Analysis of the Navy's FY 2010 Surface Combatant Options

In Chris Cavas's article the other day, he notes the Navy's FY10 30-year budget to include four major surface combatants: DDG-1000, DDG-51 Flight III, Future Surface Combatant, and CG(X).

These are my observations regarding what I think is going on.

It is important to remember the Navy has not received a top line budget figure (that we know of) from the new administration, so the FY 2010 30-year shipbuilding plan Chris Cavas is discussing in his Defense News article is a bookmark, nothing more than a Christmas list reflecting what the Navy would do if money existed for all items. I don't think it is inaccurate to suggest there appears to be a strategy behind the plan, but that strategy appears to me to be political.

When the Navy announced USS Michael Monsoor (DDG-1001) as the name of the second Zumwalt class, it left no doubt the Navy intends to build this ship. There is no chance in hell the Navy will dishonor him by not building this ship, regardless of the costs. I also don't believe the Navy is too concerned with the result of FY 2009 that partially funds DDG-1002, but I do not believe we will see DDG-1002 named until either late 2010 or sometime in 2011, nor do I believe we will ever see the ship built at all.

The Navy will build the first two DDG-1000s, regardless of cost, but will hold the money for DDG-1002 as long as possible as a safety net. While the Zumwalt class has no cost growth, and has a very mature design relative to when naval warships usually begin construction, there does appear to be a lot of concern the ship will be more expensive than estimated. This means the Navy will hold the funds for DDG-1002 and use them if necessary to complete the first two Zumwalts if cost growth occurs. The Navy intends to fight any additional funding for more Zumwalts.

In my opinion, building 2 is the right decision, and not building any more than two is also the right decision. No matter how hard I try to like this ship, it is a disaster of requirements planning and had no business ever being designed the way it was anyway. It is intellectually insulting to watch the Navy spend huge amounts of money for a 14,500 ton stealth hull, then design the vessel for optimal operations in a littoral environment which is also the most populated part of the sea, and then decide to make the main weapon system of this stealth littoral (star)ship Zumwalt the loudest naval gun developed since World War II. In my opinion, this is the kind of contradictory nonsense we see everywhere in the results of the SC-21 development process.

The LCS is another perfect example of these contradicting capabilities. Why in the world would someone think any ship should be emphasized for speed and space, when the result of filling space is to add weight that reduces the speed. We look very stupid to the rest of the world when the primary capabilities of our "21st century" warship designs are in direct contradiction of one another. I want to believe the Navy is smart enough not to buy into what is being sold here.

The final piece of the SC-21 program is the CG(X), what Chris Cavas notes is a 22,000 ton nuclear powered ballistic missile defense juggernaut. The Navy apparently intends to build 8 hulls, one every three years beginning in 2017. This ship makes no sense though, and appears to be included in the FY 2010 budget as a major budget distraction. Do the math, even assuming the Navy uses the LPD-17 hull and minimizes requirement creep to the minimum, with nuclear power this ship will run on average around 5 billion dollars per ship, roughly 1/2 the cost of a Ford class aircraft carrier.

It doesn't make any sense though, because ballistic missile defense requires more than one ship, a tracker and a shooter. Why in the world would the Navy build a 22,000 ton hull to be both tracker and shooter in one platform? If the Navy is serious about ballistic missile defense, and they appear to be serious enough about BMD to cancel major shipbuilding programs and inject a healthy dose of uncertainty into the shipbuilding sector, they will take a distributed network approach to shooters and trackers. The only reason the Navy would put a 22,000 ton nuclear powered BMD ship into the budget is to make a political point regarding the high cost of nuclear power, and to insure there is an easy target for the budget axe. Clearly the Navy has no intention to ever build this ship, which means its addition to the shipbuilding budget is for political purposes, not strategic purposes.

I believe Admiral Roughead is doing everything he can to kill all of SC-21, and after reading Gene Taylors announcement on Thursday I believe that includes the LCS. We have all seen this movie before, it was just last year out of nowhere members of the House came along and began questioning the DDG-1000 due to cost in the shipbuilding budget, and on Thursday Gene Taylor did it again, this time attacking the Littoral Combat Ship. He has an excellent case to make, lets review the history of this program.

• The first LCS, LCS-1 was funded in FY05 and was delivered September 18th, 2008.
• The second LCS, LCS-2 launched April 26th, 2008, and has yet to conduct sea trials yet.
• The third LCS, LCS-3 was canceled by the Navy in Apirl of 2007 after cost overruns.
• The fourth LCS, LCS-4 was canceled by the Navy in November of 2007 after cost overruns.
• The fifth and sixth LCS were canceled by the Navy in March 2007 so funds could be used to cover other program costs.
• The seventh LCS, LCS-5 ended up having its funds rescinded by Congress in September of 2008 as part of the FY09 defense appropriations act.
• The eighth and ninth LCS funded in the FY09 defense appropriations act are to be combined with any LCS purchased this year as part of a contract for 5 ships.

If the Navy buys no LCS in FY 2010, Congress can just rescind the funding from FY 2009, and five years later the Navy ends up with two single class LCS technology demonstrators, just like they end up with two DDG-1000 technology demonstrators. In other words, SC-21 goes down in history as the modern ABCD, but instead of a squadron of evolution or the "white squadron" we end up with the fleet of revolution, what I'd call the "black eye squadron" which ironically went full circle in its revolutionary approach only to slap the Navy in the face.

So if we are stopping the DDG-1000 at two ships, and the CG(X) has been gold plated to the point it will never be built in a period of tight budgets, and Gene Taylor is beginning a new crusade against a broken LCS ship concept... what will the Navy build?

In FY 2010 the Navy hopes to fund at least one DDG-51, and regardless of what John Young says the Navy most likely intends to build it exactly as Admiral McCullough told Congress, a Flight IIA design with AEGIS BMD additions, or what I am calling DDG-51 Flight III. The Navy would then build 2 of these Flight III ships in FY 2011. These three hulls would act as a cost certain bridge towards a Future Surface Combatant that may or may not be available by FY 2012. If it isn't ready, then the Navy will build more Flight III ships to fill the time delay.

Look, I know lots of people think the Navy intends to gold plate a DDG-51 Flight III, and yes John Young would like to see AMDR added, but I don't see that being where the Navy goes. Gates has made clear that 75% solutions are just fine, and no matter how you look at it, brand new DDG-51 Flight IIIs with SPY-1 and AEGIS BMD are the very best ships being built today anywhere in the world. SC-21 has made us look stupid, but we have such a lead over competitors our fallback position is still more advanced than anything being built by any competitors, so the Navy is smart to make use of our situation to get back on the right track.

In the meantime we do what must be done to move towards a future surface combatant, what I like to call CLG-9. Yes, it will be an evolved Burke hull, and from what I understand the Burke can evolve up to ~11,600 tons, and was originally going to be something like that back in the early 90s before the Navy decided otherwise, and went with what we call Flight IIA instead. The design has a ton of room for growth, the designs have been verified for exactly that for more than a decade, and it is not a terrible thing we are only now looking into options. I have no idea what it will be, and quite honestly, if it can be built well at a reasonable cost in good numbers I don't know that I care about the specific details, just as long as the intent is to evolve technology instead of revolutionize.

There are 18 FSCs in the budget, and I believe the Navy will be quite content when the CG(X) gets the budget axe and the money gets shifted for more than 18 FSCs. Either way the FSC allows the Navy to move forward at an evolutionary pace while fixing whatever processes helped develop the ridiculous, inconsistent, constantly contradictory requirements that resulted in the DDG-1000 and LCS platforms, and turned US Navy surface combatant development into the punchline of a really bad joke.

You thought FY 2009 was fun watching the DDG-1000 go down, FY 2010 is beginning to look from this section of the cheap seats to be an even wilder ride. BYOB.