How Robert O’Brien helped steer the Pentagon toward a bigger Navy

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“For the first three years of the administration, the Navy and DoD did very little to advance that goal beyond 300 ships, other than broad statements of support for the 355 number,” said Modly, who stepped down amid an outcry over his handling of the coronavirus outbreak on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.

“It was a goal written into law and it had the president’s endorsement during the campaign, but there was neither tangible funding, nor a real plan to get there in a reasonable timeframe,” he said. Trump made the pledge repeatedly while running for president, and signed the requirement into law with the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act.

The lack of progress wasn’t only the Pentagon’s fault. Efforts were slowed by pushback from lawmakers, who were initially skeptical of building additional unmanned ships, and from the president himself, who reversed a Navy proposal to free up billions of dollars by retiring an aircraft carrier early.

The consensus at the Pentagon was that reaching the president’s goal in the near future would require billions in extra funding. But the more urgent priority for Mattis and other senior leaders was restocking a military that had suffered from budget cuts and wars in the Middle East.

“You can go back to Mattis’ first statement of priority from January 2017, and growing the military was behind current readiness and weapons stocks,” said Bryan McGrath, a retired naval officer and now managing director of The FerryBridge Group. Among Navy leadership, there was “some caution that without plus-ups across the board in Navy accounts, a ‘hollow force’ would result.”

When Esper, a former Army officer, took charge of the Pentagon in July 2019, he initially expressed concern about the cost to dramatically grow the Navy’s fleet without an increase in the Pentagon’s topline, which would require shifting funds from the other services.

“I had this conversation with Secretary Esper several times, and his response was, ‘well Tom, where am I going to get the money? Who am I going to take it from?’” Modly said.

The Navy’s top admirals were also hesitant. As recently as January, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday said he would rather improve the readiness of the existing fleet than build new ships quickly.

The situation had begun to change a month earlier, when Modly and O’Brien met for the first time at the Army-Navy game.

It wasn’t a long meeting, but the two quickly agreed that the existing shipbuilding plan wasn’t matching the president’s vision and it was time to put the foot on the gas, Modly said.

O’Brien, a former Army Reserve officer, had carved out a side career as an unabashed booster of seapower. O’Brien wrote a book in 2016, “While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis,” which made the case for strengthening America’s defenses by growing the Navy, and also wrote and co-authored several essays on the topic.

One of Trump’s top policy priorities is countering China, and both Modly and O’Brien knew one way to get there was to build more ships. O’Brien invited Modly to the White House to talk more, even suggesting the Navy pull its old frigates out of retirement to bulk up the fleet.

“I know that [O’Brien] has felt that there has not been an intense enough sense of urgency at the Pentagon given the seriousness of in particular the Chinese buildup,” said a senior administration official. “He has felt that he needs to get personally engaged to move this along.”

Over the next few months, O’Brien’s and Modly’s top staffers communicated frequently on the topic of 355 ships. In early January, O’Brien sent several NSC representatives to a Navy offsite meeting on the 355-ship plan, conducted at the U.S. Naval Institute headquarters in Annapolis. The gathering included senior Navy and Marine Corps uniformed and civilian leadership, as well as a few well-known naval experts.

“It was made perfectly clear that POTUS and O’Brien were serious about establishing a plan to 355 in a strategically significant timeframe,” said a former senior defense official.

After Esper learned of Modly’s conversation with O’Brien, he invited the national security adviser to the Pentagon. During the February meeting, O’Brien pressed for progress on the ship plan, and all agreed that more ships were needed to counter China.

Shortly afterward, Esper rejected the Navy’s most recent longterm shipbuilding proposal because officials believed it lacked a credible pathway to 355 ships. He tapped his deputy, David Norquist, to launch a study that would provide the basis for a new blueprint, which was presented to Esper last week and has not been released.

Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Hoffman denied Esper was skeptical of the 355-ship Navy and said the Defense secretary has worked together regularly with O’Brien on the goal since the national security adviser assumed the role a year ago.

“Secretary Esper has publicly supported a future force Navy of more than 355 ships aligned with the [National Defense Strategy] since shortly after becoming Secretary of Defense in July of 2019,” Hoffman said.

Modly spoke with O’Brien in person once more about the 355-ship goal. In March, the two men visited Dover Air Force Base, Del., to pay their respects at the dignified transfer of three Marines killed in action. They spent several hours together during the event and spoke at length about making the plan happen.

In a statement to POLITICO, O’Brien called out previous Pentagon leaders for their reluctance to make the president’s 355-ship fleet a reality.

Current leadership — Esper and Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite — by contrast “have both made clear to the Navy that ‘355 ships’ is not a slogan,” O’Brien said. “The president’s commitment is the official policy of his administration.”

As the president now faces a heated reelection fight, O’Brien’s pressure campaign on the Pentagon appears to have paid off. Last week, Esper announced progress toward developing a new ship plan and calling for increased funding to get there.

“We will build this fleet in such a way that balances tomorrow’s challenges with today’s readiness and does not create a hollow Navy,” said Esper, who stopped short of specific numbers. “Finding the money within the Navy budget and elsewhere to make it real is something both the Navy leadership and I are committed to doing.”

Norquist’s study is nearing its conclusion, and the results will inform the Navy’s final 30-year shipbuilding proposal, which will be submitted to Congress, the Pentagon has said.

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