Volume 79, Number 1 (2026) Winter 2026

As leaders prepare the framework of a future fleet, the past is proving a valuable resource in analyzing how the Navy needs to innovate and evolve in its fight for and defense of its global sphere of influence. In this Review, Ian Easton examines surprise and deception in the operational history and current doctrine of the People’s Liberation Army in “People’s Republic of China Stratagems and Surprise Attacks: Implications for the Defense of Taiwan.” Keeping the focus on China, Ben Wermeling’s “Countering Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance in the Pacific: Mobile Missile Launcher Survivability against the People’s Liberation Army” features rigorous modeling to study attrition and survivability of mobile missile units operating within reach of Chinese forces. Shifting toward a potential NATO impact, Ian Bowers and Øystein Tunsjø survey the history of U.S. sealift and its shrinking capacity while offering potential solutions for the future in “U.S. and NATO Strategic Sealift and the Role of Norway.” Turning back to the past, Eric Anderson’s “Shipwrecked: The Burlingame Policy and U.S. Strategy in China, 1867–1871” examines U.S. approaches in early relations with China. Then, Néstor Cerdá explores the contradictions that played out in the Royal Navy’s analysis of airpower leading up to World War II in “‘Let Sleeping Dogs Lie’: The Impact of Naval Air Warfare during the Spanish Civil War on the Royal Navy, 1936–1939.” This issue also features research on Operation SLEDGEHAMMER by Gary Giumarra and a discussion of fleets in being by Norman Friedman.