Navy Falls and Rises

This is according to CNO Admiral Mike Mullen's ambitious shipbuilding plan into the next decade:

The Navy sent Congress an extremely ambitious 30-year shipbuilding plan Tuesday that would reverse the decline in the fleet and build it up from the current 285 ships to 315 in five years and sustain it above that number for more than a decade.
But to make that plan work, the Navy must get its annual ship construction funding up from the proposed fiscal 2007 level of $9.7 billion to $13.5 billion in two years, keep it at that level or higher for decades and get the average cost of its ships down substantially.

Here's what your taxes will buy. Not bad:

The plan sets out the optimum fleet force structure as 11 aircraft carriers, 88 large surface combatants -- destroyers and cruisers -- 55 of the relatively small Littoral Combat Ships, 48 attack submarines, 14 ballistic missile submarines, four of the missile boats converted to carry conventional missiles and special operations troops, 31 "expeditionary" vessels, 30 combat logistic ships, 12 Maritime Preposition Force (Future) ships and 20 support vessels.

But the sub fleet will suffer:

But the plan shows that force rising above those numbers in some classes and falling below in others. The attack submarine force, for example, falls to 40 near the end of the plan.