Analysts Skeptical of Navy Plan
By Sara Hatch
WASHINGTON, March 30 – Analysts criticized the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan Thursday, asserting that its goals are unattainable and that the proposed rate of production would in time be a greater threat to national security.
Officials from the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office and the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments testified before the House Armed Services Projection Forces Subcommittee that the Navy would not be able to meet the goals of its long-term plan, including reaching a level of 313 ships, because of over-optimistic planning and further losses in the design and industrial base.
All of the analysts agreed that it was almost totally certain that the plan would not work and that it would in many cases produce a high level of risk, the third-highest category of risk. These estimates go counter to the generally accepted moderate risk that the Navy presented in testimony earlier in the hearing.
Various causes for failure were proposed by the analysts but they were widespread and addressed many issues.
Robert Work, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the current plan was prepared “by surface warriors for surface warriors,” leaving out a great part of the naval force, including the Virginia-class submarines produced at Electric Boat in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Ron O’Rourke, a specialist in national defense for the Congressional Research Service, said the plan “does not contain enough ships” and called into question the reliability of the Navy’s past proposed budgets.
Some of the analysts pointed out that the total number of ships produced during the 30-year period would in fact fall below the 313 mark that the Navy has established in its plan. Submarines in particular would at one point fall as low as 40, a full 8 ships below the plan’s required 48.
Work said this was particularly a problem in terms of national security, reaching the highest in the four levels of risk, the “red line” category of risk, for submarines. Part of this he attributed to the loss of the design base, because at this point there are no new design plans being executed.
One of the proposed answers to this problem is a plan Congressman Rob Simmons, R-Conn., has introduced that would allow designers to begin plans for small diesel submarines that would then be sold to Taiwan, a plan the Taiwanese defense ministry supports.
O’Rourke said at the hearing that this could benefit Electric Boat in terms of preserving the jobs of designers. But in an interview after the hearing, he said he was concerned that the diesel subs planning would not maintain all of the skills critical to building nuclear submarines, a point echoed by other analysts at the hearing.
He said another solution would be to advance production of other kinds of submarines as a way to shore up the design base.
Some of the analysts also backed the long-claimed assertion by the submarine industry and some members of Congress that moving up the deadline for doubling yearly production to two submarines would reduce the cost per submarine and do something to offset the low number of ships that would be in service.
O’Rourke said the Navy would be able to save half the cost savings it is seeking by doubling the total number of submarines produced each year. He also made the point that for every year that two-ship production is advanced prior to 2012,the total number of ships would bottom out at one boat higher.
Eric Labs, the principal analyst for the national security division of the Congressional Budget Office, agreed with O’Rourke. He said that by spreading the costs over two ships would be better.
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