i've got the privilege of introducing our next speaker as the honorable elaine luria. i think most of us are familiar with her. and those of you who studied the navy force structural certainly are, a short bio, graduate of the navy academy, as a marine i checked out on that long before we got to the nuclear part. she was a congresswoman who represented the virginia 2nd district. she was a vice chair of the sea powered arm of the house services committee and most importantly, she was from alabama and we also proudly adopted her. i think those of you who have done naval reading and it came up previously on a panel, the article she wrote for the war in iraq a couple of years ago, trying to tie our fleet structure to the strategy and i think that mark mentioned earlier, that you know, that provided a construct for getting to a fleet size that was operationally relevant. so with that, i'd like to welcome congresswoman luria. thank you. [applause] >> well, good afternoon, thank you for having me and as i noted on the way up, i'm the last speaker so i'm all standing between y

. >> reporter: mike gallagher and elaine luria served on the house armed services committee in the lastout the u.s. navy to cause the two of you to find the common cause. >> we share a sense of the urgency of the moment. we see increasing threats from china in particular in the indo-pacific. we feel like we're not moving fast enough to build a bigger navy. >> reporter: congressman gallagher is a marine veteran who represents green bay, wisconsin. he chairs the new house committee on china. he's concerned that under the navy's current plan, the fleet will shrink to 280 ships by 2027, the same year the cia says china has set for having the capability to take taiwan by force. >> we'll be weakest when our enemy is potentially strongest. >> china, we have to be ready to respond today with the forces we have today. >> reporter: former congresswoman elaine luria represented virginia beach until this past january. an annapolis graduate, she had a 20-year naval career before being elected to congress. >> what would you say the state of the u.s. navy is today? >> i think the navy has not received