By Emelie Rutherford
The head of a naval panel in Congress said he will support the Navy’s request to temporarily drop its aircraft carrier tally from 11 to 10, a legal permission lawmakers rejected in the past but a senior service official said must be addressed this year.
House Armed Services Seapower subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) said he is now convinced extending the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) beyond its planned decommission date–an alternative to dropping the 11-carrier fleet down to 10 ships during a crucial 33-month period–would cost too much and disrupt the refueling schedule, and thus availability, of other carriers.
“Since (Navy officials) have made what I consider to be a compelling case, and (considering) that this is a temporary situation that’s going to be corrected when the (USS Gerald R.) Ford (CVN-78) is delivered (in 2015), then I think a waiver makes sense,” Taylor told Defense Daily last Friday, after a hearing on Navy shipbuilding.
The service asked Congress this month for a waiver to dip below the legally required aircraft-carrier fleet of 11 between the time the Enterprise is scheduled to be decommissioned in November 2012 and the Ford is expected to be delivered in September 2015.
Defense authorizers have rejected this same waiver request in recent years. Yet Taylor said he was won over by the arguments described at the hearing by Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, deputy chief of naval operations for integration of capabilities and resources.
McCullough said if the Navy is directed to keep the Enterprise in service past its planned inactivation, the service would have to “put her in the dock to do the maintenance required to continue that ship in service beyond 2012,” which would “significantly” disrupt the refueling schedules for the remaining Nimitz-class carriers.
The first carrier impacted would be the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), he said, because it will be “out of gas” when it comes home from its last deployment before its currently scheduled refueling availability, the admiral said.
“So if we put Enterprise in the dock to do the maintenance availability on her to get her beyond 2012, not only do you have that aircraft carrier out of service, you can’t get any more operational availability out of…Lincoln, because she’s out of fuel,” McCullough said. “And then each subsequent refueling would be delayed.”
If the Enterprise were to go through a maintenance availability in 2012 to extend its life, it would have enough fuel for one more deployment. Yet McCullough said after that deployment the Navy wouldn’t be able to schedule the Enterprise right away for an inactivation availability, because of the delayed refueling availabilities for the Lincoln and other carriers.
McCullough reminded the Seapower panel that because the Enterprise is a nuclear-powered warship, the crew must stay on it to maintain the propulsion plant.
“And so now we’ve got this carrier set aside with no operational availability added out of it, maintaining of a crew of around 2,000 people on it, which have to be there and can’t contribute to the Navy elsewhere,” McCullough said. “And we looked to taking those people out and putting them on a follow-on ship.”
McCullough said it would cost the Navy “in excess of $2 billion” to extend Enterprise beyond November 2012. He insisted the Navy could mitigate the operational availability of the nation’s carriers with only 10 in use.
Taylor told Defense Daily he could not justify spending more than $2 billion–a figure he cited as $2.8 billion–to garner just one additional deployment out of Enterprise when that deployment also would set “off a chain reaction of unintended and bad consequences for the Navy,” as described by McCullough. Extending the Enterprise would, in effect, take the Lincoln out of service while awaiting refueling, the congressman noted.
“Given that it unfortunately would take the Lincoln out of service just to save the Enterprise for another 18 months, well then it’s just a bad decision to refuel the Enterprise and a good decision to refuel the Lincoln on time,” Taylor said.
Navy officials ” have done a good job of making their case and I’m in agreement” with the waiver, Taylor said.
Asked why he supports the waiver after opposing it in the past, Taylor said. “The Navy’s taken the time to explain the situation that they didn’t before.”
McCullough told reporters after the hearing, “We’ve got to make the decision this year” on the waiver request.
“Last year we had some maneuver space,” the admiral said. “If we don’t get a decision this year it’ll impact how we fund Enterprise going into the future, whether we schedule her for a inactivation availability or we schedule her for a…continuation availability.”
McCullough said the $2 billion-plus cost of keeping Enterprise in service would have to be carved out of the Navy’s procurement account. That’s because the White House Office of Management and Budget has projected flatlined defense budgets for the coming years, while in the Navy manpower costs are rising and operations-and-maintenance demands are holding steady, he said.
Taylor said he will be keeping close watch over the Ford‘s delivery schedule, to ensure the next-generation carrier is not delayed. He called during the hearing for the Navy to closely monitor the progress of the Ford‘s new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System.