Morning Briefing - February 11, 2020
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February 11, 2020

Navy Budget Request Down $4 Billion For Eight Ships

By ExchangeMonitor

The Trump administration’s fiscal 2021 budget request adds only eight battle force ships, two fewer than previously planned, while also planning to retire four Littoral Combat Ships (LCSs).

The Navy is requesting $207.1 billion overall, $2.9 billion less than in the current fiscal 2020. Ship procurement is set at $20 billion, down from the $24 billion and four more ships the Navy requested and Congress allocated in its 2020 defense budget bill.

The Navy said its procurement request decrease from FY ’20 will help fund operations and maintenance, military personnel, and research and development.

Navy budget documents underscored the service still sees the Columbia-class submarine as “the Navy’s highest shipbuilding priority” even as it lowers other previously planned shipbuilding procurement for FY ’21.

As the force transitions from advanced procurement to directly buying its first new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) for $4 billion in fiscal 2021, the Navy said this will provide the first three years of incremental full funding on the first vessel. When adding detail design effort, continuous missile tube production, and advance procurement for the second ship the cost reaches over $4.4 billion.

The Navy also plans next year to buy one Virginia-class attack submarine (SSN) for $4.2 billion plus related advance procurement for future vessels. In its prior 30-year shipbuilding plan, the Navy said it would buy two SSNs. That money reportedly has been shifted to increase the budget at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the nuclear weapons branch of the Department of Energy.

Last year’s budget documents requested three Virginia SSNs in fiscal 2020. Congress reduced that to two while the Navy planned to procure two submarines annually through fiscal 2024. Then, in December, the Navy awarded prime contractor General Dynamics’ [GD] Electric Boat a nine-submarine Block V $22.2 billion multiyear contract with an option for a 10th. Block V submarines are funded by FY 2019 – 2023 accounts (Defense Daily, Dec. 2, 2019).

House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee Chairman Joe Courtney (D- Conn.) said this budget will not get the Navy to its planned 355-ship fleet and is “dead on arrival.”

“This weak, pathetic request for eight ships – of which two are tugboats – is not only fewer ships than 2020, but fewer ships than the Navy told us last year it planned for 2021,” Courtney said in a statement.

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