The proposed U.S. Navy shipbuilding budget for fiscal 2022 contains only good news for China. The threat of a larger U.S. Navy has disappeared. Reductions of cruisers eliminate long-range offensive and anti-submarine warfare ships. Frigates and Marine expeditionary ship programs are delayed. Force assessments form the plan for the Navy. An assessment conducted in the 1970s and implemented in the 1980s defined the 600-ship, Cold War-ear Navy. The bottom-up assessment conducted in the early 1990s defined a 350-ship Navy for the post-Cold War environment, but was not executed. The Navy continued to decline over the next decades. Another assessment in 2016 denned a 355-ship Navy for the current threat environment involving Russia and China and was confirmed in law. The last administration did not implement it. The current administration is not implementing it.
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