Return to sea control: US Navy surface force strategy turns back the clock

摘要

The demise of the Soviet maritime threat at the end of the 1980s marked the beginning of a new era in which the US Navy (USN) felt able to assume global dominance of the seas. Sea control - the mantra for the late Cold War period -gave way to power projection, a change enshrined in the 1992 navy operational concept 'From the Sea'. Investment in force architecture and fleet design was reprioritised accordingly. However, according to Vice Admiral Tom Rowden, Commander, Naval Surface Forces - and de facto 'tribal chief for the surface warfare community - a quarter of a century of maritime dominance is now being tested by the return of 'great power dynamics'. "The security interests of the United States and those of our allies are increasingly challenged by near-peer competitors, confrontational foreign governments, and well-armed non-state militant groups," he told the Surface Navy Association (SNA) annual symposium in Arlington, Virginia, on 10 January.