【英文】国家利益中心报告：风浪中的海权：21世纪美国海军力量的未来（43页）

英文研究报告 2021年08月16日 06:46 管理员

The Navy’s decisions regarding force structure and ship design are the most complex and important force-development questions facing America’s military. While the Navy plays a myriad of roles in support of America’s national defense, its vessels remain its singular feature and the true measure of its value. Ships are large, complex, expensive, and enduring, and surface ships must be masters of warfare against enemies in the air, on land, on the sea surface, and undersea. Modern naval ships must also confront threats which exist in space, the cyber domain, the electromagnetic domain, and the information domain.

Naval ships are designed to face the challenges of their time with the hope that they will also meet the needs of the future. Naval ships often serve for decades, as the USS Midway (1945-1992) and USS Blue Ridge (1970-Present) have. No “time outs” are possible to ponder future developments in academic isolation. While many ships were conceived, designed, and commissioned under entirely different political and technological circumstances than those under which they currently operate, a ship’s best ability remains availability, and ships are regularly tasked with filling roles radically different than those for which they were built.