The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare

by Christian Brose

In 2019, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer tried to do the right thing. They wanted to free up room in the Navy’s budget to invest in new capabilities, such as unmanned vessels like the Orca. And though they did not know how many aircraft carriers America would need in the future, they believed it would be fewer than today. Mattis and Spencer set about trying to reduce the amount of money the Navy would ask Congress to spend on aircraft carriers in the 2020 fiscal year. One idea was to curtail the Navy’s plan to purchase two new carriers at once, especially considering that the Navy was still wrestling with how it would defend these massive ships against a growing Chinese threat. This idea made strategic sense, but the Pentagon leaders eventually discarded it because canceling the “block buy” of two new carriers would have resulted in massive layoffs at the one American company that builds the ships. Once those workers were gone, there was no getting them back, which would harm the Navy’s ability to build different kinds of ships in the future. The shipbuilders needed ships to build, so the carrier block buy was left untouched. What Mattis and Spencer settled on instead was a plan to retire one existing carrier, the USS Harry Truman, halfway through its service life. The nuclear reactor that powers a carrier like the Truman can last fifty years, but it needs to be refueled after twenty-five years. By retiring the Truman, Pentagon l...