New GAO Report Addresses Deficiencies in Military Readiness Including the “Sea Domain”

This May 1, 2024 report – Military Readiness: Actions Needed for DOD to Address Challenges across the Air, Sea, Ground, and Space Domains – states that “…DOD faces many challenges restoring desired levels of readiness across the military while also modernizing its forces.”

The Navy and its problems are discussed beginning on page 20. This document also provides links to previous reports and to recommendations that the GAO has made but that in most instances have not been implemented.

More GAO reports focusing on the Navy will be forthcoming:

We have a wide range of ongoing reviews examining sustainment issues
across the sea domain. Later in 2024, we plan to issue reports on Navy
ship maintenance led by sailors, Army watercraft readiness, cruiser
modernization, the Navy’s amphibious warfare fleet, and the shipbuilding
and repair industrial base. (21)

Since the publication of the above, additional sea-related reports have been released:

Coast Guard Acquisitions: Opportunities Exist to Improve Shipbuilding Outcomes (released May 7,2024); and

Navy Shipbuilding: Increased Use of Leading Design Practices Could Improve Timeliness of Deliveries (released May 2, 2024).

A May 6, 2024 report from CRS should also be considered: Coast Guard Polar Security Cutter (Polar Icebreaker) Program: Background and Issues for Congress

Daily Diary of WW II Pacific Operations

The Nimitz Graybook (named after the binding covers), is an essential primary source for the U.S. Navy activities in World War II Pacific. Compiled by Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz’ staff, it is a daily operational diary of what occurred. It is over 4000 pages long and divided among eight volumes.

Here is the ceremonial unveiling of this work along with a lecture by Dr Craig Symonds.

American Civil War Naval Chronology


We should not lose sight of the fact that the American Civil War was not a struggle just confined to land battles; many conflicts took place either in bays, rivers, or the ocean. In the early to mid-1960s, the Naval History Division of the Navy published the six-volume Civil War Naval Chronology, 1861-1865. It is a day-by-day exposition on what occurred in maritime settings, from raids on Southern coastal ports to Mississippi River operations. Each volume (a volume for each year of the war) begins with a summary, followed by a brief listing of major events, that in turn leads into a more detailed examination of the year’s events.  In addition, excerpts from participants’ accounts add to the utility of this work.

Volume 6 contains a cumulative index along with many special studies such as : “The Navy in Defense of Washington,” “Shipboard Life in the Civil War” and “Naval Sheet Music of the Civil War” among others. While the volumes concentrate on Union exploits afloat (if only because the Union navy was far larger), the Confederate side is not ignored.

The Confederate perspective can be seen in this 1887 work:  History of the Confederate States navy from its organization to the surrender of its last vessel. Its stupendous struggle with the great navy of the United States; the engagements fought in the rivers and harbors of the South, and upon the high seas; blockade-running, first use of iron-clads and torpedoes, and privateer history.

This thirty-volume series,  Official records of the Union and Confederate navies in the war of the rebellion (1894-1922) might prove beneficial as well.

Use of Ngrams

I am no text mining expert by any means, but the use of Google Ngram Viewer for naval history provides intriguing comparisons and insights. What Ngrams does is search the corpus of books that Google has digitized with copyrights from 1800 to 2019 and highlight the frequency of the strings (a string is a series of letters, numbers, spaces, diacritical or special marks in a set order) that you have input to search. In this instance, I input the terms battleship,battleship,line of battle ship,ship of the line (notice, no spaces among the strings) to see when the terms are used with the comparisons of the strings’ appearances.

Battleship (the blue line), while having a low percentage of “hits” early on, progresses quite rapidly to become the descriptor of choice, with the high points of its use appearing in 1914 and 1942/43.

Ship of the line, the preferred term early on, loses its primary position around the time battleship becomes the standard term. (Coinciding with the rise of the steam navy.)

I also used this viewer to see how Horatio Nelson has been remembered over the centuries.

For Now, All of “British History Online” Is Freely Accessible.

British History Online, that wonderful compendium of primary and secondary sources, is, due to technical difficulties, now completely open. As it states: “We are working to fix these problems, and appreciate your patience whilst this is accomplished. In the meantime, we have lowered the paywall, and are allowing access to all our material to all visitors.”

For those of a naval persuasion, there is a great deal on information contained in the tomes now open. I refer to the Calendar of State Papers, a project that spans centuries and countries. Contained within any of these volumes are numerous references to the Royal Navy and its foreign counterparts as retrieved using different index search terms, such as navy, Admiralty, ships, vessels, fleet, etc. In fact, the volumes that hold the records for the Interregnum have separate sections wholly devoted to the navy.

For those looking for historical records, these resources prove of great value.

More Woes for U.S. Navy Shipbuilding

As if the previous reports did not have enough convincing information contained in them to expose the ineptitude up and down the command/supply chains, these two additional CBO documents just reinforce the negative impressions:

Acquisition Costs of the Navy’s Medium Landing Ship, and

The Shipbuilding Composite Index and Its Rates of Change Compared With Economywide Inflation Rates

Years-long Delays in U.S. Navy Shipbuilding

As China continues to develop its maritime arm (see the latest iteration of this document –China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress, January 30, 2024), the U.S. Navy, in a scathing in-house report, is experiencing delays of up to three years in buiding its next-generation warships. This summary document outlines the timelags, the ship programs, and the contributing factors that have led to this sorry state of affairs.

Reportage can be found at: Navy cancels ship briefings after damning internal report (Politico); US Navy ship programs face years-long delays amid labor, supply woes (Defense News); Navy lays out major shipbuilding delays, in rare public accounting (Breaking Defense); and Constellation Frigate Delivery Delayed 3 Years, Says Navy (USNI).

This problem should not come as a surprise as the various cited deficiencices have been known for years. Here are a couple of older reports:

ABANDON SHIPS: The Costly Illusion of Unaffordable Transformation (CSIS, 2008);

Report brands US shipbuilding plans “unrealistic,” Warship Technology, (October, 2008);

Current documents highlighting the seriousness of the difficulties include:

Navy Readiness: Actions Needed to Address Cost and Schedule Estmates for Shipyard Improvement (GAO, June 28, 2023) [Numerous other GAO reports on the Navy are here.)

The 2024 Outlook for Navy Shipbuilding: Familiar Plans and Higher Costs (CBO, January 3, 2024). [Numerous other CBO reports on the Navy are here.]

REBUILDING THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY: The U.S. and Chinese Defense Industrial Bases in an Era of Great Power Competition (CSIS, March 6, 2024) that states: “China is now the world’s largest shipbuilder by a significant margin. It has a shipbuilding capacity that is more than 230 times larger than that of the United States and sufficient to build 23 million tons of vessels compared to less than 100,000 tons in the United States. According to U.S. Navy estimates, a single Chinese shipyard currently has more capacity than all U.S. shipyards combined.”(23).

Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress (CRS, March 1, 2024).

Other relevant CRS reports include:

Navy Columbia (SSBN-826) Class Ballistic Missile Submarine Program: Background and Issues for Congress (April 4, 2024); and

Navy Constellation (FFG-62) Class Frigate Program: Background and Issues for Congress

Videos of Congressional testimony is found here.

Even the US Coast Guard is not immune from delays and setbacks. Please peruse this report: Coast Guard Polar Security Cutter (Polar Icebreaker) Program: Background and Issues for Congress (CRS, March 27, 2024).

And the Royal Navy is also facing all too familiar difficulties: Ready for War? (House of Commons. Defence Committee, Januray 30, 2024).

Eclipses and Longitude

As eclipso-mania holds part of this country in thrall. (btw, doesn’t the phrase “path of totality” sound like a great name for a heavy-metal group?), mention must be made of the years-long activities of the Board of Longitude that was established in 1714 by the Act of Longitude. This body was formed to address the need for accurate sailing directions, and one of the methods employed for this was the viewing and calibration of eclipses from various points around the world.

The papers accompanying this site have excellent introductions that explain the contents and carry important links to relevant acts, minutes, drafts, etc.

The search for longitude played out over the centuries. Here are some observations on eclipses that were published in the Philosophical Transactions/Proceedings of the Royal Society. Of more than passing interest is An observation of an eclipse of the Sun at the Island of New-found-land, August 5, 1766, by Mr. James Cook, with the longitude of the place of observation deduced from it: Communicated by J. Bevis, M. D. F. R. S. and his co-authored piece Observations made, by appointment of the Royal Society, at King George’s Island in the South Sea [1771].

Attention should also be given to Philip Allan’s John Harrison and the Longitude Problem that appeared in the Naval History Magazine, 33(#5, October 2019).

Here is a 2023 article published in the Royal Society of the History of Science – Eclipsed by history: underrecognized contributions to early British solar eclipse expeditions.