Analysts: Budget Shows Fewer Navy Ships Than Expected in Next 5 Years

By OTTO KREISHER, Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Navy will have at least 17 fewer ships than it expected over the next five years, but the drop in the active fleet may be only about half that much. However, the reduction in planned ship construction and the escalation of ship decommissionings could get worse if Congress and the administration cannot find a way to prevent the “sequester” of nearly half a trillion dollars in defense funding that could start next January.

Those were some of the observations from a forum on the pending defense budget proposal at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Jan. 27.

Whatever the number of ships that actually will leave the fleet in the next five years, it is clear the Navy is not only unlikely to ever reach its goal of 313 ships, but will drop below the current 284, which is the smallest fleet since just before World War I.

The 17-ship loss number was presented by Todd Harrison, the defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Harrison said he got the number from the Defense Department, but was not told which ships were included in that total.

Preliminary fiscal 2013 budget information the Pentagon released Jan. 26 showed a total of 20 ships either slated for early retirement or removed or delayed from the planned construction program.

That included seven Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruisers and two amphibious ships, probably from the Whidbey Island class of dock landing ships, which would be retired earlier than planned. The timing of those retirements, however, was not released.

There is no plan to start building a new class of cruisers and the Pentagon said construction of a new class of LSDs will be delayed until after the future year defense plan (FYDP), which runs through 2017.

The preliminary budget data also said construction of one new Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine would be moved outside the FYDP and two Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs) and eight Joint High Speed Vessels (JHSVs) would be cut from the construction program in that five years.

The Navy had planned to build four LCSs a year, working toward a total of 55. The planned number of JHSVs has been in flux, with 18 a likely total. Seven are under contract with Austal USA, which also builds one type of the LCS. Lockheed Martin builds the other type of LCS.

The Pentagon also said construction of the next America-class big-deck amphibious assault ship (LHA-8) would be delayed a year. The America, LHA-6, is under construction with delivery now expected late in 2013, and LHA-7 is under contract with Huntington Ingalls Industries.

In releasing the early budget information, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Navy would maintain its force of 11 aircraft carriers. But that number will drop to 10 because the Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered carrier, will be retired next year and its replacement, the George H. W. Bush, will not be commissioned until 2015 at the earliest.

Clark Murdock, a senior analyst at CSIS, said the decision not to cut a carrier could have been a hedge against the need to make deeper cuts if sequester is not avoided.