The US Navy wants to nearly double the number of warships to deal with China

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The US Navy will need more than 500 ships in its fleet to ensure maritime superiority over China over the coming decades, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has just announced.

That conclusion was based on a Future Naval Forces study led by Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist, which was recently transferred to Mr. Esper.

“China intends to complete the modernization of its armed forces by 2035 and build an army,” Secretary Esper said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Evaluation in Washington, DC. world class by 2049. Beijing wants to be on par with the US Navy, if not to surpass our capabilities in certain areas and to offset our dominance in some other areas".

The Pentagon's naval research, he said, has just been completed evaluating a range of future fleet-building options aimed at sustaining U.S. dominance in an age of global power competition. The Navy, Marine Corps, General Staff, Office of the Secretary of Defense, as well as independent advisers helped carry out a "comprehensive review of the national defense strategy." his vision for the future fleet is "Combat Force 2045."

The team tested a number of force options using warfare modeling and simulation to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each ship complex in the context of different future missions.

"The 2045 Combat Force asks a more balanced navy with more than 500 manned and unmanned ships," said Esper, according to National Defense reports. “Furthermore, we will reach 355 traditional warships before 2035 - a time when China aims to completely modernize its military. And most importantly, we now have a reliable pathway to have more than 355 manned ships in this time of financial constraints. (Currently the US Navy has less than 300 ships, while China has surpassed this number, although the Chinese fleet has a larger proportion of ships and still lags the US in the total payload - PV).

The submarine fleet is a top priority, Mr. Esper said. That includes buying Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, Virginia-class attack submarines to modernize the nuclear deterrent at sea. The US Navy needs 70 to 80 attack submarines, he added, and calls them the most likely attack platform to survive a major power conflict in the future.

"The US Navy must begin building three Virginia-class submarines a year as soon as possible," he said.

Carriers are now the jewel of the US Navy, though some observers believe they are becoming increasingly vulnerable to long-range, precision-guided missiles.

"Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers will remain our most obvious deterrent to being able to deploy force and perform marine control missions around the globe," Esper said. "To continue to improve their survivability and lethality, we are developing future air squadrons capable of wide-ranging combat capabilities." The squadron should include a variety of unmanned platforms including fighters, oil tankers, early warning and electronic attack aircraft, he added.

The naval force of the future will also need 140 to 240 unmanned surface ships and submarines and the option to have a manned, potentially multitasking and allowing navigational operations to be dispersed in efficient ways. in terms of cost, he noted.