evidence: The higher budget cost was a major stumbling block, so the Navy proposed extending ship service lives. That greatly increased ship count starting in the late 2020s, reaching 355 ships by FY 2032. The 2020 plan adopts the FY 2019 extended service life plan, reaching a total of 355 ships in FY 2034 (though not of the exact distribution in the 355-ship FSA) and capping fleet size at that level. The FY 2020 plan is lower in the near term because of decisions this year to retire MCMs and cruisers (discussed later).16 [...] All of this carefully planned and deeply analyzed 355-ship fleet may soon be tossed out the window (or porthole). As noted earlier, all the services, the Navy included, have been criticized for not moving fast enough to align budgets and procurement plans with the national defense strategy. The Navy’s concept of operations for great power conflicts is called "distributed operations," that is, having a large number of shooters with long-range munitions that would be dispersed around the battle area. However, the relatively small number of highly-capable but expensive ships in the Navy’s current fleet does not fit well with this concept, a disconnect that has been evident for several years. [...] 12Sydney Freedberg, "Keep Ships Longer To Boost Fleet Size: 355 Ships By 2035," Breaking Defense, June 20, 2018, https://breakingde- fense.com/2018/06/keep-ships-longer-to-boost-fleet-size-355-ships-by-2035/.