The Navy underwent a massive build up in the 1980s during the Reagan era, an effort that suggests that expanding the size of the surface fleet is not always good for sailors and Navy readiness, said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer who is now an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
"In the early part of the 1980s, so much money was going into shipbuilding and reactivating old ships that the readiness of the actual fleet suffered," Clark said.
The eighties-era emphasis on ship building left ships undermanned and made finding spare parts for even simple fixes difficult, Clark said. It wasn't until the end of the 1980s and the arrival of the new ships that form the backbone of the current fleet — AEGIS cruisers and destroyers and Los Angeles-class attack boats — that the Navy really reaped the benefits of the Reagan buildup, Clark said.