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Although President Donald Trump has promised to grow the Navy to 350 ships, and the service has signaled a need for 355, the new administration may try to scale back the littoral combat ship program and instead buy advanced frigates that are more capable, according to Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.  “They’re not going to want to build 40 or 50 LCS-based ships,” said Clark, who is familiar with the thinking of individuals that are expected to play a role in Trump’s administration. “I think they will build as many more as they have to to keep the yards going, and then transition as soon as possible to those more robust frigates.” Congress appears to be inclined to go along with such a plan, he said.

The $640 billion McCain topline, which does not include funding for overseas operations, would represent a huge increase over previous budgets. It's $90 billion more than the fiscal 2017 budget, $54 billion more than what President Obama requested for fiscal 2018 in last year's budget and $7 billion more than the last pre-sequestration budget produced under Defense Secretary Robert Gates predicted for fiscal 2018, according to Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Writing before these statements were made, Ross Babbage of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said the U.S., Japan and Australia must “thwart Beijing’s expansionism in the South China Sea and deter further Chinese adventurism.”

Now more than ever, the United States needs to formulate an effective defense strategy to preserve U.S. interests in a strategic environment characterized by looming international and domestic challenges.

To avoid those mistakes, the Trump team at the Pentagon must focus on bringing in “capable manpower,” not just swelling the ranks of the armed forces with fresh recruits, said David Johnson, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. “The issue will be how fast the [military] expansion will be” under Mr. Trump and Mr. Mattis, Mr. Johnson said. “The biggest challenge is we are not just looking for efficiency in the military, we are also looking for effectiveness in the military and the two are not necessary mutually exclusive.” One option to ensure that balance is struck is to slow down the schedule for retirements of more experienced service members, Mr. Johnson said, noting that retaining those officers and senior enlisted members would ease the pressure on fresh recruits.

The Navy should try and maintain OFRP to get carriers to a consistent maintenance schedule, while also mitigating carrier gaps by exploring other options, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent, nonprofit institute focused on national security strategy. “As we saw with Bush, the Navy’s carriers are suffering from the effects of repeated, prolonged deployments without adequate maintenance,” Clark said. He said the Navy could use Joint Strike Fighters on large-deck amphibious assault ships, allowing about 20 strike fighters to support operations against the Islamic State during gaps in carrier presence. OFRP can still work, even with longer maintenance periods, but that means ships will have less time in the sustainment phase after a deployment, Clark said.