The U.S. Navy wants to increase its fleet to 313 ships by 2020, an 11% increase, reversing years of decline in naval shipbuilding and adding dozens of warships designed to defeat emerging adversaries, according to an article that appeared in The New York Times on Dec. 5.

The plan by Admiral. Michael G. Mullen, who took over as chief of naval operations last summer, envisions a major shipbuilding program that would increase the Navy's current 281 ships by 32 vessels, at a cost of more than $13 billion a year-—$3 billion more than the current shipbuilding budget.

The Navy's fleet reached its cold war peak of 568 warships in 1987 and has been shrinking steadily since then. Admiral Mullen's proposal would reverse that, expanding the fleet to as many as 325 ships over the next decade, with new ships put into service before some older vessels are retired, and finally settling at 313 between 2015 and 2020.

The plan calls for building 55 small, fast vessels called littoral combat ships that are designed to operate in shallow coastal areas where mines and terrorist bombings are a growing threat. Costing less than $300 million, a littoral combat ship is relatively inexpensive.

Navy officials say they have scaled back their goals for a new destroyer, the DD(X), whose primary purpose would be to support major combat operations ashore. The Navy once wanted 23 to 30 DD(X) vessels, but Admiral Mullen has decided on only seven. The reduction is due in part to the ship's spiraling cost, now estimated at $2 billion to $3 billion per ship.

The plan also calls for building 19 CG(X) vessels, a new cruiser designed for missile defense, but the first ship is not due to be completed until 2017, the Navy official said. The proposal would also reduce the fleet's more than 50 attack submarines to 48. The plan also calls for building 31 amphibious assault ships, which can be used to ferry marines ashore or support humanitarian operations. But the Navy would keep 11 aircraft carriers, just one fewer than the dozen it has maintained since the end of the cold war.

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