Naval History and Heritage Command

(Reprinted from Proceedings with permission; Copyright © (2021) U.S. Naval Institute/www.usni.org. Note: This essay is published, below, as it was originally submitted by the author.)

Our Navy has enjoyed an uncontested supremacy on the high seas for over seventy years, having defeated a militarist tyranny that threatened the liberty of the Allied nations, and has kept open the sea commons for the benefit of all nations. It now finds that supremacy threatened by continental powers who are rapidly expanding the size of their naval forces, and wielding new technologies that may render obsolete the force structure that has enabled the Navy to maintain that dominance. The ships that the Navy is currently building are said to be plagued with problems, and its existing fleet is rapidly aging. To make matters worse, the ability of the Government to finance new ship construction looks grim now and in the foreseeable future. The nation that once exulted in its naval victories have largely forgotten them, and takes its Sea Services for granted.

The paragraph above might well apply to the situation that the United States Navy finds itself in today, but it really describes the predicament facing the British Admiralty in the mid-1880s. The Royal Navy found itself beset with aging ships, its forces stretched thin by global responsibilities, attacked by a muckraking press, dogged by government inquiries into its competence, and threatened by the growth of the navies of France and Russia. Nonetheless, it emerged from the Nineteenth Century stronger than ever with the largest, most modern fleet in the world and enjoying wide public and political support. How was this accomplished? In one word: Navalism.

The United States Navy today does indeed find itself in a similar dilemma, facing the renewed growth in the naval power of its Cold-war adversaries, in particular the phenomenal expansion of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Budget constraints, and a Congress often skeptical of its requests for a larger fleet, hobble its ability to meet the growing naval power of its old rivals. The Sea Services of the United States should look to the past for direction on how to acquire the political capital to build the force structure it will need to meet these new challenges. The path forward is to engage public, and hence political, support through a New Navalism for the Twenty-first Century.

The Birth of Navalism

The dictionary defines “navalism” simply as the “advocacy of, or policy favoring naval power”.[1] The naval historian Arthur J. Marder described it as “the big navy movement” led by naval officers, politicians, and sympathetic civilians; a movement that used popular support to obtain the political clout needed to finance the rapid expansion of the Royal Navy in the 1890s.[2] The navalism of that era can be said to have had two components: “hard” or directed navalism and “soft” navalism. The former was practiced by naval professionals, sympathetic publishers, and their political allies who defined a new blue-water naval strategy that required a bigger fleet, made the case for that naval expansion in Parliament, and then financed, designed, and built the ships they envisioned to carry out that strategy. “Soft” navalism was practiced by the popular press and pressure groups such as the Navy League, who used the new forms of mass communication that emerged in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century to rouse patriotic fervor, to build popular enthusiasm for the technological wonder that was the modern battleship, and ultimately to persuade the public of the need for a powerful navy both in terms of national security and national identity.[3]  The deft use of mass communication laid the groundwork that enabled the “hard” navalists to secure the political means needed to rebuild and expand to Royal Navy to such an extent that it could not be matched by its rivals.  

Britain began to awaken from the “long lee” of Trafalgar in the 1880s, stirred in part by the British muckraker W.T. Stead whose series of articles appearing in the Pall Mall Gazette called into question the ability of the Royal Navy to defend the British Empire.[4] Admiralty intelligence reports pointed to a dangerous growth in the navies of France and Russia; in particular France’s Jeune Ecole school of guerre de course was seen as an existential threat to Britain’s sea trade.[5] Public concern and agitation by naval officers such as Captain Charles Beresford, RN led to Parliamentary investigation and ultimately resulted in the Naval Defence Act of 1889.[6] This groundbreaking legislation for the first time dictated the size of the Royal Navy, requiring that it be larger than the combined fleets of the two next largest foreign navies, thereby establishing the “two power” standard that remained in effect until 1921. The Act called for the construction of ten new battleships and thirty-eight cruisers within a five-year period.[7] In the thirty years following the passage of the Act the Royal Navy remained the premier naval force in the world, thanks to the willingness of the British taxpayer to maintain naval supremacy at almost any cost. That willingness was engendered through the work of a sympathetic popular press and furthered by the efforts of the Navy League of Great Britain, founded in 1895 for the specific purpose of promoting British sea power to the British public. The result was an unprecedented level of enthusiasm for the Royal Navy and the absolute belief in it as symbol of the nation and its importance to the economic well-being of the British Empire.[8]

Navalism also blossomed in the United States in the late Nineteenth Century, triggered by the realization that the post-Civil War Navy had been allowed to deteriorate to such as state that it was woefully inadequate to defend the nation.[9] In 1884 the Chilean Navy took delivery of the Armstrong built protected cruiser Esmeralda; its 10-inch rifled guns were said to be able to lob shells into San Francisco from a distance well outside the range of the defending shore batteries.[10] There was no ship in the United States Navy at that time to match it. The prospect of South American navies raiding our coasts with impunity, and the realization that European powers equipped with modern warships could easily reassert themselves in the Western Hemisphere, provided the impetus for the funding of a “New Navy” of steam and steel warships. In 1883 Congress authorized the construction of the “ABCD” protected cruisers, and with the Naval Act of 1890 the Navy’s first battleships.[11]

The New Navy would be led by a new caste of highly trained, professional, and progressive naval officers.[12] These officers found an intellectual home in the US Naval Institute, and the Naval War College. The publishing of Alfred T. Mahan’s seminal The Influence of Seapower Upon History in 1890, with its emphasis on the importance of global sea power, was a product of this new intellectual flowering and provided the foundation for a new American navalism. Thus began the transformation of the United States Navy from a peace force of cruisers and coast defense monitors to one of fleets of modern battleships capable of defending the nation on the high seas against the powerful navies of Europe.

 The New Navy gained great popular support by its spectacular success in the Spanish American War, which was colorfully documented by an enthusiastic press.  Mahan’s writing was not just for navalists; he also wrote dozens of articles that appeared in many popular magazines that explained the imperatives of sea power to the average citizen.[13] The directed navalism of the professionals, combined with this emerging soft navalism, induced successive Congresses to appropriate the funds necessary to build an ever larger and more capable fleet, one that would show that the United States was a world power with global reach. The ascension to the presidency of the consummate navalist Theodore Roosevelt accelerated the growth of the Navy. Keenly aware of the importance of public opinion, Roosevelt urged the creation of The Navy League of the United States in 1902 to build popular and political support of the Sea Services. The transit of the Great White Fleet around the world in 1907-08 not only demonstrated the technical prowess of the American Navy, it also was a public relations triumph without precedence.[14] Roosevelt’s naval expansion was continued by his successors. By the end of the First World War American navalists had succeeded in transforming a lack luster navy into one that was “second to none”.

Navalism is Not a Dirty Word

The term “navalism” has different connotations for different audiences. It is entirely benign to those who recognize the importance of sea power to national security, but for others it has unsavory connotations of militarism at sea, imperial aspirations, and colonial exploitation. The navalists of Edwardian Britain and Wilhemine Germany stoked the nationalist sentiments of their people in a race to build more and better dreadnoughts, and although Britain had effectively won that race by 1912, the popular antagonism that was engendered is seen as one of the contributory causes of the First World War.[15] Some historians see American navalism as having been driven by the perceived need to create an “imperial” navy, useful for the domination of the Caribbean and Central America by “gun boat diplomacy” and the acquisition of American possessions in the Pacific by force.[16]  As a result of its misuse, even when done with sincere intent, navalism has acquired a distinctly bad reputation in some quarters.

British and American navalists of the era saw things differently, and distinguished their brand of navalism from that of the naval militarists. Sir Julian Corbett, in The Spectre of Navalism, a pamphlet published in 1915, claimed that the word “navalism” was unknown until it was coined by the Germans as a pejorative term to describe Britain’s domination of the seas. Corbett defined navalism as militarism at sea, “...the use of naval predominance to deny the world the freedom of the seas and to tamper with national independence…”.[17] This was not Britain’s practice; rather the Pax Britannica ensured that the free trade of all nations could pass unmolested on the high seas and the independence of the former Spanish colonies would be preserved.

For their part American navalists did not seek to create a formal overseas empire, rather they saw the emergence of the United States as a great power wielding the “big stick” of naval force as an entirely positive development for the world. Ensuring the security of the nation first and foremost, American sea power would bring the blessings of free trade and democracy to the former colonies of despotic regimes, and modern civilization to the undeveloped world.[18]

By contrast, Wilhemine Germany developed a powerful navy of a size far beyond that required for the defense of continental power. The Kaiserliche Marine was an extension of Germany’s militarist culture, its ostensible purpose was to secure her colonial possessions. Its real purpose was to threaten the dominance of the Royal Navy “between the Thames and Heligoland”. Germany’s motive in threatening the national security of a (formerly) friendly power was never clear, “… it was either foolish or malign for the Kaiser to challenge Britain’s maritime supremacy. Indeed, the Kaiser’s High Seas Fleet really weakened Germany by turning Britain and all her new friends into enemies and thus imperiling even Germany’s supremacy on land”.[19] The Hochseeflotte may not have had a truly rational purpose, but existed mostly to fulfill the need of the Kaiser and German people for an institution that was a symbol of national unity and Imperial identity more than a means to acquire what it considered to be its rightful place in the world.[20] Germany’s sea power gambit ultimately failed due to the resolve of the British public to bear the cost necessary to maintain naval supremacy,  a resolve built by British navalism. The failure of Germany’s navalists, foremost the Kaiser, to see the folly of such an effort was emblematic of their overall lack of strategic vision.[21] The parallels with the PRC’s creation of a huge blue water fleet for the purpose of challenging the dominance of the United States are striking.[22] The United States and her allies must show a similar resolve and willingness to bear the cost of resistance.

According to Corbett, the British Empire’s promotion of free trade and protection of the sea commons was a mark of its legitimacy: “…for an Empire to endure it must be felt by the rest of the world to be a convenience. Let it once lose hold of this fundamental secret and sooner or later the nations will combine to remove it as a common nuisance.”[23] This “fundamental secret” separates the navalists of the West from the naval militarists of authoritarian regimes. Western sea power has been more than just a convenience, it has been the protector of the Free World. Indeed, the West can point with pride to the success of British, American, and Allied sea power in securing victory in two World Wars.[24] Post war, American sea power peacefully assumed the mantle of leadership from the Royal Navy and has maintained the freedom of the seas down to the present day.

However, the authoritarian regimes of world’s two great continental powers, China and Russia, now seek to challenge the West’s leadership. In particular, the rapid transformation of the PLAN into a large blue-water navy threatens to upset the current order in the Indo-Pacific. China’s command economy has been able to finance and build large numbers of new warships on a scale beyond that needed for the reasonable defense of its national interests, and without the need for public approval. The geo-political outlook of the ruling Communist Party and its Chairman Xi Jinping is based on a centuries old Sino-centrism of obeisance to the Central State by vassal clients. Non-Chinese states may benefit from the relationship but only if they conform to the desires of the central power – ethical and ritual obedience is required.[25] China’s growing authoritarianism, its creation of a digital surveillance state, and the repression of its Uighur population stand in stark contrast to the current liberal world order, and serve as sufficient reason to resist China’s effort to become a global hegemon.

If the United States and its allies want to maintain the current rules-based world order they must prepare to meet this challenge through the maintenance of their sea power. That effort will require a massive and sustained reinvestment by the United States in its Sea Services. The political support for this effort can be obtained through a thoughtful application of a New Navalism for the Twenty-first Century.

The New Navalism

The United States Navy was an important contributor to the West’s Cold War victory, however that success and the “peace dividend” that followed began a process of disinvestment while our naval supremacy was taken for granted.[26] The “pivot to Asia” that begun in the Obama administration was in response to the rise of China as a global competitor, but even before that became official policy strategists were already sounding the alarm.[27] The work of directed navalism has been on-going, working to develop a strategic vision to meet the new challenges. The Naval War College and the US Naval Institute have been in the forefront and the current Sea Power Project is an outstanding example of the intellectual firepower they bring to bear.

The work of “soft” navalism, however, has not kept pace. There is lacking a strategy to engage public opinion. Recently Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.), speaking about the lack of details in the October release of the Pentagon’s Battle Force 2045, said:

We want to do more, but I really feel like the Navy should do a better job communicating – not just to us, who are going to put the pieces together in the National Defense Authorization Act, but to the American public about why this is so essential to our national defense. … You need to build a Navy. A Navy to do what?[28]

The answer to “what” the Navy intends to do, and explaining it to the policy decision makers is the job of directed navalism, the question of communication to the American public falls into the category of soft navalism.

Soft Navalism

As in the original era of navalism, today we are experiencing an unprecedented transformation of available communications media. The explosion of new forms of communication in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, in the form of print and then film media, was fully leveraged by the navalists of that time to spread the gospel of sea power and importance of naval defense.[29] Modern navalists will do well to follow their example.

In 1929 the Chief of Naval Operations created a Motion Picture Board for the specific purpose of engaging with Hollywood producers to reach the American public through their favorite form of mass media. By 1941 no less than 40 films were made that displayed the Navy’s latest technology in the form of submarines and carrier-based aircraft. The films successfully portrayed the Navy as a modern and exciting organization with a vital mission.[30]   Soft navalism in the Twenty-first century must also utilize the similar proliferation in new forms of digital communication to promote sea power with messaging tailored to appeal to a variety of diverse audiences. The Navy needs to broaden its messaging to appeal not only to those inside the Beltway but also to the general public and educate them on why the Navy’s mission is critical to the well-being of this nation and the world. A word of caution: to be creditable the messaging must avoid jingoism, hyper-nationalism, and racism. The people of China are not our enemies – it is the policies of their government that we oppose.

In addition to directed media messaging, some of the following suggestions can help the New Navalism to succeed:

Show the Fleet. Fleet Weeks are a popular event when they occur. The Los Angeles Fleet week draws a quarter million visitors every Labor Day weekend.[31] This should be replicated in as many locations as possible, including on the Great Lakes and the nation’s inland waterways. The launching and commissioning of new ships should be another cause for public celebration.

Celebrate Navy Day. Established in 1922, this event was a public relations success in the Inter-war period, generating a great deal of popular support.[32] It should be reimagined and relaunched on its one hundredth anniversary.

Support the US Naval Institute. The Institute continues to enjoy great success with its traditional publishing efforts and its on-line presence. The USNI News enjoyed a large increase in its reach in 2020.[33] Every person reading this should be a member. Every career officer and civilian who believes in sea power should consider becoming a Life Member.

Support the Museums. There are over six dozen warships preserved as museum ships across the country, as well as many other museums devoted to the Sea Services and naval aviation. They tell the Sea Service’s story like no other source and make great places to promote sea power to a receptive audience.

Support the Navy League. Military members and civilian employees are prohibited from lobbying activities in the execution of their official duties. The Navy League of the United States, however, can and does educate the public and Congress on the importance of sea power to the nation’s defense and economic well-being. With a large membership and hundreds of local chapters it is well placed to promote the Sea Services.

Engage the Mid-west.  The Navy needs to think strategically about how to win broader public support. One way is by creating more jobs in the Mid-west, an area with a paucity of defense related work.[34] Fincantieri has obtained the contract to build the FFG-62 Constellation and nine additional sister ships in their Marinette, Wisconsin yard, and they have indicated that if more work comes, they may open a second yard.[35] Locating another shipyard on the Great Lakes will garner support from the key Congressional delegations.[36] Job creation and the presence of the Navy’s ships in the waters of the Heartland are ways to gain public and political support.

Conclusion

For the New Navalism to succeed support for it must extend over successive presidential administrations and be funded by successive Congresses, regardless of which party has the White House or control of Congress. RADM Wayne Meyer, referring to the adoption of the AEGIS program, said that for a new vision to succeed the visionaries must be able to tell a “compelling and enduring” story to the decision makers.[37] The story must be told by effective and accessible communications.

If the Sea Service’s plans to meet the challenges of the future are to be successful, they must meet with the approval of the ultimate decision maker, the American Taxpayer. All the new technologies, operational genius, and grand strategies devised by hard navalism cannot come to fruition without the necessary political will to make it happen, and that depends on broad public support. Building that support through the communication of a “compelling and enduring” story will be the task of the New Navalism.  

[1] https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/navalism

[2] Arthur J. Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought ear, 1880-1905 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1940), 4.

[3] Bradley M. Cesario, The Admiralty, Popular Navalism, and the Journalist as Middleman, 1884-1914, (Doctoral Dissertation, Texas A&M University, May, 2016), 13. I am indebted to Cesario for the concepts of hard and soft navalism. In this paper the term “soft navalism” includes the use of mass market media aimed at the general public as opposed to policy decision makers.

[4] https://www.attackingthedevil.co.uk/pmg/navy.php. William Thomas Stead was the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette and a crusading journalist. Using information provided by the navalists and serving officers such as Jackie Fisher, Stead’s “The Truth about the Navy” alleged that the Royal Navy was weak and technologically inferior, especially compared to France. His articles reached a wide public and are credited with igniting the navalist agitation in the press that led to the Naval Defence Act of 1889.

[5] Roger Parkinson, The Late Victorian Navy, The Pre-dreadnought Era and the Origins of the First World War (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2008), 102-105. The French Minister of Marine in 1886, Admiral Hyacinthe-Laurent-Theophile Aube, ordered the construction of new classes of fast cruiser and ocean-going torpedo boats; the first aimed at British commerce, the second at attacking British ironclads. New technology would be used to break Britain’s dominance at sea.

[6] Ibid, 94-99. Beresford at the time was a member for Parliament from Marylebone East, London and was appointed Junior Sea Lord. In that position he advocated for the creation of the Naval Intelligence Division using a combination of aristocratic connections and press sensationalism. His allegations of naval weakness proved to be crucial in the passage of the Naval Defence Act.

[7] Ibid, 113. Parkinson argues that the extent of British weakness was exaggerated by the navalists, nevertheless they succeeded in pushing through the Naval Defence Act.

[8] Ibid, 164.

[9] Kenneth J. Hagan, This People’s Navy (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1991), 180-181. Events such as the Viginius affair created a war scare with Spain and laid bare the inadequacy of the post-Civil War Navy. In 1873 a Spanish warship seized the Virginius, an American registered former blockade runner smuggling guns into Cuba, and some of the American crew were executed for piracy. The Navy Department found itself without a serviceable ironclad and instead relied on diplomacy to avoid a potentially disastrous war with Spain, which at that time had a more modern navy.

[10] "We Cannot Fight the Chilean Navy," Army and Navy Journal Vol.23, No. 1 (1 August 1885), 24.

[11] The design of these early efforts still fell in line the US Navy’s traditional strategy of guerre de course and coastal defense, but they provided the technical lessons needed to build the battlefleet envisioned by CAPT A.T. Mahan and others.

[12] Scott Mobley, Progressives in Navy Blue (Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2018), 267-268. Mobley’s thesis is that the American naval officers of the Gilded Age acted in the spirit of progress and reform to transform their culture from that of the “mariner-warrior” of the Age of Sail to the “warrior-engineer” of the modern steel and steam era to meet the challenges of rapidly changing technology.

[13] Mahan, Alfred Thayer; Hattendorf, John B.; and Hattendorf, Lynn C., "HM 7: A Bibliography of The Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan"(1986). Historical Monographs. 7. By my count Mahan published 126 articles in non-professional, popular publications between 1890 and 1914.

[14] See James R. Reckner, Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet, (Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2001), 157-159. The success was tarnished somewhat by the publication of Henry Reuterdahl’s muckraking article “The Needs of Our Navy” in McClure’s Magazine in January, 1908. The article was written in part by William S. Sims and exposed some serious design faults in the ships of the New Navy. Here was a case where Sims and the progressives used soft navalism to promote needed changes in the internal operations of the Navy.

[15] Jan Rüger, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,  2007), 248-249. Rüger’s thesis is that the intense Anglo-German naval rivalry was part of a greater “theatre of power and identity” that fed German paranoia and severely limited the diplomatic efforts to keep Great Britain out of the war after Germany declared war against Russia on 1 August, 1914.

[16] See Mark Russel Shulman, Navalism and the Emergence of American Seapower, 1882-1893 (Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1995), Postscript “Navalism at Work”, 159-161. Shulman describes how the USS Boston and her marines were used to intimidate the Hawaiian royal house into submission.

[17] Julian Corbett, The Spectre of Navalism, (London, UK: Darling and Son, 1915), 4.

[18] Mobley, 67. The US Navy was a force for good in the minds of the progressive officers of the late Nineteenth century, mandated to bring “civilized” values abroad, including constitutional democracy, capitalism, scientific knowledge, and Protestant Christianity. They envisioned the Navy as “shield pressing across the sea” bringing with it the blessings of progressive American civilization.

[19] Walter A. McDougall, “History and Strategies: Grand, Maritime, and American”, The Telegram, Temple University, Vol. 6, (October, 2011).

[20] Rüger, 147-154.

[21] Norman Freidman, Fighting the Great War at Sea, Strategy, Tactics and Technology, (Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2014), 22. German naval culture was based on Prussian military culture. While exhibiting tactical and operational brilliance using the best technology, German warfighting ultimately failed due to an inability to formulate effective grand strategy.

[22] See Steven Wills, “The Hohenzollern Chines Navy?” Parts One and Two, Center for International Maritime Security, Sept. 24, 2015. https://cimsec.org/hohenzollern-chinese-navy-part-one/. Wills, a former surface warfare officer, provides an excellent and cogent comparison.

[23] Corbett, 8.

[24] The dreadnoughts built by the navalists of Britain enforced the blockade that eventually brought the German Empire to its knees in 1918; they would then stand alone to shield the free world from Fascism in 1940-41. Allied sea power formed a bridge over the Atlantic to bring to bear the military power needed to defeat Hitler’s Germany. American sea power would rise from the mud of Pearl Harbor, be rebuilt better than before, and play the main role in freeing the Pacific from the tyranny of the Japanese Empire.

[25] David K. Schneider, “How China Sees the International Order: A Lesson from the Chines Classics”, War on the Rocks Media, March 18, 2021

[26] CMDR Paul S. Giarra and CAPT Gerard D. Roncolato, USN (Ret.), “The American Sea Power Project”, USNI Proceedings, Vol. 147/1/1,1415, (January, 2021), 53.

[27]Perhaps most effectively with the concept of “AirSea Battle” laid out by Jan van Tol, et al, in 2010. See AirSea Battle – A Point of Departure Operational Concept, (Washington, DC: Center for Strategical and Budgetary Assessments, 2010). This seminal document succinctly described the threat of China’s growing naval power to the stability of the Indo-Pacific and has formed the basis for current strategic and operational planning in that region.

[28] Sam LaGrone, “Navy’s Vision for Future Fleet is Blurry Say Seapower Members Luria, Gallagher”, USNI News, March 18, 2021. https://news.usni.org/2021/03/18/navys-vision-for-future-fleet-is-blurry-say-seapower-members-luria-gallagher   

[29] Cesario, 331. Navalism found expression in the profusion of inexpensive print media that flourished during this era thanks to new printing technologies such as high-speed presses, cheap paper supply, and colorful inks. The media could be cheaply transported by extensive rail and shipping networks.

[30] [30] Ryan Wadle, “Sea Power Goes Celluloid: Lessons from Interwar Era Naval Publicity”, Naval History, Vol. 32, No. 1, (February, 2018), 33.

[31] RADM Mike Statynski, USN (Ret.), “The USS Iowa is Back in the Fight: How LA Fleet Week and the Battleship Iowa Museum Contributed to USNS Mercy’s COVID 19 Mission to Los Angeles”, Surface SITREP, Vol. XXXVI, No.2, (Summer, 2020), 7.  The USS Iowa Museum played a big part in this event and no doubt was the main attraction.

[32] Ryan Wadle, “First Rate Ideas: The Hidden History of Navy Day”, Naval History, Vol. 31, No. 6, (October, 2017), 37. The event was amalgamated with “Armed Services Day” in 1948 and was largely forgotten. It was resurrected by ADM Elmo Zumwalt in 1972. Originally celebrated on October 27^th, Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday, Zumwalt moved it October 13, the date of the founding of the Continental Navy in 1775. The public neither knows nor cares which is correct. This must change.

[33] USNI Annual Meeting Webcast, 19 May, 2021. VADM Peter H. Daly, USN (Ret.) reported a 46% increase in page views for USNI News and an overall growth of 37% in on-line page views for USNI.org.

[34] Source: Bloomberg Government Study: Defense Contract Spending: A State-By-State Analysis, Bloomberg Government, 2015.

[35] Megan Eckstein, “Fincantieri wins $795M Contract for Navy Frigate Program”, USNI News, April 30, 2020. https://news.usni.org/2020/04/30/fincantieri-wins-795m-contract-for-navy-frigate-program

[36] Likewise, other programs such as the Light Amphibious Warship (LAW) and the Navy’s Unmanned Underwater Autonomous Vehicles (UUAV) can be built along the inland waterways of the Upper Mid-west.

[37] Van Tol, AirSea Battle, 123.

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Mr. Andrew Blackley, an independent scholar based in Ohio, has an MA in history (cum laude) from Norwich University. He has presented at the McMullen Naval History Symposium, and his work has appeared in Naval Review.