By Carlo Munoz
Proposed personnel cuts, as well as a looming equipment reset bill for the Marine Corps, will not force the Navy to make tradeoffs in its future shipbuilding plan, service secretary Ray Mabus said yesterday.
“The shipbuilding plan we have put in is realistic, in today’s budget situation,” Mabus told reporters yesterday during a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington, adding the Navy was not in an “an either or” type of situation regarding the plan and other service priorities.
The sea service’s longstanding shipbuilding plan has the Navy hitting a base fleet size of 313 ships over the next few years, with that number reaching closer to 325 in 2020, according to acquisition officials. That buildup will likely top out by the 2020 time frame, when at that time acquisition will taper off from that 325-ship high, due to scheduled retirements of legacy ships and the introduction of the SSBN(X) submarine program.
However, the service will need roughly $14 billion in shipuilding investments per year through 2020 to support that plan. While Mabus was adamant that the Navy would not cut corners on other service priorities to get that $14 billion, it would have some room to maneuver to keep the books balanced.
While hefty, that $14 billion shipbuilding price tag is only 14 percent of the Navy’s annual budget, Mabus said, noting the build rate in the shipbuilding plan is giving the Navy “more ships for [that] amount of money.”
On Marine Corps reset, the service chief noted that “this bill has been out there” especially with the service bearing the brunt of the White House’s troop surge into Afghanistan last year. But with the Marine Corps expected to shrink, in terms of manpower and equipment over the next few years, the service secretary said the final reset bill has yet to be set in stone, adding “you got to take a look at what equipment they need to reset.”
The Marine Corps’ recently-completed force posture review outlined a plan to drawdown the service by 15,000 in 2015, with the service looking to bolster its intelligence, cyberwarfare and special operations capabilities over the next several years as a way to compensate that cut.
Coupled with the pending troop withdrawals in Afghanistan and Iraq, “it is clear we do not need the same equipment that is being used up, or we do not need all of the same equipment” for the Marine Corps that was required for those combat operations, Mabus said.
While a possibly cheaper reset bill for the Marine Corps could be directed back into the Navy’s shipbuilding fund, retaining the right number of sailors and Marines to operate those ships is another matter.
Mabus said the service plans to commence personnel boards scheduled this summer to look at mid-career officers and enlisted personnel, and “remove some of them” or reclass those officers or sailors into areas “that are undersubscribed” within the Navy.
But like concerns over balancing the sea service’s books between ships and Marine Corps reset, Mabus said personnel reductions could take place without the shipbuilding roadmap falling off course.
Recent developments in automation and other technologies have dramatically driven down the size of ship crews required for the Navy’s future fleet. The service’s next- generation Littoral Combat Ship only needs a roughly 80-man crew to run the ship and its weapons systems, compared to the 300 required for the service’s Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, Mabus said. Further, the new Ford-class carriers will also require 1,500 fewer sailors compared to the current Nimitz-class boats.
The service’s ongoing efficiencies initiatives have also been consistently shifting sailors from “desk jobs” to pier-side billets or putting them out to sea, he added. “By rebalancing the force and changing the way sailors and Marines are used, you can have a larger amount of ships with the force we have today, or a somewhat smaller force,” Mabus said.