Authorizers look to shield shipbuilding programs

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are lining up to save the military's shipbuilding programs, which promise to be central to budget negotiations when House and Senate authorizers meet to mark up the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill.

With members of both parties concerned about the details of the Pentagon's plans to slash budgets for ships and other weapon systems, authorizers are expected to make major changes to the Bush administration's budget request to make room for favored programs.

"It's going to be a food fight," a House aide said.

Both the House and the Senate Armed Services committees ultimately might shift billions of dollars out of troubled programs to save projects they believe are critical to current and future military missions. By week's end, the Army's massive Future Combat Systems, missile defense, and several communications programs might be among the targeted bill payers, congressional sources said.

"You will probably see a few shifts -- some significant, some not," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said in an interview. While he would not detail which systems might get cut, he acknowledged the $3.2 billion requested for FCS will be "adjusted" during his committee's markup.

The potential FCS cuts reflect a growing impatience in Congress for Pentagon programs that take decades to develop and often are fraught with cost overruns and schedule delays. The money, some say, could be spent more wisely on promising technologies that would be more immediately available.

For instance, FCS has "substantial cost problems, substantial technical problems and ... its place in the acquisition cycle is not where you want to be right now," said Steve Kosiak, director of budget studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has taken its own approach to budget-cutting. In a widely-leaked document, Defense officials decided late last year to slash program accounts by more than $30 billion through 2011.

Shipbuilding in particular would be hit hard, with the budget request for new ship procurement down $3.2 billion from last year's appropriated figures. The Pentagon has requested only four new ship buys next year, down from eight in 2005 -- and 19 during the 1980s weapons buildup, said Cynthia Brown, president of the American Shipbuilding Association.

Several lawmakers have opposed the cuts, saying they not only will hinder the Navy's transformation plans but also hurt the domestic shipbuilding industrial base.

In addition to the procurement cuts, the document proposes retiring the USS John F. Kennedy, one of the Navy's 12 aircraft carriers, a move Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., a former Navy secretary, adamantly opposes. Like Warner, Hunter said he has "strong concerns" about retiring the Kennedy, despite its advanced age, and plans to address the issue in the fiscal 2006 authorization bill.

To save shipbuilding, some lawmakers and lobbyists want to scrap the Pentagon's plans to buy 13 aging cargo ships it leases. The buy could cost anywhere from $750 million to $1.5 billion and the lease on the ships is not up for several more years.

Shipbuilding advocates say it makes little sense to invest in aging platforms while cutting funding for next-generation destroyers and other new ships.

"A 25-year-old girl is attractive. But a 25-year-old ship is getting up there in age," said Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., a senior member of the Armed Services Committee and one of the leaders of the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus.

Still, Congress would have to shift more money to save other pet programs, such as the C-130J cargo plane, which the Pentagon proposed canceling after this year.

The Georgia delegation has fought hard to save the plane, which is manufactured in Marietta. Now, it appears that they have Hunter on their side, despite his concerns about the program's skyrocketing costs. The military has "no alternative" but to continue modernizing the cargo platform, used extensively in Iraq, he said.

FCS, whose price tag eventually might exceed $125 billion, might be one of the biggest targets for cuts in the Defense budget. It is by far the most ambitious and costly undertaking in the Army's history. Lawmakers have been concerned that the FCS schedule -- even after the Army pushed it back four years to 2014 -- is not realistic given the program's complexity.

At the same, there appears to be growing skepticism over whether the expensive and lightweight ground vehicles planned for FCS are what the Army needs.

"I'd like to see FCS fielded sooner, not later. But I think we have to keep our eye on the ball," Hunter said. "I think [Iraq and Afghanistan] are two major laboratories that are very instructional with respect to the next generation of land platforms. And the jury is out on those platforms."

Aside from the FCS cuts considered by Hunter, House Armed Services ranking member Ike Skelton, D-Mo., said he plans to target missile-defense dollars in 2006, which the Pentagon already has proposed cutting by roughly $1 billion next year alone. Because the systems still are not "fully ripe," the $8.8 billion requested for missile defense should get cut further, Skelton said.

The military's Transformation Satellite and Space Radar programs also are low-hanging fruit in the Pentagon request that are "in jeopardy of some serious cuts" in the Senate and House defense authorization and appropriations bills, a House aide said.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been concerned that the programs are mismanaged and, like FCS, are unable to meet lofty schedule goals. "It is just so obvious that they're heading for another train wreck," the aide said.

Congressional sources also have indicated the budget for the Joint Tactical Radio System, part of the communications backbone for FCS and other services' transformation programs, could get sliced far lower than the $530 million the Defense Department wants for next year.