WASHINGTON: The Navy really needs more fighters. Buying 14 more Super Hornets isn’t just the No. 1 item on the Navy’s unfunded requirements list of items that didn’t fit the 2017 budget: The $1.5 billion purchase of F/A-18E/Fs makes up almost a third — 29 percent — of the total $5.4 billion wishlist.
- Add to the 14 Super Hornets a pair of F-35C Joint Strike Fighters, the No. 3 priority; two low-priority C-40 transports (#30); and an array of upgrades and weapons, and aircraft-related purchases make up $2.2 billion, 41 percent.
- Ship-related procurement, from landing craft to electronic warfare kits, is another $1.1 billion. That includes the No. 2 priority on the list, $433 million to complete construction of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer (DDG) mostly funded in 2016.
- Military readiness and personnel items make up another $1.6 billion, ranging from ship maintenance to auditability of Navy finances to funding sailors’ moves to new assignments. But all these items come much lower down the list, the highest at #16.
- Finally, military construction weighs in at half a billion. The MILCON items aren’t included in the main list of priorities but in a separate list, probably because Congress covers them under a different account in a different bill.
Unlike the other three services whose unfunded requirements we’ve previously published — the Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps — the Navy ordered all its non-MILCON items by priority, from the Hornets at #1 to a tugboat, the T-ATS(X), at #31. (Remember, tugboat fans, that just getting your program on this list is a huge achievement). Many of the higher-priority items are not the ones with higher costs.
For example, items #4, 5, and 6 total just $147 million, but they all relate to electronic warfare and signals intelligence, a top priority as the Navy reorients to counter sophisticated Russian and Chinese threats. Items #7 through #15 total a another $366 million of small-but-vital “for want of a nail, a battle was lost” items: new torpedoes, missiles, and bombs; command-and-control upgrades for destroyers and submarines; and various sonars to detect hostile subs.
Only at #16, with the first of the readiness items, do the prices spike again, with $645 million for better maintenance — which has been chronically shortchanged for both ships and aircraft. After various readiness enhancements comes another ship upgrade, the CANES computer network, followed in turn by $187 million for four landing craft of various kinds. Then the list trickles out in various small items until the last two long-shots on the wishlist, $207 million for the C-40s and $75 million for that tug.
Move over FARA: General Atomics pitching new Gray Eagle version for armed scout mission
General Atomics will also showcase its Mojave demonstrator for the first time during the Army Aviation Association of America conference in Denver, a company spokesman said.