Excessive Shrinkage’ Warning: Cuts In U.S. Navy Force Structure Risk America’s Global Interests

(Washington, D.C.): A subject in urgent need of adult supervision may just get it this
afternoon
when the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Seapower Subcommittee meets to consider the
Clinton Administration’s Fiscal Year 1999 request for naval shipbuilding. After all, few
areas of
military activity more transparently reveal the dire, cumulative effect of the thirteen years
of defense budget cuts than the rapidly shrinking fleets of the U.S. Navy. And
few areas are
more likely to translate into grave problems for American security interests around the
world than the attendant reduction in this nation’s forward presence, global power
projection and independent combat capability.

Enter Ronald O’Rourke

The Congress has been given ample warning of the trend. For years, Ronald
O’Rourke — the
Congressional Research Service’s outstanding researcher charged with monitoring U.S. naval
force structure issues — has been issuing alerts about the Navy’s inability to maintain the fleets it
says it needs within available and projected shipbuilding funding. The most recent of these was a
30 October 1997 CRS Report for Congress entitled “Navy/DoD Projected
Long-Range (Fiscal
Year 2004-FY 2015) Ship Procurement Rate: Issues for Congress.” href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾ Among its more troubling
highlights were the following:

• “Unless ship service lives are increased…the FY2004-FY2015 shipbuilding plan
  would
  make it very difficult for policy-makers to maintain a Navy of even 300 ships in the
  long-term. Using a fleet-wide average ship service life of 35 years, a sustained Navy
  ship
  procurement rate of 6.3 to 7.7 new ships per year would result in a Navy of about 220 to
  270
  ships by the late 2020s.

“If the fleet-wide average service life turns out to be closer to 30 years, then 6.8
to
7.7 new ships per year would in the long run result in a Navy closer to 190 to 280
ships.

• “It is not clear whether a Navy of less than 300 ships could perform its stated
  missions….In assessing the risks of this scenario, it can be noted that this rapid and
  significant
  diminution in the size of the Navy would occur at about the same time that the United States
  might be confronted with a large and modern Chinese navy, a rejuvenated Russian navy and
  significantly improved maritime military capabilities in other countries, such as Iran.
• “The projected FY2004-FY2015 ship procurement rate raises the question of whether DoD
  and the Navy plan to maintain a 330- to 346-ship fleet. The 346-ship figure was first
  established by the October 1993 Bottom-Up Review of U.S. defense policy and programs, and
  Navy testimony in 1994-1996 variously supported a fleet of 330 to 346 ships….

“Recent reports…state that the Administration is planning to reduce the size of
the Navy to 313 ships by FY1999 and 306 ships by FY2003.” [These
downsizing
plans have subsequently been officially confirmed.]

• “Since FY1985, the Navy’s ship procurement account, known formally as the
  Shipbuilding and
  Conversion, Navy (SCN) appropriation account, has received an average of about 12.8 percent
  of total DoD procurement funding. This compares with an average of about 15.0 percent for
  the 30-year period 1955-1984 and average of about 16.7 percent for the 15-year period
  FY1970-FY1984.
• “It is…possible that the relatively low rate of new Navy ship procurement projected for
  FY2004-FY2015 results not from a low priority having been given to SCN in the projected
  allocation of DoD procurement funding, but rather from an inability to fund adequately
  total DoD procurement on a total budget of about $60 billion.“

In the Navy’s Own Words

An unclassified executive summary of the Navy’s Program Objective Memorandum (POM) —
a
key planning document leading to the preparation of the annual presidential request for the
Defense Department — dated August 1997 has the same bottom line:

“[This] Program Review (PR-99) presents an SCN plan that is executable, but
does
not meet the long-term recapitalization requirements of the Navy. The plan
supports procurement of less than 6 ships per year.

“There are two significant problems associated with continued procurement at
these levels. First, Navy forward presence and warfighting missions require a
minimum of 300 ships. Even with extended service lives, procurement at an
average level of six ships per year will not maintain a 300 ship Navy.

“The second significant problem is that the shipbuilding industrial base is not
adequately supported. We are pursuing shipbuilding plans to solve both of
these problems but there are no easy solutions. As we work to develop POM-00, there
is a significant potential that we will require topline relief to
address these issues.” (Emphasis added throughout.)

The Bottom Line

Dynamic changes in the international environment — changes that are placing new demands
on the
United States’ ability to maintain forward presence and project global power at the same time as
the use of bases and airfields on allied territory, from the Persian Gulf to Japan, is becoming more
problematic — place an increasing premium on naval power. The strains currently in evidence in
the Navy’s ability to maintain two carriers off Iraq, and the resulting shortfalls in coverage made
necessary elsewhere, offer adequate grounds for revisiting the decision to drop the
requirement from 346 ships to roughly 300. In particular, the wisdom of permitting
such a
momentous decision to be driven by budgetary considerations rather than by a clear-eyed
assessment of the military requirements cries out for congressional review and course-correction.

In addition, members of the Seapower Subcommittee and their counterparts elsewhere on
Capitol
Hill must urgently come to grips with the long-term implications of inadequate funding
for
construction of modern aircraft carriers and other naval vessels. For even if the Navy
can
somehow manage to maintain roughly 300 ships through the year 2015, unless it is adequately
programming for and building⁽²⁾ the ships that
will replace those facing block obsolescence
thereafter, the force structure will rapidly decline precipitously. Absent a concerted
redirection
of the planned Navy SCN program, today’s Congress will bear a measure of
responsibility
for the dangers to vital U.S. interests that will surely arise in that future period — and the
Nation’s inability to safeguard those interests.

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1. CRS Report for Congress 97-981F.

2. This requires, in turn, having an adequate industrial base in which
to perform such naval
construction.