Sailors, not ships, were Topic A in discussions between lawmakers and Navy officials throughout 1999.
The reason was simple: plummeting personnel retention seemed to threaten the ability of the former to man the latter properly.
The prospect was frightening enough to induce Congress to enact the most sweeping pay-and-benefits improvements in more than a decade. Passed in late 1999, the Fiscal Year 2000 Defense Appropriations Act hiked pay a minimum of 4.8% for all service members; Navy personnel also saw new and improved career continuation bonuses.
With that victory newly in hand, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jay L. Johnson announced the next big task for the Joint Chiefs of Staff: improving military health care. It sounded a bit strange for the CNO to emphasize tail—not tooth. But just weeks later, Defense Secretary William Cohen underlined the new priorities with the Pentagon's fiscal year 2001 budget proposal. And the former Republican senator went one social service better, by hiking housing subsidies for military members and proposing to eliminate out-of-pocket housing costs over five years.
The concern about benefits stood in marked contrast to the previous few years, when alarm about shipbuilding rates and readiness issues drove Capitol Hill debate.
Drawdown Ends
Several things allowed a diffusion of the normal laser-like focus on new weapons. The pace of ship, submarine, and aviation squadron decommissionings slowed and the numbers leveled out, as prescribed by 1997's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). Sea power-inclined senators were not confronted with lists of dozens of disappearing hull numbers. Fiscal year 1999 saw 25 warships leave the active rolls; in fiscal year 2000, the fleet will bid farewell to three Spruance (DD963)-class destroyers and an attack submarine.
Meanwhile, the shipbuilding rate inched upward; the fiscal year 2001 budget proposes to produce eight vessels, two more than this year's plan. Congressional concern was far from completely dispelled. Even eight warships a year will not be enough to keep the fleet at a total strength of 308 a decade from now, Congressional Research Service expert Ronald O'Rourke told members of the House Armed Services Committee on 2 March 2000. To accomplish that, the Navy needs an annual average of 8.7 new ships, O'Rourke said.
When Navy Secretary Richard Danzig appeared before the committee three weeks later, several congressmen asked the secretary whether he should demand more money for shipbuilding.
"Why haven't you been banging the table with the administration to let them know of these shortages?" asked Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA). Cool as ever, Danzig explained that many of the ships, built in the mid-1980s, are only halfway through their expected lifespans. This relatively young fleet permits a temporary respite from recapitalization's driving demands. "The time to build and replenish is not right now," Danzig said.
Time to Invest
Instead, now is the time for research, development, and patience, he said. Waiting a bit could bring a big payoff: more ships for less money. The key is the DD-21 Land Attack Destroyer—the highly automated, minimally manned, unprecedentedly lethal next-generation surface combatant. Its up-front costs are considerable: $3.9 billion in research and development, according to the 2001 budget proposal. But the 32-ship DD-21 fleet, carrying only 95 crewmembers apiece and built for easy operating, could save the Navy $30 billion in operations and maintenance costs. This, Danzig said, would allow 30 more ships.
The secretary was so sure of this logic that he allowed the DD-21's scheduled launch to slip a year—to 2008 or so—in order to equip the class with electric drive and its promise of unprecedented flexibility and reliability. Some senators were less sanguine.
At a 23 March 2000 hearing before the seapower subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, lawmakers noted that DD-21's new 100-mile guns are intended to cover amphibious assaults. Would not any delay imperil our troops? they asked.
"We have some revolutionary technologies that we have to get right," Rear Admiral Michael Mullen, Director of Navy Surface Warfare, told Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME). "I'm confident that this approach is the right one.
Few Dramatic Battles
Unlike past years, there were few dramatic battles over new ships and aircraft.
The fiscal 2001 budget would slow procurement of F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and MV-22 Ospreys just a bit—but both of these programs rolled through initial buys with little incident. Under congressional pressure, acquisition of the KC- 130J Hercules was hastened.
The Navy's follow-on to the Nimitz (CVN-68)-class aircraft carriers—dubbed CVN(X)—would get a boost with $4 billion in advanced procurement money installed in the fiscal year 2001 budget proposal. The build rate for the Arleigh Burke (DDG-51)-class destroyers would be slowed a bit in the outyears—and one ship added—to spread the contracts and keep the shipbuilding industry occupied until DD-21 arrives.
One fast attack submarine will be completed in each of the next four years, helping the sub force move up from the QDR's 50-boat fleet to the 55 to 68 subs recommended by a recent Joint Chiefs of Staff report.
Meanwhile, Pentagon officials floated yet another request for more base closings. Shedding infrastructure in 2003 and 2005 could add $3 billion to the $14.5 billion already saved, defense officials said. But given President Bill Clinton's election-year meddling in the last round, lawmakers are unlikely to grant permission.
Send Repair Money
Stronger words were passed over the late-year cuts to the operations and maintenance budgets.
Shortly before 1999 turned to 2000, lawmakers decided to trim federal spending in the new year by 1%. President Clinton vetoed that measure, but Congress returned fire with a 0.38% reduction. For the Pentagon, the cuts in fiscal year 2000 spending came to just over $1 billion. And because Congress exempted military pay and benefits, operations and maintenance funding took the hit. Almost overnight, the Navy lost $118 million.
Unexpected problems—the 16 February 2000 grounding of the amphibious transport dock Shreveport (LPD- 12) in the Suez Canal, and the newly discovered decay of the fast combat support ship Detroit (AOE-4)—squeezed the operations-and-maintenance budget even tighter.
This led Admiral Johnson to declare a ship maintenance "emergency." The Navy needed more money immediately—not for new construction, but to take care of shipyard maintenance.
"I'm asking in the strongest terms for help in FY '00 because these ships are in repair right now," Johnson told the House Appropriations Committee's Defense Subcommittee on 15 March 2000. "This is high on our list of concerns .... If we do not get $220 million this year it will cause more problems" in the future.
"Pay Triad" Passes
Maintenance aside, recruiting and retention problems were the hot-button issues this year.
With retention at the lowest rate in more than a decade, Johnson, Danzig, and the rest of the Pentagon's top military and civilian leaders pressed hard throughout 1999 for a package of benefit increases Admiral Johnson called the "pay triad."
The package included a 4.8% general pay raise, a revamping of the retirement pay structure, boosted housing allowances, and new or increased retention bonuses. (A $50,000 incentive was established for surface warfare officers, an unprecedented move to keep them in the Navy.) The effort paid off; lawmakers included the package in the fiscal year 2000 military spending bills passed late last year. And the package, along with other recruiting and retention efforts, may already have started to make a difference. In March 2000, Navy officials reported small increases in both categories.
The Pentagon's fiscal year 2001 proposal attempts to continue the trend. It proposes a host of improvements, including a 3.7% pay raise, trimming out-of-pocket housing expenses from 18.8% to 15%, the elimination of co-payments for military families who use civilian health facilities, and giving Tricare eligibility to military families who live more than 50 miles from a major base.
Other proposed improvements seem likely to remain out of reach. Attempts were made to make good on the commonly held idea that people who serve 20 years under arms deserve a lifetime of free military health care. The last decade's base closings shuttered many military hospitals and clinics, and the promise of military-sponsored lifetime health care for retirees slipped away. Ideas were floated to provide this health care to at least the oldest of retirees—i.e., those eligible for Medicare—but the problem foundered on the estimated $21 billion cost. It's still an idea, but any solution will have to be long, rather than short term. The idea of a tax-deferred savings plan for service members has been around for a while, but lobbying by top Navy brass yielded substantial progress this year. Lawmakers included in the fiscal year 2000 spending bills a provision allowing all service members to participate in the thrift savings plan for federal civilian employees.
The rough equivalent of private-sector companies' 401(k) savings programs, the plan would have allowed service members to sock away up to 5% of their paychecks beginning 1 June 2000. But after the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the program could cost the U.S. treasury $141 million in lost income taxes annually, lawmakers insisted that Pentagon budgeteers come up with the money. The idea never had won much support outside the Navy, and a deadlock ensued despite 8 February 2000 promises from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Senator John Warner (R-VA) to work on the issue. "If this were easy, we would have done it," a House Armed Services Committee aide told Navy Times.
The End for Vieques?
Lawmakers also had plenty to say about the flap over the Navy training ranges on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. In April 1999, an errant bomb from a Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet killed a civilian security guard near the bombing range, touching off a firestorm of Puerto Rican protest. Danzig immediately suspended bombing operations, but politicians from the island commonwealth's three parties came together in all-but-unprecedented accord to demand the Navy quit the island and end a half century of training there. Despite the Navy's protestations that the live-fire training at Vieques is crucial and irreplaceable, President Clinton has negotiated a deal that allows the Navy and Marine Corps to drop only inert ordnance at Vieques and promises $90 million in financial aid if islanders vote to allow live bombing.
On 22 March 2000, Representatives James V. Hansen (R-UT) and Steve Buyer (R-IN) took Danzig to task at a House Armed Services Committee hearing for failing to evict demonstrators squatting as human shields on the range. What if such a protest "was going on at Quantico?" Hansen asked. Danzig replied that healing the rift between incensed Puerto Ricans and the Navy was worth time and effort. Under Clinton's arrangement, the islanders will vote on 1 September 2000 on whether the Navy may stay. A "no" vote means the Navy must pull out by 2003.
Mr. Peniston is managing editor of Military.com. His book Around the World with the U.S. Navy was published in 1999 by the Naval Institute Press.