ABSTRACT
In 1970, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Jr attempted an innovation in the way naval forces fought. His new warfighting vision of defensive sea control not only required new equipment and platform components, but also a new architecture to link old and new in a novel way. Instead of focusing on power projection, as in Vietnam (and elsewhere), he wanted to shift to open-ocean defensive sea control to counter the rising Soviet maritime threat.1 ‘Project 60’, quite simply, consisted of a promise Zumwalt made during a pre-nomination interview with Secretary of Defense Laird to shift to a new way of fighting and to provide a plan for implementing the innovation within 60 days after becoming CNO – hence the title.2
