EDITORIAL COMMENT
Long-range plan is impossible to fund
Even without the SSBN(X) the US Navy could not afford all of the vessels and equipment in its latest 30-year plan
to have, and its ability to afford the number of ships it believes it needs to acquire, shows no signs of abating. As has been highlighted before in Warship Technology, the planned size of the US Navy, the rate of ship procurement, and the affordability of its shipbuilding plans have been matters of concern, not least for the congressional defence committee, for several years. Even the US Navy itself has acknowl-
T
edged this, as it noted in its latest 30-year shipbuilding plan, which was published early in July 2014, when it admitted that it can’t fund all of the surface ships and nuclear-powered attack submarines it want to acquire in the period from 2025 to 2034. Te 30-year plan, which must be submit-
ted to Congress, notes that to meet the objectives it contains “requires funding at an unsustainable level.” Te only way that it can afford the ships in the plan is if spending on naval shipbuilding increases dramatically and, in an era of declining defence spending, that seems unlikely to say the least. At the moment, the plan is to increase the
number of vessels in the fleet to a total of 306 (from 289 currently) and build 12 new strategic ballistic missile class submarines (known as the SSBN(X) programme, see Warship Technology, May 2014, pages 17-19). Setting aside the debate about what kind of navy the US needs and the factors that influence that debate – such as China’s growing naval strength, Russia’s re-emergence as a post-Cold War naval power, and a growing emphasis on the Asia Pacific region – the biggest fiscal problem facing the US Navy and the Department of
Warship Technology October 2014
he growing disconnect between the US Navy’s acquisition plans and the kind of force structure it would like
Defense is that from 2019 onwards the US needs to fund the new class of submarines; full-scale production of the F-35 fighter aircraſt; and a new long-range strike aircraſt. As Carl Levin, Chairman of the
Committee on Armed Services noted in a letter accompanying submission of the plan to Congress, the ‘future years defence programme’ – and its cost – does not take into account the effects of the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011. “Tis plan will be difficult to execute if Congress does not repeal the current BCA funding limita- tions,” said Senator Levin (for ‘difficult’ read ‘completely impossible’). “Addition- ally, at the BCA cap funding level, the department will be forced to retire the USS George Washington (CVN 73) early.” Senator Levin confirmed that there
would also be what he called “resource challenges” outside the future years defence programme “largely due to invest- ment requirements associated with the SSBN(X) programme.” According to the long-range construc-
tion report, the average cost of the plan during the period when the service will be spending the most on the SSBN(X) is US$19.7 billion a year, and US$24 billion at the peak year, FY2032. As it notes, this budget cannot be accommodated by the US Navy from existing resources, particularly if the Pentagon remains under congression- ally mandated cuts known as sequestration. In recent years, the US Navy’s historical shipbuilding budget has averaged about US$13 billion a year (in FY2014 dollars), so the scale of the disconnect is evident and, even if the SSBN(X) is removed from the US Navy’s plan, the average shipbuilding funding required beginning in FY2020 is still around US$15 billion per annum.
As a Congressional report published in
June 2014 noted, the US Navy’s proposed FY2015 budget requests funding for seven new battle force ships (that is, vessels that count against its goal of achieving and maintaining a fleet of 306 units). Te seven ships include two Virginia-class attack submarines, two DDG-51Aegis destroyers, and three Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs). Its proposed FY2015-19 five-year shipbuilding plan includes a total of 44 ships, compared to a total of 41 ships in the FY 2014-18 five-year plan. The report said the FY2015 30-year (FY2014-44) shipbuilding plan, like many previous 30-year shipbuilding plans, does not include enough ships to fully support all elements of the 306-ship goal over the entire 30-year period. In particular, the US Navy projects that the fleet would experience a shortfall in amphibious ships from FY2015 through FY2017, a shortfall in small surface combatants from FY2015 through FY2027, and a shortfall in attack submarines from FY2025 through FY2034. In its October 2013 report on the cost of the FY2014 30-year shipbuilding plan, the Congres- sional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the plan would cost an average of US$19.3 billion per year in constant FY2013 dollars to implement, or about 15% more than the US Navy estimated. Te CBO’s estimate was about 6% higher than the navy’s estimate for the first 10 years of the plan, about 14% higher than the estimate for the second 10 years of the plan. It was about 26% higher than the navy’s estimate for the final 10 years of the plan, although some of the difference between CBO’s estimate and the navy’s – particularly in the latter years of the plan – is due to a difference in how the CBO and the US Navy treat inflation in shipbuilding. WT
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