Notes to the New Administration Week
By Captain R. Robinson Harris, USN (ret.) and Colonel T.X. Hammes, USMC (ret.)
There has long been public angst in DC about the number of ships in the U. S. Navy, which is projected to decline to 283 in 2027. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the number of ships will slowly begin to increase in 2028 and reach 381 manned ships and 134 unmanned ships by 2045. Today, the PLA Navy has 370 ships and is building at a higher rate than the United States.
The new administration should understand that the number of ships is the wrong metric. The metric to instead focus on is the number of missiles the Navy possesses and how they are deployed across the fleet via platforms. In a high-end war at sea, offensive firepower would be mostly delivered by missiles, and most of those missiles are likely to be launched by surface ships. Yes, the Navy’s aircraft carriers and their embarked aircraft can carry missiles as well, but the number of missiles per aircraft is small and aircraft range is limited, potentially putting them beyond striking distance of important PRC targets. The surface fleet features thousands of vertical launch cells that can generate missile salvos much faster than the sortie generation rates of aircraft carriers and airfields.
This means the U. S. Navy needs more missiles and they should be deployed in a larger number of widely distributed ships to complicate the PRC’s targeting. But today it takes approximately nine years to build a flight III guided missile destroyer at a cost of about $2.5B.1 Comparable figures for a Constellation-class guided missile frigate are seven years and about $1.4B.2 Staying the course on current surface warship acquisition will not grow the missile capacity of the fleet at a speed and scale that makes a major difference by the end of this decade.
There is a solution that is faster and more affordable – purchase used merchant container ships and outfit them with containerized missiles, drones, and other modular capabilities. They could be deployed in less than two years and the net acquisition cost could be $130 to $140 million dollars each. This can amount to ten missile merchants with 400 missiles for the price of one frigate. These ships can affordably increase the number of missiles at sea at a much more affordable rate compared to conventional warships, while spreading this firepower across a greater number of less exquisite platforms to complicate PRC targeting. Armed merchant ships deserve close consideration by the new administration for their many untapped advantages.
Captain R. Robinson “Robby” Harris commanded USS Conolly (DD-979) and Destroyer Squadron 32. Ashore he served as Executive Director of the CNO Executive Panel. He was a CNO Fellow in CNO Strategic Studies Group XII.
Dr. T. X. Hammes is a Distinguished Research Fellow at National Defense University. He served 30 years in the Marine Corps.
References
1. Email from Congressional Budget Office senior analyst Dr. Eric Labs, January 14, 2025.
2. Ibid.
Featured Image: Container feeder Charo B sailing from Cádiz, November 2021. (Photo via Wikimedia commons)