The Congressional Budget Office has said the U.S. Navy’s plan to increase its combat fleet size to 355 ships under the first two alternatives would cost an average of $103 billion to $104 billion in 2017 dollars a year over the next three decades.

CBO said Wednesday the Navy would meet its 355-ship goal through the construction of more vessels in the next 20 years under the first alternative that includes 12 aircraft carriers, 12 ballistic missile submarines, 68 attack submarines and 104 large surface combatants by 2037.

Under the second alternative, the service would need to spend an average of $104 billion per year through 2047 and could attain its target fleet size by 2028 through service life extension programs and use of a new-ship construction schedule.

CBO estimated that the military branch would need to spend an average of $91 billion each year over the next 30 years to maintain a fleet of 280 ships similar to the current fleet size and composition under the third alternative.

The fourth alternative would cost the Navy an average of $82 billion annually over the next three decades with a fleet size of 230 ships constrained to historical funding levels.

The Navy would need to spend an average of $26.7 billion in 2017 dollars per year to meet its 355-ship target by solely using the new-ship construction model, according to the report.

CBO’s report showed that Navy’s annual operating costs for a 355-ship size by 2047 would be 68 percent higher than the costs the service spends each year to operate today’s fleet of 280 ships.

The U.S. Army plans to combine the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system and the Patriot air-and-missile defense platform within two years to facilitate communications between the two equipment and support the development of the service’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System, Defense News reported Monday.

Brig. Gen. Randy McIntire, cross-functional team lead for the Army air and missile defense, told the publication in a Wednesday interview the CFT conducted an industry day with the Missile Defense Agency and other stakeholders to address the system integration issue.

“We were able to reprioritize, and some of the things that we were doing to integrate THAAD and Patriot were four and five years away, but we kind of magnified the problem and were able to reprioritize three significant capabilities that we thought would be game-changers with those and actually bring them in about two years to 18 months sooner,” McIntire said.

He noted that the service could potentially incorporate and deploy the integrated THAAD-Patriot systems as a future increment to IBCS.

The U.S. Navy has commissioned USS Colorado that was built by General Dynamics‘ Electric Boat subsidiary as part of the Block III Virginia-class submarine program.

Cmdr. Reed Koepp II will serve as commander of the submarine designated as SSN 788 and sponsored by former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’ daughter Annie, the service branch said Saturday.

USS Colorado is designed to support anti-submarine; anti-surface; irregular; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; mine and strike and special operations forces delivery missions.

The Navy noted its new submarine features a nuclear reactor plant and can travel submerged at more than 25 knots.

SSN 78 also includes two large-diameter Virginia Payload Tubes built to launch up to six Tomahawk cruise missiles each and two photonic masts with visible and infrared digital cameras.

Georgia’s congressional delegation, led by Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), has sent a letter urging the U.S. Army to station the service’s Futures Command in the state.

The letter, addressed to Secretary of the Army Mark Esper, emphasized that Georgia’s city of Atlanta may serve as a technological resource for the Futures Command, Sen. Isakson’s office said Wednesday.

The delegation attributes this notion to Atlanta being the largest technological private sector hub in Southeast U.S.

The Army announced last year a wave of modernization efforts aiming to address needs imposed by modern warfare, and among these is the Futures Command.

The Army Futures Command will consist of cross-functional teams of experts in acquisition, contracting and sustainment who will contribute support to the service’s weapon modernization activities.