The Marine Corps’ top official said Tuesday the House and Senate Armed Services Committee’s support for funding one San Antonio-class PPD-17 Flight II amphibious transport dock ship, LPD-33, in their respective versions of the next defense policy bill sends a “powerful signal” as congressional appropriators work through FY ‘24 spending bills.
“What I understand from both sides, both chambers, both parties, they all recognize the nation needs amphibious ships to protect its interests overseas. But we’ll see where they go on LPD,” Berger said during keynote remarks at the Modern Day Marine conference in Washington, D.C. “The message that we got from the Armed Services Committee that authorizes incremental procurement is a powerful signal. Now we’ll see what the appropriators do.”
Both HASC and SASC included authorizing funds for LPD-33 in each of their bills after the Navy did not include the ship in its FY ‘24 budget request and after Berger included the platform at the top of the Marine Corps’ unfunded requirements list (Defense Daily, March 21).
The House Appropriations Committee’s version of the FY ‘24 defense spending bill, however, does not fund the LPD-33 (Defense Daily, June 14).
“As evidenced by constant year cost, the LPD Flight II is the most effective and affordable answer until a follow-on amphibious warfare ship is developed,” Berger said in recent written testimony to the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said in March the department is pausing procurement of amphibious ships primarily because the San Antonio-class Flight II amphibious transport dock ships are increasing in cost and starting to run late (Defense Daily, March 15).
Jay Stefany, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, has said that given the most recent LPD is being procured in FY ‘23 the next one does not need to be purchased until FY ‘25 to keep an optimal production pace (Defense Daily, March 29).
“So there is a period where we can look at a more affordable way of, potentially, to build those. We don’t need to build 1 in ‘24, we can take some time to see if there’s a more affordable way to build those before we buy the ’25 ship,” Stefany said.
Berger also said on Tuesday he would not expect to rely on a potential supplemental to support more funding for Force Design modernization efforts, if lawmakers pursue such a measure to boost defense spending above the cap set by the debt ceiling agreement.
“I think we have to put in our budget what we need and not count on anything extra or anything coming after that. If it’s important to the Marine Corps, it needs to be in our budget,” Berger said when asked about his view on a potential supplemental.
Berger noted supplemental funding measures have been used to support specific emergency situations, such as contingency operations or responses to natural disasters, rather than funding “normal things.”
“I don’t know how Congress is going to view that,” Berger said. “I don’t know that there would be an appetite for them to fund normal things through a supplemental. But I’m not an economist.”
Senate leadership has previously offered a commitment to keep open the possibility for supplemental funding measures to add a defense boost, noting the debt ceiling bill does not block the use of emergency spending measures to address security-related items (Defense Daily, June 2).
The debt ceiling bill passed earlier in June locked in an $886 billion defense topline, the level requested in the president’s budget for FY ‘24 and a 3.3 percent increase over FY ‘23, and authorizes a one percent increase in FY ‘25 to the defense and non-defense toplines.
SASC adopted language in its version of the FY ‘24 National Defense Authorization Act that “urges the President to send emergency supplemental funding requests to address those concerns, to include continued support for Ukraine, additional munitions production, and additional naval vessels and combat vehicles” (Defense Daily, June 23).
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth has said recently supplemental funding from Congress would be “very helpful” to ensure continued support for Ukraine in light of the debt ceiling agreement’s defense spending caps (Defense Daily, June 14).