The Navy had 271 ships in 2015, 20% fewer than in 1998, and still kept 100 ships out at sea, according to Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment.

The Navy has been strained by fewer ships taking on more missions. A 2015 study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found that deployed ships remained at a constant level of 100 between 1998 and 2014, even though the fleet shrank by about 20 percent.

Between 1998 and 2015, the Navy shrank by 20 per cent to 271 ships, while the number of vessels deployed overseas remained at about 100 ships, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, wrote in a 2015 article for The National Interest. Clark concluded that each ship has to work 20 per cent more to meet demand.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told ITN June 8 the Navy could send Congress a letter describing the budget offset but, because Congress has its own appropriation and authorization processes, it does not need an amended budget. "Congress gets to decide what to buy and how," he continued. "In effect, the budget is just a recommendation to Congress, so they could add a LCS using [Overseas Contingency Operations] funds or another offset."

However, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow who focuses on naval issues at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said the funding doesn’t do enough to help with modernization. It will “basically allow the Marines to operate at the readiness they have been over the last few years,” he told National Defense. “It addresses some of the readiness shortfalls … but what is doesn’t do is really help them with their modernization problems.”

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a former Navy submariner, said the amount of acoustic coating missing on the Mississippi "could create enough flow noise to be a sound problem at even relatively slow speeds. Also, there is enough tile missing that it could reduce the coating's ability to absorb sonar energy and make the submarine easier to find with active sonar." Clark said it isn't clear from the photo if the tiles came off due to debonding, meaning a loss of adhesion, "or if they got stripped off from something rubbing against the submarine. Nets and cables adrift at sea can do this."