FUTURE NAVY SINKING?

“The Navy’s new destroyer, the DD(X), is becom­ing so expen­sive that it may end up destroy­ing itself,” the Times’ defense tech reporter, Tim Weiner, writes today. “The Navy once wanted 24 of them. Now it thinks it can afford 5 — if that.”

The price of the Navy’s new ships, dri­ven upward by old-​​school pol­i­tics and the rusty machin­ery of American ship­build­ing, may scut­tle the Pentagon’s plans for a 21st-​​century armada of high-​​technology air­craft car­ri­ers, destroy­ers and sub­marines.
Shipbuilding costs “have spi­raled out of con­trol,” the Navy’s top admi­ral, Vern Clark, told Congress last week, ris­ing so high that “we can’t build the Navy that we believe that we need in the 21st cen­tury.“
The first two DD(X)‘s are now sup­posed to total $6.3 bil­lion, accord­ing to con­fi­den­tial bud­get doc­u­ments, up $1.5 bil­lion. A new air­craft car­rier, the CVN-​​21, is esti­mated at $13.7 bil­lion, up $2 bil­lion. The new Virginia-​​class sub­ma­rine now costs $2.5 bil­lion each, up $400 mil­lion. All these increases have mate­ri­al­ized in the last six months.
The Navy says it can make do with fewer big ships patrolling the oceans. It wants more fast boats and air­craft to fight off­shore and upriver, a speed­ier force to counter ter­ror. But Congress, seek­ing to sus­tain America’s ship­yards, wants as many big ships as pos­si­ble.
Admiral Clark, who plans to retire later this year, says both strate­gies could be sunk by soar­ing costs.

April 19th, 2005 | Ships and Subs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.