Counting ships, missiles, bases, and shipyards is how most would measure power at sea.1 But a second measure gets far less ...

Paradoxically, therefore, even as navies invest heavily in autonomous systems and digitalization, the requirement for a ...

Eventually, reality catches up. The Hai Kun enters service, joins the fleet, and validates the ceremony in retrospect. Or the ...

For the first time in decades, the United States is being forced to think seriously about naval shipbuilding as an allied industrial problem. Years of delayed programs, strained yards, maintenance ...

From November 11-18, 2024, CIMSEC featured writing submitted in response to our Call for Articles on readiness for Pacific war in 2027. Authors covered a wide variety of topics, including force design ...

The following is the first in a five-part series meant to shed light on Hainan Province’s maritime militia. For decades, these irregular forces have been an important element of Chinese maritime force ...

For years, the public debate over a possible Chinese Communist invasion of Taiwan has focused on a single question: Does the People’s Liberation Army have sufficient amphibious lift to move an ...

French maritime strategy has been on full public display with the deployment of the French Carrier Strike Group (CSG) from November 2024 to April 2025, carrying out an extended deployment across the ...

Classification of surface warships as cruisers, destroyers, frigates, or corvettes, has become like pornography. There are no generally accepted definitions, but “I know it when I see it”–except that ...

“You go to war with the Army you have, not the army you want.” – U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, December 2004 Much like Secretary Rumsfeld’s comments on fighting with the army you have, a ...

Recent events in the Strait of Hormuz offer a timely reminder that economic warfare at sea rarely resembles the clean, declared naval cordons of the past. Blocking commercial shipping from transiting ...