The United States needs to start a national debate about how the military should be shaped, especially as the nation begins to reduce its presence in Iraq, Sen. Jim Webb (D- Va.) said recently.
Webb made those comments during a speech at the Surface Navy Association symposium, during which he called for a larger Navy–reiterating a point he has made in the past about the need for a fleet larger than 313 ships.
“I’m not going to stand up here and tell you I have a magical number for what the size of the United States Navy should be, but I will tell you I have spent my entire adult lifetime believing in the validity of a strategy that is based on the notion that the United States is a maritime nation and should be a credible sea power,” Webb said. “Therefore, I am looking forward to working energetically with [Chief of Naval Operations] Adm. Gary Roughead and others to make sure that we can match our strategic vision with the needs that we will have to have work to carry out.”
To that end, Webb, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the service and the industrial base need a stable and affordable plan to buy ships. That will require defining new approaches to controlling costs on major programs like boosting competition and finding ways to extend the lives of existing ships.
According to Webb, the Navy has decommissioned five Ticonderoga-class cruisers about 10 years too soon because modernizing the combat systems was too expensive.
“There are theories there about finding ways to upgrade and modernize the combat systems in a more competitive way, to get American industry to compete–use an open business model to encourage competition and drive some of these costs down,” he said.
Navy experts have been skeptical about the feasibility of a fleet increase, saying more than cost-cutting measures is required.
Ronald O’Rourke, a defense specialist for the Congressional Research Service, has analyzed the plan for a 313-ship Navy. According to his report on the topic, the plan assumes that the service’s overall budget does not decline, that its operation and maintenance spending does not grow, its personnel budget stays the same and that research and development spending decreases over the long run, wrote (Defense Daily, Oct. 29).
But even while cutting the size of the Navy, personnel costs are growing slightly, said Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, the deputy chief of naval operations for integration of responsibilities and resources. Once the size of the force remains stable, personnel costs may grow more than five percent each year, he said.