Surface Navy 2026: US Navy remains committed to combat-surge-ready goals

USS Bonhomme Richard had to be taken out of service after fire damage, shown here. (US Navy)

The US Navy (USN) is still pushing its forces to meet an 80% combat-surge-ready goal even as leadership acknowledges meeting that number will still be difficult to reach.

“None of the forces, not even our submarines, is at 80%,” Admiral Daryl Caudle, chief of naval operations (CNO), said on 14 January during a media round table discussion at the Surface Navy Association (SNA) National Symposium.

For more about USN efforts to reach the 80% goal, please seeNavy League 2025: US Navy continues to push for combat surge-ready force .

“Everything but amphibs [amphibious ships] is greater than 60[%],” Adm Caudle said.

The reason the amphibious force is facing a stiffer challenge is because one of the fleet, amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard (LHD 6), was lost to a fire in July 2020.

“When you lose a capital ship like that, you lose 10% [of that force] right there,” Adm Caudle said.

The combat-surge-ready concept has been “normalised this into fabric of how we do business”, he said.

Admiral James Kilby, the vice-chief of naval operations, said on 14 January during an SNA symposium speech, “Eighty percent is a stretch goal – it's meant to be that way. It's meant to be ambitious. You have to think about the process.”

Part of that is using the USN's augmented reality maintenance system (ARMS), which “measures the health of our ships in real time”, Adm Kilby said.

The emphasis now is on “replacing things before they break, before they reach catastrophic failure”.