As we go forward, I am a fan of making sure that we get the navy what they need—not necessarily what they want, but what they need. Because of the size and scope of our navy, we aren't going to have the same economies of scale the Americans have, for example. How many Arleigh Burkes did they build? It was in the fifties or higher, I believe. They have economies of scale with all their ships, and they're gearing up to have a 330-plus ship navy.
Then we also have to look at our adversaries. We know that the Russians have really increased capabilities in their navy in recent years, especially in their submarine fleet. Then you look at what's happening with mainland China and the People's Liberation Army Navy. The threat environment has increased, and we need to have capability to match it on both the east and west coasts, never mind the Arctic. At least we're getting the AOPs up there.
What are the things you would recommend? I know you gave three options.
I look at the one option, which is that you build the first three surface combatants and then you move to the FREMM design. The difference there is not even $7 billion. That could easily be blown through just in the Canadianization of the FREMM and trying to match up capabilities on the surface combatants to the FREMMs.
Did you do that type of analysis, or how do we make the surface combatant more comparable to the FREMM with the capabilities onboard?