WASHINGTON – The Navy submitted an update to Congress to its annual long-range shipbuilding plans, one that takes a step back from the much-talked-about standard of a 355-ship fleet and instead lays out priorities for a future distributed naval force.
The new document lays out a manned fleet as low as 321 manned ships and potentially as large as 372 manned ships.
A fleet of 321 manned ships would be a departure from past modeling, wargaming and analysis that pointed to a fleet of 355 or more manned ships to counter threats from China and Russia in a future fight. The lower number, though, is more in line with current fiscal constraints and industry capacity. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said this week that, “based on the top-line that we have, that we can afford a Navy of about 300 ships” – and there’s not much hope that Navy shipbuilding budgets will increase drastically in the next few years.
Those 321 to 372 manned ships would be supplemented by a yet-to-be-determined number of unmanned surface and underwater vessels – between 77 and 140, according to the document. It notes that new types of platforms, such as unmanned vessels, “bring great potential, but also have greater developmental risk. This is represented by a wider objective range. As prototyping and experimentation retire technical and [concept of operations] uncertainty and risk, along with a clearer understanding of the associated costs, we expect that the objective force ranges will narrow.”
As a result, the Navy’s total fleet could range from 398 manned and unmanned ships to 512. The document, obtained by Defense News June 17, states the Navy will release a more detailed long-range plan with the FY23 budget request next year.
“In the interim, the Department will continue to build on ongoing analysis, experimentation, testing, prototyping, and the analytic results from force structure assessments, future fleet architectures, and intelligence updates to refine required capabilities and characterize the technical and operational risk of an objective battle force in military competition. This work will inform the content and transition pace to the future force and be reflected in the FY2023 shipbuilding plan.”