The Navy Can't Afford to Get This One Wrong.

"Sen. Roger Wicker is correct:

 "The U.S. Navy Needs More Attack Submarines" (op-ed, July 17) because of their unchallenged stealth and formidable lethality. 

The Navy's surface ships and aircraft, on the other hand, are increasingly vulnerable to continuous tracking, targeting and long-range attacks, thereby ending their role -- or, at a minimum, severely limiting it -- as the principal means of conventional naval power projection.

Recognition of the increasing vulnerability of the Navy's large amphibious ships to advances in Chinese detection capabilities led Gen. David Berger, the Marine Corps commandant, to advocate a new class of small amphibious ships to transport Marine littoral regiments into combat.

The Navy doesn't want to find itself as it did in 2009. At the time, it recognized China was emerging as a high-end warfare threat and established in response the AirSea Battle Office, but it kept building its littoral combat ship with little combat value for a high-end warfight against China. Today the Navy is discarding those ships as fast as it can. The Navy can't afford another mismatch in its strategy and force structure.

Bruce B. Stubbs

Alexandria, Va.

Mr. Stubbs was director of strategy in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations." [1]

Those small amphibious ships  will be picked up by autonomous drones, that could be produced in huge numbers by advanced industrial power.

1. The Navy Can't Afford to Get This One Wrong. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 26 July 2023: A.18.