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Mahnken asserted that the military needs more resources for both readiness and modernization. He noted the uniqueness of the recent drawdown in that it is the first one to occur “all the while the United States has been at war.” Mahnken said “the risk calculus has changed” with the return of great-power competition, citing Russia and China as challenging U.S. power in certain theaters. He recommended investing in capabilities in the high end of warfare. “We need a truly global strategy that also deals with regional challenges,” he said. He cautioned that the capacity of the Defense Department to effectively and rapidly absorb a large infusion of capital is limited, and that rebuilding the military — such as increasing the Navy’s battle fleet to 340 or 355 ships — will take time and cannot be completed in four or eight years.

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.