While a new naval future fleet architecture study from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) suggests that the U.S. Navy should maintain a fleet of 12 full-sized supercarriers, the paper also suggests that the service should develop a new class of light carriers. In the interim, while the new aircraft carriers are being developed, large deck amphibious assault ships could fill the role of the smaller flattops.

A new naval future fleet architecture study from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) suggests that the United States Navy will need to develop a dedicated air superiority fighter to counter Russian and Chinese advances.

“Counter-air operations will require low observable manned fighters with an unrefueled combat radius of more than 500 nm,” the CSBA report states. “These characteristics will keep refueling aircraft out of range of enemy air defenses while enabling the fighters to reach and engage bombers in a dynamic environment inside the enemy’s air defense envelope.”

The CSBA does not recommend the U.S. abandon its carrier-centric force altogether, but says the Navy needs to focus more on submarines and calls for a resurgence of the surface fleet. The report also calls for a new smaller carrier-sized ship.

The Pentagon and the U.S Navy must increase submarines, strengthen the surface fleet size and build new smaller, more agile carrier-type ships -- as as part of a broader effort to rethink the way it constructs the American fleet for future conflicts and operations, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment (CSBA) contends in a just-released report. 

The Navy needs a bigger fleet of smaller ships than envisioned in its official Force Structure Assessment, says a congressionally-chartered study from the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments.

CSBA emphatically agrees with the Navy that the focus needs to shift from day-to-day counter-terrorism and presence operations to deterring (and if need be, fighting) major wars. Both plans call for a steep increase in attack submarines from 55 today to 66, along 12 nuclear-missile submarines. But CSBA recommends distinctly different surface fleet — one with many similarities to proposals from Senate Armed Services chairman John McCain.

“The Navy’s idea was much more about, the F-35 has a command and control node that might be part of a strike package that’s mostly F/A-18s rather than F-35s doing a whole strike mission by themselves, which is what the Air Force model might be,” Bryan Clark, naval analyst Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) and former special assistant to past Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, told USNI News on Friday.

“We’re going to use the F-35 more as an enabler and a strike lead and as a command and control platform than as a fighter platform on its own.”

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.