CNO Reading List Series: PART 1 – FOUNDRY
War is won in the industrial base before it is fought at sea
Welcome to Part 1 of our review of the Chief of Naval Operations’ new Professional Reading Program.
The CNO has moved beyond a simple checklist of ‘good books’ to create a strategic blueprint for the future force. This architecture charts a specific path: we are Built in the Foundry (Industrial Base), Tempered in the Fleet (Strategic Employment), and Forged to Fight (Tactical Execution).
Finally, the CNO anchors this blueprint in the Total Sailor. Strategy and industrial might are useless without the human element. This category spans character, competence, decision-making, nutrition, and the ‘whole person.’ In an era of high-tech platforms, we often forget that the ultimate weapon system is the individual Sailor. If the Foundry builds the hull and the Fleet directs it, it is the Sailor who must endure the strain of the Fight.
Over the coming weeks, we will decode this architecture layer by layer, starting where the war is actually won: the factory floor.
We begin where naval power begins: The Foundry.
This category argues that the outcome of war is often determined long before the first shot is fired. It is determined in shipyards, factories, and research labs that generate our material advantage.
As the CNO notes, reading is a force multiplier that sharpens our minds for the “unforgiving crucible of combat”. The books selected for this section challenge us to view the industrial base not just as a supply chain but as a weapon system in itself.
But this return to the “Foundry” comes at a critical moment
We have witnessed a generation of shipbuilding where ambition too often outpaced execution. As the CDR Salamander Substack recently noted regarding the crisis in our frigate and destroyer programs…
“We simply move from failure to fiasco and then tell each other what a great job we are doing.”—CDR Salamander Substack
From the cost overruns of the Zumwalt to the struggles of the Constellation-class, we are risking what Salamander calls “monuments of generational failure.” These delays reveal a hard truth: the United States has not successfully designed a warship from the ground up since the Cold War.
Meanwhile, the strategic environment has shifted. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has executed the largest rapid naval buildup since World War II. Our competitors are challenging U.S. maritime dominance not just with resolve but with industrial scale. They are building a maritime ecosystem designed to out-produce, out-repair, and out-sustain us in a long fight.
This is why the CNO’s list starts here
To reverse these trends, we must understand how industrial breakthroughs reshape warfare. We are Built in the Foundry. If we cannot maintain our dominance there, we cannot deter the fight at sea.
