Budgeting for Naval Forces: Structuring Tomorrow's Navy at Today's Funding Level

In the view of the Congressional Budget Office CBO, the U.S. Navy will have trouble carrying out its current acquisition and modernization plans without a substantial increase in annual funding over the next 20 years. If such an increase does not occur, how could the Navy structure itself to perform its missions in the coming decades The Navys strategy has evolved since the Cold War-from combating a large Soviet fleet in the worlds deep oceans to confronting smaller, regional powers in coastal littoral areas. Nevertheless, although the size of the Navy has shrunk dramatically during the past decade, its composition has largely remained the same. The service continues to buy many of the same weapons that it did during the Cold War. In addition, it plans to build a more-modern version of each major type of vessel it uses. But CBO estimates that carrying out those plans-and sustaining the Navy at its current size of about 300 ships will cost 105 billion annually adjusted for inflation through 2020. That amount is about 17 billion more per year than the service receives now. Without more funding, the Navy will face trade-offs in terms of which missions it can perform or how well it can perform them. This study presents four alternative force structures, each of which emphasizes one of the Navys current missions. Each of the alternative fleets would cost roughly 90 billion per year in todays dollars through 2020.