Senators urge bigger 2008 budget for Navy shipbuilding

Sixteen senators from both parties have urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to boost the Navy's fiscal 2008 shipbuilding budget to $14 billion -- more than $3 billion more than the Navy wants to spend on new ships in fiscal 2007 and a hefty increase during a much anticipated period of fiscal belt tightening.

The senators' generous request represents roughly the amount the Navy has said is needed each year to carry out Chief of Naval Operations Michael Mullen's 30-year plan to build enough advanced submarines, destroyers and other ships to field a fleet of 313 ships.

The Navy's current fleet is at 280 ships, down from 341 five years ago and the fewest ships since the 1930s.

"Capability is important for sure, but numbers also matter because of the need for continued global presence," the senators said in a letter last Thursday to Rumsfeld.

The lawmakers signing the appeal hail from states with heavy shipbuilding interests, such as Connecticut, Maine, Mississippi and Rhode Island. Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., usually a champion of shipbuilding programs, was not among them.

In their letter, the senators argued that the defense budget has grown more than 50 percent since 2001, but the ship procurement budget has declined by 17 percent.

They also pointed to China's rising naval power, which analysts expect will exceed the size of the U.S. fleet by 2015. In addition to the projected growth of its fleet, China's shipbuilding technologies are maturing rapidly, the senators added.

"A robust U.S. fleet, and the funding required to build and maintain that force, is essential to our nation's security," the lawmakers wrote.

The letter comes just weeks after the Congressional Budget Office concluded the Navy would have to spend $15 billion each year to maintain a fleet of just 260 ships by 2035 -- significantly short of the Navy's goal.

Indeed, the Navy needs far more than $14 billion -- perhaps as much as $21.7 billion annually -- to buy all the destroyers, submarines and other ships it needs to carry out Mullen's plan, according to analyses by CBO and the Congressional Research Service.

To pay for the ship plan, the Navy has said it needs operations and maintenance and personnel accounts to remain stagnant in real terms, research and development dollars to decrease for several years, and industry to stick to current prices for ships.

"If one or more of the four required things does not happen ... it might become difficult or impossible to execute the Navy's shipbuilding plans," CRS concluded in a report last Thursday.