With U.S. President Donald Trump promising the U.S. will boost the buildup of Navy ships, Wang Weiming, deputy chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army Navy, told Xinhua that China is speeding up the development of a marine corps, adding destroyers and frigates and will step up air and sea patrols.

As part of its ambitious military buildup aimed at narrowing the gap with the United States, China has put into service its J-20 stealth fighter and vowed to build a "first class" navy and develop a marine corps.

The Trump administration proposed to increase US military budget to $603 billion. This is about a $54 billion increase that mostly boost procurement (in navy ships, planes and army equipment). McCain and other republican military hawks are pushing for an even larger increase.

The US Navy loves to have lots of ships. President elect Trump received kudos for promising a 350 ship navy. This would be up from the 271 ships that are in the current fleet.

A certain piece of Ronald Reagan's military buildup was the promise of a 600 ship navy. This was an increase from about 530 ships at the end of Carter's administration. This went down further to 521 ships in 1981 before reaching a peak of 594 ships in 1987.

The world war 2 peak was 6768 ships. There were about 2500 Amphibious landing ships to achieve actions like the D-Day invasion. There was a peak of 833 major surface ships. 377 Destroyers. 361 Frigates. 28 aircraft carriers. 23 Battleships. 232 submarines.