New Chief of Naval Operations Calls For More “Wargaming” to Counter China

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

The newly arrived Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti called for more wargaming as a key part of a series of inspirational remarks about the Navy’s purpose and resolve as it surges quickly into a new threat environment.

Franchetti’s core message was quite clear … that the US Navy is no longer the singular global dominant maritime force in the world… to the extent to which it has been in recent decades.

“Gone are the days of operating from a maritime sanctuary against competitors who cannot threaten us,” Franchetti said.

Franchetti’s recently delivered inaugural remarks called “America’s Warfighting Navy” at the 2024 Surface Navy Association Symposium emphasized the growing need to deter and counter a fast growing “People’s Republic of China,” specifically suggesting that wargaming and disruptive technologies can ensure the US Navy can be “prepared to prevail” in a conflict with China.

“We must defend our homeland, deter strategic attack, deter and be prepared to prevail in conflict against the People’s Republic of China, and meet the acute challenge of an aggressive Russia and other persistent threats,” Franchetti writes in her America’s Warfighting Navy text.

While the Chinese threat has indeed been on the radar for many years at this point, Franchetti’s warning about the pace of Chinese growth and modernization in relation to a fast-evolving threat environment seems well placed, as it aligns with her emphasis upon the growing need for innovations, disruptive technologies and wargaming. Essentially, Franchetti challenges the Navy to embrace a new, potentially more intense and rigorously competitive mindset, based on the very realistic prospect of a conflict with China. At the same time, Franchetti is clear about intent, meaning that preparing an unrivaled warfighting Navy will “deter” China and therefore keep peace by preventing conflict. She instructs the Navy to “think differently.”

“We must think, act, and operate differently, leveraging wargaming and experimentation to integrate conventional capability with hybrid, unmanned, and disruptive technologies,” Franchetti writes.