The new fleet-wide guidance from the Navy’s top officer focuses on preparing the service for a potential war with China by 2027 as the maritime component of a joint “warfighting ecosystem.”
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti will publicly issue her “America’s Warfighting Navy,” guidance to the wider fleet this week, more than a year into leading the Navy. The plan outlines her priorities for the service, which include fixing maintenance backlogs and recruiting, according to the final draft reviewed by USNI News.
Dubbed “Project 33,” Franchetti’s service-wide guidance wrestles with preparing for war with China with a short time horizon and problems caused by legacy readiness and recruiting deficits and the ships and aircraft currently in inventory.
“We cannot manifest a bigger traditional Navy in a few short years, nor will we rely on mass without the right capabilities to win the sea control contest,” reads the plan.
“Without those resources, however, we will continue to prioritize readiness, capability, and capacity—in that order. We must recognize that the Navy faces real financial and industrial constraints, including the once-in-a-generation cost of recapitalizing our [sea-based] strategic nuclear deterrent.”
Franchetti identified seven areas to improve – chief of which is fielding mission-capable ships, submarines and aircraft. The goal is to surge up to 80 percent of the surface fleet as part of a so-called “combat-ready surge force” that would be available on short notice for combat operations.
On Tuesday, Fleet Forces commander Adm. Daryl Caudle defined a combat-ready unit as “a unit that within an acceptable level of risk, I would have confidence that could go into combat… and I know it can do a few things… I know it can maneuver, communicate, shoot and defend itself… They’re good enough.”
The push merges with initiatives like Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, the Naval Surface Forces commander. North Star 75 surface ship readiness plan and previous efforts to improve the readiness of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fleet, said Navy officials who spoke with USNI News on the details of the plan earlier this month.
For combat surge units, that means shorter availabilities and more time certified to deploy, Caudle said Tuesday at the ASNE Fleet Maintenance and Modernization symposium.
“We will only accomplish this by getting platforms in and out of maintenance on time; in addition, we must embrace novel approaches to training, manning, modernization, and sustainment to ready the force. By 2027, we will achieve and sustain an 80 percent combat surge-ready posture for ships, submarines and aircraft,” reads the plan.
As of now, maintenance for the surface Navy force – cruisers, destroyers, amphibious warships and Littoral Combat Ships – is about 2,700 days behind. Overseeing the reduction of that backlog to create the surge force has been assigned to Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jim Kilby, according to the document.
To prepare for a 2027 conflict with China in the Pacific, the Navy is emphasizing a new class of unmanned systems in line with the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative to create low-cost, lethal air and surface systems that would disrupt a cross Taiwan Strait invasion. The “hellscape” concept that was born from experimentation in the U.S. Pacific Fleet is driving the first tranche of Replicator investment.
“The Ukrainian Navy used a combination of missiles, robotic surface vessels, and agile digital capabilities to deny the Russian Navy use of the western Black Sea and threaten Russia’s supply lines to occupying forces in Crimea. In the Red Sea, Houthi forces created massed effects through a mix of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones against the U.S. and partner navies at sea for the first time,” reads the plan.
“As a start, the Navy established an enlisted Robotics Warfare Specialist rating in 2024, and we are exploring how we grow robotics expertise in the officer corps. We have moved from experimentation to integrating robotic and autonomous systems across numbered fleets and Navy Special Warfare. We have learned how to employ such systems as sensors, as well as munitions. We are making critical pushes to scale testing on new systems to counter drones as well, including directed energy.”
The Navy adopted a two-track approach for unmanned systems with hellscape drones as a near-term solution and development for sophisticated unmanned systems pushed further down the road, officials told USNI News.
“Robotic and autonomous systems are incredibly important but [they are] operating on two different time horizons so that we don’t get our streams crossed about budgetary requirements [and] programmatic requirements,” a Navy official told USNI News.
Development of new platforms like the Large Unmanned Surface Vessel and the Medium USV are wrapped up in a separate, ongoing force-design effort.
Looking to the high-end fight, the plan also includes development of maritime operations centers – or MOCs – that will be the decision-making hub for a fight.
“Supporting that fight requires new ways of operating, from sustaining the fleet in contested environments, to an understanding that our installations and Maritime Operations Centers are themselves warfighting platforms,” reads the report.
“Information dominance is the key enabler in this new form of maneuver warfare, by which we confound the adversary’s ability to find, fix, and attack our forces. In other words, Distributed Maritime Operations is complex, fleet-level warfare on a scale we have not executed in nearly a century, blending decentralization and unity of effort in a way that places intense new demands on fleet commanders.”
A Navy official characterized the relationship of units to the MOC as “less the 4,000-mile screwdriver and think more to the the vignette that CNO has given of an orchestra maestro. Sometimes you’re just going to have to wait while the oboe plays, because [the conductor] sees the full sheet of music, and you don’t, and I’m going to try and provide you as much context and much interlacing with the joint force and the capabilities that sit at higher national or allied levels that you don’t necessarily have insider access to.”
In terms of personnel, “by 2027, we will achieve 100 percent rating fill for the Navy active and reserve components, man our deploying units to 95 percent of billets authorized, and fill 100 percent of strategic depth mobilization billets. We will reach 100 percent recruiting shipping fill and a 50 percent Delayed Entry Program posture.”
After two years of failing to meet its recruiting goal for the active force, the Navy saw a positive increase in recruiting and retention, the service announced last month.
Other efforts include increasing quality of service and improvements in training and infrastructure.
In terms of fleet design, the Navy is sticking with the 381-ship fleet goal arrived at in 2023, USNI News reported at the time.
“The Navy emphatically acknowledges the need for a larger, more lethal force. Beyond the 381 battle force ships and submarines last assessed in June 2023, it must also include the aircraft, munitions, people, data, spectrums, and all enabling capabilities that produce a global fleet capable of massing combat power in the time and place of our choosing. It also means seamless integration with the Joint Force, Allies, and partners, all of whom are key to enabling joint maneuver, and for whom the Navy provides critical elements of an integrated kill web,” reads the report.
The lack of detail on the future force is causing at least one analyst pause.
Naval analyst Bryan Clark, who reviewed the NAVPLAN, told USNI News on Wednesday he liked Franchetti’s clear short-term goals for the service to keep focused on the 2027 high-end warfare goals but wanted more detail on how the service would wrestle with a 381-ship goal, which will be unaffordable based on the Navy’s budget projections of 3 to 5 percent growth annually.
“A 380-ship Navy requires a 20 percent bigger budget… Fundamentally, the Navy is on an unsustainable trajectory in terms of its costs,” Clark told USNI News.
“That target is probably wrong if it’s not achievable.”
