Pentagon proposes junking the Truman

The Truman, a Nimitz-class carrier, is 23 years old, and normally would have a service life of 50 years.

“We’re using every trick in the book, if you will, to get to a more powerful Navy as quickly as possible,” said Adm. John Richardson, chief of naval operations, at a defense forum in Washington last week.

The U.S. currently has 11 aircraft carriers, and is under a congressional mandate to maintain a 12-carrier fleet.

With U.S. commanders complaining they can’t always get a carrier strike group when they need one, skeptical members of Congress are not persuaded that scuttling the Truman makes sense, especially because the replacement reactors have already been bought and paid for at a cost of roughly $538 million.

“The problem is, if you get rid of Truman early, you’re taking a very valuable asset out of Navy inventory,” said Rep. Robert Wittman, R-Va., ranking member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces.

“You’re now dropping our number from 11 down to 10, and it takes you years and years and years to actually get up to 12,” Wittman said, appearing at the same forum as Richardson.

[Related: The Pentagon’s prize fighter is ready for its close-up]

In an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday, the acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, said the decision to give up the Truman was a “very difficult” one, but the cost savings, he argued, would buy more lethality in the fleet by accelerating the acquisition of a second Ford-class ship.

“The Truman decision represents some of the strategic choices we made in this year’s budget,” Shanahan said.

Committee Chairman Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., wasn’t entirely buying it, insisting the math didn’t add up.

“I’m still not happy with the results of that and my mental numbers don’t agree,” he said in response to Shanahan’s explanation.

Critics have argued for years that the glory days of the big supercarrier may be over, as the massive ships become more vulnerable to high-tech weapons, such as hypersonic glide vehicles, and some insiders think the demise of the Truman may be a sign that the Navy will ultimately move to smaller, more maneuverable carriers.

But the Navy’s top admiral dismissed the idea that America’s carriers are in any danger of becoming obsolete.

“This is not about the survivability or vulnerability of the aircraft carrier. The Gerald R. Ford class carrier’s going to be a lot more capable than the Nimitz class carrier,” said Richardson, who never misses a chance to extol the improvements in the $13 billion ship.

[Also read: The Pentagon is downplaying serious problems with the F-35, watchdog says]

“That aircraft carrier, that ship is going to go out and destroy every record for aviation operations at sea that’s ever existed,” said Richardson, who insists the new carrier can generate a third more aircraft sorties with a third fewer crew, a cost-saving of $4 billion over the life of the ship.

The new design can generate three times as much electrical power, which is crucial in the coming age of directed energy weapons, high-power microwaves, and pulse sensors.

Still, Congress is looking at some very simple math: If you retire one carrier early, you end up with one less carrier. Analysts such as Thomas Callender of the Heritage Foundation believe the funding to refuel the Truman will be restored, if not this year, then next.

“The chances of Congress letting Congress retire Truman early I think are slim,” said Callender, a retired Naval officer.

As for carriers going the way of the dinosaurs, “I do not see aircraft carrier becoming obsolete in the foreseeable future,” Callender said. “No one has yet shown me that ‘hey, this can do and replace all the things that the carrier can do.'”

[Opinion: How to fix America’s broken aircraft carrier strategy]