The Navy needs to make Oliver Twist a senior budget official because it needs to ask: “Please, sir, may I have some more?“
That’s the essence of comments made by a Congressional Research Service defense expert who said the Navy’s reluctance to push for significantly higher budgets in coming years may give lawmakers the wrong view of Navy needs.
This, in spite of the fact the Navy is facing recapitalization needs aren’t very different from those of the Air Force — which has been up front about needing an additional $20 billion a year for the next five years.
“The Navy has been avoiding asking for an increase,” said Ron O’Rourke, a national defense specialist at CRS. “If one [branch] is vocal about the need for an increase and another is not, policy lawmakers can develop an imbalanced understanding of funding needs for the services.”
What some lawmakers have seen of the Navy’s long-range plans has generated skepticism. Some lawmakers, including key members on the House Appropriations and Armed Services subcommittees, have put more faith in Congressional Budget Office fiscal estimates than in the Navy’s. That’s led some influential lawmakers to consider altering the Navy’s ship procurement plans.
On Capitol Hill, O’Rourke told attendees of the Sea-Air-Space expo in Washington, D.C., there has been strong criticism of the Navy’s inability to follow its 30-year shipbuilding plan since the service isn’t requesting the budget increases that officials believe are necessary to execute the plan on time.
For example, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s defense panel, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), cited the discrepancy between what CBO researchers say the Navy needs to meet its 313-ship fleet in 30 years and what the service proposed in its 2009 budget: The CBO said the Navy would need to spend about $20 billion a year on new ship construction to meet the plan. But the fiscal ’09 budget includes just $14.1 billion for ship construction.
O’Rourke also referred listeners to March 14 comments made by Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) chairman of the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, to best capture the sense that lawmakers have of the Navy’s shipbuilding plans.
“Dismissed as pure fantasy,” O’Rourke said. Taylor is a strong backer of Navy programs but is well known for his plain speaking and hard-hitting logic, Hill observers say.
“It [the plan] is totally unaffordable with the resources the Department of Defense allocates to the Navy for ship construction,” Taylor said in his March 14 comments. The Navy, he continued, admitted in its annual long-rage report on shipbuilding that it does not have the funding to construct the vessels it will need in the years beyond 2020.
Taylor panned the Navy for its plans to cancel ships that are being built on time — the LPD 17 class amphibious assault ship, Arleigh Burke class destroyers, Virginia class submarines and T-AKE Dry Cargo Ammunition ships — in order to go forward with additional Littoral Combat Ships, which are behind schedule and over cost.
According to O’Rourke, members on the armed services committee and the powerful appropriations committee both are considering pushing for changes in what the Navy buys, believing they have a better handle on Navy needs than the sea service’s leadership.
Gene Taylor’s approach is a bit like looking for the keys you lost in the dark alley under the lightpost because it is easier to see there.
Damn right we can build Arleigh Burke class destroyers, Virginia class submarines and T-AKE Dry Cargo Ammunition ships on time. They are long past the prototyping phase. We have, certainly in the case of the Arleigh Burke class ships, plenty already, and are using the new purchases to replace existing surface combatants before their “due dates” run. Equally important, the threat level faced by blue sea operations of the U.S. Navy is near an all time low. The failure of the Russian Navy to thrive has also reduced the pressure on the U.S. to build more nuclear attack submarines — the main reason that we are building Virginia Class submarines at the rate we are building them now is to keep the manufacturing infrastructure in place.
The LPD 17 class San Antonios haven’t been without contracting mishaps, despite their relatively unambitious design, and even if the ships are ready, the fact of that matter is that the primary customer for this ship, the United States Marine Corps, has its hands full in places like Iraq where you can’t use them.
The Littoral Combat Ship, in contrast, is a more urgent need. We are actively engaged in littoral operations in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. Our anti-mine warfare force is small and dwindling before its planned replacement arrives. The urgency of threats from coastal submarines has been underlined by multiple incidents over the last couple of years, the LCS is designed to address that threat, and ASW forces were cut back after the Cold War. The littoral anti-piracy mission of the U.S. Navy is more active now than at any time in living memory. The LCS is at the core of the Navy game plan for the next several decades.
Also, while Congressional Research Service staffers are right to note that the U.S. Navy is being less strident about tooting its own horn than the Air Force for comparably urgent needs, I’m not sure that the Air Force has the better of the argument.
We are fighting two regional wars right now, in addition to manning garrisons in places like South Korea and Japan. Fighting these two wars in dreadfully expensive.
The notion that the portions of the U.S. military that are less actively involved in Iraq and Afghanistan can continue to submit business as usual budgets year after year is flabbergasting and shows a failure of leadership.
Which is worse for the Navy: Asking for the right amount of funding to buy ships that the Navy has taken a beating on, or asking for fewer funds than CBO and Congress know are necessary? Doesn’t the Navy set itself up for just what Chairman Taylor is advocating? Or is the Navy willing to accept more ships no matter the type to avoid expending the political capital to get what it wants? What kind of message is the Navy sending by not obligating funds in the FY 2008 appropriation for the third LCS by the mid-point of the fiscal year?
ohwilleke,
Thank god the Russian Navy has failed to thrive or else the USN would be in as much danger as the USAF of not being able to fulfill is worldwide commitments. At least the USN has gotten new ships since the end of the cold war. Think how bad a shape the USN would be in if it had not gotten all those Arleigh Burke DDGs…
It is downright SCARY how peole like you think that since we are currently fighting two low-intensity “unconventional” wars right now that we can neglect preparing for the posibility that the next war could be a MUCH larger, more intense “conventional” war.
The LPD 17 class is a VERY ambitious design. The 12 LPD 17 are intended to replace 4 classes (LPD 4 Austin class, LSD 36 Anchorage class, LST 1179 Newport class & LKA 113 Charleston class) totalling 41 ships .
I agree with you on the LCS. The problem is that the LCS made since at $400 a piece not so much…
Cut Navy Hqs waste in DC alone.
Combine programs for shipbuilding.
Give Incentives.
Have Euro yards bid for Navy ships– UK, France, Germany?
Recall those ships in the Mothball fleet?
“THOSE SAME INSURGENT FORCES AND TERRORIST are far more likely to kill you in the USA than some silly fantasy conventional war”- Darth America
Sigh.
One, insurgents are incredibly unlikely to kill anyone in the USA. By definition, the only insurgents we could even have in the US would be American irregulars, fighting a foreign invader who’d actually conquered territory. Think of that awful 80s movie, ‘Red Dawn.’ It’s not happening this century, move on.
The second half of that statement is that terrorists are more likely to kill the rhetorical ‘you’ in the US than that ‘you’ would die in a war with a nation-state. Well, over the last 10 years, the number of US citizens killed by terrorists in the US hovers around 3,000. The number of US citizen-soldiers killed in war during that same period is nearly 5,000. That’s using DoD numbers, where helicopter crashes and Hummer roll-overs ‘don’t count’ If you extend the time frame you look at to twenty, thirty, fifty years, the imbalance gets far worse.
An ‘insurgency’ is a popular uprising against foreign invaders. I keep hearing comments on how horrible it is that we (the US, NATO, the West, whatever) is so unprepared for an insurgency. Okay. Pretend for a moment that I’m the SecDef. Point out for me please the number of counter-insurgency ‘operations’ in the world in the last 100 years. Now point out to me the ones where the invaders won. Okay, now eliminate all the ones on your list where winning is the same as reducing the combat to some arbitrarily acceptable level. What conflicts are left, and what weapons systems can we use from that list?
It’s not a long list.
Very simply, there is no modern tool or tool set for winning a COIN war for an invader. The only thing I am aware of is a very ancient strategy. Look up the Latin root of the word ‘decimate.’ Basically, unless you are willing to be a barbarian and commit what in today’s world are considered war crimes, COIN is untenable.
Please, prove me wrong. Show me something. I would love it if I was so far off base as to be a walking joke. It would mean that a lot more of my fellow citizens would be coming home from the Sandbox, and that I could look forward to Iraq being a stable, democratic, free US ally with no US military presence in my lifetime. I wish for that. So throw me a bone, people.
“Very simply, there is no modern tool or tool set for winning a COIN war for an invader. The only thing I am aware of is a very ancient strategy. Look up the Latin root of the word ‘decimate.’ Basically, unless you are willing to be a barbarian and commit what in today’s world are considered war crimes, COIN is untenable. “
more rubble, less trouble?
DarthAmerica,
There is nothing rational &/or wise to assume that the only wars we will fight in the future will be like those we are fighting now.
Yes the DOD is very well prepared to fight traditional conventional wars beyond any opponents means to resist TODAY but in order to be able to continue to do so the DOD muct continue to move forward to what is essentially a 1980’s war machine (the majority of the current force was procured in the 1980’s) with a 21st century war machine.
The main reason why we are not prepared for the pace of deployments is because our armed forces were cut too much after the cold war & we are STILL for the most part fighting two regional conflicts at peace-time force levels.
We are more well prepared for low intensity conflicts, asymmetric warfare et cetera than you want people to believe. Don’t confuse poor exicution of the current wars with being “unprepared”.
What alternate universe are you living in where ALL of our fights for the last 30+ years have been low intensity conflicts, asymmetric warfare & MOOTW?
YOU are the one wanting to fight yesterday’s (or today’s) war rather than tomorrow’s wars.
DarthAmerica,
It would be so nice if you would not put words into other people’s mouths. I never said that the current wars are “force on force equipment contest” but the next war that we fight COULD BE.
You haven’t supported jack.
YOU are the one you making wild speculation.
DarthAmerica,
Perhaps you should actually read what you link to…it DOES NOT support your fantasy of no more high-intensity conventional conflict.
NOBODY is saying that the US armed forces do not have to adapt to changing threats (threats which include BOTH high-intensity & low-intensity conflict) — and nobody is saying that low-intensity conflict is not more probable or likely to be more frequent. The difference is that those of us who know what we are talking about know that in so doing we CAN NOT neglect continuing to maintain & advance our armed forces to DECISIVELY win major conventional conflicts. History has proven those who think otherwise to have been wrong again & again…
Your problem is you are too focused on single aspects of conflict without seeing it as PART of the overal picture.
Take the diesel subs vs Virginia-class subs for example. Is sending a Virginia-class sub to counter a single diesel sub cost effective? Of course not & NOBODY is saying it is (or that it is the best way to deal with a diesel sub). But you CAN send a Virginia-class sub to counter a single diesel sub AND a Virginia-class sub CAN do a whole lot more for you reguardless of the intensity of the conflict. Focusing too much on that single “force-on-force” diesel sub vs Virginia-class blinds you to everything else a Virginia-class sub CAN & DOES do and to how a lot more is going on than just that single diesel sub. Plus diesel subs are a threat in high-intensity conflict as well as low-intensity conflict…the difference is that the stakes are MUCH higher in high-intensity conflict.
DarthAmerica,
You have it all backwords. NOBODY is saying that the DOD is neglecting high intensity wars (some in the DOD are but the DOD as a whole is not). And NOBODY is saying that we should ignor low-intensity conflict. But people like you sure as hell DO sound as though YOU think that the propablilty of high-intensity conflict is next to zero & we should concentrate fully on low-intensity conflict.
Here is a GREAT BIG hint…OIF only became a low-intensity conflict AFTER the high-intensity conflict had been won! And yes as far as high-intensity conflict goes OIF was comparatively easy & short lived.
Some of us new LONG before OIF that you have to be prepared for the post-conflict requirements. But guess what, there are no post-conflict requirements until AFTER you win the conflict.
You lack of undersatnding of military history is pathetic.
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