“The big number that the Navy is looking at is usually
anchored to presence requirements. It is crazy that we
always measure our naval capacity in terms of numbers of
ships. Numbers of ships does not necessarily tell you the
power,” Conetta said.
He noted that an aircraft carrier today is a much more
powerful than it would have been 20 or 30 years go.
Reducing the fleet to 230 ships, the task force contends, would save about $126.6 billion from 2011 to
2020.
Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of operations (CNO),
has emphasized that 313 ships represents “the floor”
total for the future fleet force, not the top number, if
the Navy is to meet a full-range of missions over the
next several decades.
The Navy continues to hold to that figure.
“As stated in the 30-year shipbuilding plan that was
submitted to Congress Feb. 1, previous analyses determined that 313 ships is the floor for the Navy’s force
structure,” said Lt. Nate Christensen, a Navy spokesman.
“I agree with now three different CNOs, who said that
313 ships is a floor not a ceiling and that you need these
capabilities” in order to deter wars, said Rep. Gene Taylor,
D-Miss., chairman of the House Armed Services seapower
and expeditionary forces subcommittee.
Having a fleet of at least 313 ships is important for
several critical reasons, he argued: It takes a long time to
build the ships, it takes a long time to train the crews,
and it takes a long time to grow the captains and the senior petty officers who handle the weapons systems.
“You certainly can’t go to your corner rental store to
get an aircraft carrier, a submarine or a destroyer,”
Taylor said. “Given the lethality of weapons around the
world, it is just unrealistic to think that if there is a
future conflict you can recover the ships that are lost.
You have to have the ability to respond to those losses.”
Additionally, he indicated that perception is almost
as important as building the requisite number of ships
and training the people to operate them.
“I do not want to create a set of circumstances where
[the adversaries] think they might have a chance,” he said.
Taylor stressed that the shipbuilding budget has been
essentially frozen at $15 billion for the last decade.
“We are one of the few groups that tries to do a better job with limited resources,” he said.
Among the options the task force recommends in
the report to shake up the status quo is to cancel the
Navy’s and Marine Corps’ buy of the F- 35 and fulfill
the requirement for additional aircraft instead with
F/A-18E/F Super Hornets — a move that would meet
with stiff resistance from the services and the Pentagon
leadership.
The task force brushes off the Marine Corps’ stated
need for vertical-takeoff-and-landing version of the F- 35
U.S. MARINE CORPS
A Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) exe-
cutes testing maneuvers at the Quantico, Va., Marina and
Range 15 in May 2009. The Sustainable Defense Task
Force has recommended canceling the EFV program,
which has been plagued by delays, cost overruns and
design changes.
by noting that the capability has not proved critical to
operations in recent wars, and that those types of aircraft
are the “most dangerous” of all U.S. aircraft.
“Removing VSTOL [vertical and/or short takeoff and
landing] jets from amphibious assault ships and replac-
ing them with UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] or addi-
tional attack helicopters will alter the mix of capabilities
available to the nation,” the report said. “But the net
effective difference to our overall capabilities for waging
war will be negligible. Marine Corps pilots will continue
to fly F/A-18s, perhaps more than today, from the Navy’s
big deck carriers, and these will provide jet support to
the Corps’ combat elements on the ground.”
The cancellation of the high-profile F- 35 program
for the Navy and Marine Corps would net close to $10
billion in savings over the next decade, according to
the task force’s calculations.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, however, said in the May
issue of Seapower that the Navy remains “absolutely
committed to the F- 35 Joint Strike Fighter and to the
capabilities that it brings. We need it on our decks. The
Marines need it.” [See related story, page 44]
In order to save another $10 billion, the task force
recommends the cancellation of the Expeditionary
Fighting Vehicle that the Marine Corps has been hanging on to despite signs within the Pentagon that it
could go on the chopping block. The service’s stated
requirement for 573 of these vehicles can be met by a
combination of refurbished and newly built and updated AAV7A1s — the Corps’ current armored amphibious vehicles — the task force recommended. ■
