Navy, shipbuilders prepared for proposed fleet buildup.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

As the Navy calls for a larger fleet, shipbuilders are looking toward new contracts and ramping up their yards to full capacity.

In December, the sea service released a new force structure assessment that said the Navy's new goal was to reach a 355-ship fleet--a bump of 47 ships over the previous FSA. This would include a mix of additional attack submarines, an aircraft carrier, numerous large surface combatants and amphibious ships.

In a recent Congressional Research Service report, naval analyst Ronald O'Rourke found that getting to 355 ships would actually require more than 47 additional vessels.

"Achieving and maintaining the 355-ship fleet could require adding 57 to 67 ships, including 19 attack submarines and 23 large surface combatants, to the Navy's FY 2017 30-year shipbuilding plan, unless the Navy extends the service lives of existing ships beyond currently planned figures and/or reactivates recently retired ships," he said.

Procuring that number of vessels--which averages to about 1.9 to 2.2 additional ships per year over the 30-year period--could cost an average of $4.6 billion to $5.1 billion per year, he added.

However, "these additional shipbuilding funds are only a fraction of the total additional cost that would be needed to achieve and maintain a 355-ship fleet instead of 308-ship fleet," he said. Crew and maintenance requirements would also cause costs to swell.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the chairman of the $enate Armed Services Committee, in a defense white paper, said: "Whatever the right fleet size ultimately is, one key objective for the next five years is the same: The Navy must ramp up shipbuilding. It is unrealistic to deliver 81 ships by 2022."

Previous defense plans under President Barack Obama called for the procurement of 41 ships over the next five years, he said.

"However, with sufficient funding, the Navy could procure 59 ships in this timeframe," he said. That would include five fast attack submarines, five fleet oilers, three destroyers, two amphibious ships, two afloat forward staging bases, two undersea surveillance ships, two survey ships, two patrol ships, one aircraft carrier and one new small surface combatant.

Even more important than expanding the fleet is buying the right kinds of ships, he said.

"The Navy should be optimized for deterring conflict against increasingly capable great power competitors," he said. "Given the time limitations of shipbuilding, the Navy must seek to add new...