Trying to gently improve public discourse, I’d suggest that we don’t need to speculate when something is so easy to look up:

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%24160B+in+2022+convert...

It is all meaningless speculation. There is no reason that broadly measured inflation statistics have any relevance to price increases specific to materials and labor required for the subject at hand, such as ship building or operations of a navy.

$100 > $80.

Meta: (1) Oh, that's cool, using Wolfram to look up inflation data! I'll try to remember that.

(2) "Trying to gently... I'd suggest..." strikes me the same as "With the greatest respect..." Maybe just post the link next time.

There’s only been about 60% inflation since 2001, so assuming the above numbers are correct then that’s outpacing inflation.

Cumulative inflation is 62% over that period according to https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

To reply to those saying CPI inflation is up 60% over the period: S&P500 is a better measure of inflation, up 3x over the period, so navy budget roughly keeping pace.