As debate swirls around the need for the DDG-1000 and CG(X) and the future size of the Fleet, we should not overlook a cheaper, more practical option: extending the service lives of our Aegis cruisers and destroyers.
Our nation's investment in sea power over the past 60 years has produced an American global maritime dominance, but has also created a dilemma that deepens with each budget cycle. Quality ships, and the effective exercise of American foreign and military policy they provide, have become indispensable and ever more expensive. The sea power we need comes with a bill we cannot always pay. It is a recurring phenomenon throughout American history, and one that is set to peak yet again by the end of the decade, at a time when American presence in the oceans and littorals of the world is demanded more than ever. Given the fiscal, strategic, and technological realities of sustaining American naval power, the next battle for the right mix of new and old ships is here. This battleground rests squarely within the Ship Construction Navy (SCN) budget, and what it intends to fund.
The Realities of Balance
The fight for the appropriate balance of naval force often seems as epic in scope as the battles in which our Fleet has engaged. Yet our hard-won array of current capabilities is popular with policy makers and warriors alike, for the flexibility, influence, and firepower it represents: carriers are indispensable; so are submarines; as are maritime expeditionary capabilities; so too, naval gunfire.
Another dimension to the balance dilemma is increasingly relevant as the 21st century gets under way. While individual ships have become more effective and efficient thanks to technology innovations, we have concurrently reduced the number of hulls that can perform our many missions around the globe. But we are reaching a tipping point where there is clearly a minimum number of ships below which we cannot meet our obligations, even with the extended reach and sustainability that technology can provide. In a few short decades, we have gone from an accepted minimum threshold of 600 to 313, and perhaps even fewer, vessels. Technology and virtual presence still have their limits, and just as the Army talks about the need for more "boots on the ground," the sea services must rightly insist on more hulls in the water.
All of this is further aggravated by our traditional desire to float the best maritime technology available right now. Incredible advances in propulsion, automation, stealth, damage control, long-range guns, netted fire, and command and control systems are within our reach, if only we could pay for it all. Our nation's commitment to continued maritime leadership on the world stage would seem to demand it.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Mullen has confronted this issue with a proposed ship construction program to achieve a Navy of 313 ships. Unfortunately, there are years in the SCN funding profile in which this single appropriation requires on the order of $20 billion of obligational authority, a level well above recent historical norms. Some critics have expressed doubt that the Navy can sustain these SCN funding levels without considerable top-line growth. Others argue that there is no room for the inevitable cost growth once new classes of ships are under construction. We believe that the Navy needs to hedge against a future in which $20 billion in a single year for SCN proves impossible.
One such hedging strategy to ensure the Navy maintains sufficient surface combatant hulls despite escalating new ship construction costs would be to finance the long-term viability of the Aegis cruisers and guided missile destroyers already in the inventory. These are easily the most combat capable and technologically advanced ships at sea today. The force is also relatively new, with many years left in them. We propose that this force of Aegis surface combatants be modernized through an SCN-funded Surface Life Extension Program (SLEP), rather than one funded in the operating accounts, under a Fleet Modernization Program.
SCN: Getting the Most out of Execution
We have a need for the very best technology, and we have a need for it to be on station, ready for a variety of missions that seem to grow in number and scope. Some solutions promise savings against the staggering costs, such as lower manning through automation, reduced maintenance requirements through more sustainable systems and materials, and smaller, more cost-effective multi-mission ships for the littorals. But against the cost of fielding the best technology, these answers only chip away at the margins of an SCN budget that could remain flat after peaking at its projected average level of $14 billion per year for fiscal years 2007 to 2011.
Assuming that the realities of a constrained budget, the relevance of American naval power, and the increasing cost of technology will continue, the necessary balance of the future naval force has to be found within a relatively flat SCN projection-how, and how fast, all of the programs within it are executed.
The good news is that the SCN budget is in some respects a relatively safe haven for planning purposes. It has the longest "spend out" period (seven years) of any major defense appropriation, and is a favorite for a Congress that tries to show robust defense funding, but values low outlays in the near-term. It also represents more stable funding than the often-volatile Operations & Maintenance Navy and Other Procurement Navy budgets, especially in time of war. SCN is not the only funding source for new ships: the National Defense Sealift Fund (at an expected $1.3 billion per year in the out years) covers the cost of commercial hulls used by the Navy. But it too is constrained and could be strapped by the funding of replacement maritime pre-positioning ships.
Making some fairly safe assumptions about spending within expected SCN levels reveals a budget challenge for new ship construction. A six-year projection at the $14 billion per year level-assuming that an aircraft carrier and an amphibious assault ship are procured as expected every four years, DDG-1000s (formerly the DD(X)) and submarines at one per year, a total of 30 littoral combat ships, plus normal outfitting, conversion and refueling costs-leaves very little money for getting either DDG-1000s or subs to a desired production rate of two per year. This would be the necessary goal if we are to achieve the surface combatant and submarine force levels required.
At a production rate of only one per year for these platforms, the yards that build these ship classes have considerable excess capacity-a cost-increasing overhead burden the Navy has no desire to take on. There is clearly little support in Congress to see even one shipyard go away. There is also no margin in the Navy's budget figures for normal cost growth, or resolution of technical problems that will surely manifest themselves in the advanced technology of the DDG-1000 and CG(X).
The answer, and the balance we must maintain, lies within our grasp in terms of the manner and rate at which we execute the SCN budget in the years ahead. Submarine, carrier, and other large-deck plans likely have little flexibility for reasons that range from the political, to the strategies surrounding their employment, to the numbers, and to the ages of the hulls involved.
The variable that allows the most opportunity for managing risk, and in actuality may enhance the SCN budget plan and the necessary politics that surround it, is the balance between the existing cruiser-destroyer force, and the follow-on hulls of the DDG-1000 and CG(X) classes.
Revolution through Evolution
The DDG-1000 and CG(X) are arguably revolutionary shifts in ship design and technology, and this revolution will not come cheap. With today's budget realities, these shifts are achievable only by way of a more evolutionary path. But beyond historic precedent, there are more compelling reasons to adjust the plan to bring in the DDG-1000 class, and ultimately CG(X), on the current schedule.
When the last Arleigh Burke (DDG-51)-class guided missile destroyer is delivered in fiscal year 2008, we will have an Aegis cruiser-destroyer fleet with an average age of about 14 years. This formidable force will consist of 22 Ticonderoga (CG-47)-class Aegis cruisers and 62 DDG-51s. These ships could easily be recapitalized in our building yards with a SLEP to include an upgrade of combat systems and hull, mechanical, and electrical improvements. We could also provide follow-on selected restricted availability (SRA) in our repair yards at a rate of five to eight ships per year, funded in SCN at about $300 to $500 million per ship. The service lives of our cruisers and destroyers can be extended, their operating costs reduced, and their combat capabilities increased for a fraction of the price of a new ship. A lot can be said, too, for the benefits of getting the most out of these existing ships, which were-and are-a sizable investment made by our taxpayers.
These upgrades would necessarily be executed in the two shipyards currently engaged in surface combatant construction. SLEP answers the two-shipyard problem, with its political benefit for Congress. Its more practical benefit would be sustaining the work force and the industrial base with modernization work in parallel with a more achievable near-term DDG-1000/CG(X) construction program.
SLEP of the existing cruiser-destroyer force would also leave more ships in the water than the current SCN funding plan, thereby contributing to perhaps the most fundamental role of the surface Navy-"being there." Once the DDG-1000 and CG(X) ships reach production maturity and efficiency, then a necessary build rate of two per year can be achieved within the fiscal realities we face.
The existing cruiser-destroyer hulls are solid, effective, and relatively young ships that can be increasingly relevant if converted with technology such as new open architecture systems. And these hulls can simultaneously be vehicles for the management of risk in new systems implementation-an important consideration in an age of monumentally expensive technology. Aegis hulls have already been proven to be well suited for the incremental phase-in of new technology, thereby reducing the risk for the DDG-1000 and the CG(X).
Finally, SLEP of the Aegis cruiser-destroyer force would help to address the Navy's reduced manning priority, a vastly important cost-savings initiative. It would reduce ship manning faster than the current SCN plan through a more rapid introduction of the DDG-1000.
A revised execution rate of the large, but admittedly constrained, SCN plan represents safe passage practically, strategically, and politically, for a modern U.S Navy that must be relevant and balanced. A practical build rate for the DDG-1000 and CG(X), plus an SCN-funded SLEP and life extension SRA of the Aegis fleet, allows for other equally compelling priorities and keeps more hulls in the water. It is not a flashy plan. It does not get artists' renditions of 21st-century ships in the water as soon as we had hoped. But it will get them there, at lower cost, with reduced risk, and with more proven technology. It's prudent, effective, and may in fact be the best way to undertake a revolution that we know we need, but can't afford as quickly as we Sailors would like.
Admiral Natter is a career surface warfare officer with two combat tours in Vietnam. His many assignments included Commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, the first Commander of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, and the Navy's Chief of Legislative Affairs.
Admiral Pilling is also a career surface warfare officer whose last assignment was Vice Chief of Naval Operations. He is a 1965 Naval Academy graduate and holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Cambridge University.