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Editorial: Security before shipyards

Tracking all the changes to the DDG 1000 destroyer program can give you whiplash these days.

For 13 years, the Navy pushed development of the Zumwalt-class destroyers as its next-generation surface combat vessel; as recently as this spring, the service planned to buy at least seven. Then in late July, top shipbuilding officials suddenly reversed course and testified to Congress that the service should stop the ship class at two hulls and build more Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

Among their reasons: Zumwalts aren’t built to shoot down ballistic missiles, and Burkes are.

It was jarring to see Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, a deputy chief of naval operations, talking down a program the Navy had built up for so long. But the message was clear: These costly ships cannot meet the most urgent threat facing today’s surface warships.

Lawmakers who supported DDG 1000, especially Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, were up in arms, saying the move would hurt Maine’s Bath Iron Works. But in an Aug. 18 letter, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England assured her that the program wasn’t over with. He wrote that the Navy “has been directed” to “conform” to the earlier plan of buying a third Zumwalt in the fiscal 2009 budget.

His reasons are troubling. “This plan will provide stability of the industrial base and continue the development of advanced surface ship technologies,” he wrote.

So the Navy now has been told to spend at least $3.2 billion for a destroyer it says it no longer needs just so a shipyard won’t lose money. The “technologies” England mentioned — radar systems, automated damage control and stealth — feel like an afterthought. As it is, the two Zumwalts already authorized provide ample opportunity to provide stability to industry and serve as platforms for technology advancement.

The Navy should design and build ships based on war-fighting requirements, not on the needs of commercial shipyards. Shipyards will then fill those requirements. It’s time for the Pentagon and the Navy to be straight about what is truly needed to meet its mission.