The Navy's New Battleship Budget Plan

Yesterday I encouraged everyone to read the Chris Cavas article, a gold mine of public information that in one news article, can summarize virtually everything wrong with Navy shipbuilding. The John Young memo that has been leaked to the press has been getting a lot of attention, and now that we have reviewed the specific details of the memo, lets look at what we have learned. I should also mention that I have seen the FY 2010 30-year shipbuilding plan, so I will try to put into a generic context what the Navy is asking the Obama administration to approve as that administrations first shipbuilding plan, but we will come back and examine the specific platforms in more detail later.

Last week I posted on a new Heritage Foundation shipbuilding plan, and I decided it was better to let the comments handle it. Contributor Michael H. won comment of the day with his "Hey, Heritage Foundation! 1985 called and wants its force structure back!" comment. Very Funny.

I honestly thought the Heritage Foundation plan was a joke of a suggestion, but apparently I'm the one who is out of touch, and Heritage appears plugged right in.

Hidden in plain sight within Chris Cavas's article is the fact the Navy's FY10 budget plan will include 4 of the largest, most modern, most capable, most expensive battleships in the entire world. In FY 2010 alone, the Navy will be seeking money to complete the purchase of the third DDG-1000, a ship the Navy doesn't even want, and also seek both R&D and SCN funding for a brand new DDG-51 Flight III ship to be purchased in FY 2010, which the Navy does want.

The new plan will also include the previously mentioned Future Surface Combatant (FSC), also known as either DDG-51 Flight IV (or block 4) or CGL-9, that the Navy would begin purchasing in FY 2012. There are a total of 18 Future Surface Combatants in the Navy's 30 year plan. Finally, the FY 2010 shipbuilding plan includes an 8 ship class of 22,000 ton nuclear powered ballistic missile defense cruisers scheduled starting in 2017 to be built every 3 years over a period of 24 years, what some are calling the CG(X) or the CGN-42 class.

I will discuss each ship in detail in later discussions, but before going any further, can we just admire the state of shipbuilding for a second?

The first Navy budget under the Barack Obama administration, pending approval, is currently scheduled to include a new shipbuilding program of 4 of the largest, most expensive battleships in the world, and not only are none of these four specific classes currently under construction, but none of them have a completed design yet, including the Flight III for FY10 unless the Navy has already decided it will have the SPY-1 radar (which counters recent news reports). We'll cover every angle of that discussion in more detail in the future.

Of all the different ships in the Navy's FY10 shipbuilding budget, there are actually only 3 mature ship designs: the Virginia class submarine, the San Antonio class amphibious ship, and the Lewis and Clark dry cargo ship. The Ford class aircraft carrier is a new design, the America class LHA is a new design, the Independence class LCS is a new design, the Freedom class LCS is a new design, the Zumwalt class destroyer is a new design, the yet to be named JHSV is a new design, the DDG-51 Flight III for FY 2010-2011 is pending decisions prior to final design, the Future Surface Combatant will likely be a major evolution design of DDG-51 or DDG-1000, and the proposed 22,000 ton nuclear powered BMD cruiser is completely new.

You know all those Maritime Pre-Positioning ships discussed on whitehouse.gov? That includes new designs too.

This reflects the inability of naval leadership to set requirements. This reflects a long standing policy where accountability has not been a priority. This reflects an industry without enough oversight. This reflects weak political leadership willing to ignore deception and deceit. Let me explain that last point.

John Young should be hauled up in front of Congress and fired. Look, John Young was absolutely right to force the Navy to go through a requirements study process, but the rest of the memo should be raising serious questions in Congress.

The very intent of the memo, which comes from the top acquisition official in the Department of Defense, is a signed specific instruction to the Navy to intentionally 'pad' the budget of the DDG-1000 program with money from a completely new program with the specific intent to avoid a breach of Nunn-McCurdy. The net effect is, in its first year of construction the DDG-1000 could now potentially go over budget by several hundred million dollars and still not trigger a breach of Nunn-McCurdy, even though without this budget deception the program would be 89% over budget already, which amounts to several critical breaches of Nunn-McCurdy.

With the leak of this memo, all of our Congressmen and Senators must now intentionally look the other way, with both eyes shut and index fingers jammed into their ears, and ignore that the top DoD financial officer is intentionally padding the books to circumvent the law. How can anyone suggest a Senator or Congressman is serious about Defense Acquisition Reform when this kind of slight of hand, now in plain view for all to see, is going on from the top acquisition officer in Department of Defense?

Why would John Young do such a thing? When I read the memo, I admit being too caught up in the studies finally demanding we follow a requirements process that I completely missed why the Nunn-McCurdy breach matters. You see, John Young knows if there is a Nunn-McCurdy breach, it will require someone in the Navy to explain to Congress why the DDG-1000 platform is worth $6 billion a copy at a time when most of the SCN money is yet to be appropriated, and everybody but John Young is trying to kill the program.

John Young isn't protecting the Navy, and he most certainly isn't protecting the taxpayer, he is protecting his own reputation, because as one of the fathers of the DDG-1000 program he loses face if the DDG-1000 gets canceled on his watch as Under Secretary of Defense for AT&L. Thanks for protecting the taxpayers money Nero, in the meantime Rome is clearly burning.

Let no one suggest the Barack Obama administration will be soft on defense, because when the administrations first Navy budget could potentially include a new shipbuilding plan with FOUR of the most powerful surface combatants ever built in human history, it appears absolutely clear to me that the Obama Navy with John Young's pen signing checks with taxpayer money is prepared to defend every square inch of the oceans the US Navy sails from a potential future threat by China, not to mention invasion from outer space.