Putting aside for a moment the new ship counting convention
recently announced by the Secretary of the Navy, the decision in the
2015 President's Budget to cease contracts on the present version of the
Small Surface Combatant (SSC) known as the LCS in favor of a more
lethal and survivable SSC (from a clean sheet, an existing design, or an
evolved LCS) to fulfill the Navy's 52 ship SSC requirement.will create
additional pressure on already scarce shipbuilding funds, adding to an
inevitable decline in Fleet size as the country turns increasingly to a
Navy decreasingly prepared for the task. One only has to turn to the
national asset that is CBO's Eric Labs and his analysis of the 2014 Shipbuilding Plan for the data to support this assertion. Specifically, this passage on Page 3:
"If
the Navy receives the same amount of funding (in constant dollars) for
new-ship construction in each of the next 30 years that it has on
average over the past three decades, it will not be able to afford all
of the purchases in the 2014 plan.4 CBO’s estimate of $19.3 billion per
year for new-ship construction in the Navy’s 2014 shipbuilding plan is
38 percent above the historical average funding of $14.0 billion (see
Figure 1). And CBO’s estimate of $21.2 billion per year for the full
cost of the plan is 34 percent higher than the $15.8 billion the Navy
has spent on average per year for all items in its shipbuilding accounts
over the past 30 years."
Put another way, if NOTHING had changed in the 2015 Budget
(and its likely soon to be released by-product, the 30 year
shipbuilding plan) the Navy's plan was underfunded by 1/3, given
historical funding levels. And because ships age and come out of
service, Fleet numbers will decline because there are insufficient
resources to replace them as fast as they leave service. But NOTHING
did not happen. What did happen was that forty percent of the SSC
requirement was directed to evolve into a more lethal and survivable
platform, presumably as compared to the an LCS fitted with any one of
the three mission modules (MCM, SUW, ASW). Round number procurement
cost of an LCS with a mission module comes in based on recent numbers in
the neighborhood of $480M (this figure does not amortize R&D), and so this figure MUST BE ATTAINED by the follow-on SSC
in order just to tread water in terms of fleet size--or more to the
point, to decline at the rate that a Fleet underfunded by a third would
have declined. It strikes me as a difficult task indeed to move to a
more lethal and survivable SSC while remaining under the $480M figure.
The next ship unit cost will be higher than that of an LCS plus its
mission module, which means that unless shipbuilding resources are
increased, fewer ships will be built. This means either fewer of the upgunned SSC's, or fewer DDG's, SSN's, Amphibs, or Logistics ships--all of which are highly desired.
History
major math is always dicey, so stay with me on this. Let's estimate
the unit cost of the evolved SSC at $750M, for a total of $15B.
Purchase of the 20 LCS plus mission modules at $480M per copy would cost
$9.6B, for a difference of $5.4B. What doesn't get purchased if that
$5.4B is not forthcoming? Do we walk away from 2 SSN's? Or 2.5 DDG's?
Or an LHA(R)? Or do we revise the SSC "requirement" down from 52 ships
to 44 to match the available resources?
The point of
this exercise has been to reinforce the position I take here all the
time. The Fleet we have is too small for the uses required of it. The
present plan does not address this shortage; rather, it exacerbates it.
The SSC evolution will make the problem even worse. We need a bigger
Navy.
Bryan McGrath
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