Money and not resources is the main obstacle that must be overcome to fulfill President-elect Donald Trump's intention to increase the size of the U.S. Navy to 350 warships.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson said the defense industry is ready and capable of building all the new ships if Trump goes ahead with his promise to expand the U.S. Navy from its current size of 272 ships.

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Adm. Richardson said the Navy has a current target of building 308 ships and increasing this total will be "remarkably easy" if there's funding to pay for the multi-billion dollar expansion that will extend well into the next decade.

The only other problem facing an expansion at this level will be hiring and training workers to build the new warships.

"If it's resourced, it's a matter of working closely with the industrial base, and they definitely are ready to do that," said Adm. Richardson.

An executive from Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc., the largest U.S. military shipbuilder, said the company can create capacity faster than the Congress can appropriate the money.

Military officials, however, warn that the boost to 350 warships will require huge increases in staffing, training, maintenance and infrastructure.

Adm. Richardson recommended the Trump administration can get the process of building more ships started by submitting a supplemental budget for fiscal 2017 that ends Sept. 30.

He said a supplemental budget request might include munitions, aircraft and other equipment that can be bought on short notice. Orders for submarines, destroyers, amphibious ships and carriers can follow later on.

On the other hand, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work warned against Trump moving too quickly to expand the Navy and the military. He said the armed services need to make sure they have the right tools to deal with the current and future operating environment.

"I'll tell you right now, if I had $20 billion a year right now, I wouldn't buy more force structure. I would really focus on cyber vulnerabilities, making sure the C4I (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence) grid is resilient, can withstand repeated assault," said Work.

"I'm much more of a capabilities guy right now than I am a size guy. I know we've had this conversation over a long period of time: I'd like to have both -- if we had enough money, man that would be great. There's a lot of things we would want to fix before I'd say let's start growing the size of the force."

TagsU.S. Navy, expansion, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson, donald trump, Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work