BLUF
Naval forces face strategic and economic challenges as high-cost warships counter low-cost, mass-produced threats. The Red Sea experience highlights the need for distributed fleets, layered defences, cost-effective magazines, and emerging technologies.Learning outcomes:
- Understand the strategic and economic challenges of defending high-value naval platforms against inexpensive, mass-produced threats.
- Recognise the importance of fleet composition, including distributed, layered, and affordable platforms, to maintain resilience and operational sustainability.
- Explain how magazine depth, cost-exchange ratios, and emerging technologies such as directed energy weapons influence naval planning and capability development.
