The U.S. Navy’s capacity to protect America and insure safety and commerce on the high seas is rapidly sinking.
In 1990, the Navy’s 600 ships guarded the U.S., and insured international peace as well as orderly global commerce. Today, the aging 250 ship fleet faces major threats from dramatically increased and hostile Russian and Chinese naval forces, as well as regional challenges from Iran. China’s naval force will be larger than the America’s within five years, and both Russia and China have technologies that places even the most powerful U.S. vessels at high risk. In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Admiral Gary Roughead stated that China “doesn’t want to build a navy that’s equivalent to the U.S., [they] want to build a navy that surpasses the U.S.”
The problem is about to get worse.
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS) “The planned size of the Navy, the rate of Navy ship procurement, and the prospective affordability of the Navy’s shipbuilding plans have been matters of concern for the congressional defense committees for the past several years. The Navy’s FY2015 30-year (FY2015-FY2044) shipbuilding plan…does not include enough ships to fully support all elements of the Navy’s 306-ship goal over the entire 30-year period.
“In particular, the Navy projects that the fleet would experience a shortfall in amphibious ships from FY2015 through FY2017, a shortfall in small surface combatants from FY2015 through FY2027, and a shortfall in attack submarines from FY2025 through FY2034…[the] Navy is still recovering from the FY 2013 sequestration in terms of maintenance, training, and deployment lengths. Only 1/3 of Navy contingency response forces are ready to deploy within the required 30 days…
“Unless naval forces are properly sized, modernized at the right pace, ready to deploy with adequate training and equipment, and capable to respond in the numbers and at the speed required by Combatant Commanders, they will not be able to carry out the Nation’s defense strategy as written. We will be compelled to go to fewer places, and do fewer things. Most importantly, when facing major contingencies, our ability to fight and win will neither be quick nor decisive. Unless this Nation envisions a significantly diminished global security role for its military, we must address the growing mismatch in ends, ways, and means. The world is becoming more complex, uncertain, and turbulent. Our adversaries’ capabilities are diversifying and expanding. Naval forces are more important than ever in building global security, projecting power, deterring foes, and rapidly responding to crises that affect our national security.”
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Mistakes made today will have consequences for decades to come. Naval vessels cannot be built rapidly, particularly with America’s reduced shipbuilding capacity. As quoted in a recent Breaking Defense article, “Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 10th, ‘you see the effects today on….our shipyards. You’ll see the effects on our fleet ten years from now, 15 years from now, 20 years from now’…The moral, as Mabus told Senate appropriators, is that ‘if you miss a year building a Navy ship, you never make it up.”
Breaking Defense also quotes Admiral Jonathan Greenert ‘s statement that
“I worry about the shipbuilding industrial base… If sequestration forces steep cuts to the Navy’s shipbuilding account … the impact on the size of the fleet “would take years to manifest,” … last for decades, so building fewer today generally comes back to bite you in a generation…
“But more importantly,” the admiral went on, “there’s some likelihood we lose one or two [ship] builders, and we only have five. Bath Iron Works in Maine, Electric Boat in Connecticut, Newport News in Virginia, Ingalls in Mississippi, and NASSCO in California: These are the “Big Five,” down from the “Big Six” since the closure of Avondale in Louisiana. (Concentrating the industry even more, Ingalls and Newport belong to Huntington-Ingalls Industries; the other three yards all belong to General Dynamics). Could we really go down to a Big Four or even a Big Three?”
Testifying before Congress in March, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter noted “For decades…U.S. global power projection has relied on the ships, planes, submarines, bases, aircraft carriers, satellites, networks and other advanced capabilities that comprise the military’s technological edge…Today that superiority is being challenged in unprecedented ways.” Carter also stated that America’s aircraft carrier fleet will probably continue to be reduced in size.