미해군의 과도한 팽창

[위종민]

RUSI에 실린 글입니다. 

미 해군이 직면한 과도한 부담 

Sidharth Kaushal 박사, Kevin Rowlands 교수

2026년 8월 26일

읽는 시간 8분

미국은 자국이 정한 항공모함 배치 계획을 초과하고 있으며, 그에 따른 연쇄적 영향과 부담은 우려할 만한 문제다.

1990년대 후반 정치학자 새뮤얼 헌팅턴은 미국이 어떤 주요 지역 강국보다도 강하지만, 때로는 여러 지역에서 활용 가능한 능력이 그들보다 부족할 수 있는 ‘일극-다극’ 세계의 출현을 묘사했다. 헌팅턴이 글을 쓸 당시에는 아직 어느 정도 먼 이야기였지만, 이제 그 현실이 우리 앞에 와 있을지도 모른다. 이 점은 해양 영역에서 가장 분명하게 드러난다. 미 해군은 여전히 전 세계적으로 우세하지만, 대부분의 핵심 지역에서 자신들이 원하는 만큼의 능력을 확보하지 못하고 있는 것으로 보인다.

USS 에이브러햄 링컨은 270일이 넘는 기간, 거의 9개월 동안 배치됐고 그 대부분을 중동에서 보냈기 때문에 헤드라인을 장식했다. 미 해군의 표준 배치 기간은 약 7개월, 즉 210일이다. 더 우려스러운 점은 링컨함의 배치 기간이 일회성 사례도 아니고 기록도 아니라는 것이다. 그 불명예스러운 기록은 올해 초 326일간의 배치를 마친 USS 제럴드 R. 포드가 갖고 있다. 이제 이는 예외가 아니라 하나의 추세가 됐다. 지난 10년간 미 해군 보도자료를 기준으로 보면, 2023년 이후 11차례 항공모함 배치 가운데 8차례가 8개월 이상 지속됐고, 5차례는 최소 9개월에 달했다.

서류상 미 해군은 항공모함 11척을 보유하고 있으며, USS 니미츠가 퇴역하면 곧 10척만 남게 된다. 많은 숫자로 들릴 수 있고 세계 다른 국가들과 비교하면 실제로 그렇지만, 단 한 척을 작전구역에 유지하는 데에도 상당한 노력이 필요하다. 원칙적으로 배치 일정은 미 해군의 배치 및 순환을 위한 전력생성 계획 모델인 최적화 함대 대응계획(OFRP)에 따라 결정돼야 한다. 이 계획은 각 항공모함이 7개월간 배치되고, 나머지 기간은 정비와 훈련, 휴가, 높은 준비태세 유지 기간으로 구성되는 3년 주기를 가정한다. 이는 어느 시점이든 미 해군이 2~3척의 항공모함을 배치하고 나머지는 전력생성 주기의 다른 단계에 있어야 한다는 의미다. 그런데 배치가 9개월이나 10개월, 11개월로 늘어나면 일반적으로 정비 요구기간도 길어진다. 이는 다시 전체 주기의 나머지 부분에 영향을 미치며, 다른 함정들이 이용할 수 있는 정비시설의 가용성에도 연쇄적인 영향을 준다.

문제를 전력구조와 태세의 관점에서 생각하는 것이 직관적일 수 있지만, 이는 더 근본적으로 전략적 절제의 문제를 반영한다고도 볼 수 있다.

계획보다 길어진 배치의 영향을 생각할 때 정기 정비를 건너뛰는 자동차 소유주에 비유할 수 있다. 자동차는 한동안 괜찮겠지만 어느 시점에는 문제가 생기기 시작한다. 결국 차주가 정비소에 차를 가져가 정비를 받게 되면 더 오래 걸리고 더 많은 비용이 든다. 차가 오래됐다면 앞으로 훨씬 더 큰 고통이 따를 수도 있다. 참고로 링컨함은 44년 전에 취역했다. 미국에서 가장 오래된 항공모함 2척인 니미츠와 아이젠하워는 각각 51년, 48년 됐다.

여러 요인이 결합돼 미 해군을 현재 상황으로 몰아넣었다. 그중 하나는 배치 주기를 맞추기 위해 정비를 연기해온 것으로, 이는 수십 년간 문제가 돼왔다. 시간이 지나 함정들이 노후화하면서 과거에 미뤄졌던 정비 비용이 누적됐다. 유럽과 중동에서 여러 위기가 발생한 것도 문제를 악화시켰다. 억제와 안심의 신호를 보내기 위해 항공모함을 작전구역에 계속 유지해야 한다는 요구가 배치 기간을 늘렸기 때문이다. 사실상 이란 전쟁이 현재의 위기를 일으킨 것은 아니지만, 그 문제를 다시 한번 선명하게 드러냈다.

이 문제는 호위함정에도 이어진다. 미 해군은 배치 도중 구축함을 타격단에 새로 투입하고 기존 구축함을 빼내는 순환 운용을 시작했다. 이는 개별 호위함정의 사기와 정비 부담을 줄여주지만, 편대 수준의 통합성과 전술적 효율성 측면에서는 대가를 치르게 된다. 사실상 상호교체성은 부족한 자원에 대응하는 합리적인 적응책이지만, 동시에 과도한 부담의 영향이 함대 전체에 걸쳐 있음을 보여준다. 여기서 최근 몇 주 동안 한 호위함정이 겪은 문제도 언급할 가치가 있다. USS 벤폴드는 동력을 잃은 채 나흘 동안 표류했다. 더욱 우려스러운 점은 이 함정이 임무를 마치고 떠나려는 지친 링컨 항모타격단이 아니라 이제 임무에 들어가는 워싱턴 항모타격단 소속이라는 사실이다.

미국의 상륙전력은 아마도 같은 길을 몇 년 더 앞서가고 있을 것이다. 미 해군과 해병대는 상시 전개 목표를 갖고 있으며, 해병원정대를 탑재한 상륙준비단 3개를 항상 배치하려 한다. 하나는 대서양, 하나는 태평양, 하나는 일본 전방배치다. 실제 준비태세는 요구 수준의 절반을 겨우 넘는 정도에 불과했다. 항공모함뿐 아니라 상륙함도 만들어내야 하는 동일한 36개월 준비태세 주기가 사실상 무너졌다는 점은 공개적으로 인정되고 있으며, 실제로는 44개월에 더 가까운 것으로 보인다. 미 해군과 해병대는 가용 선체가 제한된 상황에 대응하기 위해 사실상 이 더 긴 주기를 정상적인 것으로 받아들이기로 했다.

문제를 전력구조와 태세의 관점에서 생각하는 것이 직관적일 수 있지만, 이는 더 근본적인 전략적 절제의 문제를 반영한다고도 볼 수 있다. 지속적인 전진배치 전략이 준비태세에 가하는 위험은 적어도 10년 전부터 알려져 있었다. 2018년 미국 국방전략에서 도입된 동적 전력운용은 예측 가능한 순환배치를 준비된 전력의 보다 유연한 운용으로 대체함으로써 이러한 긴장을 완화하려 했다. 이는 미국이 전략적으로는 예측 가능한 상태를 유지하면서도 작전적으로는 예측 불가능해지고, 특정 전력이 특정 전구에서 지속적인 존재를 제공할 것이라는 기대를 줄인다는 의미였다.

동적 전력운용은 명시적으로 준비태세를 보존하면서도 새롭게 나타나는 요구에 대응할 수 있도록 하기 위한 것이었다. 그러나 최근의 항공모함 배치는 오히려 짧아지기는커녕 더 길어졌다. 이란과의 전쟁 상황에서는 불가피했을 수 있지만, 그 이전의 배치들도 미국이 지역 위기의 직접적인 교전 당사자가 아니었던 시기에 장기화됐다. 이는 중요한 질문을 제기한다. 위기 신호 발신은 흔히 지속적 존재에 대한 요구를 만들어내기 때문에 동적 전력운용은 본질적으로 결함이 있었던 것인가, 아니면 그 논리가 단지 정치적 편의에 종속된 것인가? 후자의 경우라면 문제는 개념 자체보다는 이미 전구에 배치된 전력의 배치를 연장함으로써 위기에 정면 대응하려는 미 해군과 미 국방부의 의지에 더 있다. 이는 동적 전력운용이 부분적으로 완화하려 했던 바로 그 지속적 전진배치 부담을 다시 만들어내고 있다.

결과와 교훈

미 해군의 현재 상황에는 여러 결과가 따르며, 동맹국과 적국 모두가 여기서 얻을 수 있는 교훈도 있다.

전략적 차원에서는 몇 가지 중요한 고려사항이 있다. 첫째, 역대 미국 대통령들과 국가안보전략은 인도·태평양을 최우선 전구로 선언해왔으며, 중동, 특히 미 제5함대의 전력구조는 점진적으로 축소돼왔다. 여기에는 테러와의 전쟁 시대의 유산이었던 중부사령부 작전구역 내 상시 항공모함 배치를 종료하는 결정도 포함됐다. 하지만 위기가 발생할 때마다, 심지어 미국 스스로 만들어낸 위기라 하더라도 걸프의 자석 같은 힘은 너무 강하게 작용하고, 대만 인근이나 남중국해에서 해군 억제에 투입할 수 있는 전력은 거의 남지 않게 된다.

둘째, 막대한 능력에도 불구하고 중간 규모의 지역 적국과의 전쟁은 미국의 전 세계 군사태세를 위기 지점까지 몰아붙였다. 이는 해군 플랫폼의 준비태세뿐 아니라 여러 분야에서 사실이다. 예를 들어 미국은 10년치 THAAD 요격미사일 생산량을 소진했으며 핵심 복합무기 비축량을 다시 채우는 데 수년이 걸릴 가능성이 높다. 앞으로 어떤 지역 적국이라도 미국이 자신과 맞서면서 동시에 인도·태평양에서 필요한 자원 소모를 의식해야 한다는 사실을 알게 될 것이다. 마찬가지로 중국은 미국이 아시아 밖의 지역전쟁에서 자원을 소모하는 것이 자국의 전략적 위치를 개선한다고 판단할 가능성이 충분히 있다. 문제는 특정 위기가 다른 전구에서 적에게 기회를 만들어주는가가 아니라, 양측이 더 넓은 전략 상황을 바라보는 방식이 어떻게 변하고 있는가에 있다.

군사적으로는 작전적 예측불가능성을 높이려는 노력에도 불구하고 미국이 전혀 그렇지 못하다는 점이 핵심 교훈으로 보인다. 아시아에서는 수개월 동안 지속되는 저강도 위기가 발생하면 미국은 반사적으로 항공모함을 해당 지역에 배치할 것이다. 중국 같은 상대에게 이는 작전적으로 흥미로운 교훈이다. 베이징은 원칙적으로 해경과 준군사 전력을 이용해 대만에 대한 봉쇄나 검역을 시작함으로써 미국이 가치가 지나치게 높은 능력을 재배치하도록 강요할 수 있고, 이후 수개월 동안 그 준비태세가 침식되는 모습을 지켜볼 수 있다. 중국이 이미 상황을 확대할 계획을 세웠다면 인민해방군 해군은 예비로 남겨뒀다가 미 해군이 피로에 시달리는 더 늦은 시점에 투입될 수 있다.

인적 차원에서는 사기에 대한 불만을 어떤 분쟁에서도 나타나는 현상이자 장기간의 불편한 배치에 본질적으로 따르는 것으로 쉽게 치부할 수 있다. 그러나 인력 유지에 미칠 잠재적 영향은 고려할 필요가 있다. 국방부 역시 이 문제를 모르고 있지는 않으며, 피트 헤그세스 미 국방장관은 인력 유지 검토와 항공인력 대상 보너스를 지시했다. 미국은 과거 몇 년 동안 인력 유지 목표를 상당히 효과적으로 달성해왔으며 2025년에도 대부분의 목표를 달성했다. 하지만 장기 배치가 더 일상화될수록 핵심 기술을 가진 수병과 항공인력을 금전적 인센티브로 붙잡아두는 비용도 더 커질 것이다. 최근 몇 년간 이뤄진 진전이 되돌려질 위험도 있다.

현재의 준비태세 문제를 해결하는 것은 쉽지 않을 것이다. 더욱이 이 문제를 해결하려면 정비 적체 같은 문제에 대한 기술관료적 해결책 이상의 것이 필요하다. 근본적으로 미국은 다양한 상황에서 반사적으로 사용해온 능력을 어떻게 운용할 것인지에 대해 더 큰 전략적 절제가 필요할 것이다. 모든 상황에서 올바른 질문이 언제나 빌 클린턴 전 대통령의 말을 빌려 “가장 가까운 항공모함이 어디 있나”인 것은 아니다.

© RUSI, 2026.

이 논평에 표현된 견해는 저자들의 것이며 RUSI 또는 다른 어떤 기관의 견해도 대변하지 않는다.

The Overstretch Facing the US Navy | Royal United Services Institute

The Overstretch Facing the US Navy

The Overstretch Facing the US Navy

Dr Sidharth Kaushal and Professor Kevin Rowlands

26 August 20268 Minute Read

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The US is exceeding its own plans for deployment of aircraft carriers, and the knock-on effects, and the strain, should be a cause for concern.

In the late 1990s the political scientist Samuel Huntington described the emergence of a ‘uni-multipolar’ world in which the US would be stronger than any major regional power yet might sometimes have less available regional capacity than many of them. Though some way off at the time of Huntington’s writing, this reality may now be upon us. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the maritime domain where the US Navy remains globally dominant and yet seems to have less capacity in most key regions than it would like.

USS Abraham Lincoln has hit the headlines because it was deployed for over 270 days – almost nine months, most of them in the Middle East. The US Navy’s standard deployment length is around seven months, or 210 days. More worryingly, the length of the Lincoln deployment is neither a one-off, nor is it a record. That dubious honour goes to USS Gerald R Ford which completed a 326-day deployment earlier this year. This has now become a trend, rather than an exception. Based on US Navy press releases over the last decade, it can be established that of the 11 carrier deployments since 2023, eight have lasted for eight months or more, and five have been at least nine months.

On paper the US Navy has 11 aircraft carriers, and will soon have only ten, as USS Nimitz is retired. It might sound like a lot, and it is in comparison to the rest of the world, but it takes considerable effort to keep just one on station. In principle, deployment schedules should be determined by the US Navy's Optimized Fleet Response Plan, its force generation planning model for deployments and rotations. The plan assumes a three-year cycle for each carrier based on a seven-month deployment, with the remainder made up of maintenance, training, leave, and a period at high readiness. That means that at any given time, the US Navy should expect to have two or three carriers deployed and the rest at some other point on the generation cycle. If a deployment then stretches to nine months, or ten or eleven, the maintenance requirements will usually be longer. This, in turn, has an impact on the rest of the cycle and a knock-on effect on the availability of maintenance facilities for other vessels.

While it might be intuitive to think of the problem in terms of force structure and posture, it is also arguably reflective of a deeper issue of strategic discipline

When considering the impact of longer-than-planned deployments, one might use an analogy with a car owner who skips regular servicing. The car will be fine for a while, but, at some point, things will start to go wrong. When the owner does eventually get the car to the garage for a service, it is going to take longer and be more expensive. If the car is old, then there could be a lot more pain to come. Lincoln, for reference, was commissioned 44 years ago. The oldest two US carriers, Nimitz and Eisenhower, are 51 and 48 years old respectively.

Several factors have combined to bring the US Navy to this point. Among them is maintenance being deferred in order to keep deployment cycles on track – something which has been a challenge for decades. Over time as vessels have aged, the costs of maintenance deferred during earlier periods have accumulated. Several crises in both Europe and the Middle East have compounded the problem, since a requirement to retain an aircraft carrier on station, to signal deterrence and reassurance, means longer deployments. In effect the Iran war has not caused the present crisis, but it has shone another light on it.

The issue extends to escort vessels. The US Navy has started to rotate destroyers into and out of strike groups mid-deployment. This eases the morale and maintenance burdens for individual escorts, but there is a price to pay in integration and tactical effectiveness at the formation level. In effect, interchangeability is a sensible adaptation to scarcity but it also illustrates that the impact of overstretch is fleet wide. It is also worth mentioning here the problems that one escort has had in recent weeks. USS Benfold spent four days adrift without power – more concerning is the fact that the ship is part of the Washington carrier strike group coming onto task, not the worn-out Lincoln group about to leave.

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The US amphibious fleet is probably a few years further down the same road. The US Navy and Marine Corps have a presence target, and aim to have three Amphibious Ready Groups with embarked Marine Expeditionary Units deployed at all times – one in the Atlantic, one in the Pacific and one forward deployed to Japan. The actual readiness state has been barely half of what is required. The same 36-month readiness cycle that is supposed to generate amphibious ships as well as carriers, is openly acknowledged to be broken, and is probably closer to 44 months in practice. The US Navy and Marine Corps have effectively opted to normalize this longer cycle as a response to limited hull availability.

While it might be intuitive to think of the problem in terms of force structure and posture, it is also arguably reflective of a deeper issue of strategic discipline. The risk posed to readiness by the strategy of persistent presence has been understood for at least a decade. Dynamic Force Employment, introduced in the 2018 US National Defense Strategy, sought to mitigate this tension by replacing predictable rotations with the more flexible employment of ready forces. It meant that the US would remain strategically predictable while becoming operationally unpredictable, reducing the expectation that particular forces would provide continuous presence in particular theatres.

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Dynamic Force Employment was explicitly intended to preserve readiness while allowing forces to respond to emerging requirements. However, more recent carrier deployments have become longer rather than shorter. While this may have been unavoidable in the context of the war with Iran, earlier deployments were also prolonged in periods during which the US was not directly a belligerent party in a regional crisis. This raises an important question. Was dynamic force employment inherently flawed because crisis signalling often creates demands for persistent presence, or has its logic simply been subordinated to political expediency? In the latter case, the problem lies less with the concept itself than with the willingness of the US Navy and US Department of Defense to meet crises head-on by extending the deployments of forces already in theatre. It is recreating precisely the persistent presence burden that dynamic force employment was intended, in part, to alleviate.

Consequences and Lessons

There are several consequences of the US Navy’s current predicament, as well as lessons that allies and adversaries alike can draw.

In strategic terms, there are several major considerations. First, successive US presidents and national security strategies have declared the Indo-Pacific as the primary theatre, and the order of battle in the Middle East, particularly in the US 5th Fleet, was progressively reduced. This included a decision to end the standing carrier presence in CENTCOMs AOR which was a legacy of the War on Terror era. But every time a crisis flares up, even ones of the US’ own making, the magnet of the Gulf proves too strong, and there is precious little left for naval deterrence near Taiwan or in the South China Sea.

Second, despite its enormous capacity, war with a medium sized regional opponent has brought the US global posture to a crisis point. This is true across multiple areas not just naval platform readiness. The US has, for example, burned through a decade’s worth of THAAD interceptor production and will likely take years to replace stockpiles of key complex weapons. Any regional opponent will know that the US will, moving forward, have to confront it with one eye on the expenditure of resources needed in the Indo-Pacific. Equally, China may very well calculate that the expenditure of US resources in regional wars outside Asia is improving its own strategic position. The question is not whether any specific crisis creates an opportunity for an adversary in another theatre, but rather how each sides’ wider view of the strategic situation is shifting.

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Militarily, a key lesson appears to be that despite efforts to become operationally unpredictable, the US is anything but. In Asia, this means that a low-intensity crisis which plays out over months will lead the US to reflexively deploy carriers to a region. For an opponent such as China, this represents an operationally interesting lesson. Beijing could, in principle, initiate a blockade or quarantine of Taiwan with its coastguard and paramilitary forces and compel the re-allocation of disproportionately valuable US capabilities, and sit back and watch the subsequent erosion of their readiness over a period of months. The PLA Navy could be held in reserve and be committed, if China had already planned to escalate, at a later point when the US Navy is suffering from exhaustion.

At the human level, complaints about morale can be easily dismissed as part of any conflict and as inherent to long uncomfortable deployments. However, the potential impact on retention bears considering. The Pentagon is not blind to the problem and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a retention review and bonuses for aviators. The US has, in past years, been rather effective at meeting its retention targets and achieved most of them in 2025. However, the more routine long deployments become, the more expensive it will become to retain sailors and aviators with key skills through financial incentives. There is also a risk that the progress of recent years is reversed.

Resolving the current readiness issues will not be easy. Moreover, fixing the issue will require more than technocratic solutions to issues such as maintenance backlogs. At a fundamental level, the US will require greater strategic discipline in how it uses capabilities, which it has become accustomed to use reflexively, across a range of contingencies. The right question in every scenario is not always, to quote former President Bill Clinton ‘where is the nearest aircraft carrier’.

© RUSI, 2026.

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