Analysts: More money needed to boost Navy fleet.

As the Navy considers whether to increase its force structure requirements, analysts said the service would need billions of dollars in additional funding each year to grow and maintain a fleet sufficient to deal with potential threats.

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The Navy's latest assessment calls for a fleet of 308 ships. But the sea service is undertaking a new review to see if that force level would be enough in a different strategic landscape.

"We're on track to meet that number of 308 ships," Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, said at a conference in February after the fiscal year 2017 budget request was released. "But even that assessment is a little bit old. The last time we did that... we really didn't have to account for a resurgent Russia. We really didn't have to account for [the Islamic State]. And so we're starting again."

The force structure assessment is expected to be completed this summer.

"Some observers believe this new [assessment] will result in an increase in the Navy's force-level goal to a figure higher than 308 ships, in part because it will call for an increased Navy forward-deployed presence in the Mediterranean, a region that was deemphasized... during the post-Cold War era," naval specialist Ronald O'Rourke said in a recent Congressional Research Service report.

Beefing up the fleet to deal with an increasingly assertive China and Russia would require a big boost in the shipbuilding budget, analysts noted.

"The Navy said they needed 308 ships, which is going to require $3 billion or $4 billion more per year [over the next 15 years]...