Marc Selinger
Defense Daily
Six senators and 33 House members have signed letters urging key congressional appropriators to pass language allowing the successor to the Navy’s Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine to enter its next development phase.
Navy officials have said the Ohio Replacement Program (ORP) must begin detailed design work by January to meet a requirement to conduct the first ORP patrol in fiscal year 2031. But the go-ahead for the work is contained in the FY 2017 defense appropriations bill, which is stalled on Capitol Hill. The Senate and House letters, both dated last week, say that if Congress extends the current continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government into calendar 2017, it should include an “anomaly” allowing the program to start detailed design.
“With an uncertain path forward for the fiscal year 2017 appropriations process, we urge you to take action to keep the Navy’s top modernization program on track to maintain delivery schedules and avoid program cost increases,” the Senate letter says.
The Senate letter, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is signed by all six Democratic senators from the shipbuilding states of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Virginia. It warns that thousands of Navy and industry employees could be affected if the program is slowed.
“Unless the Congress provides (1) the first year of ORP funding provided through a defense appropriations bill, or (2) an anomaly in a CR, the Navy and contractor team would have to cut up to 2,300 jobs from the engineering, design and support staff across Connecticut, Rhode Island and Virginia,” the senators wrote. “This would result in the loss of an indispensable knowledge base and critical skills that cannot be rebuilt without incurring considerable cost, schedule delay and technical risk. Therefore, we must do everything we can to ensure ORP remains on schedule.”
The Senate letter is addressed to Sens. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel. A Cochran spokesman told Defense Daily Nov. 22 that “due to the leadership decision to defer final action on the FY 2017 appropriations, House and Senate appropriations committees are drafting a continuing resolution to provide government funding into next year. While no final decisions have been made, providing appropriations necessary to maintain national security programs is central to those discussions.”
The House letter, led by Rep. Joe Courtney (D-R.I.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee’s seapower panel, is signed by a bipartisan group of members from across the country. It is addressed to Reps. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the chairman and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, and Reps. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) and Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.), chairman and ranking member of the committee’s defense panel.
According to a Nov. 21 brief by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), the submarine is among the Defense Department’s 10 “biggest and most important defense acquisition programs distorted by this year’s continuing resolution.” A delay in ORP could leave the Navy with fewer than the 10 ballistic missile submarines it needs to sustain current patrol levels, the brief says. Other affected programs include the Marine Corps’ CH-53K heavy-life helicopter, which is supposed to begin procurement in FY 2017, and the Navy’s Carrier Replacement Program, which is slated to start of construction of the third Ford-class aircraft carrier in December 2017.
The Navy plans to build a total of 12 ORP submarines to replace 14 aging Ohio-class boomers. General Dynamics Electric Boat is the prime contractor and Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News Shipbuilding has a secondary role. The Pentagon convened a Defense Acquisition Board meeting Nov. 4 to review the program but has not yet announced the results.
