A New Maritime Strategy
The Navy is setting out a series of strategic plans to guide its way ahead in the
21st Century. The Maritime Strategy is one element of a larger four-part structure
that inludes:
Vision sets the ends. The Navys vision is Sea Power 21.
Strategy is the ways and means to achieve the ends set forth in the vision.
The new Maritime Strategy will fill this role.
Tactics, as addressed in the Naval Operations Concept, comprise the way resources
are used and applied by the warfighter.
Resources are finite and the Navy Strategic Plan will inform and guide programmers
in the development of the budget submission.
- The process for creating a new Maritime Strategy isnt about updating an existing
document . . . it focuses on a new strategy to address current challenges and to
guide the Navy in an entirely new, globally-connected environment that has not existed
in the past.
- It will build on the vision outlined in Sea Power 21, account for the ability to
shape the environment, and provide the structure and guidance needed for fleet operational
concepts in Homeland Defense, the War on Terror, Irregular Warfare and conventional
campaigns.
- The Maritime Strategy will connect with published guidance and will serve as the
over-arching guidance complementing the vision of Sea Power 21 and its tenets of
Sea Strike, Sea Shield and Sea Basing, which define Navy capabilities.
- To develop the strategy we are seeking a competition of ideas, beginning with a
series of forums focused on internal and external audiences to accurately define
our environment. We encourage dissenting views and will build a document considering
the input of all. The development process will pass through five phases.
- Phase I: Collect Inputs and Analyze Strategic Environment. This begins the process
and continues through all phases.
- Phase II: Develop Maritime Strategies. Discuss strategic theories in public forums
in order to socialize initial concepts.
- Phase III: Test, Examine and Refine Alternatives. The Navy will legitimize and
validate proposed strategies through the testing and gaming process and analysis
of results.
- Phase IV: Synthesize and Report. The Navy will synthesize successful strategies
into one comprehensive strategy.
- Phase V: Sustainment. The Navy will continue to promote and uphold principles of
the Maritime Strategy, ensuring its enduring value and legitimacy.
- Using a linear and collaborative approach, input will be sought from individuals
and organizations such as OSD, the Joint Staff, Combatant and Component Commanders,
USMC, USCG, the U.S. Merchant Marine, business and academia, the Interagency, and
our friends around the world.
- We see the new Maritime Strategy influencing the next cycle of strategic thinking,
including the next Navy Strategic Plan and into the next QDR.
- These are dynamic times. The maritime security environment is constantly changing.
And our strategies and strategic documents must change with them as necessary to
remain relevant. It is a continuous cycle.
Where the old Maritime Strategy focused on sea control, the new one must recognize
that the economic tide of all nations rises not when the seas are controlled by
onebut rather when they are made safe and free for all. Admiral Michael Mullen,
Chief of Naval Operations (Current Strategy Forum, Naval War College, 14 June 2006)
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