The Navy’s fiscal 2025 budget request, seeking only six new ships and reducing planned submarines by one, faced a chilly reception from some congressional leaders this week.
The lawmakers opposed plans to procure only six new ships in FY ‘25, which includes one Virginia-class attack submarine, changing previous plans to buy two. The Navy also plans to delay procurement of the future
Ford-class carrier CVN-82 from FY ’28 to FY ’30.
“At a time when the pace of all of Navy shipbuilding—manned and unmanned, including carriers, submarines, destroyers, and frigates—is recovering from the impact of the COVID pandemic and supply chain disruptions, the Navy’s plan to cut a submarine that is already been partially paid for and built, makes little or no sense. If such a cut is actually enacted, it will remove one more attack submarine from a fleet that is already 17 submarines below the Navy’s long stated requirement of 66,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee said in a statement March 11.
Courtney said this change from what the FY ‘24 budget predicted the Navy would request contradicts the Defense Department’s January National Defense Industries Strategy that identified procurement stability as critical for resilient supply chains.
Courtney also said the submarine reduction could “have a profound impact” on the U.S. and Australian navies, given the U.S. plans to sell three to five Virginia-class submarines (SSNs) to Australia under the AUKUS pact.
“For all these reasons and more, this hard rudder turn by the Navy demands the highest scrutiny by the Congress which, at the end of the day, has the sole authority ‘to provide and maintain a Navy’ vested in Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution,” he said.
Courtney’s district includes General Dynamics’ [GD] Electric Boat facility that builds Virginia-class attack submarines and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).
Under Secretary of the Navy Erik Raven on Monday said the service removed one SSN from the budget request “out of concern for the industrial base’s ability to produce yet one more, while, in a capped environment, making room for these historic investments in the submarine industrial base.”
He was referring to budget caps under the Fiscal Responsibility Act agreed to by both congressional parties to move forward on the FY ‘24 budget. Raven also highlighted the Navy’s plans to invest $11.1 billion across the five-year long Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) (Defense Daily, March 12).
Rep Rob Wittman (R-Va.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and chairman of the subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, argued the shipbuilding request “is also threatening to devastate our naval fleet and the Hampton Roads industrial base by slowing aircraft carrier construction and failing to meet the two Virginia-class submarines per year cadence required to support the AUKUS security pact.”
Wittman represents part of the region where HII [HII] builds Ford-class carriers as well as parts of the Virginia-class attack submarines and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines.
Electric Boat and HII jointly build the SSBN and they both produce SSNs.
The Navy said it pushed back procurement of CVN-82 two years due to adjustments to “critical aviation forces” stemming from the budget caps, so they in turn pushed back the carrier.
Wittman said he will work to prioritize “strengthening our shipbuilding industrial base, driving a real strategy on aircraft capacity and modernization, increasing production of long-range fires, and investing in emerging technologies to meet the threat posed by our foremost foreign adversaries” in the FY ’25 defense authorization bill.
Sen, Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, struck a more conciliatory tone, saying the budget request aligns with national security and fiscal challenges “while adhering to the contours of the debt ceiling agreement Republicans demanded.”
“The job of Congress is to determine the right balance of resources to meet requirements. In that sense, the President’s Defense Budget Request is an outline and a starting point.”
Reed underscored the committee will hold hearings with DoD leaders as they start to work on the FY ‘25 National Defense Authorization Act.
“Taxpayers should not have to pay for programs or systems that are wasteful or ineffective, and Congress must not shirk its responsibility to get rid of outdated platforms in favor of more effective new technologies, he added.
Sen Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member of SASC, also strongly opposed the budget.
He argued against the submarine cut in light of DoD statements about how the industrial base needs stability and real budget growth, and hit DoD for failing to maximize production rates of almost two dozen key munitions.