The Navy will soon need to request additional funding from Congress to cover an estimated $600 million in repairs to the USS John S. McCain and USS Fitzgerald, Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer said Wednesday.
The two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are needed back in the western Pacific as soon as possible and the Navy will most likely need the repair funding before next year’s defense budget, Spencer said during a meeting with reporters at the Pentagon.
“We are going to have to go back up on the Hill because that is outside budget numbers,” he said. “It’s going to have to be sooner rather than later.”
The service is now operating on a stopgap budget until December, when Congress hopes to hammer out a final defense budget. But most 2018 Navy priorities have already been set in National Defense Authorization bills passed by the Senate this week and the House in July.
The McCain and Fitzgerald were badly damaged and 17 sailors were killed in separate collisions with merchant ships in June and August. The incidents triggered Navy reviews, officer firings and questions about the training and maintenance of the fleet.
Spencer said Fitzgerald will likely be out of action for at least a year due to the needed repairs.
“We haven’t had the full assessment of McCain yet, but we’d hope that that is a much quicker fix because the combat systems weren’t damaged in that case,” he said.
The two ships, along with the USS Antietam cruiser that ran aground this year, were among seven ships stationed in Japan as part of the military’s missile defense system. Now that they are out of service the Navy is trying to fill the gap.
Spencer said the service is “rebalancing” in the western Pacific and is still able to provide missile defense, which has become a focus amid North Korean tests, but declined to say whether specific ships are being moved into the region.
“The ballistic missile defense system works well with what we have. The matrix is there,” Spencer said. “Needless to say, we need to get McCain and Fitz back out there as quickly as we can.”
