Congress, Marine Corps Want to Give Biden’s US Navy Ship-Building Plan the Heave-Ho

There appears to be growing bipartisan Congressional consensus, and acknowledgment from within the Biden administration, that its shipbuilding plan for the U.S. Navy is headed for an overhaul.

The Biden administration’s $886 billion Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) defense budget request includes $842 billion for the Pentagon, which has earmarked $202.5 billion for the Navy, a 4.5 percent increase; and $53.2 billion for the Marine Corps, about a 3-percent hike from the existing budget.

Unfortunately with today’s record-level of inflation, these increases don’t go very far, House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said. We are seeing that very clearly in the request for ship-building.

Scaling Down the Fleet

In June 2021, in its first annual update for the Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, the Biden administration scaled down the size of the fleet planned during the Trump administration from 400 ships by 2050 to between 321 and 372, with 355 ships being the target.

In its FY23 budget, the administration requested funding for nine new combat ships while decommissioning 16. Congress agreed to build the nine ships but only consented to mothballing four of the 16 headed for the scrapyard.

In its FY24 budget request, the administration is proposing nine new ships while divesting 11, including three cruisers, three amphibious dock landing ships, and two littoral combat ships.

Congress Wary of Quick Cruiser Divestment

Del Toro said the three cruisers—the USS Cowpens, USS Shiloh, USS Vicksburg—are within three years of their end-of-service-life dates and wired with obsolete technologies.

They are among 17 Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers the Navy wants to replace with Arleigh Burke-class Flight III destroyers. The current plan calls for all 17, built in the 1980s through mid-90s, to be mothballed by FY27.

“The cost associated with repairing, modernizing, and sustaining the hulls significantly outweigh any war-fighting contribution they provide to the fleet, and occupy limited, valuable private shipyard space that could be better used for maintaining more-lethal ships,” he said. “We have essentially inherited ‘John Lehman’s Navy.’ Ships get old.”

No Replacements

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) said the administration has now sought to divest five cruisers over the last two years without replacing them.

“I’m not a mathematician but I do not know of any math that allows you to do addition by subtraction,” he said, noting the three cruisers’ 124 missile tubes firepower is not being replaced. “Capacity is, by itself, critically important. Quantity has a quality all its own.”

Amphibious Ship Plan Criticized

The Navy’s FY24 plan calls for retiring three amphibious ships; the USS Germantown, USS Gunston Hall, and USS Tortuga. The three are among seven Whidbey-class landing dock ships (LHDs) being replaced by San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships (LPD).

The LHDs/LPDs are among a fleet of amphibious ships that include helicopter assault landing (LHA) ships and multi-purpose amphibious assault (LSDs) ships that resemble small aircraft carriers designed to support Marine expeditionary forces.

The Navy maintains two Marine expeditionary units (MEUs) at sea at all times to respond to unfolding crises. To support those two MEUs and five other MEUs training ashore, a 2019 Amphibious Force Requirements Study determined that a 31-vessel fleet of amphibious assault ships was “the bare minimum necessary” and Congress installed that number as a statutory baseline.

The ideal 31-ship alignment is 10 LHD/LHAs and 21 LPD/LSD ships, according to the Navy. But under its FY21 budget request, three LDHs are designated for divestment.