Navy shipbuilding: Is transformation happening?
In a Pentagon briefing on the Bush Administration's FY2004 budget request, DoD Comptroller Dov Zakheim called shipbuilding a "good news" story for the department. In fiscal 2004, $12.2 billion is budgeted for procurement of seven ships—up sharply from $9.5 billion and five ships in FY 2003. Through fiscal 2009, the department plans on at least seven ships a year. In fiscal 2008 and 2009, the numbers jump to nine and 14. That is when a new class, the littoral combat ship, or LCS, is scheduled to enter service.
CVN-21: The budget includes $1.5 billion for the planned 2007 aircraft carrier, which has been upgraded to the CVN-21 design—whose innovations include an enhanced flight deck, a new nuclear power plant, allowance for future technologies, and reduced manning. Some of these capabilities previously were not going into a new carrier until 2011. "This is an example that fulfills President Bush's goal of skipping a generation of systems or technologies," says the DoD.
New ship classes/technologies: $1.2 billion is budgeted to continue development of technologies to be applied to the whole family of 21st century surface combatants including DDX destroyer, littoral combat ship, and the CG(X) cruiser.
DIP BELOW 300 SHIPS
While the build rate may be up, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld last month told a House panel that "despite the significant increase in shipbuilding, we did not get the shipbuilding rate up to the desired steady state of 10 ships per year. Because of planned retirements of other ships, we will drop below a 300-ship fleet during the course of the FYDP. The Navy is in the process of transforming, and has two studies underway for amphibious ships and for submarines—we have increased shipbuilding in 2004, but we do not want to lock ourselves into a shipbuilding program now until we know precisely which ships we will want to build in the out-years."
|
|
Actual |
Requ. |
FIve Year Plan
|
| Type |
03 |
04 |
05 |
06 |
07 |
08 |
09 |
| CVN |
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
| SSN |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
| DDG |
2 |
3 |
3 |
|
|
|
|
| DD(X) |
|
|
1 |
1 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
| LCS |
|
|
1 |
1 |
|
3 |
4 |
| LPD |
1 |
1 |
|
2 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
| LHA (R) |
|
|
|
|
1 |
|
|
| MPF |
|
|
|
|
|
1 |
2 |
| T-AKE |
1 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
1 |
|
|
| T-AOE |
|
|
|
|
|
|
2 |
| TOTALS |
5 |
7 |
8 |
7 |
7 |
9 |
14 |
Hmm. Not everyone is buying the FYDP at its face value, anyhow. Least of all, perhaps, shipbuilding guru Tim Colton.
Here's what he had to say about it on www.coltoncompany.com.
"The Defense Department has made a big thing about how the new five-year development plan gets the build rate up to seven ships a year. Well yes, but. Look at it. (see table on first page of this feature).
First, the FY04 request is good: that's what's needed. But then we start getting unreal next year already. They aren't going to be ready to buy either DD(X) or LCS next year. No way. Anybody want to bet with me on this? Now look at FY07: the new CVN and the new LHA both in the same year, plus two of those prodigiously expensive new SSNs as well three other ships? That's totally unaffordable and it's never going to happen. Finally, look at those two T-AOEs in FY09: it's not that they aren't needed but they have the smell of that AE that was in the out-years of the FYDP all through the 1980s but never made it to the left-hand column. They are in there to boost the out-year numbers, so that DoD spokesmen can claim to be in favor of increasing the level of naval shipbuilding. Goodness, I'm getting cynical, but look at every single five-year plan for the past 25 years and you will see what I mean."
WINDS OF CHANGE
Padding the out years of the FYDP may be a game that never changes. But there is some change afoot at the Pentagon. In a very real sense, we're still in a game of Donald vs. The Dinosaurs, with reform-minded thinkers such as Rumsfeld being resisted by admirals who would like to gold plate everything and shipbuilders who don't like the idea of "skipping a generation of ships" if it means skipping a bunch of money they could otherwise pick up.
Still, some winds of change have started to blow. One of those winds has blown away a whole generation of shipyard top management. The Big Six yards now belong to the Big Two defense contractors—and their priorities are about creating platforms on which to hang missiles and sensors.
MORE
