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Destroyer extension part of 313-ship plan

The Navy will add five years to the planned 35-year service lives of its workhorse Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, according to the latest version of the service’s 30-year shipbuilding plan.

The plan was issued Feb. 4 in conjunction with the Navy’s budget request for fiscal 2009.

To field a fleet of at least 313 ships beyond 2020, the service must modernize its destroyers and cruisers, the plan said.

Between 2021 and 2038, 165 ships will reach the end of their expected service lives — twice as many as will be retired between 2009 and 2020, the report said.

“The Navy must manage meticulously the service lives and modernization of legacy ships during this period to prevent block obsolescence from causing unacceptable gaps in capability and capacity,” the document says.

The Navy’s fiscal 2007 plan was short about 26 cruisers and destroyers after 2020. Last year’s 30-year plan shrank the gap to about 10 ships, adding destroyers to the final years of the plan.

“This year’s 30-year plan erases that remaining shortfall, and even maintains a slight surplus, by assuming a five-year extension of the service lives of the DDG 51s,” said Ron O’Rourke, an analyst for the Congressional Research Service.

Retired Adm. Robert Natter, former commander of Fleet Forces Command, said the Navy would be “crazy not to” modernize and maintain the DDG 51s. The retired four-star called the Arleigh Burke the “best ship afloat.”

“Without the littoral combat ship and modernizing the destroyers and cruisers, the Navy is going to shrink,” Natter said.

Despite publishing a 30-year plan that requires the service life extension, Navy officials said they had not made the move official.

“In recognition of the importance of the war-fighting capability of the DDG 51 class to the future force structure, the Navy is studying the potential of extending service life of the class beyond 35 years,” Lt. Karen Eifert, a Navy spokesman, told Navy Times via e-mail. “Such a service life extension could maximize the shipbuilding investment in the 62-ship DDG 51 class, as well as reduce pressure on the far-term shipbuilding budgets by decreasing the required production rate for the follow-on destroyer, DDG(X).”

The Navy has yet to reveal any plans for the DDG 51 replacement, known as DDG(X). The DDG 1000 destroyers, which the service will begin purchasing in fiscal 2009, will not replace the DDG 51. The service plans to buy seven of the Northrop Grumman-built DDG 1000 ships at a rate of about one per year.

Meanwhile, Eifert said, the Navy plans to spend more than $5.7 billion over five years to modernize the fleet. Most of the money will go toward destroyer and cruiser upgrades, she added. The service will begin upgrading its cruisers this year, starting with the Bunker Hill, while work on the 62 DDG 51s is slated to begin in 2010.

The destroyers will get upgrades for their combat systems, force protection, ballistic missile defense and anti-submarine warfare capabilities, Eifert said. She declined to provide details.

The 2009 shipbuilding plan predicts that Aegis-equipped ships will be asked to perform more ballistic missile defense in the future.