By Emelie Rutherford
Defense Secretary Robert Gates will tackle today the thorny question of whether the Navy truly can afford an $85 billion Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarine replacement program.
At the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference, he will “talk about the very difficult situation the Navy will eventually find itself in vis-a-vis its procurement budget and its pursuit of the (SSBN(X)) next-generation boomer submarine, which had the potential, at least in the late teens, to be gobbling up almost all of the procurement budget,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said.
Initial SSBN(X)-related research and development funding appeared in the current fiscal year budget. The Navy currently plans to buy 12 SSBN(X) submarines from FY ’19 to FY ’33 at a cost of $6 billion to $7 billion each in FY ’10 dollars. That figure is roughly half of the service’s annual shipbuilding budget.
Gates has joined lawmakers, including House Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), in questioning how the Navy could afford the submarine effort.
“When that program really begins to ramp up, in the latter part of this decade, it will suck all the air out of the Navy’s shipbuilding program,” Gates told the House Appropriations Defense subcommittee on March 24.
“So this is (one of) the kind of issues that have to be wrestled with by the Navy,” Morrell told reporters April 29. “Can they afford for one platform to devour that much of its budget? … They have to certainly consider how do you meet your requirements and how do you deal with the ever-increasing cost of these naval platforms. And how do you also deal with the constraints of the federal budget, given the fiscal situation we’re in?”
Morrell said “those are the kinds of things” Gates will discuss today during his luncheon address at the naval conference in National Harbor, Md.
Taylor has suggested lawmakers could withhold funding for the program. He asked Gates last month to compel the Navy to give the congressman the analysis of alternatives (AoA) for the SSBN(X), charging the Navy did not follow normal acquisition procedures with the submarine effort.
In an April 22 letter, Taylor said he wants to know if the Navy considered a less-expensive alternative to the rebuilding the SSBN Ohio-class submarine, such as modifying the existing Virginia-class submarine, and using a smaller missile.
“Since none of the analysis conducted by the Navy has been made available to the Congress for review I am not inclined to recommend to the Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee, or the full Armed Services Committee, that the House support the fiscal year 2011 request for this program,” Taylor wrote.
Funding the SSBN(X) program as planned would decrease the Navy’s fleet by 32 vessels in the later 2020s and early 2030s, the congressman said.
SSBN(X) supporters note the effort is backed by the new Strategic Arms Reduction (START) treaty President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed last month and the Pentagon’s new Nuclear Posture Review.