Mar.
28, 2012 - 07:15PM |
By
CHRISTOPHER P. CAVAS
The U.S. Navy’s new 30-year shipbuilding plan for
2013 shows few unexpected changes, projecting a slightly smaller average fleet
size and slightly reduced shipbuilding rate.
The plan, sent
this week to Congress, projects an average fleet size through 2042 of 298
ships, a drop of seven ships from last year’s 306-ship standard. The force is
projected to rise from today’s 282-ship level to 300 ships by 2019.
Ten fewer ships
are scheduled to be bought over the three-decade time span, reducing last
year’s 276-ship 30-year total to 268, a drop from 9.2 ships per year to 8.9.
Many of the force reductions already have been
announced, particularly new orders to decommission seven Aegis cruisers more
than a decade before previously scheduled, a slowing in the rate of ballistic
missile defense destroyer conversions and cancellation of plans to buy more
than 10 small and cheap Joint High Speed Vessels. The amphibious fleet also is
being reduced by one ship.
Other changes already announced were shifts in the
aircraft carrier and littoral combat ship construction rates, and a decision to
push back new ballistic missile submarine construction by two years.
The new plan
covers the years 2013 to 2042, while last year’s documents covered 2012 to 2041.
The 30-year plan
is broken roughly into three major sections. Near term reflects the coming
decade, defined by the Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP) of 2013-2017 and a
second FYDP from 2018 to 2022.
The mid-term planning period covers 2023 to 2032,
while far-term planning begins in 2033.
For the near
term, the service projects an annual shipbuilding budget of $15.1 billion in 2012
constant dollars, a baseline used throughout the plan.
The rate of
spending rises to $19.5 billion a year in the mid-term, due largely to the
SSBN(X) Ohio Replacement Program, the effort to replace existing Trident
ballistic missile submarines.
Average yearly expenditures fall to $15.9 billion
per year for the far-term period.
Over the entire
30-year plan, the annual ship construction budget is projected at $16.8 billion
per year, including Navy and National Defense Sealift Fund ships.
For the most part, the annual shipbuilding rate
drops across the plan, but a number of ships are simply delayed, or shifted to
the right, rather than eliminated. Construction rates tend to pick up in the
2020s, then again fall below last year’s projections in the 2030s.
Destroyer construction shows a jump, and from 2023 on out two or three ships a
year are procured. Last year’s plan showed one or two ships a year, with
three ships only in 2036.
Construction of
attack submarines jumps to three in 2020,
falling to one per year in 2026, whereas last year the plan showed one per year
for every year beginning in 2023.
Force level
projections reflect the Navy’s decision to stretch the build time of new
aircraft carriers from five to seven years,
avoiding situations where the force, set by law at 11 ships, would temporarily
rise to 12 flattops. Now, the John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), funded in 2013, will be
delivered in 2022 rather than 2020, and the yet-to-be-named CVN 80, funded in
2018, will deliver in 2027.
Overall, the
carrier force drops to 10 ships beginning in 2040, where last year’s plan
showed 11 into that decade.
The attack
submarine force, projected last year to reach a low of 39 boats in 2030, now
bottoms out at 43 subs in 2028. The level begins to rise again in 2032 and
reaches 50 hulls in 2037. Last year’s plan projected only 45 submarines in
service for most of the late 2030s.
The number of
SSBN ballistic missile submarines drops from 14 boats to 13 boats in 2027.
But whereas last year’s plan never fell below 12 ships for any given year, the
new plan shows a force of 11 ships in 2029 and 10 in 2032, holding there until
the number starts to rise in the early 2040s.
The plan for
SSGN guided-missile submarines remains the same.
Two ships are decommissioned in 2026, and the last two are gone by 2028. The
Navy plans to replace the ships with a stretched version of SSN 774
Virginia-class attack submarines.
The number of large surface combatants — cruisers
and destroyers — drops in the near term but surpasses earlier projections starting
in the late 2020s. The force drops in
2014 to 78 ships, down from last year’s 85. The revised numbers remain from
two to 10 ships below the old numbers until 2027, when the new plan begins to
show more ships in service than under the old plan. The growth in the number of
destroyers in service is sustained through the remainder of the plan, with an
increase of as many as 11 ships a year.
The small surface combatant category, including
littoral combat ships (LCS), frigates and minesweepers, now shows an all-LCS
force in 2029, six years sooner than previously forecast.
The annual amphibious ship force level is one or
two ships below last year’s, returning to parity in the 2030s.
The plan provides few, if any, new details on
construction plans in the current FYDP, as those are included in the Navy’s
2013 budget request submitted in February.
But the second FYDP, for the years 2018 to 2022,
includes the most ambitious, complex and expensive new start of the plan, the
SSBN(X) submarine. The Navy plans for 12
new ships to replace 14 existing submarines, with detail design to begin in
2017 and the lead ship to be funded in 2021 — a change already announced
and two years later than last year’s schedule. The price tag for the first SSBNX is projected at
$11.7 billion, including $4.5 billion in non-recurring engineering costs and
$7.2 billion for the ship’s construction.
The second FYDP also will feature the start of the
LSD(X) dock landing ship replacement program. The new ships will be delivered
sooner than when the older LSDs are to be retired, a move the Navy says is “ahead of need,” but necessary to preserve the
shipbuilding industrial base and reduce the risk associated with the decision
to operate an amphibious force of only 32 ships, rather than the 38-ship force
the Marines say they need.
At the lower end of the scale, the first two of
five planned T-AGOS(X) ocean surveillance ship replacements and the first two
of four planned T-ARS(X) salvage ship replacements also are to be purchased in
the second FYDP.
Other details
listed in the new plan include:
• Up to 33
Flight III DDG-51-class destroyers will be bought featuring the new Air Missile
Defense Radar (AMDR), a replacement for the Aegis system’s SPY-1 series of
phased-array sensors. Twenty of the ships will come in during the mid-term
planning period, the last in 2030. Procurement of an “affordable follow-on,
multi-mission” destroyer is to begin in 2031.
• Both versions of the littoral combat ship (LCS)
will continue to be purchased through 2026, completing the initial, 55-ship inventory. The first follow-on
LCS(X) replacement is to be bought beginning in 2030.
• Procurement of a Virginia-class replacement
submarine design, tentatively designated SSN 774(X), is aiming for a 2033
start.
• Construction of Flight I LHA(R) amphibious
assault ship replacements is to continue, with one ship being built every four
years starting in 2024.
• The LSD(X) dock landing ship replacement program
remains at a total of 10 ships, the last coming in 2032.
• Plans remain to build two replacement submarine
tenders, with one each in 2023 and 2025.
•
The two long-serving LCC command ships, in service since 1970 and 1971, will be
replaced with new construction starting in 2032.
