Navy: No Need to Add DDG 1000s After All
By philip ewing
Published: 1 Aug 08:18 EDT (12:18 GMT)
Top Navy acquisition officials dramatically reversed course during a congressional hearing July 31, saying the service needed to purchase more Arleigh Burke-class DDG 51 destroyers, and no longer needs the next-generation destroyer it has been pushing for over the past 13 years.
This, after years of vigorously claiming the service needed to move beyond the 1980s technology in the Burkes and leap ahead with the new ship, the DDG 1000 Zumwalt class. Now, they're saying the Zumwalts just won't cut it, citing the planned ship's inability to fire advanced versions of the Standard Missile, contradicting previous industry claims.
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They also said there was a new "classified threat" for which the Burkes are better suited but would not go into specifics. Speaking for the Navy were Vice Adm. Barry McCullough, deputy chief of naval operations for integration of resources and capabilities; and Allison Stiller, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for ship programs.
"Now, we're turning on a dime," mused Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., a former Navy vice admiral, after hearing their testimony.
In earlier congressional and public discussions, the sticking point for the DDG 1000 had been its cost, which is now estimated to be $3.2 billion per copy. Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., chairman of the House Armed Service's Seapower subcommittee earlier this year struck the third Zumwalt from the Navy's budget request because he said ballooning costs for the advanced warships would bankrupt the Navy's acquisitions budget.
Navy leaders confirmed last week that they would end the ship class at two hulls, nixing earlier plans to build seven ships. Before that, the Navy had called for 32 hulls.
At the hearing, Taylor maintained his stance that cost was the biggest problem with the program. But the Navy's stated position July 31 wasn't that officials couldn't control the costs for its future ships but that the world threat picture had changed in such a way that it now makes more sense to build at least eight more Burkes. Precise details were still unclear for when the ships would be built and how they'd be outfitted.
"Why not go with the Zumwalt if you don't care about affordability?" Sestak asked.
Taylor, interjecting, said affordability may not have been a consideration for Navy planners, but it remained important to the subcommittee.
But McCullough maintained that more Burkes are needed to counter: a bigger threat from ballistic missiles; sea-skimming anti-ship cruise missiles; and quiet diesel-electric submarines.
They also told subcommittee members that the Marine Corps no longer needs the long-range fire support from the Zumwalts' 155mm Advanced Gun System, because such fire support could be provided by Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles and precision airstrikes. McCullough said the Marine Corps agreed, although a spokesman for Headquarters Marine Corps, Capt. Carl Redding, said he could not immediately confirm there had been a new accord with the Navy.
A second panel of congressional Navy experts, including Ron O'Rourke of the Congressional Research Service and Eric Labs of the Congressional Budget Office, told lawmakers they hadn't heard before McCullough mentioned it July 31 that the Marine Corps had withdrawn its requirement for long-range fire support from offshore naval guns.
Reporters weren't able to ask McCullough or Stiller for details about the acquisition plan for the new Burkes or the Marine Corps fire support issue. Surrounded by a phalanx of aides, McCullough and Stiller jogged from the hearing room and out the door of the Rayburn House Office Building into a waiting motorcade, ignoring shouted questions from journalists. It was a departure from previous hearings, where it's not out of the ordinary for witnesses to stop and answer reporters' questions after giving testimony.
Earlier in the hearing, many subcommittee members appeared incredulous that the Navy could have conducted such a sweeping re-evaluation of the world threat picture in just a few weeks, after spending some 13 years and $10 billion on the surface ship program known as DD 21, then DD(X) and finally, DDG 1000. That figure does not include the money spent for the two hulls.
Rep. Niki Tsongas, D-Mass., noted that in March, McCullough told Congress that DDG 1000 was critical the Navy's future missions. Did he still stand by his testimony?
McCullough and Stiller said they still thought the ship would be highly capable, but more Burkes would be better for today's asymmetrical threats. McCullough cited the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah's anti-ship missile attack on an Israeli patrol boat in 2006.
Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., asked why the Navy had made such an about-face after it had already asked for a third DDG 1000 in this year's budget request. Had the Navy done an analysis of alternatives, or consulted with other military commanders, before deciding to stop building DDG 1000 after two ships?
No, McCullough said, adding that when Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead started his job last October, the new Navy leader pointed out an "asymmetric mismatch" in what the Navy would need and the types of ships it was building. The service had "excess capacity in fire support," so it didn't need more of the new ships it has been planning, in various stages, since 1995. McCullough and Stiller added that Roughead still has not given his final approval on eliminating the five ships beyond the two the Navy has already ordered.
In the second panel, Paul Francis, an acquisitions expert with the Government Accountability Office, said the fire support issue came as a "surprise" to him.
Sestak said he was worried about what he called the recent "sea change" the Navy had apparently undergone in the threats it perceived over the next few years.
"My issue today is one of credibility. Not of an individual but of a process. I don't know what the strategic sense of the Navy is today," he said. "Whither the Navy of the future?"
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