U.S. Navy

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 subm^a" fine is similarly a target for budget cutters albeit for very different reasons. The fir^st 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 y^ear 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 fi^s' 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.