Trump’s Navy buildup

The to-do list before shipbuilders can get to work includes clarity from the administration about the mix of ships it proposes. This comes down to a decision between a fleet based on carriers, like today’s but just bigger, or a fleet that relies more heavily on small surface combatants. Then Congress needs to reach a deal to boost defense spending with a budget request that neither party supports.

Even if the massive fleet buildup passes Congress, industry will need to hire and train a sizable crew of new employees. It takes decades for the biggest ships to be built. Roman Schweizer, a defense analyst with Cowen and Company, said a 350-ship fleet is “several decades” away even in ideal circumstances, especially as aging ships in the existing fleet are retired.

“This buildup would take multiple decades and significantly more dollars in the shipbuilding account,” he said. “You don’t just add an aircraft carrier overnight or really over a decade.”

Trump proposes $603 billion for base national defense spending in fiscal 2018, a $54 billion increase over caps in the Budget Control Act. But that’s only 3 percent higher than President Obama’s plan. That $603 billion would include $574 billion in base Pentagon spending and $29 billion in other national defense spending, such as that for the Department of Energy. But when you factor in $65 billion for the overseas contingency operations account, which is not subject to budget caps, the total national defense topline is $668 billion.

That eye-watering number won’t gain any traction on Capitol Hill, say lawmakers and other experts, because Trump plans to offset the increase with $54 billion in cuts to non-defense spending, including cuts to the departments of State and Homeland Security that have already drawn the ire of both parties.

The “skinny budget” released by the administration in March did not contain specifics of the Navy buildup, such as the types or numbers of ships to be built or how quickly the service might grow.

Mark Cancian, senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the big first step toward the buildup won’t be taken in fiscal 2018. He estimates that the Navy will get only $2 billion more than $165 billion Obama sought, and the Navy could anyway put that money instead toward readiness accounts or aircraft investment, such as keeping the F/A-18 production line running.

“You’re not going to see a slew of new ships in ’18. Maybe you’ll see one new ship” he said. “I think there’ll be a lot of pressure to add a ship, but they don’t have a whole lot of money to do that.”

Details of Trump’s proposed buildup won’t come out until May, when the White House releases its full budget, though Cancian said the administration may wait to reveal its plans for future-year spending in its fiscal 2019 request next February.

The Navy’s new fleet assessment, which is similar to Trump’s overall number, provides some detail of what the service wants. A report released by the service in December said that the country needs 355 ships to counter growing threats from Russia and China.

The Navy now has 275 ships, but had been on track to build to 308. The proposed 355, says the Navy, balances risk and resources with a fleet that “can reasonably achieve success.” It’s still not what the service would build if there were no budget constraints.

The Navy’s requirement would add an aircraft carrier built by Newport News Shipbuilding, bringing the total to 12. It would add 16 more large surface combatants built by both General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls, four more amphibious warfare ships and 18 more attack submarines from Huntington Ingalls and General Dynamics Electric Boat. The plan also calls for three more combat logistics force ships, three more expeditionary support base ships and two more command and support ships.

Brian Slattery, an analyst at The Heritage Foundation, said he expects Trump to roughly follow the Navy’s force assessment, since it closely lines up with the president’s 350-ship goal.

Today’s shrunken Navy demonstrates why it must grow, Slattery says. Deployments last beyond seven months, whereas six months used to be the norm. Another telling example came recently when the Navy could not send even one carrier to the Persian Gulf because maintenance work had been so long deferred.

The fleet mix depends on how quickly Trump wants to grow the Navy, said Bryan McGrath, managing director of the FerryBridge Group. If the president wants 350 ships quickly, he should build more small surface combatants and a new fast patrol vessel that is both highly mobile and heavily armed, McGrath said. These ships are cheaper and less complex, so they can be built faster.

A fleet architecture plan from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which McGrath worked on, decreases the number of large surface combatants from 88 to 71 and increases the number of small surface combatants, allowing the Navy to be in more places at once.

McGrath argued that a fleet of smaller surface warships is more useful against the threats the country faces today and would be “instrumental in the opening phases of great power aggression.”

The Navy’s other option is to continue building the types of ships it already operates, including more large amphibious ships, destroyers and especially submarines.

The biggest question is about aircraft carriers. Some plans want a boost from 11 to 12 carriers, which is extremely expensive. Trump told sailors on the carrier Gerald R. Ford “we’re going to soon have more coming,” perhaps an indication of which way he’s thinking.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has his own ideas. In a January white paper, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee argued that it’s “unrealistic” to deliver 81 ships by 2022. Instead, he proposed procuring 59 ships during this time, including five fast-attack submarines, five fleet oilers, three destroyers, two amphibious ships, two afloat forward staging bases, two undersea surveillance ships, two survey ships, two patrol ships, one aircraft carrier and one new small surface combatant.

McCain also advocated abandoning the Littoral Combat Ship in favor of speeding up the procurement of the next small surface combatant, a true frigate to replace the LCS, which some argue can be saved but others argue should be rejected after years of shortfalls and problems. Under McCain’s timeline, the Navy would buy only the bare minimum of littoral combat ships to “serve as a bridge” for when the new small surface combatants begin arriving in 2022, about seven years ahead of the current plan.

McCain also said the Navy should focus investment on undersea warfare, where the U.S. has an advantage, and should procure two to three manned submarines per year in 2020 and four per year starting in 2021 to give industry time to ramp up to meet the government’s need.

“We cannot produce more submarines over the next five years even if we wanted to,” McCain wrote.

Slattery said he expected to see investment in facilities that build attack submarines so that three can be launched each year instead of two at most now.

Most fleet architecture plans agree that the submarine fleet must grow. As a result, Newport News, a subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls Industries, and Electric Boat, part of General Dynamics, have a lot to gain.

“No matter what happens, things look good for them,” Cancian said. “We’re almost certainly going to be buying more submarines. Even the Obama plan called for a lot of submarine building because you have Columbia-class coming in. Trump will almost certainly add more Virginia [class submarines] to that program, which will be very good for them.” The Columbia class will replace the Navy’s fleet of Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines.

Schweizer also stressed that the defense industrial base beyond the shipyards also stands to benefit. Suppliers of steel and complex machinery are going to get a payday.

“While the shipyards or shipbuilders like General Dynamics or Huntington Ingalls Industries are probably the most directly thought of as beneficiaries, the companies that do sensors, electronics and missiles like Lockheed, Raytheon or BAE Systems are some of the ones that would also participate in this sort of broader shipbuilding endeavor,” he said.

Shipyards that build subs likely have the most to gain, but accelerating sub construction is also likely to be the “toughest slog” because the workforce is so specialized, McGrath said. It requires a slow increase and costly worker training.

Industry and suppliers try to scale themselves to the annual needs of government, so they don’t pay to maintain excess staff and facilities that eat profits, Schweizer said. While industry isn’t yet sized to build what’s wanted, it can ramp up to fill the government’s need as long as it is done gradually.

McGrath said accelerating work in the shipyards would require the hiring of people such as sheet metal workers or electricians — “this sort of caricature of the Trump voter” — and would be politically advantageous for Trump.

“This is a political opportunity for the Trump administration to say look at this, building these ships is employing more people, people who have gotten left behind by the economy,” McGrath said.