How many ships? Lawmakers set to establish independent commission to study Navy’s structure

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are poised to establish a new independent commission tasked with definitively telling Congress, the White House and the Pentagon just how big the US Navy’s fleet should be.

That panel, dubbed the “National Commission on the Future of the Navy,” would be borne out of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which was passed by the House last week and now awaits a vote in the Senate before heading to President Joe Biden’s desk. Should the NDAA pass as is, the panel’s eight members, each selected by various congressional leaders in both chambers, have daunting objectives and roughly 18 months to do their work.

“The Commission shall undertake a comprehensive study of the structure of the Navy and policy assumptions related to the size and force mixture of the Navy, in order— (I) to make recommendations on the size and force mixture of ships; and (II) to make recommendations on the size and force mixture of naval aviation,” according to the legislation released by House and Senate lawmakers last week.

The provision was included in the House’s version of the defense policy bill, but its inclusion in the new “compromise” legislation signals now that Senate lawmakers also support the idea.

The bill lays out numerous factors the panel should consider ranging from the needs of the combatant commanders and the Navy’s plan to revamp its four public shipyards to shipbuilding industrial capacity and relevant maintenance programs. In essence, the panel must consider just about every conceivable factor that the Navy itself likely considers when balancing the needs of its fleet against the fiscal realities it faces.

The commission’s final report would be due to lawmakers no later than July 1, 2024, according to the bill’s text, and the panel would be disbanded within three months of lawmakers receiving the report.

The definitively “correct” size and structure of the future Navy fleet has become a hotly debated talking point on Capitol Hill, where mostly everyone agrees the current fleet isn’t up to par, but virtually no one can agree on how to move forward.

The Navy’s top brass do routinely conduct their own “force structure assessments,” which have similar goals to the new commission’s work: figure out how many ships the future fleet needs to fight and win. But those assessments must pass muster with the Pentagon’s political leadership before going to the Hill or being publicly released, meaning they are sometimes taken with a grain of salt by those in Congress who disagree with the White House’s policies.

The notion of independent commission to help referee the subject, which is beset with parochial interests from all parties involved, has been previously suggested by some analysts, such as AEI’s John Ferrari.

“We are getting close to the tipping point where the only option is to go into full triage mode for the service, and the Congress needs to lead us in this urgent recovery,” he wrote in an op-ed for Breaking Defense. “Only a National Commission can forge the consensus we need and put in place a fifteen-year plan to get the Navy healthy again.”

But other experts, such as retired four-star Navy admiral James Foggo, argue that a new layer of bureaucracy is the last thing the Navy needs.

“The Navy is not broken, and the acknowledged challenges it faces won’t be helped by yet another layer of bureaucracy. What the Navy needs is more support and more focused missions,” he wrote in his own op-ed.