Admiral and CBO analyst part waters over Navy budget outlook
Analyst says shipbuilding program will cost $12 billion to $14 billion more than it is likely to receive.
The Navy's top officer said Friday he was satisfied with the Defense Department's fiscal 2010 budget request and expressed confidence the Navy will do well in the review of defense programs and organizations.
But a veteran congressional analyst of naval programs said the Navy's shipbuilding program would cost $12 billion to $14 billion more than it is likely to receive and asserted that the service has not done a good job of explaining why it needs the force it wants.
"The Navy probably is in the weakest position heading into the QDR," said Congressional Budget Office analyst Eric Labs, referring to the congressionally mandated Quadrennial Defense Review.
Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, said the discussions on next year's budget were "very fair, very open" and resulted in decisions based on the capabilities needed in the fleet. Roughead said he was "happy with the way the Navy side" came out. Roughead, who appeared with Labs and others at a forum on military strategy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, did not provide any details on the budget, which is expected to be released next week. The admiral indicated his confidence that the Navy's programs and operational concepts would be endorsed by the QDR, depicting the Navy as capable of dealing with the range of defense challenges, from the irregular conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to a potential major conventional war.
But Labs said the Navy's 30-year shipbuilding plan would require $25 billion to $27 billion annually, while the program receives only $13 billion in the fiscal 2009 budget, partly due to congressional increases. "No amount of tinkering is going to close that gap," he said. "They have to give something up." Labs said the changes in ship programs that Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced last month, including ending the DDG-1000 program at three ships, slowing aircraft carrier construction and postponing production decisions on two amphibious ships and the future missile-defense cruiser, would not be enough. The analyst argued that the Navy's requirements "are based almost entirely on conventional war," while Gates has focused increasingly on building capabilities for the current unconventional conflicts.
Christine Fox, an analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, had a more positive view of the Navy's posture for unconventional war, noting the use of a carrier as a base for special operations forces going into Afghanistan and the use of amphibious ships to train friendly navies and perform humanitarian relief in Africa and South America. Roughead made a similar argument for the Navy's role in unconventional warfare, citing the 15,000 sailors on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan combating improvised explosives and supporting the ground forces, its extensive "partnership development" efforts and formation of the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command and the Irregular Warfare office.
Roughead and the analysts noted the looming shortfall in Navy and Marine Corps strike fighters as older FA-18s are retired before the F-35, or Joint Strike Fighter, becomes operational. But Labs said the Navy plans to cut its carrier force from 11 to 10 during periods when the service plans to retire an older carrier but must await the arrival of a new one. Making the cut in carriers permanent would reduce the fighter shortage, he said.