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Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan doesn’t add up in Asia

By Mackenzie Eaglen

April 18, 2012, 8:00 am

With budget cuts and tradeoffs being discussed among the naval community at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space gathering this week, Congress is set to examine the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan. When the Obama administration unveiled new strategic guidance for the military that emphasized the importance of the Asia-Pacific to America’s enduring interests, many assumed that the Navy and Air Force would reap the benefits. But the president’s budget proposal for 2013 shrinks and ages both of these services and their fleets of ships and aircraft.

Like the administration’s new guidance, the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel also recognized the importance of the Pacific, stating that “the force structure in the Asia-Pacific needs to be increased.” However, the bipartisan commission recommended increasing the size of the fleet to 346 ships and investing in new capabilities to counter anti-access technologies, for example.

The new plan shows a fleet averaging a size of roughly 298 ships over the next three decades, down from 306 ships in a plan the administration released only six months ago. The new plan kills the Navy’s long-standing goal for a 313-ship fleet, the size considered the floor by the last CNO.

The Navy’s smaller fleet will also be an older one because the new plan also builds fewer ships. Whereas last year the administration planned to build 57 ships over the next five years, the current five year build rate is for 41 new ships.

Two trends exacerbate the older and smaller fleet of today. With reduced construction, the Navy is planning to extend the service lives of select surface combatants in order to keep the fleet from shrinking beyond an acceptable limit. The problem is that the Navy is relying on unrealistic lifecycle estimates for its surface fleet. In order for the plan to work as hoped, cruisers would need to be funded and maintained to stay in service for 35 years and destroyers for 40. These estimates are fantasies. The Navy is currently retiring seven cruisers over the next two years with an average age of just over 20 years. Current cruiser retirements are a full 15 years earlier than the magical new service life assumption found in the latest shipbuilding plan.

Compounding these challenges is the possibility that the Navy may not build as many ships as it hopes. That is because the 30-year shipbuilding plan estimates that the Navy needs to spend $16.8 billion annually on shipbuilding, but the current budget only allocates $12.7 billion a year for this account through FY 2017. What the Navy is effectively advertising is that the “check is in the mail.” The promise of future investment is a defense budgeting trick as old as the FYDP. But the new shipbuilding plan emphasizes retiring existing ships from the fleet over new construction in the near term, retiring seven more ships over the next five years than it builds.

Either the Navy is retiring these ships too early or its lifecycle estimates are hopelessly optimistic. But service leaders cannot have it both ways. Similarly, the administration cannot realistically “pivot” to Asia—a region defined by the “tyranny of distance”—and cut the fleet at the same time.

Mackenzie Eaglen is a resident fellow at AEI. She is testifying about the Navy’s 30-Year Shipbuilding Plan before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee this afternoon. Click here to watch her testimony live at 2:30 P.M.

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Obama’s defense strategy says one thing while the defense budget does another

By Mackenzie Eaglen

February 13, 2012, 12:51 pm

President Obama sent an annual budget request to Capitol Hill today that does little to reduce the deficit but dramatically cuts military spending anyway. Even though last year’s debt ceiling deal was supposedly agreed to in order to reduce America’s crushing debt burden, Obama is apparently planning to use half of the cuts in war spending to “help finance a major six-year, 50 percent increase in transportation spending.”

Defense cuts in the name of debt reduction are really for increased domestic spending. This is not a surprise. Last summer, President Obama made his priorities clear: social spending trumps national security. “A lot of the spending cuts that we’re making should be around areas like defense spending as opposed to food stamps,” he told NPR. He went on to say last summer during his Twitter town hall that “the nice thing about the defense budget is it’s so big … that you can make relatively modest changes to defense that end up giving you a lot of head room to fund things like basic research or student loans or things like that.”

Within the defense budget, the administration’s talking points sound good but the numbers just don’t add up. Modernization spending is taking the biggest budget hit despite the urgent need for modernization across the U.S. military. President Obama’s 2013 budget proposes cutting $45 billion from last year’s budget request, with nearly $19 billion coming from procurement alone. This account, which the Pentagon uses to buy everything from IT services to weapons systems, is bearing a disproportionate burden of defense cuts. Procurement only comprises roughly one-fifth of the defense budget but it will cough up almost 42 percent to meet the defense budget cut targets.

President Obama’s latest defense budget proposal does not adequately resource the military’s new defense strategy, making the military’s intended emphasis on the Asia-Pacific a “paper pivot.” The president is proposing to retire massive numbers of ships and aircraft before the end of their service lives at a time when numbers matter because the demand for U.S. presence abroad is not declining.

The president also wants to slash the active-duty Army and Marine Corps by 100,000 soldiers and Marines while leaving the entire Department of Defense civilian workforce of over 750,000 people intact. The president is requesting a fresh round of base closures in the U.S. The falling defense budget will also reduce America’s manufacturing workforce that build ships, vehicles, and aircraft–many of which are small businesses. Finally, the National Guard is taking a big hit in nearly all 50 states even as the Pentagon’s new strategy calls for an increased reliance on these very forces as the active military shrinks.

President Obama’s budget cuts the U.S. military while asking those in uniform to accept more risk in their jobs and providing fewer resources to fulfill their missions. Congress should reject these proposals as going too far for too few and pass a budget resolution that adds additional resources to properly fund military readiness and modernization.

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U.S. Navy readiness continues its decline amid the ‘pivot’ to Asia

By Mackenzie Eaglen

February 3, 2012, 9:30 am

At the same time as the Obama administration is heralding a strategic “pivot” towards Asia and the growing threat of Chinese military modernization, the U.S. Navy continues to put on a brave face in the middle of a growing readiness crisis. While not new, this alarming trend was highlighted again this week when Navy officials announced that, for the second time in seven months, the USS Essex, a Marine Corps amphibious assault ship, has failed to meet a commitment at sea due to equipment failure or maintenance issues.

The Navy’s No. 2 wasn’t understating the problem when he told Congress last year: “The stress on the force is real. And it has been relentless.”

This is not an isolated occurrence. A high operational tempo over the past decade has put an incredible strain upon all of America’s military. As fewer ships spend less time at home making repairs, regular wear and tear takes a heavy toll. In fact, in 2011, nearly one-quarter of the entire surface fleet failed inspection. The Navy has 22 cruisers in service and every one of them has cracks in the aluminum superstructure. Meanwhile, half of the Navy’s deployable aircraft are not combat ready and engines aboard two F/A-18s have caught fire aboard ships underway.

While the Navy has shrunk by 15 percent since 1998, it has deployed a relatively constant number of ships at sea at any given time. Between two major wars in the Middle East, a third in Libya, anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa, disaster relief in Asia, and maritime deterrence in the Western Pacific, the U.S. military has increasingly been asked to do more with less.

The USS Essex was supposed to take part in Cobra Gold—a joint exercise with Thailand—before it had to back out due to mechanical problems. In many ways, this incident can be seen as a metaphor for the entire shift to Asia. On paper, it sounds like a smart and forward-thinking policy—it even involves allies and burden-sharing. What’s not to love?

But without the proper resources, Cobra Gold, as well as the larger “pivot” and its supposed emphasis on air and naval power, is just a paper tiger.

If the administration is serious about properly resourcing an American military emphasis in the Pacific while not taking our eye off the ball everywhere else, the president must send over a budget that proposes to reverse the decline of the Navy’s size, fleet, and readiness. Anything less should be called out for what it really is: a strategy that says one thing and a budget that does another.

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A defense budget that erodes America’s military power

By Mackenzie Eaglen

January 26, 2012, 4:40 pm

This week, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta provided a preview of the U.S. military’s budget for fiscal year 2013. A deluge of Pentagon jargon such as “reversibility,” “rebalance,” and “sustainment” masks the fundamental reality: this is a budget that will weaken the military. Despite Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey’s protestations to the contrary, this budget request is a clear pathway towards dismantling America’s military supremacy.

The severe modernization cuts under this administration increase the likelihood that U.S. military capabilities will fall short of the nation’s wide-ranging security commitments. Current budget plans indicate the United States may relinquish its military superpower status—not to another nation per se, but by reverting to a position where it lacks the capacity to engage and maintain a forward presence globally.

Economically, the president’s request lays off 100,000 active-duty soldiers and Marines. The budget also seeks a new round of U.S. base closings, retires crucial ships from the fleet, and delays the Joint Strike Fighter, by far the most important program to the health of the American defense industrial base and many small businesses around the country.

At a time when President Obama is calling for a rebirth of American manufacturing, it is wrong to jeopardize the health of America’s shipbuilding and aerospace manufacturing workforce—especially when the military needs these platforms now. This budget accelerates the trend of a defense manufacturing workforce in rapid decline. A recent working group hosted by The Brookings Institution concluded:

Not only then are the U.S. military services, but also American defense industry at a crossroads. … Careless defense reductions or poor planning won’t just cost jobs or competitiveness, but could actually result in lost American military industrial capability in core areas.

The report continues, stating:

As presidential candidates and other national leaders develop their platforms for the 2012 elections and beyond, any serious discussion of national security and the current state and future of the military must also give direct attention to matters of the American national security scientific and industrial base.

The administration’s words and actions simply don’t add up. While President Obama has spoken at length about the strategic importance of the Pacific and the growing threat of China, the defense budget greatly lacks the capabilities to back up the military’s ever-growing commitments.

The Obama administration is proposing a “pivot” to Asia in name only. Take, for example, the reckless proposals to eliminate six tactical aircraft squadrons and shrink the Navy’s fleet by 16 ships. A 2009 RAND study identified the current force as too small and the United States losing an air war over the Taiwan Straits due to an overwhelming Chinese advantage in numbers of aircraft.

Make no mistake: as defense budgets go down, so does America’s capacity to give its men and women in uniform the tools they need to defend our interests abroad—as well as our ability to sustain the world-class scientists, engineers, designers, and machinists that comprise our defense manufacturing industrial base. The military deserves better than this budget, and so does America.

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Don’t give the Pentagon the pink slip

By Mackenzie Eaglen

January 24, 2012, 10:21 pm

Tonight, President Obama spoke at length about revitalizing American manufacturing and betting on American workers. Citing the courage and determination of America’s service members, the president argued that America can soon get back on its feet. Despite this soaring rhetoric, however, the president’s message is truly frustrating—and hypocritical. The administration’s policies are directly contributing to unemployment and the decline of American industry, and what is more, they are putting our men and women in uniform at risk by denying them the cutting edge technology they need.

The president is already giving the pink slip to 100,000 active duty personnel. These are soldiers and Marines who are returning home from combat only to find that the government that they risked their lives to defend no longer wishes to employ them. And these cuts are only the beginning.

The sequestration cuts triggered by the failure of the Super Committee would eliminate more than one million jobs across America as production lines shut down and the defense industrial base falls into decay. The cuts from sequestration alone would raise national unemployment by 0.6 percent.

It gets worse. The sequestration cuts would not just end jobs—they would gut research, development, and procurement of vital next-generation programs that the military relies upon to maintain technological dominance on the battlefield. Since the Second World War, America has maintained a simple contract with its armed forces: America will send you into battle when necessary to protect the nation’s vital interests, but when you go to war, you will do so with the finest equipment and training possible.

Over the past few years, the Obama administration has been all too quick to say to the military, “Maybe you don’t need quite the best equipment. Maybe you can get by with older planes, ships, and tanks.” This hurts our national security, but more importantly, it hurts our men and women putting their lives on the line for all of us. This would be irresponsible for any president, but it rings especially hypocritical for one who puts such emphasis on everyday hardworking Americans.

The future does not have to be like this. President Obama can maintain America’s contract with its military and help keep American jobs by working to undo the disastrous sequestration cuts and infusing much-needed capital into the defense budget. More work—much more work—needs to be done in order to help the military recover from already ruinous reductions, but as the president himself said, “America remains the one indispensable nation in the world.” Let us resolve to keep it that way.

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