...Even before it was formally submitted as the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2016, a draft of the Navy’s latest shipbuilding plan was floating around Washington and being seen by defense commentators as likely to have a short shelf life. The plan holds to the Navy’s goal of reaching a 308-ship battle force over the next five years. But an ongoing Force Structure Assessment (FSA) is under way that will likely see that number raised, the U.S. Naval Institute quotes naval analyst Bryan Clark of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments as saying. Clark, a former special assistant to past Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, told USNI News that the plan is “very provisional until the Navy comes up with a new set of force structure requirements.” He added that Congress is “already weighing in with additional ships they want to build, and the new administration is going to obviously have things they want to do differently.”..
In the News