By Dave Ahearn
New and experimental defense hardware programs should be banned for the next two years, a new paper recommends.
Further, the Navy should kill the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyers procurement program (General Dynamics [GD] and Northrop Grumman [NOC]) after the first three are built because they’re expensive, while the Air Force should build just 203 F-22 Raptor strike fighter aircraft (Lockheed Martin [LMT]) instead of the 381 the Air Force requested, according to a paper from the Center for National Policy(CNP), a Washington think tank.
To avoid wasting the billions of dollars invested in completing designs for the DDG-1000s, their new cutting-edge technologies should be migrated to other vessels, where possible, the paper counsels.
It also recommends cutting the number of lower-cost F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, the Lightning II, (Lockheed Martin) by an unspecified amount.
To be sure, the paper recommends increasing some buys, calling for procuring more of the DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that were designed in the 1980s, and moving immediately–next year–to double the annual buy of Virginia-class attack submarines (General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman) to two a year, and perhaps make a later increase to three a year, so that the Navy has at least 50 nuclear attack submarines in its fleet, the paper recommends. And the Navy should preserve U.S. capabilities to design submarines by accelerating development of a successor to the Virginia class.
Overall, the plan calls for increasing the total number of Navy ships and submarines in the fleet to 325. That was the level recommended by Adm. Vern Clark, a former chief of naval operations. His successor as CNO, Adm. Michael Mullen, offered a different plan that still is the official Navy goal, building to a fleet of 313 vessels. Mullen now is chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
While canceling purchase of further DDG-1000s because they are expensive, with estimates ranging from $3 billion to $4.6 billion per ship for the first two produced, the paper suggests buying many of the much cheaper Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) (General Dynamics-Austal USA, Lockheed Martin-Marinette Marine [MTW]/Bolinger Shipyards), which earlier had a target price of $220 million for the basic ship (not including swap on-swap off multi-mission packages) but turned out to cost roughly twice that. The LCS comes in two separate versions. The program at times has been frozen by cost concerns.
Even if each LCS cost $500 million, however, that would be one-sixth or less the cost of a new destroyer.
To cut LCS costs further, the paper recommends eliminating one of the signature capabilities of the near-shore fighters: speed. Each LCS is supposed to be able to move about 50 to 55 mph. One version of the LCS is based on a very high-speed Australian ferry boat with three aluminum hulls (trimaran).
For the Navy procurement programs generally, the paper recommends that a “widespread move to lower-cost platforms should be considered.”
While cutting there, the paper recommends adding more interchangeable mission modules that give the LCS an outsized series of capabilities (hunting enemy submarines, taking out enemy mines, and killing terrorist-piloted swarm boats). The new missions would aid the Marine Corps, providing surface fire-support (a strong point of the DDG-1000), a special operations module, and a humanitarian assistance module.
The paper also calls for a review of Marine Corps amphibious ship needs, with the report due to Congress next year.
The report recommends that the Navy move to awarding fixed-cost shipbuilding contracts, pushing the risk of cost overruns onto contractors instead of taxpayers bearing that risk, where that is feasible, on a case-by-case basis.
As far as aircraft, aside from cutting buys of manned platforms such as the F-22 and F-35, the paper recommends far greater procurement of lower-cost unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned combat aerial vehicles.
If the armed forces require more logistics air capabilities, then the Air Force should buy more C-17 transports (Boeing [BA]), keeping production lines hot instead of closing them, the paper advises.
The report also recommends continuing the Army Future Combat Systems (Boeing, SAIC [SAI] as lead systems integrators, plus others) acquisition program that would buy new-design vehicles, aircraft and more, continuing research and development on the 14 remaining systems envisioned in the program. But perhaps that wouldn’t occur as soon as planned. The Army “should also explore expanding even further its delivery timeline in order to accommodate ongoing development of critically needed FCS technologies,” the paper advises.
Perhaps the most costly recommendation in the paper is to increase the number of military personnel, adding 65,000 soldiers and 25,000 Marines by 2013.
The paper was authored by Scott Bates, CNP vice president and senior fellow, and Zachary Warrender, communications and policy associate.
To read their paper titled “Agility Across the Spectrum: A Future Force Blueprint” in full, please go to http://www.cnponline.org on the Web.