Conduct a large-scale naval campaign in one region while denying the objective of--or imposing unacceptable costs on--an opportunistic aggressor in a second region.
That obviously means the Pacific and China. Other than worrying that Iran might try to hit us in the Persian Gulf region while we are busy against China, I don't see any other likely theater on the horizon. That assumption is bolstered by the stated objective of rebalancing our posture to emphasize the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East.
The China-first assumption also includes overcoming anti-access/area denial strategies and technologies.
The force pool assumes we will have about 300 ships over the next twenty years, including:
--12-14 SSBNs.
--11 big-deck carriers.
--about 48 SSNs.
--0-4 SSGNs (ex-SSBNs with a Tomahawk battery).
--about 90 high-end surface warships.
--about 55 low-end surface warships (LCS, I assume).
--about 32 amphibious ships.
--about 29 combat logistics ships.
--about 33 assorted support vessels.
Note that the amphibious ships will be enough for a two-brigade Marine assault (in the initial wave) and that some of those ships could function as light carriers using F-35 V/STOL fighters and helicopters. And as we phase out our cruise-missile trucks (SSGNs) we may add cruise missile modules to our SSNs to spread that capability across the submarines fleet.
I have my doubts that we can maintain this number of battle force ships (and remember that "battle force" includes only about 200 ships designed to shoot at other ships) while keeping 11 big-deck carriers. It's a nice wish list, but I still don't know if the Navy has really picked a number (about 300) that it will defend no matter what the composition that funding will allow requires.
See this related CRS report on the "pivot" to Asia. A nice overview, although the only really new thing I learned was that our planned deployment of Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore will consist of 4 ships.
