Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly
In his newest regular Secnav Vector message, launched today, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly seems attempting to abate concerns increased by current records in protection magazines recommending that the U.S Navy might be pulling back from the 355 ship fight pressure objective.
“For the past several years the debate over defining what enhanced naval power really means has centered around the aspirations for a 355 ship Navy,” he creates. “Today, this 355 ship objective is the unwritten law, as laid out in the bipartisan ‘Securing our Homeland by Increasing our Powers on the Seas’ Act, authorized right into regulation by President Trump in 2018. The 355 target objective was based upon our 2016 Force Structure Assessment (FSA), which suggested not just an overall variety of ships however likewise the abilities called for to attend to arising safety and security risks. We have actually been functioning in the direction of this objective over the last a number of years, however I am not pleased with the progression we have actually made in regards to reaching it within a sensible and also tactically pertinent duration. As an outcome, I have actually asked Navy and also Marine Corps management ahead up with a strategy to reach this objective within the following ten years.
“To develop this plan, we will be relying upon the Integrated Naval Force Structure Assessment (INFSA). The INFSA will be the first time the Navy-Marine Corps team has ever worked together to create a truly integrated naval force design. Despite some erroneous recent reporting, all of these initial plans reflect a continued net increase in ships in Fiscal Year (FY) 21 towards our goal of 355 vessels or more, not a decrease.”
“Today, our Navy is less than half as large as when it last faced a major peer competitor in the late 1980s,” states the Vector message. “Meanwhile, U.S. gross domestic product has grown from $5 trillion in 1988 to $19.5 trillion. Our trade by sea has since tripled, from $230 billion to over $880 billion. Almost the entire internet and trillions of dollars in trade are carried today on a largely unsecured network of undersea cables. Four decades later, we simply have a lot more to protect from increasingly capable maritime adversaries who will present challenges to our economic security and indeed, our very way of life.”
But the Vector message later on keeps in mind that “the reach a best pressure framework including 355 ships … is a high one. We presently stand at 293 ships, up from 275 simply a couple of years back. To reach, and also much more notably maintain, a 355 ship pressure within a sensible duration can need an extra $20-30 billion in the Navy’s yearly spending plan of around $160 billion. The straightforward reality is that a fleet of 30% even more ships is mosting likely to need a much larger topline to develop, guy, run, and also maintain.
“The mathematical truth is that based on current budget expectations, we can only build and sustain approximately 305 ships by traditional measures of what counts as a ‘battle force ship.’ Therefore, we are compelled to look at the 2016 FSA 355 ship goal differently, and to redefine whether that number is relevant to what it truly means to serve as an effective integrated future naval force.”
“In reviewing our 355 ship objective, we need to take into consideration just how to change prices far from premium systems to a bigger variety of smaller sized, however still very qualified ships. In FY18 bucks, the typical price of a ship throughout the Cold War ‘600 ship Navy’ age was around $1 billion. It is currently two times that. This pattern is not lasting, so we need to change the price contour on every one of our ships in the various other instructions– and also they need to supply the dispersed abilities we need. Such a change can enable wider existence, minimized manning, and also much longer get to via a considerable rise in hypersonic tools, higher stealth, and also progressed anti-ISR abilities. All this need to be attained via reduced purchase and also sustainment prices– a tactical important.
“We are also considering how unmanned surface and subsurface platforms not traditionally counted as ‘battle force ships’ (mostly because they have never existed at scale) should figure into our force mix. These platforms will not only allow us to distribute and conceal lethality, but also do so at reduced cost and in ways multiplied through its integration and interdependencies with the Joint Force. Whether it consists of 305 ships, 355, or 500, it is difficult to imagine a future scenario in which American naval power will not be the critical piece of an integrated multi-service, multi-domain national security campaign for lasting peace and prosperity.”
Read the complete Vector message HERE
