Budget 2010: Navy may rethink 313-ship goal - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Budget 2010: Navy may rethink 313-ship goal

The Navy appears to be backing off its oft-stated goal of building a fleet of at least 313 ships. Instead, a Navy budget official said May 7, the goal could change as part of the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review.

Rear Adm. T.J. Blake described the review as he unveiled the Navy’s fiscal 2010 budget request in a briefing for reporters at the Pentagon. When asked if the service was standing by its goal for a floor of 313 ships, he said everything about the U.S. defense posture, including that, was subject to change in the QDR.

“One of the significant elements of the QDR is force structure, so that would be a discussion as to what is the right force structure, and that’s a part of the discussion that’s going to take place this summer.”

Likewise, Blake would not discuss how or when the Navy could buy aircraft to address its fighter gap — a time when officials worry F/A-18 Hornet fighters could wear out before their replacement F-35 Lightning II comes online — because that, too, would be included in the QDR.

Navy spokesman Lt. Clay Doss said that for now, the Navy’s official goal remained a fleet of at least 313 ships, but he said that number came from analysis involved with the 2006 QDR. It wouldn’t be appropriate for the Navy to say it was going into this year’s QDR committed to making the case for 313, Doss said.

Other than information about the ships and aircraft it wants to buy in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, there were not many new details about the Navy’s long-term plans included in the budget rollout. The service is required by Congress to include a 30-year shipbuilding plan with each year’s budget, and this year it also was told to submit a 30-year aviation plan. But neither document accompanied the budget the Navy sent to Congress.

“There are ongoing discussions with respect to the shipbuilding plan, but it would not be appropriate to discuss them at this time,” Blake said.

The Navy also did not include a future-years defense plan as a part of this year’s budget, although that has been common for the first defense budget submitted in a new presidential administration.

The Navy is asking for $156.4 billion overall in fiscal 2010 and expecting $15.3 billion from the supplemental request sent to Congress earlier this spring, making for a total request of $171.7 billion. That’s $7.9 billion more than total funding in fiscal 2009.

Of its base request, the Navy wants to spend $44.3 billion on personnel, $44.8 billion on procurement, $42.9 billion on operations, $5.1 billion on infrastructure, and $19.3 billion on research and development.

In addition to sustaining the Navy’s operations for another fiscal year, officials want to use that money to buy eight ships, 203 aircraft, and 2,476 missiles, torpedoes and other munitions.

The Navy will begin research and development on a new class of ballistic-missile submarine to replace the Ohio class and continue research and development into its Zumwalt-class destroyers, although construction on the first one has already begun. Doss said the $538 million set aside for Zumwalt R&D would cover research into the Long Range Attack Projectile — the new round Zumwalt is to fire from its Advanced Gun System — and testing of the novel tumblehome hull form.

The Navy wants to increase funding for depot-level maintenance for ships by $800 million, Blake said. Part of that funding will go to the Navy’s new Surface Ship Life Cycle Management Activity, created in response to readiness problems in the surface force, and also following a year in which five ships and one sub were deemed “unfit.”

That funding accounts for 96 percent of the maintenance the Navy projects ships will need for the fiscal year.

Shipbuilding

The Navy’s fiscal 2010 budget includes plans to build eight ships:

• 1 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer

• 3 littoral combat ships (the winner of a competition between Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics will be awarded two; the loser, one)

• 2 Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo and ammunition ships

• 1 Virginia-class fast-attack submarine

• 1 Joint High Speed Vessel

The service also plans to ask for funding to pay for the second half of the Zumwalt-class DDG 1002; the third increment of funding for the carrier Gerald R. Ford; and the second increment of funding for the refueling and complex overhaul of the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, scheduled for September. The Army also is asking for a Joint High Speed Vessel in its budget, making for nine total ships in this year’s Pentagon budget request.

Also in fiscal 2010, three destroyers, an attack submarine and an ammunition ship will join the fleet. Two attack subs, a frigate, an ammunition ship and an auxiliary fleet support ship will be decommissioned.

Aviation

The total aircraft budget proposal is $18.4 billion, up from last year’s budget of $14.1 billion. Included are:

• 9 F/A-18E/F Super Hornets

• 2 E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes

• 27 MH-60R helicopters

• 18 MH-60S helicopters

• 38 T-6A/B Joint Primary Pilot Trainers

• 16 F-35B Joint Strike Fighters for the Marine Corps

• 4 F-35C Joint Strike Fighters for the Navy

• 6 P-8A Poseidons

• 1 C-40A Clipper cargo plane

• 8 MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned aerial vehicles

Other highlights

In addition to shipbuilding and aviation plans, the Navy budget includes requests for the following:

• 325 Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System missiles. APKWS is a 70mm rocket launched from a helicopter against “soft or lightly armored targets.”

• 24 Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Ohio-class ballistic missile subs have 24 tubes and each missile packs multiple nuclear warheads. The cost will be just more than $1 billion.

• $495 million for research and development of the propulsion plant and missile compartment on the ballistic missile sub that will replace the Ohio class, expected to join the fleet in 2020.

• No Mine Resistant Ambush Protected trucks. The vehicles, developed in response to the roadside bomb tactics used in Iraq and now Afghanistan, are used by Seabee and explosive ordnance disposal units.

• Upgrades for Camp Lemonier, the U.S. military base in Djibouti, including $8.1 million for security fences, $21.7 million for an ammunition supply point, a $4.8 million firehouse and $7.3 million for road paving.

• $46.3 million for channel dredging in Mayport, Fla., and $29.7 million to repair the Charlie Wharf pier, former home of the carrier John F. Kennedy.

• $284.2 million for research and development of the Next Generation Enterprise Network, the replacement for the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet.