Navy budget request avoids deep cuts - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Navy budget request avoids deep cuts

The Navy’s $170.1 billion budget request, released Monday, suggests the Navy has emerged a relative winner in the latest round of belt-tightening.

The request includes $155.9 billion in baseline funds and $14.2 billion in war funds, altogether a 1.7 percent drop from last year. The service’s main concessions are reducing the number of ships built over the next five years and retiring seven cruisers and two dock landing ships earlier than anticipated. By comparison, the Air Force is retiring 130 airplanes, and the Army and Marine Corps are shedding tens of thousands of troops over the next few years.

But that doesn’t mean the cuts won’t be felt. Thousands of jobs are disappearing over the next few years, and for the first time in at least a decade, operations funds would increase as personnel costs drop.

The budget must be approved by Congress and signed by the president.

Manning is set to drop, the budget makes clear. As a result of last fall’s enlisted retention boards, which cut 2,946 sailors, the Navy is already well below congressionally mandated end strength for 2012. And between now and Sept. 1, 2013, the Navy will have to cut active-duty manning by 1,022 to get to an end strength of 322,700.

Manpower drops further after 2013. By September 2015, another 4,400 jobs will be cut before adding 1,000 positions the following year.

“The bottom line: the Navy’s got end strength going flat” over the next five years, said Rear Adm. Joseph Mulloy, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget. The fluctuations there, he continued, “reflect some of the decommissionings, other changes.”

In all, the Navy expects to spend $17.9 billion less on personnel over the next five years than previously planned. Additionally, over the next five years operation and maintenance funding is going down $2.6 billion, procurement is going down $32 billion, research and development by $2.3 billion and infrastructure spending by $3.3 billion.

The Navy is continuing to invest in more planes and battle-force ships, while spending more on developing the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter and other future weapons.

Aviation

The budget calls for 192 new aircraft next year. It includes six F-35Bs, a jump-jet variant Marines will use, and four F-35Cs, a Navy version with bigger wings and sturdier landing gear for carrier operations.

Spending is going up for research and development for the F-35, going from $1.310 billion to $1.481 billion. It’s unclear if the figures included in Navy documents refer to all three variants or just the Navy and Marine versions. As the P-8 Poseidon moves closer to entering operations, research and development funding for the next-generation maritime patrol aircraft is dropping from $609 million to $421 million.

The Navy wants 26 new F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets, the biggest fixed-wing purchase. It is unclear if those planes will be used by the Navy or Marine Corps.

The Navy also plans to buy 37 MH-60 helicopters.

Those new aircraft should get put to good use: funding for flight operations is going up slightly. Including operations in Afghanistan, funding is going from $4.8 billion to $4.9 billion.

Flying hours are staying “relatively flat,” as is aircraft maintenance levels, Mulloy said.

Ships and submarines

The request calls for building 10 ships at a total cost of $10.9 billion. In fiscal 2013, the Navy plans to build two Virginia-class attack submarines, two destroyers, four littoral combat ships, one joint high-speed vessel and begin funding for the latest Ford-class aircraft carrier, the John F. Kennedy. Across the next five years, the plan outlines 41 ships to be built, including nine Virginia-class attack subs, nine destroyers and 16 LCS hulls.

As part of an effort to save money, the Navy is decommissioning nine ships early. In fiscal 2013, the plan calls for retiring the cruisers Cowpens, Anzio, Vicksburg and Port Royal. Retiring the following year would be cruisers Gettysburg, Chosin and Hue City, and dock landing ships Whidbey Island and Tortuga.

Depot-level maintenance for ships is fully funded at $6.4 billion, a rise from last year. Ship operation spending, which funds underway days deployed and non-deployed, also has been bumped up to $5.2 billion.

Construction

The construction budget is shrinking. Last near the Navy budgeted $1.129 billion for construction worldwide, a figure that includes projects in Iraq and Afghanistan, but only $1.011 billion has been budgeted for the next year.

Military construction has a “significant drop over time” and largely focuses on projects that support direct military needs, things like hangars, maintenance depots and other facilities that play a direct role in operations rather than support facilities like family housing, Mulloy said.

The new budget does not show any funds overseas; operations in Iraq ended in the last year, and operations in Afghanistan have slowed.

The budget sidelines the long-standing goal to relocate a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Mayport because it shifted the infrastructure spending needed to support the move out of the five-year budget forecast, Mulloy confirmed to reporters.

“It effectively delays it,” he said of the deferred funding. “Strategic dispersal is still a strategic need,” he continued. “But it did take out the [military construction] as required for a carrier.”

The family housing budget, however, is going up. On the construction side, it’s increasing from $101 million to $102 million, while the operations budget is jumping from $368 million to $378 million.