GAO: Navy ‘Wasted’ $1.84 Billion in Repairs to Cruisers Cut from the Fleet
Sam LaGrone
December 17, 2024 7:27 PM
An ambitious 12-year plan to modernize the Navy’s aging guided-missile Ticonderoga-class cruiser fleet wasted $1.84 billion in attempting to fix ships that the service ultimately chose to decommission, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Tuesday.
The Senate-ordered investigation into the phased cruiser modernization plan found that since 2015, the service spent $3.7 billion to modernize seven cruisers and will only successfully deliver three back to the fleet.
“The Navy has divested four of the cruisers prior to finishing modernization and without providing any operational value to the Navy, thereby wasting the $1.84 billion already spent to modernize them. The Navy decided to divest these ships, in part, due to a lack of funding to finish them, according to Navy officials,” reads the GAO report.
“The three ships that have completed or are planned to complete modernization were scheduled for only one deployment before the Navy planned to divest them, however it has now extended their service lives and plans to decommission them in fiscal year 2030.”
https://news.usni.org/2024/12/17/gao-navy-wasted-1-84-billion-in-repairs-to-cruisers-cut-from-the-fleet
