Not since the Cold War era has the demand on Navy shipbuilding been so high, but the difference now is a flat defense budget and a decade of lost buying power, a top service official told lawmakers.
By law, the Navy must have a 355-ship fleet but presently has just 296 ships, and its latest 30-year shipbuilding plan would not reach the requirement until 2031 to 2033 if it was funded fully. But that plan projects 4.1% budget increases each year. This year’s defense budget is flat (0% growth), making the benchmark to keep pace with China’s rapidly growing navy impossible, service officials and hawkish lawmakers warn.
“Competition on, under, and above the seas is intensifying,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday told members of the House Appropriations Committee in a hearing on the fiscal year 2022 Navy and Marine Corps budget.
“China and Russia are rapidly modernizing their militaries, attempting to undermine our alliances, undermining the free and the open international order we’ve worked so hard to sustain,” he said.
‘LESS TALK AND MORE ACTION’: NAVY SAYS IT HAS A CLEAR VISION DESPITE CONFLICTING SHIPBUILDING PLANS
To put the challenge into context, Gilday said the last time the Navy had to build so many ships to keep pace with an adversary was the period from 1981 to 1985. The foe back then: the Soviet Union.
“We were trying to recapitalize the strategic deterrent and grow the conventional force,” he said. “During that time, the DOD budget rose at an annual rate of 7.5%. Right now, our buying power has been flat since 2010.”
The fiscal year 2021 budget does not put the Navy on a funding trajectory to afford 300 ships, while assessments by the Navy, industry, and think tanks call for a sea service larger than 355 ships to meet America’s national security and global alliance needs.
“In terms of challenges in the future, I would tell you, I think it comes down to not technology, per se, but numbers of ships,” he said, responding to a question about increasing competition in the Arctic and far north, where the Navy has conducted some 20 exercises in the past 18 months as polar ice caps melt and open new waterways.
“While our fleet can deliver on those missions today, we’ll be increasingly challenged to do so in the future,” he said. “America needs a larger, more capable Navy. We need greater numbers of submarines, smaller and more numerous surface combatants, and more lethal offensive capabilities, a host of unmanned platforms under and above the seas, and modern strategic deterrents.”
Much of the Navy’s shipbuilding budget is wrapped up in modernization efforts.
Some 30% of the budget alone is part of the Columbia-class ballistic submarine meant to replace the 40-year-old Ohio-class sub to perform a “no fail” nuclear deterrent mission.
To fulfill its need for strategic sealift, the Navy got congressional permission to buy used ships at one-tenth the cost.
Tens of billions of dollars more are wrapped up in modernizing America’s four shipyards, each of which is over 100 years old.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Harker told lawmakers he hoped some of the Navy’s $20 billion, 20-year shipyard upgrade plan might be wrapped into President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill.
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Gilday told lawmakers the U.S. Navy was not going to keep up with China and can only barely maintain the fleet size it currently has.
“We’re moving out on that to close a capability gap that is only widening with China,” Gilday said of the plan to buy used ships. “Three fifty-five is the law. The short answer from the Navy is more ships, but they gotta be manned, they’ve got to be filled with weapons.”
