By Geoff Fein
Lawmakers yesterday said they would like to see the Navy reach its goal of a 313-ship fleet sooner, and they would like to boost the ’09 shipbuilding request by at least three additional ships.
“We hope we can come to an agreement with yourselves and the Senate, to build at least 10 ships,” Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee defense (HAC-D) subcommittee, said yesterday.
“A couple of suggestions staff has made is to take one of the DDG-1000s out and put in two more T-AKEs because they are stabilized platforms. I don’t know if that is the right answer,” he said. “Our industrial base is so small now, there is so little competition, and we obviously need competition. But on the other hand, we need to build as many ships as we can, so we need to look at all the options.”
In its FY ’09 budget, the Navy has requested $14.2 billion to build seven ships. Of that amount, $2.55 billion is for full funding of a third DDG-1000 and advanced procurement for the fourth ship of the class. The ships are being built by General Dynamics‘ [GD] Bath Iron Works and Northrop Grumman [NOC] Shipbuilding.
Murtha said he has been talking with Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) and Rep. Bill Young, (R-Fla.), ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee defense subcommittee, about the possibility of “jumping over [DDG-1000], and going to the nuclear-powered cruiser.”
“I know the Navy is looking at that,” Murtha noted.
“If we took the ships the administration sent over, we would never get to what the Navy says it needs,” he added. “So we are going to try…Bill and I are going to try…and convince the committee that we need three or four more ships. [We need to] find a way to get to take us to 313 ships in much less years.”
Murtha also questioned whether it made sense to give up one DDG-1000 to buy two more T-AKE dry cargo ships and possibly a 10th LPD-17.
“There are three (DDG-1000s) now in ’09. If you take one out what does that do to the shipbuilding distribution,” Murtha said. “If you take one out and go to two T-AKEs, what does that do to…capability of the force?”
General Dynamics’ NASSCO shipyard in San Diego builds the Lewis and Clark-class T-AKEs.
“NASSCO likely could not execute four in one year,” Allison Stiller, deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development & Acquisition), told lawmakers.
“They would have to spread them out. We felt they could go to two year; that’s why we put two in ’09,” she added.
If you take one of the other DDG-1000s out, it would fund a 10th LPD-17 and two T-AKEs, Murtha said.
“We are looking how we can shift this and not affect you,” he said. “What happens to the shipbuilding industry, how will it affect them?”
Stiller said any reduction in DDG-1000s would be an issue for the surface combatant force as well as Bath, which is one of the Navy’s surface combatant providers, she said.
DDG-1000 will be built at Bath, while DDG-1001 will be manufactured at Northrop Grumman’s Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard. The two companies were both awarded construction contracts for the advanced combat ship earlier this month.
As for buying a 10th LPD-17 for the Marine Corps, Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Integration of Capabilities and Resources, told lawmakers the service is spending less to extend the life of four amphibious ships to help the Marine Corps reach its requirement of 33 ships.
The Navy will spend $1 billion to extend the life of the USS Cleveland (LPD-7), the USS Ponce (LPD-15), the USS Nassau (LHA-4) and the USS Peleliu (LHA-5).
The Marine Corps has made a 10th LPD-17 class ship their top unfunded requirement for the past two years, Young said. He was asking for some assurance from the Navy that the service wouldn’t move to shut the LPD-17 production line down after the ninth and final ship of the class is built.
Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding builds the amphibious ships at both its Pascagoula shipyard and its facility in New Orleans.
The Marine Corps has stated they have a requirement for 33 amphibious ships, and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead has concurred with that need, McCullough said.
But in the ’09 budget, given the needs of the entire Navy, the decision was made not to include a 10th LPD-17, he added.
After the hearing, McCullough told reporters the cost to do a Service Life Extension Program on the four amphibious ships was less than buying a new LPD-17.
“It’s around $1 billion to get 27 years of ship life out of those [ships], and that includes operations and maintenance…it might be $1.2 billion, but it’s a billion dollars,” McCullough said “Currently one LPD-17, on our unfunded list, is $1.7 billion. So for me to get 27 years of ship life is about a billion…by extending the estimated service life of those four ships. To buy a new one is $700 million more, and that’s not counting the operations and maintenance.”
While the CNO supports Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway’s requirement for 11 aviation capable amphibious ships, 11 LSD-class and 11 LPD-class ships, the Navy has to balance that in in its budget, McCullough added.
“That’s why we made it number two on our unfunded list. It probably would have been number one on ours with the exception of the problem we have had with the P-3s,” he said. “I’ve got a very urgent need to mitigate the problems with the P-3s, and that’s why that is the number one.”
In December, the Navy grounded 39 of its fleet of Lockheed Martin [LMT] P-3C Orion aircraft due to structural fatigue concerns discovered during an ongoing evaluation of the aircraft (Defense Daily, Dec. 18).
Earlier this month, Conway said the SLEP still won’t help the Marine Corps transit the force. “Those ships don’t have the carrying capacity of the new ships. So we are still short and that’s a point the Secretary [of the Navy], the CNO and I are talking about in terms of where we are in regards to the idea of forcible entry from the sea (Defense Daily, Feb. 19).”
The Navy has delivered the first three LPD-17s, and all of the ships through LPD-25 are under contract, Stiller said.
LPD-25 doesn’t deliver until 2012, so there is a backlog of ships, she added.
The Navy wouldn’t be shutting down the LPD-17 production line once the final ship is built, Stiller noted.