NAVSEA Sunk: Musk Axes 83,000 US Navy Jobs And Launches ‘Shiba Inu’ Barge Fleet

Editor’s Note: April Fool’s, if you haven’t figured that out already.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (gCaptain) In a move that shocked defense circles and thrilled meme lords everywhere, deep sources inside the Pentagon have confirmed to gCaptain that Elon Musk will personally terminate all 83,000 federal employees of NAVSEA, the US Navy’s bloated and beleaguered shipbuilding and repair bureaucracy, next week.

Replacing NAVSEA will be a lean, aggressively modular agency named after yet another cryptocurrency: Shiba Inu.

Continuing the Trump administration’s tradition of naming government efficiency programs after internet memes, President Trump is expected to formally announce the Shiba Inu Naval Force at this Friday’s rally in Houma, Louisiana—the new headquarters for the Pentagon’s maritime modernization effort.

“NAVSEA has been the most broken agency in the history of broken agencies,” said Musk at a hastily organized Twitter Spaces event. “They haven’t delivered a single ship on time or on budget this century. We’re replacing bureaucracy with barge power.”

SHIBA INU, of course, is an acronym. According to internal documents leaked to gCaptain, it stands for:

Strategic

High

Impact

Barge

Artillery

Inexpensive

Naval

Upshift

The organization’s first official HQ will not be in the Pentagon, but in a newly renovated trailer park previously used by the Cajun Navy in Houma, Louisiana, chosen for its resilience, vibe, and proximity to America’s last remaining shipyards.

“America must lean into its strengths,” said Rear Admiral Buck Tumescent, Shiba Inu’s first (and possibly last) Flag Officer. “America does two things better than anyone on the planet: building massive, dumb, flat-bottomed barges, and dropping Tomahawks on foreheads. So, that’s the strategy. Put Tomahawks on barges, tow ‘em into theater, and let God sort it out.”

Think Tanks Respond

At a national security roundtable this morning, McKinsey & Co., along with the Brookings Institution and Hudson Institute, gave the idea their blessing—citing the unparalleled “modularity” of the Mississippi barge system.

“A single Mississippi towboat can push 42 barges at once,” said Brookings fellow Alister Muff, adjusting his Warby Parkers. “Each barge is 200 feet long and 35 feet wide. One barge for drones. One for fuel. One for snacks. Another for launching an airship with Aegis sensors. One with a sonar dome duct-taped to it. The potential is limitless.”

This, of course, is not a new idea. It’s the same “modular dream” that inspired the Littoral Combat Ship program, which famously resulted in 35 ships and exactly one fully operational mission package: the Surface Warfare Module, known internally as “the one that barely works.”

Musk Fires Back

When asked about the think tanks’ ideas during a late-night X (formerly Twitter) livestream, Musk responded:

“No. That’s stupid. Keep it simple. Maybe slap a CWIS on there because Gatling guns are cool, but the idea is Tomahawks. On. Barges. That’s it. No sonar balloons. No airships. No ‘floating kill webs.’ Just boom-boom on a barge. KISS—Keep It Simple, Stupid.”

Chaos Ensues

Of course, nobody in Washington bothered to ask a ship captain how 42 inland barges tied together will handle 12-foot swells in the North Atlantic. That omission proved too much for maritime scholar Sal Mercogliano, who suffered an on-air aneurysm during a live stream as he tried to explain barge hydrodynamics using a LEGO model of the Gaza Pier.

“It was touch and go,” said the Chief of the Northwest Harnett Volunteer Fire Department, who responded to the scene. “We stabilized him with Gatorade, a Chief Engineer, and a stern lecture on hull form coefficients. He’s in the Hospital expected to recover.”

Editor’s Note: In a completely unrelated development, the Marine Corps has announced its own crypto-inspired program called FLOKI: Forward Littoral Operations Kommand Initiative. Sources say it will be headquartered on an unlicensed party pontoon boat in Jacksonville.

Subscribe for Daily Maritime Insights

Sign up for gCaptain’s newsletter and never miss an update

— trusted by our 109,008 members