The upcoming fiscal year 2019 budget request will continue the 2018 budget trend of wholeness to fund maintenance and readiness as well as increased ship procurement to reach the goal of 355 ship fleet, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) said last week.

Adm. John Richardson said the Navy has been getting sharper definitions of the concept of wholeness over the past several years.

The FY 2018 budget “represents a pretty whole budget. Particularly when it comes to funding those accounts that sometimes are not as visible but are very important in terms of maintaining readiness.” 

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson speaks at the Brookings Institution. (Photo by Marc Selinger/Defense Daily)
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson speaks at the Brookings Institution. (Photo by Marc Selinger/Defense Daily).

That budget funded readiness at about the maximum level required or executable, he said in a panel discussion at the WEST 2018 conference, co-hosted by AFCEA and the U.S. Naval Institute.  

Richardson said the FY 2019 budget, expected to be released on Feb. 12, “continues in that, and so when that budget is delivered one of the things that you can anticipate is that it will be informed by the strategic direction that we are talking about. It will be consistent with the dimensions of the Navy the nation needs.”

He said the budget process started with a strategic direction, makes tough tradeoffs informed by the fleet leaders who have a “better sight” of the readiness picture, “and delivers a budget that’s pretty whole, pretty balanced.”

Richardson reiterated the Navy will submit a shipbuilding plan with the budget request that will start at 1955, showing the change in fleet size and shipbuilding capacity. He noted the shipbuilding industrial base is about one third the size it was in 1955, with 14 shipyards either shuttered or out of the defense business.

The Navy first revealed they would release a shipbuilding plan at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last month (Defense Daily, Jan. 19).

At the conference, the CNO said the plan will be “very realistic” and include a “family of plans.” This ranges from near the status quo where it takes a “long time” to get to 355 ships, a faster plan pressing to the current limits of the present industrial base, and then a fastest option which includes building shipyards and thinking differently.”

The plan will include “all tricks. So we’re looking at life extension. We looked hard at bringing ships back but we’re…every trick in the book is on the table.”

Also on the panel was Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller who said there is an obvious advantage to getting increase funds expected in the FY19 budget. Previously the service had to make trades on funding, to the detriment of facility maintenance.

He said while the Marine Corps has had good luck with facilities in recent years, they will never be on top of those kinds on maintenance issues entirely. Neller underscored while most people focus on big ticket items like ships in the budget, the largest share of funding is dedicated to infrastructure elements like salaries, maintenance, training, “these other things that never go away.”

If there is a more robust funding profile these other items get more whole. “They never get fixed entirely but there’s still…we’re always chasing ourselves on the infrastructure,” Neller said.

He noted when the military buys a new system like the F-35, in cannot be operated in an old hangar, it needs to buy new ones and “we’re expensive.”

However, Neller noted the Marine Corps and the other services also have to use the increased funding more wisely and efficiently and spoke highly of new leaders.

“I find it quite refreshing to deal with DefDepSec [Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick] Shanahan, Ms. [Ellen] Lord at AT&L [under secretary of defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics], and our own service secretary, Secretary [Richard] Spencer, because they take a very different view, they take a business view, and then they’re asking us some very hard questions.”

“They’re asking really hard questions about, okay, what did you get out of that money, what value did you get out of that, how did you spend that money, and tell me about this and tell me about that” Neller said. “It’s forcing us to be, I think, in a positive way, more introspective and analytical about what we’re doing and the processes we’re using and how we spend this money so we can get the maximum benefit out of it.”