New panel grills Navy leaders on ship numbers

The Navy's budget plans for fiscal 2004 through the end of the decade, affecting manpower, ship building and development of new technology, faced tough challenges Thursday at the premier hearing of a subcommittee created explicitly to examine the long-term growth of the U.S. military.

Top Navy planners-including Assistant Secretary of the Navy John Young, Vice Adm. John Nathman and Vice Adm. Michael Mullen-were the first witnesses to testify before the House Armed Services Projection Forces Subcommittee. They acknowledged that they shared congressional concerns for striking a balance in manpower, ship numbers and technology.

Overall, Navy plans envision increasing the ship count from 292 in 2004 to 305 by 2009. There are currently 34 ships under contract, and the Navy has announced its intention to retire 27 ships during the next three years.

Asked by Projection Forces Subcommittee Chairman Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., if decommissioning so many ships in such a short period of time was dangerous, Mullen characterized the action as "a prudent near-term, moderate risk." This would enable the Navy to recapitalize and have new, more efficient ships, better-suited to current military challenges, at work in the next several years.

Current cost estimates run at about $12.2 billion per year, according to the Navy's 2004 projections, a 34 percent increase over the $9.1 billion per year the Navy was calling for in 2003.

The Pentagon's long-term goal, perhaps 20 years out, is to have a 375-ship Navy-including launching at least one new submarine each year-designed largely to support land-based warfare requirements, the witnesses said.

Projection Forces Subcomittee ranking member Gene Taylor, D-Miss., was joined by several others who urged the Pentagon to avoid sacrificing manpower as a way to pay for new ships and largely untested technologies, which are meant to create a more efficient military.

"All of our ships are manned at almost 100 percent, and we recognize that we need to fully man the fleet," Mullen said.

Nathman concurred, saying staffing levels would not fall to troublesome levels experienced in previous cost cutting eras.

Summarizing his vision for the new subcommittee, Bartlett told the Navy witnesses that he had some broad issues that he was going to ask the Pentagon to address in the coming months and years.

"I have some nagging concerns of the kind of [military] threats we might someday face," he said, noting for instance the "asymmetric threats" of terrorism, a "reconstituted Russian military," or the emergence of China as a threat to the United States.

While the United States is a lone military superpower today, he noted, that is no assurance that superpower status is any guarantee of security.

"Maybe instead of a 300-ship Navy we need a 3,000 ship Navy, that would cost us no more than the 375 ship Navy we envision today," Bartlett said. "I just don't know."