While the United States Navy will likely require a larger fleet to counter growing threats from around the world, the service is taking its time to ensure that it can deliver a realistic and executable force structure plan. As such, the Navy’s leadership is working on building consensus with the Pentagon leadership and Congress before releasing its force structure assessment for the future.
The Navy’s submarine force is looking to reinvigorate its high-end warfare training and plans to do so by finding efficiencies within the current testing and certification schedules, the commander of submarine forces said.
Vice Adm. Joseph Tofalo said at the Naval Submarine League’s annual symposium yesterday that he was taking a hard look at that predeployment schedule to find as much as 10 to 15 days that could instead be devoted to improving high-end skills that would be needed against a peer or near-peer adversary.
The U.S. Navy, which is in the early stages of exploring a potential successor to the Virginia-class attack submarine, expects that unmanned underwater vessels (UUVs) will be an integral part of the future submarine’s design.
