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By Norman Polmar, Author, The Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet
The U.S. Navy: A (Much) Smaller Fleet
The fiscal year 1991 defense budget has gone to Congress with the Bush administration approving virtually all °f the Navy’s shipbuilding requests— 15 new ships costing $10.5 billion (see Table 1). This impressive shopping list, howler, will be paid for by severe reduc- h°ns in the operating forces that will profoundly affect the maritime strategy. Important weapon systems, such as the multimission V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor ver- tical/short take-off and landing (V/STOL) | aircraft and the Sea Lance stand-off antisubmarine weapon, will be canceled. “Gone forever” is the goal of a 600- ship Navy, according to Navy budget official Charles Nemfakos.1 By 30 September 1991, the Navy should have 546 ships if all goes according to plan. The Navy will probably have fewer ships and the shipbuilding plan could be reduced. The channel for the defense budget through the various congressional wickets is fraught with shoals and mines. The overall defense budget totals $295.1 bil- | lion, or 2.6% below the fiscal year 1990 level when adjusted for inflation. (A real decline of 2% per year is forecast through fiscal year 1995—a cumulative ten-year decline of 22% since the peak defense budgets of the Reagan administration.) The overall fiscal year 1991 budget request notes that $25 to $50 billion per year may be required to cover domestic costs. The defense budget is a prime target to compensate for those expenses as the Soviet threat declines. Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney has also said | |||||
| Table 1 | Fiscal Years 1990 and 1991 Shipbuilding Program DoD DoD Navy FY 1990 FY 1991 FY 1992 Approved Request* Plan | Navy FY 1993 Plan | Navy FY 1994 Plan | |||
New Construction |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
SSBN | Trident missile submarine | 1 | 1 | ($1,415.3) | 1 | 1 | 1 |
SSN-21 | Attack submarine | — | 2 | (3,482.0) | — | 6 | _ |
SSN-668 | Attack submarine | 1 | — | (51.2) | — | — | — |
DDG | Aegis missile destroyer | 5 | 5 | (3,599.3) | 10 | — | 10 |
LHD | Amphibious assault ship | — | 1 | (969.1) | — | 1 | — |
LSD | Dock landing ship | 1 | 1 | (240.0) | 1 | 1 | 1 |
MCM | Mine countermeasures ship 3 | — | (15.8) | — | — | — | |
MHC | Coastal minehunter | 2 | 3 | (279.9) | 4 | 5 | — |
WAGB | Icebreaker (Coast Guard) | 1 | — |
| — | — | — |
AE | Ammunition ship | — | — |
| — | 1 | 2 |
T-AO | Fleet oiler | — | — | (18.8) | — | — | _ |
AOE | Fast combat support | 1 | 1 | (405.5) | — | 3 | — |
AGOR | Oceanographic research | 3 | 1 | (47.3) | 2 | 1 | 2 |
T-AGOS | Towed array ship | 1 | — | (12.3) | 2 | 3 | — |
AGOS | Ocean surveillance | — | — |
| 1 | — | 2 |
AR | Repair ship | — | — |
| — | — | 1 |
ARS | Salvage ship | — | — |
| — | — | 1 |
| Totals: | 19 | 15 | ($10,536.5) | 21 | 22 | 20 |
Conversions-Modernizations |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
CVN | Aircraft carrier (Mod) | 1 | — |
| — | — | — |
CV | Aircraft carrier (SLEP) | 1 | — |
| — | 1 | — |
AO | Oiler (Jumbo) | 1 | — |
| — | — | — |
MTS | Moored training submarine 1 | — |
| 1 | — | — | |
| Totals: | 4 | — |
| 1 | 1 | — |
*MiIlions of dollars; includes outfitting and post-delivery costs, but not associated research and development, or military construction. This table docs not | |||||||
include the procurement of air cushion landing craft, special operations craft, or Coast Guard patrol boats. |
|
|
arms control agreements and weapon test results may lead to further reductions.
The uncertainty of long-range defense planning is further evidenced by the failure of the budget to include a five-year spending plan, as required by Congress. As a result, there is no formal five-year shipbuilding program in the budget, although the Navy has produced a shipbuilding plan through fiscal year 1994.
While the Navy’s shipbuilding request is reminiscent of the $10 to $11 billion budgets of the Reagan years, the Navy is being forced to reduce manpower, lay up warships, and cancel several major weapon programs.
Personnel: The Navy will reduce its strength by 6,000 during fiscal year 1991 and will end up with a force of 585,000. This is the smallest reduction of the three military departments; the Army will give up 17,000 people and the Air Force 15,000. The cuts will reduce the Army and Air Force to their lowest strength since the end of the Korean War. The Marine Corps will sustain minor cuts and will deactivate several artillery batteries.
Ships: The recently recommissioned battleships Iowa (BB-61) and New Jersey (BB-62) are to be laid up in reserve. The other two battleships, the Missouri (BB- 63) and the Wisconsin (BB-64), will be kept in service but their days in service obviously are numbered; those ships each require crews of some 1,600 men and cost some $60 million per year to operate. Their effective long-range firepower—32 Tomahawk cruise missiles— is not sufficient to justify their cost.2 While the battleships have an impressive presence potential, their limited military capabilities will make the two surviving ships candidates to join their sister ships in the mothball fleet by the mid-1990s.
Other ship retirements under the fiscal year 1991 cutbacks include eight attack submarines of the Permit (SSN-594) and Sturgeon (SSN-637) classes, of which the newest boats were commissioned in 1969; 11 more destroyers of the Charles F. Adams (DDG-2) and Farragut (DDG- 37) classes, the last completed in 1963; and the nuclear-propelled cruisers Bain- bridge (CGN-25) and Truxtun (CGN-35), commissioned in 1962 and 1967, respectively.
The fleet will retire at least 54 additional ships in the next two years. The submarine retirement rate will accelerate in future years as Sturgeon-c\ass nuclear attack submarines (SSN) will be retired rather than refueled. The 37 Sturgeon- class SSNs are designed for under-ice operations, while only the last 23 of the succeeding Los Angeles (SSN-688)-class submarines have that capability.
The Navy’s maritime strategy calls for nuclear attack submarines to penetrate Soviet waters—much of those areas under ice—early in a conflict with the Soviet Union.3 With the demise of the Sturgeon class, by 2000 the U.S. Navy will have only the 23 under-ice-capable submarines of the improved Los Angeles class plus a small number of the new Seawolf (SSN-21) class.
Weapons: Major weapon cancellations for the Navy include new F-14D Tomcat fighter aircraft (older F-14A models will be updated), the V-22 Osprey V/STOL aircraft, Phoenix air-to-air missiles for the F-14, and the Sea Lance ASW standoff weapon.
The Marine Corps wanted to use the MV-22 as an assault aircraft, providing higher performance than its 1960s vintage CH-46 and CH-53D troop-carrying helicopters. The V-22 program ran into trouble earlier when the Air Force and Army essentially withdrew from the effort, while the Navy’s interest was lukewarm, at best. The Navy had considered ASW and, eventually, airborne early warning (AEW) configurations, but the only variant actually planned by the Navy was the combat rescue model. The potential for this aircraft in the amphibious assault role is considerable, and its termination will inhibit future Marine assault effectiveness.
Similarly, the Sea Lance missile would have had a significant impact on ASW— allegedly the Navy’s highest combat priority. The Sea Lance, with a potential range of some 90 miles, i.e., out to the third sonar convergence zone, was to be carried by attack submarines and by surface ships fitted with vertical missile launchers. The initial warhead was to be the Mk-50 lightweight torpedo, to be replaced by a nuclear depth bomb. Its termination leaves the submarine force with only the Mk-48 and advanced capability (AdCap) torpedoes, with a range of about 35,000 yards. (The decreasing attack ranges caused by quieter Soviet submarines could affect the requirement for a longer-range weapon in submarines.)
Surface ASW ships will now carry only short-range Mk-50 torpedoes plus helicopters in some ships. A proposal has been made for a redesign of the new vertical-launch ASROC (VLA) to carry the Mk-50, but there was no funding when this column was written. There is no nuclear ASW weapon in U.S. submarines or surface ships.
While the Navy has been successful in gaining the Bush administration’s support for a relatively large new ship program, several of the programs are high on the target list for Capitol Hill and other defense budget cutters.
The three highest-cost ship programs are the most vulnerable targets:
- Trident submarines: The fiscal }'ear 1991 budget provides for construction of the 18th Ohio (SSBN-726)-class submarine. That unit, when completed about 1997, will provide the Navy with 432 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) carrying 3,456 re-entry vehicles. By that time all of the earlier, ex- Polaris missile submarines will have been
4
retired because of agreements or age-
Those 3,456 warheads would equate to 70% of the 4,900 warheads now pr°" posed as U.S. and Soviet weapon ceilings under the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). There will be considerable political pressure on President Bush to sign the START accord this year. Such a limitation would leave the Air Force s land-based missile force—the MX and the small ICBM “Midgetman” systems-— with 1,444 warheads if the Navy has 1® Trident submarines. A force of 20 Trident submarines would have 3,840 warheads, leaving only 1,060 for Air Force strategic missiles.
Even the ratio with 18 submarines— and certainly a larger number of Trident submarines—will not be acceptable to some members of Congress, and certainly not to the Air Force and its major contractors. Also, the increasing Soviet capabilities in submarine and antisubmarine warfare will cause some people to question the efficacy of a strategic fores mix that emphasizes submarines.
Although the Navy’s submarine community has been arguing for as many aS 24 Trident SSBNs (4,608 warheads), a reduction in the one-per-year production rate is highly probable. Proposals voiced on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon have included an every-other-year SSBN pr°' gram or building two submarines every three years.
- Attack submarines: The attack subma" fine is similarly a target for budget cutters albeit for very different reasons. The first Seawolf (SSN-21) is under construction with two additional units proposed in the fiscal year 1991 budget.
According to a Navy spokesman, the lead ship of the class is to cost $1.9 bil' lion and the next two units a total of $3 billion. Those numbers represent an i°' crease of $500 million in the past year over stated Navy costs.5 Further, the Department of Defense’s annual repod Program Acquisition Costs by Weap°n System shows very different numbers; f°f the SSN-21, procurement costs since fis' cal 1987 have totaled more than $2.3' billion plus more than $746.7 million f°r research and development; the submarine is four years from completion and hence the actual costs are not really known.
The Navy has requested more than $3 billion, plus additional research and development funds, to build the next two submarines. In series production (starting with No. 5) the Seawolf unit cost is supposed to decline to about $1.2 billion per submarine. This would represent a 40% reduction from the Navy’s stated costs for the lead submarine; this compares to the previous Los Angeles class, in which the unit cost dropped 19% for the second year’s buy, but then averaged out at a production-run reduction of about 12% from the lead ship.
The Seawolf is a much more complex submarine than the Los Angeles, and the new submarine’s AN/BSY-series sonar and fire control system has experienced major management, technical, and cost problems. Thus, the anticipated cost decrease is unlikely to occur.
At the same time, the SSN force strength is declining precipitously. The current force of 95 nuclear attack submarines will drop to 86 by the end of fiscal year 1992.6 Accelerated retirements of the older units in lieu of refueling will speed up the SSN retirement rate until the year 2000, when the attack submarine force could consist of the 62 Los Angeles- class boats plus a maximum of 12 Seawolf submarines if the planned construction of six submarines every second year is funded.
That rate also seems unlikely, as the average of three Seawolfs per year would equate to 36% of an annual $10 billion shipbuilding program. In recent years attack submarines have accounted for about 25% of the annual new construction budget. (As shown in Table 1, a more efficient plan has been developed to order the equivalent of two-year SSN-21 and DDG-51 purchases in alternate years.)
Alternatives being proposed for the Navy’s planned Seawolf building rate include a reduction to an average of one or, at most, two units per year while continuing construction of the Los Angeles class at about $750 million per submarine or close to one-half of the predicted cost of series-production Seawolfs.1 The Los Angeles-class submarines have been cited publicly by U.S. Navy officials as superior to all Soviet SSNs now being built. Thus, they may be a viable interim alternative, especially since the Soviet military threat is perceived to be decreasing over the next decade. During that period, a near-term, concentrated development effort could provide the technology to initiate construction of a truly high- performance submarine.8
Other alternative SSN programs have been proposed, including some by Navy officials; for reasons of force levels and cost, if not relative capability, an alternative to the proposed three-per-year Seawolf program will undoubtedly be forthcoming.
► Aegis destroyers: The Navy’s controversial Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) program continues with five ships proposed in the fiscal year 1991 budget. Fifteen ships have been authorized in previous budgets since fiscal year 1985. These ship have been criticized for cost overruns, delays (the lead ship is some 16 months behind schedule), and their lack of an ASW helicopter capability.
The accelerating retirements of older cruisers and destroyers could leave the fleet with a major shortage of such ships by the year 2000. Counting only ships 30 years old or younger, the Navy will by that time have 70 cruisers and destroyers plus the Arleigh Burke class. Building an average of five Arleigh Burke-class destroyers each year would raise the total to 110 ships in 2000. That equates to the minimum cruiser-destroyer force required to escort 14 carriers plus amphibious and replenishment groups, and military convoys. (No battleships are expected to be active.) Further, there is no realistic alternative destroyer design available for a start up in the next few years.
Aircraft carriers: No carrier has been proposed through the fiscal year 1994 program. While additional nuclear carriers of the Nimitz (CVN-68)-class had been planned for the late 1990s, the Senate has directed the Navy to establish a carrier technology plan for the first half of the 21st century. It is not clear who will undertake the related studies and hence how objective they will be.
Still, the Navy has some “breathing” room on the carrier issue. The Navy will have nine nuclear and four post-1961 oilburning carriers in 2000. While the service life extension program now in progress will keep the four oldest carriers available for some years, it is unlikely that their continued operation will be affordable for long.
Significantly, during the 1980s the aircraft carrier has ceased to be the highly controversial issue that it had been for the first three decades after World War II. Congressional funding of the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) over President Jimmy Carter’s veto in the late 1970s and the relative ease with which former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman garnered approval for four more nuclear-powered carriers indicate that the Congress and defense leadership recognize the carrier’s value in nonstrategic operations.
Secretary of Defense Cheney, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “I have to admit a bias in their [aircraft carriers’] favor. They are an important peacetime asset. In a crisis, the President’s first question is, ‘Where are our carriers?’ ”
The major near-term carrier issue continues to be the imminent refueling and modernization of the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), which entered service in November 1961. Congress authorized $79.5 million in fiscal year 1989 and $1.4 billion in fiscal year 1990 to refuel and upgrade the ship.9 The actual costs are expected to be higher, possibly approaching that of a new Nimitz-class CVN, which would have a service life of at least 30 years as opposed to the 15 to 20 additional years expected from the Enterprise. A considerable amount of money, however—the exact number is not available—has already been spent for long- lead items and planning for the overhaul at Newport News, Virginia.
The issues of ship designs, force levels, force composition, and relative affordability are complex ones. This survey is intended to highlight some of the issues. Political and economic factors will probably have more impact than technology, threat, and maritime strategy as the Navy seeks to build and effective fleet for the 21st century.
‘Press briefing, Pentagon, Washington, D C 27 January 1990.
“By comparison, Spruance (DD-963)-class destroyers are being modified to carry 61 vertical-launch missiles without any loss of ASW or other capabilities and are manned by 335 officers and men.
The Maritime Strategy, supplement to the Naval Institute Proceedings, January 1986.
The last of the 41 Polaris submarines was completed in 1967, and thus would be 30 years old.
“Cost data provided by the Office of Information, Navy Department, on 25 January 1990 and on 16 November 1988, respectively.
The last U.S. diesel-electric combat submarine was retired in December 1989. The 95 boats include two ex-Polaris submarines configured for the special operations and transport role although still designated SSNs.
The single fiscal year 1990 Los Angeles-class submarine costs more than the average unit built during the 1980s. in part because of close-down costs. “See Ronald O’Rourke, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, memorandum “Maintaining a 100-SSN force through 2010 in a fiscally constrained environment: near- and mid-term procurement options,” to Senator Alfonse D’Amato (D-NY), II October 1989. Mr. O’Rourke was winner of the Naval Institute’s Arleigh Burke General Prize Essay Contest in 1988 for his essay “The Maritime Strategy and the Next Decade.” Also see “The U.S. Navy: Advanced Submarine Technology,” Naval Institute Proceedings, June 1989, pp. 117118.
The Enterprise refueling is not referred to as a Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) for arbitrary reasons, although the nonrefueling aspects of the upgrade are similar to the SLEP program for conventional carriers.