{"id":10240,"date":"2026-04-22T21:52:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T21:52:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/the-navy-will-keep-shrinking-until-the-industrial-base-catches-up\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T21:52:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T21:52:32","slug":"the-navy-will-keep-shrinking-until-the-industrial-base-catches-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/the-navy-will-keep-shrinking-until-the-industrial-base-catches-up\/","title":{"rendered":"The Navy will keep shrinking until the industrial base catches up"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Navy is getting its turn this year to get an independent assessment on its future with a congressionally-mandated commission on its future. While the commission\u2019s mandate is wide, there\u2019s one overarching question the group will need to answer: What can Congress do to support the aging fleet as the defense industrial base works to catch up to demand?<\/p>\n

Though the service\u2019s ideal ship count is a moving target, the real problem is that too few of the ships it does have are actually able to get underway, commissioner Trip Barber, chief analyst for Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc., said Wednesday at the Navy League\u2019s Sea-Air-Space conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is that there are so many demands and there’s so little Navy to meet them,\u201d Barber said. \u201cThe Navy we have today is smaller than the demand and the level of pressure on the force, as a result, is unsustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just over the past year, Navy ships have been engaged in combat operations in the Red Sea, the Caribbean and now in the Persian Gulf, putting strain on the service\u2019s notoriously overextended carrier strike and amphibious ready groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the reason the Navy is too small is that the deployable part of the Navy is too small,\u201d Barber said. \u201cToo much of it is stuck in maintenance. It’s not being recapitalized at the rate at which it’s wearing out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The service is in the midst of a plan to streamline its maintenance periods and has bumped its request for shipbuilding funds up 50 percent this year, but those are longer-term plans that will take years to pay dividends as the fleet continues a relentless deployment schedule.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Navy is as busy as I\u2019ve ever seen it in my career, just as an observer,\u201d said commissioner Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.\u00a0 \u201cAnd it’s historically way too small.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s going to get smaller, the commissioners said, while the defense industrial base ramps up to meet the service\u2019s demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do we cover that risk?\u201d Barber said. \u201cIn the interim, we’ve been looking at unmanned options, because that’s really the only way we can get more capability out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Navy needs a clear unmanned strategy, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo if unmanned is key to the near-term, because we can’t build enough large ships fast enough to meet the capability needs, we’re going to have to use smaller things that are unmanned,\u201d he said. \u201cHow are we going to focus and manage that? And I don’t think the Navy currently is doing a very coherent job of doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

If remote and autonomous systems are not only the bridge to a higher ship count, but the future of warfare, the Navy needs to start thinking about what that means beyond the capabilities they could bring, said commissioner Tommy Ross, head of global public policy at Alteryx, Inc.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to think about not just the equipment, not just the platform, but also the people that are needed to support,\u201d he said. \u201cEven though they’re uncrewed, there’s going to be a lot of people that support these systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Details like where they be home-ported and what they need in terms of maintenance facilities have yet to be worked out, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI can go on, but I worry that \u2026 we\u2019re much further ahead in our thinking about the technology than we are thinking about all those other elements,\u201d Ross said. \u201cSo I think that’s an area that I hope the commission will dig into.\u201d<\/p>\n

And though the Navy and presidential administrations have often focused on ship count, Barber said it\u2019s a meaningless number if it isn\u2019t the right balance of ships, from carriers to amphibs to submarines.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach of them has a number that makes sense, and having too much of one doesn’t compensate for having too few another. We need to have a set of numbers that, in the aggregate, describe what the Navy needs to be able to do,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd whatever they happen to add up to at the bottom line does not matter, because you have to hit each one of those to have the right Navy, with the right capability.\u201d\n\n<\/svg><\/p>\n<\/div>\n