The Navy’s ship­build­ing pro­gram is a mess. That was the con­sen­sus of sev­eral highly qual­i­fied speak­ers at a recent Washington sem­i­nar spon­sored by the Hudson Institute. And, it was agreed, the cur­rent Navy and con­gres­sional efforts will not rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion.

The fis­cal year 2010 pro­gram recently pre­sented to Congress calls for $14.9 bil­lion in ship­build­ing funds for eight ships:

1 SSN attack sub­ma­rine
1 DDG Arleigh Burke–class destroyer (a restart of that pro­gram)
3 LCS lit­toral com­bat ships
2 T-​​AKE replen­ish­ment ships
1 HSV high-​​speed ves­sel

With a planned aver­age ship ser­vice life of 30 years, this build­ing rate would sus­tain a fleet of 240 ships. This is less than the Navy’s cur­rent 283 ships and far short of the long-​​standing Navy “require­ment” for 313 ships.

The dis­tin­guished speak­ers at the Hudson con­fer­ence on 22 May made it clear that with­out a mas­sive increase in ship­build­ing funds a larger fleet was not achiev­able. Dr. Eric Labs, senior naval ana­lyst at the Congressional Budget Office said that about $25 bil­lion per year for new ships is needed to reach the Navy’s goal.

Now is the time for “hard choices,” Labs said. We “can­not fix prob­lems with sim­ple mea­sures.”  He observed that the ship pro­cure­ment dol­lars being dis­cussed do not include a new class of bal­lis­tic mis­sile defense cruis­ers, and “it is not unrea­son­able” for those ships — now des­ig­nated CG(X) or, if nuclear pro­pelled, CG(X)N, to cost $6 to $7 bil­lion per ship.

Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, under whose direc­tion the U.S. fleet had reached almost 600 ships in the 1980s, out­lined a “new look” for the Navy (which will be dis­cussed in a future com­men­tary). With respect to ship­build­ing prob­lems, Lehman blamed the con­stant bureau­cratic growth of the Defense Department, includ­ing the Naval Sea Systems Command, and the lack of “line deci­sion mak­ers” — peo­ple who have the author­ity and respon­si­bil­ity to make key deci­sions. Only then can the con­tin­ual flow of changes be made in ship require­ments and con­struc­tion be halted.

Lehman called for “freez­ing” designs and mak­ing only “block” changes in new con­struc­tion pro­grams.

Congressman Joe Sestak, a retired vice admi­ral, believes that the Navy could carry out its mis­sions with a 240– to 260-​​ship fleet if “we bought cyber­space.” Calling for the devel­op­ment of meth­ods for track­ing every sur­face ship — both mil­i­tary and com­mer­cial, an expan­sion of the Automated Identification System (AIS) now used for large mer­chant ships — and for the con­tin­u­ous loca­tion of sub­marines, he said that such infor­ma­tion could reduce the U.S. Navy’s ship require­ments. 

Still, “own­ing” cyber­space would be expen­sive. And, the only way to under­take such an achieve­ment would be to remove “cyber war” oper­a­tions from the ser­vice bud­gets and con­sol­i­date the effort under a Department of Defense exec­u­tive, accord­ing to Sestak. 

A con­sen­sus of the pre­sen­ta­tions and the ques­tions and com­ments from the audi­ence included the fol­low­ing points:

The Navy’s flip-​​flops on the Zumwalt (DDG 1000) and Burke (DDG 51) pro­grams have hurt the Navy’s image and cred­i­bil­ity of its ship­build­ing pro­gram.
The Navy’s 30-​​year ship­build­ing plan, required by Congress, is unre­al­is­tic and of lit­tle value.
Poor man­age­ment of the Navy’s ship­build­ing efforts have resulted in ship delays and cost over­runs
The Navy has failed to effec­tively “sell” itself as a key fac­tor in America’s political-​​military effec­tive­ness, in part because of the above fac­tors
Ship num­bers do count and the con­tro­ver­sial lit­toral com­bat ship (LCS) is the Navy’s only hope for increas­ing fleet size.
The Navy’s lead­er­ship can fix the pro­cure­ment mess, but must take bold and inno­v­a­tive action, includ­ing demand­ing firm fixed-​​price con­tracts and the use of second-​​tier ship­yards and con­trac­tors to spark competition.

– Norman Polmar