March 07, 2018
Lessons for the Navy from SpaceX and the Commercial Sector
The United States Navy has a goal of increasing its fleet from its current inventory of 280 ships to 355, but its recently released 30-year shipbuilding plan does not reach that goal until the 2050s. This is despite the fact that the recently released national-security strategy publicly recognizes that the United States is now in a great-power competition with China and Russia. In addition, China’s investments in its own navy will enable it to surpass the U.S. Navy in size within the next decade; China may supplant the United States as the most influential nation on the global scene shortly after that. If the United States is to maintain its role as the key player, it will have to make changes in the way it approaches building and maintaining instruments of national power. Fortunately, there are some good examples of how to do this.
Just over a decade ago, the U.S. government engaged in a public-private partnership with Elon Musk’s fledgling space-launch company, SpaceX, to create a hybrid company that paired private capital with government funds. In the beginning, with the Space Shuttle program approaching its end, the partnership aimed to find an affordable method for launching resupply missions to the International Space Station. As the program matured, however, it became something much greater: a commercial business that overcame massive infrastructure costs to become a core part of the nation’s launch enterprise, all within the space of a decade.
Read the full article in National Review.
More from CNAS
-
Colombia Tariffs, Banning Chinese Drones, and Stacie Pettyjohn on Drone Warfare
Podcast
Emily and Geoff play a quick round of Tariff Tarot to dissect Trump’s tariff threats on Colombia last weekend. Then they dig in to the bipartisan debate over banning various c...
By Emily Kilcrease, Stacie Pettyjohn & Geoffrey Gertz
-
Don’t Talk About the War
Commentary
Confronting aggressors and getting them to the negotiation table requires both carrots and sticks—in other words, diplomacy and military power....
By Franz-Stefan Gady
-
Sharper: Trump's First 100 Days
Commentary
Donald Trump takes office in a complex and volatile global environment. Rising tensions with China, the continued war in Ukraine, and instability in the Middle East all pose s...
By Charles Horn
-
Build a High-Low Mix to Enhance America’s Warfighting Edge and Deter China
Commentary
The Trump administration can take immediate actions to improve U.S. military capability, capacity, and warfighting to deter China and reverse negative trends in military power...
By Stacie Pettyjohn, Carlton Haelig, Becca Wasser & Josh Wallin
