The Navy’s latest shipbuilding plan is falling flat with lawmakers and analysts as the Biden administration’s defense budget calls for a reduction in the fleet and the ability to put steel on targets even as China’s naval and Pacific presence grows.
The repackaged shipbuilding plan submitted to Congress departs from Trump-era plans that called for more than 500 new ships by 2045. The ambitious goal submitted by former President Donald Trump’s last defense secretary, Mark Esper, lacked any actual funding, but hawks contended it would facilitate the kind of strategy viewed as necessary to counter Beijing’s large investment in shipbuilding. Lawmakers have recently warned Pentagon officials they are worried about what they view as Biden’s lack of a long-term naval strategy.
To that end, some hawkish analysts say the 46th commander in chief is allowing the sea service to fall further behind, should his administration opt to wait another year before announcing a long-term fleet growth strategy — if it even decides to swell the fleet beyond existing spending plans.
The administration’s fiscal year 2022 budget blueprint also proposes a 9% degradation in the fleet’s overall firepower. Navy officials will have a chance to make their case again before Congress at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday.
“I was extremely shocked when the budget came out,” Heritage Foundation analyst and retired Navy Capt. Brent Sadler told the Washington Examiner.
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Sadler said the same Pentagon officials responsible for implementing former President Barack Obama’s failed pivot to Asia are still in high posts inside the Defense Department.
“It’s called ‘divest to invest.’ It’s never worked,” he said of the decommissioning of ships that would actually shrink the Navy in hopes that savings will be invested in ship production in coming years. “It basically just becomes a divest to shrink.”
In testimony before the latest shipbuilding plan was released, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins grilled Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley for a plan that does not even meet the congressionally mandated number of 355 ships.
The Navy currently stands at 296 vessels.
“China, on the other hand, now has the world’s largest navy, has about 60 more ships than our own fleet, and has surpassed our own 355-ship goal,” Collins said pointedly. “The Office of Naval Intelligence projects that China will have 400 battle-force ships by the year 2025.”
Austin argued that 355 was a “good goal to shoot for.”
“Size matters, but capabilities also matter,” the defense secretary said.
“An admiral once told me that quantity has a quality all of its own,” Collins responded.
But Sadler says the Navy plan also reduces capabilities.
He points to the decommissioning of seven Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruisers, each with 122 missile tubes.
The significance has repercussions for Chinese war planners.
“They count missile tubes. They look at how many weapons we could put down range in a salvo,” said Sadler. “Just in one year, you’re going to take out 9% of your firepower.”
Navy officials say they are balancing their needs with the available budget, which received $22.6 billion or a 7% increase this year in the president’s budget.
“The shipbuilding plan is about more than any single metric,” Navy Lt. Rob Reinheimer said.
“It is not just [Vertical Launching System] cells, it is about the radar, the combat system, and the reliability of the platform,” he added. “It is about balancing our future force with the most capability given the fiscal environment.”
‘Disarray’
While promising near-term cuts for a long-term investment, the Biden administration does not plan to release a 30-year shipbuilding plan until next March, in time for the fiscal year 2023 budget.
“This budget is throwing the shipbuilding industrial base further into disarray,” House Armed Services Committee ranking member Mike Rogers of Alabama said in testimony last week. “Shipbuilders are laying off workers because of the lack of Navy vision and chronic underfunding.”
Navy veteran and Virginia Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria was likewise unsatisfied with the administration.
“The law requires a 30-year shipbuilding plan and a future years defense plan (FYDP). Neither has been provided by the Pentagon,” she said in a statement provided to Defense News following the release of the congressional report.
Luria said that without the required planning documents, Congress may be forced to cut other programs to finance the required Navy structure. Luria then referred to another unclear aspect of the Thursday plan, which gives a range of ships needed rather than set numbers.
“When the Navy provides ranges of ships needed, it is clear that they do not have a strategy that defines actual requirements,” she said.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday defended the administration’s budget last week, noting that 20% of the budget this year is dedicated to Columbia class submarines.
“The submarines give us that greatest advantage,” Gilday said in explaining the allocation of limited resources. “That overmatch, that we have right now against China, we are unwilling to budge on.”
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Reinheimer indicated the Navy intends to keep pace with the China threat by replacing the Ticonderogas with Flight III Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers this decade and a new guided-missile destroyer class called DDG(x) in the 2030s.
“This year’s plan reflects hard choices,” said Reinheimer. “The Navy is carefully balancing readiness, capability, and capacity within the limits of available resources to ensure we do not build a hollow force.”
