President-elect Donald Trump has set a goal of a 350-ship navy, an increase of nearly 80 ships.  The conventional wisdom is that it will be achieved through the construction of larger combatants such as aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates, and submarines.  An increase in the number of those platforms are important and necessary for the long-term ability of the United States to meet Combatant Commander’s demands for overseas operations.  Absent a flexible acquisition cycle to implement a major shipbuilding plan soon after the inauguration, however, the administration may want to consider a more immediate option.  It may be time for the U.S. Navy to go smaller in order to get bigger, sooner while waiting for the warm lines of present production to turn hot on longer lead time ships. The question of how to do this has been answered before in our history: use commercially proven hulls and adapt them to Navy use in nearly every conflict from the American Revolution to World War II.   This surge in smaller, commercially-built vessels not only has historical precedence but satisfies growing global maritime challenges as well as domestic employment.

Achieving the goal of 350 or 355 ships will be challenging.  From the time a contract is let, it can take up to five years or more to complete construction.  Industrial capacity is limited in the near- and mid-term with only a few shipyards are capable of building capital ships.  Changing work shifts to twenty-four hours a day or opening an additional shipyard or two might increase the possibility but each of additional shift or shipyard requires additional skilled workers.  Again, that requires time.  Finally, these ships could not put to sea until additional sailors are recruited and trained.  While these factors were not insurmountable during the comparatively short World War II.  Escort carriers, destroyers and Liberty ships could be constructed quickly and manned because the country already had the industrial capacity in place which could be switched from commercial to low-tech military production.

Considering these factors, reaching these goals are unlikely in a possible second presidential term much less by the end of the first.  Nor are capital ships necessary for all missions.  Were billion dollar warships necessary for combating piracy off the Horn of Africa? In a Navy where the only tool is a hammer most every solution is an overly-excessive naval force.  Such was the case in 2011 when an aircraft carrier, a cruiser and two destroyers surrounded the ill-fated sailing vessel QUEST which had earlier been captured by Somali pirates.

Instead of continuing to use the wrong tool for the job, it is logical to develop a diverse force of smaller naval ships to handle numerous, smaller missions, leaving the blue water navy to pursue the larger, vital warfighting role that it was designed to do.  Smaller navy vessels working in squadrons may be more cost-effective in responding to global maritime incidents, patrolling coasts, and deterring similar forces.  While the threat of Somali piracy has diminished the destabilization of other economies and nations could cause new threats to shipping to emerge as off Venezuela.  Larger threats continue to loom as small Iranian boats swarm U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz and China’s maritime militia in the South China Sea have harassed ships in the past.  Rather than offering larger, single targets of opportunity, dispersed squadrons of smaller vessels provide greater opportunities to counter asymmetric operations.

The U.S. Navy has built small combat vessels before, but to have an immediate impact on numbers, capabilities and shipyard/boatyard employment, it must shift from the standard acquisition cycle that takes years to design, build, launch, test, and deliver.  The PEGASUS-class took more than five years from concept to delivery of the first ship during the 1970s.  By the 1990s the CYCLONE-class took nearly a decade.

To eliminate these short-term challenges the new administration could increase the size of the naval force to meet its goals with smaller vessels whose purpose is the myriad of low-intensity operations.  Simultaneously, it could pursue long-term design, contracting, and construction of larger combatants.  This could be accomplished with already-proven and available boatyards in a wide range of states in the south, east, Great Lakes and even along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.  This objective not only has historical precedent in the U.S. Navy, but the platforms have already been proven elsewhere.

The distribution of boat building has advantages and disadvantages.  Joshua Humphreys failed to centralize construction and oversight of the Department of the Navy’s original six frigates due to congressional apportionment.  These super-frigates performed admirably during the Quasi-War, Barbary War and War of 1812, but they did not achieve uniformity in either design or construction.  Following the Barbary War, Thomas Jefferson decreased the size of the navy and its larger ships in favor of a construction program of small gunboats for coastal protection in 1807.  Nearly 170 gunboats were eventually constructed, albeit without quality control or standardization.  Several used in the Battle of Lake Borgne during the War of 1812.  During that battle, Thomas Catesby Jones’ five gunboats operating in open, shallow water were eventually overwhelmed by forty British barges.  According to historian Dr. Gene Smith of Texas Christian University, “The action successfully delayed the British giving General Jackson information on the direction and timeframe of the advancing enemy force, time in which he was able to prepare his defenses,” he notes.  Smith contends that “Jefferson had a sound vision for a multifaceted force of capital ships and gunboats, but a parsimonious Congress would not provide the capital ships.”  At least one of the gunboats was part of David Porter’s mosquito fleet in his operations against pirates along the shallow coasts of Caribbean islands.

At the outset of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had too few commissioned ships to mount an effective blockade against the Confederacy and assembled a large force of smaller commercial ships that were immediately available or quick to construct at commercial boatyards.   At the outset of both World War I and World War II, the U.S. converted private yachts and other vessels to patrol home waters.

Today, commercially-built vessels are operating in maritime security roles in other parts of the world.  Diaplous Maritime Services, a Cypriot maritime security company and the second largest in the world, is only one of the private maritime security firms that provide purposefully-built, ballistic-proof vessels in high-risk areas.  According to company official Dimitrios Maniatis, through a local intermediary firm, provides vessels and crews while the Nigerian navy provides on-board security in the Gulf of Guinea.  Diaplous has four Fast Crew Supplier 3307 vessels built by Damen Shipyard.  Similarly, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society also recently had built by Damen a modified FCS 5009 for approximately $10 million to challenge Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean.  Their OCEAN WARRIOR is currently operating with another ship that serves as the OCEAN WARRIOR’s supply ship.  The extended range and operations in one of the most remote oceans should serve as a proof of concept to critics who argue that smaller ships can only be used for coastal defense.  It may also be that each influence squadron – a concept developed by then-U.S. Navy Captain Henry J. Hendrix - has a tender to keep the small ships well-maintained and supplied. Such a mother ship can also be of commercial design and may require only minimum modifications to provide shops, spare parts and berthing for the crews of the small vessels.  The fact is that non-state actors like Somali pirates or non-governmental organizations like Sea Shepherd have resupplied their smaller ships in the past; there is no reason that a suitably organized U.S. naval militia could not do the same.

The administration could use a proven design from an overseas boatbuilder much like Australia used the U.S. design for its ADELAIDE-class frigates.  It could also simply foster competition and innovation among the smaller U.S. boatyards in an abbreviated timeframe.  The Office of Naval Research-sponsored ship FSF-1 SEA FIGHTER, for example, was built in eighteen months.

An increase in the number of smaller ships decreases the need for high rates in recruitment and training but that can be mitigated by using a hybrid force of active and reserve components.  Assuming a force of 75 small vessels with eight-man crews (based on offshore patrol vessel manning) and a security component of 10, would require approximately 1,350 officers and enlisted.  The majority of these billets might be filled by Navy reservists.  For the past fifteen years, the Navy Reserve has performed largely Army-functions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Djibouti and elsewhere; at best, they have been in joint billets but not necessarily naval functions.  In 2013, for example, approximately 60 percent of CJTF-HOA’s headquarters staff was manned by navy reservists. Given that it is unlikely that Air Force or Army reservists would be mobilized to serve on U.S. Navy ships, it is only reasonable to provide uniquely maritime opportunities for reservists.

In his July 2012 USNI Proceedings article “Payloads over Platforms: Charting a New Course,” then Chief of Naval Operation Admiral Greenert wrote, “We need to move from ‘luxury-car’ platforms—with their built-in capabilities—toward dependable ‘trucks’ that can handle a changing payload selection. “Sea trucks” is the perfect way in which to picture arming the smaller ship force.  There already exist large numbers of “bolt on” modular weapons systems and sensor packages that could allow a squadron of such ships to present a challenge to any potential foe, ranging from anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles to various form of autonomous vehicles with many mission capabilities. The addition of helicopters to the mix adds both a counter-surface and ASW capability; the same is true for drones. A lightweight modular force means that a small squadron could form a formidable presence at a relatively low cost.