The initial drafts of the House fiscal year 2024 defense authorization and appropriation bills, or marks, disagree on some Navy ships to procure and which vessels the service can decommission.
The House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) chairman’s mark adds $750 million to procure the next San Antonio
-class Flight II amphibious transport dock ship, LPD-33, in line with the Marine Corps’ top unfunded priorities list item (Defense Daily, March 21).
(Image: Huntington Ingalls Industries)
Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. David Berger said he listed the ship to signal the Navy’s long term shipbuilding plans do not indicate any future LPD-type ships to retain the congressionally-mandated minimum of 31 amphibious ships pending an Office of the Secretary of Defense-directed study seeking to reduce costs (Defense Daily, March 29).
The Navy’s FY ‘24 budget request seeks to decommission three Whidbey Island/Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ships: USS Germantown (LSD-42), Gunston Hall (LSD-44), and Tortuga (LSD-46) without plans in place to replace them (Defense Daily, March 13).
The bill would also significantly cut funding for one next-generation submarine tender replacement, called AS(X). The Navy requested $1.73 billion for the vessel, but the mark cuts that down to $248 million and lists the $1.485 billion cut as “late contract award.”
A senior committee aide told reporters Monday the funding was changed because they are working within the debt ceiling agreement and that the ship would not use all the funds next year.
“The reason why we didn’t fund it at $1.7 billion is because they cannot spend $1.7 billion in FY ‘24. So we’ve incremented the funding, we’ve provided money to do advanced procurement and to get the ship, the ship we need, under contract and to begin production,” the aide said.
“But because we wrote the bill at [the Presidential Budget Request], we needed to find savings. So we looked very closely at what in the request was executable in FY ‘24. And that full amount was not executable in FY 24,” the aide continued.
The final debt limit deal negotiated between the White House and House Republican leaders set a defense topline of $886 billion for fiscal year 2024, which matches the administration’s request (Defense Daily, May 30).
In contrast, the House Appropriations Committee’s mark for the defense appropriation bill (HAC-D), released Wednesday, funded the submarine tender at $1.54 billion, and did not include funding to buy LPD-33.
The bills also clash on which ships the Navy would be allowed to decommission early.
The Navy’s FY ‘24 budget request seeks to retire the USS Cowpens (CG-63), Shiloh (CG-67), and Vicksburg (CG-69) Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers two to three years earlier than expected; USS Germantown (LSD-42), Gunston Hall (LSD-44), and Tortuga (LSD-46) amphibious dock landing ships two to six years earlier than planned; and the Independence-class Littoral Combat Ships USS Jackson (LCS-6) and Montgomery (LCS-8). The service was already planning to also retire the USS Antietam (CG-54) and Leyte Gulf (CG-55) cruisers and the USS San Juan (SSN-751) Los Angeles-class attack submarine in FY ‘24.
The HASC seapower and projection forces subcommittee’s mark would not let the Navy retire or inactivate the USS Germantown, Gunston Hall and Tortuga LSDs; USS Shiloh and Cowpens cruisers; and overall prevent the Navy from retiring more than three other guided-missile cruisers but also allows the Navy to retire any additional Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) it wants (Defense Daily, June 12).
However, the House Appropriations Committee’s defense bill mark restricts the Navy from decommissioning any LCS, the Germantown or the Tortuga but would allow the Navy to retire any of the aging cruisers.
The Navy earlier tried retiring CG-69, LSD-42, LSD-44 and LSD-46 in FY ‘23, but Congress prohibited them from doing so.
Members of Congress have sought to retain some cruisers through their expected 35-year service lives to maintain a higher number of vertical launch system (VLS) missiles and amphibious ships to keep the minimum of 31 vessels. However, top Navy officials argue many of these ships have been previously overworked and under-serviced during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, leading to more difficulties in maintaining them.
In March, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said many of these ships are aging out of their usefulness and the Navy cannot deploy the VLS cells if the ships keep getting stuck in maintenance piers. However, Del Toro said of the five cruisers the Navy wants to retire, he sees utility in investing resources into three of them to extend their lives to another one to two deployments each (Defense Daily, March 28)
Del Toro insisted the CG-63 and CG-69 are not salvageable, regardless of how much money is put into them, but at least LSD-46 can use funds to complete its maintenance availability and be useful. He also noted LSD-42 is beyond saving, like the two cruisers.