In the face of a resurgent Russian and Chinese navy modernization, the US Navy is scrambling to plus up from 272 ships to a fleet of 355 and meet pressing demands all around the globe.

But the US has already strained its industrial base for building ships, and additional ships just can’t be built fast enough to meet the growing gaps.

Instead, naval experts at the American Enterprise Institute have put together a plan to reorganize and modernize the US Navy to meet future challenges within five years, as Defense News first reported.

“We can’t just grow the Navy, that’s not the solution that’s going to meet all the demands we have,” said John Miller, a retired vice admiral who led the development of the “improved Navy,” or iNavy plan, in an interview with Defense News.

USS Gerald R. Ford
US shipyards like this one at Newport News are already maxed out.

“We really don’t have the money to do that and we don’t have the industrial capacity to just build a bigger Navy in a very short amount of time,” Miller said.

 

Read the whole story from Business Insider.

Featured image courtesy of U.S. Navy