I'm John Batch with Tom Odley, former acting Secretary of the Navy, now the CEO of Ballarock Ventures,

and president as well. We're looking at the budget request by the Trump administration for the U.S. Navy in 27.

However, there is implicit in this a metaphor of something that's called the Golden Fleet,

and that is said to be turning on the building of a super, super, super battleship,

something that's fast and very powerful, which according to Defense News,

is endorsed by some Admiral somewhere.

The puzzle for me is that I read contrary information, so Tom help me here.

The size of the fleet is important, I understand, but the kinds of ships and the missions are

equally important.

And right now we're dealing with two peers, Moscow and Beijing, with hostile intent. They have surrogates,

North Korea and Tehran come to mind, but their fleets are the concern. We're building more

capital ships. My understanding is that that has to withstand the technology advance that's

underway with our potential adversaries.

Is the Golden Fleet in answer to what we're seeing now dominating the battlefield, no matter

whether it's on land or sea, drones? Is the Golden Fleet built for drones, or is this a new

concern that it just came in?

Well, the Golden Fleet right now from my understanding and what I've read and what I've heard people talk about is largely encapsulated in the idea of rebuilding the Navy and creating

a bigger, more powerful Navy.

And what I've seen in terms of force structure shows still a significant amount of high-end ships

to include this new proposed battleship on the high end with aircraft carriers and DDGs.

And then a lot more on the lower end as well to help address this issue of a

distributed maritime force. So that would be the frigate and some of the other smaller ships

...