“The Type 002 is likely the carrier Admiral Wu Shengli talked about before he retired that will incorporate a catapult and arresting gear to enable it to deploy larger aircraft and do so more quickly,” the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Studies’ Bryan Clark, one of the foremost naval thinkers in Washington, told The National Interest. “It will also likely be larger than the Type 001 or the Liaoning, enabling it to carry more aircraft. The PLAN also wants to expand the range of their carrier-based aircraft, and more importantly, they need to be able to launch early warning and electronic warfare aircraft as well as larger fighter-bombers that can carry more weapons. They need catapults and arresting gear to deploy these kinds of aircraft.” For China, the new carrier is important as it expands its power projection capabilities. “Strategically, China wants to be able to use their aircraft carriers to expand the reach of their mainland-based strike, ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and EW [electronic warfare] systems, so a larger carrier will be helpful to that goal,” Clark said. “Secondarily, this will give them a carrier able to operate more independently of land-based aircraft, since it will be able to carry larger (and slower) logistics and early warning aircraft. That will be helpful in protecting sea lanes farther from China, such as in the Indian Ocean.”

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), in a recent report, argued for the expansion of the unmanned fleet, with 40 additional, larger, ocean capable unmanned ships – a goal that received praise and strong backing by Senator John McCain. The United States already has the perfect testing ground for exploring its current and future unmanned system and to further explore the various tactical and strategic frameworks in which they would prove most valuable.

In his opening statement, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments who previously served on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations, noted: "Shipbuilding for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard is the largest single user of American steel for military and homeland defense, with steel making up about half of a warship’s weight. A 100,000-ton aircraft carrier, for example, requires about 48,000 tons of steel, and the fleet overall contains about six million tons of American-made steel." Today, the U.S. Navy is the smallest it's been since 1916. Clark pointed out that America's current fleet is overworked and under-maintained, noting that the timing is troublesome, when terrorist threats such as the Islamic State remain a concern and attacks on Western targets continue.

The ask-fors were presented during the Congressional Steel Caucus' annual hearing, “America Rebounding: Steel in 2017 and Beyond,” on March 29 at Capitol Hill. The meeting featured members of the steel caucus and steel industry representatives including Roger Newport, CEO of AK Steel; Tracy Porter, executive vice president of Commercial Metals Company; Edward Vore, CEO of ArcelorMittal Tubular Products; Terence Hartford, vice president of ATI Defense; Tom Conway, international vice president of United Steelworkers; Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing; and Bryan Clark, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Beyond arguing for a larger fleet, authors of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments report on the potential boost of defense funding, say the Navy needs to be re-structured to meet likely future threats. Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the center, joined Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss what that re-imagined fleet would look like.

Because companies won't hire excess workers in advance, they will have a huge challenge in expanding their workforces rapidly if a shipbuilding boom materializes, said Bryan Clark, who led strategic planning for the Navy as special assistant to the chief of Naval Operations until 2013.