5 Ways the Navy Will Beat Any Nation in a War

It’s worth noting that the Navy is currently on the cusp of a technological revolution, with new ships, fighters, radars, lasers, railguns and unmanned systems on the horizon. In ten years, a repeat of this list may look very different.

byKyle Mizokami

The Ohio submarines fired their first missiles in anger on March 19th, 2011 during Operation Odyssey Dawn. USS Florida fired 93 Tomahawks against Libyan military targets. In the future, the cruise missile submarines could be used as mother-ships for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs.)

The United States Navy is the largest and most advanced navy in the world, fielding everything from aircraft carriers and maritime patrol aircraft to submarines, destroyers and unmanned helicopters.

So when your editor asks you to choose the Navy’s five most lethal weapons systems, your most difficult challenge is trying to narrow it down to just five selections. For this article I bypassed the larger platforms such as the aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships. To be sure, those are actually the most lethal weapons in the Navy’s arsenal, however, everybody knows them, and, as big platforms, they are actually the sum of many smaller ones.

(This first appeared in 2014.)

Instead, I wanted to highlight platforms that were outstanding in some particular way, with an emphasis on the biggest bang for the buck. I also wanted to spread out the selection; it’s easy to merely include surface ships and submarines, ignoring aircraft and certain missions.

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