Shipbuilding... At All Costs

One more reason FY10 is going to be a wild ride.

Boeing Co.’s new Navy P-8 patrol aircraft for spotting enemy submarines and ships faces a cut of more than $900 million in the Defense Department’s proposed fiscal 2010 budget in order to pay for a new warship, according to budget documents.

Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, in an Oct. 31 budget memo, approved shifting away as much as $940 million to complete payment for a new DDG-1000 destroyer that Congress partially funded this fiscal year. The ship is the last of three the service says it will buy from Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Dynamics Corp.

The proposal is an indication the Navy is willing to cut new aviation programs -- even one designed to replace P-3 maritime patrol craft in operation since the 1950s --to sustain its long- range shipbuilding goal. The Navy wants to have 313 vessels in the fleet by 2020, including new ships added as others retire, up from 283 deployable vessels today.

In effect, the Navy is trading 4 aircraft from the P-8 IOC to pay for 1/3 of a DDG-1000. These types of complicated trade offs are going to be interesting to observe, because you can expect there to be a lot of these type trade offs and you can expect a lot of them to not be popular.

The Navy has made it clear they will take money for aircraft to build ships, and with shipbuilding in such a bad state this isn't unforseen. The question is whether it is wise? The surface combatant force has an average age around 15 years old, while some of the P-3s the P-8s are replacing are over 50 years old.

I agree with the premise of this, I'd rather build something American made with stimulus packages than get no product for the dollars spent. That would allow us to not hamper one program to save another, because if people don't think this will likely lead to more costs for the P-8 down the road, you haven't been paying attention.