Budget holdup delaying ship maintenance - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Budget holdup delaying ship maintenance

As it stands, the Navy has less than three weeks left of a budget. No one knows what comes next. That uncertainty has left planners reconsidering yard repairs and scheduled projects on-the-fly. Already, the Navy has canceled five shipyard availabilities set for March and April, and as many as 29 are on the chopping block if Congress renews the funding extension, known as a continuing resolution, instead of passing the proposed budget.

Meanwhile, the service’s just-proposed budget for the next fiscal year, a part of the larger federal budget, seems certain to sail into gridlock in Congress. All this has left the sea service adrift, its top budget official warned.

“Right now, we are in uncharted waters,” Vice Adm. Terry Blake said Wednesday in a speech before the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Naval Academy Alumni Association. “We have three budgets in the air,” and the prospect of a year-long continuing resolution. He added, “We have never been in that situation before.”

Already fouling up the service’s finances, the cuts will get closer to the bone the longer the stopgap funding is in place. If it is extended through the year, for instance, the Navy couldn’t afford to pay sailors their final paycheck this year, Blake said.

Blake emphasized that, if this happened, money would be shifted around to make sure everyone is paid. But all budgets would be disrupted, he warned.

If the 2011 budget is not approved and the funding extension expires March 4, the government would shut-down, a possibility that Blake called “very remote.”

Maintenance, low on the food chain, would be especially decked. The operations and maintenance budget would be short an estimated $4 billion. Off-put maintenance would then cascade from year-to-year and the shifts may doom many planned yard-periods, Blake said. “Yards are heel-to-toe, if you will, on ships coming in and out,” he said. “You may loose an avail, you may not be able to get back.”

New shipbuilding would also be endangered. Under the stopgap spending bill, the Navy can’t initiate new projects, such as building the second Virginia-class attack submarine which is planned to start this year, or fund military construction, without specific authorizations from Congress.

Blake and his staff are in a tight spot, trying to plan out next year’s expenses without knowing what will get funded this year. Ships that miss maintenance later this year may bump other planned ships from the schedule.

“As we continue on with the [continuing resolution], what you will see is that it will bow wave into fiscal [year] 12, and then ’12 is going to bow wave into ’13,” Blake said. “So we’re trying to build a budget for ’13 and we don’t know what’s going to happen in ’11 and ’12.

“We’ve just taken a simple problem and turned it not only into a complex problem, but it’s kind of like playing 3-D chess.”