Panel: Future Fleet Numbers Not As Important As Capabilities Like Sealift, Unmanned
By: John Grady
March 1, 2021 3:03 PM
A panel of Navy experts is hopeful that discussions around the future naval fleet will focus on big-picture questions – how will the Navy and the nation pay for modernizing the sealift fleet, do unmanned craft count as ships, and how does the sea service balance the needs of small and large shipyards as it builds and maintains the fleet – instead of getting stuck on debates over exactly how many ships of each class the Navy needs for its future force design.
The Navy League hosted a panel discussion last week centered around its newest Maritime Policy Statement, produced every other year to outline the Navy League’s legislative agenda. Keynote speaker Bob Work, a former deputy secretary of defense and undersecretary of the Navy, praised the report for concentrating on policy instead of the nitty gritty details of ship counts, which he called a “numbers game.â€
Work, who is also the chairman of the board of the U.S. Naval Institute, said a fleet of 355 ships, which is what the report is based on, is “now the law of the land†but that “whether you count unmanned ships [in sizing the fleet] is very important.â€
https://news.usni.org/2021/03/01/panel-future-fleet-numbers-not-as-important-as-capabilities-like-sealift-unmanned#more-83881
