Posted on 12/06/2005 7:29:59 AM PST by Paul Ross
Analysts say Navy ship plan faces uncertainties
By DALE EISMAN, The Virginian-Pilot
© December 6, 2005
Last updated: 12:59 AM
WASHINGTON — A new proposal to revive Navy shipbuilding and add more than 30 vessels to today’s fleet of about 280 depends on the service’s ability to control construction costs and keep other expenses – including the war on terror – from eating into shipbuilding budgets, independent analysts said Monday.
“It’s based on everything breaking right,” said Robert Work, a retired Marine Corps colonel and defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The Navy typically is too optimistic in forecasting its budgets and too conservative in estimating ship costs, he suggested.
Though Navy leaders remained publicly silent on their proposal, the service apparently began briefing key lawmakers last week on a long-range shipbuilding program conceived by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, who took over in July as chief of naval operations.
Mullen is reported to envision a fleet of 313 ships by 202 0. To get it, he wants the service to spend an average of $13.4 billion annually on ship construction beginning in 2007. The service invested $10.4 billion on new ships during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 but asked for just $8.7 billion in 2006.
Two months into the new fiscal year, the 2006 overall defense spending plan remains stalled in Congress.
Mullen’s proposal picked up a key early endorsement on Monday as U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., said the Navy leader “can count on me to be one of his strongest supporters.” Warner heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversees defense spending.
Other members from shipbuilding states probably will give the proposal a similarly warm reception, analysts said.
But it’s far from certain that Mullen can protect the shipbuilding budget from raids by Pentagon planners when the military runs into unexpected war expenses or is stuck with the bills for its responses to disasters such as H urricane Katrina and last December’s Asian tsunami, they added.
Also contributing to uncertainty about the proposal are steady increases in military pay and benefits, particularly health care costs for service members and retirees. And while senior defense officials apparently have been briefed on the Navy proposal, the Pe ntagon is two months away from completing a Congressionally ordered “Quadrennial Review” that will include its suggestions for force levels in all the military branches.
Work said Mullen’s proposal appears reasonable in the short term, as the service develops the initial ships in its DDX destroyer program and its new aircraft carrier design, CVN-21.
Yet, b eginning about 2011 or 2012, there is “significant fiscal risk” in the proposal, as Mullen expects to go to a construction rate of two submarines and at least two major surface ships per year, Work said.
“This looks like it will work only if pretty much everything goes as planned,” agreed Ronald O’Rourke, who tracks Navy programs at the Congressional Research Service.
Work and O’Rourke noted that Mullen’s proposal does not include at least one big ticket item that typically is part of shipbuilding budgets: the $2.5 billion cost of refueling each of the Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
It also apparently does not include the cost of the “mission modules” – special equipment – to be installed on each of the 55 “ littoral combat ships” Mullen wants to buy.
A brainchild of Mullen’s predecessor, now-retired Adm. Vern Clark, the relatively small, fast and highly maneuverable littoral combat ship is being designed for close-to-shore missions such as mine-hunting and anti-submarine warfare.
The interchangeable mission modules, to be installed and removed depending on each ship’s assignment, are expected to cost $150 million each.
The analysts said other potential trouble spots for the plan include:
nCVN-21. The proposal anticipates that the cost of the new series of carriers can be held to $8.8 billion per ship after the first ship in the line. That ship will cost more than $13 billion, including funds for research on its new systems and the development of a new design .
nDDX. The proposal apparently assumes that the Navy can trim $200 million from the cost of each of the first two DDX ships, reducing the price to $3.1 billion per ship.
Even at the current Navy estimate of $3.3 billion per ship, there are signs the two initial DDXs may be under-priced. A “cost analysis improvement group” inside the Pentagon has concluded that the first ship in the series could cost more than $4 billion.
The cuts apparently will require the removal of some weapons or other systems from the ships, though industry officials have insisted that a stable, long-term Navy budget will allow them to streamline work schedules and significantly reduce costs without cutting into warfighting power.
nThe Virginia-class submarine. Mullen’s proposal assumes that the Navy can reduce the price of each Virginia-class sub by about $500 million, to a total of $2 billion.
“The cost estimates on which this plan is based are so unrealistic it’s hard to understand,” said a Congressional analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The plan depends on cutting ship costs in an era in which those costs have been growing, generally faster than the Navy had foreseen, he added.
How many non-Great Lakes ship building facilities are left in the US ?
Yes, we have to fund ILLEGAL ALIENS, the pork-loaded highway bill, massive medicare expenditure, and the failed "GOVERNMENT OF LOUISIANA" --- far more important than national defense.....
Thank you George, and Washington!
I think we are seeing an impending clash not just with the domestic spendaholics in Congress...but between the DOD and the White House/OMB which has been underfunding the Navy ship-procurements right along...and was on track to cut our subs back to only 28.
Who builds in N.O. ?
I thought Avondale was gone. For some reason, I was thinking there were only two US yards capable of turning out a destroyer...
"Newport News (Norfolk, VA)"
Newport News Shipbuilding is in ... well ... Newport News. There is a Navy ship repair facility in Norfolk, though.
NGSS and Bath are the only two currently building destroyers. But Avondale is still around.
riverdawg - [Homer Simpson] dooh [/Homer Simpson] I stand corrected. Newport News Shipbuilding is in Newport News.
Too bad none of the Great Lakes yards...
Part of the problem, IMO, is not just Congress and the Administration, but the bloat at defense contractors and at the pentagon.
I'm so disgusted with the report I read on NIP, I could spit copper nickels.
Have we recuperated from the downsizing of the Military that Clintoon managed? No.
Is a 313-ship Navy what we really need?
I say we need more than that, and the budget doesn't even reflect getting to the 313. This is insane.
From the "Brief of all Briefs", it has been shown, historically, that some nation poses a threat to the US evey 25 years. True, Russia may not be a threat right now - and I emphasize the "right now", but in 15 more years?? Will it be Pakistan? Indian? China? Korea?
They are all buying everything they can get their hands on from Russia.
And we are not going to be prepared.
Ping lists?
This isn't a complete list, but right off the top of my head:
Ingalls in Pascagoula, MS; Newport News in Newport News, VA; Electric Boat in Groton, CT; Avondale in Gulfport, MS; New Orleans, LA. IOW, not much and all owned by either Northrop Grumman or Generay Dynamics.
ping
BTTT
Maybe. Keep in mind how artificial the $10 billion Navy procurement budget was...and the Adminstration only gave them $6.8 billion of it this last year. The U.S. yards are being starved, and its no wonder there are no longer any economies of scale. There is just no scale to have any such economies. This would appear to be a serious example of the budgetary defense implosion that is a legacy of too-lengthy a defense "holiday" that GWB never really SERIOUSLY addressed. For him, it appears to have been mere campaign rhetoric, and "transformation" was supposed to make the need to actually DO SOMETHING about it "go away." Like magic. Won't happen, and instead we will be seing more stories like THIS ONE from today:
Electric Boat To Lay Off up to 2,400 Workers
By CHRISTOPHER P. CAVAS
About one in five workers at General Dynamics Electric Boat submarine shipyard are getting a lump of coal for Christmas.
John Casey, president of Electric Boat, told workers Dec. 6 that the company will lay off between 1,900 and 2,400 employees by the end of 2006. A shrinking workload is the reason, according to an internal company memo.
“These reductions are the result of pressure on the Navy’s shipbuilding budget,” Casey said in the memo.
Casey made the announcement at the company’s annual business briefing for state and local elected and appointed leaders from Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Electric Boat has about 11,800 employees, primarily at its facilities at Groton, Conn., and Quonset, R.I.
The company was the lead shipyard in developing the Virginia SSN 774-class nuclear attack submarine for the U.S. Navy and is handling the conversion of four ballistic missile submarines into SSGN cruise missile and special operations boats. But with design work largely coming to a close for both those projects, and the Navy showing no signs of building more than one submarine a year, the company felt the need to downsize.
“We have to adjust the business accordingly,” said company spokesman Bob Hamilton.
Electric Boat shares construction of the Virginia-class submarines with Northrop Grumman’s Newport News, Va., shipyard, and nine submarines currently are under contract. But industry representatives and analysts for years have warned the shipyards would be hard-pressed to maintain their work forces if the Navy sticks to its current plan of building only one submarine per year, at least through fiscal 2011.
The company also is facing the loss of its repair and maintenance work on attack submarines, which two years ago accounted for more than half its revenue. The Navy is shifting that work to its publicly owned yards, primarily Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, a facility that had been targeted for closure by the Navy but now, after a September decision by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, is to remain open.
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