Volume 78, Number 2 (2025) Summer/Autumn 2025

As the Navy celebrates its 250th birthday, the Summer/Autumn 2025 issue of the Review looks to the future of naval innovation while eying lessons from the past. On the cover, work aboard USS Nimitz represents the aims of the Foundry, one of CNO Admiral Daryl Caudle’s three interlocking priorities: the Foundry, the Fleet, and the way we Fight. As the Foundry forges warships for the fleet, the College helps forge the intellectual capital required to sustain and modernize how the fleet fights. Toward that idea, Jeff Vandenengel’s “Mission and Weapon Drive Fleet Design” examines how shifts in the Navy’s primary mission and weapon will drive force restructuring and fleet design. In juxtaposition, Walker Gargagliano’s “Floating Fortresses: American Carriers’ Extraordinary Resilience to Battle Damage” illustrates the incredible resilience of carriers, the key component to current fleet design. Jeffrey Larsen and James Wirtz explore the reintroduction of the submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile and potential deterrence policy implications in “Neither Confirm nor Deny: The U.S. Navy’s Declaratory Policy on Nuclear Weapons.” Raja Menon’s “At the Dawn of a Naval Renaissance: India Takes a Relook at Mahan” considers how Mahanian truths and India’s history can shed light on China’s rapid naval expansion. Leonard Heinz’s “SG Radar in the Solomon Islands Campaign: Assumptions, Perceptions, Reality” delves into the earliest appearances of radar in WWII combat and the path forward it illuminated. Finally, Sam Tangredi’s “Bringing Air to the Sea: Four Competing Paths to Developing U.S. Naval Aviation and Their Lessons” dives deep in the College archives for lessons to apply in future fleet design.