The US Navy's Uncrewed Future

The US Navy faces several fundamental, interrelated challenges as it tries to shape the fleet it will have in the mid-21st century and beyond. These issues are not unique to the United States, but are common to many democratic nations across Europe and East Asia. The US Navy's ability to acquire new ships is hampered both by their prohibitive cost and by the limited scale of the US defence industrial base, since the US Congress precludes the navy from buying warships from allied nations. Even if this could be overcome, the US Navy's long-term ability to adequately crew ships will gradually be diminished by declining cohorts of young people and the unwillingness or inability of many of them to serve.