Since the start of the War on Terror many calls have been made to make increasingly pervasive changes in the U.S. military in response to what is frequently characterized as the “war of tomorrow”. The most recent came in the pages of the Weekly Standard’s online edition from John Noonan, and challenged the Pentagon to completely overhaul the curricula at its service academies. However, while the changing security environment in the world does demand ongoing rethinking of forces and roles, for the Navy in particular, too radical a change is unwise in the face of recent maritime developments.

Take China, for example. While the Chinese have gingerly stepped away from part of their past and introduced private ownership and free enterprise to their economic system, China aggressively maintains their authoritarian political system and territorial ambitions. In fact, the world recently learned that the People’s Republic may have had an invasion plan drafted to retake Hong Kong should Britain have decided not to return the island a decade ago. And more recently, China has embarked on an unprecedented expansion of naval power with the stated intent of expanding their influence throughout the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans.

To that end, the Chinese are building and buying destroyers, amphibious ships and submarines by the score, and have stated their intention to add three aircraft carriers to their fleet. While many in the West are struggling to conceal their concern, Japan, Australia and South Korea have reacted by adding Aegis destroyers with ballistic missile defense capabilities and amphibious assault ships capable of operating fixed-wing aircraft to their maritime forces.

And if China’s ambitions are not enough, take a look at the Russians’ naval plans. Having allowed their fleet to languish and deteriorate over the last quarter century, Russian premier Vladimir Putin decided in the last few years that enough was enough. Today, Russia has just completed the design and testing of a new ballistic missile submarine and associated ICBM, and announced it intends to build over forty new surface combatants for its navy, along with six -- yes, six -- new aircraft carriers. And if history is any guide, in order to keep their defense sector generating much needed foreign capital, Russia will offer just about everything for sale to any nation willing to pay. And finally, Russia has just entered discussions with China to evolve their fledgling military cooperation agreement into a full-blown alliance to counterweight -- you guessed it -- the United States and NATO.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world clearly recognizes where the long-term threats lie. In addition to Japan, Australia and South Korea, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, India and Brazil are all buying or contemplating new carriers of their own. In fact, the pace of naval expansion and modernization around the globe prompted one naval analyst to note that the world has not seen such a rapid buildup of maritime power since the decades before the Second World War.

With terrorists building networks of international support and financing and cells capable of striking anywhere on little or no warning, America is certainly in a war like none before. We have already changed our thinking in many respects and adapted measure for measure with the new threat. But even within the new threat, it is useful to remember that the major front in the War on Terror in Iraq was still opened with a remarkably conventional battle between ground forces.

While the wise will continuously assess and prepare for developing threats, change can be taken too far. We must realistically examine threats across the entire spectrum of conflict and not focus too closely on immediate problems. The threat of terrorism for all the services -- and for the Navy in particular -- is not a replacement of old threats, but a new, additional threat. After all, in the light of other developments, the “war of tomorrow” may look remarkably like the war of yesterday.