SECDEF: Navy needs to have more than 500 ships by 2045

| October 7, 2020

ninja sends us this article from Stars and Stripes. In the article, SecDef Mark Esper provides more details on his plan for a 500-ship Navy, which we first talked about a few weeks back.

The Navy wants to double its number of submarines as part of a modernization plan to build more than 500 ships by 2045 to maintain a competitive edge against other naval powers such as China and Russia, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday.

“We believe that this is the vision for the future that will ensure that we maintain the greatest Navy in the world,” he said during a speech at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based think tank specializing in U.S. defense policy, force planning and budgets.

Esper provided an overview of the plans developed from Defense Department findings, called “Battle Force 2045,” though the Pentagon has yet to share the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan or its naval force study with Congress.

The defense secretary directed a future naval force study earlier this year to determine how the U.S. Navy can maintain its edge against the navies of other military powers.

Esper said the need to modernize the Navy is in part due to China’s own naval modernization and shipbuilding efforts. The Pentagon’s China report released Sept. 1 determined the country aims to have a “world-class” military on par with the United States by 2049. It already has the largest navy in the world at 350 ships. The United States now has 296 deployable battle force ships, according to the Navy.

Esper said during his speech that the Pentagon has found a “credible path” to get to 355 ships within the next 15 years, which had been the Navy’s previous shipbuilding goal. However, he did not offer specifics Tuesday, other than to say they were included as part of the funding and reform efforts being created for the Battle Force 2045 plan.

The first priority of that plan is to have a large number of attack submarines, with a target of 70 to 80 submarines overall. This will require the Navy to build at least three next generation Virginia-class submarines every year “as soon as possible,” Esper said. The Navy now has more than 40 operational attack submarines, according to Pentagon documents.

More at the source. This clearly shows the Trump Administration’s belief that China is the largest long-term threat to our interests. With a resurgent Russia also looking to play on the world stage it seems like Trump wants to borrow Reagan’s play of spending our enemies into collapsing.

Category: Big Pentagon, Guest Link, Navy, ninja, Politics

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Ex-PH2

“…spending our enemies into collapsing.”

Hey, I can go along with that. But I think the goal for a full force Navy should, subsequently, be a tad higher, e.g., 600 ships.

Just sayin’.

FuzeVT

As long as we are just spending money as a goal, can we build some more Battleships? I’d like to see what a modern day Battleship would look like. That could be pretty badass! Of course, that goes against my notion that ships should be smaller, faster, and cheaper in order to spread firepower across the battlespace without bankrupting us and not put all our eggs in aircraft carrier baskets. It still would be pretty awesome!

Deckie

I wonder if there are any plans for a larger US flag merchant marine anywhere in this plan? China already has us beat soundly in that realm by several thousand hulls.

Anonymous

Chicoms provide ample reason, if not evidence we’re behind…

11B-Mailclerk

The laws that mandate high expenses work against the demand needed to increase our merchant fleet.

If you want o mandate high standards and wages, there are costs. We already mandate us flagged owned and crewed ships for US to US shipping. The difference is so huge between ours and flag-of-convinience serf-shipping that it is often cheaper to ship CA to cross-ocean-nations to WA on “Panamanian” ships than direct on US merchantmen.

That also is one reason stuff is more costly in Alaska and Hawaii.

We can make that change via mandate and tariff, and force US shipping, or at least to block the most egregious serf-shippers. The cost will be -huge- if done whole hog. There may be a way to game some winning arrangements, but this is just about -everything- foreign originated.

Now, as we re-onshore more manufacturing and resources, that balance shifts too.

Anonymous

‘Merica! Hell yeah!

5th/77th FA

Subs, and a bunch of them. I think our Brothers and Sisters in Blue/Gold/White will agree that no one has a better Underwater Artillery Platform than we do. You gotta find it to kill it, and we can hide and hunt better than they can hunt.

Most of us won’t live long enough to see it, but we can hope that the USA USA USA continues to have the very BEST MILITARY in the World. All of this is a mute point if Trump is no re-elected. President Harris…oops…Biden will sell the Navy vessels to China who will turn them into razor blades. Hunter Biden needs them razor blades to chop up his nose candy.

UpNorth

Glad I read all of the posts, that’s exactly where I was going, 5/77. If, God forbid, the Pedophile wins, we won’t have a military.

5th/77th FA

Got that right UpNorth! And the other concern, as expressed by others here, is the ability to have enough crews for these ships. When we were on this subject the other day, I made a comment about us using something similar to the WWII PT Boats. Then there was a comment comparing it to the Iranian Navy. IIRC from my studies of the Pacific Surface War, the PT Boats did a decent job. Maybe I’m missing something, or even better, maybe it’s time to quit being the worlds Policeman, or at the very least, get some help paying for it all.

I am not so much concerned about our foreign enemies as I am our domestic enemies.

David

I believe your comment was on the order of arming bass boats or similar; hence my response re the Iranian Potentially Subsurface ‘Navy’. PT boats are a whole ‘nother kettle of fish and a thousand would be handy.

5th/77th FA

There have been people (Naval) that referred to PTs as “fast, heavily armed oversized ski boats.” Had a former squidly swabbie cousin that called them oversized Chris Crafts, alluding to the wooden hulls. Here’s the link from the other thread comment.

https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=105471#comment-3327894

NHSparky

Good luck. You can’t even man the boats you have, and that’s after offering nukes $40k to enlist and $100k to reenlist as early as the 2-year point.

11B-Mailclerk

Make all federal student aid dependant on veteran status, with amount tied to length of service. Kickers the hard to fill slots, and biggest for combat arms. Allow small fractional for those who genuinely can’t, but not much. Perhaps allow small fractional for other forms of service, but the big money goes to the writers of those “blank checks”. Maintain satisfactory reserve status while using the benefits.

For those not interested in college, vo-tech and other job training. Maybe business startup or home loans.

NHSparky

Meh. Loans and mommy/daddy are the primary sources of little Johnny paying for college, and most folks who qualify for high tech fields get bonuses and their branch College Fund.

Frankly, given the credits I was able to transfer from my previous college and nuke pipeline schools, finishing my Bachelors was damn near free. No need for financial aid.

timactual

He wants to add 200 ships in 25 years. The Navy has trouble manning the ships it already has. And if those 200 new ships take as long to build and deploy as the LCS, DDG1000, and USS Ford it will never happen.

Somebody needs drug test.

Combat Historian

In this day and age, the only way you can build and maintain a 500 ship navy is to have a highly automated combatant fleet of frigates each manned by less than fifty sailors and DDGs each manned by less than seventy. Ships will have to be highly automated and autonomous. The trade off may be a bigger sustainment and replenishment force required to support such a large automated force. Supercarriers each requiring 6000 crews may become unsustainable in terms of manpower manning in the foreseeable future. Unless we can solve the technological hurdles to develop such highly automated firepower-heavy combatants, coming up with a 500 ship combatant force will be a very high hurdle…

11B-Mailclerk

How does one automate damage control of fighting ship?

-that- is the hard part.

Roombas and drones can swab decks and chip paint. But can they patch flooding blast holes and fight fires?

Combat Historian

Hopefully somewhere in the deep recesses of DARPA they are developing and testing out autonomous shipboard firefighting robots…

SteeleyI

One doesn’t care, one lets it sink.

An automated vessel would be smaller and faster (no crew spaces, no armor), but more importantly cheaper.

Cameron

The problem I have with that is, if the system gets knocked out by an EMP or hacked into, the whole ship could end up being paralyzed. I’m beginning to wonder if our military has already become way too dependent on technology. That could end up becoming a big Achilles’ Heel. I understand automation that eliminates some personnel but I question the wisdom of making the entire navy automated. Maybe I’m wrong, but that sounds like inviting trouble to me.

Combat Historian

That’s why this will be a very high technological obstacle to hurdle. Coming up with a lighter-manned higher-automated platform will also require higher-level protection of the platform’s electronics and automation systems from asymmetric attack by hacking, EMP, etc. There is no free lunch, and all of these strategies and courses of action will involve trade-offs and of course lots of money…

NHSparky

One of the issues on the McCain (IIRC) was that even the CPO “system expert” had no idea how to run or maintain the critical gear which failed and caused the collision.

Skippy

Well this won’t happen under a Biden stint

Combat Historian

Under Joey Brainbleed the Navy will get a bunch more of those crappy worthless littoral catamarans built by demonrat corporate bundlers at killer exorbitant prices…

Devtun

This ain’t 1983. We’re broke. Our debt at $27 trillion is now $6 trillion more than GDP.