A retired admiral says the US needs to start building boats fast because China's going to outpace the US Navy in no time
- The US Navy needs more ships to match up to China, retired US Navy Adm. James Stavridis said.
- China has the world's largest navy, with over 355 vessels in its fleet.
The US is going to have to expand its naval forces and get more boats if it wants to keep pace with China's forces, retired US Navy Adm. James Stavridis said.
"You don't have to be a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician to realize the number of Chinese ships is going to continue to outpace us," Stavridis, a former NATO commander, said in a Sunday radio interview on "The Cats Roundtable."
In July, leaked US Navy intelligence said China's shipbuilding capacity was 232 times as great as the US's.
In 2021, the US Naval Institute reported China had the world's largest navy, with over 355 vessels in its fleet. That same year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported the US had 296 ships.
"We have a lot more experience, but quantity has a quality on its own," Stavridis told the radio host John Catsimatidis. "We need to build more warships. We need to think about a US Navy that approaches 350 ships."
Stavridis added: "We don't want to be the world's policemen, but we want to live in a safe neighborhood. And sometimes that means having very capable military forces. We need a bigger navy to do that."
This isn't the first time Stavridis has weighed in on the US's and China's naval capabilities and how they stack up against each other. Stavridis said in an interview on "The Michael Medved Show" in December that China wasn't ready to take on the US.
"Even though China is building a massive fleet, even though they're acting very aggressively, they're not ready yet to line up all that they need to take on the US Pacific Fleet," Stavridis said.
The former NATO supreme allied commander said the strength of US military alliances would blunt a Chinese offensive.
"If we ended up in a war with China, it wouldn't be just the US and China. We have treaty allies who are sworn to come and be a part of a military campaign like that," Stavridis said.
"That's Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand," he added. "So that's a lot of firepower when you kind of put it all together."
Representatives for Stavridis did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.