BATH — On one of the final campaign stops, President elect Donald J. Trump told a crowd of more than 1,000 people gathered in Lisbon that Bath Iron Works would receive more work under his administration.

“It’s all gonna change. That includes rebuilding our badly depleted Navy, which is now the smallest it has been since World War I. My plan builds the 350 ship Navy we need and everybody requests,” said Trump. “And that means a lot more work for — I’m sure you’ve never heard of this place — Bath Iron Works here in Maine.

“The rebuilding of our military will be a nation-wide effort from Bath Iron Works to Portsmouth and Norfolk Naval shipyards, to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and all around the country,” he added.

The 350 ship figure is not entirely new. The Navy’s current 30-year shipbuilding plan would increase the size of the Navy to 308 ships from approximately 270 now. According to a Congressional Research Service report conducted by Specialist in Navy Affairs Ronald O’Rourke released the day after the election, that number has fluctuated between 306-328 ships in various Navy plans since 2006. The Trump campaign compared their figure to a proposal from the National Defense Panel to increase the size of the Navy to somewhere between 323-346 ships.

“Over the past few months a 350-ship Navy has been something of a consensus target in quiet think-tank discussions throughout DC, so the target is sensible,” said Craig Hooper, who studies national security challenges at Gryphon Scientific and writes about Navy shipbuilding on his blog, Next Navy.

Most of those calling for increasing the Navy to around that size propose to do it over a 30-year period. According to the CRS report, a Trump administration could achieve this goal with a 30-year shipbuilding plan by adding somewhere between 45-58 ships to the naval force, which comes out to about 1.5-1.9 ships per year.

Hooper warned, however, that the Trump team has not been clear on what time frame they expect to accomplish their proposed expansion of the Navy. If a Trump administration tries to rush a naval buildup, it could repair older ships and put them back in service, which would mean less construction of new ships.

“The decades it takes to get to a 350-ship fleet may not be acceptable if the Trump Administration is focused on meeting this goal before the next election,” said Hooper. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty, and the Trump Administration is doing a very good job of keeping their options open. But the outlook for Bath is positive if the Trump Administration resists the temptation to grow the fleet exclusively using bureaucratic chicanery and other short-term fleet-boosting measures. I expect the Trump Administration to rely on a healthy mix of long-term and short-term solutions to grow the fleet.”

There are still many unanswered variables in Trump’s proposals, making it difficult to know how a buildup of the Navy would affect BIW. According to the hypothetical 349 ship 30-year plan in the CRS report, the Navy would need to build an additional 16 cruisers and destroyers. BIW, one of two shipyards along with Ingalls Shipbuilding to build Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers for the Navy, could stand to benefit under this plan. If the Trump administration favors a destroyer-heavy navy, BIW would be well positioned to reap the benefits.

“If the Trump Administration is serious about growing the fleet, starting a deliberate, decades-long expansion, then Bath is going to be in great shape,” said Hooper. “It is critical that the next-generation Flight III Arleigh Burke gets either sped into production or a few additional “restart” destroyers — the ones already in production at Bath–are added while the design is finalized.”

A memo written by Alexander Gray, a senior military advisor to the Trump campaign, also highlights the need for additional Arleigh Burke destroyers.

“Mr. Trump’s plan would grow the Navy’s surface and undersea assets, modernize a significant number of the Navy’s Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and invest in Flight III of the Arleigh Burkeclass destroyer as the backbone of a serious ballistic missile defense strategy,” said Gray.

Of course, all of this is still up in the air. Congress in controls the budget for Navy shipbuilding, not the president, so if Trump wants a bigger navy, he’ll have to work with leaders in Congress to obtain it. As Trump’s transition unfolds, his picks for Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy could also influence this plan and how it’s executed. While BIW stands to benefit from the proposed rebuilding of the Navy, nothing is certain.

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