By Emelie Rutherford
Maine’s senators are appealing to defense appropriators in their chamber to heed the Navy’s $2.5 billion budget request for buying a third DDG-1000 destroyer–and to fight House attempts to halt the ship program.
“Any significant decrease in FY2009 DDG-1000 funding or a directed delay in ship procurement would have a devastating impact on the stability and affordability of our destroyer shipbuilding industrial base, including the highly skilled and irreplaceable workforce at BIW,” which is the General Dynamics Bath Iron Works shipyard in Maine, Republican Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe say in a June 11 letter.
It was sent to Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee (SAC-D) Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and ranking member Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).
Maintaining the Navy’s DDG-1000 program of record “is important in order to help achieve program affordability through industrial base stability and focus on achieving cost efficiencies,” Collins and Snowe write.
Though the House and Senate appropriations committees have not yet marked up the defense bills for fiscal year 2009, the chambers’ authorizers have clashed over the DDG-1000 program.
The House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) FY ’09 defense authorization bill, which the House passed May 22, calls for pausing procurement of DDG-1000s and directing the Navy to spend $400 million in advance-procurement funds for restarting procurement of DDG-51 destroyers or for continuing the DDG-1000 program. HASC Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) has advocated buying more DDG-51s.
The version of the bill the SASC marked up April 30, but the Senate has not yet voted on, calls for granting the Navy’s request for one DDG-1000 in FY ’09. Collins sits on the SASC, where seapower subcommittee chairman Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) also supports continuing the DDG-1000 line.
When the House Appropriations defense subcommittee (HAC-D) marks up the FY ’09 defense appropriations bill on July 16, it is expected to take similar action on the DDG-1000 program as the House authorizers took.
However, the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee’s (SAC-D) plans are less clear, aides said. The SAC-D has not announced a date for marking up the FY ’09 defense bill.
Collins and Snowe in their letter implore Inouye and Stevens to maintain the Navy’s DDG-1000 request and then fight for it during a future conference committee with the House.
“Your subcommittee’s continued strong support of the DDG-1000 program–as reflected in legislative action in consecutive fiscal years to provide increased advance procurement funding followed by full procurement funding for the first two DDG-1000 destroyers over FY07 and FY08–is especially essential this year,” the Maine senators write.
They point to Pentagon acquisition chief John Young’s June 4 testimony before the SASC, when he said halting the DDG-1000 line and restarting DDG-51 production would increase procurement costs, including for the first two DDG-1000s on contract.
Young and the Navy appear to be at odds over a Navy destroyer cost comparison that shows the cost to restart the DDG-51 line would be less than the current DDG-1000 plan.
Taylor sent Young a letter on June 6 raising concerns that the DDG-1000 has the potential to bankrupt all other Navy shipbuilding efforts and could cripple the service’s shipbuilding plan (Defense Daily, June 9).