Strategic Planning, Naval Power, and a Framework for Regional Security in the Indo-Pacific

This research report represents the culmination of research commissioned by the Director of Warfighter Development in the Department of the Navy, or OPNAV N7, that resulted in a volume titled The New Age of Naval Power in the Indo-Pacific: Strategy, Order and Regional Security (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2023). That volume has been provided in hard copy to the N7 as a deliverable on this research project. The N7 project enabled the Principal Investigator (PI) to assemble an international team of authors over several years to produce in-depth analysis facing the Navy as it finds itself immersed in a new era of great power competition on the high seas. The volume is focused upon the Indo-Pacific theater with a cross disciplinary set of authors that are designed to help the wider US Navy community unpack the many issues associated with applying naval power in concert with friends and allies across the Indo Pacific’s vast maritime domain – the largest in the world. This particular report represents the framework for analysis used in the volume and which can be applied by the N7 as it works on developing long-term strategy to guide fleet architecture as well as war-fighting and deterrence concepts over the next quarter century. As such, the volume also is intended for classroom and practitioner communities moving through planning and educational cycles to prepare the US Navy for an uncertain future of naval competition with the People’s Liberation Army-Navy.Approved for public release. Distribution is unlimited.Naval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program (PE 0605853N/2098)PNRP Project ID: NPS-23-N039-ANaval Postgraduate School, Naval Research Program; OPNAV N