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Navy mulling more nukes, SecNav says

SAN DIEGO — Aircraft carriers might not be the only nuclear-powered surface ships in the future fleet.

Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter told a San Diego audience that service officials are closely studying the possibility of nuclear power for a new class of cruisers, a strategy that has drawn some congressional interest.

“We are folding in a nuclear option, a nuclear power option, into the analysis of alternatives that’s ongoing for the next-generation cruiser, the CGX,” Winter told a May 16 breakfast meeting of the Military Affairs Council in San Diego at the Admiral Kidd Club in San Diego. Winter said the preliminary analysis of a nuclear-powered cruiser suggests the biggest power drain isn’t on keeping the ship running but in maintaining the constant operation of the large air and missile defense radar that’s planned.

The idea of nuclear-powered surface combatants isn’t new to the Navy. “It’s something we used to have we got away from,” he said.

Officials are studying several issues, including operational, logistics, production, crewing and maintenance, as well as the training and development of sailors needed to crew such a ship. Other issues would need to be addressed. There’s no shipyard that is nuclear certified that also currently builds surface combatants, he noted. “The question comes: How do we go ahead and build a ship of that nature?” he asked.

And, of course, costs and funding must be studied, Winter said. “It’s not going to be free,” he added.

Winter spoke during a whirlwind 24-hour visit May 15-16 to this busy region of sailors and Marines, where he saw the commissioning and launch of the new cargo ship, met with Swedish submariners, thanked sailors who helped fight recent wildfires and visited sick and wounded sailors and Marines.

It was his second visit to the city that boasts the largest fleet concentration area on the West Coast, and is expanding even as it retires some ships from the shrinking fleet.

Two East Coast fast-attack submarines — the Hampton and Albuquerque — will relocate to San Diego in the Navy’s shifting of more forces to the Pacific, Winter said. The aircraft carrier Carl Vinson will move to Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado, Calif., once the Navy completes a supplemental environmental impact statement. The air station, home to the nuclear-powered carriers Ronald Reagan and Nimitz, had previously been home to three carriers, although some were conventionally powered.

Carl Vinson, which was homeported in Washington State, is in Newport News, Va., for a refueling and overhaul period at Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipyard. The Navy decided to shift the carrier to San Diego after a careful review of issues, including housing and allowances, traffic, quality of life and operational training requirements.

“We looked at all of that. We did not ignore anything,” Winter told the Military Advisory Council during a May 17 breakfast meeting at the Admiral Kidd Club in San Diego. The decision was “so heavily dominated by the operational considerations that we really had to put the other items aside, particularly because we could not find any ... silver bullets in the other issues.”

Carriers based in the Pacific Northwest spend weeks away from their homeports during pre-deployment training periods at sea where the massive flattops train and operate, often with embarked air wing and carrier strike groups, across the vast offshore training ranges off Southern California. Repositioning the carrier will save time and money and boosts availability, Winter said.

“No question. We would be able to save several weeks of just coastal steaming ... repositioning the carrier from the Pacific Northwest to take advantage of training areas,” he told the group. “That really dominated the overall factor.”

San Diego will be home to the Navy’s first home of the new fleet of Littoral Combat Ships, two versions which are in development despite construction setbacks and strong scrutiny because cost overruns. “Our objective is to get the first three LCSs here to San Diego. We’ll do the workups here,” Winter said.

Winter on April 12 cancelled the Lockheed Martin-built LCS-3, but Lockheed Martin’s LCS-1 remains on track, and officials are watching the progress and cost controls of that vessel as well as LCS-2 and LCS-4 under contract with General Dynamics. The cancellation “will enable us to focus the resources that we have on the first three units,” he said.

The two defense industry giants have crafted two different ships. The Navy wants to get a fleet of ships that can be tailored for differing roles with the use of mission-specific modules.

“We want to get at least those two first ships out to sea trials and, in particular to be able to integrate the mission packages with them and be able to do a full-up assessment of the capabilities they would be able to provide to us to prosecute the war in the littorals,” he added.

During his trip, Winter also:

* Visited wounded sailors, Marines and other service members at San Diego Naval Medical Center, which is in the process of expanding its patient and amputee care with a Comprehensive Combat Casualty Care Center. “There is no question we have seen a succession of modern medical miracles,” Winter said.

* Thanked members of Assault Craft Unit 5 at Camp Pendleton for their swiftness in organizing and hauling 28 loads of firefighting equipment to help Los Angeles County Fire Department stamp out a 4,200-acre wildfire on Catalina Island, a popular coastal resort isle. “You demonstrated the full spectrum of support and the work the Navy provides the community here,” Winter told the unit assembled in a hangar. “You’ve done us proud.”

* Met with Swedish crew members on Gotland at the submarine base in Point Loma. Gotland, an ultra-quiet diesel-electric boat, is wrapping up two years of training and operating with the Navy in the Pacific region.