A top naval official and a key lawmaker on Feb. 10 both welcomed three newly released studies that urge the Navy to revamp and expand its arsenal of ships.
The studies reached many similar conclusions, including the need to build significantly more ships than planned, operate naval forces in a more distributed manner, increase the use of unmanned systems, develop smaller aircraft carriers and increase the lethality of weapons systems, said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Two of the studies advocate transitioning from the Littoral Combat Ship to a more capable frigate as soon as possible.
“Yesterday, I received the three studies, which are an impressive body of work that Navy leaders must draw upon to increase the warfighting capability and capacity of the future fleet,” McCain said in a statement. “The question now is what tangible steps Navy leaders will take to turn these recommendations into reality. I look forward to reviewing their proposals and working with them to build the future fleet.”
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said in a statement that the Navy plans to implement at least some of the studies’ suggestions. Although his statement did not specify which recommendations the Navy will pursue, the service indicated two months ago that it needs 355 ships, up from the 274 vessels it has today and the 308 ships it is slated to grow to by fiscal year 2021.
“Some of the recommendations from the studies are so sound that we will act on them quickly,” Richardson said. “Other ideas show promise and we’ll study those hard. The studies will be rolled into our program of analysis, war games, experiments, technology demonstrations and prototyping.”
The studies were mandated by the fiscal year 2016 defense authorization act and were conducted by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), the Mitre Corp. and a Navy project team.
CSBA, which issued a 162-report, the longest by far, said the Navy needs a more capable force to counter China and Russia, which are modernizing their militaries and using them more aggressively.
“The return of great power competition suggests dramatic changes to how U.S. naval forces will have to operate by the 2030s,” CSBA wrote in its report, Restoring American Seapower: A New Fleet Architecture for the United States Navy.