Thomas Dee, acting U.S. Navy undersecretary, has said the service will take until 2050s to execute its plan to increase its combat fleet to 355 ships, Breaking Defense reported Thursday.
“We may want it very, very soon, and perhaps we’ll be able to get there, but we’re going to have to work with our partners over on the Hill,†Dee said of the 355-ship goal.
“We can get on mark by mid-century to be approaching 350 ships, with significant additional dollars in our shipbuilding accounts,†he said Wednesday at the Expeditionary Warfare conference in Annapolis, Maryland.
Dee said the Navy might have to complement its large combat ships with small fleets of unmanned vessels and leverage multi-domain concepts of operation and cyber space to facilitate services coordination in order to help achieve the 355-ship capability by 2050s, the report added.
