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The U.S. research fleet is already three ships short. By 2040, on our central case, it's 35. We built the supply balance for America's ocean research and survey fleet: NOAA, UNOLS and institutional operators. Demand is derived bottom-up from mission-days: the stock assessments Magnuson-Stevens requires, the charting backlog, the national EEZ-mapping targets, and standing ocean observations. Three findings: 1.) The deficit is already here. Mission-day arithmetic says the fleet entered 2026 about 3 vessels short. A figure consistent with NOAA's own audit trail: the Inspector General documented fleet capacity falling by more than a third as decommissioning outpace deliveries. 2.) The order-book is near-zero. After NOAA's Navigator delivers, all that remains is a pair of undeclared contract options. Meanwhile age-outs and charter wind-downs take roughly two hulls a year after 2030. In all, six NOAA ships reach end of service life by 2031, and the academic fleet's workhorses are 1976–1997 builds. 3.) Arctic routing and autonomous deployment makes it worse by more four ships by 2040. The Arctic season is ~110 effective days and modest survey requirements convert into disproportionate hull-demand. Near peer adversaries treats Arctic survey as route infrastructure and built a vessel class for it we've never constructed. 4.) And the tell that says the system knows: A R/V was just ordered from a yard in Chile. The gap gets closes one of three ways: new construction/refits, commercial charter, or missions going unmet. Overall it's a contract-design choice and that's the subject of the full brief. This is the fifth fleet segment Maritime OIC LLC has modeled this way: LNG carriers, product tankers, government sealift, subsea cable ships, and now the research and survey fleet. The firm's analysis is quantitatively inform the sovereign maritime demand signal. Our sources and methods available to serious counterparties: we build these for peer review. Maritime OIC builds