Rear Admiral Fullam closely followed the progress and reports coming out of the Washington Naval Conference. He praised the Conference for modernizing naval thought (setting it free from the ""thralldom of conservatism""), and having decreed the scrapping of 66 battleships and a holiday of ten years in battleship building. He strongly supported bringing the battleship into a lesser fleet role, allowing for increased procurement and utilization of submarines, aeroplane carriers and aeroplanes as offensive weapons- what he referred to as our ""Three-Plane-Navy"". Thus, a "balanced fleet" was more critical to the overall naval strength. He coined the term ""battleshipitis"".