{"id":12485,"date":"2018-04-09T20:24:49","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T20:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/04\/09\/the-navy-once-again-soft-pedals-its-own-355-ship-count-assessment\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T21:29:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T21:29:21","slug":"the-navy-once-again-soft-pedals-its-own-355-ship-count-assessment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2018\/04\/09\/the-navy-once-again-soft-pedals-its-own-355-ship-count-assessment\/","title":{"rendered":"The Navy, once again, soft-pedals its own 355 ship-count assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-smg-jwplayer-video\"><atype-video-jwplayer nostick=\"true\" playlisturl=\"https:\/\/cdn.jwplayer.com\/v2\/playlists\/fCzRqMW8?tags=72f1b5b8-ef77-473f-a4a9-a886935c1c45\" poster=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/video-poster-72f1b5b8-ef77-473f-a4a9-a886935c1c45.jpg\" aspectratio=\"16 \/ 9\" mute autostart=\"false\"><\/atype-video-jwplayer><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Dr. Jerry Hendrix of the Center for a New American Security, lays out his response to what he sees as the Navy walking back a plan for 355 ships. (Staff)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just in case there was ever any doubt, the Navy really doesn\u2019t want you to hold them to the 355 ship number it said it needed at the end of 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Senior Navy leadership has made a cottage industry of down-playing its December 2016 assessment that attempted to match combatant commander demand with the kind of fleet size it might reasonably expect to build. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since Jim Mattis took over as Defense Secretary in January, equivocation has been the order of the day when it comes to what size fleet the Navy is building towards in the era of President Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that continued Monday morning at Navy League\u2019s annual maritime bonanza, Sea-Air-Space. In response to a question about priorities, the Navy top requirements officer told the crowd to focus less on the 355-ship number. When it comes to fleet lethality, its what\u2019s on the inside that counts, Vice Adm. William Merz told the crowd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCapability is where we would really like to put most of our energy,\u201d Merz, the deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems, said. \u201cThat\u2019s where we can return capability and make our fleet more lethal much more quickly than just building capacity. There is the capacity piece, the 355-ship Navy, that I\u2019m sure you\u2019re very familiar with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe caution everybody that 355 is a target,\u201d he continued. \u201cIt\u2019s much more important to focus on the sum of the parts to derive from it.\u201d He said that fitting the right capabilities to operational plans and need areas was more important than actually hitting the target number of ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Merz is the latest in a long line of 355-ship soft-pedlars, a trend that has continued despite Congress making achieving a 355-ship Navy a matter of national policy as part of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act. Merz told House lawmakers in March that the Navy was gearing up for a new force structure assessment that would inevitably revise the 355-ship number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Mattis was pressed last June about growing the fleet to 355 ships, he said the nation needed a larger fleet but that it was unlikely without three-to-five percent real growth in the defense budget annually. Mattis has made clear that restoring readiness in the force is his number one priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Navy Secretary Richard Spencer said in September that the Navy needs to grow, but that the service needed to take a hard look at what capabilities the fleet would need in 15 years. The Navy\u2019s own 30-year shipbuilding plan released in February didn\u2019t get to 355 ships at all, capping out at 342 ships in 2039.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Navy\u2019s public squirreliness on its own assessment of its needs have started to irk even its staunchest supporters on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a hearing in March, Rep. Rob Wittman, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee\u2019s Seapower subcommittee, said the Navy was missing the mark on its shipbuilding plans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCritical shortfalls in aircraft carriers, large-deck [amphibious ships] and attack submarines are debilitating to our national security and only serve to embolden potential adversaries,\u201d Wittman said. \u201cThe Navy sometimes misses the strategic imperative and national urgency associated with the message our nation needs to sends to the world when an inadequate shipbuilding budget is proposed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What this all boils down to is that 355-ships is not a priority for the current administration, said Bryan McGrath, a retired destroyer skipper and consultant with The FerryBridge Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI continue to believe that a lot of people (myself included) suffered from irrational exuberance when the president\u2019s 350 campaign promise morphed into a 355 ship force structure assessment in late 2016. When people downplay numbers, it is almost always a way to reconcile tight resources. The bottom line is that if 355 were a Secretary Mattis priority, we\u2019d know it. It isn\u2019t, and so it is likely we will continue to see Navy downplay the number.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The size of the fleet is not the most important metric of sea power, an admiral said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":29311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":65,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,12,26,65],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3231],"class_list":["post-12485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-news","category-newsletters","category-your-navy"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"X6AIR5QZKFCYXNMCODQ464EA7E","arc_canonical_url":"\/digital-show-dailies\/navy-league\/2018\/04\/09\/the-navy-once-again-soft-pedals-its-own-355-ship-count-assessment\/","remove_feature_photo":true,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Navy, once again, soft-pedals its own 355 ship-count assessment - Navy Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The size of the fleet is not the most important metric of sea power, an admiral said.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Navy, once again, soft-pedals its own 355 ship-count assessment\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The size of the fleet is not the most important metric of sea power, an admiral said.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2018\/04\/09\/the-navy-once-again-soft-pedals-its-own-355-ship-count-assessment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Navy Times\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-04-09T20:24:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-08-07T21:29:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David B. 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