Options for the Navy's Future Fleet
Abstract
Since 2000, the Navy has spent an average of about $43 billion a year to buy and operate its fleet of 285 battle force ships and 4,000 aircraft. In the new 30-year shipbuilding plan that the Navy released in February, senior officials argue that the service needs 313 ships to perform all of the tasks assigned to it. Increasing and modernizing ships and aircraft as implied by that plan would cost an average of about $53 billion annually over the next three decades, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. (Those past and projected cost figures, like the others in this analysis, are in 2007 dollars). The Navy's need for additional resources to fund its modernization plan is likely to coincide with myriad other pressures on the federal budget-from elsewhere in the military, from Social Security and Medicare, and from the need to pay interest on federal debt, to name a few. If the Navy ends up not receiving any increases in funding other than for inflation, how big and how capable can the fleet be in future years?
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA448137
Entities
Organizations
- Congressional Budget Office