The House Appropriations Committee has reduced the Fiscal Year 2012 Department of Defense budget by some $17 billion compared with the FY 11 budget, which is almost $9 billion less than the Obama administration requested. The FY 12 cuts do not include military construction, which also may be reduced.
More severe cuts in the Defense budget can be expected in the coming years as the Republican-led House of Representatives demands more reductions in government spending. Some of those cuts will cause major changes in Navy programs. The Navy’s leadership should consider imposing reductions on the Fleet now rather than wait for what could be arbitrary cuts imposed by Congress and the White House.
Three programs come to the fore when looking at future force levels, types of ships, program status, costs, and other factors:
Aircraft carriers. The nuclear-propelled carrier Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), now under construction, will cost an estimated $12–16 billion. This approximation is based on data provided by active-duty and retired naval officers, and estimates by government and private study and analysis organizations.
By comparison, the Navy’s previous carrier, the George H. W. Bush (CVN-77), cost about $7.5 billion. The huge increase in cost comes as aircraft carriers have become increasingly vulnerable to continuous, real-time surveillance and, compared with the Cold War era, have become less capable in mission performance.1
The second carrier of the Gerald R. Ford class, the recently named John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), could be canceled. Such action for the not-yet-laid-down ship would demonstrate that the Navy is serious about funding issues and could provide the Fleet with increased capabilities. The CVN-79 will cost some $8–12 billion. Cancellation would make shipyard capacity available at the Newport News shipyard, which has built all of the Navy’s nuclear carriers. Of those funds, some $9 billion and the shipyard capacity could be allocated to the construction of three “big-deck” amphibious ships (LHA/LHD) at Newport News, i.e., in alternate years during the seven-year CVN construction period.
Those three LHA/LHDs together should cost less than $9 billion.2 Thus, there would be a net budget reduction of at least $3 billion. The new LHA/LHDs would be in addition to the force level of 11 LHA/LHDs now planned. The three added ships would make a major contribution toward meeting the Marine Corps’ 38-ship amphibious force requirement. The Navy now plans only the minimum amphibious force of 33 ships.
Alternatively, some or all of the three additional big-deck ships could be employed as “Harrier carriers,” with air groups of AV-8B Harriers or, in the future, the F-35B Lightning Joint Strike Fighter; or as antisubmarine carriers with MH-60R Seahawk helicopters; or as special-operations ships, employed as the Kitty Hawk (CV-63) was at the start of Afghanistan operations in 2001.3 And of course, big-deck amphibious ships are invaluable in disaster relief and other specialized operations.
Surface combatants. The Navy is now operating its two littoral combat ship (LCS) prototypes. The Navy’s earlier plan had been to construct these radically different prototypes and to then down-select to the better design for series production. (A total of 55 LCSs are in the Navy’s long-range shipbuilding plan; in 2035 the 55 units could comprise 45 percent of the Navy’s surface combatants.)
However, earlier this year the Navy’s leadership decided to put both LCS designs into series production and avoid a competitive evaluation. Not only are the two LCS hulls different, but so are their ship and machinery controls, propulsion plants, radars, radios, and numerous other features. This means that the Navy will have to support maintenance, crew training, spare-parts stores, and other logistic functions for two different ship designs.
Deciding on a single design would, over the next decade, save many hundreds of millions of dollars. Both LCS building yards could share in producing the selected design. While the Navy leadership contends that it will be cheaper to build both LCS designs, promised supporting data from N86 in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations has not been forthcoming.4
It is difficult to understand how building and supporting two LCS designs—for the same mission set—could be less costly than selecting one design. This could be a significant dollar savings for a 55-ship program over the next few decades.
Submarines. The most important submarine issue facing the U.S. Navy today is the next-generation strategic missile submarine, now designated SSBN(X). The Navy plans to construct 12 nuclear-propelled missile submarines, the first to be authorized in FY 19, the second in FY 22, and one per year from FY 24–33.
The current estimated cost of these boats is $7 billion-plus per submarine. Add in research and development costs and—without missiles—it could be a $100 billion program. In an effort to cut costs and, hopefully, to reach a $5 billion-per-unit price tag, missile numbers and stealth features will be reduced. The latter is of particular concern, as these submarines could serve into the 2080s.
Reducing stealth features to reduce costs will see a missile submarine most likely with steam turbines turning a conventional propeller shaft, within a circular hull, with few, if any, inherent non-acoustic signature-reduction features. Future efforts to enhance the non-acoustic stealth would be both difficult and expensive. While there undoubtedly would be enhanced internal noise (acoustic)–suppression features in the large SSBN(X), non-acoustic (i.e., external) stealth is becoming a major concern for those who keep track of foreign antisubmarine/submarine design technologies. Some analysts and naval officers believe that compromising stealth features would be a serious mistake in a submarine that will be at sea 70 years from now.
But in the current budget environment, a $5–7 billion-plus submarine is simply unaffordable. An alternative SSBN(X) concept is for a much smaller submarine that would be based on the Virginia (SSN-774) design. Virginia-class SSNs are now under construction at the rate of two per year for approximately $2.5 billion per unit. The basic design could be enlarged with a missile compartment and related fire-control and berthing spaces to produce a submarine carrying 12 (or more?) Trident C-4–size missiles on a displacement of approximately 15,000 tons. The cost per unit has been estimated at about $3.5 billion. Most important, the actual cost of building a Virginia-class SSN is a known factor while the current SSBN(X) cost estimate is ephemeral, at best.
This approach of modifying an SSN design was used in the late 1950s to develop the Navy’s first ballistic-missile submarines of the George Washington class, and served as the design template for the successive classes of SSBNs, including the current Ohio class.
The lower cost could enable the Navy to deploy a larger number of SSBNs, which could help compensate for an antisubmarine-warfare breakthrough by a potential enemy in the next couple of decades. Then, as the U.S. economic situation improves, a more advanced SSBN(X) could be developed and built without compromising stealth features.
These proposals would (1) save funds, (2) provide the Fleet with more ship platforms (at least with respect to aviation platforms and missile submarines), and (3) see the Navy initiate a meaningful effort to save several billion dollars in ship construction funds and to more efficiently use the monies that are spent. In the current political and economic environment, if the Navy’s leadership does not think creatively about the future Fleet, someone else will do it.
1. See N. Polmar, comment on “If the Question is China...,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (February 2011), pp. 82–83.
2. The LHA planned for the FY 12 shipbuilding program is estimated to have a total cost of $3 billion. Some reductions could be expected by a three-ship commitment to the Newport News shipyard.
3. The Nassau (LHA-4) operated as a Harrier carrier with 20 AV-8Bs in the 1991 Gulf War, while the Bataan (LHD-5) and Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) did so in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, each operating 24 Harriers. See C. Rodriguez, et al., “Harrier Carriers Perform in Iraqi Freedom,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (February 2004), pp. 32–35.
4. Under Secretary of the Navy Robert Work, discussion with N. Polmar, 8 February 2011, Alexandria, VA.