As the Navy continues to gird itself for a potential fight with Russia or China, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday is placing readiness as his number one priority.
Gilday outlined his ideas during an Oct. 19 Atlantic Council’s Commanders Series discussion, reiterating the points he raised in the Navigation Plan 2022 white paper he released earlier this year. The unexpected conflict between Russia and Ukraine served to emphasize the need to be ready to fight at any time, he told the audience.
“My approach has been commensurate with my responsibility, really, to field the most lethal, capable force that we can now and into the future,” Gilday said.
Doing so, he added, requires an emphasis on maintenance and supply – so that the storerooms on deployed ships have everything they need to be self-sustaining.
Likewise, he added, the crews on these ships need to be trained well.
“On every deploying strike group and amphibious ready group, we continually assess our certification methodology and the ringer we put them through before we say that they’re certified to go forward to potentially [defend] the nation,” Gilday said.
He added that the certification process is getting harder and more challenging, driven largely by the necessity to keep pace with China.
While more ships would be beneficial, Gilday stressed that numbers alone would not suffice.
“If the Navy decides to put capacity first, in other words if ship count becomes the primary objective, my prediction is we’ll look like the Soviet navy when I first came in, in the mid-1980s, when their ship count included ships they kept from the First World War,” Gilday said. “I’m not sure that many of them were relevant. It’s readiness over capacity. The ships that we put out there have to be ready to fight.”
Modernization efforts that focus on increased lethality include development of electronic warfare systems, enhancement of cyber resiliency, an increase in payload capacity on Virgnia-class submarines, and new weapons such as improved torpedoes and a maritime-strike Tomahawk cruise missile, Gilday said.
Hybrid systems, such as the carrier-based MQ-25 Stingray and XLUUV autonomous diesel submarine, also figure prominently, he added.
Continued operations with allies and partners also is invaluable, Gilday said. Australia, the United Kingdom and France “fill gaps that we’re unable to fill,” he said.
“When the secretary of defense directs the services to have certain levels of readiness for response forces, the immediate response force has to be ready in a certain amount of time to be at his call to react in a crisis,” Gilday said. “The Navy’s immediate response force is at sea every single day. We’re not tied up. We’re not bunkered. We’re out there. We’re forward.”
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