There appears to be growing bipartisan Congressional consensus, and acknowledgment from with the Biden administration, that its shipbuilding plan for the U.S. Navy is headed for an overhaul.
The Biden administration’s $886 billion Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) defense budget request includes $842 billion for the Pentagon, which has earmarked $202.5 billion for the Navy, a 4.5 percent increase; and $53.2 billion for the Marine Corps, about a 3-percent hike from the existing budget.
“Unfortunately with today’s record-level of inflation, these increases don’t go very far,” House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said. “We are seeing that very clearly in the request for ship-building.”
In June 2021, in its first annual update for the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, the Biden administration scaled down the size of the fleet planned during the Trump administration from 400 ships by 2050 to between 321 and 372, with 355 ships being the target.
In its FY23 budget, the administration requested funding for nine new combat ships while decommissioning 16. Congress agreed to build the nine ships but only consented to mothballing four of the 16 headed for the scrapyard.
In its FY24 budget request, the administration is proposing nine new ships while divesting 11, including three cruisers, three amphibious dock landing ships, and two littoral combat ships.
During an April 28 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, Rogers and others questioned how mothballing more ships than those being built will help the 296-ship Navy achieve the 355-ship 2050 goal.
“Forget about the 500-ship navy many say we need to counter China; at no point over the next 18 years does the size of the fleet even reach the statutory goal of 355,” he said.
In fact, under the June 2021 shipbuilding plan update, the Navy’s battle force ship count declines to 280 ships in FY 2027.
“While this administration dithers, the CCP is rapidly modernizing its navy,” Rogers said. “It already controls the largest navy in the world. Our fleet of 296 ships was eclipsed years ago by the Chinese fleet of over 350. In two short years, the [U.S. Department of Defense] predicts the CCP will control 400 battle-force ships.”
Administration: Quality Counts in Combat
But Secretary of the Navy David Del Toro and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday argued that the ship-building plan invests in the future Navy while maintaining the readiness of “John Lehman’s Navy,” envisioned during the Reagan Era, to “fight tonight.”They both cautioned that, when it comes to warships, numbers are not as important as the capabilities, capacities, and trained crews of individual ships.
Del Toro said the lethality of U.S. Navy ships are unmatched, pointing to the 2022 initial deployments of the newest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald Ford, and newest Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, USS Jack Lucas.
He said the ship-building plan sustains that focus with the development of two new warship classes. The first USS District of Columbia ballistic missile submarine is “nearly done” while construction of the first of a new frigate class, USS Constellation, has begun.
Del Toro said the Navy’s FY24 request seeks funding for a second Columbia-class “boomer,” two Burke-class destroyers, two Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines, two Constellation frigates, an oiler, and a submarine tender. It also sustains incremental funding for two Ford-class aircraft carriers and one amphibious helicopter assault ship, he said.
The 11 ships the administration wants to decommission include three cruisers, three amphibious dock landing ships, and two ships from its much-maligned littoral combat ship inventory
The decision to “divest or extend a ship’s life is based on a hull-by-hull evaluation,” Del Toro said, explaining the cruisers and dock landing ships (LDSs) “are in tremendously poor material condition [and] offer very limited fighting capacity regardless how much more investments we put into them” and that the littoral ships were deemed as a warship class inadequate for future needs.
“We owe it to taxpayers to be responsible stewards of taxpayer money. Investing in platforms that have limited capability conflicts with that responsibility,” he said.
Gilday said the 11 ships represent a “bygone era” and that the plan clears the deck of “hollow” ships while dedicating more resources into unmanned warships, which could equal or outnumber manned ships by 2050.
“The oceans we operate in are growing more lethal and more contested every day. Our competitors also investing heavily in war-fighting capabilities of their own,” he said. “We can no longer afford to maintain ships designed for a bygone era, especially at the expense of readiness and modernization, or at the expense of buying new ships that are relevant to tomorrow’s fight. America cannot afford to field a hollow force.”
Congress Wary of Quick Cruiser Divestment
Del Toro said the three cruisers—the USS Cowpens, USS Shiloh, USS Vicksburg—are within three years of their end-of-service-life dates and wired with obsolete technologies.They are among 17 Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers the Navy wants to replace with Arleigh Burke-class Flight III destroyers. The current plan calls for all 17, built in the 1980s through mid-90s, to be mothballed by FY27.
No Replacements
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) said the administration has now sought to divest five cruisers over the last two years without replacing them.“I’m not a mathematician but I do not know of any math that allows you to do addition by subtraction,” he said, noting the three cruisers’ 124 missile tubes firepower is not being replaced. “Capacity is, by itself, critically important. Quantity has a quality all its own.”
Del Toro said two of the five cruisers—Cowpens and Vicksburg—“will never see another deployment no matter much we put into them” but suggested the other three could be extended “by one or two deployments.”
He said efficiencies that have been developed in the modernization of the Arleigh Burke destroyer “to keep it sailing thorough 2031, five years beyond its estimated service life,” and in extending by three years the service life of a Los Angeles-class attack submarine, means such retrofits could be a “trend with other ships when possible.”
“We hope to keep destroyers and even Ticonderoga-class cruisers where we actually have the ability to extend them for one or perhaps two more deployments,” Del Toro said.
While “that is achievable,” he said, it would mean committing resources and limited shipyard space for expensive but relatively short-lived retrofits.
“Ultimately,” Del Toro said, “it is our sailors and Marines who pay the price when we are restricted from retiring legacy platforms and investing in the capabilities needed for the future.”
“Part of the challenge here, and I think the cruisers are a good example, is, yes, you have a ship but this ship spends an overwhelming majority of its time in dry dock,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash) said. “First of all, you don’t have a useful ship, and second of all, you spend an enormous amount of money just to keep that ship in dry dock.
“If you were to look at your little chart, you’d say, ‘Well, we got one more.’
But Smith challenged, “Is that actually helping us if it can’t be in the fight and you’re having to spend a lot of money even while it can’t be in the fight? These are the decisions that we have to try to make.”
Amphibious Ship Plan Criticized
The Navy’s FY24 plan calls for retiring three amphibious ships; the USS Germantown, USS Gunston Hall, and USS Tortuga. The three are among seven Whidbey-class landing dock ships (LHDs) being replaced by San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships (LPD).The LHDs/LPDs are among a fleet of amphibious ships that include helicopter assault landing (LHA) ships and multi-purpose amphibious assault (LSDs) ships that resemble small aircraft carriers designed to support Marine expeditionary forces.
The Navy maintains two Marine expeditionary units (MEUs) at sea at all times to respond to unfolding crises. To support those two MEUs and five other MEUs training ashore, a 2019 Amphibious Force Requirements Study determined that a 31-vessel fleet of amphibious assault ships was “the bare minimum necessary” and Congress installed that number as a statutory baseline.
The ideal 31-ship alignment is 10 LHD/LHAs and 21 LPD/LSD ships, according to the Navy. But under its FY21 budget request, three LDHs are designated for divestment with no replacement other than incremental finding for an LPD with no delivery date. This would trim the current 32-ship “amphib” fleet to 29 ships.
Rogers said several of the LHDs “have remaining service life” and that divesting 10 percent of the amphibious fleet without corresponding replacements “invites risk.”
“We recognize this request brings us below the 31 amphibious ships we are required to maintain,” Del Toro said, adding that the administration is “committed to ensuring we meet this requirement and doing so in a timely manner, but with a capable, sustainable mix of ship classes that will support our Marines and sailors for decades to come.”
He said the three LHDs “are all at or over 34 years of service and in unsatisfactory material condition.”
“The planning and repair periods required for these ships to reach a deployable status would put all three at or near their 40-year end-of-service-life mark. Undertaking the repair of these ships, with potential cost growth, would tie up funding, shipyard capacity, and take an enormous personal toll on our Sailors assigned to the projects.”
Del Toro said he inspected the USS Germantown in San Diego. It has a crane that hasn’t operated for six years and a wooden deck that is “deteriorating and would cost approximately a half billion dollars to replace. That’s the best you could do and if you are lucky, you get one additional deployment out of it.”
The Navy would “rather use those funds on a brand-new LPD that could have capabilities that last out 20-plus years and provide a greater return on investment for Congress and the American taxpayer,” he said, although money dedicated to maintaining aging Ticonderoga cruisers could be used to “get the Tortuga out [dry dock] and operational.”
Marines Not Onboard With Biden ‘Amphib’ Plan
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger made it clear to the panel that he was not onboard with the Navy’s “amphib” plan.The Marine Corps requested the penciled-in LPD’s funding be accelerated, another amphibious assault ship be funded, and that construction of the first 18 of 35 planned medium landing ships (LSMs) to support three newly created Marine Littoral Regiments (MLRs) deployed in Okinawa and Guam beginning in FY24.
The Navy’s budget request features none of that, Berger said.
“The decision to delay LSM procurement from FY22 to FY25 was a setback in our ability to bring this [MLR] capability online within an operationally relevant timeframe,” he said, calling falling below the 31-ship requirement “a result of divesting these platforms faster than we are procuring their replacements. From my perspective, I think it is a dangerous approach.”
Berger said the amphibious ship fleet is how the United States “responds to crises,” citing the ships’ roles in assisting during the 2011 Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster in Japan, non-combatant evacuations in Lebanon, Hurricane Katrina, the rescues of downed U.S. aircrew in contested areas, to crises “whether in Haiti, Venezuela, South Sudan, Yemen, Eswatini, or anywhere else on the globe.”
Without the 31 ship mix, the Marines “would have gaps during the year when we would not have at-sea capability for the combatant commander” in fielding two MEUs and readiness for response support—which is already being tested, he said.
“It has affected readiness, our availability to be on the water, to respond,” Berger said. “Divesting faster than we are procuring their replacements—the result became most acutely visible when we were unable to provide traditional disaster-relief response following the earthquake in Turkey earlier this year.”
That already stretched availability has also made it difficult to provide assistance, and security, for up to 16,000 Americans seeking to evacuate from South Sudan as it disintegrates into a civil war, he said.
“The last couple of weeks in Sudan, I feel like I let down the combatant commander because [United States Africa Command Marine Corps] Gen. Langley needs options” in coordinating evacuations, Berger said. “He didn’t have a sea-based option.”
Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) said the administration’s 30-year shipbuilding plan does not specify funding for amphibious beyond the incremental design placeholder for one LPD. He asked Del Toro how long the administration plans to sustain its “strategic pause that I don’t think is going to happen” in amphib ship production.
“I hope it will be as short as it can possibly be,” he said. “There is unquestionably a need for heavy lifting when it comes to fulfilling the Marine Corps’ responsibilities, when it comes to Indo-Pacific and in situations around the world.”
Del Toro said that adding three to five ships to the FY24 building list would generate about 1,500-to-2,000 shipyard jobs. Not doing so now, Kelly said, is almost like a reverse lay-off.
Mothballing more ships than the number being built “is doing away with the workforce we say we don’t have,” he said, “allowing it to atrophy and come back a year later to build the same thing, and it just costs more and takes longer and longer.”
“Here’s my concern,” Berger said. “The first time this nation can’t respond to a crisis and one of our adversaries can is probably the last time” the nation can respond to a crisis.
“Gen. Berger has put an ‘amphib’ in his ‘unfunded priority list,’” Rogers said. “I think you’ll find support for that request from this committee.”
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