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
-
Sharper | Securing America’s Defense Industrial Base
Commentary
Six months of war with Iran has depleted America’s munitions capacity, leaving stockpiles of interceptors and precision weapons dangerously low and demand above the replacemen...
By Cadence Barker & Charles Horn
-
Bloomberg Economics' Becca Wasser and Dina Esfandiary Talk Iran Conflict
Podcast
With President Trump set to meet Gulf leaders on the sidelines of this week’s UN meetings, the Iran war is likely to take center stage. Houthi attacks in Saudi Arabia and risi...
By Becca Wasser
-
Big Take: The Real Costs of the U.S. Iran Blockade
Congressional Testimony
On today's Big Take podcast, Bloomberg Global Defense Editor Gerry Doyle and Bloomberg Economics Defense Lead and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Securi...
By Becca Wasser
-
Drones, Missiles, and the U.S. Munitions Shortage
Reports
Executive Summary Drones have exploded in popularity since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. There is a growing view that inexpensive drones—“affordable mass”—a...
By Philip Sheers & Stacie Pettyjohn
