U.S. Marines say they need around 40 amphibious warfare ships

The U.S. Marine Corps needs roughly 40 amphibious warfare ships to sustain its goal of keeping three Marine Expeditionary Units deployed simultaneously, and it currently has 32. That gap, laid out publicly by Marine Lt. Gen. Jay Bargeron at the Modern Day Marine exhibition in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, frames one of the most consequential shipbuilding shortfalls in the American military today.

Bargeron, the deputy commandant for plans, policies, and operations, told the panel audience that an ongoing analysis had not yet produced a final figure, but the number is “probably going to be around 40,” as he put it in remarks reported by Task & Purpose. “It could be a little more.” With the Navy currently operating 32 amphibious warfare ships — and legally required to maintain at least 31 — getting to 40 means building or acquiring at least eight additional hulls on top of a fleet that is already struggling to keep enough vessels deployment-ready to meet current demand.

The readiness problem compounds the numbers problem in ways that make the gap worse than it appears on paper. At an April 15 House Armed Services Committee hearing, Navy Adm. James Kilby, vice chief of naval operations, testified that only about 45 percent of amphibious ships are “combat surge ready” — available to deploy quickly for their mission in a crisis — compared with 63 percent of surface ships and 65 percent of submarines, as Task & Purpose reported. In practical terms, that means fewer than half of the 32 ships the Navy currently operates are genuinely available when a crisis erupts. The legal floor of 31 ships provides no meaningful cushion when nearly half of those ships are unavailable.

The consequences of that readiness gap are not hypothetical. In February 2022, the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit was unable to deploy from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to the European theater ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because maintenance problems had grounded its ships, as Defense One reported at the time. The Corps that prides itself on being the nation’s crisis response force was effectively sidelined at one of the most significant moments of European security in decades — not by enemy action, but by deferred maintenance and aging hulls.

An Amphibious Ready Group — the organizational building block that carries a Marine Expeditionary Unit — consists of three ships: a big-deck amphibious assault ship capable of embarking Marines and operating vertical-takeoff aircraft including the MV-22 Osprey, helicopters, and F-35 fighters; an amphibious transport dock ship; and a dock landing ship. Three ARGs deployed simultaneously means nine ships continuously at sea, all of them ready, crewed, and sustained — before accounting for the ships in maintenance, transit, or preparation. Getting to three continuous, consistent, and simultaneously deployed ARG-MEU combinations, which the Corps calls a “3.0” presence, requires a total fleet substantially larger than what a nine-ship deployment footprint alone implies.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith made the case for that 3.0 presence directly in a May 2025 statement to Congress. “Three continuous, consistent, and simultaneously deployed [Amphibious Ready Groups and Marine Expeditionary Units] provide lethal response options, creates dilemmas for our adversaries, forward-postures forces to deny adversaries decision space and supports campaigning alongside our allies and partners,” Smith wrote. That strategic logic — presence as deterrence, forward posture as decision space denied — underlies the entire amphibious shipbuilding argument. Without the ships, the strategic concept exists only on paper.

Bargeron’s comments at Wednesday’s panel made clear that even 3.0 may not be enough to meet actual combatant command demand. “There is a [combatant command] demand signal that is in excess of 3.0,” he said, as reported by Task & Purpose. “If you look at the raw data that comes into the Global Force Management process, it’s been somewhere around six [in the] last few years.” Six simultaneously deployed ARG-MEU combinations would require a total amphibious fleet substantially larger than even the 40-ship target Bargeron outlined — and far beyond anything in current shipbuilding plans.

Navy Vice Adm. John Skillman, deputy chief of naval operations for integration of capabilities and resources, joined Bargeron in acknowledging the shortfall without being able to specify the solution. “We’re aligned,” Skillman said at the panel. “It’s more than 31. We actually don’t know the numbers yet.” The admission that the Navy and Marine Corps agree the legal floor is inadequate while simultaneously lacking a final target number captures the precise state of American amphibious warfare planning: strategic consensus without budgetary resolution.

Bargeron was equally blunt about the legal minimum. “The Navy and the Marine Corps are aligned on this: 31 is not the right number,” he said. “It’s a floor, as was described.” Floors are not strategies. And a floor that barely gets cleared — with fewer than half the ships above it actually combat-surge ready — is not a floor that provides meaningful operational confidence. The Marine Corps has a plan for how it wants to fight. What it doesn’t yet have is the fleet to execute it.