BUDGETING FOR NAVAL FORCES:

STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY

AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL

The Congress of the United States

Congressional Budget Office
NOTES

Unless otherwise indicated, all dollar amounts in this study are in 2000 dollars.

Numbers in the text and tables may not add up to totals because of rounding.

The cover shows artists' representations of (from top to bottom) the Virginia class attack submarine,

the LPD-17 amphibious transport dock, the DD-21 land-attack destroyer, and the CVNX aircraft

carrier. (Drawings courtesy of the U.S. Navy and Electric Boat Corporation.)
Preface

How much money does the Department of the Navy need to sustain its current force of

about 300 ships and 3,500 aircraft? Many analysts argue that the service will need

a larger budget in the future if it is to maintain a high state of readiness, modernize

its ships and aircraft, and improve the quality of life for its sailors, pilots, and marines. If

the Navy cannot sustain its fleet under current budget levels, what are some possible alternatives to its current force structure and modernization plans?

This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study—prepared for the Subcommittee on

Sea Power of the Senate Committee on Armed Services—examines the Navy’s missions, its

modernization plans, and the budgetary implications of supporting the service’s current and

planned fleets through 2020. It also looks at four alternative force structures that the Navy

might be able to sustain at roughly its current funding level of $90 billion (adjusted for

inflation). In keeping with CBO’s mandate to provide objective analysis, this study makes

no recommendations.

Eric J. Labs of CBO’s National Security Division wrote the study under the general

supervision of Christopher Jehn and R. William Thomas. Raymond Hall of the Budget

Analysis Division prepared the cost analysis under the general supervision of Mick Miller.

Sally Sagraves thoroughly reviewed the manuscript before publication. The author would

also like to thank Lane Pierrot, Jo Ann Vines, Dawn Regan, and Kent Christensen of CBO,

Ivan Eland of the Cato Institute, and numerous employees of the Department of the Navy for

their help. Robert Shackleton, Arlene Holen, and Barry Anderson of CBO and the late

James L. George provided thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this study. (The

assistance of external participants implies no responsibility for the final product, which rests

solely with the author and CBO.)

Leah Mazade and Christian Spoor edited the study, and Christine Bogusz proofread it.

Judith Cromwell produced drafts of the manuscript, Kathryn Quattrone prepared the study

for publication, and Annette Kalicki prepared the electronic versions for CBO’s Web site.

Dan L. Crippen

Director

October 2000

This study and other CBO publications

are available at CBO's Web site:

www.cbo.gov

Contents

SUMMARY ix

ONE THE U.S. NAVY IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD 1

The Evolution of Naval Strategy and Missions

Since the Cold War 2

The Current Organization of the Navy 3

Determining How Big the Navy Should Be 6

Procuring and Modernizing Navy Ships 8

Foreign Threats Facing the U.S. Navy 12

TWO CAN THE NAVY MAINTAIN A 300-SHIP FLEET

AT CURRENT BUDGET LEVELS? 17

The Navy's Modernization Plans Through 2005 17

Sustaining the 300-Ship Fleet Beyond 2005 18

The Increasing Age of the Fleet 21

THREE ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES OF FUTURE

NAVAL FORCES 23

Analyzing the Alternatives 23

Alternative I: Rely on Carriers and Focus on

Providing Forward Presence 24

Alternative II: Use Other Ships for Presence

Missions 27

Alternative III: Build a Submarine Strike Navy 30

Alternative IV: Reorient the Navy to Provide

More Support to the Marine Corps 34

Conclusions 38
vi STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

TABLES

S-1. Distribution of Navy Ships, 1990 and 2000 x

S-2. The Navy's Planned Purchases of New Ships

and Aircraft Through 2020 xi

S-3. Force Structure Under the Navy's Current Plan

and Four Alternatives xii

1. Distribution of Navy Ships, 1990 and 2000 4

2. Drawdown of Navy Ships Between 1990 and 2003 7

3. Capabilities of Navy Attack Submarines 10

4. The Navy's Planned Purchases of New Ships and

Aircraft Through 2020 18

5. Estimated Annual Budget Needed to Sustain the

Planned Navy Through Fiscal Year 2020 Compared

with Annual Funding Under the 2001 FYDP 19

6. Average Age of Navy Ships, 2000 and 2020 21

7. Force Structure Under Alternative I Compared with

the Navy's Current Plan 26

8. Force Structure Under Alternative II Compared with

the Navy's Current Plan 29

9. Force Structure Under Alternative III Compared with

the Navy's Current Plan 32

10. Force Structure Under Alternative IV Compared with

the Navy's Current Plan 36

11. Distribution of Ships Under the Navy's Current Plan

and Four Alternatives 39

FIGURES

1. The Navy's Surface Combatant Force, 2000 and 2020 11

2. Naval Force Levels of the United States and

Selected Countries, 1999 13
CONTENTS vii

BOXES

1. The Role of the U.S. Coast Guard 5

2. Are Surface Ships Becoming More Vulnerable? 15
Summary

I

n the view of the Congressional Budget Office

(CBO), the U.S. Navy will have trouble carrying

out its current acquisition and modernization plans

without a substantial increase in annual funding over

the next 20 years. If such an increase does not occur,

how could the Navy structure itself to perform its missions in the coming decades?

The Navy’s strategy has evolved since the Cold

War—from combating a large Soviet fleet in the

world’s deep oceans to confronting smaller, regional

powers in coastal (littoral) areas. Nevertheless, although the size of the Navy has shrunk dramatically

during the past decade, its composition has largely

remained the same. The service continues to buy

many of the same weapons that it did during the Cold

War. In addition, it plans to build a more-modern version of each major type of vessel it uses. But CBO

estimates that carrying out those plans—and sustaining the Navy at its current size of about 300 ships—

will cost $105 billion annually (adjusted for inflation)

through 2020. That amount is about $17 billion more

per year than the service receives now.

Without more funding, the Navy will face tradeoffs in terms of which missions it can perform or how

well it can perform them. This study presents four

alternative force structures, each of which emphasizes

one of the Navy’s current missions. Each of the alternative fleets would cost roughly $90 billion per year

(in today’s dollars) through 2020. For that sum, the

future Navy could focus on:

o Continuing to provide visible military presence

around the world (known as forward presence)

with aircraft carriers but fewer other ships;

o Providing forward presence with other surface

combat ships, including a new multipurpose

presence vessel, which would be designed specifically for littoral operations;

o Performing strike missions (attacking targets on

land) with a fleet of new strike submarines,

which would be less vulnerable to regional foes

armed with antiship cruise missiles, mines, or

small submarines than U.S. surface ships would

be; or

o Providing more support to the amphibious operations of the Marine Corps.

Those alternatives are by no means exhaustive. They

simply illustrate some of the directions that the future

Navy might take at today’s funding level.

Conceptually, determining what missions the

Navy should perform or whether it has enough ships

ought to begin by assessing the U.S. role in the postCold War world and by identifying specific foreign

policy objectives. From that analysis would follow a

national security strategy, which would include the

option of military force and how it might be used to

execute that strategy. Planners could then determine

the missions that the Navy (or any of the services)
x STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

should be ready to carry out, the Navy’s size and composition, and the level of funding necessary to support

that force structure. However, whether or to what extent the current Navy is consistent with the Administration’s national security strategy is beyond the scope of

this analysis. Instead, this study examines the size,

composition, and funding requirements of the Navy

with only general reference to the current national security strategy.

The Navy in the PostCold War World

Throughout the Cold War, the Navy had a number of

clearly defined missions: maintaining control of the

seas, operating the sea-based “leg” of the United

States’ nuclear deterrent, monitoring the Soviet fleet of

ballistic missile submarines, and defeating any enemy

concentration of naval power should war occur. To

carry out those missions, the Navy invested heavily in

attack submarines and other weapon systems for antisubmarine warfare. It also equipped its surface combatants with the sophisticated Aegis air-defense system. During most of the 1980s, the Navy’s goal for

its force—what it needed to fulfill its main missions

and other duties—was a fleet of 600 ships, including

100 attack submarines and 15 aircraft carriers.

By the mid-1980s, it had become clear that the

U.S. Navy far outstripped the Soviet fleet. Shortly

thereafter, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold

War ended. The Navy’s civilian and military leadership began to redefine the service’s roles and missions.

Those efforts resulted in the white papers . . . From

the Sea in 1992 and Forward . . . From the Sea in

1994.

With those papers, the Navy’s doctrine evolved

to focus on a different kind of threat and on a mission

that encompasses both peacetime and war. That evolution shifted the Navy’s wartime mission from fighting the Soviet navy to projecting military power

ashore in the world's littoral areas against regional

foes (as part of the overall U.S. strategy of being able

to fight two nearly simultaneous major theater wars).

The Navy’s peacetime mission emphasizes forward

presence through regular patrols and the stationing of

naval vessels around the world. Training and practicing to fight a large opponent with a global deep-water

navy is very different from training and practicing to

fight much smaller opponents who operate in the

littorals. For example, tracking Soviet ballistic missile

submarines in the quiet, deep waters of open oceans

Summary Table 1.

Distribution of Navy Ships, 1990 and 2000

1990 2000

Number

of Ships

Percentage

of Fleet

Number

of Ships

Percentage

of Fleet

Aircraft Carriers 15 3 12 4

Surface Combatants 213 37 116 37

Attack Submarines 97 17 56 18

Ballistic Missile Submarines 35 6 18 6

Amphibious Ships 66 11 39 12

Combat Logistics Ships 60 10 34 11

Mine Warfare Ships and Fleet Auxiliaries 88 15 41 13

Total 574 100 316 100

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office based on data from the Navy.
SUMMARY xi

requires different skills and equipment from those

needed to detect diesel-electric submarines in the

noisy, shallow waters of coastal regions.

Yet despite that shift in doctrine, the Navy continued throughout the 1990s to buy weapons similar to

those it bought during the Cold War, including Aegisequipped ships, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and

attack submarines. Although the total number of ships

has dropped from 574 in 1990 to 316 by 2000, the

distribution of forces among the Navy’s three major

warfare “communities”—air, surface, and submarine

—is similar to what it was during the Cold War (see

Summary Table 1). Although Navy officials might

disagree, today’s force could be characterized as a

reduced version of the Cold War Navy.

Can the Navy Sustain a 

300-Ship Fleet?

CBO’s analysis of the Navy's budgetary and procurement plans suggests that the service will have difficulty maintaining a fleet of 300 ships within its current

annual funding of about $90 billion. That funding

level is unlikely to cover all of the ships and aircraft

the Navy will need to buy and also support readiness

and a good quality of life for the service’s sailors,

pilots, and marines. To sustain its 300-ship fleet, its

inventory of aircraft, and the infrastructure that supports them, the Navy will need an annual budget of

about $105 billion in today’s dollars—$17 billion

more than it is expected to receive, on average, under

the Administration's Future Years Defense Program

(FYDP) for fiscal years 2001 through 2005.

The Navy plans to build 45 ships between 2000

and 2005, or seven and a half ships per year (see Summary Table 2). Those vessels include more of the current models of aircraft carriers and destroyers. They

also include new designs, such as the DD-21 destroyer, the Virginia class attack submarine, and the

LPD-17 amphibious ship. Assuming that the average

service life of a Navy vessel is 35 years, that planned

shipbuilding rate is sufficient to keep the Navy at

about 300 ships through the coming decade. Eventually, however, as more ships reach the end of their serSummary Table 2.

The Navy's Planned Purchases of New Ships

and Aircraft Through 2020

2000-2005 2006-2020a

Ships

Aircraft carriers 1 4

Surface combatants 14 48

Submarines 5 38

Amphibious ships 11 5

All others 14 33

Total 45 128

Aircraft

Fighters 267 219

Strike aircraft 0 984

Medium lift aircraft 246 374

Trainers 160 210

All others 37 439

Total 710 2,226

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office based on data from the

Navy.

a. These purchases represent the Navy’s preliminary projections for

the future rather than its official requirements or programmatic

decisions.

vice lives than are replaced, the Navy must buy larger

numbers of ships or the size of the fleet will decline.

With respect to aircraft, the Navy is planning to

buy planes in smaller quantities than required to maintain the current inventory. To sustain a fleet of about

3,500 aircraft, the Navy needs to buy, on average, 152

planes and helicopters per year. Under the 2001

FYDP, it will purchase 710 aircraft through 2005, or

an average of 118 a year.

Alternatives for Structuring

Future Naval Forces

If the Navy does not receive more resources in the future than it is getting now, it will eventually have to

reduce its force structure. That could be done in many
xii STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

ways. In this analysis, CBO assumes that the Navy’s

funding is fixed at $90 billion (adjusted for future inflation)—roughly its average budget for the next five

years under the 2001 FYDP.

CBO constructed four alternative fleets that the

Department of the Navy could pursue between today

and 2020 to fit within a $90 billion budget. Each of

the options emphasizes a particular portion of the

Navy's existing force structure. They illustrate different ways in which the Navy could reduce its fleet further and still replace older ships with newer and usually more-capable ones. Which of the alternatives is

the “best” choice for the force structure, under the

budgetary assumptions of this analysis, depends on

how the world evolves between now and 2020 and on

what missions the Navy is asked to perform.

Each alternative has advantages and disadvantages, which are discussed in the context of the different directions that the world might take over the next

20 years. It should be emphasized, however, that the

alternatives illustrate only what a smaller Navy might

look like; this analysis does not consider the numerous

other potential ways to structure U.S. naval forces.

Alternative I: Rely on 

Aircraft Carriers and Focus 

on Providing Forward Presence

This option would keep the Navy’s fleet of aircraft

carriers at its current size, 12, which would mean limiting the numbers of other types of ships. Proponents

of keeping a large carrier fleet would argue that maintaining a robust forward presence with those ships

deters aggressors, reassures friends, and allows the

United States to respond more quickly in a crisis than

if its fleet sailed from U.S. ports.

Summary Table 3.

Force Structure Under the Navy's Current Plan and Four Alternatives

Navy’s

Current Plana

Alternative I:

Keep a 12-Carrier

Navy for Forward

Presence

Alternative II:

Use Other

Ships for

Presence

Missions

Alternative III:

Build a

Submarine

Strike Navy

Alternative IV:

Reorient the

Navy to

Provide More

Support to the

Marine Corps

Aircraft Carriers 12 12 7 7 10

Surface Combatants 117 83 118 58 93

Attack Submarines 55 25 34 72 30

Strike Submarines 0 0 0 50 0

Ballistic Missile Submarines 14 10 10 10 10

Amphibious Ships 36 24 6 18 43

Combat Logistics Ships 31 26 26 26 26

Mine Warfare Ships 16 16 16 16 47

Fleet Auxiliaries 23 23 23 29 23

Total Ships 304 219 240 286 282

Aircraft Carrier Air Wings 11 11 6 6 9

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office.

a. Assumes that the Navy achieves the force goal of the Quadrennial Defense Review, after adjustments in 2007 and 2012, plus five additional

submarines and one additional surface combatant. 
SUMMARY xiii

To pay for 12 carriers and their upkeep, the

Navy would have to reduce the surface combatant

force from the currently planned level of 117 ships to

83 by 2020—a decline of almost 30 percent. Under

this option, that force would consist of 58 Arleigh

Burke destroyers and 25 “sea dominance” versions of

the DD-21 destroyer, which is a less-capable ship than

the version of the DD-21 that the Navy is now planning to buy. The current fleet’s 27 Ticonderoga class

cruisers would be retired and not replaced.

Other cuts under Alternative I would include reducing the number of attack submarines from 55 to 25

and the number of ballistic missile submarines from

14 to 10 (see Summary Table 3). This fleet would

also have fewer support (logistics) ships than the

planned Navy. Because the option emphasizes aircraft

carriers, the Navy and Marine Corps would buy both

the F/A-18E/F fighter aircraft and the Joint Strike

Fighter.

Overall, this force would support the same level

of forward presence with aircraft carriers as the

planned Navy. It would be effective for carrying out

that mission day to day in regions considered vital to

U.S. interests and for responding quickly to any rapidly developing crises there. This fleet would also be

an effective instrument for controlling the seas. However, the Navy would have less ability to use surface

combatants to fill any gaps that arose in maintaining

forward presence with aircraft carriers. In addition,

other presence missions that do not require carriers

(such as operations to prevent drug smuggling or joint

exercises with other navies) would probably have to be

curtailed.

Furthermore, this alternative’s fleet would be

able to fight two nearly simultaneous major theater

wars, but it would be less flexible in performing unmanned strike missions because it would have fewer

Tomahawk missile launchers. It would also have

fewer attack submarines available for forward deployment. That limitation, according to a 1999 Pentagon

review, would make it difficult for the attack submarine force to perform either its peacetime or its wartime missions.

Alternative II: Use Other Ships 

for Presence Missions

Some critics have argued that the Navy is not designing and building the right kinds of ships to operate

mainly in coastal waters. This option illustrates one

way to address that criticism. It would cut the number

of aircraft carriers and use the resulting savings to

develop a surface combatant force especially designed

for overseas presence. Under this alternative, the

Navy would have seven aircraft carriers, 118 surface

combatants (58 Arleigh Burke destroyers and 60

“presence” ships, described below), six large flat-deck

amphibious ships, 34 attack submarines, 10 ballistic

missile submarines, and slightly fewer support ships

than under the Navy's current plan (see Summary

Table 3).

Instead of building the surface combatant force

around the DD-21 destroyer, the Navy would commission a new type of presence ship. It would be a multipurpose vessel that could perform many of the missions in littoral areas that are now distributed among

several classes of ships. As suggested by Admiral

William Owens (former Deputy Chief of Naval Operations and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff),

the ship would resemble a hybrid of a surface combatant and a flat-deck amphibious ship. It could carry

and deploy marines, shoot Tomahawk and Standard

missiles from vertical launch system cells, and provide

long-range gunfire support to troops on shore.

This alternative would provide a robust forward

presence. The U.S. carrier that is currently based in

Japan could provide full-time presence in the Western

Pacific. The remaining carriers could provide either a

modest level of presence in both the Mediterranean

and Persian Gulf regions or nearly full-time presence

in one of those two areas. At the same time, this option would allow the Navy to maintain eight presence

ships and five attack submarines in continuous forward deployment.

What this option would add to performing the

presence mission, however, it would subtract from the
xiv STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Navy’s ability to fight two major theater wars. Even

several presence ships would be unlikely to prove as

effective in wartime as an aircraft carrier. One criticism of the hybrid presence ship is that it could perform many missions but none of them optimally. Yet

in other ways, the presence ship could be quite flexible

because, as a large multipurpose ship, it could adapt

more easily to changes in technology than could

smaller, more specialized craft.

Alternative III: Build a Submarine

Strike Navy

This alternative would deemphasize the forward presence mission in favor of increasing the Navy's ability

to carry out large strike operations with missiles. In

the future, the areas where the Navy may operate

could be dominated by regional powers armed with

large numbers of relatively inexpensive antiship cruise

missiles and small diesel-electric submarines. Because

such developments could make surface ships more

vulnerable, this alternative would build more submarines to perform the strike missions that are now conducted by surface combatants and carrier-based aircraft. The quietness of submarines makes them ideal

for stealthy strike operations from the sea.

The fleet under this option would be very different from the force structure that the Navy now envisions (see Summary Table 3). In this alternative, the

Navy would design and acquire 50 new “strike submarines”; like the current Trident ballistic missile submarines, each strike submarine would have two crews.

Those new submarines would be large vessels with the

means to launch hundreds, if not thousands, of various

land-attack weapons, including missiles and unmanned

vehicles. This alternative would also increase the attack submarine force to 72 (compared with 55 under

the Navy’s current plan), for a total fleet of 122 submarines. The Navy considers an attack submarine

force of 72 to be the minimum size necessary to meet

all of its peacetime requirements for presence and intelligence collection by 2020. The surface combatant

force would be reduced to just the 58 Arleigh Burke

destroyers, whose principal mission would be to protect the seven remaining aircraft carriers. The amphibious fleet would be cut by half and the number of

support ships reduced slightly, but the number of submarine tenders (vessels that provide a floating maintenance facility) would jump from two to eight.

The Navy’s principal mission under this alternative would be to provide a capability for land-attack

warfare with missiles that would be difficult to defeat

or destroy—in military terms, this fleet would be

“highly survivable.” About 25 strike submarines

(each with two crews) and 12 attack submarines could

be forward deployed continuously, ready to strike a

potential aggressor with a large amount of ordnance.

However, the Tomahawk missiles that submarines fire

today are not as flexible a weapon as aircraft launched

from carriers. The major virtue of this option is the

fleet’s ability to strike with great power and yet survive in an environment in which surface ships may not

be able to operate safely. In addition, as new technologies were developed to make missiles smaller, more

versatile, and more accurate, the bombardment capability of the strike submarine force would increase dramatically. Whether that capability could ever exceed

the capability of today’s carrier fleet, though, is an

open question.

Of the four options examined in this study, Alternative III would be the least effective in providing visible forward presence during peacetime. With so few

surface ships in the fleet, substantial periods of time

could elapse during which large U.S. ships were unavailable in different regions of the world. In wartime,

however, this fleet could effectively deny other navies

or civilian ships the use of the sea because of its large

attack submarine force.

Alternative IV: Reorient the Navy 

to Provide More Support to 

the Marine Corps

Shaping the fleet to provide more support to the Marine Corps may be a logical approach to force structure in the post-Cold War world. The United States is

unlikely to face a global competitor like the Soviet

Union for many years to come. At worst, it may

someday confront one or more smaller, regional powers that endanger U.S. interests by, for example,

threatening allies or interfering with the free flow of

commercial shipping. The amphibious assault capabilities of the Marine Corps could prove useful against
SUMMARY xv

such opponents, should the United States need to attack them with ground forces. In addition, the Corps

is well suited to perform most of the missions that

U.S. forces have been involved in since the end of the

Cold War: peacekeeping operations, humanitarian interventions, hostage rescues, and evacuations of civilian personnel. The Marines are structured and trained

to conduct precisely those missions, which often arise

with little warning.

Compared with the Navy’s current plan, this alternative would spend more on amphibious ships. It

would buy 12 large helicopter carriers (either the LHA

or LHD class) and 12 LSD transport docks, the same

numbers slated for purchase in the current plan. However, this option would also buy 19 LPD-17 dock

landing ships to the current plan’s 12 (see Summary

Table 3). The extra seven LPD-17s would allow the

Navy to meet the Marine Corps's goal of being able to

transport the assault echelons of three Marine expeditionary brigades.

In addition, Alternative IV would buy 31 more

mine-clearing ships than the Navy’s current plan calls

for. To pay for those ships, it would cut the carrier

force to 10 and the surface combatant force to 93 (58

Arleigh Burke destroyers and 35 maritime support

versions of the DD-21). The submarine force would

also shrink: the number of attack submarines would

fall to 30, and the number of ballistic missile submarines would drop to 10.

The central mission of the Navy under this alternative would be to support the Marine Corps in any

operation it might have to conduct from the sea. This

fleet would be better suited for that role than the fleet

created under any other alternative, including the

Navy’s current plan. It would provide more transport

capacity, more mine-clearing capability, and more

gunfire support. But by orienting its fleet primarily

toward supporting the Marine Corps, the Navy would

give up some capabilities—most notably its performance of deep-strike missions. Under this alternative,

those missions would fall to the Air Force, and the

Navy’s carrier aircraft would be used to provide closer

air support to the Marine Corps.

Conclusions

The Navy’s roles and missions in the post-Cold War

environment are still evolving. The old Navy of the

open ocean is becoming a Navy that focuses on

coastal warfare. But uncertainty abounds regarding

the right combination of ships and aircraft for that new

orientation. Compounding that uncertainty is the reality that the Navy’s budget is not large enough to pay

for all of its programs—including those designed to

conduct coastal warfare. To purchase what it wants,

the service must either receive a substantial increase in

procurement funding or cut its force structure.

As the Navy seeks a balance between its roles,

missions, and budget, there are many alternatives to its

current plans that it could explore. This study outlines

four such options. Each has strengths and weaknesses

in its approach to different threats and environments,

and each focuses on performing one of the Navy’s varied missions. Determining which alternative (or combination of them) is “best” depends on which missions

one considers most important and which threats or

challenges the United States is likely to face well into

the 21st century.
Chapter One

The U.S. Navy in the

Post-Cold War World

The U.S. Navy has changed its doctrine and reduced its size since the mid-1980s, when the

United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War. Day to day, however, the

Navy continues to perform many of the same tasks

that it did 15 years ago. The service’s budget has

shrunk by about 35 percent since 1985 (adjusting for

inflation); consequently, fewer ships are deployed

overseas. But the number of operations the Navy has

been called on to carry out has risen. If that trend

continues, the Navy will find it increasingly difficult to

modernize the fleet, maintain the same level of operational readiness and overseas presence as in the past,

and provide a good quality of life for its sailors, pilots,

and marines.

In this study, the Congressional Budget Office

(CBO) focuses on four questions that are central to the

Navy’s future:

o What missions might the Navy be asked to perform between now and 2020? 

o Does the Navy have a viable plan to sustain and

modernize its current fleet of about 300 ships?

o Can the Navy pay for that plan if its funding is

limited to an inflation-adjusted level of $90 billion per year (roughly the average amount budgeted under the Future Years Defense Program

for fiscal years 2001 through 2005)?

o What are some possible alternatives to the

Navy’s current force structure and modernization

plan?

Conceptually, determining what missions the

Navy should perform or whether it has enough ships

to do so ought to begin by understanding the U.S. role

in the post-Cold War world and how specific foreign

policy objectives would support that role. From that

understanding would follow a national security strategy, which would include the option of military force

and how it might be used to execute that strategy.

Then, planners could determine the missions that the

Navy (or any of the services) should be ready to perform, the Navy’s size and composition, and the level

of funding necessary to support its force structure.1

Although vital, questions about the role of U.S. interests and foreign policy objectives in shaping the nation’s military strategy or the Navy’s missions, structure, and budget are beyond the scope of this analysis.

So are questions of whether or to what extent the current Navy is consistent with the national security strategy.

1. Very different foreign policies and national security strategies could

lead to very different naval missions, force structures, and budget levels. For example, U.S. foreign policy today calls for an active presence in world affairs; consequently, the Navy deploys a large percentage of its fleet overseas in support of that policy. A foreign policy that

articulated a much less active role for the United States might well

lead to many fewer ships being deployed overseas, a smaller fleet, and

a smaller budget for the Navy.
2 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Instead, this study analyzes the size, composition, and funding requirements of the Navy with only

general reference to the current national security strategy. The core objectives of that strategy, as articulated by President Clinton, are to enhance U.S. security, bolster the nation’s economic prosperity, and promote democracy abroad.2

 To achieve those goals, the

United States pursues a variety of lesser objectives.

They include maintaining a military presence in many

regions around the globe, promoting an open trading

system, exporting U.S. goods and services, protecting

the flow of oil from exporters to importers, and maintaining the military capability to win two major theater

wars nearly simultaneously as well as to conduct

smaller operations.

Sea power—through the missions that the Navy

and its related service, the Marine Corps, perform—is

a fundamental element in achieving both the broad and

the specific goals of the national security strategy.

This chapter reviews changes in the strategy and missions of the Navy since the Cold War, the Navy’s current force structure, recent attempts to determine the

optimum size of that force, the service’s plans for procuring and modernizing ships, and potential threats to

U.S. naval forces around the world.

The Evolution of Naval 

Strategy and Missions 

Since the Cold War

During the Cold War, the U.S. Navy’s main mission

was to counter the threat posed by Soviet maritime

forces. If a war had broken out in Europe, Soviet submarines and long-range bombers would have tried to

disrupt supplies and reinforcements being shipped

from the United States to Europe. Soviet (and now

Russian) naval forces in the European theater have

always been geographically constrained. Thus, before

they could attack U.S. resupply convoys crossing the

North Atlantic, Soviet submarines and bombers would

have had to traverse two relatively narrow waterways:

one between Greenland and Iceland and the other between Iceland and the United Kingdom (an area commonly called the GIUK gap at that time).

As a result, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) advocated a strategy of “sea control,”

which called for setting up defensive barriers between

Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom. NATO

antisubmarine forces—including U.S. subs—would

try to intercept Soviet submarines before they reached

the Atlantic Ocean. Similarly, U.S. aircraft based on

carriers and in Greenland, Iceland, and the United

Kingdom would attempt to shoot down Soviet bombers before those bombers could use their long-range

cruise missiles against NATO shipping.

As the Soviet and U.S. navies grew during the

Cold War, the U.S. Navy developed an offensive strategy in the mid-1980s called the maritime strategy. It

called for attacking Soviet maritime forces as far forward as possible—in their home bases or as they traversed the Norwegian Sea en route to the Atlantic.

Navies are much easier to find and more vulnerable

when they are in port or in more confined waters. The

maritime strategy argued that if Soviet forces were

found and attacked under those conditions, they would

be much less likely to reach the open ocean and disrupt NATO sea control. As part of that strategy, U.S.

attack submarines would try to destroy not only Soviet

subs capable of firing nuclear ballistic missiles but

also the attack submarines guarding them in defensive

bastions near the Soviet homeland.3

In either the sea control or the maritime strategy,

defense planners presumed that the Soviet Union

would attack U.S. vessels in the open ocean with submarines and land-based bombers. Consequently, during the Cold War, the U.S. Navy made investing in

attack submarines and antisubmarine warfare systems

its highest priority. A close second was equipping its

surface ships with sophisticated systems to defend

against attack from the air. In the later portion of the

maritime strategy—once Soviet maritime forces had

been eliminated—deep-strike aircraft from carriers

would be used to attack the Soviet Union itself. On

the basis of those strategies, the U.S. Navy's goal dur2. The White House, A National Security Strategy for a New Century

(December 1999), p. iii.

3. Admiral William A. Owens, High Seas: The Naval Passage to an

Uncharted World (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995), pp.

3-4.
CHAPTER ONE THE U.S. NAVY IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD 3

ing most of the 1980s was to have a fleet of 600 ships,

including 100 attack submarines and 15 aircraft carriers.

With the end of the Cold War and the dramatic

decay of the Russian navy, the United States was left

without a major rival for control of the seas. As a result, the U.S. Navy began to question its mission. It

moved away from the maritime strategy when it published the white papers . . . From the Sea in 1992 and

Forward . . . From the Sea in 1994. Instead of warfare in the open ocean, those documents emphasized

projecting military power ashore. With the United

States capable of controlling the world’s oceans and

no major threat to maritime transportation in view, the

Navy began to concentrate almost exclusively on

fighting smaller, regional foes in the world's littoral

(coastal) areas. As its principal peacetime mission,

the Navy emphasized overseas, or forward, presence

—having its ships patrol the world’s oceans to deter

trouble.

Among the Navy’s many missions, sea control

and forward presence are paramount: sea control

makes performing the Navy’s other tasks possible, and

forward presence makes performing them easier. At

any given time, about half of U.S. naval forces are at

sea—either deployed forward in key regions around

the world, going to and from those regions, or training

for deployment. With those forces, the Navy keeps in

place the military power necessary to control the sea

lanes. Military and commercial shipping can traverse

those waters but only with the acquiescence of the

U.S. Navy.

By controlling the sea lanes, the Navy can carry

out such peacetime tasks as evacuating noncombatant

U.S. personnel from crisis situations, providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, enforcing

sanctions, combating narcotics smuggling, supporting

peacekeeping operations, reinforcing U.S. diplomacy,

and reassuring allies.4

 In wartime, the Navy’s major

missions would include projecting U.S. power ashore

with Tomahawk cruise missiles, carrier aircraft, or

Marine amphibious forces.

Among their other missions, U.S. naval forces—

especially attack submarines—also gather intelligence,

which is one of the few missions that does not necessarily depend on control of the sea. In addition, naval

forces conduct a variety of missions aimed at deterring

potential aggressors from attacking their neighbors or

threatening U.S. interests. Ballistic missile submarines, which are virtually invulnerable to detection and

attack, are the mainstay of the U.S. strategic nuclear

force. They provide an extra measure of deterrence

beyond the quick military response that forwarddeployed naval forces represent. (The Navy may have

another mission in the future: using surface combat

ships to provide a defense against ballistic missiles.)

The Current Organization 

of the Navy

The Navy organizes many of its ships into battle

groups centered around 12 aircraft carriers. During

the Cold War, a notional carrier battle group consisted

of one carrier surrounded and protected by six surface

combatants. Those ships usually consisted of two

cruisers or destroyers (equipped with the Aegis combat system for air defense) and four destroyers or frigates (to defend against opposing submarines and surface vessels). Rounding out the group were combat

logistics ships for resupplying the carrier and the surface combatants. In addition, attack submarines were

sometimes assigned to provide support to a battle

group, but they were not well integrated with the

group’s operations.

Today, the composition of a notional carrier battle group varies according to the severity of the likely

threat and the mission to be undertaken. Nevertheless,

those groups still look much like they did during the

Cold War. One difference is that attack submarines

operate more often with battle groups now to help

guard against enemy subs. With less need to perform

independent missions against Russian nuclear subma4. Generally, the Navy and the Marine Corps are used more often than

the Air Force or the Army to respond to international events or crises.

See Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, Force Without War:

U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (Washington, D.C.:

Brookings Institution, 1978), pp. 38-48. See also Department of the

Navy, Vision . . . Presence . . . Power: A Program Guide to the U.S.

Navy (1999).
4 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Table 1.

Distribution of Navy Ships, 1990 and 2000

1990 2000

Number

of Ships

Percentage

of Fleet

Number

of Ships

Percentage

of Fleet

Aircraft Carriers 15 3 12 4

Surface Combatants 213 37 116 37

Attack Submarines 97 17 56 18

Ballistic Missile Submarines 35 6 18 6

Amphibious Ships 66 11 39 12

Combat Logistics Ships 60 10 34 11

Mine Warfare Ships and Fleet Auxiliaries 88 15 41 13

Total 574 100 316 100

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office based on data from the Navy.

rines than during the Cold War, U.S. submarines are

becoming more integrated with battle-group operations.

 At the beginning of 2000, the Navy possessed

116 surface combatants (see Table 1). Although the

majority are associated with carrier battle groups, the

remainder are available for independent presence missions, crisis response, exercises, and specialized missions. Surface combatants, including those equipped

with Tomahawk missiles and the Aegis air-defense

system, sometimes form what used to be called surface

action groups. Those groups substitute for carrier

battle groups where gaps exist in maintaining forward

presence, responding to crises, or conducting other

independent missions.5

 For example, the Navy regularly sends the Middle East Force, a surface action

group, to the Persian Gulf. (Surface ships of the U.S.

Coast Guard sometimes also take part in overseas

presence missions. Their role is discussed in Box 1.)

Like surface combatants, attack submarines can

also be used for independent missions. Those missions include collecting intelligence off the coast of a

hostile nation or landing teams of special-operations

forces ashore. (In practice, roughly two-thirds of the

Navy’s submarine missions gather intelligence

whether they are supporting a carrier battle group or

not.) During the Cold War, in contrast, most U.S.

submarines were devoted to tracking and, in the event

of war, attacking Russian ballistic missile and attack

submarines.6

 The U.S. Navy would probably consider

that to be the primary mission of its attack submarines

once again if relations between the United States and

Russia deteriorated significantly.

The Navy’s amphibious ships are organized into

12 amphibious ready groups (ARGs) of about three

ships each. Those groups sometimes accompany carrier battle groups to conduct forward presence missions or respond to crises, but they can also operate

independently. ARGs are designed for such missions

as landing Marines in a limited amphibious assault,

rescuing noncombatant personnel during a crisis, and

providing humanitarian assistance.

An amphibious ready group is usually centered

around a large flat-deck ship that is similar to a

medium-sized aircraft carrier (but smaller than the

very large carriers that are the mainstay of the U.S.

Navy). The flat-deck ship helps transport marines and

5. See Robert Holzer, “114 Navy Warships Won’t Do the Job, Study

Says,” Navy Times (June 6, 1994), p. 34.

6. For a picture of submarines’ new missions, see Don Ward, “New Horizons: As Subs Surface from the Cold War, the View Is Friendlier but

Busier,” Navy Times (November 15, 1993), p. 14.
CHAPTER ONE THE U.S. NAVY IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD 5

equipment to shore. It can also launch helicopters and

fixed-wing aircraft that take off and land vertically,

landing craft that travel on a cushion of air, and amphibious personnel carriers that “swim” to shore. The

other, smaller amphibious ships in an ARG can also

launch helicopters, landing craft, and amphibious vehicles. In the long term, as newer, more-capable amphibious ships replace more-numerous older models,

each ready group will comprise one large flat-deck

ship, one amphibious transport dock, and one dock

landing ship.

A fast combat logistics ship (also known as a

station ship) accompanies every aircraft carrier battle

group to supply fuel, ammunition, and dry-cargo provisions. The combat logistics force also contains shuttle ships for each of those commodities; shuttle ships

travel from port to the battle group to resupply the

station ship. Other support ships that do not operate

with carrier battle groups or amphibious ready groups

include surveillance ships for hunting submarines, tenders that provide a floating maintenance facility for

other vessels, ships used to clear mines, and openocean tugboats.

Rounding out the Navy are 18 ballistic missile

submarines, the portion of U.S. nuclear forces that are

considered most likely to survive a nuclear war.

Those submarines are very quiet and operate independent of other forces. In a nuclear war, they would

launch their missiles while hiding in the deep ocean.

The Navy intends to reduce that force to 14 submarines by 2004.

Box 1.

The Role of the U.S. Coast Guard

The Coast Guard is the fifth armed service of the

United States. It is much smaller than the other services, with about 35,000 uniformed and 6,000 civilian

personnel and an annual budget of about $4 billion.

Unlike the other services, it is part of the Department

of Transportation. The Coast Guard's fleet consists of

125 cutters and large patrol boats, 190 aircraft and

helicopters, and many small boats. That fleet both

supplements and complements the Navy, but it also

has unique responsibilities and missions.

The Coast Guard's high- and medium-endurance cutters, though smaller than Navy frigates, participate in overseas combat operations and peacetime

presence missions. During the Vietnam War, Coast

Guard cutters patrolled Vietnamese waters, providing

gunfire support to troops and attacking enemy supply

routes, base camps, and rest areas. More recently, a

Coast Guard cutter was assigned to the Navy's Sixth

Fleet and is helping to patrol the Adriatic Sea after

the NATO air campaign against Serbia. Coast Guard

cutters are regularly involved in presence missions to

ports on the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf.

The Coast Guard’s primary mission is the

coastal defense of the United States, and its performance of that mission frees the Navy to operate elsewhere. The Coast Guard is responsible for protecting

millions of square miles of ocean and thousands of

miles of coastline from relatively low intensity threats

such as narcotics trafficking and illegal immigration.

The Navy is also responsible for protecting U.S.

shores from those types of threats, of course, but its

principal focus in coastal defense is on the greater

perils posed by the navies of potentially hostile nations.

Unlike the Navy, the Coast Guard is also a lawenforcement organization. In effect, Coast Guard

personnel are the police, firemen, and paramedics of

the sea. They enforce marine regulations, respond to

environmental hazards such as oil spills, and conduct

search-and-rescue operations for boats and aircraft

lost at sea.

The Coast Guard hopes to embark on a $15 billion acquisition program known as Deepwater to replace many of its aging ships and aircraft. The program is also intended to integrate the Coast Guard’s

sensors, ships, and aircraft to make the service a

smaller but more effective force. Currently, the Coast

Guard is soliciting design plans from three teams of

contractors. The Congress is expected to authorize

the first ship in that program after fiscal year 2001.
6 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Determining How Big

the Navy Should Be

Determining the size of the Navy depends heavily on a

myriad of assumptions. They include what the Navy's

ships will be used for, how many commitments or conflicts are expected, how capable the ships are, what

level of force is necessary to do the job, and how hard

the ships’ crews are worked.

Strategy Reviews in the 1990s

Since the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the

Department of Defense (DoD) has carried out two major strategy reviews to determine the proper size and

composition of U.S. military forces, including the

Navy. The first was conducted in 1993 as part of the

department’s Bottom-Up Review (BUR). The second,

held in 1997, was called the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Different assumptions led the two reviews to different conclusions about what the future

Navy should look like. Despite those assumptions,

however, the reductions in U.S. naval forces that occurred during the 1990s appear to have been driven

largely by declining budgets, brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The plan that emerged from the BUR decreased

the Navy’s force goal from 574 ships in 1990 to 346

ships by 1999.7

 The recommended number of carriers

was reduced to 12 and attack submarines to between

45 and 55. But the BUR was unclear about the required number of surface combatants, which may explain how it could recommend a specific number for

the total fleet but a range for the attack submarine

force. Later, the overall force goal was lowered to

331 ships—to save funds to modernize the fleet—but

it was restored to 346 in 1995 by the Chief of Naval

Operations. That decision was apparently made because of a more optimistic outlook for the Navy’s budget and because naval forces were being heavily used

for overseas forward presence and crisis-response missions.8

The 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review revisited

the Navy’s force goal and further reduced the recommended numbers of attack submarines and surface

combatants.9

 Subsequent Navy statements and briefings and DoD’s 1998 Annual Report to the President

and the Congress confirm a force goal of slightly more

than 300 ships by 2003. That goal includes 12 aircraft carriers, 116 surface combatants, 50 attack submarines, and 41 amphibious ships (see Table 2). In

addition, the 2000 Annual Report and the President’s

budget for fiscal year 2001 added five submarines and

possibly one surface combatant to that goal.

The BUR and the QDR illustrate the difficulty in

determining the optimum size and composition of the

Navy. Despite the substantial differences between the

two reviews, each maintained that the naval forces it

recommended were sufficient to fight two major theater wars nearly simultaneously as well as to maintain

a robust forward presence. In fact, the Bottom-Up

Review specifically stated that 10 carrier battle groups

were adequate to fight two such wars but that 12 were

necessary to maintain a forward presence in three key

regions of the globe: the Western Pacific, the Persian

Gulf and Arabian Sea, and Europe (usually the Mediterranean Sea).

Current Reviews of Naval Forces

In preparation for the next Quadrennial Defense Review, set to begin in 2001, the Navy continues to study

its structure in detail. One review, the Surface Combatant Force Level Study II, is examining whether the

Navy needs more than 116 surface combatants to perform all of the missions required of that fleet.10 Preliminary analysis argues that by 2015, with the likely

addition of theater missile defense to its missions, the

7. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, Report on the Bottom-Up Review

(October 1993), p. 28.

8. John Burlage and Ernest Blazar, “Drawdown Doesn’t Jibe with

Navy’s Course,” Navy Times (July 3, 1995), p. 4.

9. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, Report of the Quadrennial

Defense Review (May 1997), pp. 29-30.

10. Robert Holzer, “Requirements Rise May Force Larger U.S. Warship

Fleet,” Defense News (May 24, 1999), p. 1.
CHAPTER ONE THE U.S. NAVY IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD 7

Table 2.

Drawdown of Navy Ships Between 1990 and 2003

1990

1994

 (BUR)a 2000

2003

(QDR Goal)

Aircraft Carriers 15 12 12 12

Surface Combatants 213 110 116 116

Attack Submarines 97 87 56 50

Ballistic Missile Submarines 35 16 18 14

Amphibious Ships 66 41 39 41b

Combat Logistics Ships 60 47 34 34c

Mine Warfare Ships 8 15 16 16

Fleet Auxiliaries 80 59 25 23

Total 574 387 316 306d

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office based on data from the Navy.

NOTE: BUR = Bottom-Up Review; QDR = Quadrennial Defense Review.

a. These numbers represent the Navy’s force level shortly after the BUR was published, not the BUR force goal, which was 346 ships.

b. As the Navy replaces more-numerous older ships with more-capable ships, this number will fall to 36 by 2007.

c. As the Navy replaces more-numerous older ships with more-capable ships, this number will fall to 31 by 2012.

d. Under the QDR, this number was supposed to fall to 298 by 2012. However, in 2000 the Department of Defense added five submarines and,

apparently, one surface combatant to its force goal. Thus, by 2012 the total would be 304.

Navy would need as many as 95 surface combatants

for peacetime operations. The service has not yet determined how many of those ships it would need to

carry out combat missions, but the number would be

larger, perhaps around 140. It is not clear when, if

ever, the Navy will issue that report.11 Moreover, if a

national missile defense system is deployed on surface

ships, the requirements for those vessels will increase

substantially.

The guidance from recent DoD reviews is also

ambiguous when it comes to determining the size of

the attack submarine force. The Bottom-Up Review

specified that 45 to 55 boats would be necessary to

meet combat requirements but that the lower number

of that range would jeopardize the Navy’s ability to

perform peacetime missions. Somewhat arbitrarily,

the QDR rounded that number to an even 50. In

March 1998, military officials argued before the Senate Armed Services Committee that requirements for

attack submarine deployments, “which include CVBG

[carrier battle group] deployments, national tasking,

arctic operations, special forces missions, and independent presence missions[,] would dictate a force of

72 attack submarines.”12 A 1999 study for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff determined that the

Navy needs 55 submarines by 2015 to meet wartime

requirements and between 55 and 68 to fulfill the most

critical peacetime requirements.

In the absence of a real enemy to fight, the size

of the attack submarine force might be driven by the

number of submarines that U.S. political and military

leaders want to keep forward deployed. According to

a Navy calculation, 5.8 submarines are necessary to

keep one submarine forward deployed at all times.

11. The first version of that analysis was done in the early 1990s and argued that the Navy needed 120 to 135 surface combatants to fulfill

peacetime presence missions and 135 to 165 ships to fulfill wartime

requirements.

12. Ronald O’Rourke, Navy Attack Submarine Programs: Background

and Issues for Congress, Report for Congress RL30045 (Congressional Research Service, February 4, 1999), p. 21.
8 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Thus, using the Navy’s formula, 50 submarines can

keep eight submarines operating in that manner.

Although the size of the Navy’s fleet has fallen

since 1993, the carrier force has remained steady at

12. That number appears to be a compromise between

what is required for forward presence and what the

Navy needs to fight wars. As noted above, the

Bottom-Up Review stated that 10 carriers were

enough to fight two regional wars nearly simultaneously but that keeping an aircraft carrier deployed in

East Asia, the Persian Gulf area, and the Mediterranean at all times would require a force of 15 carriers.13

According to the BUR, 12 aircraft carriers can

provide a high level of presence in those regions and

meet warfighting needs “at an acceptable level of

risk.”14 What that appears to mean is that 12 carriers

can meet the requirements for both warfighting and

forward presence with about two-month gaps each

year in their coverage of the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf areas. In the event that full-time forward

presence was necessary because of a crisis, the carriers could be kept at their stations longer than their

usual six-month deployment, albeit at the risk of exhausting their crews. Restoring the Navy to a force of

15 aircraft carriers would be an expensive proposition:

procurement costs would reach more than $30 billion

if all new ships and aircraft were built, and operating

and support costs would add about $1 billion annually. Conversely, cutting the carrier fleet to 10 would

save money but leave extremely large gaps in presence

in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf—in the absence of any remedial actions that could keep the carriers on patrol longer.15

The requirements for the carrier fleet depend on a

host of assumptions, such as what type of future carriers the Navy buys, how frequently and how long they

are deployed, the time required for crews to achieve a

high level of readiness, and the availability of overseas

home ports for carrier battle groups. Analyses by outside organizations have come to similar or different

conclusions than DoD depending on the assumptions

they used. For example, a study by the Center for Naval Analyses showed that an 18-month deployment

cycle for carriers could generate the same amount of

forward presence as a 21-month cycle but with two

fewer carriers.16

Procuring and Modernizing

Navy Ships

Although the overall size of the Navy is in flux, the

service is developing or building a new ship for each

major type of vessel it uses. Because the service lives

of ships range from 30 to 50 years, all of the ships that

the Navy is buying today or that it plans to buy in the

next 10 years will probably still be in the fleet in 2020,

and some will still be there in 2040. Thus, they represent major claims on the Navy’s future resources.

Procurement Since the Cold War

While its strategy and missions shifted in the 1990s,

the Navy continued to buy either the same weapons it

had purchased during the Cold War or new versions of

them (with the exception of attack submarines). For

example, the Navy is still buying the DDG-51 Aegisequipped destroyer, which was designed to counter

massive attacks by Soviet cruise missiles over open

water. The DDG-5l (the Arleigh Burke class) is not

as effective in the more cluttered littoral environment.

Moreover, early versions of the ship cannot house a

helicopter, which is a potent weapon against coastal

patrol boats armed with antiship missiles—the main

naval weapon of many potential regional adversaries.

For two other types of vessels—aircraft carriers

and submarines—the Navy is not straying far from the

ships it now deploys. Although it has begun research

13. See Aspin, Report on the Bottom-Up Review; and Congressional

Budget Office, Improving the Efficiency of Forward Presence by

Aircraft Carriers, CBO Paper (August 1996).

14. Department of the Navy, Vision . . . Presence . . . Power, p. 13.

15. Creating a home port in the Mediterranean or bringing in a new crew

while an aircraft carrier was in its theater of operations rather than

back in the United States could keep carriers at their stations for a

much longer time. See Congressional Budget Office, Improving the

Efficiency of Forward Presence by Aircraft Carriers.

16. William H. Sims, Budget-Driven Carrier Employment Options and

Implications for Future Carrier Design (Alexandria, Va.: Center for

Naval Analyses, July 1992), pp. 6-7.
CHAPTER ONE THE U.S. NAVY IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD 9

and development of an aircraft carrier to replace the

current Nimitz class ships, it still has one Nimitz under construction and will order another in 2001. The

Navy also purchased a third Seawolf submarine in

1996 and began buying its less expensive successor,

the Virginia class attack submarine, in 1998. The Virginia is the first major naval weapon that is designed

to perform missions in littoral areas but is still able to

operate effectively in the blue water of the open ocean.

In the area of aircraft procurement, the Navy has

begun buying the E/F model of the F-18 fighter. That

aircraft can fly farther and carry a bigger payload than

its predecessor—the F-18C/D—which should make it

more useful as a bomber and thus better for operations

against land targets in coastal regions.17 In the longer

term, one version of the Joint Strike Fighter is expected to become the Navy’s principal aircraft for

ground attacks.

Although the total number of U.S. ships will

drop to 316 in 2000 from 574 a decade earlier, the

distribution of forces among the service’s three major

warfare “communities”—air, surface, and undersea

—remains similar to what it was during the Cold War

(see Table 1). The force has become slightly more

“carrier heavy”—that is, the number of aircraft carriers has been reduced by less than the number of surface combatants and submarines (by 20 percent versus

46 percent and 44 percent, respectively). Nevertheless, the balance of forces among the three communities has not changed greatly, and all of them continue

to modernize by buying new, more-capable weapons.

Thus, although Navy officials might disagree, the current force could be characterized as a reduced version

of the Cold War Navy.

The fact that changes in force structure and procurement lag behind changes in strategy and missions

is not surprising. Historically, that is almost always

true for any nation or military. When the Cold War

ended, many years and dollars had been invested in

researching, developing, and procuring weapons (such

as the Arleigh Burke destroyer and the Nimitz carrier)

designed for combat against the Soviet navy. Because

the service lives of ships are so long, the entire force

structure could not be transformed quickly—except at

very great expense.

Modernizing Aircraft Carriers

Most of the 12 aircraft carriers that the Navy operates

are Nimitz class vessels. That class was originally

designed in the 1960s, but each new ship built since

then has been modified and improved. Now, the Navy

would like to change the design of its carriers and develop a new class.

Building and operating an aircraft carrier over its

45- to 50-year service life is expensive. A carrier begun today would cost $5 billion to $6 billion to procure and outfit and $15 billion to operate and support

over 50 years, CBO estimates. Much of that cost is

for paying the crew of around 3,500 people who operate the carrier (and the other 2,000 or so personnel

who operate and support the carrier’s air wing). The

Chief of Naval Operations hopes to reduce the personnel needed for an aircraft carrier by nearly 30 percent

by using new technology that would automate many

tasks now performed by crew members.18 Redesigning

the carrier’s nuclear propulsion plant so that it would

not need to be refueled during its lifetime could also

save money. The Navy considers a new, more-efficient power plant its first priority in the modernization

program.

Originally, the Navy intended to redesign the carrier all at once—developing a new class of ship—with

the first new vessel to be authorized in 2006. But that

revolutionary design fell victim to budgetary realities.

Navy officials recognized that the service lacked the

$6 billion to $7 billion necessary to develop the new

ship. Consequently, they adopted a more evolutionary

approach. The Navy will increase the amount of

money it spends on new technologies that can be incorporated into the CVN-77, the Nimitz class carrier

that it wants to order in 2001. More new technology

will be incorporated into succeeding ships, the CVN17. According to the General Accounting Office, however, the E/F model

does not provide significant improvements over the C/D in its performance as a fighter plane. See General Accounting Office, Navy Aviation: F/A-18E/F Will Provide Marginal Operational Improvement at

High Cost, GAO/NSIAD 96-98 (June 1996).

18. Joe Hart and Rick Lazisky, CVX: An Evolutionary Path to a Revolution in Naval Warfare, Critical Issues Paper (Arlington, Va.: Center

for Security Strategies and Operations, August 28, 1998), p. 15.
10 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Table 3.

Capabilities of Navy Attack Submarines

Los Angeles

Class (Improved)

Seawolf

Class

Virginia

Class 

Size

Displacement (Tons, submerged) 6,900 9,100 7,800

Length (Feet) 360 353 377

Draft (Feet) 32 35 31

Beam (Feet) 33 40 34

Speed (Knots)

Maximum 33 35 34

Tactical (Silent speed) n.a. 20 n.a.

Operating Depth (Feet) 950 about 1,600 more than 800

Crew Size 129 133 113

Armament (Number of missiles or torpedoes) 37 50 38

Weapon Launchers

Torpedo tubes (21 inches)a 48 4

Vertical launch system cells 12 0 12

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office.

NOTE: n.a. = not available.

a. The Seawolf has 26.5-inch torpedo tubes that launch its weapons.

78 and CVN-79, which will be the first ships of the

evolved CVNX class. The Navy has not yet determined—and probably does not yet know—which new

technologies will fit within the existing Nimitz hull and

which will not.19

The Navy may have to live with the decisions it

ultimately makes about the new carrier for a long time.

If the CVN-77 is authorized in 2001 and commissioned in 2006, it will probably remain in service until

after 2050 (assuming the same service life as today’s

carriers). The first carrier of the new CVNX class

will be authorized in 2006 and probably commissioned

in 2013. If the Navy buys 10 of those ships—as it

expects to do with the Nimitzes—the last CVNX

would still be in service after 2100. If the evolutionary approach to carrier design does not work, the

Navy can, of course, stop the new class after producing a few ships and begin again. But such a decision

would be very costly.

Modernizing Attack Submarines

The mainstay of the U.S. attack submarine force at the

end of the Cold War and today is the Los Angeles

class submarine. Sixty-two were built; about 55 remain in the force. Over the next 20 years, most of

those submarines will reach the end of their useful service life. To replace them, the Navy first developed

the Seawolf. Although it was arguably the most capable submarine in the world, the Seawolf was also the

most expensive. That program was canceled, and only

three of the submarines were ordered.

19. Robert Holzer, “Navy Sinks Futuristic Carrier: Service Abandons

CVX, But Will Test Technologies on Next Nimitz,” Defense News

(May 25, 1998).
CHAPTER ONE THE U.S. NAVY IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD 11

FFG-7 Oliver Perry

Class Frigates (36)

DDG-51 Arleigh Burke

Class Destroyers (29)

CG-47 Ticonderoga

Class Cruisers (27)

DDG-963 Spruance

Class Destroyers (24)

2000

CG-21 Air-Dominance 

Cruiser (1)

DDG-51 Arleigh Burke

Class Destroyers (58)

CG-47 Ticonderoga

Class Cruisers (26)

DD-21 Land-Attack

Destroyers (32)

2020

The Virginia class attack submarine was proposed in 1990 by the Chief of Naval Operations as a

lower-cost successor to the Seawolf. The Navy expects it to be as quiet as the Seawolf but somewhat

less capable in terms of the weapons it carries (see

Table 3). However, the Virginia is designed to be

flexible enough to conduct missions in support of the

Navy’s doctrine of littoral warfare—something the

Seawolf and Los Angeles classes are less capable of

doing—and to serve as a hedge against the possibility

of a rejuvenated Russian submarine threat. The Virginia class submarines will be able to carry out various missions, including stealthy strikes with Tomahawk missiles, antisubmarine warfare in the littorals

and deep water, antiship warfare, covert intelligence,

and mine laying against enemy shipping. Those submarines will also be able to support carrier battle

groups and special-operations forces. The Navy’s

current modernization program calls for buying 30

Virginia class submarines at a total cost of around $60

billion.

Modernizing Surface Combatants

The Navy’s current surface combatant force is composed of four types of ship: Ticonderoga class cruisers, Arleigh Burke class destroyers, Spruance class

destroyers, and Oliver Perry class frigates. By 2020,

the Navy will probably still have four types of surface

combatants, but they will be different types. The DD21 Zumwalt class land-attack destroyer will replace

the Spruance destroyers and the Perry frigates, and the

fleet may have one new CG-21 air-dominance cruiser

(see Figure 1).

Currently, the Navy has only one building program for surface combatants, that for the Arleigh

Burke destroyers. Authorization for that program will

end in 2005 at 58 ships (with the last commissionings

in 2010). Also in 2005, the Navy expects to order the

first DD-21—the first ship specifically designed for

the post-Cold War environment and littoral warfare.20

It is expected to have a highly stealthy design to reduce its chance of being detected during the close-toshore operations it is intended to conduct. The DD-21

is also designed to be highly effective at antisubmarine

warfare and to have a greater land-attack capability

than any other ship in the fleet, except aircraft carriers. Its land-attack weapons will include 128 to 256

vertical launch system cells containing missiles with

varying ranges; it will probably also carry two advanced gun systems for high-volume fire support.

As with the CVNX carrier, the Navy is hoping to

keep procurement and life-cycle costs for the DD-21

low through the use of new technology. The service

would like to spend no more than $750 million (in fiscal year 1996 dollars) per ship. It also hopes to keep

the size of the crew to around 100—compared with

the 340 or more personnel required for other cruisers

and destroyers now in the fleet. The Navy’s plan is to

Figure 1.

The Navy's Surface Combatant Force, 2000 and

2020 (By number of ships)

20. If the DD-21 program is delayed further, as appears likely, the Navy SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office.

may need to buy more Arleigh Burke destroyers to maintain the industrial base for building destroyers. According to news reports, the Navy

has already discussed that possibility.
12 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

use automated systems, sensors, and the like to reduce

the number of people needed for damage control, shipboard logistics, and other areas of the ship’s operations.

Is the cost goal for the DD-21 realistic? One

way to answer that question is to consider historical

norms. Research has shown that new ship designs

typically cost 15 percent more than their predecessors.

Arleigh Burke destroyers, which some observers might

view as the predecessor of the DD-21, cost around

$900 million to $1 billion to procure today. Thus, a

$750 million DD-21 would cost about 25 percent less

than an Arleigh Burke destroyer. Arleigh Burkes,

however, are equipped with the Aegis combat system,

a highly effective but also extremely expensive airdefense capability, which the DD-21 will not have. If

one considers Spruance class destroyers to be the DD21's true predecessor, then the target of $750 million

may fit within historical norms. But the changes and

new technologies that the Navy hopes to introduce in

the DD-21 make it likely that the ship will have a price

tag closer to that of the Arleigh Burke.

Reducing the size of the crew may be more difficult than keeping costs down, in part because the

Navy’s goal is so ambitious. By cutting the number of

crew members for a destroyer by more than twothirds, the Navy hopes that the DD-21 will have annual operating and support costs equal to no more

than 30 percent of those for the Arleigh Burke. But

questions remain about whether such a drastic reduction in personnel will decrease the effectiveness of the

DD-21 or, worse, its survivability in combat.21

Foreign Threats Facing 

the U.S. Navy

What ability do other powers have to threaten, undermine, or otherwise inhibit U.S. naval forces from executing their missions? In many respects, very little.

Most analysts would agree that the United States is by

far the strongest naval power in the world. In fact, its

current level of superiority is probably comparable

only with those of the U.S. Navy immediately after

World War II and the British navy after the Battle of

Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars—times when

their opponents’ fleets had been destroyed and no new

opposition had yet arisen.

Comparing the United States’ current naval

forces with those of its potential adversaries—whether

by simply counting ships or by comparing the quality

of the ships, leadership, personnel, and organization

—leads to the conclusion that no other nation can directly defeat the U.S. Navy anywhere in the world,

either today or for the foreseeable future. However,

one threat that may loom on the horizon is the possibility that a hostile power could deny U.S. naval

forces access to an area by using large numbers of

relatively cheap weapons, such as mines and antiship

cruise missiles.

The Russian and Chinese Navies

U.S. relations with both Russia and China have been

uneasy since the end of the Cold War. Although the

United States and those countries share some interests,

they disagree about various foreign policy issues. For

example, U.S. relations with Russia deteriorated after

NATO launched an air campaign against Serbia, a

traditional friend of Russia, in March 1999. At one

point, Russian President Boris Yeltsin claimed that he

had not ruled out military intervention in the conflict.

Relations with China took a turn for the worse in

1996, when China fired several ballistic missiles at

Taiwan in an apparent effort to intimidate its leadership. The United States responded by sailing parts of

the Seventh Fleet—including the aircraft carrier Independence—through the Taiwan Strait. Since then,

U.S. military planners have monitored developments in

both China and Russia closely. They consider both

nations to be potential threats.

After the United States, Russia and China have

the largest navies in the world. Their forces each have

large numbers of surface warships and submarines

(see Figure 2). Technologically, however, the fleets of

both nations are much less capable than the U.S.

Navy.

21. See, for example, Captain Pierre Vining, “Can a Minimum-Manned

Ship Survive Combat?” Proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute (April

1999), pp. 80-83.
CHAPTER ONE THE U.S. NAVY IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD 13

Aircraft Carriers and Major Surface Combatants

United States Russia China India Iran North Korea

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140 Number of Ships

Attack Submarines

United States Russia China India Iran North Korea

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140 Number of Ships

Corvettes and Missile Boats

United States Russia China India Iran North Korea

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140 Number of Ships

a

Figure 2.

Naval Force Levels of the United States and Selected Countries, 1999

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office based on data from Captain Richard Sharpe, ed., Jane's Fighting Ships, 1999-2000, 102nd ed. (Alexandria,

Va.: Jane's Information Group, 1999); and International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 1999-2000 (London: Oxford

University Press, 1999).

NOTE: The Russian fleet is in a serious state of decline. It has little money for training, deployments, or weapons, and major units of the fleet spend

only a few days a year at sea.

a. Excludes China's obsolete Romeo class submarines.
14 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Russia. Although the Soviet navy was once easily the

second most powerful fleet in the world, the Russian

navy, like Russia itself, has fallen on hard times. The

number of ships has dropped dramatically, from

nearly 300 large warships in the Soviet fleet in 1985 to

less than 100 in the Russian fleet today. Moreover,

the Russian navy is in a serious state of decline because of a lack of funding. With little money for

training, deployments, or weapons, major parts of the

fleet spend only a few days a year at sea. When major

repairs or refits on a ship come due, more often than

not the ship is abandoned.22

Although much of that situation applies to the

submarine fleet as well, Russia has made a greater

effort to maintain production of new submarines than

it has with other types of ships. For example, the Russian navy now appears to be producing one Akula II

class submarine a year, but how long that pace can

continue is unclear. Russia is also reported to be developing a new attack submarine, the Severodvinsk,

and a new ballistic missile submarine, the Borey. But

progress on both appears to be limited. Construction

of the Severodvinsk either is extremely slow or has

been suspended altogether—with an uncertain future.

Only one Borey is under construction, and work appears to have been suspended because of problems at

the shipyard and with the manufacturer.23 Some analysts have speculated that the new Akulas are quieter

than the Los Angeles class, the mainstay of the U.S.

attack submarine force. But such concerns may be

exaggerated. Those Russian submarines may indeed

be quieter at very slow speeds—5 to 7 knots—but

they are much noisier than Los Angeles class submarines at the higher speeds associated with normal combat operations.24

China. The Chinese navy has grown rapidly over the

past several decades, and it could one day challenge

U.S. naval forces. As yet, however, it does not pose a

threat comparable with that of the Soviet navy during

the Cold War. In the late 1970s, the Chinese had

fewer than two dozen major surface warships. By

1998, that number had grown to more than 50 ships

that were much more capable. China’s submarine

force has not increased much in quantity, but its quality has improved considerably as new Chinese-built

submarines, as well as submarines bought from Russia, replace old Soviet models.25 China appears to

have a long-term goal to build and deploy a genuine

blue-water navy. Nevertheless, the nation has no aircraft carriers and only about half as many major surface combatants as the United States.26 And not one

of those surface combatants appears to be as capable

as a U.S. Spruance class destroyer—much less an

Aegis-equipped cruiser or destroyer.27

China’s amphibious fleet is also composed of

dozens of ships, but those ships together can carry

fewer than 8,000 troops and 250 tanks. China has

recently revived production of its Yuting class amphibious ship and built four of them over the past

year. They can carry 250 troops, 10 main battle

22. See the Haze Gray and Underway Naval History Information Center,

World Navies Today: Russia (2000), available at www.hazegray.org/

wordnav/russia/. See also Captain Richard Sharpe, ed., Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1999-2000, 102nd ed. (Alexandria, Va.: Jane’s Information Group, 1999), p. 556.

23. Sharpe, Jane’s Fighting Ships, 1999-2000, pp. 558, 560. See also

the Haze Gray and Underway Naval History Information Center,

World Navies Today: Russia.

24. Reported to the Congressional Budget Office in a briefing by the

Navy, September 18, 1996. See also Rear Admiral Michael Cramer

as cited in Ivan Eland, Subtract Unneeded Nuclear Attack Submarines from the Fleet, Foreign Policy Briefing No. 47 (Washington,

D.C.: Cato Institute, April 2, 1998), p. 5; and Robert Holzer, “Study:

U.S. Navy Overestimates Stealth, Might of Russian Subs,” Defense

News (July 29, 1996), p. 50.

25. For a good discussion of these issues and Russian submarine programs, see O’Rourke, Navy Attack Submarine Programs, pp. 14-19.

26. Periodically, there are rumors that China is building or trying to buy

an aircraft carrier. But China does not appear to be close to doing so,

and it would take years before it had the means to project power with

an aircraft carrier. Acquiring such a vessel is only one obstacle.

Training crew members and supporting a carrier are not skills that can

be learned quickly.

27. Both the Spruance and China’s largest and most modern warship, the

Sovremenny class destroyer bought from Russia (China has no cruisers), displace about 8,000 tons and have comparable speeds and cruising ranges. The Chinese ship carries eight antiship cruise missiles; the

Spruance has eight Harpoon antiship cruise missiles. The

Sovremenny class destroyer has two surface-to-air missile launchers

with 44 missiles (but no area air-defense radar), compared with 61

vertical launch system cells on the U.S. ship capable of firing Tomahawk missiles and antisubmarine rockets. The Chinese ship has four

130-millimeter guns and four torpedo tubes; the Spruance has two 5-

inch guns and six torpedo tubes. China has purchased two of those

ships and may buy two more. See Sharpe, Jane’s Fighting Ships,

1999-2000, pp. 119, 810.
CHAPTER ONE THE U.S. NAVY IN THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD 15

Box 2.

Are Surface Ships Becoming More Vulnerable?

A growing number of naval analysts contend that surface

ships—especially aircraft carriers—are becoming increasingly vulnerable to attack.1

 That vulnerability began

in World War II, they argue, but it could reach a critical

stage soon as potentially hostile regional powers acquire

large stocks of cheap antiship missiles and diesel-electric

submarines.

The Six-Day War in the Middle East in 1967, the

Falklands War in 1982, and the Iran-Iraq War in the late

1980s provide evidence of how vulnerable surface ships

are to small, inexpensive missiles and submarines. In

1967, the defense world was surprised when a small

Arab patrol boat sank the larger Israeli destroyer Eilat

with antiship missiles. During the Falklands War, Argentine aircraft equipped with sea-skimming Exocet missiles sank five British surface ships and damaged 11

more.2

 On the other side of that conflict, the British nuclear submarine Conqueror sank the Argentine heavy

cruiser General Belgrano in a torpedo attack. (That submarine also kept the entire Argentine navy bottled up in

port for the rest of the war.)3 And during the Iran-Iraq

War, an Iraqi aircraft mistakenly attacked and severely

damaged a U.S. naval vessel—the frigate U.S.S. Stark—

with an Exocet antiship missile. (That frigate and other

U.S. ships were escorting Kuwaiti oil tankers to protect

them from attack by Iran.)

Some analysts who argue that surface ships are

increasingly vulnerable also maintain that aircraft carriers

will become the most vulnerable surface ships of all. Although the Navy hopes to reduce the radar silhouette of

1. See, for example, James F. Dunnigan, How to Make War: A

Comprehensive Guide to Modern Warfare for the Post-Cold

War Era (New York: William Morrow, 1993); George Friedman and Meredith Friedman, The Future of War: Power,

Technology and American World Dominance in the TwentyFirst Century (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996), pp.

180-204; and John Keegan, The Price of Admiralty: The Evolution of Naval Warfare (New York: Viking, 1989), pp. 266-

275.

2. Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, The Battle for the

Falklands (New York: Norton, 1983), pp. 351-360.

3. James L. George, The U.S. Navy in the 1990s: Alternatives

for Action (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1992), p.

73.

carriers in future versions of the ship, their huge size and

angular shape make such a reduction difficult. Aircraft

carriers are also vulnerable to saturation attacks by large

numbers of antiship missiles. At first glance, the decline

of Soviet maritime forces appears to reduce the likelihood

of such attacks. But because carriers are more likely to

operate in coastal areas now than during the Cold War,

some analysts believe that the proliferation of inexpensive

but deadly antiship missiles among potential regional

adversaries will make coastal operations more dangerous.

Nations armed with antiship missiles are unlikely

to possess the same large quantities as the former Soviet

Union, but they could still pose a substantial threat because carrier battle groups operating closer to shore

would have to react more quickly with less information.

Battle groups that faced antiship missiles mounted on fast

patrol boats nearby or on shore-based launchers might not

have as much time to react to incoming missiles as they

would have had in a confrontation with Soviet missiles

launched from bombers hundreds of miles away. In addition, “land clutter”—trees, buildings, and other objects

that radar cannot see through—could allow hidden,

shore-based enemy launchers to surprise a battle group.

During the Gulf War, such clutter rendered the sophisticated Aegis air-defense system on U.S. cruisers and destroyers much less effective than it would otherwise have

been.4

New technologies, however, could ultimately permit effective countermeasures to those threats. For example, microwave or high-energy lasers might enable a surface ship to defeat saturation attacks by antiship cruise

missiles. High-powered microwaves aimed at a salvo of

incoming missiles might be able to disrupt their avionics

simultaneously, rendering the attack ineffective. Other

new technologies that are being explored to protect ships

include water-barrier technology, which shoots up a large

wall of water in front of a ship just before incoming missiles are about to strike. The missiles explode harmlessly

against the water or are knocked out of the air. That technology has been tested successfully against single incoming missiles, and defense planners hope it will eventually

be able to defeat groups of missiles.

4. Friedman and Friedman, The Future of War, pp. 198-199.
16 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

tanks, four landing craft, and two helicopters.28 (In

contrast, the U.S. Navy has fewer amphibious ships

but can carry about five times the number of troops as

the Chinese ships. And some of the U.S. amphibious

ships could be used to strike other sea- or land-based

targets.)

Other Nations’ Navies

Other powers with which the United States might one

day come in conflict have much smaller naval forces

than Russia and China do. Iraq has never possessed

much of a navy and has none now. Iran’s navy comprises a few frigates, two dozen corvettes or missile

boats, and several diesel-electric submarines purchased from Russia. Those submarines appear to

worry U.S. naval planners the most (as discussed in

the section below). In addition, just this year, Iran

built and launched its first domestically produced submarine. India has built a large fleet that seemingly

represents equally large ambitions, but financial constraints have apparently dampened its ardor in recent

years.29

Area-Denial Strategies

The Navy is less occupied with analyzing the threats

that specific countries pose and more with what defense planners call capabilities-based threat analysis.

In other words, analysts try to determine what capabilities (technologies and weapon systems) are available

on the international arms markets that could ultimately

threaten U.S. Navy ships.

The capabilities that the Navy worries about

most involve relatively cheap weapon systems that

countries can buy abroad or produce at home in

quantity—mines, antiship cruise missiles, fast-attack

torpedo and missile boats, and small diesel-electric

submarines.30 If a country had enough of those weapons, it could implement what defense analysts refer to

as an asymmetric area-denial strategy. Such a strategy would not attempt to challenge and defeat U.S.

naval forces directly. Instead, it would seek to inhibit

the U.S. Navy’s operations in a region by strewing

coastal areas with mines, putting hundreds of antiship

cruise missiles along the shore, and having several

quiet diesel-electric submarines roam littoral waters.31

Many analysts worry that surface ships are becoming

increasingly vulnerable to such measures. (For more

details, see Box 2 on page 15.) As the Navy puts it,

“In future crises and conflicts . . . access-denial weapons could make the projection of U.S. power so costly

that the United States might be deterred from acting.”32

In one possible scenario for an area-denial strategy, Iran might be able to prevent the U.S. Navy from

operating in the Persian Gulf by mining the Strait of

Hormuz and then guarding it with antiship cruise missiles and small submarines to thwart mine-clearing

operations.33 Could China do the same with the Taiwan Strait?

The purpose of such area-denial strategies is to

prevent the United States from defending its interests

or its allies. The Korean War offers a historical example. The amphibious assault by U.S. forces at

Wonsan was delayed for eight days by mines, prompting the U.S. commander to declare, “The U.S. Navy

has lost control of the seas.”34 And North Korea did

not even have a fleet.

28. Robert Sae-liu, “China Revives Yuting-class Ship Programme,”

Jane’s Defence Weekly (June 14, 2000), p. 87.

29. Admiral J.G. Nadkarni, “Indian Navy Stands at a Crossroads,” Proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute (March 1998), pp. 70-72.

30. See Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence, Challenges

to Naval Expeditionary Warfare (1997), pp. 7-13. If those submarines are of the new “closed system” variety—also known as air-independent propulsion—that do not need to come to the surface frequently to charge their batteries or refresh their air supplies, the threat

could be especially potent.

31. Simon Saradzhyan, “Russia Expects to Boost Exports of Ships and

Subs,” Defense News (June 1, 1998), p. 10. See also Joris Janssen

Lok, “Mini Submarines and Special Forces Pose Maximum Threat,”

Jane’s International Defense Review (June 1998), pp. 63-68; and

Captain Ed Smith, “They Can Buy It, But . . .” Proceedings, U.S.

Naval Institute (February 1994), pp. 45-48.

32. Department of the Navy, Vision . . . Presence . . . Power, p. 3.

33. See Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence, Worldwide

Submarine Challenges (1997), pp. 29-31. See also Andrew F.

Krepinevich, Jr., A New Navy for a New Era (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, May 1996).

34. James L. George, The U.S. Navy in the 1990s: Alternatives for Action (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1992), pp. 175-176.
Chapter Two

Can the Navy Maintain a 300-Ship

Fleet at Current Budget Levels?

The Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of

the Navy’s budgetary and long-term procurement plans suggests that it will be difficult for

the Navy to maintain its current force goal of about

300 ships. Current funding levels are inadequate to

cover all of the ships and aircraft the Navy wants to

buy and also maintain readiness and a good quality of

life for sailors, pilots, and marines.1

 To sustain its

300-ship fleet and inventory of aircraft, as well as the

infrastructure that supports them, the Navy will need

about $105 billion annually (adjusted for inflation),

CBO estimates. That amount is over $17 billion more

per year than the Navy is expecting to receive, on average, under the Administration's Future Years Defense Program for fiscal years 2001 through 2005 (referred to here as the 2001 FYDP).

The Navy's Modernization

Plans Through 2005

The 2001 FYDP would authorize 45 new ships—or an

average of 7.5 per year—between 2000 and 2005.

Specifically, the Navy would buy one aircraft carrier,

14 DDG-51 and DD-21 destroyers, five Virginia class

attack submarines, 11 LPD-17 and LHD amphibious

ships, and 14 combat logistics ships and fleet auxiliaries (see Table 4). That shipbuilding program represents an increase from previous plans. The 1998

FYDP, for example, would have built only 6.2 ships

per year between 1998 and 2003. However, press reports about the Navy’s budget for fiscal years 2002

through 2007 indicate that the planned shipbuilding

rate may fall back to 6.5 a year.

For most of the 1990s, the Navy built far fewer

ships, on average, than required to maintain a force of

300 in a steady state. Between fiscal years 1992 and

1999, the Navy ordered an average of 4.5 ships per

year, about half the steady-state requirement. That

low level of shipbuilding was possible because the

Navy had many more ships than it needed to fulfill its

force goal at the conclusion of the Cold War and was

even retiring ships before the end of their useful service life. The shipbuilding plan under the 2001 FYDP

would allow the Navy to meet its force goal for the

next 10 years or so. Eventually, however, the Navy

would have to buy more ships or the attrition that occurs as vessels reach the end of their service life would

lead to a smaller fleet.

The planned purchases of naval aircraft under

the 2001 FYDP are smaller than the number needed

for steady-state replacement. The Navy plans to buy

710 new aircraft, or an average of 118 a year. Those

planes include the F/A-18E/F (fighter/attack) aircraft,

the tilt-rotor V-22 (which can fly like a helicopter or a

1. Although costs for aircraft are part of the overall modernization bill,

CBO’s analysis focuses primarily on the Navy’s ability to meet its

force goal for ships. For a more comprehensive treatment of the Department of Defense’s ability to pay for all of its tactical aircraft programs, including those of the Navy, see Congressional Budget Office,

A Look at Tomorrow’s Tactical Air Forces (January 1997). For an

update of that analysis, see the statement of Christopher Jehn, Assistant Director, National Security Division, Congressional Budget Office, before the Subcommittee on AirLand of the Senate Committee on

Armed Services, March 10, 1999.
18 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Table 4.

The Navy's Planned Purchases of New Ships and Aircraft Through 2020

2000-2005 2006-2020a

Total Purchase Annual Average Total Purchase Annual Average

Ships

Aircraft carriers 1 0.2 4 0.3

Surface combatants 14 2.3 48 3.2

Submarines 5 0.8 38 2.5

Amphibious ships 11 1.8 5 0.3

All others 14 2.3 33 2.2

Total 45 7.5 128 8.5

Aircraft

Fighters 267 44.5 219 14.6

Strike aircraft 0 0 984 65.6

Medium lift aircraft 246 41.0 374 24.9

Trainers 160 26.7 210 14.0

All others 37 6.2 439 29.2

Total 710 118.3 2,226 148.4

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office based on data from the Navy.

a. These purchases represent the Navy’s preliminary projections for the future rather than its official requirements or programmatic decisions.

propeller plane) for transporting Marine Corps troops

and equipment, several training aircraft, and an upgraded version of the E-2C early-warning aircraft.

Overall, CBO estimates that the Navy’s requirement

for planes is about 3,500. Assuming an average service life of about 30 years per plane, the Navy would

have to buy about 150 aircraft a year to fulfill its

steady-state requirement.

Sustaining the 300-Ship Fleet

Beyond 2005

Sustaining the Navy’s force goal of about 300 ships

over the long term (in this analysis, the next two decades) will require inflation-adjusted budgets of $105

billion a year, by CBO’s estimate. Yet the average

Navy budget over the next five years will be $88 billion, according to the 2001 FYDP. Under that plan,

the Navy would not have enough funds to support its

force goals on a steady-state basis. Thus, it would

have to either receive more resources than it is now

expected to get or reduce its force structure.2

Estimating the Navy’s Long-Term

Budget Requirements

CBO estimated how much money the Department of

the Navy needs to sustain and modernize its force

structure between 2001 and 2020 by determining the

level of funding necessary in each of the major budget

accounts: procurement, personnel, operation and

maintenance, research and development, military construction, and family housing.

For ship and aircraft procurement, CBO estimated a sustaining budget under which the Navy

2. The Department of Defense as a whole faces similar problems over the

long term. For more details, see Congressional Budget Office, Budgeting for Defense: Maintaining Today’s Forces (September 2000).
CHAPTER TWO CAN THE NAVY MAINTAIN A 300-SHIP FLEET AT CURRENT BUDGET LEVELS? 19

would buy the appropriate numbers each year to replenish its fleet and its inventory of aircraft as they

age. To estimate that budget, CBO first determined

the annual purchases required for replenishment by

dividing the Navy’s inventories of ships and aircraft

by the service life of each type of vessel and plane. (In

the case of aircraft, CBO added an adjustment for expected annual losses through accidents, combat, or

other sources of attrition.) Those annual purchases

were then multiplied by CBO’s estimates of the unit

(per-item) cost for each type of ship or plane. The

results were a required budget of $10.8 billion per

year (in 2000 dollars) for new ships and $10.2 billion

for new aircraft (see Table 5). By comparison, the

average amounts budgeted for those categories under

the 2001 FYDP are $9.4 billion and $8.1 billion, respectively.

Table 5.

Estimated Annual Budget Needed to Sustain 

the Planned Navy Through Fiscal Year 2020

Compared with Annual Funding Under the 2001

FYDP (In billions of 2000 dollars)

Budget Category

Average

Annual

Funding

Under the

2001 FYDP

Annual

Sustaining

Budget

(CBO Estimate)

Procurement

Ships 9.4 10.8

Aircraft 8.1 10.2

Other 7.7 13.9

Military Personnel 26.0 29.5

Operation and 

Maintenance 26.0 27.4

Research and 

Development 8.3 10.3

Military 

Construction 1.0 1.4

Family Housing 1.2 1.1

Other 0.5 0.4

Total 88.2 105.0

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office.

NOTE: 2001 FYDP = Future Years Defense Program for fiscal

years 2001 through 2005.

For other procurement—including such items as

missiles, trucks, communications equipment, and

equipment modifications—CBO’s estimate was based

on past spending for those items and on the relationship between that spending and spending for ships and

aircraft.

For the budget categories of military personnel

and operation and maintenance, CBO used the appropriations for fiscal year 2000 and adjusted them for

inflation and for anticipated increases in military pay

over the 2001-2020 period. Thus, CBO’s estimate

provides operating and support funding that would

maintain the current levels of operations, maintenance,

and support. That estimate also includes an allowance

for pay increases to keep the compensation of Navy

uniformed and civilian personnel competitive with

compensation in the private sector (which is expected

to increase, in inflation-adjusted terms, along with labor productivity).

For research and development, CBO used a value

determined by the historical budget share devoted to

that category since 1974. The Navy has generally

spent about 10 percent of its total budget on research

and development, which would amount to about $10.3

billion of CBO’s estimated annual sustaining budget.

For military construction, CBO estimated the

amount required to sustain the Navy’s existing infrastructure of bases, naval air stations, and so forth.

CBO’s figure, $1.4 billion per year (in 2000 dollars),

is based on what the Department of the Navy spent on

facilities during the 1980s—the last period, according

to many defense leaders, in which investment in military construction approached the level needed to sustain the Navy’s infrastructure. That estimate does not

take into account future base closings that might generate savings.

For family housing, CBO estimated the replacement value of the Navy’s stock of family housing,

based on recent construction costs per unit. Dividing

that sum by 50 produced an estimate of how much the

Navy would need to spend annually on construction

and revitalization, assuming its housing units have an

average service life of 50 years.
20 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Long-Term Shipbuilding Rates

The Navy’s long-range planning calls for purchasing

128 new ships between 2006 and 2020—an average of

8.5 per year (see Table 4). Specifically, the Navy

hopes to build four aircraft carriers, 48 DD-21 landattack destroyers and CG-21 air-dominance cruisers,

38 attack and ballistic missile submarines, five amphibious ships, and 33 mine warfare ships and fleet

auxiliaries. Under that building program, the Navy

would be able to maintain a 300-ship fleet through the

next decade, but by 2020, the fleet would fall to about

290 ships, according to CBO’s analysis of the Navy’s

current fleet, the remaining service lives of those ships,

and planned commissionings and decommissionings.

To maintain a 300-ship Navy through 2020—assuming an average service life of 35 years per vessel fleetwide—would require a building rate of 8.6 ships a

year.

The Navy already plans to keep some ships longer than it had expected when they were first constructed. For aircraft carriers, the Navy used to assume an average service life of 45 years, but today, 50

years is the norm. Similarly, when the Navy first built

its force of Trident ballistic missile submarines, it assumed a service life of 30 years, which is typical for a

submarine. Now, the Navy assumes that Trident subs

will last between 40 and 42 years. In addition, the

Navy is planning to make a modest investment in extra

maintenance to keep some Los Angeles class submarines for 33 years—up from 30 years. Finally, some

new classes of ships may have longer service lives

than their predecessors.3

Those planned extensions of service life do not

mean that the Navy is continuing to use ships that it

should have retired. Projected service lives depend on

many factors such as the amount of time ships spend

at sea, the intensity of their use, and the quality of the

maintenance they receive. For example, Trident ballistic missile submarines, unlike attack submarines,

tend to sail relatively slowly and in relatively shallow

water. Their mission is to hide and stay quiet, not

track and hunt other submarines. Because their hulls

do not undergo the same kind of stress that attack submarines face, they can remain in the fleet longer.

Despite longer service lives, achieving the

Navy’s force goal for ships over the long term will

cost considerably more than the level of funding the

service is receiving under the 2001 FYDP. As noted

above, CBO estimates that the Navy needs to spend

about $10.8 billion a year on ship construction to

maintain a 300-ship fleet through 2020. But under the

2001 FYDP, it will spend an average of $1.4 billion a

year less than that.

The relationship between the Navy’s force goals

and budget levels is illustrated by its programs for the

attack submarine fleet. The Navy plans to build less

than one attack submarine a year between 2000 and

2006. That low rate of production is sufficient to

maintain a fleet of 55 attack subs through 2015 because the Navy has many more Los Angeles class submarines with useful service life left in them than it

needs. But continuing to build one new attack submarine a year indefinitely would lead to a fleet of 28 by

2028, and 33 in the very long term, as older subs were

retired at a faster rate than they were replaced. Maintaining the 55-sub force for a longer period means that

the Navy must increase procurement to two submarines a year after 2006. Annual costs for producing

two submarines a year would be about $3.5 billion—

approximately half of the Navy’s total shipbuilding

budget for 2000 (a year in which the Navy is not buying an aircraft carrier).

Long-Term Aircraft Procurement

To fulfill its long-term requirements for aircraft, the

Navy plans to buy 2,226 planes during the 2006-2020

period, or an average of 148 a year. Those planes

consist of various types of fixed-wing aircraft: the

F/A-18E/F, two versions of the Joint Strike Fighter

(one for the Navy’s carrier air wings and one for the

3. Some analysts question whether the Navy will be able to keep its ships

as long as it plans. For example, the average service life for surface

ships historically is less than 30 years (indeed, most classes are well

below that), but the Navy’s notional service life is 35 years. That

historical average is based on Navy data, but those data do not distinguish between ships that were retired because they wore out and ships

that were retired because the Navy no longer wanted or needed them.

During the 1990s, the Navy retired many ships before they reached the

end of their notional service life because Navy budgets were declining

and the service could no longer afford to keep a larger fleet. There are

increased costs associated with retaining ships longer, but it is not

clear whether those costs are to keep the ship operating or for technological improvements.
CHAPTER TWO CAN THE NAVY MAINTAIN A 300-SHIP FLEET AT CURRENT BUDGET LEVELS? 21

Marine Corps), new support aircraft, a new jammer to

replace the Navy’s EA-6B, and a new early-warning

aircraft to replace the E-2C. The Navy also intends to

buy the V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft (as medium lift to

transport troops and equipment for the Marine Corps)

and to remanufacture (completely overhaul) the SH-60

antisubmarine helicopter and various support aircraft.

However, those plans would leave the Navy with

fewer aircraft than it needs to maintain its inventory

on a steady-state basis—continuing a trend evident

during the 1990s.

Even though it would be buying many fewer aircraft than its steady-state requirement, the Navy’s

planned purchases are sizable. The schedule for the

F/A-18E/F calls for producing 48 planes annually for

most of the next decade. Purchases of that plane are

expected to total 548 (much less than the original goal

of about 1,000 aircraft for the Navy and Marine

Corps). Production of the Joint Strike Fighter is expected to start with 12 aircraft in 2006. Purchases

increase to 84 per year by 2011, for a total of about

1,000 planes between 2006 and 2020. The Navy’s

schedule for the V-22 completes production at 403

aircraft by 2014.

Increasing aircraft production by enough to sustain the Navy’s inventory would be virtually impossible at current budget levels. By CBO’s estimate, the

steady-state procurement costs for that inventory are

about $10.2 billion a year (in 2000 dollars). But aircraft production is budgeted for an average of about

$8 billion a year under the 2001 FYDP.

The Increasing Age of 

the Fleet

Today’s fleet is relatively young. Under the Navy’s

procurement plans, the average age of many of the

principal classes of ship in that fleet would increase,

but only slightly. The average age of attack submarines would initially rise and then fall back to about 16

Table 6.

Average Age of Navy Ships, 2000 and 2020

(In years) 

2000 2020

Expected

Service

Life

Aircraft Carriers 21 25 50

Surface Combatants 13 18 35

Attack Submarines 13 16 33

Ballistic Missile Submarines 11 29 40

Amphibious Ships 20 20 40

Combat Logistics Ships 19 16 35

Mine Warfare Ships 8 21 30

Fleet Auxiliaries 15 14 35

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office.

years by 2020, as the Virginia class submarines were

procured in quantity. The average age of surface warships would increase from about 13 years today to 18

years by 2020; the average age of amphibious ships

would initially decline from its current level of 20

years and then return to that number by 2020; and the

average age of aircraft carriers would increase from

about 21 years to 25 years (see Table 6). One notable

problem could be the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines. Under current plans, the average age of that

fleet would increase from about 11 years today to 29

years by 2020. Apparently, the Navy does not plan to

buy any new boats until that latter date. Overall, the

average age of the total fleet would rise from about 14

years now to 19 years by 2020. Moreover, in that

year, almost two-thirds of the fleet would be older than

the midpoint of the ships’ average service life of 35

years.4

4. For a discussion of the aging of the Navy’s aircraft, see Congressional

Budget Office, A Look at Tomorrow’s Tactical Air Forces, and the

statement of Lane Pierrot, Senior Analyst, National Security Division,

Congressional Budget Office, before the Subcommittee on Military

Procurement of the House Committee on Armed Services, February

24, 1999.
Chapter Three

Alternative Structures of

Future Naval Forces

When confronted with funding constraints, the

Navy has often reduced its force structure.

The service has trimmed the number of its

battle force ships by more than 45 percent since 1990.

More recently, in 1998, it lowered its force goal from

346 ships to about 300. As the previous chapter indicated, in the absence of additional funding, the Navy

could well face further reductions in the fleet.

This chapter presents four alternative force

structures that the Navy could develop between now

and 2020 at roughly its current budget level (adjusted

for inflation). Like today’s Navy, all of the alternative fleets are power-projection navies. However,

each alternative emphasizes a particular portion of

the Navy’s existing forces: aircraft carriers, surface

combatants, submarines, or amphibious ships.

Analyzing the Alternatives

These options illustrate different ways in which the

Navy could shape its fleet. Which choice would be

“best” depends on how the world evolves between

now and 2020 and therefore on what missions the future Navy is asked to perform. The nature and number

of future threats to U.S. interests would be an important factor in that choice, but so would the foreign policy goals of the United States and the role of sea

power in achieving them. Each alternative has advantages and disadvantages, which are discussed in the

context of the different ways in which the world security situation might change over the next 20 years.

Elements of CBO’s Analysis

The Congressional Budget Office made a number of

assumptions in developing and analyzing the alternatives. The primary assumption was that over the next

two decades, the Navy’s annual budget would be limited to the inflation-adjusted equivalent of about $90

billion (in 2000 dollars)—roughly the average the

Navy expects to receive each year through 2005 under the 2001 Future Years Defense Program. Moreover, CBO assumed that the force structure for each

alternative would be fully funded within that $90 billion budget limit. The modernization costs that are

part of CBO’s estimates assume that the Navy would

purchase all of the elements of the fleet in adequate

numbers to sustain the force structure in the long run.

Each alternative includes at least one new class

of ship that the Navy is not currently planning to buy.

The designs of those future ships are based on information developed by CBO or by the Navy for analytic purposes. For example, for the future DD-21

land-attack destroyer, the Navy conducted an analysis

of alternatives, which considered several different

designs for the next surface combatant. In some of

the alternatives presented here, CBO used a variant

of the design that differs from the DD-21 concept that

the Navy actually selected.1

1. In designing the DD-21 land-attack destroyer, the Navy thoroughly

analyzed the missions and requirements the ship would have to fulfill,

the capabilities it would have, and the ship’s potential costs. (That

exercise is called a cost and operational effectiveness analysis.) As

part of that process, the Navy also examined various alternatives to the

DD-21, including at least six different types of ships as well as combinations of those types. Among the ship types that the Navy studied
24 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

The final element that CBO included in its analysis is operating and support costs for each alternative. Those estimates are based on operating costs

for the ships in the fleet today.

Overall, three categories of cost—procurement,

operation and maintenance, and military personnel—

vary with each alternative, depending on the type of

ships and aircraft that the alternative includes. However, for any given category, those differences are not

greater than 12 percent from one alternative to another. Research and development costs in all of the

alternatives are set at $9 billion—their historical budget share. For military construction and family housing, CBO uses the estimates discussed in Chapter 3:

$1.4 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively.

Measures of Comparison

The Navy’s two groups of missions—peacetime and

wartime—provide a framework for analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of these alternatives.

The Navy’s principal peacetime mission is maintaining a visible forward presence. Other missions that

fall under that broader category include enforcing

sanctions, responding to humanitarian or other crises,

putting ground forces ashore for peacekeeping operations, making diplomatic visits or port calls, and

“showing the flag” around the world. The Navy’s

principal wartime mission is defined in terms of capability rather than actions: the Navy articulates it as

having the ability to fight two major theater wars at

almost the same time. Under that rubric, the Navy’s

wartime missions would include controlling the seas

and denying enemies their use, conducting forcibleentry operations with Marine Corps troops, and carrying out strike operations.

None of the fleets in CBO’s alternatives could

perform all of those missions as well as today’s Navy

can (and today’s Navy cannot perform all of them as

well as the much larger Navy of 1990 could). But

each alternative fleet should be able to perform some

of those missions better than the other alternative

fleets could.

Thus, CBO compares each alternative using two

criteria: capability and flexibility. Capability is the

ability of the force to perform the mission or operate

in the environment for which it is best suited. Flexibility is the force’s ability to respond to the requirements of different missions. Another way to think

about those characteristics is to consider how balanced the fleet is. Can it perform a variety of missions? What is the risk that it will be unable to protect U.S. interests if the international environment in

2020 is different from the one that planners now expect? CBO did not use a formal model to apply those

criteria in its analysis. Instead, it performed the analysis qualitatively.

Readers should note, however, that none of these

alternatives would be fully suitable if the United States

faced an adversary with a naval force that rivaled the

U.S. Navy in size and quality of ships. In that event,

the $90 billion budget level would most likely be

inadequate—and the force structure too small—for

U.S. forces to prevail easily.

Alternative I: Rely on 

Carriers and Focus on 

Providing Forward Presence

Under this alternative, the Navy would retain 12 aircraft carriers, at the expense of maintaining other

types of ships. The Navy justifies the size of the current carrier force by the requirement to maintain overseas presence rather than by the role those ships would

play in wartime.2

 Thus, the principal mission of this

alternative’s fleet would be to maintain as much forward presence with aircraft carriers as possible. Proponents of keeping a large force of aircraft carriers

would argue that maintaining a robust forward presence deters aggressors, reassures friends, and allows

the United States to respond more quickly in a crisis

were a large-capacity missile ship (a variation of the arsenal-ship concept canceled several years ago); a relatively inexpensive sea-dominance maritime interdiction ship; and a power-projection ship capable

of carrying Marines, helicopters or V-22s, and Tomahawk missiles.

2. The Department of Defense’s 1993 Report on the Bottom-Up Review stated that a force of 10 carriers would be adequate to fight

two nearly simultaneous regional wars.
CHAPTER THREE ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES OF FUTURE NAVAL FORCES 25

than if its fleet sailed from U.S. ports. According to

CBO’s analysis, the current 12-carrier force would

allow the Navy to deploy a carrier in the Far East 100

percent of the time and one each in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf regions about 85 percent of the

time.3

Retaining 12 carriers while staying within current budget constraints would make the Navy even

more “carrier heavy” than it is now. As noted earlier,

when the Navy reduced its forces after the Cold War,

the number of carriers declined less than the number

of other major types of ships. Keeping the same

number of carriers and remaining within the budget

that CBO has assumed for this analysis would require

the Navy to cut the number of other ships further.

Force Structure Under Alternative I

This alternative would preserve aircraft carriers as

the core of the Navy and would continue the service’s

modernization programs for carrier aircraft according

to current plans. The Navy would buy the F/A-18E/F

and the Joint Strike Fighter for both its carrier wings

and the Marine Corps’s squadrons. In that respect,

there would be no difference between this alternative

and the Navy’s long-term plan.

In the area of surface combatants, however, Alternative I would differ sharply from the Navy’s current force goals. By 2020, the number of surface

combatants would drop from 117 under the Navy’s

plan to 83 under this option—a decline of about 29

percent (see Table 7). In that year, the force would

comprise 58 sophisticated, multipurpose, Aegisequipped DDG-51 (Arleigh Burke) destroyers. The

remaining 25 ships would be the Navy’s new surface

combatant, the DD-21—but not the high-end model

of that vessel now planned. Instead, the Navy would

purchase the less expensive sea-dominance version,

which CBO estimates would cost about $600 million

apiece. That version of the DD-21 would have strong

capabilities against enemy submarines and surface

ships and the ability to enforce maritime quarantines.

Unlike the more sophisticated ships with Aegis radar,

however, it would not provide air defense for the

fleet, although it would have a self-defense capability. Also missing from this version of the DD-21

would be vertical launch system (VLS) cells to shoot

Tomahawk missiles. To stay within budget constraints, Alternative I would also retire all 27 of the

Navy’s Aegis-equipped Ticonderoga class cruisers

and would not replace them. Thus, although the

Navy’s current force goal calls for 85 Aegis ships,

Alternative I would have only 58—about the same

number as are in the fleet today.

Under this alternative, the Navy’s fleet of attack

submarines would decline to 25, compared with the

current force goal of 55. The ballistic missile submarine force would be reduced to 10, which is four submarines less than both the Navy’s force goal and the

number advocated by the Clinton Administration’s

Nuclear Posture Review.

This option would also reduce the amphibious

fleet by one-third. The remaining 24 ships would be

organized into eight amphibious ready groups, each

containing one large flat-deck ship (capable of deploying amphibious forces by sea and air) and two

other amphibious vessels. In many situations, ARGs

can substitute for carrier battle groups in providing

forward presence. For example, they could be used

to fill the gaps in coverage of the Mediterranean and

Persian Gulf regions when deployment cycles resulted in the absence of an aircraft carrier.

Under this alternative, the number of combat

logistics (replenishment) ships would fall from 31 to

26 because fewer logistics ships would be needed to

support the smaller fleet that this option envisions.

However, the alternative would retain other

vessels—submarine tenders, other support ships

(such as surveillance ships and tugs), mine warfare

ships, and fleet command ships—in the same numbers as in the Navy’s plan.

Capability Under Alternative I

Overall, this option’s force structure would provide

the same ability to maintain forward presence with

3. Those figures are based on a projected force of 10 nuclear and two

conventionally powered carriers in 2003. See Congressional Budget Office, Improving the Efficiency of Forward Presence by Aircraft Carriers, CBO Paper (August 1996), pp. 7-9. The 100 percent figure for the Far East is fixed by definition. The Navy counts

the carrier based in Japan as being forward deployed even if it is

docked in its Japanese home port.
26 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Table 7.

Force Structure Under Alternative I Compared with the Navy's Current Plan

Navy’s

Current Plana

Alternative I:

Keep a 12-Carrier Navy

for Forward Presence

Difference Between

Alternative I and

the Navy's Plan

Aircraft Carriers 12 12 0

Surface Combatants

DDG-51 destroyers 58 58 0

DD-21 destroyers 32 25b -7

CG-47 cruisers 27 0 -27

Subtotal 117 83 -34

Attack Submarines 55 25 -30

Ballistic Missile Submarines 14 10 -4

Amphibious Ships 36 24 -12

Combat Logistics Ships 31 26 -5

Mine Warfare Ships 16 16 0

Fleet Auxiliaries 23 23 0

Total Ships 304 219 -85

Aircraft Carrier Air Wings 11 11 0

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office.

a. Assumes that the Navy achieves the force goal of the Quadrennial Defense Review, after adjustments in 2007 and 2012, plus five additional submarines

and one additional surface combatant.

b. The DD-21 destroyers for this option are cheaper and less capable than those in the Navy's plan.

aircraft carriers as the Navy’s current plan. That kind

of force is best for day-to-day management of affairs

and for quick responses to rapidly developing crises

in the Mediterranean Sea, Indian Ocean, or Western

Pacific regions. The presence of a U.S. military force

in a theater of operations could help stop a regional

aggressor in the critical early stages of a conflict.

Carrier battle groups are also effective sea-control

instruments because the long ranges of their aircraft

allow them to patrol large areas of sea lanes as well

as deal effectively with threats to those lanes.4

Yet despite its advantages, this option would

substantially weaken the Navy’s ability to use surface

combatants for forward presence. Currently, the

Navy fills its gaps in carrier coverage with groups of

cruisers, destroyers, and frigates. But under this alternative, the Navy would be unlikely to have enough

of those ships to continue doing so, unless it reduced

the number of surface combatants that deploy with a

carrier from the current level (typically, four to six).

Another drawback of this option is that other

presence missions that do not require carriers might

have to be curtailed. For example, Navy ships are

routinely involved in trying to stop drug smuggling in

waters close to countries that are the source of narcot4. For more on the value of carriers, see James L. George, The U.S. Navy

in the 1990s: Alternatives for Action (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute

Press, 1992), p. 103. For a current critique, see Rebecca Grant, “The

Carrier Myth,” Air Force Magazine (March 1999), pp. 26-31.
CHAPTER THREE ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES OF FUTURE NAVAL FORCES 27

ics. Those ships also conduct joint exercises with

other nations’ navies. Such operations might have to

be reduced under this alternative—or eliminated altogether.

Flexibility Under Alternative I

For the most part, this option would retain nearly the

same flexibility to fight two major theater wars as the

current Navy plan, but it would be less flexible in

other respects. On the one hand, by keeping and

modernizing the current fleet of 12 aircraft carriers

and their air wings, the Navy would conserve much

of the striking power of the battle group. (The remainder of that power is found in long-range missiles.) On the other hand, because the Navy would

have fewer surface combatants and submarines under

this alternative, its ability to conduct strike operations

using Tomahawks or some other type of land-attack

missile would be impaired.

The surface ships that this option would sacrifice to maintain the carrier force are the ones that

contain large numbers of VLS cells, which carry and

launch Tomahawk missiles. Overall, the force created under this alternative would have about 5,500

VLS cells— less than half the number in the Navy’s

plan. That might prove to be an important limitation

if the Navy is increasingly called on to perform the

kind of unmanned strike missions with Tomahawks

that have been conducted recently in Afghanistan,

Somalia, Iraq, and Serbia.

Attack submarines would continue to perform the

same missions under this alternative that they do today—gathering intelligence, helping to defend carrier

battle groups against attack by diesel-electric submarines in littoral waters, and performing some strike

missions. But far fewer submarines would be available for those missions. According to the Bottom-Up

Review, the Navy needs 45 submarines to fulfill wartime requirements, although that force is probably too

small to fulfill all of the submarines’ peacetime requirements. Overall, this option would substantially

increase the risk of failure in conducting peacetime

missions by attack submarines; it would also introduce

considerable risk of failure in carrying out wartime

missions. For example, with the 25 submarines under

this alternative, the Navy could keep only four attack

subs forward deployed, compared with nine under the

Navy’s plan—a reduction of more than 50 percent.

(To make that calculation, CBO used standards of

measurement provided by the Navy.) However, at

least one analyst has argued that a submarine fleet of

the size that this option envisions would be sufficient: “The United States could cut the number of

submarines to 25 modern hulls and still field the best

force in the world.”5

Alternative II: Use Other

Ships for Presence Missions

Some critics of the Navy have argued that the service

is not designing and building the right kind of ship to

perform overseas presence missions, which usually

involve operating in coastal waters. This alternative

illustrates one way to address that criticism—by cutting the number of aircraft carriers and amphibious

ships to buy a more-capable force of surface combatants.

Under this option, the Navy would build its surface combatant force around a new type of presence

ship instead of the DD-21 destroyer. The new ship

would be patterned after the littoral-supremacy ship

proposed by Admiral William Owens, former Vice

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.6

 It would resemble a hybrid of a surface combatant and a flatdeck amphibious ship and would perform many of

the missions in littoral areas that are now distributed

among several classes of ships.

The new vessel would have VLS cells capable of

shooting missiles such as the Tomahawk for land attack and the Standard for air and tactical ballistic missile defense. The ship would also carry marines and

be able to put them ashore using helicopters and high5. Ivan Eland, Subtract Unneeded Nuclear Attack Submarines from

the Fleet, Foreign Policy Briefing No. 47 (Washington, D.C.: Cato

Institute, April 2, 1998), p. 1.

6. Admiral William A. Owens, High Seas: The Naval Passage to an

Uncharted World (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1995),

pp. 166-169.
28 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

speed landing craft. In addition, the vessel could provide landing forces with supporting fire (from the sea

using long-range guns or from the air using attack

helicopters and vertical or short take-off aircraft).

Thus, this hybrid ship might be the only platform

needed to conduct small amphibious operations, such

as a raid or a rescue of personnel from an embassy.7

Force Structure Under Alternative II

Although the number of surface combatants under

this option would be about the same as under the

Navy’s plan—118 versus 117—the capability of the

ships would be greater. The surface combatant fleet

in 2020 would comprise 58 Aegis-equipped DDG-51

destroyers and 60 of the new multipurpose presence

ships (see Table 8). As in Alternative I, the 27

Ticonderoga class Aegis cruisers would be retired

because the Navy could not afford them. In addition,

the DD-21 land-attack destroyer program would be

canceled because those destroyers would be replaced

by the presence ships.

This alternative would help pay for the new

presence ships by cutting the number of aircraft carriers and aircraft. The carrier force would be reduced

from 12 to seven, and the Navy’s inventory of tactical

aircraft would be cut by eliminating five air wings.

The number of large flat-deck amphibious ships

would also be reduced—from 12 to six—and the rest

of the amphibious fleet would be retired. Consequently, the number of dedicated amphibious ships

would fall from 36 to six. Nevertheless, because of

the new hybrid ships, the Marine Corps would suffer

no diminution of its lift capability (its capacity to

transport troops and equipment). In analyzing this

option, CBO assumed that the presence ships would

have the same lift capability as the LPD-17 ships now

under construction. Thus, this fleet would have substantially more lift capability with respect to troops,

cargo space, vehicle space, and spots for air-cushion

landing craft than the Navy’s current plan. It would

have slightly more capability with respect to spots for

vertical take-off and landing aircraft (630 versus 612

under the Navy’s plan).

Alternative II would cut the number of ships in

other categories as well. The attack submarine fleet

would drop from 55 to 34.8

 And as in Alternative I,

the number of ballistic missile submarines would fall

from 14 to 10, and the number of replenishment ships

would decline from 31 to 26 because fewer would be

needed to support a smaller fleet. Like the previous

option, this alternative would retain the currently

planned numbers of submarine tenders, other support

vessels such as surveillance ships and tugs, mine warfare ships, and fleet command ships.

Capability Under Alternative II

The central mission of this option’s fleet would be to

provide a robust forward presence in many different

regions of the world. The fleet’s composition is designed to ensure that the maximum number of ships

would be “on station” (patrolling their designated

areas), ready to respond to low-level crises and to

deter potential aggressors as well as promote stability

by being visible and available.

In the Western Pacific, the Navy could maintain

full-time presence using the aircraft carrier that is

based in Japan. The remaining six carriers under this

alternative could provide a modest amount of forward

presence in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean

Sea; alternatively, they could provide full-time presence in one of those regions, but the other would be

without a carrier. At the same time, this alternative

could maintain eight presence ships and five attack

submarines in continuous forward deployment, in

addition to the carrier battle groups.

With that kind of force structure, this fleet could

perform several forward presence missions simultaneously. For example, it could maintain a carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf region continuously, per7. Some Navy analysts have also supported this idea. For example,

see Commander Sam Tangredi, “A Ship for All Reasons,” Proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute (September 1999), pp. 92-95.

8. For example, Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution has argued

that a fleet of 35 submarines would be sufficient in light of the fact that

U.S. subs no longer need to trail Russian ballistic missile submarines—a

principal mission during the Cold War. See O’Hanlon, How to Be a

Cheap Hawk: The 1999 and 2000 Defense Budgets (Washington, D.C.:

Brookings Institution Press, 1998), pp. 125-126.
CHAPTER THREE ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES OF FUTURE NAVAL FORCES 29

Table 8.

Force Structure Under Alternative II Compared with the Navy's Current Plan

Navy’s

Current Plana

Alternative II:

Use Other Ships

for Presence Missions

Difference Between

Alternative II and

the Navy's Plan

Aircraft Carriers 12 7 -5

Surface Combatants

DDG-51 destroyers 58 58 0

DD-21 destroyers 32 0 -32

Presence ships 0 60 60

CG-47 cruisers 27 0 -27

Subtotal 117 118 1

Attack Submarines 55 34 -21

Ballistic Missile Submarines 14 10 -4

Amphibious Ships 36 6 -30

Combat Logistics Ships 31 26 -5

Mine Warfare Ships 16 16 0

Fleet Auxiliaries 23 23 0

Total Ships 304 240 -64

Aircraft Carrier Air Wings 11 6 -5

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office.

a. Assumes that the Navy achieves the force goal of the Quadrennial Defense Review, after adjustments in 2007 and 2012, plus five additional attack

submarines and one additional surface combatant.

haps to help enforce the no-fly zone against Iraq. It

could also keep several presence ships in the Mediterranean—one or two of which might be launching

Tomahawk missiles in response to a crisis in the Balkans while another was evacuating noncombatant personnel from a different country in the region. Still

another vessel might be deploying marines for a peacekeeping mission in, say, Lebanon on short notice.

In the past, performing all of those missions at

once would have required elements of a carrier battle

group operating with an amphibious ready group. But

this option’s new presence ships—arguably fewer in

number but, more important, on station year-round

—could perform those missions because there would

be no gaps in coverage. John Pike of the Federation of

American Scientists has argued that the Navy could

reduce its carrier fleet substantially and substitute surface ships in presence missions, although he did not

specifically endorse the concept of a littoral-supremacy ship.9

Flexibility Under Alternative II

What this alternative would add in performing the

Navy’s presence mission, it would subtract from the

9. Federation of American Scientists, 1998 Top Ten & Dirty Dozen:

Cancel Aircraft Carriers CVN-76 & CVN-77; Cut to Eight Aircraft

Carriers (May 1, 1998), available at www.fas.org/pub/gen/mswg/

msbb98/dd09cvn.htm.
30 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

service’s ability to fight two nearly simultaneous major theater wars. It would keep enough carriers to

fight one regional war and perhaps contribute to

fighting a second. But the carrier force would not be

large enough to provide a sea-based air fleet for two

major regional wars if the Air Force did not have access to land bases. That could be a major concern if,

as some analysts predict, the United States will face

much more restricted access to overseas bases than it

has in the past. Moreover, substituting presence

ships or a surface action group for some carrier battle

groups would lessen the chance that air power based

on carriers would be available in a particular theater

to halt an armored assault in the early stages of a war,

before aircraft that would use land bases could arrive.

A further drawback of this fleet is that several

presence ships would probably not be as effective in

wartime as a carrier battle group. Indeed, one criticism of the hybrid ship is that although it could perform many missions, it would perform none of them

optimally. For example, its limited number of VLS

cells might not allow a large-scale strike against land

targets, and its constrained capacity to carry marines

would not permit a large-scale amphibious assault.

In other words, a ship designed to perform all of the

missions required for overseas presence might not be

the best option for responding to more-severe crises

or fighting a war.

Nevertheless, the presence ship could be a very

flexible platform. According to Admiral Owens,

large multipurpose ships adapt more easily to

changes in technology than small specialized ships

do: “The very characteristics that portend such

power in the context of littoral warfare—the ship’s

size and multipurpose character—also tend to make it

adaptable to whatever strategy we may eventually

adopt three decades from now.”10

Thus, in a post-Cold War world in which most

crises were small, a force of hybrid ships could be

ideal. If a low-level crisis escalated in a particular

theater, the fleet’s remaining aircraft carriers could

always redeploy from other theaters or U.S. ports.

But if a second crisis occurred at the same time and

could not be contained by the presence ships in the

region, the fleet under Alternative II would have a very

difficult time conducting a second major theater war.

Alternative III: Build a 

Submarine Strike Navy

Alternative III deemphasizes the forward presence

mission in favor of the Navy’s ability to carry out

large strike operations (that is, attacks on land targets) with missiles. In the future, the areas where the

Navy may operate could be dominated by regional

powers armed with large numbers of relatively inexpensive antiship cruise missiles and small diesel-electric submarines. Because surface ships, especially

carriers, may become more vulnerable as a result, this

alternative would build more submarines to perform

the Navy’s strike missions.

Since the 1960s, the technology that makes submarines quieter and thus harder to detect has advanced more rapidly than the technology that allows

surface ships or land-based forces to detect submarines. The best submarines are still detectable by

surface forces —but only at distances that are within

range of the submarines’ weapon systems. Consequently, submarines are likely to find surface forces

before those forces find them, which means that “[i]f

a submarine is in an operating area, other platforms

operate at its sufferance.”11

The stealthiness of submarines makes them an

ideal platform from which to project military power.

A major advantage of a fleet that emphasized submarines would be that credible threats of military violence against potential enemies could be made without

fear that the means to carry out those threats would be

preemptively destroyed. If military action was subsequently required, submarines on station would be able

to execute it quickly. Moreover, because they would

not be vulnerable to a country’s air-defense system,

they could use their precision weapons immediately to

attack whatever targets U.S. political and military

10. Owens, High Seas, p. 169.

11. Naval Studies Board, Technology for the United States Navy and

Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st Century Force, vol. 6,

Platforms (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1997), p. 86.
CHAPTER THREE ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES OF FUTURE NAVAL FORCES 31

leaders chose in support of a particular policy. Thus,

as the threats to surface ships multiply and become

increasingly difficult to counter, it may be time for

the submarine to become the true capital ship of the

Navy. As the Naval Studies Board put it:

Over the next 40 years rapid proliferation

of high-technology systems will render nonstealthy platforms and weapons systems

increasingly vulnerable. The inexorable

global spread of modern technology will

allow hostile nations to increase their seadenial capabilities through improved surveillance, enhanced reconnaissance, rapidly

expanding information technology and precision weapons. This growing ability to

inflict significant casualties on forces that

can be detected and tracked easily places a

premium on the value of stealth. U.S.

forces, required to establish and maintain

sea control when and wherever the national

interest requires, will need maximum

stealth capabilities. The increased value of,

and emphasis on, stealth will likely result in

increased reliance on submarines in future

naval operations.12

Force Structure Under Alternative III

Under this option, the Navy would design and acquire

50 new “strike submarines” (see Table 9). It would

also enlarge the force of attack submarines to 72—the

minimum number that the service considers necessary

to meet all peacetime requirements for presence and

intelligence collection. The new strike submarines

would be big vessels that could carry large numbers of

land-attack weapons as well as some unmanned underwater vehicles and, possibly, unmanned aerial vehicles. The subs would also have the conventional armament, communications equipment, and intelligence

and surveillance capabilities of an attack submarine.

In theory, the new strike submarines could be modeled

on the concept to modify Trident subs to carry VLS

cells instead of ballistic missiles, which a number of

analysts advocate.13 In reality, though, a new strike

submarine would be designed and built in a way that

could make it far more capable and flexible than a

converted Trident.

Although the strike capabilities of such a submarine force would be relatively limited today, they

could expand dramatically in the future. New versions of the Tomahawk may be able to attack moving

armored targets as a result of increased accuracy and

the ability to “loiter” over the battlefield and be reprogrammed in midflight. That would make it possible to attack more-mobile targets. In addition, a report by the Naval Studies Board, Technology for the

United States Navy and Marine Corps, 2000-2035,

envisions a family of modular weapons based on a

single-stage theater ballistic missile. Such a

weapon—which would be less than half the diameter

and length of the Tomahawk—would be three times

as accurate and thus more capable of finding a way to

destroy heavily protected (hard) targets.

Using the capacity of a Trident ballistic missile

submarine as a model, a strike submarine could deploy up to 2,000 missiles. Its weapons would be of

different sizes, ranges, and capabilities to perform the

different missions of attacking wide areas, soft targets, hard targets, and mobile targets.14 A fleet of 50

such submarines could carry up to 100,000 weapons.

(Similarly, a Virginia class attack submarine could

deploy six such weapons for every Tomahawk or torpedo in its 38 weapon positions.) A fleet of strike

submarines with that kind of bombardment capability

would be formidable in any conflict. By comparison,

all of the coalition air forces in the Gulf War flew

12. Ibid., p. 85. See also Robert Holzer, “Utility of Subs Rises as Targeting Grows More Precise,” Defense News (April 10, 2000), p. 17.

13. Rear Admiral William P. Houley, “Making the Case for SSGNs,”

Proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute (July 1999), pp. 47-49; Owen

Cote Jr., Precision Strike from the Sea: New Missions for a New

Navy, MIT Security Studies Conference Series (Cambridge, Mass.:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Security Studies Program,

1998); Jim Courter, “The Boomer Reborn,” Proceedings, U.S.

Naval Institute (November 1997), pp. 51-53; Andrew Krepinevich,

The Trident ‘Stealth Battleship’: An Opportunity for Innovation,

Backgrounder (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, February 24, 1999). For a contrary view of the

value of these types of weapons platforms, see Norman Polmar,

“Tridents Are Not the Answer” (letter to the editor), Washington

Post, February 23, 1999.

14. Naval Studies Board, Technology for the United States Navy and

Marine Corps, 2000-2035: Becoming a 21st Century Force, vol. 5,

Weapons (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1997).
32 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Table 9.

Force Structure Under Alternative III Compared with the Navy's Current Plan

Navy’s

Current Plana

Alternative III:

Build a Submarine

Strike Navy

Difference Between

Alternative III and

the Navy's Plan

Aircraft Carriers 12 7 -5

Surface Combatants

DDG-51 destroyers 58 58 0

DD-21 destroyers 32 0 -32

CG-47 cruisers 27 0 -27

Subtotal 117 58 -59

Attack Submarines 55 72 17

Strike Submarines 0 50 50

Ballistic Missile Submarines 14 10 -4

Amphibious Ships 36 18 -18

Combat Logistics Ships 31 26 -5

Mine Warfare Ships 16 16 0

Fleet Auxiliaries 23 29 6

Total Ships 304 286 -18

Aircraft Carrier Air Wings 11 6 -5

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office.

a. Assumes that the Navy achieves the force goal of the Quadrennial Defense Review, after adjustments in 2007 and 2012, plus five additional attack

submarines and one additional surface combatant.

60,000 attack sorties against Iraqi forces.15 Operation

Allied Force, the NATO air campaign against Serbia,

involved almost 10,000 ground-attack sorties.

This alternative would produce the smallest number of surface combatants of any of the options in this

study: just 58 Aegis-equipped Arleigh Burke destroyers, compared with 117 cruisers and destroyers under

the Navy’s current plan. The DD-21 land-attack destroyer would be canceled in favor of the new strike

submarine, and no other surface combatant would be

designed or built. As in the previous alternatives, the

27 Ticonderoga class Aegis cruisers would be retired.

As the first surface combatants designed with stealth

in mind, the Arleigh Burke destroyers are the newest

Aegis ships in the fleet and less vulnerable than the

cruisers. The 58 destroyers would be sufficient to

provide air defense for a smaller carrier fleet or to

carry out their own operations.

Carriers and strike aircraft would be less important under this alternative than under any other. Thus,

as in Alternative II, this option would leave the Navy

with only seven aircraft carriers, compared with 12

15. Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf War (April

1992), p. 150. An analyst at the Lexington Institute estimates that

there are 25,000 to 35,000 major targets in a theater war, 10 percent

of which would be leadership and infrastructure targets. See Vince

Crawley, “Air Force Looks to New Cruise Missile, Not Bombers,”

Defense Week (July 12, 1999), pp. 1, 13.
CHAPTER THREE ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES OF FUTURE NAVAL FORCES 33

under the current plan. That reduction would help

pay for the large submarine force that this alternative

would create. To save more money, this option

would replace the Navy planes on board aircraft carriers with Marine Corps tactical aircraft squadrons,

substantially lessening the Navy’s need to maintain a

large inventory of aircraft. That element of the option would carry the current practice of substituting

some Marine Corps squadrons for Navy planes to its

logical conclusion.

This alternative would also reduce the Navy’s

amphibious fleet—and consequently the Marine

Corps’s capability afloat—by one-half. If surface

combatants are indeed becoming more vulnerable to

cruise missiles and submarines, the Navy’s amphibious force is in greater danger as well, because it must

operate closer to enemy coasts to conduct its missions

than any other type of combatant (except minesweepers). Specifically, under this option, the number of

large flat-deck amphibious ships (LHAs and LHDs)

would be reduced from 12 to six. And the number of

LPD amphibious transport docks and LSD dock landing ships would drop to six each, down from 12 each

under the Quadrennial Defense Review. As a result of

those reductions, the Marine Corps would be able to

maintain only 1.25 Marine expeditionary brigades

afloat, down from the current capability of about 2.1

and well below the Navy's force goal of 2.5.

With respect to support ships, six submarine

tenders would be added because of the large increase

in underwater vessels in this option. In contrast, the

number of replenishment ships would fall by five.

Otherwise, the alternative would retain the same

number of fleet support ships as in the Navy’s current

plan.

Capability Under Alternative III

This alternative is designed to address the problem of

a world in which potentially hostile regional powers

have acquired large numbers of antiship cruise missiles and diesel-electric submarines.16 The Navy’s

principal mission under this option would be to provide capability for land-attack warfare with missiles.

The submarine force that this option provides would

allow the Navy to deliver a large amount of ordnance

against a potential aggressor. Moreover, the size of

the force—50 strike submarines and 72 attack submarines—means that eight strike submarines and 12

attack submarines could be forward deployed continuously. (If the Navy maintained two crews for each

strike submarine, as it does for its strategic Trident

submarines, it could keep about 25 strike submarines

forward deployed at once.) Thus, the Navy would

have a considerable capability readily available to

strike deep into enemy territory in several different

regions simultaneously. It would also have a bombardment capability that could be generated in the

event of crisis or war by putting most of the submarine force to sea on short notice.

Nevertheless, at least initially, the new submarine would be a less potent weapon for strike missions than an aircraft carrier, although it would also

be less vulnerable. Compared with the Tomahawk

missiles that the submarines would carry, the aircraft

from a carrier can hit a wider variety of targets. The

Tomahawk has a greater range than those aircraft but

is still limited to soft or fixed targets (currently, it is

ideal for low-level retaliatory strikes to punish an

aggressor). Thus, if the strike submarines envisioned

for this option carried only the existing Tomahawk

missile or some similar weapon, they would not be

nearly as effective as carriers.17

The rest of the fleet under Alternative III—the

surface combatants, carriers, and amphibious ships—

would continue to perform some of their traditional

missions. But because of their reduced numbers and

vulnerability, they would perform those missions less

frequently, or in some cases not at all. The small surface combatant force would be sufficient only to protect the carriers and amphibious ready groups and

might be hard-pressed to do even that. The seven

carrier battle groups could still perform some forward

presence missions in peacetime, maintaining full-time

presence in the Western Pacific and either modest

presence in both the Mediterranean Sea and Indian

Ocean or nearly full-time presence in one of those two.

16. For additional discussion of that problem, see Cote, Precision

Strike from the Sea, pp. 11-14.

17. On the advantages and disadvantages of this type of alternative, see

George, The U.S. Navy in the 1990s, pp. 73-74.
34 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

Seven carriers would also be sufficient to fight one

major theater war, but they would not be performing

deep-strike missions and would be limited to close air

support of troops on the battlefield. Finally, the

smaller amphibious forces in this option could still

carry out traditional missions such as evacuating noncombatant personnel, but their reduced numbers

would make them less available for such tasks.

Flexibility Under Alternative III

Perhaps the biggest weakness of this alternative is the

dramatic reduction it would make in the Navy’s visible forward presence during peacetime. Under this

option, the Navy would have 83 ships for that mission (seven aircraft carriers, 58 surface combatants,

and 18 amphibious ships)—only half as many as under the service’s current plan. That reduction would

lead to a corresponding drop in the amount of visible

presence the Navy could achieve.

Can submarines be used for visible forward

presence? The answer is yes, but that use would defeat the purpose of investing in a large submarine

force. The sail of a strike submarine may be as effective in “showing the flag” as the silhouette of an

Aegis destroyer, but it exposes the submarine to discovery, identification, and attack, betraying its chief

asset— stealth. Furthermore, a submarine sitting on

the surface cannot defend itself against antiship

cruise missiles.

With its emphasis on submarines, the fleet in Alternative III would have a much smaller capacity for

sea control—in other words, for guaranteeing safe passage of military or civilian ships across the lines of

communication at sea. If, as this option assumes, the

proliferation of antiship cruise missiles based on land

made surface ships more vulnerable, sea control in

littoral waters might prove difficult if not impossible

to achieve under this alternative. Submarine forces

could do little to protect shipping unless their strike

weapons could destroy every conceivable threat to a

merchant ship in coastal regions. The carrier battle

groups would be able to provide some measure of sea

control in areas farther away from the littorals. But

that capacity might be of relatively little use to merchant vessels, since most attacks on shipping tend to

occur near coasts.

Although it would have less capacity for controlling the seas, the Navy under Alternative III

would probably be highly effective at denying other

navies or civilian ships the use of the seas. As was

demonstrated in World War II, submarines are the

preeminent sea-denial weapon. How useful, though,

is a potent sea-denial capability? Against an enemy

such as Yugoslavia, which has only a very small

navy, it is not particularly important. That capability

is more useful against an opponent with a large

amount of seaborne trade (although denying another

state the use of the seas in peacetime, such as through

an embargo, is more difficult with submarines because they have to surface to stop merchant ships).

A powerful sea-denial capability could prove

highly effective against a large hostile Asian power

that had a large navy and depended heavily on trade

with its island neighbors. In any conflict with such a

country, its shores would probably be heavily armed

with antiship cruise missiles. Thus, the most effective naval response to such a power would probably

be sea denial using submarines.

Alternative IV: Reorient the

Navy to Provide More Support

to the Marine Corps

After the Cold War, the Navy revised its doctrine and

shifted its focus from fighting the Soviet navy in the

open ocean to conducting missions in coastal areas.

As part of that revision, it published the white papers

. . . From the Sea in 1992 and Forward . . . From the

Sea in 1994. The first report emphasized the Marine

Corps’s role in the Department of the Navy and the

Navy’s support of that role. The second report put

about equal emphasis on that mission and on the

Navy’s overseas presence and strike missions. This

alternative would orient the Navy more in accordance

with the principles in . . . From the Sea than with

those in Forward . . . From the Sea.
CHAPTER THREE ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES OF FUTURE NAVAL FORCES 35

In the strategic environment of the post-Cold

War world, emphasizing the Marine Corps and its

amphibious capabilities may make a lot of sense.

The United States is unlikely to face a global competitor similar to the former Soviet Union for many

years to come. At most, the nation may someday

confront one or more smaller, regional powers that

endanger U.S. interests by, for example, their ability

to threaten allies or the free flow of commercial shipping. The Marine Corps’s amphibious assault capabilities could prove useful against such opponents

should the United States need to attack them with

ground forces.

In addition, the Marine Corps is well suited to

the low-intensity missions that U.S. forces have been

involved in since the end of the Cold War—missions

such as peacekeeping, humanitarian intervention,

hostage rescue, and evacuation of civilian personnel.

In the view of one analyst, those types of operations—not conflicts like the Persian Gulf War—are

now the “norm.”18 The Marines are structured precisely to perform those missions, which often arise

with little warning.

Force Structure Under Alternative IV

The most important feature of this alternative is that

it would spend more on amphibious ships than the

Navy’s current plan. Under this option, those ships

would number 43 rather than 36, because the Navy

would buy 19 amphibious transport docks (LPD-17s)

rather than the 12 now planned (see Table 10). Furthermore, the variant design of the LPD-17 assumed

under this alternative would be equipped with VLS

cells. Both Alternative IV and the Navy’s plan

would retain 12 LHA or LHD amphibious assault

ships and 12 LSD dock landing ships.

Today, the Navy’s (fiscally constrained) goal for

amphibious lift is the capacity to deploy 2.5 Marine

expeditionary brigades (MEBs). The Navy expects to

meet that goal by 2010 when it completes the 12-ship

LPD-17 program. The Marine Corps’s requirement

for the amphibious warfare fleet, by contrast, is to be

able to deploy the assault echelons of three expeditionary brigades. To achieve that goal, the Navy would

have to purchase another seven LPD-17s.

This option would buy those seven additional

LPD-17s to reach the Marine Corps’s goal of deploying three MEBs. That capability would give the

Corps enough amphibious lift to land a contingencyresponse force capable of fighting its way in—what

the Marines call a “forcible entry operation”—in two

geographically distant theaters at the same time. (According to the Marine Corps, a MEB is the smallest

force capable of conducting a forcible-entry operation.)19

The second most important feature of this alternative is that it would almost triple the size of the

Navy’s mine-clearing force. By procuring an additional 31 ships similar to the MCM-1 Avenger class,

as well as two large vessels to serve as support ships,

the Navy would increase the number of mine-clearing

ships it could deploy to 47—meeting the minimum

goal for those ships that it established after the Gulf

War.20 Part of the rationale for buying 31 new ships

is that the existing 14 vessels of the Avenger class

may be insufficient to clear mines for a single

medium-sized amphibious assault, let alone two

nearly simultaneously.

To help pay for those new ships, the carrier force

would be cut to 10, which would be enough to support

two medium-sized amphibious assaults. In addition,

the attack submarine force would fall to 30. With respect to tactical aircraft, the Navy would purchase

several F/A-18E/Fs, and the Marine Corps would buy

the Joint Strike Fighter. But as was the case in Alternative III, the Marine Corps’s tactical aircraft squadrons would substitute for Navy aircraft on carriers.

That substitution would save money by reducing the

Navy’s inventory of tactical aircraft and would integrate the Marines into carrier operations, where they

18. George, The U.S. Navy in the 1990s, p. 111.

19. Department of the Navy, Integrated Amphibious Operations and

USMC Air Support Requirements (January 1990), p. 68. That

report is commonly known as the DON Lift II Study.

20. Norman Polmar, The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press,

1996), p. 198. The Navy also has 12 coastal minehunters of the

MHC-51 Osprey class, which were designed and built to clear U.S.

ports in the event they were mined. Those vessels, however, have

limited endurance for overseas operations.
36 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

would be well placed to carry out amphibious operations.

Like most of the other alternatives, this option

would reduce the overall number of surface combatants. It would retain the 58 Arleigh Burke destroyers

in the Navy's current plan and retire the 27 Ticonderoga class cruisers. But under this alternative, the

Navy would also buy 35 future surface combatants

dedicated to maritime support of the Marines in littoral

areas. Those ships would be similar to the DD-21 as

currently planned but would carry at least four 155-

millimeter guns to support amphibious assaults. CBO

chose that size of gun because the Army has already

developed antitank, fragmentation, and wide-area

munitions for 155mm guns. If the Army and Navy

could buy the same size ammunition, the Department

of Defense might realize some savings from

“ecomonies of scale” on those purchases. Moreover,

a Navy cost and operational effectiveness analysis

chose that caliber of gun to improve fire support on

the DD-21. The 155mm rocket-assisted shell would

have a range of up to 100 nautical miles and be three

times as powerful as the current 5-inch round.

In addition to 155mm guns, the maritime support

ships would carry improved radar to reduce the harmful effects of interference from ground clutter, which

Table 10.

Force Structure Under Alternative IV Compared with the Navy's Current Plan

Navy’s

Current Plana

Alternative IV:

Reorient the Navy to

Provide More Support

to the Marine Corps

Difference Between

Alternative IV and

the Navy's Plan

Aircraft Carriers 12 10 -2

Surface Combatants

DDG-51 destroyers 58 58 0

DD-21 destroyers 32 0 -32

SC-21 (Littoral warfare) 0 35 35

CG-47 cruisers 27 0 -27

Subtotal 117 93 -24

Attack Submarines 55 30 -25

Ballistic Missile Submarines 14 10 -4

Amphibious Ships 36 43 7

Combat Logistics Ships 31 26 -5

Mine Warfare Ships 16 47 31

Fleet Auxiliaries 23 23 0

Total Ships 304 282 -22

Aircraft Carrier Air Wings 11 9 -2

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office.

a. Assumes that the Navy achieves the force goal of the Quadrennial Defense Review, after adjustments made in 2007 and 2012, plus five additional attack

submarines as well as one additional surface combatant.
CHAPTER THREE ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES OF FUTURE NAVAL FORCES 37

afflicts most shipboard sensors. An improved system

would also function as a counterbattery radar—similar to the land-based Firefinder system.

With such radar, the Marines could pinpoint fire from

enemy guns so those guns could be destroyed by

shells from the support ships.

Capability Under Alternative IV

The central mission of the fleet under this alternative

would be to support the Marine Corps in any operation

it might have to conduct from the sea. In that respect,

this Navy would be better suited for that role than any

of the other alternatives, including the Navy’s current

plan. This Marine-support Navy would provide more

amphibious lift, more mine-clearing capability, and

substantially more gunfire from the sea. In addition,

its carrier fleet would be oriented toward conducting

close-air-support operations for the Marine Corps. In

this sort of Navy, “All ships are either amphibious

ships or amphibious support ships.”21

Amphibious Lift. With the seven additional LPD17s that this option would buy, the Navy’s amphibious fleet would achieve the Marine Corps’s goal of

being able to transport the assault echelons of three

Marine expeditionary brigades. Thus, it could support two simultaneous Marine operations in widely

separated theaters, such as the South Pacific and the

Mediterranean.

In addition, the three MEBs could constitute the

assault echelons of a Marine expeditionary force.

Such a force, which totals about 40,000 troops, could

conduct a large amphibious assault in a major theater

war. The United States has not conducted a major

amphibious landing since the Korean War. Nonetheless, the three-MEB lift capability that this alternative

would provide might offer insurance against a military need that has arisen in the past.

Mine Clearing. The added mine-clearing ships under

this option would be sufficient for at least one major

theater war. In the Gulf War, for example, the United

States and its allies deployed a total of 34 mine-clearing vessels. This alternative would give the Navy an

even larger force that would be completely under its

operational control. That force, however, would solve

only part of the problem that the Marines face with

mines. The current Avenger class ships cannot clear

mines relatively close to shore. (If the United States

had to clear such mines today, it would have to use sea

mammals, such as dolphins.) Shallow-water mine

clearance would require the development of new technology, which this alternative would allow under its

general research and development budget. But longterm solutions for shallow-water mine clearance are

speculative and beyond the scope of this study.

Supporting Fire. The Marine Corps’s need for supporting gunfire from Navy ships flows from the fact

that its ground units have fewer tanks and less artillery

than the Army’s tank or mechanized infantry divisions

do. Consequently, the Corps’s forces are lighter and,

arguably, more mobile and flexible than the Army’s,

but they can also be more vulnerable. With the final

retirement of the Iowa class battleships in 1992, the

largest gun that Navy ships carry is 5 inches—which

some experts consider inadequate to provide covering

fire for a large-scale amphibious operation. Five-inch

shells have several drawbacks: they have relatively

limited lethality and a range of only 12 nautical miles,

which requires Navy ships to expose themselves to

enemy attack by coming close to the shore to fire.22

Some planners see missiles fired from VLS cells

on surface combatants as the solution to the Marines’

need for covering fire. But missiles cannot provide

all of the shore bombardment that the Marines require. Guns, by comparison, sustain a high volume

of fire using cheaper projectiles to suppress enemy

forces before and during an assault. Gunfire can also

be adjusted easily at the request of ground forces.

Flexibility Under Alternative IV

By orienting its fleet more toward the requirements of

the Marine Corps, the Navy would give up some of its

21. Rear Admiral Woody Sutton as quoted in Peter J. Skibitski, “Admiral Says Naval Amphibious Blueprint Must Change Dramatically,” Inside the Navy (November 8, 1999), p. 8.

22. As an interim improvement, the Navy is developing an extendedrange gun munition to provide more gunfire support. The munition

is a rocket-propelled shell that will extend the range of the Navy’s

5-inch guns to 63 nautical miles. Its complexity, however, is posing a technical challenge to the Navy.
38 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

current emphases—namely, the deep-strike mission.

The Navy’s current and future carrier aircraft programs give it the ability to strike targets far inland.

Under this alternative, the Navy would cede most of

that mission to the Air Force and orient its carrier

aircraft toward providing close air support to the Marines. Navy ships would still offer some deep-strike

capability, however, primarily through Tomahawk

missiles deployed on surface combatants and attack

submarines.

The United States currently has redundant capability among the services for striking inland targets.

Heavy Air Force bombers (such as the B-1, B-2, and

B-52), Air Force tactical fighters (such as the F-15E

and the future Joint Strike Fighter), the Navy’s tactical

aircraft and Tomahawk missiles, and the Army’s Tactical Missile System can all strike high-value, strategic

fixed targets—such as bridges, airfields, or commandand-control installations—behind enemy lines. Alternative IV recognizes that redundancy and the fact that

the Navy’s relatively limited deep-strike assets (compared with the Air Force’s) would probably be insufficient for conducting a major theater war. Under this

option, the Navy’s strengths would lie not in performing sustained deep-strike missions but in conducting

small littoral operations that require relatively little

deep-strike capability or in preparing the way for the

introduction of land-based ground and air power, such

as in securing a beachhead. Some Navy officers have

argued for such an orientation.23

With respect to other missions, this alternative’s

fleet would have more capability to conduct visible

forward presence than the fleet described in Alternative III (though less than the fleets of the first two options). The 10 carrier battle groups would permit fulltime presence in the Western Pacific and about halftime presence in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian

Ocean. The gaps in presence in those regions might

be filled with the new maritime support surface combatants and with amphibious ships, in light of their

increased numbers in this option. However, because

the attack submarine fleet would be cut to 30, the

Navy would be able to keep only five subs forward

deployed.

Conclusions

CBO’s four alternative fleets differ in varying degrees from the fleet in the Navy’s current plan. With

respect to numbers, the distribution of ships in Alternatives I and IV is similar to that in the planned fleet,

but the distributions in Alternatives II and III vary

significantly from that arrangement (see Table 11).

With respect to displacement (tonnage), Alternative

IV is the most balanced fleet and the most similar to

the Navy’s current plan. Alternatives I, II, and III

differ more from that plan because they emphasize a

particular type of ship.

The similarities among the alternatives and the

Navy’s current plan are not surprising. Ships have

long service lives, between 30 and 50 years. Thus,

many ships in the fleet today could still—and probably

will—be in service a quarter century from now.

Scrapping most of the fleet and replacing it with new

ships is simply too expensive, even if the world is fundamentally different today than it was 15 years ago.

Continuing the Current Funding Level

Would Force Future Trade-Offs

Within the same budget level, each of these alternatives describes a different Navy and emphasizes a different mission—which suggests some of the trade-offs

that future naval planners may face. Alternative I

maintains 12 carriers at the expense of all other types

of ships and stresses the importance of those vessels in

maintaining forward presence. However, that alternative would produce the smallest fleet—219 ships—

among the navies examined here. Aircraft carriers and

their air wings are clearly expensive investments, and

the Navy’s determination to keep the carrier fleet at 12

would have a deleterious effect on the rest of the fleet

over the next 20 years in the absence of major increases to the service’s budget.

Alternative II, like the first option, maintains a

great deal of forward presence, but it adds some flexibility with ships that are capable of performing the

varied yet relatively small missions that the Navy is

frequently assigned. That option’s fleet of 240 war- 23. See, for example, Commander Kevin Peppe, “Constant Bearing,

Decreasing Range,” Proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute (December

1996), p. 42.
CHAPTER THREE ALTERNATIVE STRUCTURES OF FUTURE NAVAL FORCES 39

ships combines the surface combatant and amphibious forces into one but is dominated by surface combatants, especially a new hybrid presence ship. As in

the first alternative, however, all other major categories of ships must suffer substantial cuts to put this

forward-presence-oriented force to sea.

Alternative III builds a Navy that is arguably the

most different from today’s. It allocates over 45 percent of the fleet to submarines (compared with 23 percent today) and would call on those vessels to perform

many of the missions now conducted by aircraft carriers and surface ships. It is also the alternative that

Table 11.

Distribution of Ships Under the Navy's Current Plan and Four Alternatives

Navy’s

Current Plana

Alternative I:

Keep a 12-Carrier

Navy for Forward

Presence

Alternative II:

Use Other

Ships for

Presence

Missionsb

Alternative III:

Build a

Submarine

Strike Navy

Alternative IV:

Reorient the

Navy to

Provide More

Support to the

Marine Corps

Number of Ships

Aircraft Carriers 12 12 7 7 10

Surface Combatants 117 83 118 58 93

Submarines 69 35 44 132 40

Amphibious Ships 36 24 6 18 43

All Others 70 65 65 71 96

Total 304 219 240 286 282

Percentage of Fleet

By Numbers

Aircraft Carriers 4 5 3 2 4

Surface Combatants 38 38 49 20 33

Submarines 23 16 18 46 14

Amphibious Ships 12 11 3 6 15

All Others 23 30 27 25 34

Total 100 100 100 100 100

By Displacement (Tonnage)

Aircraft Carriers 25 34 14 17 24

Surface Combatants 24 18 58 12 21

Submarines 14 10 9 40 9

Amphibious Ships 20 18 5 12 27

All Others 17 19 14 19 17

Total 100 100 100 100 100

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office.

a. Assumes that the Navy achieves the force goal of the Quadrennial Defense Review, after adjustments made in 2007 and 2012, plus five additional attack

submarines as well as one additional surface combatant.

b. In effect, this alternative combines the surface combatant and amphibious fleets into one force.
40 STRUCTURING TOMORROW'S NAVY AT TODAY'S FUNDING LEVEL October 2000

faces the most technical risk. Having submarines

serve as the Navy’s principal strike weapon and carry

out many of the strike missions now performed by

aircraft carriers would require substantial improvements in submarines’ weapons, sensors, and

communica- tions. Those improvements appear to be

technically possible, but they do not yet exist. In a

sense, this alternative emphasizes an emerging revolution in military affairs.

Alternative IV, which focuses on the Navy’s

support of the Marine Corps, is probably the alternative most like the Navy of today. Under that option,

the amphibious fleet would grow by a few more

ships, and each of the other major categories would

be reduced fairly evenly, for a total fleet of 282 ships.

The Choice Among Alternatives 

Depends on the Future Security 

Environment

Inevitably, after an analysis such as this, the question

arises, Which alternative is best? There are two ways

to answer that question. First, the alternatives are

merely illustrative. Each one represents a plan for

reconfiguring the Navy over the course of 20 years.

Many other approaches are feasible—for example,

combinations that might mix and match elements

from these alternatives or plans that represent something entirely different.

Second, which option is best depends on what

one expects the world to look like in 2020. Different

scenarios lead logically to different alternatives.

Consider the following five examples:

o If one expected that in 2020, the United States

would be engaged in a new cold war with at

least one rival superpower (a wealthy and hostile China, perhaps, or a rejuvenated Russia)

and that rival was investing heavily in naval

forces, none of these alternatives might be adequate. Instead, the United States might require

a much larger Navy.

o If one expected a relatively peaceful and prosperous world with perhaps two or three potential

regional troublemakers who did not have powerful antiship capabilities, Alternative I might

make the most sense. Its large carrier force

would seem well suited to dealing with a problem nation, if necessary, while maintaining substantial forward presence to promote general

tranquility.

o Similarly, if one believed that all of the major

regional powers in 2020 would be peaceful and

that prosperity would be steadily, if slowly, expanding, Alternative II might look attractive.

The fleet under that option would be a flexible

force well suited to dealing with small problems; in addition, it could promote stability by

maintaining more visible forward presence than

any other alternative.

o Conversely, if one envisioned a world in which

numerous hostile regional powers were well

equipped with effective and difficult-to-counter

antiship cruise missiles, mines, and small, cheap

submarines, Alternative III would appear to

hold sway. In that world, the United States

might not be the superpower it is today, but it

would be much more than the equal of any regional power. A submarine strike Navy would

permit the United States to pursue its interests

during conflicts with one or more of those states

without seriously jeopardizing its naval forces.

o Finally, if one predicted a world of chaos, religious strife, and disintegrating political regimes,

Alternative IV might be the best choice. In such

a world, the United States would probably conduct operations similar to those it has undertaken in Haiti, Somalia, and Panama. A stronger and larger amphibious force with appropriate support ships could effectively perform

those kinds of missions.

Clearly, there are distinct differences in the

threats the Navy may one day face and the missions it

may be called on to perform. Each alternative Navy

discussed here would have strengths and weaknesses

for dealing with those threats and performing those

missions. Determining which alternative (or combination thereof) would be the best depends on which

missions one considers most important and which

threats or challenges the United States is likely to

face well into the 21st century.