Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
3/20/2015
OGDEN, UTAH—The Defense Department might be forced to “look creatively” at funding the estimated $139 billion Ohio-class Replacement, including shifting money from other services, a top Navy official said March 19. “I don’t advocate that at all,” Rear Adm. Richard Breckenridge, Director of the Navy Warfare Integration Division (N91) said during the Utah Defense Alliance’s TRIAD Forum. “I’m tired of robbing Peter to pay Paul at the detriment of other types of important power for our nation’s security. So my goal is to wait in Congress, get them to treat our national security appropriately with the risk that they’re starting to see around the world without continuing to play this game of how we share resources that are too tight.”
Breckenridge pointed out a general DoD rule of thumb which states that the Navy, Air Force and Army should be funded at equal levels, yet emphasized that the Army received increased funding during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars started and that the other two services garnered positively skewed funding during the Cold War, dictated by national security demands, he said.
Congress included a Sea-Based Deterrence Fund into the Fiscal Year 2015 National Defense Authorization Act to bankroll the Ohio-class Replacement separate from the Navy’s shipbuilding budget, but no money has been put in the coffer. The account can receive up to $3.5 billion in unobligated balances from FYs 2014-2016.
Navy Wants to Keep 14 SSBNs as Long as Possible
Breckenridge said the Navy plans to extend its current fleet of 14 SSBNs as long as possible, to serve as a buffer as the subs will get much harder to keep in service past 2021, the oldest ships’ 40-year mark. The service plans to drop the oldest Ohio-class in 2027, drawing down to 10 total SSBNs by 2032. The Navy also expects to add one Ohio-class Replacement both in 2041 and 2042, in ramping up to its full planned deployment of 12 SSBN(X)s.
Breckenridge expressed concerns about how the service will be finishing the fifth Ohio-class decommissioning as the first replacement comes online in 2031. “I call this sort of ludicrous risk-taking,” he said. “But again, the budget [experts] look at and say, ‘Hey, well you could save $20 million here if you go do this,’ and there’s probably some kind of mathematical answer that’s correct, but it just defies logic that we would even be quibbling about less than hundreds of billions of dollars compared to the great consequences of deterrence for our country.”
CBO: Navy Would Require $5B Yearly Plus-Up to Fund Ohio-class Replacement
Breckenridge’s stated concerns come six days after the Congressional Budget Office released a report stating that the Navy might be able to procure only 10 Ohio-class Replacements if the service’s shipbuilding account continues to average $16 billion yearly for the next 30 years. If the Navy funds the Ohio-class Replacement through its shipbuilding budget, the account would need to average an annual $21 billion until 2044 to support all 12 submarines, according to the report.
Reiterating previously voiced sentiments, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told a packed March 17 House Armed Services Committee hearing that the program requires national support, pointing to the two previous SSBN procurements, during which “significant amounts” were added to the shipbuilding budget. “This is the most survivable leg of our deterrence triad,” he said. “We cannot extend the life of the Ohio-class any longer. And this is a program that if Navy shipbuilding is asked to bear the entire burden of it, would take more than half of our shipbuilding budget for 12 years, which would have serious implications to our submarine fleet and all the rest of our fleet, and to the entire Navy.”
Is Congress Deaf to Deterrence?
At the TRIAD Forum, Breckenridge presented a PowerPoint slide showing that 20 percent of Congress members in 2014 had military experience, compared with the 60 percent in the 1980s, and he called out current legislators for their lack of nuclear enterprise knowledge. “In the game, there’s just a lot of folks that don’t have the right muscle memory,” he said. “They don’t understand the threats that are real, that are out there by our aggressors that are ramping up while we’re life extending.”
To be sure, Breckenridge also criticized the Pentagon for its failure to educate the public about the nuclear mission. “We have not done our duty to inform,” he said. “And I see us in Washington, D.C., all the time. In this fiscal austerity, budget constraint era that we live in, military leaders generally have capitulated, emphasizing what the nation needs to try to come up with creative, affordable solutions to do our part in the fiscal crisis, and as a result, everyone is oblivious to this type of challenge we face as a nation.”
Greenert: Without Funding Relief, Ohio-class Replacement Could Pose Strategy Challenges
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert emphasized strategic challenges and reiterated funding difficulties tied to the Ohio-class Replacement during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on March 13. “We have to replace the current Ohio-class submarine,” Greenert said. “We don’t have the money associated to do that without ruining the shipbuilding account, which permeates all that [21st century] strategy is about for the future. That is my number-one conundrum right now.” The Navy is currently working to build up to a 309-ship fleet.
