As the Navy works with the Pentagon to determine its budget request for the fiscal year 2020 budget, the service’s top civilian called for lawmakers to continue to fund the department at a pace that will provide for much needed modernization and technology development.
“We have such great tailwind right now,” Secretary Richard Spencer said Dec. 6 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “We have laid the foundation and spent this money to get us going in the right direction.” 
“The bicycle is pedaling, we are up. Please don’t knock us over,” he added. “The waste would be absolutely stunning.”
Spencer would not elaborate on which programs or areas were most at risk should the Trump administration or Congress push for a cut to the national defense budget, but said that some of the proposed scenarios “will make your eyes water with what we might to do if the numbers are certain numbers.” President Trump previously called for a 5 percent cut across his cabinets, which would remove about $33 billion from the FY ’20 budget. Meanwhile, Congress continues to mull whether to re-impose the Budget Control Act after two years of lifting the spending caps on domestic and discretionary spending.
Spencer noted that if he were to include everything on his wishlist to help the Navy reach its desired goals within the next 10 years, “it would dwarf the other three services.”
The Navy and the Pentagon more widely must “make the business case” to Congress for why it must continue to fund the Defense Department at a high level, but the services must also continue to enact reforms within their own offices to find savings, Spencer said.
“We’re going to have to get after reform issues that people are very uncomfortable talking about, both on the Hill and in the building,” he said.
As budget talks continue, the Navy is pushing forward with key programs, Spencer said. The service is working “side-by-side” with Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] to reach a deal for two new aircraft carriers, he said. Officials and industry leaders have hoped to get a contract underway before the end of the calendar year, and Spencer said, “there are some very good numbers” coming out of current discussions. He called for a group discussion in January, to include the Navy, joint chiefs of staff and industry, to explore “what does the next carrier possibly look like eight years out.”
The Navy must also place more focus on the Arctic as Russia continues to asset its dominance in the region, Spencer said. He added that he meets with key lawmakers from Alaska, such as the state’s two Republican senators, Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, to have “Arctic pow wows” and discuss the re-emerging threat in the region.
“The Arctic is an area … that we must focus on,” Spencer said. “We need to have a strategic Arctic port up in Alaska. We need to be doing [freedom of navigation operations] up in the northwest passage.”
As cruise ships increasingly move through the region, the Pentagon must monitor the area more closely, he added. “Can you imagine a Carnival line cruise ship having a problem and the Russians [doing] the extraction? … We need to sell the business plan to our representatives so they fund it appropriately.”