The Navy faces huge hurdles in trying to get to 355 ships – but a new shipbuilding plan due in coming weeks could change the whole calculus.

“We’ve got to wrestle with ship mix and their capacity; there’s a balancing act.” 

The Navy is rushing to fix its long-broken ship repair and overhaul pipeline as the service prepares itself for “a generational-level of submarine work.”

Presumptive CNO Vice Adm. Mike Gilday is forced to answer for years of Navy problems.

“It would be illogical to continue to concentrate our forces on a few large ships,” the new USMC Commandant writes in his new guidance, setting decades of planning on its head. So what’s next?

The Navy is adding more ships as quickly as possible, even as it grapples with how it’s going to pay the costs to keep them afloat once it gets them, a top officer said.

CAPITOL HILL The head of the Navy’s Columbia-class nuclear submarine program says that the program, despite earlier concerns over cost, schedule, and industrial base issues, is set to meet its goal of a first deployment in 2031, putting the service’s most expensive and consequential program on track. The boats will come just in time to… Keep reading →

The Navy may back off its much-publicized call for a 355-ship fleet and look at new options like unmanned vessels, the Chief of Naval Operations said.

Smaller unmanned vessels will act as expendable scouts and decoys, larger ones — over 50 meters — will carry masses of missiles, while manned ships will carry both the largest systems and the human beings essential for rapid adaptation in combat.

WASHINGTON: The once-revolutionary prospects of the Navy’s Zumwalt-class destroyer continue to be whittled away. Having lost some of its touted stealth capabilities and suffered a series of engine and electrical problems, now it’s likely to ditch its long-troubled gun. The Advanced Gun System on the Zumwalt never lived up to its billing. When the Navy… Keep reading →