The Duncan Hunter Fleet Of One

Duncan Hunter is still trying to push the Sea Fighter. You know, X-Craft, that beacon of hope for those who hold out for major Navy transformation. Duncan Hunter is under the assumption that if the Navy would just field the Sea Fighter with 500 missiles from a certain company who continues to get earmarks from Mr. Hunter, a company that donates a lot of money to his political campaign, the US would have a better Navy. InsidetheNavy has the money quotes of the latest back and forth. Sorry, subscription only, no link...

House Armed Services Committee ranking member Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) continues to push to make the Navy's Sea Fighter a deployable vessel even though the service says it only plans to use the catamaran for at-sea experiments.

Hunter this year included language in the House version of the fiscal year 2008 defense authorization bill calling for the Sea Fighter to take over the tasks of the HSV-2, a catamaran the Navy is leasing until next July. The report states the Navy’s plan to use Sea Fighter only for experiments “fails to take full advantage of the capabilities of this vessel.”

Though the final FY-08 defense authorization bill agreed to by House and Senate conferees includes no money for modifications to Sea Fighter -- the House report language included $22 million in unrequested funds for the conversion -- Hunter's office maintains that the House-passed language altering Sea Fighter's use stands.

Duncan Hunter's fleet of one is in Florida and he isn't too happy about it. This is the second year in a row Duncan Hunter has tried this trick, and last year the Navy did nothing to move the process along to Duncan Hunter's liking. The difference, in 2007 the House actually put $22 million in the budget which "authorized and appropriated $23 million for the Navy to begin the process of upgrading Sea Fighter so it can be operationally deployable -- through steps including adding offensive and defensive weapons and improving ship survivability systems." This year Congress didn't include any money, that probably has something to do with a certain 2006 election. Maybe L3 needs to give more political donations to Democrats...

The Navy ultimately never spent the FY07 money, it still exists and sits there.

ONR is custodian of the ship, which is operated by a civilian crew. ONR spokesman Colin Babb said there are no plans for Sea Fighter to be used to replace the HSV-2.

“It's not being deployed and [there is] no intention of it being deployed like that,” Babb said.

Hunter scolded Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead at a Dec. 13 House Armed Services Committee hearing for not using Sea Fighter differently.

“You've had the opportunity to embrace transformation and you've chosen not to,” Hunter said, citing the Sea Fighter's speed and capabilities.

He said 500 medium-range cruise missiles could potentially be put on the ship, which he argued would give the Navy “multiples in terms of capital investment versus firepower, manning versus cost, operations and maintenance versus cost.”

If Roughead is rejecting the Duncan Hunter's version of transformation, I'm a bigger Roughead fan than I thought.

The Sea Fighter represents a number of things. It represents the signature program in the Department of Defense regarding earmarks, as it was basically the bone Rumsfeld threw to Duncan Hunter through ONR back when Hunter was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. It also represents the trademark program for naval transformation, specifically the small warship concept, the arsenal ship concept, the modular ship concept, and the fast ship concept. In that regard, it also represents the debate on what the future Navy should look like.

Here is the basic question fairly presented, without the hyperbole one would see from those who don't like or advocate for the concepts...

Should the Navy build ships like the Sea Fighter, which is similar but also different than the Littoral Combat Ship, to fight wars for the Navy? The differences between the Littoral Combat Ship and Sea Fighter are more numerous than one might believe. The Sea Fighter is a technology demonstrator for what would be a 1500 ton warship, where the LCS is a 3000 ton naval truck. The Sea Fighter is designed to be modular, with a focus on large numbers of affordable weapons for land/sea strike. The LCS is designed to be modular, with a focus on deployable unmanned systems for specific mission profiles like small boat ASuW, ASW, and MIW.

The Sea Fighter could be a $150-200 million dollar hull with over $500 million invested in weapons and systems. The Littoral Combat Ship has turned into a $350 million dollar hull with around $120 million dollars worth of deployable platforms. Both hulls are fast, with top speeds over 40+ knots, and both hulls have limited endurance. Both hulls are modular, and can support multiple payload packages. Both hulls are intended to have small crews, and both platforms have low survivability standards compared to other warships in the US Navy fleet. It should be pointed out that Sea Fighter is built to commercial standards, while the LCS is built to the Level I standard, the lowest standard of warship design.

Is Duncan Hunter right about Sea Fighter, or is the Navy? Should the Navy build 1500 ton low cost hulls built to house $500 million worth of weapons and equipment, or should the Navy stick to the LCS design for its modular solution? As this blog has noted in the past, we are not sold on the idea that Sea Fighter is a replacement for HSV Swift, nor are we sold that it should be operational or mass produced, but we are open to changing our mind and agree it is a new approach.

There is one thing that does stand out in all of this though. If the Navy isn't willing to utilize the Sea Fighter, why should anyone believe, particularly given the previous cancellations, the Navy will be any more excited about a similar, more expensive Littoral Combat Ship? Regulars know where we stand on this, the new Maritime Strategy calls for new metrics, metrics one can find in Motherships and Corvettes.