Options for the Navy's Future Fleet

Since 2000, the Navy has spent an average of about $43 billion a year to buy and operate its fleet of 285 battle force ships and 4,000 aircraft. In the new 30-year shipbuilding plan that the Navy released in February, senior officials argue that the service needs 313 ships to perform all of the tasks assigned to it. Increasing and modernizing ships and aircraft as implied by that plan would cost an average of about $53 billion annually over the next three decades, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. (Those past and projected cost figures, like the others in this analysis, are in 2007 dollars.)
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