British painter Philip Connard depicted the forecastle of the Royal Navy light cruiser the HMS Curlew in 1918. Following its commissioning in 1917, the vessel was active for more than two decades before being sunk by the German Luftwaffe in 1940. Credit: Imperial War Museum
The most survivable deterrents to war are in short supply as the U.S. Navy struggles to replenish its underwater fleet. But history suggests America’s wealthiest can make a difference in closing the nation’s submarine gap.
When General Ulysses S. Grant floated troops down the Tennessee River in 1862 on the campaign that would eventually break the back of the confederacy, his transports did so under the protection of privately-owned gun boats. The first-of-their-kind riverboat ironclads were at that time still the property of their inventor—St. Louis entrepreneur James B. Eads.1
A wealthy businessman, Eads oversaw more than four thousand workers to build the boats from scratch in less than one hundred days, spending his own money to finish them in time. Though technically under contract with the federal government, he was not paid until well after Grant used his vessels to pry open the war’s western theater.
The acquisition pace for new naval assets was different in 2023. On submarines, for example, the Navy announced last March that the United States would not achieve a two-submarine-per-year delivery schedule until 2028.2
Traditional procurement pathways and industrial base issues do not allow the Defense Department to deploy new naval assets in less than one hundred days. A consortium of wealthy elite Americans—latter-day James B. Eadses—might. With the Navy confronting unprecedented challenges—from the growing prowess of adversaries abroad (especially China), to aging assets, an eroded industrial base, a ponderously slow acquisitions process, and unreliable funding streams at home—perhaps patriots of means can provide a similar service today.
Given a dire need for greater deterrence in the shallow seas around Taiwan, one area in which they might have an outsized impact is unmanned submersibles, or autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). If that wealthy consortium was granted the flexibility to acquire and deliver the right assets now—while admittedly highly unconventional—it may forestall or even prevent disaster later. For Navy planners, it is worth a conversation.
Losing Our Underwater Edge
The South China Sea has become Beijing’s kill box. Land-based missiles—like the DF-21D “carrier killer” or the DF-26 “Guam express”—menace allied bases and surface ships four thousand kilometers out to sea. In the air, China’s fifth-generation fighters will hold a numerical advantage by 2025.3 Unlike American aircraft, they take off, land, and refuel from well-protected homebases.
America’s advantage lies underwater, where the Navy retains superior technological and combat capability. What it lacks is numbers. Last year, the Congressional Research Service found the Navy had just thirty-one submarines operationally ready for service worldwide—not just in the Indo-Pacific.4 Maintenance and production delays have frozen the U.S. undersea fleet at three-fifths the size Navy plans require.5 Nor is the defense industrial base able to fill this gap fast enough: Congress has pushed for two new attack submarines a year, but according to the Wall Street Journal, the major shipyards can only produce them at a rate of 1.2 per year.6
Submarines may be America’s only edge in the South China Sea, and there are not enough to deter what some assess is a rising risk of China attacking Taiwan by 2027.7
Can unmanned underwater assets fill the gap in the near-term? Ukraine’s experience in the Black Sea suggests the answer is “yes.” The country’s cheap, homemade sea drones have given Kyiv asymmetric advantages in attacking Russian naval assets.8
Power projection in the far-flung Pacific certainly requires something more substantial than homemade drones, but it also requires something right now. America’s Virginia-class attack submarines may be a one hundred percent solution, but there are not enough available. If the country can get a seventy-five percent solution to hold the line in the near-term, it should.
AUVs that are low-cost—at least relative to the time and expense of producing a nuclear attack submarine—can yield nearer-term, asymmetric advantages against China’s surface vessels and other assets. While the Defense Department announced plans to invest in AI-powered drones and AUVs to do just this, serious doubts remain about the government’s ability to fund these initiatives, especially given more and more frequent shutdowns.9 (For example, the department’s Replicator initiative has grabbed headlines, but it is not a program of record, and senior officials are still working with Congress to secure future funding.)10
But the Navy does not need to ask the industry to build these assets; industry is already doing it. (Anduril’s Dive-LD, for example, is a small AUV made partially with 3D printing, which accommodates “complex payloads or multi-sensor suites,” according to the company.11 Similarly, in May 2023, Israel Aerospace Industries announced a much larger AUV BlueWhale, complete with telescopic mast for what the company says is a global communications capability.12 There are a host of other players in this space as well.)
The Navy needs a group that can acquire these assets on its behalf more quickly than otherwise possible and for its exclusive, authorized use.
Enlisting the Moneyed Elite
James B. Eads was not the first private citizen to help America get ships expediently in a perilous time (self-taught shipbuilding brothers Noah and Adam Brown delivered brigs just in time for Oliver Hazard Perry to beat the British on Lake Erie in 1813), and Eads should not be the last.13
Why bother enlisting the nation’s moneyed elite? Because procurement processes and the industrial base are too slow to deliver the conventional assets in time, and other than the federal government, no one else can afford the number of unconventional ones needed to make a difference. Wealth plus speed equals deterrence.
Is it even plausible to consider temporarily bypassing federal procurement processes? If not, it is time to ask why. The country’s atrophied industrial capability makes the exigencies Grant and Eads confronted in 1862 more familiar than they should otherwise be. Looking at that era, we find that necessity is the mother of invention—or at least of creative workarounds.
America still makes incredibly wealthy individuals: Bezos, Cuban, Dorsey, Musk, Luckey, Thiel, and Zuckerberg are only a few whose public profiles suggest openness to such a public-private partnership. Someone in the E-ring should get them together. Call them high-net-worth patriots. Call them a quick fix for a badly broken acquisition system. Call them whatever you like, but pick up the phone.
This approach has to do with the how of getting lower-cost assets where they might make a difference. There are entirely different questions around why the situation has reached such a point and why such high-net-worth individuals should want to help fix it. These questions merit serious scrutiny on their own.
A public-private partnership of this kind would certainly not be a long-term fix for the inordinately slow acquisition of premier assets. Even if adopted, further questions remain, like how to safeguard and appropriately utilize the highly-sensitive technologies involved, those of both the private players and the federal government. Complex as they may be, these problems all exist to the left of a potential conflict, which makes them better problems to have.
Long after the Civil War, General Grant remarked that though he had led a soldier’s life, “there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword.”
This might be one.
References
1 “Ulysses S. Grant, 1822-1885.” PBS, American Experience.
2 Sam LaGrone, “Navy Estimates 5 More Years for Virginia Attack Sub Production to Hit 2 Boats a Year.” USNI News, March 31, 2023.
3 Admiral John C. Aquilino, “Statement on U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Posture to the House Armed Services Committee.” House Armed Services Committee, April 18, 2023.
4 Congressional Research Service, “Navy Virginia-Class Submarine Program and AUKUS Submarine Proposal: Background and Issues for Congress.” October 23, 2023.
5 Seth Cropsey, “Delayed Repairs Shrink the U.S. Navy Submarine Fleet.” The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2022.
6 Editorial Board, “The U.S. Submarine Fleet Is Underwater.” The Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2023.
7 Miya Tanaka, “Ex-U.S. Indo-Pacific commander sticks to 2027 window on Taiwan attack.” Kyodo News, January 23, 2023.
8 Jared Malsin, “Ukraine’s Sea Drones Alter Balance of Power in Black Sea.” The Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2023.
9 Nancy A. Youssef, “Pentagon Plans Vast AI Fleet to Counter China Threat.” The Wall Street Journal, September 6, 2023.
10 Jon Harper, “Hicks: DOD plans to invest about $1B into Replicator initiative in 2024-2025 time frame.” DefenseScoop, March 11, 2024.
11 “Autonomous Underwater Vehicle: The Most Reliable & Flexible AUV Enables Boundless Exploration of the World’s Oceans.” Anduril, 2023.
12 Naval News Staff, “IAI Unveils BlueWhale Large Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV).” Naval News, May 4, 2023.
13 William J. Prom, “The Brothers Brown.” Naval History Magazine 36, no. 1, February 2022.