The secretary of the Air Force on Wednesday said that if the Navy doesn’t have to fund the Ohio-class replacement submarine through its shipbuilding budget, the Air Force shouldn’t have to gut its procurement coffers to pay for the bomber on its own either.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus again made the case before the House Armed Services Committee that paying for the $100 billion Ohio-class replacement submarine with the shipbuilding budget will essentially end all other Navy procurement projects for decades. It instead plans to use a special National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund.
“You’re going have to look at this program with a national lens because if you drop this into the middle of a Navy shipbuilding budget it will just gut Navy shipbuilding for decades to come,” Mabus said. “So the reason that we’re focused on it is because it is an existential program and the reason that we’re focused on how to do it is to do it without damaging our conventional superiority as well.”
The program to replace the current Ohio-class ballistic missile subs is a joint venture between General Dynamics Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding and is planning 12 hulls.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James then piped up that her service was also facing an expensive procurement project. The contract for the long range strike-bomber, now called the B-21, is valued at about $80 billion to procure 100 aircraft.
“If I could just add one point … I would just like to say I am not fully familiar with the strategic deterrence fund that you all have referenced here, but if that is a strategic deterrence fund which would help or benefit one leg of the triad, I would ask for consideration that all legs of the triad be considered in such an approach,” she said.
The Air Force awarded the contract for the country’s next stealth bomber last year to Northrop Grumman.
