This was a great springtime to be a navalist. Through the post-election fall and winter, we all knew that there would be a lot of talk about how to get to the promised 350 ship fleet … or even greater.

After over a decade and a half dominated by two ground wars in Asia, it was hoped that at last the existing and growing need to maintain our place as the premier global power at sea would be brought to the front, and it was.

As with many hopes, there are ideas, desires, and practicalities that bound them. Some of the best work on the topic have come from Bryan McGrath, Jerry Hendrix and Robert O’Brien – along with a handful of others who provided the reference points for others. All agree that we should have a larger fleet – we are all navalists after all – but there is a fair bit of creative friction on how to exactly get there, if we can.

The entering argument for any of these ideas and plans is a simple one; money. Regardless of promises and desire, there is a tremendous headwind out there for any aggressive drive to grow the fleet.

Navies are expensive, always have been. They also take a long time to build up and require even more treasure to maintain and properly man. We are on the cusp of the long awaited “Terrible 20s” where years of economic treading water are meeting up with expanding Baby Boomer and health care expansion strains on social spending, a recent doubling of the national debt, and the post war GDP growth model shifting in to a different, lower growth new normal. Throw in the need to recapitalize the SSBN fleet, and it is clear there will be no easy answer to find additional money without a maritime national security crisis.

We next have the by-product of the “Transformational Generation’s” clown-car of programs they were delivered to the fleet. Of the DDG-1000, LPD-17, and LCS generation showing how not to get things done, only the LPD-17, with enough treasure, has come through as a useful asset to the larger navy. All that time and treasure lost, and all we got was an adequate gold-plated amphib and very little else of use displacing water pierside.

As was the nature of the Transformational Generation, they did not leave anyone with a “Plan B.” Where in the past we always had a few designs in production or available for production in case of a mistake, we optimized ourselves in to an exquisite corner where there is no Plan B. Actually, there is a Plan B, but we lack the next item to take advantage of it;

Imagination. Why did we promise a LCS downselect and then punt? Why when we decided that LCS was pretty much as minimally useful of a Tiffany ship as it critics said it was, that we decided that its FF replacement would be … a LCS with more weight, less speed and a few more bolted on racks? (actually, that is a guess, we don’t know yet how the FrankenFrigate will be configured)

The logical option for the last decade that LCS was a known problem, was to license build a run of 1-2 dozen 6,000 ton or less EuroFrigates until we could design a decent one on our own. That would, however, require imagination along with the other shortfall;

Bold leadership. People are policy, and we have not seemed to have been blessed with the right combo of Executive Branch, Legislative Branch, and 4-star leadership to make a bold move in a better direction. We’ve had a few exceptional members in all the above, but like having only one good tire on your car, if the other 3 are flat or the wrong type, you’re not going to win any races.

What if we had a good set? The argument could be made that it wouldn’t make any difference because over the last few decades, we have allowed accretions to build up on a procurement system already running at an Ottoman level of inefficiency.

In spite of all our technology and Ivy League degree laden force, we are a less innovative, flexible, and productive entity than the USN of the first half of the previous century. That must change for any chance of coming out of the Terrible 20s with a fleet ready to meet the Chinese challenge with their fleet expected to be approaching 500 ships just 13 years from now.

The long term requirement is to radically change and streamline the procurement system so when the right people do show up, they can actually do something in a more effective and timely manner.

As Hendrix and O’Brien reminded us earlier today, in spite of all the talk of the last eight months, we are adrift with no substantial turn in sight;

Unfortunately, budget-cutters and sequestration fans have ensured that the fiscal year 2018 budget submission to Congress is essentially President Barack Obama’s shipbuilding plan, which will never approach 350 ships. Its fiscal constraint betrays a belief that deficits and debts are more threatening than rising powers eager to carve up the world’s oceans into their own spheres of influence. Such thinking is naïve and fails the president by undermining his promise to the American people.Trump’s words in Philadelphia show his understanding of a simple truth: American weakness is provocative.

President Trump has summed up his national security policy the same way Ronald Reagan did: “peace through strength.” Like Reagan, who famously built the nearly-600 ship fleet, Trump knows that rebuilding the fleet to 350 ships within his two terms in office is the type of strength necessary to keep the peace.

Let’s go back a couple of months to another of Hendrix and O’Brien’s articles, “How Trump Can Build a 350-Ship Navy” to review some of their points.

Here is the starting off point,

…Trump’s promise in September 2016 in Philadelphia to “build a Navy of 350 surface ships and submarines,” as well as his more recent commitment in Newport News, Virginia, to a “12 carrier Navy,” is so important. If he succeeds, he will join Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan as the presidents who have shaped the world and America through their commitment to the Navy.

Trump has set out to do nothing less than reverse the slide in naval power that was a hallmark of the Obama administration’s timid foreign policy. Rebuilding the Navy is the cornerstone of a “peace through strength” posture that will deter America’s adversaries and reassure her friends. It will have the added benefit, as experience has demonstrated, of growing the American economy through the addition of thousands of well-paying blue-collar jobs.

There are a few ways to get there.

First that usually comes to mind; new construction;

Presently the conversation within the Navy centers around taking the “warm” Ford(carrier), Burke (destroyer), Virginia (attack sub) and San Antonio(amphib) production lines and turning them “hot” by ramping them up to full capacity. While this step would have the result of improving the overall combat capabilities of the fleet, it would also add an average of $10 billion per year to the acquisitions budget of an already strained budget while yielding only an average of four additional ships per year.

While the Pentagon budget was increased by $54 billion in the president’s recent budget submission, the Navy can expect to receive only about a third of this amount. Most of those funds must go toward maintenance and readiness shortfalls left over from the Obama administration’s neglect. So, unfortunately, few dollars in the current budget proposal are left for building the new warships the president wants and America needs.

There is this fun twist that I fully support.

The Navy should continue building its highly capable Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, but at the current rate. Whereas two additional destroyers (the Navy already has 64 and is headed toward 80 by 2024) would cost $3.6 billion, that same money could purchase two robust frigates based upon the Italian and French FREMM class design; two 65-meter offshore patrol vessels, such as the Ambassador-class ships manufactured in the United States for Egypt; and two Joint High Speed Vessels modified with new surface-to-surface missiles to serve as fast missile attack ships. One benefit of the FREMM class frigate, the most robust of the Navy’s frigate options, is that it could be built under license at the Marinette, Wisconsin, shipyard very soon after that yard finishes the current run of the Freedom-class LCS. The Freedom-class LCS consortium includes the FREMM’s Italian manufacturer, which owns the Marinette yard.

Of course, in addition I wouldn’t mind a limited 4-ship with an option for 4-more BMD CG based on the LPD-17 hull (lots of MK-41 that could also hold TLAM for a mini-arsenal ship) … but I’m getting carried away a bit. Back to the article in question.

There is also what an Army guy would recognize as a ship type of “Stop Loss”,

…review … the ships scheduled to be decommissioned in order to determine their true condition. The five oldest cruisers in the force have been in the water for 30 years and are scheduled to be transferred to the “mothballed” Ready Reserve fleet at 35 years, but overhauls, refitting and service life extension programs could conservatively add five to 10 years to their lives. This work would have to begin immediately and would not be inexpensive—estimates range as high as $300 million per ship—but this option must be explored. Similarly, the Navy is looking to retire nine of its 14 mine counter measure ships over the next eight years. These ships fill a critical warfighting niche and were supposed to be relieved by littoral combat ships (LCS), but the mine-hunting systems that were to be installed on the LCS have not matured as expected, creating a strategic hole in the Navy’s spectrum of capabilities. The mine countermeasure ships are generally seen to be in good condition. Taken together, the service-life extensions of the cruisers and mine sweepers would add 14 platforms to the Navy’s ship count, decreasing the gap between the current plan and a 350-ship fleet from 44 to 30 ships.

The third one is one familiar to anyone who has seen previous “emergency” build ups … that is digging in to the closet,

Another option is to take a page from Reagan’s book and find capable ships in the nation’s “ghost,” or Ready Reserve, fleet. The ghost fleet is a collection of ships kept in wartime reserve. Decommissioned and preserved, they sit in the water in various strategic locations around the country ready to be called upon in a national emergency.

Currently, there are 11 Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates that are deemed too old and expensive to maintain by the Navy but are highly desired by allied navies such as Turkey, Taiwan and Egypt. These proven frigates could be refitted and equipped with modern anti-surface and anti-air missiles to get them back into the fleet and allow them to contribute to presence and escort missions. This is precisely what our allies have done when they have purchased the Perry-class frigates from us at a fraction of the cost of building a new warship.
Additionally, there are three Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruisers that were decommissioned with 10 years of hull-life left in them. Each ship was scheduled to be scrapped by the Obama administration, but that decision can be immediately reversed. For an investment of $550 million each, an eighth of the price of a new cruiser, these warships could be upgraded with new vertical launch systems and returned to the fleet with 122 VLS tubes stocked with a variety of missiles, including the Tomahawk land attack missiles that struck Syria last week.

Navy leadership mostly threw a patronizingly wet blanket on this recently,

Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, head of Naval Sea Systems Command, told Defense & Aerospace Report’s Vago Muradian that most of the ships in the inactive fleet are too far gone to make a major revival worth it.
…
“Most of those ships, from a combat systems perspective, are pretty obsolete,” Moore said. “We probably wouldn’t bring them back and they’ve kind of been spare-parts lockers the last couple of years.”
…
“We’ll go look at the FFGs, see if there is utility there,” Moore said. “We’ll look at the combat logistics force, see if there’s utility there. Of the carriers that are in inactive force, probably Kitty Hawk is the one that you could think about. But we studied that when we decommissioned Enterprise, and the carriers are pretty old. So, there is limited opportunity in the inactive fleet but we’ll look at it ship-by-ship.”

This has “slow roll” written all over it.

That leaves us with new construction and Stop-Loss – but before anything else; options, imagination, or bold leadership – we need to see the money.

Let’s end up with McGrath’s note from the end of May,

Perhaps the best possible outcome would be a long-term shipbuilding plan that adds ships in FY 2019 and beyond to hot production lines, accelerates future surface combatant design and acquisition, and retains and modernizes ships still in service that can be extended far beyond their current planned end of service lives.

Seapower advocates looking for a fleet expansion should not yet lose hope, as it appears the Trump administration is wisely and methodically taking the first steps toward sustained growth. But navies grow slowly, and effort must be sustained across many years, requiring sustained presidential leadership and attention. Whether this can be expected of the current president remains to be seen.

I find myself and my Eeyore Caucus closer to his realistically cautious, but ultimately optimistic view of the near future.

Oh, one other thing; better than average chance that by 2021 we will find ourselves in another recession. Absent sudden shocks, 2019 by the earliest, 2022 by the absolute latest. Make sure and take that in to account in the march towards 350+/-.