![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In fact, over the next decade and beyond, if the Navy builds only seven ships per year with a fleet whose life expectancy is 30 years, the total number of its ships may dwindle to the low 200s. But according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional Research Service, cost overruns of 34 percent, plus other factors, mean that these plans may be overly optimistic. The Navy has plans to increase the number of ships from below 280 to more than 310. And China is merely one of many challenges-terrorism, piracy, port security, and humanitarian disaster assistance are others-that the Navy now faces. Qualitatively, the United States will still very much have the edge, but China is catching up. This decline is occurring while China is in the midst of a shipbuilding and acquisition craze that will result in the People’s Liberation Army Navy having more ships than the United States Navy sometime in the next decade. Throughout the Cold War we had around 600 ships. At the end of World War II we had 6,700 ships. Over the decades our Navy has been slowly disappearing on us. ![]()
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