The Size of the Navy Matters

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10:28 AM, Oct 26, 2012 • By SETH CROPSEY

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If the Navy’s shipbuilding budget is maintained at its projected (non-sequester) figure of $11.9 billion dollars per year, and if the current average price of a naval combatant were to remain fixed at its current level of $2 billion dollars per ship for the next 30 years, the Navy would build 178 ships. This would decrease our current fleet by nearly a third. Numbers matter, and the suggestion that they do not is wrong and dangerous.

Seth Cropsey is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He was deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served as a naval officer from 1985 to 2004.