Russia and China Could Stop America from Controlling the Seas in a War

Essentially, the Navy and the Marines are moving back to a traditional conventional warfighting footing after more than 25 years of dealing with minor regional conflicts and insurgencies.

Dave Majumdar [2]

The United States Navy and Marine Corps have come to terms with the fact that America no longer has uncontested mastery of the seas for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. With the rise of near-peer competitors such as Russia and China and the proliferation of long-range precision-guided weapons, control of the sea can no longer be taken for granted.

“The strategic environment is rapidly changing and the Navy and Marine Corps is engaged in a competition that they have not faced in over twenty years,” secretary of the navy Richard Spencer said in his written testimony on April 24 before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Our PB19 budget continues to make strides in achieving that requirement to once again re-establish the standard that has ensured preeminence. This will be imperative to winning peer-on-peer competition, as we move forward to deliver enhanced distributed lethality.”

Gen. Robert B. Neller, commandant of the Marine Corps, summed up the problem succinctly. “The ascendant threats posed by revisionist powers and rogue states require change – we must become more lethal, resilient and as a consequence, a more capable deterrent. The Navy-Marine Corps team can no longer rely on concepts and capabilities premised on uncontested sea control,” Neller wrote in his testimony before the committee. “We have begun to re-evaluate our capabilities to operate in all domains and conduct sea control, power projection, maritime security, and deterrence knowing that we must consider the tactical and operational details of a contingency – and how our contributions could shape the strategic environment to prevent conflict. Modern sensors and precision weapons with expanding ranges and lethality are redefining how we assess our posture and relative combat power. Advanced defensive networks are forcing us to re-consider the methods of power projection required to compete against rising peers.”

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