Meanwhile, the Center for Budgetary and Strategic Assessments, a Washington think tank, has issued a list of 10 projects that could be threatened by a continuing resolution. It lists the submarine program along with Ford-class carriers, which are designed and built exclusively at the Newport News shipyard, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries.
Even if Trump's administration can find the money needed for such a dramatic expansion, new ships can't be built overnight. Reaching a fleet of the size Trump has proposed will take until the 2030s, said Bryan Clark, who served as senior aide to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jon Greenert and now works as an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The US Navy (USN) and US Marine Corps (USMC) should consider developing and building 'light carrier'-type ships to support littoral operations associated with amphibious missions, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) recommended in a report published on 16 November.
Peter Haynes, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C. think tank, said training in such a complex terrain is easy on a small scale, but will present the service with challenges as it grows larger.
“Amphibious operations have been an element of naval warfare since ships first went to sea. For more than 2,000 years, naval forces have exploited coastal waters as maneuver space to attack their enemies' weak points, reinforce their own positions, and support littoral sea control. Since World War II, America has maintained the largest and most ready amphibious fleet in the world with an average of more than ten ships and 6,000 Marines on deployment every day since World War II. These forces have conducted more than 100 amphibious operations to cope with disasters, evacuate civilians, destroy coastal targets, and help U.S. allies and partners respond to crises.”
The United States needs a new lexicon that explains the space environment in clear terms. Whether Americans like it or not, space has morphed from our aspirational “final frontier” to an area defined by growing international competition that could flash into a hot war.
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