Navy, Shipbuilders Ready for Trump-Led Expansion
The U.S. arms industry is ready and capable of boosting production of new ships if President-elect Donald Trump makes good his vow to expand the U.S. Navy to 350 ships, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said.
Shifting the current target of 308 ships upwards would be "remarkably easy" as long as there is funding to pay the bill, the top uniformed Navy official said in an interview, MANA correspondent reported.
"If it's resourced, it's a matter of working closely with the industrial base, and they definitely are ready to do that," he said, adding the only limiting factor would be hiring and training workers to build the new ships.
"If I do not have that capacity, I can create it faster than you can appropriate the money," Mike Petters, chief executive of Huntington Ingalls Industries, the largest U.S. military shipbuilder, said in a separate interview.
Trump promised during his U.S. election campaign to expand the Navy to 350 ships, although lawmakers and military officials caution that any such boost would require big increases in staffing, training, maintenance and infrastructure.
A supplemental budget request could include munitions, aircraft and other equipment that can be bought on short notice, followed by later orders for submarines, destroyers, amphibious ships and potentially even carriers, Richardson said.