🔷 Gator Navy

Gator Navy

Did you know there’s a Navy inside the Navy?

They call it the Gator Navy.

It’s the US Navy’s amphibious fleet, built for one job: putting Marines ashore from the sea, fast, and without asking permission.

This mission was born after WWI, forged in World War II beach assaults, and baked into daily global operations in the 1980s and 1990s.

ARG!

At the core of the Gator Navy is the Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), a set of specialized ships and equipment, from massive flat-top assault carriers to 100-ton hovercraft.

These exist to support Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs), which are purpose-built combined-arms units that rapidly embark, deploy, and employ from the ARG.

Combined, the ARG/MEU is a forward-deployed response force afloat around the world, often referred to as America’s 911 force.

The MEU and ARG are intrinsically linked in a symbiotic relationship.

Small and Unready

The Air Force often cites Desert Storm as a high-water benchmark for its force—the Gator Navy is very similar.

In 1991, there were 60 amphibious ships.

Today, there are 32, one more than the 31-ship Congressional mandate.

That fleet’s readiness is roughly 45%, and half of the fleet is assessed to be in ‘poor material condition.’

It gets worse. Of those 31 ships, the law requires 10 LHA/LHD-type "big-deck" ships.

Right now, there are only 9.

3.0 Uh Oh

The Marine Corps’ north star is a 3.0 ARG/MEU rotational force—at a minimum.

That means boosting readiness to 80% of the current 32-fleet fleet, which means buying new ships and retiring older ones.

But the Marine Corps can’t budget for that—it’s the Navy’s job.

And the nature of the relationship means that the Gator Navy must compete for surface fleet budgeting of the ‘blue water Navy’, both of which roll up into the larger battle force plans.

And that big ‘plan’ still has no logical budget plan, let alone a build plan.

Why: Because America has a ship-building crisis.

Lacking the capacity to build, the 31-ship mandate will require life extensions, and those are projected to cost $1 billion per ship.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though.

The Navy recently approved a new Medium Landing Ship (LSM) program, a 4,000-ton, 3,400-mile vessel to support the Marine Corps’ island-hopping concept for the Pacific.

It’s the first US LST-style ship in decades (a bow that opens to unload vehicles onto beaches).

The first LSM is expected in 2029, but at this point, every little bit helps.

4-Star thoughts

We told you about the bo-ats, but the fight over the Gator Navy isn’t really about ship counts.

It’s about whether the US is committed to projecting power from sea to shore.

That’s why Gen. Eric Smith, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, is speaking out (← worth the click).

Parting thought

In the 1990s, the Marine Corps had a vision called Operational Maneuver From the Sea (OMFTS).

OMFTS predicted a future of distributed and unmanned systems, but also reinforced the need for the V-22 (long-range vertical lift) and F-35B (sea-based strike)—aircraft explicitly designed to integrate with the Gator Navy.

In That Number

600 to 2,000 for 7

Lockheed Martin and the Department of War reached a landmark agreement to accelerate annual PAC-3 MSE production from 600 to 2,000 interceptors over the next 7 years.

Lost in the noise are 3 BIG details that are part of the Department of War's Acquisition Transformation Strategy:

1) The 7-year demand certainty allows for long-term scale optimization, not year-by-year lot buys that fluctuate

2) The collaborative financing approach means Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon will cost-share the investment required to get to scale with optimization

3) The government gets to earn back profits from new equipment and efficiencies

TRIVIA

On this day in 1991, two pre-production aircraft were deployed to Saudi Arabia to participate in Operation Desert Storm. Despite not being declared operational, these planes played a critical role in the war. What aircraft were they?

A) E-3 Sentry (AWACS) 
B) E-8 JSTARS
C) RC-12 Guardrail 
D) RC-135 Rivet Joint

On the Radar

Marine Corps CCA. The Marine Corps awarded Northrop Grumman a $231.5M OTA to integrate mission systems and autonomy onto the Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie. The 24-month effort supports development toward LRIP/FRP, with CTOL and RATO variants.

• The Merge’s Take: About time—this has been years in the making. At one point, the Marine Corps was on pace to field a Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) ahead of the Air Force. It’s now closer to neck-and-neck, but we still think the Marine Corps will field first. The XQ-58 has years of risk-reduction flights and, fully missionized, is less than half the cost of the Air Force CCA contenders. The main question we have: will the XQ-58 become the MQ-58, or will it adopt the Air Force CCA naming convention (FQ-42, FQ-44, and FQ-48). Maybe it's the FQ-46? Weird they ‘skipped’ it.

Starship expansion. SpaceX is constructing 2 Giga Bays to accommodate Starship—one in SpaceX’s Starbase Texas location and one near Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX is doubling its launch volume at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, and is considering bringing Starship launches there too.

• The Merge’s Take: These are ginormous buildings. At full-scale production, each Giga Bay can reportedly build a whopping 1,000 Starship rockets annually. The east and west coast expansions (and locations) should expand the customers (and payloads) for Starship—including US government missions.

One-Way Attack drones appear to have been used in Operation Absolute Resolve, the US seizure of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, 2026.

• The Merge’s Take: Good use of a $50k drone instead of a $1M cruise missile, though strangely, it’s one of the few details the Pentagon has not acknowledged. The distinct sound of the engines is clear in a number of clips on social media (and VID’d as “Shahed-shaped” drones by eye witnesses). If true, these are likely LUCAS drones, the Shahed 136 clones being tested by the Marine Corps state-side and currently deployed to the Middle East. Apparently, they were also deployed to South America. Our guess is they were ship-launched, just like the Navy did last month in the Middle East (see image).  

They Said It

“You can’t accidentally send 20 missiles into Poland. And that was not the first time.” 

— Ian Kelly, former U.S. Ambassador to Georgia, discussing the patterns of Russian aggression

Knowledge Bombs

• L3Harris sold a majority of its space propulsion stake to AE Industrial for $845M (they are reviving the ‘Rocketdyne’ name)

• TransDigm is acquiring RF tech manufacturer Stellant Systems for $960M

• Array Labs closed a $20M series A funding round for 3D radar satellites

• Mach Industries introduced Dart, a scalable counter-UAS system for drone swarm defense

• Barq & Elroy Air signed a $200M joint venture for drone manufacturing in the UAE

• DIU is launching a program to mature magnetic navigation (submissions due 1/22)

• ELTA North America was awarded $11M for HF/UHF jammers for Navy fighter jets

• EagleNXT won an Army contract for tactical mapping drones

• Rheinmetall & MBDA announced a joint venture for German Navy laser weapon systems

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ANSWER
B) E-8 JSTARS. The E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) played a critical role in Operation Desert Storm, despite not being operational. When the Army (yes, the Army) received the short-notice deployment order, there was 1) no unit, 2) no process to man, train, and equip a JSTARS unit, and 3) no CONOP of how the E-8 JSTARS would be integrated into the battlespace. How it all came together is worth the read—there’s a lot that applies today as the military rapidly tries to integrate new technology.