A New Strategy for the Navy?

Today at the Hudson Institute there was a forum on the future of the Navy, and some very interesting points were raised.

Former Naval Secretary John Lehman had the most scathing criticism, saying, "Clearly, we have a problem, a deep endemic problem...Acquisition problems are the most important problem facing the Navy." It's easy to see where Lehman is coming from, as two of the more disastrous acquisition blunders in any of the services come straight from the Navy: the littoral combat ship and the DDG-1000. Both these ships have been plagued by high costs and inefficient assembly, often being built before the designs were actually finalized. On top of that, the actual relevance of these ships to modern naval warfare should also be questioned. Why do we need a specialized ship to operate in the littorals? Can't existing frigates and Burke-class destroyers do this? Is there a need for 50+ of these ships like Gates is requesting? If we want a ship to patrol the coast, isn't this a function the Coast Guard should be undertaking? The Coast Guard performed missions like this in Iraq and had good results. We have plenty of ships that can perform the tasks the LCS was supposedly built for.

Speaking of having plenty of ships, the 313 ship goal for the Navy is entirely unfeasible. At the same Hudson event, chief Naval analyst from the CBO Eric Labs predicts that to reach this goal and taking current shipbuilding costs into consideration, the Navy will likely need $800 billion over the next 30 years. On face value, it can be said that this is entirely too much money to devote to a service that has been scrambling to find relevance since the end of the Cold War. We are simply not likely to face direct naval threats from places like China for a very long time. And if we do, we will not need 313 ships. We can easily survive with 7-9 carriers instead of 11, and around 35-40 attack submarines. This is especially true when you consider there have been mixed signals that China is debating heavily whether it wants to build its first aircraft carrier.