) JSF, 

12 MV-22 and 9 UAV 

CGX 3 X-WPS 1

VSC-100 24 LCS 2

X-SPT 1

UV 6 UV 3 USV and 18 UUV 

on each X-AVS and X-WPS 

SSN 1 AIP Submarine 4

T-AOE 1 T-AOE 1

Table 6-6. The Programmed CSG and the Alternative B ASG 

The corresponding ESG, as shown in Table 6-7, consists of: 

 - 62 -
y Two amphibious assault (TAK-X), 

y

y

y

One weapons ship (X-WPS), 

One support ship (X-SPT), and 

23 VSC-100 small combatants. 

Programmed Expeditionary Strike 

Group (ESG) 

Alternative B

Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) 

12 Formations 12 Formations 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

LHD, LPD and LSD 1 each T-AKX (MPF(F)) 2

Aircraft 6 VSTOL JSF and 24 MV-22 Aircraft 6 JSF VSTOL (or modified CTOL) 

JSF,18 MV-22, 3 MC-X3 and 3 UAV 

CGX 2

DDX 1

X-WPS 1

UV 9-10 UV 3 USV and 18 UUV 

on X-WPS 

X-SPT 1

LCS 3

SSN 1

VSC-100 23

Table 6-7. The Programmed ESG and the Alternative B ESG

The corresponding SSG for Alternative B, as shown in Table 6-8, consists of: 

y One weapons ship (X-WPS) and 

y Five VSC-100 small combatants. 

 

Programmed Surface Strike 

Group (SSG) 

Alternative B

Surface Strike Group (SSG) 

9 Formations 9 Formations 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

Platform Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

CGX 3 X-WPS 1

UV 3 UAV, 3 USV and 18 UUV 

on X-WPS 

VSC-100 5

Table 6-8. Comparison of the Programmed SSG and the Alternative B SSG 

The weapons ship (X-WPS) in this group would be configured with a crane and cradles to 

support the VSC-100s. 

Each aviation (X-AVS) and weapons ship (X-WPS) in Alternative B carries the package of

unmanned vehicles described in Alternative A: 3 UAVs, 3 USVs, and 18 UUVs apiece. 

 - 63 -
Alternative C. This alternative has the smallest and most numerous ships. Very small aviation

support ships, designated as Corsairs or X-CRS based on a concept design developed at the 

Naval Postgraduate School, replace the aviation ships (X-AVS). The replacement based on cost 

and capability, is four X-CRS ships for one X-AVS ship. Each of the 12 ASGs of Alternative C, 

shown in Table 6-9, consists of eight X-CRS ships. This is the only change to Alternative B. The 

ESG and SSG in Alternative C are the same as in Alternative B. The set of unmanned vehicles is 

spread over the four small aviation ships (X-CRSs). The X-CRS’s displacement is 13,500 tons 

and supports eight JSF, two MV-22, and eight UAVs. Its maximum speed is 60 knots. 

Programmed Carrier Strike 

Group (CSG) 

Alternative C

Aviation Strike Group (ASG) 

12 Formations 12 Formations Platform 

Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

Platform 

Type Number Vessels in each 

Formation 

CVN 1 X-CRS 8

UV 6 UV 3 USV and 18 UUV on X-WPS 

Aircraft 60 JSF (CV), 12 MV-22 and 8 UAV Aircraft 64 VSTOL JSF,16 MV-22 and 67 UAV 

CGX 3 X-WPS 1

VSC-100 24 LCS 2 X-SPT 1

SSN 1 AIP 4

T-AOE 1 T-AOE 1

Table 6-9. Comparison of the Programmed CSG and the Alternative C ASG 

The numbers of ships and submarines in each alternative are compared to the planned fleet 

architecture by formation in Table 6-10. 

Number Surface and Subsurface Combatants 

Formation Type Alternative Fleets 

Number 

Formations in 

Fleet Programmed A B C 

Carrier Strike Group 12 96 288 396 468 

Expeditionary Strike Group 12 120 216 324 324 

Surface Strike Group 9 27 54 54 54 

Total Number Combatants 243 558 774 846 

Total Number UVs 282 1,368 1.368 1,560 

Table 6-10. Programmed and Alternative Fleet Sizes 

The alternatives are designed to significantly increase the number of combatants in the fleet over 

the programmed number. The results show the numbers of combatants increasing from 243 in 

the planned architecture to 558 in Alternative A, 774 in Alternative B, and 846 in Alternative C. 

 - 64 -
Evaluating Fleet Capabilities 

As explained in Chapter 3, it appears unlikely for resources to be available to build the full fleet 

architecture shown in Table 6-10. A key advantage of the alternatives over the programmed fleet 

is that they scale better. The alternatives include large numbers of lower unit cost ships so that in 

times of tight shipbuilding budgets the fleet can maintain a critical numerical size. When more

resources do become available, the Navy can take advantage of the opportunity by building these 

ships more rapidly. A key to success for any of the fleet architectures is that at all times, the 

Navy supports experimenting with ship designs that target greater speed, maneuverability, higher 

payload fraction, and seaworthiness. 

Capability areas. The fleet needs the capabilities shown in Table 6-11. These capabilities are 

aggregations of the detailed list of capabilities supplied by the Office of the Chief of Naval 

Operations, N-70. They were reviewed in the two decision support exercises held at the Naval 

War College and an assessment was made of how critical each was likely to be in meeting future 

challenges. 

First, the fleet must be able to develop and communicate knowledge about forces and the 

military situation. As computers continue to grow more powerful and the capacity for

exchanging large amounts of information expands these activities will increasingly be executable 

by directly exchanging data between battlefield elements in real time through data networks. 

 Develop and Communicate Knowledge of Forces and 

Situation 

 Control Operational Domain 

 Bring Joint Forces to Bear where Needed Promptly 

 Fight from the Sea 

 Sustain Joint Forces 

 Deny Enemy Ability to Hold Homeland at Risk 

Table 6-11. Capability Areas 

Second, a fleet must be able to control the area from within which it conducts its operations. 

Specifically, it must be able to survive threats posed by undersea weapons, enemy surface ships, 

aircraft, and missile attacks launched either from the opposing fleet from shore installations. 

Third, a fleet must be able to deploy its forces to optimize its ability to arrive in the right place at 

the right time. Fundamental to this capability is the size of geographic area that the fleet can 

access. Given potential access, a fleet must be quick to move in order to arrive quickly, and it

 - 65 -
must be highly maneuverable in order to get into the most advantageous tactical position. The 

speed and maneuverability of individual ships will also enhance the fleet’s survivability if it 

comes under attack. 

Next, a fleet must be ready to fight once it is properly deployed. If the operation is aimed at an 

opposing fleet, it must be able to engage and destroy that fleet’s assets; if the operation is aimed 

at supporting a land battle, it must be able to attack and destroy both fixed and mobile land 

targets, and it must be able to insert special operation forces where they are needed. 

Since the duration of the war is often uncontrollable, a fleet must also be able to sustain itself 

and, if necessary sustain the expeditionary forces operating ashore. This capability essentially

requires that the fleet have the resilience to always fight another day if the circumstances 

demand. 

Finally a fleet must be able to contribute to the emerging capability of denying an enemy the

ability to hold the U.S. homeland at risk. This capability might require that the fleet participate in

missile defense, in monitoring suspect shipping bound for the U.S., in port defense, and in sea

control along our shores. 

U.S. Security Policy and Enemy Behavior. All the capabilities described above are important, 

though which capability is most important to the nation depends upon the character of our 

national security policy and upon the nature of the enemy we encounter. 

If our national leadership chooses to continue a policy of intervening to stabilize critical regions 

or to head off emerging threats to our security, we can expect to face enemies that employ 

asymmetric tactics. On the other hand, if our leadership emphasizes maintaining our strategic 

advantage in the ocean commons, the fleet will have to prepare to contend with an adversary that 

challenges us directly and possibly symmetrically in the ocean commons. 

Some capabilities are more critical in one circumstance than the other. Agility, access, and power 

projection are the most important capabilities if the fleet is to support an interventionist policy. 

Control of relevant areas – large areas of the world’s oceans or portions of homeland periphery -- 

is the most important capability if the fleet is to support a strategic advantage policy. 

If the enemy turns out to behave in an asymmetric manner, networking of a larger number of

fleet assets is, as will be subsequently shown in this chapter, the best way to achieve the desired

capabilities. If the enemy is symmetric, the best way to attain the desired capability is to increase

the survivability of fleet assets, a goal that could be achieved either by improving the defensive 

capability of programmed platforms or by networking a larger and more widely dispersed

number of fleet assets. 

Quantifying Fleet Capabilities. A capability analysis was performed that focuses on the two 

most challenging cases. First the imperative to intervene as needed and cope with an enemy that 

could be expected to resist using asymmetric tactics was analyzed. Next, the need to maintain the 

 - 66 -
strategic advantage the Navy has established in the ocean commons in the face of a competent

enemy challenging us symmetrically in its region was analyzed. Quantification of a fleet’s 

capabilities is routinely provided by campaign analyses that embed the fleet within specified 

scenarios and then calculate the likely outcomes as a function of inputs describing the enemy, the 

fleet, and the system that composes them both. Properly done, they can yield valuable detailed 

information on fleet performance. That said, campaign analyses require detailed assumptions and 

the details can obscure and overwhelm the broad capability characteristics sought. 

A different tack has been adopted in this study. The authors leap beyond the current philosophy 

for designing the nation’s fleet and seek a vantage point from which to examine the fundamental 

assumptions that underpin that philosophy, and then to explore alternatives. To this end, models 

that identify and measure parametrically the critical factors that drive capability are employed. 

The details of the future may be uncertain, but the foregoing analysis provides a rather clear 

picture of the capabilities the fleet will need to cope. Particular attention is paid to the 

imperatives of getting on the right side of technology trends so that over time, the fleet 

architecture’s capabilities grow relative to the challenges posed by the competition. This 

approach yields greater insights than campaign analysis when the exact nature of future 

challenges is uncertain and it avoids a point solution dependent on details. Such a solution is 

likely to prove too brittle when details emerge that are different from those assumed. 

Models aimed at identifying the critical factors that drive capability need not be detailed

campaign models, with many specific input parameters. Indeed it is better to avoid this since it is

impossible to determine with precision the inputs that will reflect future challenges with fidelity. 

The main thrust of this analysis is to discern how best to ensure that critical capabilities are

resident in the fleet. The models used are intentionally transparent and simple to explore how key 

factors we identify affect fleet capability, as opposed to describing in detail performance in a

particular scenario. The capability models used in the study to compare future fleet capabilities 

provided by the alternative architectures are described in Appendix C. More detail concerning 

these models and concepts may be found in the Comparison of Potential Future Fleet 

Architectures, a report prepared by the Institute for Defense Analyses.5

Analysis of Alternatives. Next the question of fleet capability in a dynamic future is addressed 

by using these models for the two critical circumstances identified above. Begin with the case in 

which U.S. security policy continues to have a strong interventionist component. Under these 

circumstances, the needed capabilities are: agility, access and control of operational domains, 

and the ability to fight from the sea (power projection). The Navy is mainly focused upon 

supporting the land battle from the sea and it must therefore tailor its operations to the dynamics

of that battle. Agility, measured by the fleet’s ability to quickly get to the right location, is thus 

important. In a similar fashion, since supporting land operations requires that the Navy be 

positioned within striking distance of land targets, a fleet participating in an interventionist action 

would have to gain access to the enemy’s littorals against the anti-access forces that the enemy 

deploys there. Finally, since the whole reason for using the fleet in an interventionist war is to

 

5

 IDA Paper P-3980, Comparison of Potential Future Fleet Architectures, Institute for Defense Analyses, January

2005. 

 - 67 -
affect the battle on land, the fleet must be able to deliver a sizable power projection punch once it 

has accessed the littoral.

• Interventionist Policy / Asymmetric Enemy: Enemy action is more likely to be aimed 

at exploiting the vulnerabilities of the fleet than at confronting it head on. Consequently, 

the enemy would be driven to attempt to strike and flee rather than confront our forces 

openly. Similarly, the fleet’s ability to remove the various anti-access assets the enemy 

would surely deploy against it could be significantly reduced by enemy tactics designed 

to hide from surveillance when and where those assets were deployed. Finally, enemy 

targets could choose to operate in an environment in which the surrounding objects 

provide them with an ability to break track before we can launch weapons against them. 

Therefore, the most important critical factor to all the relevant capabilities is the enemy’s

ability to elude detection. 

The enemy’s ability to hide can be controlled by networking sensors on many dispersed 

platforms. Networking, made increasingly stronger by rapidly developing information 

technologies, promises to deliver two different kinds of benefits. First, by rapidly sharing 

information, networking enhances the effective performance capability of each platform. 

It is the capability of the network, not the capability of each individual element, which

ultimately matters in a networked force. For instance, by using information made 

available to the network by all ships, any individual ship in the network could launch 

weapons at targets outside of its own detection range. Second, by allowing free

information flow between military personnel, the network could enable through 

spontaneous self-organization a more cohesive behavior out of which focused, relevant 

action can emerge. 

A networked fleet consisting of many platforms offers therefore the promise of being not 

only more capable but also more relevant to fighting an asymmetric enemy in an 

interventionist setting. By inculcating cohesive behavior, networking effectively denies 

an asymmetric enemy the powerful lever of elusion and deception. Indeed, a networked 

force can operate faster, have significantly more tactical options, and generate a more

fluid picture of its instantaneous posture and subsequent intentions. This new flexibility 

and complex array of possibilities would make it difficult for any enemy to figure out 

exactly what action would generate deception; it may not be able to figure out what will

happen next, to set up an appropriate deception plan, and to adapt rapidly enough to 

changes confronting it. 

In the analysis, the programmed fleet was compared parametrically with its alternatives 

quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Comparisons are made between the fleets for three

capabilities: Control Operational Domain, Promptly Bring Forces to Bear, and Fight from

the Sea.6

 

6

 Ibid. The in-depth analysis used to arrive at the comparisons between the programmed fleet and the Alternative 

Fleet Architectures shown in Tables 6-1, 6-2, and 6-3 is described in the aforementioned IDA report. 

 - 68 -
Comparison of Alternative Fleets Ability to

Control Operational Domain

Intervention Setting, Asymmetric Enemy

Incorporating Full Benefits of Networking

R

elativ

e Pr

o

b

a

bility th

at

P

o

w

er Projection Forc

e

s S

urviv

e

Programmed 

Fleet

Alternative

A

Alternative

B

Alternative

C

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

Figure 6-1. Comparing Programmed and Fleet Alternatives’ Ability to Control 

Operational Domain, Incorporating the Full Benefits of Networking 

Comparison of Alternative Fleets Ability to 

Promptly Bring Forces to Bear

Intervention Setting, Asymmetric Enemy

Incorporating Full Benefits of Networking

Programmed 

Fleet

Alternative

A

Alternative

B

Alternative

C

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

R

elativ

e A

gilit

y

(b

eing

pro

mptly in t

h

e right plac

e

at the ri

g

ht ti

m

e)

Figure 6-2. Comparing Programmed and Fleet Alternatives’ Ability to Promptly

Bring Forces to Bear, Incorporating the Full Benefits of Networking 

 - 69 -
Rel

ative Strike 

Effectiven

e

s

s

Comparison of Alternative Fleets Ability to

Fight from the Sea

Intervention Setting, Asymmetric Enemy

Incorporating Full Benefits of Networking

Alternative

A

Programmed

Fleet

Alternative

B

Alternative

C

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.4

Figure 6-3. Comparing Programmed and Fleet Alternatives’ Ability to Fight from

the Sea, Incorporating the Full Benefits of Networking 

• Strategic Advantage Policy / Symmetric Enemy: The next case considered is a policy

that seeks to maintain strategic advantage in the global commons against a symmetric 

enemy determined to deny it access. The largest ships in the programmed fleet (greater

than 20,000 tons) might survive an enemy hit and remain operational. Smaller ships 

would likely be out of action when hit. That said, the alternative architectures have 

different advantages. Their dispersion, numbers, speed, agility, and small signature 

hamper the enemy’s ability to target, track, and then hit them. The key degrees of 

freedom are platform speed and the operational flexibility that would flow from 

networking. If the enemy attacked with surface or air launched missiles, numbers would 

help since networking provides a large fleet with the capability to confuse the enemy 

surface picture enough to make our alternative fleets harder to hit than the programmed 

one. 

The capabilities of the programmed fleet and its alternatives to control the operational 

domain were compared in the case in which the U.S. is pursuing a policy of strategic

advantage against a symmetric enemy. These capabilities are analyzed in a similar

manner as described earlier. Not modeled here is the stress put on the ability of the 

enemy’s ISR capability to keep track of a greater number of faster, more maneuverable 

ships with lower signatures, which is an advantage a network of small, fast, numerous

platforms would have. 

With the increased power provided by networking, the fleet alternatives can be expected 

to better deny the enemy’s ability to read the battlefield accurately, making it harder for

him to locate and track the smaller, faster, more agile ships comprising the alternatives. 

As shown in Figure 6-3, we find that, similar to the intervention / asymmetric enemy 

 - 70 -
scenario, these benefits greatly improve with the alternatives as compared to the 

programmed fleet. 

Survivability Considerations. The analyses shown in Chapter 4 did not address the potential 

differences in survivability of the surface craft. Does this consideration alter the images 

developed to this point? 

Figure 6-4 compares the strike effectiveness of the programmed fleet and the alternatives in the

interventionist policy setting against an asymmetric enemy. Losses to the fleet are included this 

time, namely 50 ships lost. The approach does not model how these ships might be lost but is

offered to show the consequences of losses. A fixed number of losses is typically associated

with a fixed number of enemy weapons launches or tracking systems. An example might result 

from losses to a mine field or losses to a barrage of a fixed number of ballistic missiles at the 

approaching fleet before the fleet can respond with a counter strike on the launchers. 

Comparison of Alternative Fleets Ability to

Fight from the Sea

(Intervention Setting, Non-traditional Enemy)

Relati

v

e Strike Effecti

veness

Programmed 

Fleet

Alternative

A

Alternative

B

Alternative

C

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

No ships lost

50 ships lost

Figure 6-4. Comparing Programmed and Fleet Alternatives Ability to Fight 

from the Sea, Including Ship Losses in the Alternatives 

The alternative fleets, even if they suffer this level of loss, maintain a greater capability than the 

programmed fleet. 

 - 71 -
Observations. Alternative fleet formations consisting of small fast and relatively inexpensive 

craft combining knowledge and attaining flexibility through networking appear superior to the 

programmed fleet for non-traditional warfare in a variety of settings. This is due to increasing the

complexity the enemy faces and increasing U.S. fleet options that in turn reduce enemy options. 

The speed and complexity of the alternative fleets can provide them with the capability to

complicate and possibly defeat the attempts of non-traditional adversaries to elude surveillance.

The enemy could have difficulty determining what to expect and how to defeat them all. The 

superior speed and more numerous participants than in the programmed fleet provide a stronger 

intelligence base and more numerous platforms from which to conduct strikes and interceptions.

This appears to be true even if the smaller craft are individually somewhat less capable and less

able to sustain a hit than the larger ships in the programmed fleet. 

If these circumstances are not achieved, and the enemy can continue to elude and deceive, the 

programmed fleet often is as good as the alternatives, sometimes even better. It is not 

necessarily better in cases in which individual ship survivability dominates, a perhaps

counterintuitive result until we realize that fleet survivability not individual ship survivability is 

what dominates. 

An area in which programmed fleets might have an advantage would be when the long loiter 

time or deep reach of CTOL aircraft on programmed big-deck CVNs is needed. That said, there 

need be no great sacrifice. With airborne tanking, the VSTOL aircraft in the alternatives could 

meet the deep strike and long loiter demands. Also, as mentioned earlier, a combination of 

advances in EMALS and modifications to the JSF will make it possible to launch the JSF with 

only a marginal range-payload capability penalty. Moreover, trends in technology are providing 

unmanned aircraft greater capability, including greater loiter time and sensor capability. 

Implementation and Risk 

If managed properly, the Navy can implement a new fleet architecture in a way that minimizes 

risk and maximizes the potential benefits of the example alternatives. Five principles are key to 

guiding the implementation of a new architecture: begin immediately, develop options, suppress 

unit cost, target technology insertion, and shorten building cycle time. 

A shift of the nature described in this report will take time. The sooner the Navy begins to 

develop and explore alternatives, the sooner it will have options to choose from. Building smaller 

ships with plug-in combat modules has two advantages that facilitate implementation. First, this 

makes it possible for the Navy to develop and build ships more quickly. Further, it permits

technology insertion throughout the life of the ship. Figure 5-1 on page 52 of the previous 

chapter indicates technology cycle times. Information technologies in particular cycle rapidly. 

The ability to insert the rapidly advancing information technologies onto the modules means the

ship does not have to stand down during the upgrade. More frequent technology insertion is thus 

feasible, putting the fleet in a position to ride the crest of the information technology wave. 

The shipbuilding industrial base would also need to start to retool to build different types of ships 

more rapidly. Smaller shipyards, which presently do little or no work for the Navy could 

 - 72 -
compete to build the smaller ships, thereby broadening the capabilities base of ship design and 

construction available to the Navy. The change to smaller, lower unit cost ships would also open 

up overseas markets. With more shipyards able to build the ships and potential for a broader 

overall market, the U.S. shipbuilding industry would have the chance to expand its competence, 

innovation and relevance. Taken together this would sharpen the industry’s ability to compete 

and provide alternatives to a ship procurement system that is beset by laws and regulations that 

frustrate, even pervert, market forces. 

Risk would have to be managed carefully during the transition. The longevity of most of the 

ships in the current fleet provides an effective, if expensive, hedge. The ships presently in the

fleet will need maintenance and overhaul and this will preserve for many years the technical base

to keep open the option of building the types of ships envisioned in the current program. As the 

Navy’s leadership becomes confident in the capabilities of the new fleet architecture, it can retire

the legacy ships early, declare the costs to be sunk, capture the operations and maintenance

savings and move aggressively to an alternative fleet architecture. 

 - 73 -
7. Conclusion

The foregoing analysis has highlighted two major imperatives that call for change in designing 

the U.S. Navy’s future fleet platform architecture. 

First, the U.S. Navy has to adapt to the changed security environment that requires it to increase 

its relevance to the irregular and catastrophic challenges that have emerged. At the same time, it 

must maintain the strategic advantage it has established in the global commons (ocean, air, 

space, and cyber space), ensuring that no adversary can deny the fleet the freedom to operate 

wherever it needs to. 

Second, the resources on which the Navy was counting when it designed its future fleet 

architecture and formulated its long-range shipbuilding plan are not materializing and this 

situation is unlikely to improve in the years ahead. This development, coupled with the fact that 

most of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget is programmed for high unit cost ships, signals a trend in 

the direction of an even smaller Navy that will fall short of serving the full range of national 

security requirements. 

The alternative fleet architecture design presented in Chapter 5 of this report provides further 

details on how to “find the way.” The key characteristic of the three examples of alternative

future fleet platform architectures presented in Chapter 6 is that they are composed primarily of

lower unit cost ships. This design principle yields a fleet with a greater number of ships. It also 

puts the future fleet platform architecture on the right side of trends in technology. First, 

advances in technology, especially in precision guidance and terminal weapons effects, allow our 

steadily increasing strike capability to be packaged onto smaller platforms. Second, advances in 

information technologies open up the power of networking to the fleet. Through networking, the 

fleet’s ability to develop shared battlespace awareness and to strike responsively is amplified 

well beyond the sum of the naval platforms’ individual capabilities. 

A second important characteristic of the alternative fleet platform architectures is modularity to

give the fleet operational agility. By designing ship hulls with common system interfaces,

different combat modules can be swapped on and off ships. This allows the fleet to adapt rapidly 

to a dynamic operational environment. Moreover, it permits the Navy to incorporate advances in 

technology into the fleet more quickly and at less expense. Planned upgrades for DDG-51 

destroyers will take each ship out of service for over a year.

7

 With modular platforms, upgrades 

can be done on the modules themselves so the Navy does not need to pull a ship off line for 

extended overhaul. 

Smaller, lower unit cost ships can also be made faster, more maneuverable, and present a lower 

signature to enemy sensors. This allows them better to elude detection or to break track once

detected. Taken together with the power of networking and the adaptability provided by 

modularity, a fleet architecture designed with these principles presents an enemy with a far more 

complex challenge than at present. 

 

7

 Christopher P. Cavas, “USN Lays out DDG Upgrade Plan,” Defense News 25 July 2005, 48. 

 - 74 -
A fleet designed with these characteristics would place great stress on an adversary’s 

surveillance tracking and targeting system; complicate his decision making; make it more

difficult for his forces to elude detection; and allow the isolation and over-matching of enemy 

units. 

Finally, the alternative fleet architecture design described above will enable the future fleet to

scale well in either direction, as required by the evolving national strategy, the Navy’s 

operational requirements in support of that strategy, and unpredictable budgetary restraints. 

When resources for shipbuilding grow, the Navy can take advantage of the opportunity and 

quickly expand the numbers of ships it builds. When resources decline, the program can be

slowed more gradually than a program of large, highly integrated, high unit cost ships to ease the 

shock to the fleet. 

The longstanding logic of force building falls short of the challenge for the future. It embodies 

elements that risk the Navy’s “losing the way.” The dangers include: 

• Choosing a narrow or irrelevant competitive space. The Navy will be called upon to 

participate in joint intervention operations while needing to preserve its strategic

advantage in the ocean commons. Focusing on one mission to the detriment of the other 

is a choice the Navy needn’t make and would narrow the fleet’s capabilities base.

• Trying to shrink the Navy into greatness. Focusing primarily on accommodating a 

shrinking budget by reducing the number of ships procured holds the risk of an ever 

smaller, less capable fleet. 

 

• Sticking with the current metrics. The current metrics used in designing a fleet 

architecture view technical opportunities as risky and stifle innovation. 

 

• Shielding the shipbuilding industrial base from global competition guarantees high 

cost, limited innovation, and long cycle times for building ships. 

• Down selecting early to one “best” design chokes off competition among design teams 

prematurely. Design is the very phase in ship development where the greatest innovation 

takes place. Related is the danger of stifling progress in cost suppression and innovation 

by cutting the R&D account to “balance” the budget. 

The alternative fleet architecture offers a set of opportunities for the Navy to “find the way.” 

• Achieve coherence in fleet building and in operations. A fleet architecture can be 

designed with a broadened capabilities base to prepare for both the continued need to 

intervene and to preserve the Navy’s strategic advantage in the global commons. Risk 

can thereby be managed and regret (from making sub-optimal choices) delayed. 

 - 75 -
• Build a large and more capable Navy characterized by “the small, the fast, the many.” 

This fleet would gain considerable power from networked behavior and its ability to 

sense over a broad area. 

• Competition on cost and time. The approach to fleet architecture design described in 

this report emphasizes the advantages of generating and preserving options, maintaining a 

high transaction rate, maintaining a high learning rate, and presenting greatly increased 

complexity to an enemy. 

• Seize technology opportunities early. Technology has reached maturity that allows the 

Navy to develop a diverse set of platforms that, with standard interfaces, allow systems 

modules to be swapped on and off ships. This expands the opportunity to spin-on 

advances in technology and to adapt the fleet architecture responsively to changing 

operational or strategic circumstances. 

 - 76 -
 - 77 -
Appendix A—Determining Capabilities Required in 

the Future Fleet: A Decision Support Exercise 

Capabilities Required in the Fleet 

In the spring of 2004, two decision support workshops were held at the Naval War College at

Newport, Rhode Island, the first in April and the second in May. The primary objective of these 

workshops was to develop a prioritized list of capabilities that the fleet will need in the future. A 

group of national security analysts from the military, industry, and academia with extensive

experience in naval force planning and operations was assembled. Their charge was to explore 

how changing global conditions can inform the Navy about the capabilities it must field to meet 

future challenges. 

The most significant results of the two decision support workshops are presented in the three 

short sections that follow: “Military Activities,” “Prioritizing Military Activities,” and

“Prioritizing Fleet Capabilities.” Chapter 5 (“Alternative Fleet Architecture Design”) describes

the new rules set, the principles guiding the design of the alternative fleet platform architectures, 

and the new metrics, to be used in assessing the capabilities the fleet can deliver. The new rules 

set and the list of prioritized naval capabilities developed by the Naval War College workshops 

(see Table A-2) helped guide the development of the alternative future fleet platform 

architectures presented in Chapter 6. 

Military Activities 

Although we cannot predict the future in detail, this does not mean that we know nothing of it. 

As described in Chapter 2 (“Strategic Context”), we have some idea of the types of security 

challenges the U.S. will face in the years ahead. Participants at the April 2004 decision support 

workshop developed a set of military activities that the U.S. Armed Forces must be capable of 

executing as they plan for the future. The list spans a broad spectrum of type and intensity of 

activities. 

• Constabulary operations: Relatively small-scale policing actions, such as those 

conducted in Haiti in 2004. 

• Military support to civilian authorities: Activities that include such things as counterdrug and counter-illegal immigration operations. 

• Counter-terrorism operations: Operations pertaining to the global war on terrorism. 

• Counter-proliferation operations: Efforts to retard the spread of technologies and 

weapons that could be used to create mass devastation. 

 A-1 
• Crisis response: Activities related to manmade crises that require intervention by 

external forces. 

• Deter major contingency: Prevent aggression by potential regional adversaries. 

• Deter peer/global war: Activities aimed at deterring behavior of potential peer 

competitors that might lead to conflict. 

• Deter and defeat WMD use: This is found in other activities but the consequences of 

nuclear war are so serious that participants felt it deserved separate consideration. 

• Extended deterrence/defense: The ability to spread a defensive umbrella (for such 

things as air and missile defense) over allies, friends, and coalition partners. 

• Fight & win major contingency: Activities involved in contingencies like Iraq. 

• Global Engagement: Activities whose objectives are to engender good will and 

interoperability with allies and partners. 

• Humanitarian operations: Activities related to natural disasters that require intervention

by external forces. 

• Impose U.S. will (compellence): Self-explanatory. 

• Collect intelligence: Self-explanatory. 

• Enforce international agreements: Self-explanatory. 

• Conduct limited operations against a major power: Activities short of conflict such as 

those conducted during 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. 

• Protect U.S. lives/property abroad: Self-explanatory. 

• Conduct punitive strikes: Retaliatory activities such as those mounted against Libya in 

Operation El Dorado Canyon. 

• Stabilization operations: These activities are performed on a much larger scale than

constabulary operations and involve a broader range of capabilities. The occupation 

activities following the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq are representative. 

• Protection of the commons: The commons include the oceans, the airways, space, and 

cyberspace. 

• Demonstration of capabilities: Capability demonstrations to convince a potential 

adversary that his desired course of action is futile (without shots having to be fired). 

 A-2 
. 

• Homeland Defense: Activities associated with a layered defense of the homeland. While 

some of the activities above apply to this area, participants believed it deserved to be 

considered on its own. 

Prioritizing Military Activities 

The participants in the second decision support workshop were first asked to assess how critical 

the military activities are in achieving the eight strategic objectives identified in National 

Defense Strategy. 

• Secure the United States against direct attack; 

• Ensure strategic access; 

• Establish favorable security conditions; 

• Increase capability of partners; 

• Assure allies & friends; 

• Dissuade potential adversaries; 

• Deter aggression & coercion; and 

• Defeat adversaries. 

Based on these objectives, the participants built a prioritized list of military activities to 

determine which capabilities should be stressed in future naval force structure. Results are shown 

in Table A-1 below. This list formed the prioritized master list that was used to determine the 

capabilities the fleet will need in the future. 

Naval War College Workshop Two 

1 Extended deterrence / defense

2 Deter peer / global war 

3 Deter major contingency 

4 Fight & win a major contingency 

5 Crisis response

6 Deter and defeat WMD use 

7 Homeland defense

8 Global engagement 

9 Counter-terrorism operations

10 Collect intelligence 

11 Conduct force demonstration

12 Stabilization operations 

13 Counter-proliferation operations

Table A-1. Prioritized Military Activities 

 A-3 
Prioritizing Fleet Capabilities 

The Office of the N-70 of the Navy Staff (OPNAV) provided a list of naval capabilities for the 

decision support workshop participants to work with. The participants assessed the relative 

importance of each naval capability for executing the most important military activities in the 

future, as established in Table 5-2. Specifically, they assessed the criticality of each capability

for executing the most important military activities in support of strategic objectives by assessing 

whether it was (1) Helpful, (2) Important, (3) Critical, or (4) Could not succeed without the 

capability. Naturally, some activities are more important than others and the contribution a

capability makes to an activity was weighted according to that activity’s importance. As shown 

in Table A-2, the workshop participants produced a list of naval capabilities that took this 

weighting into account: 

Naval War College Workshop Two 

1 Develop battlespace knowledge 

2 Deploy and employ forces 

3 Maintain communications and data networks 

4 Generate and maintain common operational and tactical pictures 

5 Maneuver forces

6 Conduct strike operations 

7 Control littoral areas 

8 Command naval and joint forces 

9 Conduct theater air and missile defense 

10 Conduct forcible entry operations 

11 Protect forces 

12 Conduct air supremacy operations 

13 Provide strategic deterrence 

14 Conduct undersea warfare 

15 Pre-position joint assets afloat 

16 Provide integrated logistics support 

17 Conduct surface warfare 

18 Provide naval fire support 

Table A-2. Prioritized Naval Capabilities 

The first five prioritized naval capabilities determined by the workshop participants ranked the 

fleet’s ability to develop battlespace knowledge, deploy and employ forces, remain connected, 

maintain shared awareness of the battlespace, and maneuver forces as the most critical

capabilities for the future fleet architecture design. These five top priority naval capabilities point 

to a relationship between getting and moving information and getting and moving things.

Capabilities #6-11 reflect the collective judgment of the Naval War College Workshop 

participants that the Navy must continue to operate forward, in harm’s way. The remaining 

capabilities contribute to two other important areas of military activity: traditional military

activities (including strategic deterrence) and force sustainment. 

 A-4 
Appendix B—The Power of Networking 

Introduction. Fundamental to designing alternative future naval fleet architectures is an 

understanding of the new sources of power and options that will be derived from these 

architectures. It is not from the platforms in the architectures presented in Chapter 6 of this

report where the greatest power is derived. The U.S. military entrance into and understanding of

the Information Age provides the stepping-stone for creating a network-centric force, one that is 

defined by these architectures. This network-centric force is an outgrowth of the transition to the

Information Age, and is driven by a key element of the DoD transformation efforts, networkcentric warfare (NCW). Regarded as the emerging theory of war for the Information Age, NCW 

provides a unique approach to the conduct of warfare. Both the Services and the Joint 

community recognize its importance as the central organizing principle for their force

transformation efforts and therefore, they are implementing NCW using the following tenets8

 as

their guide. 

y

y

y

y

 

A robustly networked force improves information sharing. 

Information sharing enhances the quality of information and shared situational awareness. 

Shared situational awareness enables collaboration and synchronization, and enhances 

sustainability and speed of command. 

Taken together, these dramatically increase mission effectiveness. 

NCW is helping to create and maintain a decisive warfighting advantage, which in essence 

leverages the power of the network and information. The Department of Defense understands 

this well, as each Transformation Roadmap, to include the Naval Transformation Roadmap9

, 

describes the importance of NCW initiatives now under development, many of which have been 

tested under fire in the Middle East. However, NCW is not just about the networks (which will 

be discussed later in this section), but it is first of all about human behavior. Thus, when 

examining the power of NCW, human behavior in a networked environment is the critical 

indicator in determining the degree to which it is being implemented and exploited. 

As a key part of the emerging way of war, NCW represents a powerful set of warfighting 

concepts and associated military capabilities that allow warfighters to take advantage of all 

available information and to bring to bear all assets in a timely and flexible manner. The 

movement is toward a naval force that is capable of achieving U.S. strategic and operational 

objectives more quickly through the employment of agile, more rapidly deployable forces. To do 

this, naval forces must be robustly networked, organized to best exploit the network, and 

mentally prepared to operate in a networked environment. Fully implementing the concepts and 

8

 These four basic tenets of NCW were initially set forth in Network-Centric Warfare: Department of Defense

Report to Congress, 27 July 2001. 9 Naval Transformation Roadmap 2004, Department of the Navy

 B-1 
capabilities associated with NCW will make the future naval force capable of gaining and 

maintaining decision superiority, influencing or rapidly altering initial conditions, and 

conducting network-centric operations to execute the missions of the 21st century. 

What is Network-Centric Warfare? NCW, at the highest level, is the military’s response to the

Information Age. It is how military forces behave, perform, and organize themselves when they 

are networked. Therefore, while “the network” is a noun that represents technology as an enabler 

to the force, “to network” is a verb that brings to focus the actions and behavior of an 

organization in exploiting the power of the network. 

What is the value of a networked force, and specifically a networked naval force? The

commercial world set the stage in the 1990s by leveraging the power of the network in ways 

never before imagined. Those that were successful basically reinvented themselves, creating 

organizations more agile and responsive than their competitors to any change that occurred in the 

market place by not only putting into place the critical elements of the network, but creating a 

cultural change that maximized the potential of the network. Much like industry, the U.S. 

military must create an environment that is more favorable to our forces and less favorable to our

adversaries. The power of the network is a key element in creating this favorable environment.

The governing principles for a network-centric force, which constitute the new rules of warfare 

for the information age, provide a good framework for identifying the capabilities needed in any 

future networked naval force. These are: 

Fight First for Information Superiority: Generate and exploit high-quality shared

awareness through better timeliness, accuracy, and relevance of information. 

y

y

y

o Increase an enemy’s information needs and reduce his ability to access information. 

o Assure our own information access through well-networked and interoperable forces. 

High-Quality Shared Awareness: Routinely translate information and knowledge into the 

requisite level of common understanding and situational awareness across the spectrum of 

participants in joint operations. 

o Build a collaborative network of networks, populated and refreshed with quality 

intelligence and non-intelligence data, both raw and processed, to enable forces to build 

a shared awareness relevant to their needs. 

o Information users must also become information suppliers, responsible for posting 

information before use. 

o High-quality shared awareness requires secure and assured networks and information 

that can be defended. 

Dynamic Self-Synchronization: Increase the freedom of low-level forces to operate

nearly autonomously and to re-task themselves through exploitation of shared awareness 

and the commander’s intent: 

o Increase the value of subordinate initiative to produce a meaningful increase in 

operational tempo and responsiveness. 

o Rapidly adapt when important developments occur in the battlespace, and eliminate the 

step function character of traditional military operations. 

 B-2 
Dispersed Forces: Move combat power from the linear battlespace to non-contiguous 

operations: 

y

y

y

y

y

y

o Emphasize functional control versus occupation of the battlespace and generate effective

combat power at the proper time and place. 

o Increase close coupling of intelligence, operations, and logistics to achieve precise 

effects and gain temporal advantage with dispersed forces. 

De-massed Forces: Move from an approach based on geographically contiguous massing 

of forces to one based upon achieving effects: 

o Substitute information and effects for mass to limit the need to concentrate physical 

forces within a specific geographical location. 

o Increase the tempo and speed of movement throughout the battlespace to complicate an 

opponent’s targeting problem.

Deep Sensor Reach: Expand the use of deployable, distributed, and networked sensors, 

both distant and proximate, that detect actionable information on items of interest at 

operationally relevant ranges to achieve desired effects: 

o Leverage increasingly persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). 

o Use sensors as a maneuver element to gain and maintain information superiority. 

o Exploit sensors as a deterrent when employed visibly as a part of an overt display of 

intent. 

Compressed Operations and Levels of War: Eliminate procedural boundaries between 

Services and within processes so that joint operations are conducted at the lowest 

organizational levels possible to achieve rapid and decisive effects. 

o Increase the convergence in speed of deployment, speed of employment, and speed of 

sustainment.

o Eliminate “firewalls” between processes (e.g., organize, deploy, employ, sustain), 

operations, intelligence, and logistics. 

o Eliminate structural boundaries to merge capabilities at the lowest possible levels (e.g., 

joint operations at the company/sub-squadron/task unit level). 

Rapid Speed of Command: Create an information advantage and convert it into a 

competitive advantage by creating processes and procedures otherwise impossible within 

prudent risk: 

o Through battlefield innovation and adaptation, compress sensor-to-decision maker-toshooter timelines to turn information advantage into decision superiority and decisive 

effects. 

o Progressively lock out an adversary’s options, and ultimately achieve option dominance. 

Alter Initial Conditions at Increased Rates of Change: Exploit the principles of highquality shared awareness, dynamic self-synchronization, dispersed and de-massed forces, 

deep sensor reach, compressed operations and levels of war, and rapid speed of command 

to enable the joint force, across the cognitive, information, and physical domains of 

 B-3 
warfare, to swiftly identify, adapt to, and change an opponent’s operating context to our

advantage. 

These governing principles are joint in nature, but are as applicable to the naval force. These 

principles are made possible through the implementation of a robust network that is a critical

piece of both a future naval fleet architecture and Joint architecture as well. 

The Importance of Net-Centricity. In the past, power came from the massing of forces and the 

firepower they brought to bear on the enemy. More and more, power is coming from information 

access and speed that allows the massing of a force’s effects. In general, the force is able to

maximize the value of each of its platforms by linking them together. These linkages cross 

functional lines to include sensors, command and control systems, weapon systems, the logistics

system, and intelligence systems. 

The power of a network is realized when the network allows for greater collaboration and

coordination in real time within the military force, the results of which are greater speed of

command, greater self-synchronization, and greater precision of desired effects. The word 

“greater” is used with respect to the enemy’s in each of these categories where an advantage is

sought. The goal of networking is to merge the warfighting capabilities into a seamless force that 

is highly agile and capable of locking out its opponent’s ability to respond to high rates of 

change. In other words, the enemy is unable to keep up with the speed of which our naval forces 

operate, thereby locking out many options it might have had otherwise. In addition, the greater 

use of networks can lower the transaction costs of sharing information to negligible levels. This

in turn opens a flood of accurate and timely information to every level of the warfighting 

organization. The utility is described in Metcalf’s Law that states, “the usefulness, or utility, of a 

network equals the square of the number of users.” The equation looks like this: value = node2

 – 

node. This is saying the more nodes included in a network the greater the value of the network as 

a whole. In the case of a future naval force, we are speaking of all the elements that make up the 

force to include the ships, the airborne platforms (manned and unmanned), space-based nodes, 

and land-based nodes. The network that makes up these nodes and their connections permit the

exploitation of the power of information by all of its parts. This influenced the change of rule

sets as previously discussed. 

This phenomenon was first seen in business where the network effect (or network externality) 

caused a good or service to have a value to a potential customer dependent on the number of 

customers already owning that good or using that service. This meant that the total value of a

good or service that possessed a network effect was roughly proportional to the square of the

number of customers already owning that good or using that service. One consequence of a

network effect is that the purchase of a good by one individual indirectly benefits others who 

own the good. For example if a person purchases a telephone that makes other telephones more

useful because one more person in the “net” can be reached. In the naval forces’ case the 

commodity is information. The objective is to reach a “critical mass” based on the number of 

users of the information within the network, which is increased by adding nodes to the network. 

Therefore, network effects become significant after a certain number of subscribers to the 

information are achieved; which is called critical mass. This is done not only by increasing the 

 B-4 
number of nodes at the operational levels, but also by pushing these connections to the lowest

levels of the organization, sometimes referred to “pushing the power to the edge.” At the critical 

mass point, the value obtained from the good or service (e.g., information) is greater than or 

equal to the price paid for the good or service. The price, in the case of individual military units 

might be a requirement to feed the network with accurate and timely information. 

Once critical mass is attained all facets of the organization will change. An early example of this

is the telephone. The telephone was of very limited use when minimal users were connected. It 

became much more useful when cities were connected. But as the world became wired, the 

increased utility of the phone system was phenomenal. And while critical mass would have 

eventually been reached using analog technology, digital technology sped the progress to 

achieving critical mass. Naval forces now have the opportunity to reach that same critical mass, 

thereby maximizing use of the network. This value comes from information-intensive 

interactions between a very large numbers of heterogeneous computational nodes in the network. 

The value increases as the information moves toward 100% relevant content, 100% accuracy, 

with zero time delay. To achieve this requires a net-centric operational architecture that consists 

of three principal elements: a high-powered information backplane (or information grid); a 

sensor grid; and a transaction grid. This architecture provides the ability to generate and sustain 

very high levels of competitive space awareness, which is translated into competitive advantage. 

Building a Net-Centric Naval Force. In general, the network of the new naval fleet architecture 

must generate increased power by networking sensors, decision makers, and munitions-delivery 

platforms to achieve shared awareness, increased speed of command, higher tempo of 

operations, greater lethality, increased survivability, and a degree of self-synchronization by 

effectively linking knowledgeable entities in the battlespace. The network of the naval fleet will 

support the Navy and Marine Corps’ current overarching “Seabasing” concept under which they 

have established three pillars: Sea Base; Sea Shield; and Sea Strike. Each of these areas contains 

or will contain unique NCW capabilities that are considered critical to the future naval force,

implementing these capabilities through their cross-cutting program called FORCEnet. 

FORCEnet is the Department of the Navy’s lynchpin program for implementing NCW and is 

defined as the operational construct and architectural framework for Naval Warfare in the 

Information Age. This framework “integrates the Sailors and Marines, sensors, networks, 

command and control, platforms and weapons into a networked, distributed combat force, 

scalable across the spectrum of conflict from sea to space and from sea to land. As early as the 

1980s the Navy began experimenting with network-centric operations when they developed and 

tested the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) system of systems that combined a highperformance engagement sensor grid with a high-performance engagement grid. In 1996 it

reached its Initial Operational capability, and today with the Marine Corps’ CEC-based

Composite Tracking Network provides an effective, common network of sensors and weapons

and is a important piece of the of Naval NCW capabilities. The CEC system was truly pushing

information out to the edge by passing in real time the information needed by tactical weapons

platforms to accurately attack targets from sensors dispersed throughout the battlespace. 

Experimentation and Observation of NCW and the Power of the Network. As the CEC

capability continues to grow within the Navy, so do other facets of NCW. This is evidenced by 

 B-5 
Fleet Battle Experiments (FBEs) conducted by the Navy and Marine Corps since 1997 when the 

first FBE was conducted. The first fleet battle experiment FBE-Alpha linked all in-theater 

shooters through a single network. In each FBE, emerging Navy tactical and doctrinal concepts 

designed using the network–centric warfare approach were tested. In general, each FBE dealt 

with one of the following aspects of NCW: Information/Knowledge Superiority; Information 

Assurance; Networking; System Interoperability; Shared Visualization/Situational Awareness; 

Decision Superiority; Speed of Command; Self-Synchronization; Battlespace Management; and 

Sustainability, all of which are equally important when implementing network capabilities. As a 

result of these experiments, the network and its use have been enhanced by rapidly maturing 

command and control capabilities, increasing the availability and efficiency of bandwidth,

finding new ways of fusing data, increasing the interoperability of naval systems riding the

network and most importantly improving the means for sharing data, information and knowledge 

across the network. 

The capabilities displayed in the FBEs and in current operations show evidence of the increased

application of NCW within the fleet. To build on this experience and more closely examine the 

overall employment of NCW systems and practices, the Office of Force Transformation (OFT) 

sponsored an independent assessment of one operational fleet. This assessment took place in 

2003 using U.S. Fifth Fleet’s Commander Task Force (CTF-50). The commander and his staff, 

embarked on the USS Carl Vinson, led a coalition force of 59 ships in combat operations during 

Operation Enduring Freedom that was executing missions in the Arabian Gulf and in

Afghanistan. During this time, CTF-50 adopted a number of networking and collaboration tools 

that were described as having a significant effect on how the task force (TF) planned and 

executed missions. The assessment team conducted the evaluation using the OFT’s NCW 

Conceptual Framework, which looks at the implementation of NCW in four domains: physical; 

information; social; and cognitive. The importance of these domains rests in how the attributes 

and capabilities found in one domain interacts with the other in conducting network-centric 

operations. In general, the cognitive domain is in the mind of the Warfighter and is the realm of

effects based operations. The physical domain is the traditional domain of warfare where force is 

moved through time and space, and is the easiest to measure. The Information Domain is the 

domain where information is created, manipulated, and shared, and where the communication of 

information is facilitated. Finally, the Social Domain is where humans interact, exchange

information, form shared awareness and understandings, and make collaborative decisions. At 

the intersection of all of these domains is NCW, with each intersection representing important, 

dynamic areas within which concept-focused experimentation must be conducted. Some of these 

intersections involve: shared awareness (where cognitive and information domains intersect); 

compressed operations (where cognitive and physical domains intersect); and precision force

(where physical and information domains intersect.) 

Of specific note, CTF-50 was comprised of ships from five different U.S. fleets and six nations, 

most of which had never trained together before becoming part of the task force. This required 

that the commander’s intent be equally understood by all elements of CTF-50; collaboration 

among task force elements was continuous; and situation awareness was consistent throughout 

the TF. If this was achieved, operations could be conducted in the most effective manner, which 

in NCW terms is self-synchronization. Two aspects were part of this assessment. The first was 

“what was the perceived magnitude of net value?” In other words, what was the degree users

 B-6 
believed that the new network technology enhanced their ability to operate? The second aspect 

was, “how frequently did the users expect to derive that net-value.” The key technologies cited 

most often in the CTF-50 case study were the collaboration tools, the prominent one being “chat 

rooms.” The staff highlighted “chat rooms” because of their very ad hoc nature, which they 

believed allowed them to operate much more effectively in a constantly changing environment. 

In general, the assessment based on interviews with CTF-50 staff found that they experienced an 

improved ability to share information, propagate and maintain situation awareness, and bring 

improvements to bear on operations. This accessibility to up-to-date, pertinent information 24 

hours a day was considered critical to both the staff and the commanders. The information 

sought spanned the gamut from logistics to operations and from meteorological to intelligence. 

CTF-50 staff credited NCW capabilities with increasing the speed of command and making the 

staff more agile. 

The additional time acquired through the use of these capabilities provided more time for

contingency planning, and thereby decreased the necessity for the staff to react and improvise.

For example, Carrier Group Three staff stated that the increased time allotted to planning options 

resulted in the execution of 33 of the 35 plans developed by the staff. An additional bonus from 

the time freed up by these capabilities was the increase in down-time available, which mitigated

the effects of 24-hour operations on personnel. One additional observation dealt with the social

domain. Through the increased use of collaborative tools and the network, various relationships 

of trust resulted. Instead of the normal face-to-face interactions, these relationships were built 

using e-mail, chat rooms, and less frequently video-teleconferencing. This became a rich

environment for exchanging needed information and establishing knowledge-based relationships, 

before only possible through physical interaction. Finally, the CTF-50 commander’s 

commitment to using the fleet’s intranet as his central mode for gaining situational awareness

resulted in a major process change within the staff. Staff briefings were reduced to a minimum 

and the timeliness of information available to the commander and the rest of the staff was 

increased. Other benefits of lesser significance included less staff time dedicated to responding to 

outside information requests. Those outside organizations could now access the majority of 

information they needed directly through the command’s website. 

The Naval Environment and Supporting the Joint Force. While networking the future naval 

force will be critical to maximizing its own power, even greater power will be gained as it 

connects into the larger joint network. As mentioned with Metcalf’s Law, the power of the 

network is proportional to the square of the nodes within that network. Therefore, the connection 

of naval forces to the joint force and with outside organizations via the joint network, the Global 

Information Grid (GIG), will allow the power of the fleet to grow exponentially. This requires 

that the FORCEnet construct complies with the respective interface requirements for each of the 

joint C4ISR programs (e.g., Joint Tactical Radio System, Deployable Joint Command & Control, 

Single Integrated Air Picture, etc.) with which information can be exchanged. This construct is 

especially important as the naval forces focus more and more on the littoral environment where 

sea, land, air, and even space operations intersect and the network provides the main means for

communication and collaboration. In general, the littorals are a noncontiguous battlespace, and 

the entry fee to operate in that space is a networked force. Finally, as interdependencies between 

the Services increase, so too will the importance of a robust network that permits the highest

 B-7 
degree of information reliability and timeliness, and facilitates requirements to be

instantaneously validated and acted upon. 

Benefiting from Network-Centric Warfare. The power of networked forces continues to 

increase as the naval force further exploits the NCW capabilities through an increased use of the

network and a better understanding and acceptance by each organization of being networked.

Other factors are also affecting the power of the network. These include the processing power 

and bandwidth availability. Two laws that accompany Metcalf’s Law deal with these factors. 

Moore’s Law, first announced in 1965, stated that the capacity of semi-conductor chips will 

double every 18 months while the cost remains constant. This law has remained fairly valid and 

has resulted in the high-powered processing used today by the military. Nielsen’s Law, first 

announced in 1998, stated that Internet bandwidth would double every two years, a rate a little 

less than that of chip capacity. With an increase in bandwidth, the user is presented with the 

means to exploit the network even more. The GIG Bandwidth Expansion (GIG-BE) is one 

example at the joint level where bandwidth is being maximized by the military. 

In general, the future fleet architecture should be designed to exploit the power of the network. 

The key factors in achieving this have been integrated into the future fleet architecture examples 

presented in this report: 

y

y

y

y

y

Maximizing the number of nodes (e.g., platforms, computer stations, etc.) that are part of 

the network. 

Ensuring that the naval network is interoperable with the joint network that allows for an 

increase in the number of nodes and therefore increases exponentially the information 

available to users on the network. 

Changing the organization and the processes in a way that maximizes use of the network. 

Changing the culture through leadership and training that promotes the implementation of 

networking and increases the user’s confidence in its capabilities. 

Putting into place the tools that maximize collaboration, common situational awareness, 

and timeliness and reliability of information, and as a result increase the agility of the force. 

While great strides are being made by the naval forces in applying the principles of NCW and 

the power of the network, we are nowhere near reaching the bounds of its power. Ultimately, the 

advantage goes to those best able to exploit its capabilities through an ability to rapidly change

its organizations and doctrines and to create and assimilate technologies within a very short cycle 

time. The future fleet architecture presented in this report is designed to be highly networked and 

adaptive, able to rapidly make the required changes to maintain its competitive advantage in the

future.

 B-8 
Appendix C—Models Used to Compare Future Fleet 

Capabilities Provided by the Alternative Architectures 

The models and concepts described in this appendix were used to compare parametrically the 

capabilities of the alternative fleet architectures presented in Chapter 6. They are described in 

greater detail in the report, Comparison of Potential Future Fleet Architectures prepared by the 

Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA).10

The first model deals with the capability to control the operational domain in an interventionist 

war and determines the time-dependent probability of survival for a naval power projection force 

that moves into position to conduct operations in support of the land battle. Imagine that an 

enemy has populated the approaches to his shores with a selection of anti-access systems

designed to discourage U.S. power projection forces from operating there. The systems may be 

underwater mines, submarines, small watercraft, missiles, or some combination. Since we are 

taking a general rather than a very specific view of things, we model the anti-access threat as a 

generic field of threat distributed, over the area of strategic interest to our forces. To confront this 

generic threat, U.S. naval forces will conduct equally generic “removal” operations intended to 

eliminate it. For that purpose, the U.S. fleet deploys generic removal and then has them operate 

in the area covered by the enemy field. Figure C-1 depicts this operational arrangement. 

Power-Projection Force

Landward

Anti-access threat deployed

to attack the Power

Projection Force as it enters

area andmoves to objective

Removal ships precede Power

Projection Force to sanitize

area to extent possible

Figure C-1. Control the Operational Domain 

 

10 IDA Paper P-3980, Comparison of Potential Future Fleet Architectures, Institute for Defense Analyses, January 

2005. 

 C-1 
Consider a projection force that sails into the littoral, deploys itself through the threat field to 

some specified location, arrives there, and then initiates power projection operations in support 

of the land campaign. The probability that such a force would have survived the journey depends 

upon the time at which the journey begins; the later that the power projection force starts 

deployment, the smaller the density of anti-access threat that survived the ongoing removal

operation and therefore the larger the survival probability. For a specified time at which the 

power projection force is called upon to act, the probability of survival depends upon the initial 

density of the anti-access field and the density of the removal field we are able to deploy. Under 

the reasonable assumption that the U.S. fleet would try to interdict deployment of anti-access 

assets if it knew that it was taking place, the former input parameter reflects the enemy’s ability

to conduct covert deployment of its anti-access forces and therefore measures the enemy’s ability

to deceive. The latter input parameter is directly related to the number of removal platforms the 

fleet employs in the given operation. 

When applying this model to the strategic advantage policy case, the portion of the model 

comprising the movement of the power projection force into position was removed since under 

that policy the emphasis is on sea control and not on intervening into land operations. 

The second model quantifies the capability to promptly bring forces to bear. As illustrated in 

Figure C-2, the model envisions that U.S, naval forces detect some enemy formation that they

wish to engage. They therefore proceed in a direction that their intelligence and surveillance 

systems tell them they should follow. Inaccuracies in the intelligence and surveillance 

information lead to errors both in their estimate of the location and in their estimate of the

direction of advance of the enemy. The attempted engagement will be successful if the actual 

enemy location at the time at which the intercept was to have occurred is found to be within an 

acceptable strike radius from U.S. forces; this acceptable strike area is represented by a dotted 

circular area in the figure. 

US Force

Actual Enemy Location at

Time of Planned 

Intercept

Estimated Enemy

Location at 

Time of Detection

Actual Enemy

Location at

Time of Detection

ISR Error

Is Mismatch sufficiently

small?

Estimated Enemy

Location at

Time of Planned 

Intercept

US Force

Actual Enemy Location at

Time of Planned 

Intercept

Estimated Enemy

Location at 

Time of Detection

Actual Enemy

Location at

Time of Detection

ISR Error

Is Mismatch sufficiently

small?

Estimated Enemy

Location at

Time of Planned 

Intercept

Figure C-2. Promptly Bring Forces to Bear 

The better the information, the better is the capability to promptly engage the enemy. However, 

there is a limit to how much can be learned about enemy intentions, particularly if the enemy is

 C-2 
intent on deception. The model allows for an exploration of this limit by explicitly including the

variance of the stochastic process describing the knowledge of enemy speed. 

Figure C-3 illustrates the general concept behind the third model which evaluates a fleet’s 

capability to fight from the sea. To model this capability, imagine that the fleet is confronted

with enemy targets operating in some area, and that sensors and weapons are deployed. The 

sensors are an information-generating system designed to detect and localize as many of the 

targets as possible, and the weapons represent a killing system designed to destroy any target that

has been detected and localized by the information-generating system. The model reflects the 

case where the number of targets to attack is much smaller than number of weapons at the fleet’s 

disposal, a reasonable assumption given technical increases in fire-power in recent years and 

given that an asymmetric enemy would provide a target poor environment. 

Operating Area

Surveillance

Platform

Target

Enemy uncertainty area

Weapon lethal area

US Force

Figure C-3. Fighting from the Sea

We further consider the case where the targets have the ability to react to the informationgathering system’s attempt to detect and localize them. Consequently, at any given time, targets

fall into two classes: those that are under active localization and could be attacked with the 

higher precision corresponding to a well localized target, and those that are no longer under

active localization but could still be attacked with much lower precision, a fleeing target. The 

model adds results of these two kinds of kills and evaluates the fleet’s overall capability to fight 

from the sea as the fraction of targets it can destroy as a function of the enemy’s ability to escape

from the first class into the second. This ability to evade our track is a reflection of an

asymmetric enemy.

Since the fleet’s capability to develop and communicate knowledge of forces and situation

reflects the degree of networking that exists between its elements, this model quantifies the

increase in situational awareness provided by the network. The mechanism by which a network 

of elements gains more information than is available to the elements themselves is similar to a

Bayesian process: the information provided by each element changes the prior state of 

 C-3 
information available to the network into a posterior state. Consequently, the larger the number

of contributing elements, the higher is the state of information about the battlefield available to 

the network. In particular, if the information sought is the location of some battlefield entity, the 

accuracy with which the network can determine that location is larger than the accuracy that each 

contributing element could attain, and the average location will be closer to the actual location.

This is illustrated in Figure C-4 where measurements conducted by each element in the network 

change the prior location distribution provided by indications and warnings into a posterior 

distribution whose mean is closer to the actual location than the prior and is significantly sharper.

In fact, the variance of the posterior distribution decreases in inverse proportion with the squareroot of the number of elements. 

- 25 - 15 - 5 0 5 15 25

0.25

0.20

0.15

0.10

0.05

R

I0

m(n)

MANAGER’S STATE OF KNOWLEDGE

- 25 - 15 - 5 0 5 15 25

0.25

0.20

0.15

0.10

0.05

R

I0

m(n)

MANAGER’S STATE OF KNOWLEDGE

Figure C-4. Technical Contribution of Networking

Because networking is a fundamental feature of the fleet no matter what operation it performs, 

the results of this model have been incorporated into the results of all the models described above 

and will not therefore be displayed independently. We will, however, as described further down 

in the text, differentiate between two contributions that networking could provide: increase in the

various technical capabilities of a fleet, and increase in the relevance of those capabilities to the 

kind of war being undertaken. The former will be quantified through the Bayesian process 

incorporated in the various capability models, the latter through a change in the degree of 

deception and evasion the enemy would be able to sustain. 

 C-4 
Figure C-5 illustrates the concept of sustaining joint forces. In this case, land-based forces

(Marines, Army, or allies) need immediate resupply from sea bases nearby. The means by which 

this sustainment occurs is via air that can fly rapidly and can overfly intervening difficulties and 

threats. Thus speed and cargo capability are the dominant characteristics sought in this 

operation. These would be MV-22s from amphibious ships in the programmed fleet or a large 

new-design gyrocopter flying from the X-SPT or X-WPS ships of the expeditionary strike group 

(ESG) in the alternative fleets. 

Concept for

Sustain Joint Forces

• Unanticipated need arises for emergency resupply of embattled US or allied 

forces ashore (weather, enemy action, opportunity, etc)

• Forces call for supplies (ammo, fuel, water, etc)

Location of forces

needing emergency

resupply

Program Alternative

Cargo (tons) 10 20

Speed (kts) 250 350

MV-22 Gyrocoptor

Program Alternative

Cargo (tons) 10 20

Speed (kts) 250 350

MV-22 Gyrocoptor

Arrival of resupply 

aircraft at

objective area

Figure C-5. Sustaining Joint Forces 

 C-5 
Figure C-6 illustrates one concept of denying enemy the ability to hold the Homeland at risk.

The surface ships assist the U.S. Coast Guard provide an interception barrier to interdict any

craft, including very fast ones, attempting a sprint toward beach areas or ports. The density of

interdiction craft and their speed relative to that of the intruder are the driving characteristics in 

this model. 

Concept and Comparisons for 

Deny Enemy Ability To Hold Homeland At Risk:

Interdiction

60 kt “Go Fast” Boat 

(terrorist, drug runner)

LCS, SSC-1000 

or VSC-100

Detection 

radius

Interdiction

Barrier

Interdiction 

Barrier

Assist Coast Guard in patrolling and

defending against sea-borne threats

Figure C-6. Coastal Interdiction as Example of Denying Enemy Ability to Hold 

Homeland at Risk 

 C-6 
A second concept for Homeland Defense is to employ naval ships as missile defenses around 

selected vulnerable or critical coastal areas of the United States. This concept is depicted in 

Figure C-7. 

Concept for 

Deny Enemy Ability To Hold Homeland At Risk: BMD

X-WPS CGX

CGX

CGX

Programmed 

SAG/MDSAG

with 3 CGXs

Threat

ballistic 

missile

Threat 

ballistic

missile

Missile

engagement 

envelope

Alternative

SAG/MDSAG

with 1 X-WPS 

ship

Figure C-7. Missile Defense as Example of Denying Enemy Ability to Hold 

Homeland at Risk 

 C-7