The U.S. Navy

Great power competition has returned to the world stage and the U.S. Navy finds itself in the forefront of U.S. efforts to demonstrate national resolve. The U.S. Navy: Case Studies in its Past, Present, and Future argues that the challenge of determining the future structure and operation of the fleet can be best achieved through an examination of its relevant past experience, as well as from current operations of the navy.

After years of uncertainty as to its purpose and missions, the rise of China and Russian provocations now require U.S. officials to transform the fleet and its way of employing it. The contributors to this edition provide case studies of past, present, and future challenges that the U.S. Navy has, and will need to overcome as it reconsiders how it will restructure the fleet and reconsider its prevailing concepts of operations. Contributors examine past challenges to structuring the fleet and its prevailing concepts of operation. Based on this foundation, case studies propose how navy leadership should consider developing and employing the fleet in future.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Defense & Security Analysis.

Thomas-Durell Young is Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Security Governance, and an academic associate for comparative defense planning curriculum in the Department of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA. His latest book is Anatomy of Post-Communist European Defense Institutions: The Mirage of Military Modernity (2017).