	Introduction

This CRS report summarizes three studies submitted to Congress in 2005 on potential future Navy ship force structures, and is intended as a lasting reference source on these three studies. Two of the three studies were conducted in response to Section 216 of the conference report ( H.Rept. 108-354 of November 7, 2003) on the FY2004 defense authorization act ( H.R. 1588 / P.L. The two studies were conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) and the Office of Force Transformation (OFT, which was then a part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense), and were submitted to the congressional defense committees in February 2005. OFT was disestablished on October 1, 2006, and its activities were transferred to other DOD offices. The third study was conducted by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), an independent defense-policy research organization, on its own initiative. The study was made available to congressional and other audiences in March 2005. The CNA report's discussion of how crew rotation may alter force-level requirements for maintaining day-to-day forward deployments is somewhat detailed and may have been adapted from other work that CNA has done on the topic for the Navy. OFT Report

The OFT report was prepared under the direction of retired Navy admiral Arthur Cebrowski, who was the director of OFT from October 29, 2001 until January 31, 2005 and the President of the Naval War College (NWC) from July 24, 1998 to August 22, 2001. During his time at NWC and OFT, Cebrowski was a leading proponent of network-centric warfare and distributed force architectures. Fleet Size and Structure

				CNA Report

The 380-ship fleet at the high end of the CNA range is similar in size and composition to the Navy's 375-ship fleet proposal. OFT Report

The OFT-recommended fleet would have a much larger total number of ships than the Navy's planned fleet. As a consequence, the CNA-recommended force range would be roughly similar in overall capability to the Navy's planned architecture.
This CRS report summarizes three studies submitted to Congress in 2005 on potential future Navy ship force structures, and is intended as a lasting reference source on these three studies.
Two of the three studies were conducted in response to Section 216 of the conference report (H.Rept. 108-354 of November 7, 2003) on the FY2004 defense authorization act (H.R. 1588/P.L. 108-136 of November 24, 2003). The two studies were conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) and the Office of Force Transformation (OFT, which was then a part of the Office of the Secretary of Defense). They were submitted to the congressional defense committees in February 2005. The third study was conducted by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), an independent defense-policy research organization, on its own initiative. The study was made available to congressional and other audiences in March 2005.
The CNA study presents a fairly traditional approach to naval force planning in which capability requirements for warfighting and for maintaining day-to-day naval forward deployments are calculated and then integrated. The CNA-recommended force parallels fairly closely Navy thinking at the time on the size and composition of the fleet. This is perhaps not surprising, given that much of CNA's analytical work is done at the Navy's request.
The OFT study fundamentally challenges current Navy thinking on the size and composition of the fleet, and presents an essentially clean-sheet proposal for a future Navy that would be radically different from the currently planned fleet. This is perhaps not surprising, given both OFT's institutional role within DOD as a leading promoter of military transformation and the views of retired Navy admiral Arthur Cebrowski—the director of OFT until January 31, 2005—regarding network-centric warfare and distributed force architectures. (OFT was disestablished on October 1, 2006, and its activities were transferred to other DOD offices.)
The CSBA study challenges current Navy thinking on the size and composition of the fleet more dramatically than the CNA report, and less dramatically than the OFT report. Compared to the CNA and OFT reports, the CSBA report contains a more detailed implementation plan and a more detailed discussion of possibilities for restructuring the shipbuilding industrial base.
This CRS report will not be updated.