By Geoff Fein
The requirements for the Navy’s next-generation cruiser CG(X) remain unclear as service officials hash out the detailed specifications for the ship and define what exactly the Navy wants to build, a top service official said.
Defining the requirements for CG(X) is as much a political process as it is a technical process, Navy Secretary Donald Winter told reporters after his keynote address at the annual ASNE expo in Arlington, Va., yesterday.
Winter noted that it isn’t politics in the sense of Democrats or Republicans, but in the sense that the discussions involve various constituencies.
“They have different priorities and different agendas, and the objective that we have is to ensure we get, to the maximum possible extent, proper alignment of those various agendas, and priorities as well as the budgets,” he said.
Those constituencies cover everything from missile defense to industrial base considerations to budgetary considerations, Winter added.
“And depending upon who you talk to, these are either more important or less important,” he said. “What we are trying to do is work very carefully to get the alignment of as many of these as possible into our future plans.”
Winter added it is a matter of working, in many cases, quietly but effectively to try to develop that mutual understanding of what the trade-offs are and how best they can be combined to provide the capability that the Navy needs in the future.
Winter added that he doesn’t believe the requirements for CG(X) are clear.
“I think it is requirements at two levels. First of all we need to make sure we understand what it is that we want on this ship, what it is we want in the fleet, how that is all going to work together,” Winter said. “This ship is not going to work by itself. It’s going to work with other components, as part of the Ballistic Missile Defense System. It’s got to be able to work with many other components. We’ve got to understand how that is all going to work.”
Furthermore, one of Winter’s objectives and one of the objectives when the Navy laid out the new acquisition process was to ensure the service developed the specifications to a level of detail, to a level of specificity that really communicated the total set of interests the Navy has in developing CG(X), Winter added.
He hopes to get down into a clear understanding of what are the design criteria that are going to be used, what are the requirements for the crew, how will the Navy accommodate the crew on this ship, what are the implications associated with that for retention and training of the crew in the future.
“There are a myriad of issues. We need to get those all properly defined,” Winter said.
While he wouldn’t say there is disagreement between the parties working on CG(X)’s recruitments, Winter noted this is the first time in a long time the Navy has tried to work in such a formal process. That effort of working through the detailed specifications and requirements is creating some challenges.
Winter hopes to wrap up the analysis of alternatives before the next administration comes in. However, he acknowledges that he cannot guarantee that will happen.
“I am trying very hard to try and get as much of this down as possible. I am not sanguine or comfortable that we will get it all completed, but I want to try to get this…as far along as possible before my tenure ends,” he explained.