Top Navy officials on Monday clarified how much budget delays have cost the service and revealed a new oversight board to implement various recommendations meant to prevent future ship mishaps.
Navy Secretary Richard Spencer reiterated the common element defense and congressional defense committee officials raise regarding the billions of dollars continuing resolutions (CRs) have cost the service over the past seven years.
“Since 2011 we have put $4 billion in a trashcan, put lighter fluid on top of it, and burned it,” Spencer said on Tuesday at the U.S. Naval Institute’s 2017 Defense Forum Washington.
He said that much money could buy a squadron of F-35s, two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, 3,000 Harpoon missiles, or 2,000 tactical Tomahawk missiles.
“It’s enough money that it can buy us the additional capacity and capability that we need. Instead that $4 billion of taxpayers money was lost because of inefficiency of the ways of the continuing resolution,” he added.
He also highlighted the Navy has to lay a foundation for growth. “We must ensure the health of the defense industry and workforce are in place. Large capital investments need to be made today to build the fleet of tomorrow and to maintain that fleet.”
Regarding Navy and Marine Corps recruitment, Spencer said both services are doing well, although the need for a “surge” in recruits may pose a challenge because of the strength of the economy.
However, the Secretary said he thinks the department can easily add 3,000 personnel.
Separately, Vice Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO) Adm. William Moran echoed this point when he explained what is needed for the Navy to win against rising threats: more money.
“But we need money that we can count on more than anything else. Money has got to be in the right accounts, it’s got to be at the right time, it’s got to be predictable so that we can make efficient use of taxpayer dollars,”
He told the symposium that CRs are painful and cost significant resources and waste when the service is trying to figure out how to move faster in a world that is moving faster every year.
“For the past several years too many ships, submarines and aircraft have been parked, not ready to operate due to maintenance delays and throughput capacity. We were not resourced to make whole what we already owned. We were not given to our warfighters the time and the tools to build capability through their own experiences. We were making tough choices, often bad choices between operations, readiness and growing the force,” he added.
Moran compared this moment to when he joined the Navy as a junior officer in the early 1980s when it had closer to 600 ships and many more aircraft, but in both times the Navy deploys about the same 90-100 ships around the world.
Moreover, while in the 1980s there was one main threat in the Soviet Union, now there are four to five potential adversaries while the Navy has half of the ships and aircraft it had in the 1980s. He said without more ships the Navy cannot meet its requirements.
Meanwhile, in recent years due to CRs and the Budget Control Act (BCA) restrictions, “too many ships, submarines and aircraft have been parked, not ready to operate due to maintenance delays and throughput capacity” and the military was making “often bad choices between operations, readiness, and rowing the force.”
All of these issues contributed to the deadly summer collisions of the USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) “because we took our eye off the ball,” he said.
However, Moran noted last week he first chaired a new monthly oversight board in the Pentagon that includes U.S. Fleet Forces head Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of U.S. Surface Forces, and other top service officials.
He said the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, tasked him to oversee the board and implement the over 50 recommendations from Davidson’s comprehensive review of the issues that led to the collisions (Defense Daily, Nov. 2).
The board will also oversee recommendations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Navy’s Inspector General, and additional ideas coming from fleet commanding officers. Moran underscored the board sees its responsibility as how to make a commander’s job easier to manage, so they do not focus as much on fighting for resources and manning.
“So my concern as we enter into this oversight responsibility, is we don’t just pile on a bunch of response to actions simultaneously and overwhelm the fleet with all of these things we’re trying to do.”
The board will prioritize safe and effective operation of the fleet first, then it will start looking at other systemic issues in the Navy, Moran said.
The oversight board seeks “to remove barriers to anyone with a responsibility to implement actions. We’re going to help prioritize those actions and remain focused on addressing root causes with necessary resources to make them whole,” Moran said.
He said they will do this in a measured way at “a pace here that the fleet can tolerate” rather than instinctually solving all of the problems as soon as possible. He added that it will take a good deal of time and money to fix the problems that led to the collisions, but it is the senior leadership’s duty “to set the tone and get it right.”
The fleet, the public, the media, and Congress have the right to shed a bright light on what we’re doing. But make no mistake about it folks, we are in this to win.”