Dave Majumdar
The U.S. Navy will submit three Congressionally mandated force structure assessments to Capitol Hill within the next two weeks. While the Navy is not releasing the details of those three assessments, one of the service’s top uniformed officials told an audience at the Naval Submarine League’s 34th Annual Symposium that all three assessments—one by a think-tank, one by a federally-funded research center and one by the Navy itself—call for a significantly larger fleet.
The Need for a Larger Navy:
“I expect those reports to be out in about two weeks,” deputy chief of naval operations Vice Adm. Joe Mulloy said on Oct. 26. “Those three studies will go to the Hill and they’ll come out about 80 percent similar, but there’ll some differences. But they’re all, I assure you, looking for a bigger Navy.”
The studies looked at multiple different fleet configurations, different technologies and even novel ship designs— such as large flattop helicopter-carrying destroyers, similar to several types of Japanese vessels. However, the Navy will not accept any of the three proposals without the service’s leadership undertaking its own review since none of them participated in the process. “It was Navy study, but it wasn’t Navy leadership,” Mulloy said.
Nonetheless, the Navy leadership will take a look at that studies and come to a decision by roughly March of next year on how to proceed, Mulloy said. Meanwhile, the Navy leadership is conducting its own separate force structure assessment (FSA)—but even that study will likely call for a force larger than the current requirement for 308 ships, adding more surface combatants and additional submarines. “The number is bigger, you’ll see all the architectures,” Mulloy said. “The FSA will come out when it comes out is all I can really say. Because we have to get it through this administration to the next administration because it is talking about a Navy that is bigger than what we currently have. And for the first time—or the first time in a while—we’ll actually have a Navy that’s in our plan that is not funded.”
Mulloy said that the fleet size the that service is currently looking at will not be affordable unless the new presidential administration that will take office on Jan. 20, 2017 and the new Congress can agree to lift spending restrictions that are mandated under the Budget Control Act of 2011. “This truly will be something that will not be affordable unless we change the 30/30/30/10 OSD or raise the Department of Defense topline.”
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-verdict-the-us-navy-needs-get-bigger-needs-more-18200
