The Chief of Naval Operations recently released the Navy’s Navigation Plan for 2014-2018 (find it here).
This short, snappy little document is meant to communicate the top-level thinking of Navy’s senior leader in a few short paragraphs. It’s basically a checklist of things that he wants to get done between 2014-2018. More importantly, he ties this “to-do” list to his budget submission, giving his rational for how he is distributing his resources.
Some highlights of what has changed since last year:
- “Adjustments” are being contemplated to the FY2014 budget to respond to the expected FY14 continuing resolution and Sequestration. He caveats that all his “to-do” lists may be impacted by these cuts. If (when) they occur, he will publish a Position Report to update his Navigation Plan.
- CNO commits to adding 976 cyber operators to stand up 40 cyber warfighting teams over the next three years. That’s a huge plus up in personnel at a time of diminishing resources. We all know that there will be no new growth. This manpower will need to come out of some other area.
- The Air Sea Battle (ASB) concept will continue to drive Navy’s emphasis on “deterring and defeating aggression and assuring access.”
- By fielding “new and improved kill-chains”, such as defeating adversary radar jammers, Navy expects to maintain cyber-space dominance.
- Navy and Marine Corps are equipped as the Nations “away team”, and CNO is committing resources to provide overseas presence, even as forward deployed ground forces are reduced.
- Aligning resources to rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region continues through the forward deployed Naval Force and an increase in Forward Stationed/Forward Operating units. He addresses the need to have “surge” capacity in the event that Sequestration.
- He commits to training with our coalition partners and names operational exercises (such as RIMPAC, Bold Alligator, and Valiant Shield) as a means to test the Air Sea Battle concept.
Warfighting first. Operate forward. Be ready. It’s worth a read.