McCain was speaking at the roll-out of a new report, "Restoring American Seapower: A New Fleet Architecture for the United States Navy," by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The report was one of three commissioned by Congress to study new capabilities and organizational plans for the Navy's future fleet. The CSBA report specifically advocates for truncating the LCS program as soon as possible and building a larger guided missile frigate, similar to what McCain supports. The study also calls for building 71 frigates; the frigate, like the LCS, falls into the small surface combatant family of ships. The Navy currently has a requirement for just 52 small surface combatants, according to the service's 2016 Force Structure Assessment.
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