The Navy has sent Congress its FY 2011 Annual Long Range Shipbuilding Plan and the expected Congressional backlash has already commenced.  Though as Marine Log notes, the plan says that the "structure requirements articulated in this report are based upon the 313-ship force originally set forth in the FY 2005 Naval Force Structure Assessment," it projects a battle force level of 292 ships in the near term (FY 2016), 304 in the mid term (FY 2028) and 301 in the Far Term (FY 2040).  How the report squares this -- we'll build for 313 as a "reference point," but end up with 301 -- circle is dubious, and some might say that the decision to keep the fleet (barely) above the 300-ship level appears contrived.  All the same, at least this year's plan dispenses with the fiction of the 313 ship fleet being built on a $14 billion annual shipbuilding budget and a real dialogue about the composition of that fleet can begin to take place.  (BTW, one of DSJ's favorite parts of Monday afternoon's FY11 budget drop briefings was when the Navy's top budget official, Rear Admiral Joseph Mulloy, was asked to reconcile an element of the request with the Navy's Shipbuilding plan and he stated without batting an eye: "the shipbuilding plan is developed by a different part of the Navy.")