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| Visby class Corvette (Image: Wiki Commons) |
UPDATED with McCain praise WASHINGTON: The Navy needs a bigger fleet of smaller ships than envisioned in its official Force Structure Assessment, says a congressionally-chartered study from the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments.
CSBA emphatically agrees with the Navy that the focus needs to shift from day-to-day counter-terrorism and presence operations to deterring (and if need be, fighting) major wars. Both plans call for a steep increase in attack submarines from 55 today to 66, along 12 nuclear-missile submarines. But CSBA recommends distinctly different surface fleet — one with many similarities to proposals from Senate Armed Services chairman John McCain.
[UPDATE: “I am particularly impressed with the comprehensiveness of the CSBA study, which should serve as the starting point for the new administration’s review of naval forces,” McCain said Friday, praising CSBA’s work out above two other “impressive” congressional chartered studies, one from thinktank MITRE and the other from a Navy team.
“It proposes necessary new strategic, operational, basing, and force structure recommendations that deserve immediate consideration by Navy leaders,” McCain said of the CSBA paper. “My recent white paper ‘Restoring American Power’ has much in common with these studies and recommendations. The question now is what tangible steps Navy leaders will take to turn these recommendations into reality.”
Read the full story at Breaking Defense