It is hardly a secret that the U.S. Navy’s shipbuilding program is in the doldrums. Year after year, regardless of the strenuous efforts of both the Navy’s civilian and military leadership, the service has been unable to achieve the force levels it has set for itself.

For several years it remained committed to a goal of 355 active manned ships that it outlined in 2016. In 2020, the Navy issued a requirement for a more distributed fleet architecture that would comprise a minimum of 382 ships and at least 143 unmanned units. In both cases, the maximum goal was considerably higher — 446 manned ships, 242 unmanned.

A year later, under the Biden administration, the Navy revised its plan yet again, this time downward. The new plan involved a minimum of 321 manned ships — a level that fell below that of 2016 — and 77 large unmanned ships.

In 2022, the Navy revised its numbers yet again. The Chief of Naval Operations Navigation Plan called for a fleet of 373 manned ships as well as about 150 large unmanned surface and underwater vehicles. The manned warships included 66 attack submarines, 12 strategic ballistic missile submarines, 12 aircraft carriers, 96 large surface combatants, 56 small surface combatants, 49 amphibious ships and 83 support ships.

In practice, the Navy has not been able to exceed 300 manned warships, and has completed only four unmanned ships. Indeed, it had than fewer than that total number when the 2024 fiscal year ended earlier this week.........

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