USS Stockdale leads ships behind aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson
WASHINGTON: The years-long goal of a 355-ship fleet is nowhere to be found in the Navy or DoD budget documents for fiscal 2022, as the Navy hopes to get rid of 15 ships next year in a quest to save money in the coming years on sustainment and repair.
The Navy and Marine Corps $211.7 billion funding request might be $3.8 billion more than last year’s budget, but members of Congress are unlikely to look kindly on the request for only eight new ships, while the navy loses seven cruisers, four Littoral Combat Ships and various logistics vessels.
Overall, the shipbuilding account slips slightly from $23.3 billion to $22.6 billion and includes two Virginia-class attack submarines, one DDG-51 destroyer — one fewer than the ‘21 budget projected — and the first Constellation-class frigate. Other logistics vessels also made the cut, including a John Lewis-class fleet oiler, two towing, salvage and rescue ships, and a surveillance ship. There had been much talk of a major boost for Navy shipbuilding, but it looks as if that will have to wait for 2023 — presuming it occurs.
It also requests $2.4 billion for work on the next two Ford-class aircraft carriers, USS Enterprise and USS Doris Miller, along with $4.6 billion for the ballistic missile submarine USS Columbia, the first of a new class of submarines.
Requesting “eight ships a year is not going to get to 355,” the Navy’s top budget official, Rear Adm. John Gumbleton, told reporters at the Pentagon today. “And so all things being equal, if you have a 300-ship Navy and a 30-year lifespan you have to recapitalize it…so eight is not going to do it. It’s all about not having a hollow force, making sure we’re ready today and modernizing for tomorrow.”
The plan submitted today would get the Navy to 296 ships by 2022, two more than it has today.
Getting rid of 15 ships would produce about $1.2 billion in savings, but Gumbleton wasn’t able to explain where that money would go, since it would be in a five-year plan that is missing from the 2022 budget submission.
The Navy is also required to submit a 30-year shipbuilding plan with its yearly budget proposal, a Congressional demand that will not be met for the second year in a row , leaving huge gaps in lawmakers’ understanding of where the Navy plans to go in the coming years.
Gumbleton said the Navy had always planned to divest five cruisers in this year’s budget, but added two more to save an additional $1.5 billion over the next five years in maintenance costs.
Navy budget documents say that cruiser modernization costs “have grown 90 to 200 percent more than the initial programming estimates,” straining the budget at a time when the service wants to shift money to the Columbia program and it’s new frigates.
“This was absolutely an affordability question,” Gumbleton added. “The first priority is investment in Colombia recapitalisation.”
There is also a renewed push to deactivate two of the original Littoral Combat Ships, plus two newer LCS’s, a move which Congress has previously rejected.
In 2021, Congress granted the service the ability to decommission the first two ships of the class, USS Freedom and USS Independence, but refused to allow the retirement of LSC 3 and 4.
Today’s request again asks to get rid of 3 and 4, along with USS Detroit (LCS-7), which has had major propulsion issues, and USS Little Rock (LCS-9). The Little Rock was only commissioned in 2017, but Gumbleton said that since the USS Milwaukee, (LCS 5) is being fitted with the Naval Strike Missile and is preparing to deploy, the next Freedom-class ship up for retirement was the Little Rock.
The Navy is planning to install the Naval Strike Missile on all of its Littoral Combat Ships in the coming years, giving the troublesome ship a new mission, and a key role operating among archipelagos in the Pacific, and operating in the tight waterways of the Black Sea and Baltic.
