When You Can't Build Enough Ships, Call It a Strategy

USS Gerald R. Ford sailed from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean last fall. USS Abraham Lincoln left the South China Sea for the Persian Gulf two weeks ago. Both are Nimitz-class carriers, each displacing over 100,000 tons, each carrying 90 aircraft and 5,000 personnel. Neither was supposed to be where it ended up.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle has a plan to stop this from happening again. It's called "tailored force packages." The idea is simple: instead of sending a carrier strike group everywhere something happens, you send smaller formations — a few destroyers, some littoral combat ships, maybe a submarine — matched to the specific problem. You compensate for the reduced firepower with unmanned systems, better coordination with allies, and what the CNO's Fighting Instructions call "tailored certifications to execute specific missions."

It sounds reasonable. The Caribbean doesn't need a supercarrier to interdict oil tankers. The Bering Strait doesn't need a full CSG to monitor Russian fishing vessels. Why waste a $13 billion warship on missions that three frigates could handle?

The Problem Isn't the Concept

The problem is that this isn't a strategy born from innovation. It's a strategy born from scarcity. The Navy can't build ships fast enough to meet combatant commander demand, so it's redefining what commanders should be demanding.

Look at the numbers. The Navy operates 11 carriers today — the same number it had in 2006. Destroyer production has slowed to two Arleigh Burke-class ships per year, down from a peak of seven in the 1990s. The shipyard capacity that built 13 Los Angeles-class attack submarines in 1989 now struggles to deliver two Virginias annually, and those boats arrive 12 to 18 months behind schedule.

Meanwhile, combatant commanders keep asking for more. INDOPACOM wants persistent carrier presence to counter China's expanding blue-water navy. CENTCOM needs surge capacity for Iran contingencies. EUCOM is watching the North Atlantic again. And now SOUTHCOM, historically a backwater for Navy operations, has 11 ships — including Ford and multiple amphibious assault ships — parked off Venezuela.

Caudle is right that this is unsustainable. He's also right that carrier strike groups are often overqualified for the missions they're given. But his solution assumes that when a real fight breaks out, the Navy can rapidly reconstitute a CSG from dispersed "tailored packages." That assumption doesn't survive contact with logistics.

The Indo-Pacific Math

Consider what happened with Abraham Lincoln. The carrier left the South China Sea in late January to reinforce the Middle East. Under Caudle's plan, INDOPACOM would receive a "three-ship group" to compensate. Let's say that's two Arleigh Burkes and a Virginia-class SSN — a credible package for sea control in peacetime.

Now run the numbers if China moves on Taiwan while Lincoln is in the Gulf.

A carrier strike group brings 60-plus strike fighters with a combat radius exceeding 500 nautical miles. It brings E-2D Hawkeyes for early warning, EA-18G Growlers for electronic warfare, and the ability to sustain 120 sorties per day for weeks. It projects approximately 4,000 precision-guided munitions across a battlespace the size of the eastern Pacific.

Three destroyers carry 90 VLS cells each — 270 total — loaded with a mix of Tomahawks, SM-6s, and ESSMs. That's formidable for air defense and limited land attack. But it's not a substitute for a carrier air wing. Not even close. The submarine adds stealth and torpedo capability, which matters enormously in anti-submarine warfare and sea denial. But it doesn't fill the airspace.

And here's the kicker: if you need to reassemble a CSG from scattered packages, you're talking days or weeks of transit time, assuming every piece is available and not tied down supporting some other combatant commander's "tailored" requirement.

Unmanned Systems Won't Fix This

Caudle leans heavily on drones and robotic systems to compensate. In theory, an MQ-9 Reaper or a fleet of autonomous surface vessels could provide surveillance and even strike capability at a fraction of the cost of a destroyer. In practice, the Navy hasn't fielded a single operational large unmanned surface vehicle. The Sea Hunter prototype was impressive in 2016. It's 2026, and there's still no production run.

The Navy has been promising unmanned aviation breakthroughs since the X-47B carrier landings in 2013. The MQ-25 Stingray tanker is finally entering service — 13 years later — and it's just a tanker. Combat-capable carrier drones remain vaporware.

Even if the technology matures tomorrow, there's the deeper problem: autonomous systems work beautifully in permissive environments. They struggle in contested ones, where jamming, spoofing, and kinetic threats are constant. If you're counting on a swarm of drones to substitute for a Burke-class destroyer off the Taiwan Strait, you're betting on a technology that hasn't been proven in a peer conflict.

This Is What Managed Decline Looks Like

Caudle isn't wrong to push for more flexible force employment. The Navy does waste capability sending $2 billion destroyers to chase smugglers. It does strain maintenance cycles by yanking carriers across oceans every time the White House wants a photo op.

But calling this "tailored force packages" instead of "we're out of ships" doesn't change the underlying problem. The U.S. shipbuilding industrial base can't build fast enough. Hulls are aging faster than replacements arrive. Deployments are stretching longer, maintenance windows are shrinking, and the gap between what commanders ask for and what the fleet can deliver keeps widening.

China launched 23 major surface combatants in 2024. The U.S. launched four. China's shipyards can surge production in a crisis. America's can't — we closed most of them decades ago. That gap doesn't get solved with clever doctrine.

Caudle's Fighting Instructions are a smart adaptation to resource constraints. They might even work in peacetime, when the mission is presence and the biggest threat is fuel costs. But if deterrence fails and the shooting starts, "tailored packages" won't hold a chokepoint. They won't establish air superiority. And they won't make up for the carrier strike groups we didn't build.

Strategy should drive force structure. What we're seeing now is force structure — or the lack of it — driving strategy. That's not innovation. That's just making the best of a bad situation and hoping no one calls the bluff.