In 2025, the U.S. Navy marks 250 years of protecting the American people, defending our values and enabling our prosperity. From the age of sail to an era of nuclear propulsion, long-range strike and undersea dominance, our Navy has been the decisive instrument that keeps danger far from our shores and opportunity close at hand. But as we commemorate this legacy, we must also confront a strategic environment unlike any we have faced in generations.
For decades, American naval supremacy has been assumed. Today, that margin is narrowing.
Our adversaries are building vessels explicitly designed to contest our ability to project power, support allies and operate in the Western Pacific and beyond. Today, we are no longer the only Navy to have an aircraft carrier with electromagnetic catapults that enable heavier, long-range aircraft as well as future unmanned aerial vehicles.
Our adversaries are also sailing their ships far beyond their territorial waters, signaling a willingness to operate globally and challenge U.S. dominance on the world’s oceans.
As our strategic competitors expand both capacity and reach, they are studying every move we make. Across the Indo-Pacific, their surveillance ships closely monitor our posture, logistics operations and multilateral exercises. They chart undersea routes, map chokepoints and track how we maneuver with allies and partners.
In this environment, deterrence is not achieved by rhetoric or presence alone. It requires credible, modern, combat-ready naval power.
That is why the U.S. Navy must stay ready, modernize rapidly and invest wisely — because the world is no longer defined by uncontested seas or predictable, slowly evolving threats.
We are driving toward an ambitious but essential readiness goal: By January 2027, 80% of our ships, submarines and aircraft will be combat-surge ready. Achieving this requires shorter maintenance cycles, increased spare-parts availability, improved training pipelines and targeted upgrades across the fleet.
Readiness is not a budget line — it is a promise to the American people that their Navy will never arrive late to a fight.
Modernization is more than keeping pace; it is about leap-ahead advantages that deter war and, if necessary, win decisively.
We are accelerating production of the Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine, the bedrock of our nation’s nuclear deterrent. A recent $2.28 billion contract for five hulls underscores our commitment to sustaining this unmatched strategic capability for decades.
But the fleet of the future must be more than larger — it must be more intelligent, more resilient and more lethal. That requires a balanced mix of aircraft carriers, large and small surface combatants, submarines, unmanned systems and emerging technologies that can out-think, out-sense and out-fight any adversary at a time and place of our choosing.
The carrier — long the symbol of American sea power — remains indispensable. But its future lies in pairing the flight deck with a new generation of stealth aircraft, longer-range strike platforms, unmanned systems and advanced refueling concepts that extend reach and complicate an adversary’s calculus. The air wing of the future must be survivable, dispersed, networked and able to operate in highly contested environments.
Large surface combatants will provide resilient command-and-control, unmatched payload volume, abundant electrical power and sensor reach needed for high-end fights, while small surface combatants — nimble, lethal, affordable, easy to build — will provide distributed fires, deception, escort capability and maritime security in places where presence deters and absence invites risk.
The balance of these platforms is not a luxury — it is an operational necessity.
New technologies are reshaping the character of maritime warfare faster than at any time in our history. The Navy is moving decisively to stay ahead. Directed-energy weapons like HELIOS are already being tested on ships, but more powerful high-energy laser and microwave systems are an imperative to counter drone swarms, cruise missiles and fast inshore threats.
Unmanned systems will multiply the reach and lethality of our manned platforms. Through initiatives such as Replicator, medium and large unmanned surface vessels, autonomous ISR platforms and long-endurance undersea drones, the fleet is becoming more distributed, more adaptive and more unpredictable to any adversary.
These platforms will only realize their full potential through a modernized command-and-control architecture that fuses sensors, weapons and decision-tools into a unified operational picture.
That is why we are investing in resilient networks, artificial intelligence for decision support and battle-management systems that accelerate warfighters’ ability to find, fix and finish threats at machine speed while preserving human judgment where it matters most.
Even the most advanced fleet will fail without a strong industrial base, a skilled workforce and world-class sailors. We are expanding the Maritime Industrial Base Program to grow workforce capacity through advanced technical training in welding, CNC machining, additive manufacturing and nondestructive testing. The new Maritime Training Center now produces roughly 1,000 trained workers annually — talent that goes directly into our shipyards.
Until American yards fully recover from workforce shortages, supply chain fragility and lack of automation, we are exploring responsible cooperation with allied shipbuilders in places like South Korea and Japan to bridge near-term gaps in maintenance, repair and production. These partnerships create strategic depth today while buying time for U.S. shipyards to modernize and expand for tomorrow.
We must be ruthlessly honest about our readiness and relentlessly innovative in our solutions. America does not want a fair fight — we want a fleet so capable, so ready and so forward that the fight never begins.
Sea power has always been a reflection of national will. If we intend to remain the world’s preeminent maritime power, we must match our ambition with the resources, stability and strategic discipline required.
What we protect is greater than what we project. We protect freedom of movement, freedom of trade and freedom of thought. As we look beyond this 250th anniversary, we must recommit to maritime superiority with stable funding, accelerated shipbuilding and repair and a bold embrace of innovation — from machine learning to advanced ship design to new operational concepts.
As the 34th chief of naval operations, I clearly see the challenges ahead. I also recognize the immense promise of opportunity. A strong Navy does more than secure our shores; it preserves America’s future. Let us honor those who stood the watch before us by preparing the fleet that will sail long after us.
Sea power is America’s first line of defense — and our last great advantage. We are committed to preserving it.
Adm. Daryl Caudle, the 34th chief of naval operations, is a North Carolina native and 1985 graduate of North Carolina State University. Commissioned through Officer Candidate School, he went on to command multiple submarines and hold major operational and strategic leadership roles, including commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, Submarine Forces and Allied Submarine Command, as well as serving in key Joint Staff positions. His sea tours included assignments on several attack and ballistic-missile submarines, and his ashore roles ranged from nuclear training and cyberspace policy to senior staff leadership. Caudle was sworn in as CNO on Aug. 25, 2025.
