The U.S. Navy of the 1980s provides a reminder what serious peer competition in the naval sphere looks like and the resources and human willpower that it requires. E. B. Potter describes the 1980s buildup to counter the Soviet Union as the “most expensive peacetime military buildup in the nation’s history, to cost $1.5 trillion in five years . . . the Navy would be built up from 456 to 600 ships, including 15 carrier-centered battle groups.”1
The 1980s maritime strategy and naval buildup was advocated by senior officers in uniform, approved by civilian leadership, and then laboriously implemented across all levels. Growing pains were worked out, and complex exercises in frigid environments executed. The renaissance of naval strategic thought in the late 1970s and subsequent buildup of the 1980s should provide a source of strength and inspiration to today’s sailors and civilian defense officials. Lessons in strategy, fleet exercises, and force structure remain directly relevant.
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1. E. B. Potter, Seapower (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2014), 386.
2. Joseph Stanik, “Twilight of the Cold War: Contraction, Reform, and Revival,” in James Bradford, ed., America, Seapower, and the World (West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2016), 312.
3. Stanik, “Twilight of the Cold War,” 312.
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5. Stanik, “Twilight of the Cold War,” 312.
6. John Lehman, Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2018), 116.
7. Lehman, Oceans Ventured, 58.
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10. Lehman, “Is Naval Aviation Culture Dead?”
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25. Hayward, “The Future of U.S. Sea Power.”
26. Stanik, Twilight of the Cold War, 316.
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28. Stanik, Twilight of the Cold War, 320.
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30. Peter Ong. “U.S. Navy Will Not Replace the Patrol Coastal With a New Boat of Similar Size and Type,” Naval News, 30 January 2021; Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway, “The Navy Wants to Get Rid of its Nearly Brand New Patrol Boats” The Drive, 15 February 2021.
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32. James Webb, “Future Use of Reserve Forces: Memorandum for the Under Secretary for Policy written to the Honorable Fred Ikle,” November 1984, in Bradly F. Hanner, “The Resignation of James Webb: A Perspective from the Present” (Monterrey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2000).
33. Webb, “Future Uses of Reserve Forces.”
34. West et al., Sea Plan 2000.
35. West et al., Sea Plan 2000.
36. Hayward, “The Future of U.S. Sea Power.”
37. Paul Mcleary, “CNO Fires First Budget Salvo: We Need More Money than Army and Air Force,” Breaking Defense, 14 January 2020.
38. Thomas Spoehr, “Six Blind Men and the Elephant: Differing Views on the U.S. Defense Budget,” War on the Rocks, 14 January 2021.