| Summary: | Growing world-wide commitments and potential naval threats in the future will challenge the U.S. maritime forces to become more integrated and interoperable. The Total Fleet Concept calls for a maritime force for the nation that essentially combines the assets and unique capabilities of each maritime agency available to the U.S. government and forms a scalable force that can be employed around the globe to accomplish missions in the national interest. The U.S. Navy is the preeminent maritime power in the world. However, it has concentrated almost exclusively on maintaining its capability at the Blue-water level of operations. In light of the emerging asymmetrical threat from non-peer competitor forces, the Navy has embarked on a stated program of building up its littoral and lowlevel regional capability in order to engage these adversaries in their own environment. This thesis studies the Navy's budget requests of the Future Years Defense Program. It also examines whether these budget requests and the long-range 30-year shipbuilding plan is leading to the transformational Fleet that is envisioned by the Total Fleet Concept, or is a continuation of the predominantly Blue-water operations focused Fleet and the assets that accompany that strategy. === US Navy (USN) author.
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