Navy to Expand Fleet

Not by much, but at least its something. From Reuters:

The (NY) Times said the Navy's plan was to increase its 281-ship fleet by 32 vessels, citing senior Defense Department officials. It said the project that would cost more than $13 billion a year, $3 billion more than the current shipbuilding budget.
"We are at a crisis in shipbuilding," a senior Navy official told the newspaper. "If we don't start building this up next year and the next year and the next year, we won't have the force we need."

They may have to cut the Air Force to get it, something unthinkable even a few years ago, when the AF was the top funded service:

The Wall Street Journal, citing service officials, said the Air Force was considering eliminating over 30,000 uniformed and civilian positions between fiscal 2007 and 2011.
The Journal said that the Army was not looking at personnel cuts, but was considering a modest slowdown in troop growth. The paper said curtailments would be due to the Army's recruiting problems as well as its desire to save money.
The Journal stressed that any proposed cuts were tentative, and that their size could change.

As I said, this is a start, but consider the 100 ships bought during the 1980's , or the 6000 commissioned in WW2.

Also, the NYT expands on the story:

The plan calls for building 55 small, fast vessels called littoral combat ships, which are being designed to allow the Navy to operate in shallow coastal areas where mines and terrorist bombings are a growing threat. Costing less than $300 million, the littoral combat ship is relatively inexpensive.
Navy officials say they have scaled back their goals for a new destroyer, the DD(X), whose primary purpose would be to support major combat operations ashore. The Navy once wanted 23 to 30 DD(X) vessels, but Admiral Mullen has decided on only 7, the Navy official said. The reduction is due in part to the ship's spiraling cost, now estimated at $2 billion to $3 billion per ship.
The plan also calls for building 19 CG(X) vessels, a new cruiser designed for missile defense, but the first ship is not due to be completed until 2017, the Navy official said. The proposal would also reduce the fleet's more than 50 attack submarines to 48, the official said...The plan also calls for building 31 amphibious assault ships, which can be used to ferry marines ashore or support humanitarian operations...But the Navy would keep 11 aircraft carriers, just one fewer than the dozen it has maintained since the end of the cold war.

The DDX seems to be the F/A-22 Raptor of the sea service, they just can't afford as many as they want.