Lawmakers hoping to see the Trump administration put money toward repeated promises to significantly grow the military were disappointed in the Pentagon’s fiscal 2018 budget request, which Defense Department officials say is one step in a multi-rung ladder to
During a marathon late-night hearing June 12, members of the House Armed Services Committee pushed Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford on why the $639 billion funding plan included only nine new ships when President Trump has promised a historic buildup of the Navy, not to mention the Army and Air Force.
“This year’s budget puts us on track to get to the outdated 30-year shipbuilding plan of 308 ships,” said Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.). “If there is this near-universal agreement that 355 is where we need to be, we can’t mark time, our adversaries are doing whatever they can to build additional capacity. … It does seem counterintuitive to say we’re only going to do eight ships this year, or nine ships.”
The Trump Administration’s budget request initially included two Virginia-class submarines, a pair of DDG-51 destroyers, one Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), funding for CVN-78 aircraft carrier, the LHA-6 amphibious assault ship and advance procurement for a Columbia-class submarine. The following day a second LCS was added to the request.
The budget as submitted removes a total of $1 billion from shipbuilding accounts, Wittman pointed out.
Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.) cited several strategic reviews published in the last few years that call for a Navy from 308 to 355 ships. One accelerated shipbuilding plan that prescribed the upper end of that range suggested funding at least 12 ships in fiscal 2018, Courtney said.
“We’re living off a legacy fleet in terms of the ships that we have out there,” Courtney said. “I do not understand the hesitation in this budget in terms of taking advantage of all the work that has been done over the last three years to have a more robust shipbuilding plan than what was sent over.”
“That was a 308-ship budget that was sent over, not a 350-ship budget,” he added.
Courtney said the Defense Department needs to invest in long-term shipbuilding plans in order to assure both prime contractors and secondary suppliers that money will be available to finish ships once they lay keels.
“Shipbuilding is a long game,” Courtney said. “You’ve got to send a demand signal out not just to the big shipyards but also the supply chain … I think this budget undercuts that demand signal that people were really starting to believe in.”
Mattis agreed that the Navy needs more ships, but countered that the Department of Defense must operate within budget-restricting laws that only Congress can repeal. Responsibility for buying more ships lies with lawmakers who hold the purse strings as much as Pentagon officials, he said.
“I would love to have more ships,” Mattis said. “There are nine ships in this 2018 budget and we know that we need more … We’ve been in place here only about five months and we need to get our analysis harvested from all those [reports] you just mentioned and then come up with a way ahead.”
“Ships are expensive and we’ve got to make certain we have got the budget to support it,” he added.
Mattis said the current administration has been in office only five months and had to deal both with legal budgetary restrictions and the enforced frugality since the 2011 Budget Control Act was passed in constructing its proposed spending plan. Within the current topline, he said Navy shipbuilding must be balanced with the Air Force’s need for more fighter and bomber aircraft, the Army’s requirement for more combat-ready brigades and the Marine Corp’s need for more helicopters.
“We’ve got to weave this whole fabric together to make certain we have a joint force that’s ready to fight,” he said. “The bottom line is you’re asking us to come in with a budget request beyond what we have now that would be even more a violation of the act that Congress has passed. We need some direction from you, as well.”
Dunford said the anticipated buildup of military capacity and modernization would necessarily come in fiscal years 2019 and beyond. The needs in those years are myriad, as a result of having foregone modernization on so many fronts in favor of funding U.S. involvement in ongoing overseas wars.
“We’re confronted with what’s been described as a bow wave of modernization, in the nuclear enterprise, in cyber capabilities, our electronic warfare capability, space resilience, maritime capabilities, land forces,” Dunford said. “What we tried to do is just get the right balance within the topline that we’ve been given.”
The Pentagon needs at least a 3 percent growth year over year to keep up with inflation and “maintain the competitive advantage” the military holds over adversaries, he said.
“If we do want to get to 355 ships, if we do want to get to the number of brigade combat teams that have been identified, if we do want to get to the number of squadrons that are required, it’s going to take sustained growth over time,” Dunford said. “That’s why [FY] ’19, ’20, ’21 and ’22 are so important, because we just couldn’t get there in ’18.”