Roughead to Congress: QDR to give answers - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Roughead to Congress: QDR to give answers

The Quadrennial Defense Review due to be sent to Congress in February will answer many of today’s questions, senior Navy and Marine Corps leaders told lawmakers Thursday.

When will the Navy decide whether to base a nuclear aircraft carrier in Mayport, Fla., asked Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla.

“Those decisions will be made as part of the Quadrennial Defense Review,” answered Adm. Gary Roughead, the Navy’s chief of naval operations.

Where is the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, required to be sent to Congress every year, wondered Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va.

“Those are questions that have to be answered in the QDR, which will have an effect on what the plan will be,” Roughead replied.

How many new Expeditionary Fighting Vehicles will the Marine Corps need, asked Rep. John Kline, R-Minn.

“The number of amphibious ships in the QDR in part will determine the future of the EFV,” said Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway.

As been the case since early April, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered the first glimpse of the 2010 budget request, the Obama administration’s decision to omit nearly all planning beyond the current year has provided officials with a ready response to defer a wide range of questions. And while the decision to forgo planning for the Future Years Defense Plan — the FYDP, or the five years beyond the current budget year — was well-known, observers continue to be disappointed by the Navy’s decision not to comply with federal law and submit 30-year shipbuilding and aviation plans along with the budget request.

Roughead, speaking to reporters Thursday in one of his first public appearances since the budget was sent to Congress on May 7, was asked if the QDR would contain force-structure numbers.

“The QDR will address some of the areas we have to resolve,” Roughead said. “The QDR will inform [the 2011 budget request], and then with ’11 we can get back on track.”

So will the QDR effort produce force-structure numbers?

“The force structure numbers,” Roughead said, “needs to be a plan that I can certify to the Congress is affordable. I think the QDR will give a clear indication of the magnitude of the force. And then once we take the amphibious piece, the Nuclear Posture Review will obviously get into sea-based strategic deterrent that will define the capabilities and capacities and how that goes into the total shipbuilding plan. And I have an obligation to make that fiscally executable.

“It’s kind of what’s first, the chicken or the egg?” Roughead said. “I don’t think I can give the plan per the terms of what I have to submit here without having a view of the budget as well. QDR is going to define certain things we need to know. That will go into the overall shipbuilding plan. That has to be tempered by what I can certify as affordable.”

During the House Armed Services Committee hearing, Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., expressed his concerns about several Navy programs, including keeping down costs on the Littoral Combat Ship, watching technical issues with development of the new electro-magnetic launch system for the next class of aircraft carriers, and monitoring how the service would deal with a looming shortage of strike fighters. Skelton also highlighted concerns over the transfer of 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam and other islands in the Marianas, and over Navy readiness and the material condition of its ships.

Ranking member Rep. John McHugh, R-N.Y., noted the Navy’s reluctance during the May 7 budget rollout to recertify the “floor,” or minimum number of ships, of 313 for its fleet.

“It would appear that the situation has changed,” McHugh said.

He recalled that Navy budget chief Rear Adm. John Blake, in response to a reporter’s question, said that “one of the significant pieces in the QDR is force structure.”

Blake did not reaffirm the number, although at Thursday’s hearing Roughead declared “the floor is 313.”

Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., chairman of the Seapower subcommittee, asked the CNO about Somali pirates, wondering whether a military security team could be placed on all American-flag vessels. Taylor urged that if a ship “has got an American cargo on it, it’s our stuff. We should put a team of trigger-pullers on there.”

Roughead noted that just hours before the hearing, a contractor security team aboard a ship in the Gulf of Aden had repulsed a pirate attack.

“I believe that that scheme is something that should be pursued as opposed to putting sailors and Marines aboard ships,” the CNO said.