Abstract: As the US Armed Forces and their allies reorient toward the prospect of peer warfare in the South China Sea, they must adapt a warrior ethos paradigm largely shaped by the Global War on Terror to meet the demands of contemporary conflict. Emerging operational characteristics (e.g., risk-flattened battlespace, distributed forces, over-the-horizon combat, and participation in complex sociotechnical systems) challenge traditional assumptions about warrior identity and the conditions under which individuals understand themselves as legitimate participants in war. This paper argues that the largely neglected traditions of naval warrior ethos offer not only a means of addressing these identity challenges, but also a normative framework for understanding moral agency and responsibility in modern warfare. Focusing on the naval concept of “fighting the ship,” the paper demonstrates how collective action within a sociotechnical system can preserve individual ethical responsibility while redefining right action in distributed combat environments. In doing so, it advances naval warrior ethos as a resource for maintaining ethically grounded warfighting readiness and calls for further study of its broader implications for military ethics.

​​

​