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“They are looking for something in the $700 million to $1 billion range,” said Bryan Clark, a retired but well-connected Navy strategist the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments, which itself recommended a larger frigate in a recent congressionally-chartered study. That’s as compared to $550 million for the latest Littoral Combat Ships, whose price has come down dramatically since early overruns, and about $1.8 billion for an 8,200-9,700 ton Aegis destroyer. “If it could be half the price of a destroyer, that’s probably the ideal.”

Many often cited American plans for how to defeat China simply assume that nuclear war can be avoided. The most often cited of these is the Pentagon’s Air-Sea Battle (ASB) plan. A report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) gives a detailed account of how an ASB-style war with China would unfold. In the opening “blinding campaign,” the U.S. attacks China’s reconnaissance and command-and-control networks to degrade the PLA’s ability to target U.S. and allied forces. Next, the military takes the fight to the Chinese mainland, striking long-range anti-ship missile launchers. Given that this is where the anti-ship missiles are located, it is only logical that the U.S. would target land-based platforms. And to go after them, one needs to take out China’s air defense systems, command control centers, and other anti-access weapons. In short, ASB requires a total war with China. This often cited and influential document does not speak to the question about what is to follow victory.

Sean Stackley, the current acting secretary, is widely respected in and around the Pentagon, but his non-permanent status will make him hesitant to make any big decisions that could hem in a permanent Trump selection, said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. As the Navy looks to grow it's going to need to make trade-offs about what the service is not going to buy anymore, and once a program is canceled or significantly altered, those decisions can be tough, if not impossible to reverse.  "A holdover is just not going to be comfortable making big decisions on behalf of the new administration," Clark said.  That's going to quickly be important, since the Navy is getting ready to roll out its 2018 budget and is already well into compiling its 2019 budget, Clark said.

“We need to reevaluate how [the U.S. armed forces] fight,” David Johnson, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said at the AUSA conference. He asked what key capabilities are needed to keep above the brigade and offered that things like electronic warfare can’t be fielded at the brigade level.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, advocates for adding the local air defense requirement. He led one of three congressionally mandated alternative fleet architecture studies recently completed by the Navy, and Clark's report advocates for building guided missile frigates. He said the proliferation of anti-ship cruise missiles and the advances in cruise missile technology necessitate the frigate defending other friendly ships from such threats. "Those things drive you to having to maybe make the air defense mission a more explicit consideration in the design of the ship," Clark told ITN April 26. If the frigates are able to protect convoys and other ships from air threats, according to Clark, the Navy's guided missile destroyers could be freed up to focus on ballistic missile defense and other missions.

Armed with the Aegis Combat System, Arleigh Burkes are a multi-mission guided missile destroyer that can alternatively serve in missile defense, anti-submarine warfare and counter-piracy capacities explained Bryan Clark, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), a DC-based think tank. “The Arleigh Burkes, especially the new ones, are the front line ship that the Navy uses for the bulk of its missile defense and security cooperation type missions,” said Clark. “The Aegis Weapons System is fundamentally a missile defense system, so the Arleigh Burkes are really doing the mission today that they were originally envisioned to do.”