By Geoff Fein
The Navy yesterday acknowledged a pending change in schedule for its next-generation cruiser, as service officials continue to scour the CG(X) analysis of alternatives (AoA), the head of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) said.
Currently, the Navy’s 30-year ship building plan calls for CG(X) procurement to begin in 2011. However, yesterday at the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE) conference in Arlington, Va., Vice Adm. Paul Sullivan told attendees that the schedule is going to change.
“We know we’ve got a problem,” he said in reference to a question on the ship’s schedule. “In PB ’09 we have CG(X) in FY ’11. [We’ll] have to fix that in POM ’10.”
The Navy was tasked with conducting the AoA in June ’06. Although the 18-month study was completed in 2007, the Navy has continued to review the document and its alternatives.
“There were many, many alternative ship and radar configurations,” Sullivan said. “We will get through the analysis and build the ship, but it will have to be relevant for the next…65 years.”
He added there are plenty of discussions on how powerful the radar needs to be, as well as the cost of the ship’s architecture. CG(X) will also need to be modular.
“The ship system must be upgradable without tearing [the ship] apart,” Sullivan said. “It will have to be adaptable to new threats over the next 65 years. That’s not trivial.”
The Navy’s current plan is to build 19 CG(X), with the primary mission being missile defense and air defense. Sullivan added that CG(X) would be more than a replacement of CG- 47, the USS Ticonderoga-class of cruisers.
“It will require a very large investment of our national treasure,” Sullivan said.
The effort, however, won’t begin until the Navy understands the threat, he added.
Sullivan made it clear to attendees that he was not ready to discuss particulars about CG(X), such as opportunity to transition systems from DDG-1000, including the hull form, or whether CG(X) would be nuclear- or conventionally-powered.
Analyst Ron O’Rourke of the Congressional Research Service told attendees during a panel discussion that “we know less about the ship’s design today than we thought we did a year ago.”
“The theme of this year’s symposium is the road to CG(X) and it’s remarkable just how unclear that road has become,” he said.
The delay in announcing a basic design concept for CG(X) has continued for so long it jeopardizes the FY ’11 date of procurement of the lead ship, O’Rourke said.
He added he wouldn’t be surprised if the Navy has already determined the lead-ship procurement date is to be pushed back.
In all his years of tracking these programs, O’Rourke said he couldn’t recall when an issue of a surface combatant has been as unsettled as now.
“Month after month [there has been] no announcement of a basic design concept for CGX. We don’t have anything specific about what CG(X) will look like, even if it will be a single class of ship.”
The information available throughout this process has been so paltry, he added.