The CBO report, published Monday, estimated the cost of the shipbuilding effort at around $40 billion annually over the next 30 years.
The Navy’s 2025-2054 shipbuilding plan aims to catch up to a larger Chinese naval force and increase the 295 battle force ships the U.S. currently maintains.
By 2054, the Navy wants:
- 381 manned ships
-
134 large unmanned surface and underwater vehicles.
To get to the goal, the Navy’s budget would need to increase from $255 billion to $340 billion, according to the CBO.
The news comes as President-elect Trump is seeking to cut costs across the federal government when he comes into office on Jan. 20.
Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency is helmed by billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, two allies who have been critical of some defense programs and Pentagon waste.
But Trump, in a Monday interview with talk show host Hugh Hewitt, called for a boost in naval shipbuilding efforts.
“We’re going to do something with ships. We need ships,” Trump said. “China’s building, from what I’m hearing, every four days, they’re knocking out a ship. And we’re sitting back watching.”
The CBO report found the shipbuilding industry would need to produce “substantially” more tonnage than it has in the past 10 years to meet the Navy’s goal, a difficult ask as the industry faces challenges with workforce and production demand.
And the Navy’s promise to field a large fleet of unmanned ships faces uncertainty.
“Because the unmanned surface and undersea vessels are still being developed and their technological success is not completely assured,” CBO wrote in the report, “the future quantities of vessels and costs associated with them have not yet been determined.”
CBO officials stressed that one of the most important parts of the fleet also faces an uphill battle: The Navy wants to buy six Ford-class aircraft carriers over the next 30 years.
But to maintain the goal of 11 operating aircraft carriers, it would have to buy a new carrier every four years and extend the life of other ships.
And the new Columbia class submarine would cost $18 billion, $2 billion more than Navy estimates, in what CBO described as the “largest, most technologically complex submarine.”
The Navy is pushing in multiple directions to be prepared for a potential conflict with China.
Last year, Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti announced a plan to get ready for 2027, the year Chinese forces have been told to be ready for a potential invasion of Taiwan.
The Franchetti plan includes speeding up maintenance of ships and using more autonomous technology.
