Marines Say They Need 40 Amphibious Ships, 9 More Than the Navy Has, to Keep 3 MEUs at Sea

U.S. Navy and Marine Corps leaders have concluded they need 40 amphibious ships — nine more than the 31 the Navy has now — to keep three Marine Expeditionary Units at sea at the same time, officials told reporters last week. The 40-ship fleet would include 13 big-deck amphibious assault ships and 27 amphibious transport docks, said Shon Brodie, director of Maritime Expeditionary Warfare at the Marine Corps Combat Development and Integration Directorate, according to The War Zone, Defense One and Military.com, which reported the request again on Monday, Nov. 9.

Why the Marines say 40 ships are the number

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith’s top priority is what the service calls 3.0 ARG/MEU presence: one Amphibious Ready Group and Marine Expeditionary Unit from the East Coast, one from the West Coast, and one in Japan, “persistently,” Brodie told reporters, including The War Zone, on Wednesday, Nov. 4. MEUs are made up of about 2,200 Marines and typically embark on three-ship amphibious groups. Smith has argued that combatant commanders would prefer even more, and that 3.0 is the minimum needed as both a warfighting formation and a “cross-service integrator,” Defense One noted, citing a 2025 op-ed by Smith.

Brodie said Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James W. Kilby and Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Bradford J. Gering “have worked really close together to try to understand the number of ships it would require to achieve 3.0 based on current readiness.” “The two analytical arms of both services have come to the conclusion that it takes 40 ships. That’s 13 big decks and 27 LPDs,” he said. The requirement was worked out in recent months by the Amphibious Force Readiness Board, a joint Navy-Marine effort created to track amphibious readiness, The War Zone reported.

Big-deck ships are the Navy’s Wasp-class landing helicopter docks and America-class landing helicopter assault ships, which can embark F-35B jets, MV-22 tiltrotors and helicopters. LPDs are the smaller San Antonio-class transport docks, which also embark MV-22s and helicopters. Brodie said the biggest current problem in generating the force “really revolves around the big deck.” The law calls for 10 large-deck amphibious assault ships, but the Navy has only nine because USS Bonhomme Richard was scrapped after a 2020 fire, The War Zone reported. The Marines want the mandated number of those ships raised from 10 to 13.

What the data shows

Defense One reported the current fleet as nine big-deck ships and 22 dock ships, totaling 31, against a goal of 13 and 27, totaling 40. By The Boston Report’s calculation from those figures, the services are seeking four more big decks and five more LPDs. That is nine additional ships, or about 29 percent more than the current 31, not a rounding to 25 percent. There is no public cost estimate or completion date attached to the 40-ship goal in the reporting reviewed here.

The 31-ship floor was written into the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act to stop the Navy from retiring amphibious hulls early without replacements, Military.com reported. Lt. Col. Eric D. Flanagan, a Marine spokesman, told The War Zone, “We will have to await future congressional funding for these.” He also pointed to a 2024 HII multi-ship procurement contract of $9.6 billion for three San Antonio-class ships and a contract modification for the next America-class large-deck ship, covering LPDs 33, 34 and 35 and LHA 10. Those ships, if built, would add to the inventory over time; they are not 9 extra ships arriving at once.

Readiness, not just inventory, is part of the argument. The War Zone, citing Kilby’s fiscal 2027 budget statement, said the amphibious fleet had a 47 percent combat surge readiness rate as of April. Defense One wrote that, on average, amphibious ships are out of service more often than not, and that few U.S. warships meet the Navy’s goal of being ready 80 percent of the time. Brodie said new construction plus selective service-life extensions is “the only way for me to realistically increase that inventory” while keeping ships in service during the buildup. “You can’t get there tomorrow,” he said.

A reversal of an earlier Marine plan, with money in doubt

The call for 13 big decks is a sharp change from former Commandant Gen. David Berger’s Force Design 2030 guidance, which favored fewer large amphibious assault ships and more smaller vessels, in part because of missile and, later, drone threats to large, slow ships, The War Zone reported. Reaching 40 ships would require Congress to pay for new construction and overhauls at a moment when Democrats are preparing to take control of the House and Senate and Rep. Adam Smith has talked about keeping the defense budget from exceeding $1 trillion.

Kilby and Gering plan to take the case to Congress later this month, Brodie said. Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute told Defense One that operating and maintaining 40 amphibs may not be realistic because of maintenance costs, and he pointed to a Hudson fleet study that suggested 35 amphibs. Brodie also warned that extended deployments, if ships are not brought back and put into maintenance on time, “blow that forecast.” The Navy and Marine Corps are presenting 40 as an analytical conclusion, not as an funded program of record. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao’s recent visit to the Marines’ prepositioning hub at Blount Island is a reminder of how much the services already rely on ships and stockpiles to move Marines. Whether lawmakers add nine hulls is a budget question that has not been decided.

Sources

• Military.com: Marine Corps Needs 9 More Warships to Deploy More MEUs, Officials Say (Nov. 9, 2026)
• The War Zone: USMC Says It Needs Nine More Amphibious Warships To Carry Out Its Missions (updated Nov. 5, 2026)
• Defense One: It’s easier to buy new amphibious ships than fix old ones faster, say Navy, Marines (Nov. 5, 2026)