James J. Lee, AFJ staff Rear Adm. Joseph A. Walsh is director of the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Warfare Division.

The new vision for U.S. seapower includes a shift to joint warfighting, a shift in geography toward the west and a shift in operational terrain that will include more green- and brown-water activities, said Rear Adm. Joseph A. Walsh, director of Submarine Warfare Division.

Walsh outlined the Navy’s roadmap for the future at the Power & Limits of Jointness, the Armed Forces Journal annual conference in Washington, D.C., on June 1, where he described the service’s plan to “use power to defend freedom and to forge new friendships.”

Walsh detailed a “new way to think about sea power” in both larger and broader terms, including its readiness to respond when disaster strikes, whether it’s a tsunami in Indonesia or Hurricane Katrina along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

So-called “stethoscope diplomacy” conducted by the USNS Mercy hospital ship is another means by which the Navy intends to expand its humanitarian aid mission, said Walsh. But such work will not come at the expense of the Navy’s warfighting mission, he added. “We can’t let it be seen as a weakness,” said Walsh. “We dominate the sea, on it, under it and over it.”

A new emphasis in the Pacific, where the Navy has shifted submarines and other assets, is in response to changing threats (North Korea, Islamic radicalism and the potential for pandemic flu) and to new opportunities (the rise of China as an economic power), but Walsh said he sees “more promise than peril in the West.”

Littorals will remain at the forefront as the Navy develops a new riverine and global relief force, Walsh said. On the blue-water side, major expenditures include Virginia-class submarines with ISR capability, DDX ships, the CVN-21 next-generation supercarrier that will follow the USS Ronald Reagan and the Joint Strike Fighter.

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