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i 

65–464 2011

[H.A.S.C. No. 112–16] 

NAVY SHIPBUILDING ACQUISITION 

PROGRAMS AND BUDGET 

REQUIREMENTS OF THE NAVY’S 

SHIPBUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION 

PLAN 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND 

PROJECTION FORCES 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

MARCH 9, 2011 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES 

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri, Chairman 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

SCOTT RIGELL, Virginia 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

STEVEN PALAZZO, Mississippi 

TODD YOUNG, Indiana 

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

ROB WITTMAN, Virginia 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

MIKE MCINTYRE, North Carolina 

SUSAN A. DAVIS, California 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut 

CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine 

MARK S. CRITZ, Pennsylvania 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

BETTY SUTTON, Ohio 

HEATH BOPE, Professional Staff Member 

PHIL MACNAUGHTON, Professional Staff Member 

MARY KATE CUNNINGHAM, Staff Assistant 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS 

2011 

Page 

HEARING: 

Wednesday, March 9, 2011, Navy Shipbuilding Acquisition Programs and 

Budget Requirements of the Navy’s Shipbuilding and Construction Plan ..... 1 

APPENDIX: 

Wednesday, March 9, 2011 ..................................................................................... 47 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 2011 

NAVY SHIPBUILDING ACQUISITION PROGRAMS AND BUDGET REQUIREMENTS OF THE NAVY’S SHIPBUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION 

PLAN 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Coffman, Hon. Mike, a Representative from Colorado, Subcommittee on 

Seapower and Projection Forces ......................................................................... 1 

McIntyre, Hon. Mike, a Representative from North Carolina, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces .................................... 2 

WITNESSES 

Labs, Eric, Senior Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons, Congressional 

Budget Office ........................................................................................................ 5 

O’Rourke, Ronald, Specialist in National Defense, Congressional Research 

Service ................................................................................................................... 3 

Stackley, Hon. Sean, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development & Acquisition; VADM Terry Blake, USN, Deputy Chief of Naval 

Operations for Integration of Capabilities and Resources; and Lt. Gen. 

George Flynn, USMC, Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command ................................................................................................ 20 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Akin, Hon. W. Todd, Chairman, Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces ..................................................................................................... 51 

Labs, Eric .......................................................................................................... 89 

McIntyre, Hon. Mike ........................................................................................ 53 

O’Rourke, Ronald .............................................................................................. 55 

Stackley, Hon. Sean, joint with VADM Terry Blake and Lt. Gen. George 

Flynn .............................................................................................................. 120 
Page

IV 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Coffman ...................................................................................................... 144 

Mr. Smith .......................................................................................................... 145 

Mr. Wittman ..................................................................................................... 139 
(1) 

NAVY SHIPBUILDING ACQUISITION PROGRAMS AND 

BUDGET REQUIREMENTS OF THE NAVY’S SHIPBUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION PLAN 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND PROJECTION FORCES, Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 9, 2011. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:10 p.m., in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. W. Todd Akin (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE COFFMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM COLORADO, SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

SEAPOWER AND EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 

Mr. COFFMAN. The hearing of the Seapower and Projection 

Forces Subcommittee is called to order. Representative Akin is tied 

up in a Budget Committee hearing process, so I want to enter his 

remarks into the record. Let me quickly go over them. 

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This hearing will come to 

order. Thank you for joining us today as we consider the fiscal year 

2012 budget request for the Department of the Navy’s shipbuilding 

acquisition program. 

We have two panels of witnesses testifying today. The first panel 

are national defense experts specializing in naval issues from the 

Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office. They are Mr. Ron O’Rourke and David Eric Labs, respectively. 

Our second panel will be officials from the Navy and Marine Corps, 

which I will welcome later. 

Reviewing the Navy’s shipbuilding budget request for both this 

year and what is projected in the out-years, there are many things 

to be concerned about, and probably the most worrisome aspects of 

the Navy’s budget is that it will require near-perfect execution in 

cost control, schedule adherence and risk-mitigation efforts to obtain the force structure necessary to deter hostile threats, show 

force when needed, and, as a last resort, employ lethal operations. 

Among the concerns I have revolve around issues as such: The 

new Ford-class carrier program, EMALS [Electromagnetic Aircraft 

Launch System] integration and forthcoming cost growth to the 

overall program; Ohio-class submarine replacement regarding its 

aggressive schedule and optimistic cost estimates so early in its 

program’s development; our attack submarine inventory being nine 

submarines short of the requirement in the out-years; a shipbuilding budget estimated by CBO [Congressional Budget Office] 

that may not permit the Navy to achieve the 313-ship floor; and 

a shipbuilding industrial base in which 50 percent of major U.S. 
2 

shipyards’ future viability and ability to perform as needed to meet 

the Navy’s acquisition plan remains in question. 

My last concern focuses on congressional and Department of Defense collaboration, or should I say the apparent lack thereof. Too 

many times in the recent past we have been excluded from Department of Defense deliberations or approached with hasty requests 

that do not afford us the luxury of effectively evaluating decisions, 

most recently, LCS [Littoral Combat Ship] and EFV [Expeditionary 

Fighting Vehicle]. Bottom line, this must change. 

Lastly, we are part of this problem, too. The Congress must finish fiscal year 2011 defense appropriations legislation because the 

implications of funding the Navy and Marine Corps at fiscal year 

2010 funding levels in a year-long continuing resolution would be 

almost irreparable. 

All of our men and women in uniform deserve more from this 

body. It goes without saying we have the finest, most professional 

combat-honed sailors, marines, airmen and soldiers that any modern military has ever had within its ranks, and our responsibility 

as a subcommittee is to ensure that we provide them the equipment and tools necessary in meeting our Nation’s national security 

requirements. 

In conclusion, I would like to note that although our subcommittee has had a number of closed events already, this is our 

first public hearing of the year. It is an honor to chair this subcommittee and to follow in the footsteps of a number of previous 

chairmen who did much to make sure that our Nation maintains 

strong sea services. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Akin can be found in the Appendix on page ?.] 

Mr. COFFMAN. With that, I turn to my good friend and partner, 

the ranking member from North Carolina, Mike McIntyre, for any 

remarks he wishes to make. 

STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE McINTYRE, A REPRESENTATIVE 

FROM NORTH CAROLINA, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SEAPOWER AND EXPEDITIONARY FORCES 

Mr. MCINTYRE. Thank you very much, and also thanks to our 

chairman in his absence, and thank you all for the opportunity to 

let us question you today. 

Thank you, Mr. O’Rourke from Congressional Research Service 

and Dr. Labs from the CBO for being here. We all look forward to 

your expert opinions about where the Navy is heading with regard 

to shipbuilding and acquisition strategy. I also welcome our Navy 

and Marine Corps friends who will be appearing as part of the second panel. 

As we begin to analyze the detail of the Navy’s fiscal year 2011 

shipbuilding and acquisition plans, it is important that we look not 

only at what it proposes for this coming year, but also what it presents for the following out-years. Many of the proposed efficiencies 

that were recently announced depend heavily on our future acquisition strategy, whether that be multiyear procurement on ships or 

the development of a new amphibious vehicle. I am hopeful the 

Navy will be able to adhere to their proposals so that savings in 

those difficult choices may be realized. 
3 

Like our chairman, these are areas that I remain concerned 

about. The stated goal of the Navy is a sustained fleet of 313 ships. 

There has been some debate on how much it will cost per year to 

achieve this goal and to maintain it. So I am particularly concerned 

about whether the current plan is sustainable, especially as new 

programs such as the SSBN(X) [Next-Generation Ballistic Missile 

Submarine] begin to come on line and demand a larger portion of 

the shipbuilding budget. 

The fact that our submarine force, both attack and guided missile submarines, continues to decline is a concern, because their demand, as we know, is constantly increasing. I look forward to hearing what both panels have to say in regard to our future gaps in 

submarine requirements. 

We know our shipbuilding industrial base remains very fragile. 

We have seen how even minor changes in shipbuilding plans can 

have major impacts on the industrial base. It is critical that the 

shipbuilding workforce move to a more stable situation in order to 

provide what our great Navy needs. 

We are very aware of the stresses that the current continuing 

resolution has put on the Navy, and we have heard that in testimony before the larger full committee as well. I am hopeful that 

we will be able to achieve in the 2011 fiscal year appropriations 

bill—that we will be able to do what we need to do, but in the 

meantime, I appreciate any recommendations that you may have 

that would mitigate the risk in the interim. 

Thank you for your service. We look forward to hearing your testimony. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you. 

Now we will hear from our witnesses in the first panel: Mr. Ronald O’Rourke, Specialist in National Defense, Congressional Research Service. Mr. O’Rourke. 

STATEMENT OF RONALD O’ROURKE, SPECIALIST IN 

NATIONAL DEFENSE, CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member McIntyre, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss Navy shipbuilding programs. 

Mr. Chairman, with your permission I would like to submit my 

written statement for the record and make a couple of brief points. 

First, it should be noted that the Navy has revised some of its 

ship force structure goals over the last 5 years, and these goals no 

longer add up to a fleet of 313 ships. In this sense, the 313 figure 

is no longer a fully accurate summation of Navy ship goals. 

The Navy expects to soon complete a new force-structure assessment which could support an official replacement for the 313-ship 

plan. A replacement plan would support effective congressional 

oversight of the Navy shipbuilding by giving Members an official 

and fully accurate set of force-level goals against which to assess 

proposed Navy programs. 

My testimony outlines a number of potential shipbuilding execution challenges including those that would arise under the scenario 

of a year-long CR [Continuing Resolution], the possibility of cost 
4 

growth on ship designs that are planned to start procurement in 

future years, the question of the disposition of Northrop’s shipyards, and execution challenges that are specific to individual shipbuilding programs. 

But right now the one point I would like to focus on are the 

shortfalls in attack submarines and in cruisers and destroyers that 

are projected to occur in the 2020s and beyond even if the Navy’s 

30-year shipbuilding plan is fully implemented. These projected 

shortfalls are significant. If they occur, they could made it difficult 

or impossible for the Navy to fully perform its projected missions. 

The additional destroyer that the Navy has added in fiscal year 

2014 will mitigate the cruiser-destroyer shortfall at the margin, but 

it would take a lot more than one extra destroyer to substantially 

redress this shortfall. Similarly, the Navy hopes to restore the second Virginia-class boat in fiscal year 2018, but it would take more 

than one additional boat to substantially mitigate the attack boat 

shortfall. 

These projected shortfalls have been on the books since last year, 

but they haven’t received much attention in public discussions of 

the Navy’s shipbuilding plan. This might be because they look like 

they are far in the future, but in terms of issues they might pose 

for policymakers, that is not necessarily the case. 

Substantially redressing these shortfalls could involve putting 

additional destroyers and attack boats into the shipbuilding plan or 

extending the service lives of existing cruisers, destroyers and attack boats. These options, which could be combined, pose near-term 

policy issues for policymakers. 

Based on past information from the Navy, substantially mitigating the attack boat shortfall for wartime as well as peacetime 

operations would require adding four boats to the plan, and that 

assumes that pressures on the shipbuilding budget caused by the 

Ohio replacement program don’t cause any currently planned Virginia-class boats to drop out of the shipbuilding plan, which is a 

real possibility. 

Substantially mitigating the even bigger cruiser-destroyer shortfall might require adding at least 10, and possibly closer to 20, additional destroyers to the plan, and that assumes no increase to the 

current force-level goal for cruisers and destroyers to reflect the 

Navy’s newly expanded missile defense responsibilities. 

Because of the pressures that the Ohio replacement program 

could place on the shipbuilding budget, one option would be to add 

at least some, if not most or all, of these additional destroyers and 

attack boats to the shipbuilding plan in the years prior to the Ohio 

replacement boats. If so, then the question of whether to add these 

ships to the plan could become a near-term issue for policymakers. 

The alternative of extending the lives of existing cruisers, destroyers and attack boats by 10 or 15 years beyond their currently 

planned lives poses serious questions of feasibility and cost-effectiveness, especially for the attack boats. If this option were feasible, 

implementing it could require increasing, perhaps starting right 

away, funding levels for the maintenance of these ships to help ensure they will remain in good enough shape to eventually have 

their lives extended for another 10 or 15 years. 
5 

This additional maintenance funding would be on top of the 

funding that the Navy has already programmed to help get these 

ships out to the end of their currently planned lives. Because this 

additional funding might need to start soon, it could again pose a 

near-term issue for policymakers. 

Implementing either of these options within the Navy’s currently 

planned top line would likely compel the Navy to reduce other critical programs below desired levels. So the question of what to do 

about these two projected shortfalls is not only a potentially nearterm issue for policymakers, but one that could also raise fundamental questions for policymakers about the value of naval forces 

in defending the Nation’s interests and the priority that naval 

forces should receive in the allocation of overall DOD [Department 

of Defense] funds. 

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. Thank you again for 

the opportunity to testify. I will be pleased to respond to any questions you might have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. O’Rourke can be found in the Appendix on page ?.] 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you for your testimony, Mr. O’Rourke. 

Mr. Eric Labs, Senior Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons, 

Congressional Budget Office. 

Mr. Labs. 

STATEMENT OF ERIC LABS, SENIOR ANALYST FOR NAVAL 

FORCES AND WEAPONS, CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE 

Mr. LABS. Mr. Chairman, Representative McIntyre, members of 

the subcommittee, it is a pleasure to be here today to discuss the 

Navy’s 2012 shipbuilding plan. 

My written testimony, which I submit for the record, focuses on 

the costs and force structure implications of the Navy’s fiscal year 

2011 30-year shipbuilding plan. CBO cannot yet provide a detailed 

analysis of the Navy’s fiscal year 2012 10-year shipbuilding plan, 

as it was just released early last week. However, because the observed changes between the two plans are minor, I can still speak 

to the long-term affordability of the Navy’s shipbuilding program 

and some specifics about the 2012 plan. 

If the Navy receives the same amount of funding for ship construction in the next 30 years that it has over the last 30 years, 

which is about $15 billion a year for all activities related to ship 

construction, which means new builds, carrier refuelings, and outfitting and postdelivery, it will not be able to afford all of the 276 

ships that are advertised in the 2011 shipbuilding plan. 

CBO’s analysis of the 2011 plan shows that the Navy would need 

$19 billion a year in new ship construction alone and $21 billion 

a year for all necessary activities in the Navy’s shipbuilding accounts. Under its 2012 plan, the Navy plans to buy 106 ships over 

the next 10 years, compared to 104 ships under the same period 

under the 2011 plan. 

The breakdown between combat ships and support ships is essentially the same in the two plans. Both would buy 30 support 

ships between 2012 and 2021, although the composition of those 

ships varies slightly. The 2012 plan would buy 76 combat ships 

versus 74 under the 2011 plan. 
6 

Over the next 5 years, the Navy plans to spend 9 percent more 

in real terms on new ship construction compared to the last 5 

years. The Navy’s estimates over the next 5 years, however, do 

place them in line with the longer historical average of about $15 

billion a year in 2011 constant dollars. 

CBO’s preliminary analysis of the Navy’s 2012 10-year shipbuilding plan does not substantially change the assessment that 

the Navy continues to have a long-term funding challenge, particularly in the 2020s when the new class of ballistic missile submarines are built. 

Still, there are several reasons to believe that while the overall 

costs of the Navy’s shipbuilding plan are likely to be somewhat 

lower over the 30-year period, they will be substantially higher 

than the historical average. 

The reasons why the costs might be somewhat lower include the 

following: SSBN(X) cost-reduction efforts. The Navy has announced 

that through various refinements to the preliminary design of the 

SSBN(X), it has reduced estimated costs of those ships by an average about $1 billion per boat. CBO has not yet conducted its own 

analysis of those changes and their potential impact on costs, but 

it is reasonable to conclude that CBO’s estimate for those ships 

could go down as well. 

Second, the LCS competition and subsequent dual-award contracts. The reduction in the average price of the LCS from about 

$550 million in CBO’s estimate of the Navy’s 2011 plan per ship 

to $450 million per ship under the Navy’s dual-award strategy for 

the ship’s purchase from 2010 to 2016, if carried forward beyond 

2016, would reduce the overall cost of the Navy’s shipbuilding plan 

slightly over the next 30 years. 

Third, projections of long-term ship inflation declined, making 

ships in the far term less expensive than they had been projected 

last year. As CBO reports have detailed for several years, shipbuilding inflation has been substantially higher than price inflation 

in the economy as a whole for quite some time. However, projections of long-term Navy shipbuilding inflation declined between the 

2011 plan and the 2012 plan such that if all other things remained 

equal, average annual shipbuilding costs would be less by about $1 

billion over the long term. Nevertheless, even accounting for that 

change, that would still place the Navy’s funding requirements well 

above the historical average. 

Overall, one can expect the Navy’s total requirements for shipbuilding, new construction, carrier refueling and outfitting costs 

are still likely to be in the range of $19 to $20 billion a year. 

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I would like to make a quick observation 

about the overall number of ships in the Navy’s fleet. Echoing what 

Mr. O’Rourke said, under the 2012 plan, the Navy’s implied ship 

requirement of about 322 ships would be met by 2020, but then fall 

back below that force level by the late 2020s. Significant shortfalls 

in the late 2020s and beyond in the number of surface combatants, 

attack submarines and amphibious ships would remain under the 

Navy’s 2012 shipbuilding plan. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy to respond to any 

questions the subcommittee may have. 
7 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Labs can be found in the Appendix on page ?.] 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you. Let me begin. 

First of all, I think, Mr. O’Rourke, you mentioned the service life 

extension program for some of these—I think you were referring to 

cruisers and destroyers, a shortfall in cruisers and destroyers—and 

you said that would have to go on top of what is currently planned 

to be expended. 

Can you give an idea, just any kind of rough estimate, on the 

cost burden of doing a SLEP [Service Life Extension Program] program? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Yes, Mr. Chairman. You are correct. I was referring to the fact that you would have to put additional maintenance 

funding on top of what the Navy has already put into their budget 

to help ensure that those ships at least make it out to the end of 

their currently planned lives. How much more they would have to 

add, I don’t know. It would depend in part on the condition of the 

ships themselves over time and also exactly how many extra years 

they wanted to add to the lives of those ships. 

What the Navy would need to do is come up with a new integrated maintenance strategy that was designed in anticipation of 

keeping a ship in service, a destroyer or an older cruiser, for 40 or 

45 years as opposed to some shorter figure. And I don’t know what 

the delta would be in terms of the maintenance funding, but it 

would very possibly require the addition of that funding on top of 

what the Navy has in its budget already. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. Labs, do you have any comment on using the 

Service Life Extension Program in lieu of or extending out the time 

in which we would have to build new ships, replacement for replacement? 

Mr. LABS. Well, I would agree with Mr. O’Rourke in that we 

don’t know exactly how much that would cost, and that would indeed vary from ship to ship. Certain ships will be in better material condition than other ships, and the level of investment that 

would be required is going to vary, and not only just on the maintenance side, but whether more updates to the combat systems would 

be necessary to make sure that not only the ships can serve out 

40 or 45 years, but they are going to be effective in a wartime environment out 40 or 45 years. 

In terms of being able to meet the Navy’s shipbuilding goals, certainly maintaining existing ships in service longer would be less expensive than buying new ships to replace them, but then it becomes a question of what is the relative effectiveness that you are 

buying for the amount of money that you are spending, and that 

is something that the Navy would have to assess. 

Mr. O’ROURKE. And it is also a less permanent solution. It is essentially a way of kicking the can down the road another 10 or 15 

years, but those ships, if they had their lives extended, would still 

eventually retire, and the problem with the cruiser-destroyer shortfall could recur at that point. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Just a question about the LCS and how that—the 

fact that we had sort of the two-track policy, that we had competition between two variants of the LCS. But in doing so, are we having two separate training programs to do that? And from a career 
8 

standpoint, in terms of training and the fact that you can’t necessarily cross-deck those personnel, although maybe with additional training you can, to what extent is that a problem, and is 

that configured in terms of the cost savings? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Yes. The Navy acknowledged in their testimony 

last year in support of the dual-award plan that sticking with the 

production of both designs would create this situation. The Navy 

argued that they have had classes in the past of 12 ships, and that 

at a minimum they would have at least 12 ships of each design. 

They tended to argue that the costs that would be added on to the 

Navy’s budget for maintaining two logistics systems and so on 

would be there, but that when calculated in net present-value 

terms, that the figure would come to about 295 million additional 

dollars over the life cycle of the ships. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Any comment on that? 

Mr. LABS. No. I would have echoed the same statements from the 

same facts from the Navy’s testimony of last year. Let me just sort 

of address the issue of cross-decking sort of the personnel, if you 

will. 

Yes, it makes that slightly more complicated to cross-deck personnel from one type of LCS versus the other, but in my judgment 

it wouldn’t be that much different than a Flight I destroyer versus 

a Flight IIA destroyer on an Arleigh Burke class, or even when we 

used to have Spruances in the fleet, a Spruance versus an Arleigh 

Burke. There are challenges there, but they are challenges the 

Navy is well familiar with. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. McIntyre. 

Mr. MCINTYRE. Thank you. 

Just some clarification. Mr. O’Rourke, you mentioned the idea of 

adding destroyers and attack submarines to the shipbuilding program to reduce the projected shortfalls in these two categories of 

ships. How would those additional ships be funded, given the constraints on future defense spending that we are likely to be looking 

at? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. That is the broader issue that I mentioned that 

I think would need to be confronted if you were to embark upon 

that kind of plan. I think the reason why those ships don’t show 

in the 30-year plan right now is exactly because the Navy is trying 

to show they are balancing their requirements while fitting under 

a top line. So if you were to undertake a project like this, it would, 

I think, very likely lead to a broader debate about the value of 

naval forces in defending the Nation’s interests and what share of 

the DOD budget should go to the Navy. 

That is an argument that some observers have begun to articulate in recent weeks and months, and it is something that might 

be expanded on and pursued further as a part of or one way of getting at this situation of what to do about these shortfalls. 

But my focus has been to at least highlight the existence of these 

shortfalls, which have gone relatively unmentioned even though 

they were present in the 30-year plan that was submitted last year, 

and to highlight the fact that even though they look like they are 

several years in the future, the options for addressing them include 

things that may require us to begin making decisions in the nearer 

term. 
9 

Mr. MCINTYRE. Okay. Dr. Labs, in your written testimony, you 

state that CBO’s estimate for required funding to reach the 313- 

ship minimum, the Navy will require approximately $3 billion 

more than what the Navy currently plans for. What is the basis of 

your estimate, and, in your opinion, if the Navy remains at its currently planned levels of funding, how many ships do you believe 

the Navy will be short of its 313-ship planned procurement? 

Mr. LABS. Mr. McIntyre, CBO goes about estimating the cost of 

the Navy’s shipbuilding plan through a variety of factors. We start 

off with sort of historical cost-to-weight relationships to estimate 

each individual ship in the program, and then we adjust that for 

the effects of learning. As you build more ships, you learn how to 

build them more efficiently and less expensively, hopefully. Also we 

adjust those estimates by rate, how many ships are being built of 

the same type in the same yard at the same time. The more you 

build, you can spread overhead costs, and that would come down. 

Then we also apply the effects of this as a growth factor on the 

higher long-run shipbuilding inflation over the economy as a whole. 

To my mind, that represents a real sort of cost to the taxpayer that 

needs to be accounted for in the way you project the long-term 

costs of a shipbuilding plan. And you are right, our estimate as of 

right now is $3 billion more than what the Navy is estimating. 

So what force results from that, if the Navy is stuck with the historical average of $15 billion, in other words they must cut substantial numbers of ships out of their program, would depend very 

much on the composition of those cuts. If they choose to cut very 

expensive ships, you could end up having a force not of 313 or 322, 

but maybe somewhere around the force we have today of 280. If 

you cut more of a mix of less expensive ships, it could range anywhere from 200 to 250 ships in the fleet. It would depend very 

much on what whoever would be the deciding authority, whether 

it would be the Congress or the Navy, what they decide to remove 

from the shipbuilding plan in order to bring that overall budgetary 

level over the next 30 years into sort of an historical average line. 

Mr. MCINTYRE. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. Rigell. 

Mr. RIGELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you, Mr. O’Rourke, and also Dr. Labs, for being here 

today and for your contribution to keeping our Navy strong. 

Let us see, the first question, Dr. Labs, I would like to direct to 

you. Are there any maintenance or docking space requirements 

that are unique to the aluminum-hull LCS, and, if so, what are the 

cost and basing decisions, impacts rather, to the Navy? 

Mr. LABS. The aluminum-hulled ship is certainly one that is— 

there are fewer maintenance yards, as I understand it from briefings from the Navy, there are fewer yards on either coast of the 

United States or even around the world that are capable of performing maintenance on those types of ships. So it is not that there 

aren’t yards available, but there is going to be a lot less of them. 

So there is going to be more challenges involved on the part of the 

Navy that if a sudden breakdown occurs, to have a system in place 

where the ship receives the necessary maintenance that it would 
10 

otherwise need to have. I don’t have an assessment of what the 

costs that would be associated with that. 

Mr. RIGELL. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. O’Rourke, in your opening statement you mentioned that the 

Service Life Extension option—and it is intriguing, being able to 

extend the life of a ship by 10 to 15 years. And I know this is an 

option that has been carefully examined and considered by the 

Navy. And though it is very costly, it doesn’t seem that the essential design for hulls has changed that radically. That is not like an 

airframe, for example. 

So what price do we pay in terms of performance or lethality of 

the ship being able to project power by more of a comprehensive 

overhaul and extending the life by 10 to 15 years rather than going 

with an all-new ship? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. One of the things that you pay for, one of the 

downsides of this option, is that you are working with a ship that 

has probably less growth margin remaining in it than a brand new 

ship would, and consequently it is not just a matter of examining 

the material condition of the ship and making the ship mechanically able to operate, it is also a matter, as Dr. Labs mentioned, 

of maintaining the mission effectiveness of the ship and whether 

the ship has enough space and weight and power and cooling and 

so on to support the kind of modern combat systems that would 

keep it mission-effective in the future threat environment. 

Mr. RIGELL. I yield back. Thank you. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. Courtney. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Labs, you mentioned that you haven’t done an analysis yet 

of the revised Ohio estimates that the Navy just released. When do 

you think that will be completed? 

Mr. LABS. Well, I plan to request that information, sort of get a 

detailed briefing from the Navy, and I hope that will occur over the 

next—sometime that briefing would get scheduled sometime over 

the next month. Typically those briefings occur with both Mr. 

O’Rourke and myself. And then as a follow-on to that, I will be 

doing an analysis of the Navy’s then 2012 10-year shipbuilding 

plan, and it would be incorporated into that analysis sometime over 

the next few months. 

Mr. COURTNEY. And I am just trying to remember what your estimates were before this revision. As I recall, you were still higher 

than the Navy in that instance as well? 

Mr. LABS. That is right. Allow me to recap for a moment. In the 

2011 plan, the Navy had an average price of their 12 boomers [Ballistic Missile Submarines] at $7.2 billion, which actually broke out 

to about $9 billion for the lead ship and 6.7- or so for the followon ships. Today what the Navy is saying, they have actually—and 

CBO’s numbers in comparison were about 13 billion for the lead 

ship and 7 or so—7.8 or so billion for the follow-on ships, with an 

average of sort of 8.2- for the entire class, 7.2- versus 8.2- for the 

entire class. 

Now, the Navy’s estimate as of this year, what they have been 

advertising so far, they said that the follow-on ships are now 5.6 

billion, at least they think they have gotten it down to that point, 

although their lead ship did come up. Their lead ship is now $11.6 
11 

billion because they have increased the amount that was going to 

be allocated, sort of nonrecurring detail design and engineering. So 

they have actually come closer to the CBO estimate in the lead 

ship, and we have sort of parted company, at least for now, on the 

follow-on ships. 

Mr. COURTNEY. That is a pretty wide gap between what you have 

always consistently projected, which, to your credit, has always 

been consistent. Can you sort of explain where you guys are so divergent? 

Mrs. LABS. Well, in terms of the comparison between the numbers under the 2011 plan, when they had sort of a classwide average of 7.2- and we had a classwide average of 8.2-, our methods 

were actually fairly similar, and really the difference between us 

was sort of how we treated that long-run shipbuilding inflation. 

The Navy did not sort of account for—how should I put it—they 

did not sort of attach an additional cost on their ships in constantdollar terms to account for that long-run inflation the way I did. 

If I would factor that inflation issue out of my methodology, our 

numbers would have been exactly the same, or very close to being 

exactly the same. 

Now that the Navy has sort of gone through and what they have 

said is refined their preliminary design, they have done a number 

of things to it, like going from a 20-tube submarine to a 16-tube 

submarine, reducing the diameter of the tubes and several other 

things, they have stated that they have managed to reduce the 

costs of at least the follow-on ships somewhere in the neighborhood 

of about $1 billion a boat. 

What I don’t know yet, and it could be that once I sort of see how 

they have done that and understand those details far better, it 

could be the CBO estimate could come down in a similar fashion, 

or not. I just don’t know enough of the details to know whether 

that will be the case. 

Mr. COURTNEY. And, Ron, your report again talks and the chart 

shows what you are projecting out. If this CR somehow ends up 

with a disaster scenario where we don’t implement the upgrade in 

terms of the Virginia class and also—well, we will set the Ohio 

aside—but if we don’t get that through this year, that really just 

kind of creates—will that create a domino effect in terms of what 

those numbers are going to look like even before the shortfall that 

you were describing? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. I think it would add an extra challenge to that 

situation, because the scenario of a year-long CR would create complications for both the Virginia-class program and the Ohio-class 

program, the Ohio replacement program. 

In the Virginia class, a year-long CR scenario jeopardizes the 

awarding of the second fiscal year 2011 boat, which in turn jeopardizes the continuation of the fiscal year 2009 to 2013 multiyear 

procurement contract, which is a major source of cost constraint on 

those boats. Those boats would be subject to having price renegotiation, and the cost of those boats could go up, which would undermine a lot of the savings that were to have been achieved as a result of the multiyear plan. 

The scenario of a year-long CR would also cause a problem potentially in the Ohio replacement program because the amount of 
12 

R&D [Research & Development] funding requested for that program in fiscal year 2011 was about 40 percent more than the 

amount that was provided in fiscal year 2010. 

So if R&D work on the Ohio replacement boat was funded in fiscal year 2011 at fiscal year 2010 levels, it would probably cause the 

Navy to postpone some of the work that had been planned for fiscal 

year 2011 into a future year. That could set back the development 

schedule for the Ohio replacement boat and make it more difficult 

for the Navy to meet what the Navy says is its very tight schedule 

for completing the development boat—the development of that boat 

in time to support an fiscal year 2019 lead ship procurement, which 

the Navy says is the last year that you can think about procuring 

the lead boat without causing at some point the boomer force to 

drop below 12 boats at some point in the future. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Not good. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Labs, Mr. O’Rourke, thank you so much for joining us today, 

and thank you for your service to our Nation. 

Dr. Labs, I want to begin with you. In your written testimony, 

you talk about the CBO estimate for the Navy shipbuilding plan 

at 313 ships, and you say that essentially it is about $3 billion 

short of being able to meet that 313-ship Navy. 

In your opinion, where does that fall short as far as their cost 

estimates, and where do we end up at the current level of funding 

as far as total number of ships? 

Mr. LABS. Mr. Wittman, in terms of where they fall short, there 

is no one particular place. It is across most of the shipbuilding programs. There is just in some cases very incremental differences between this and in other cases larger ones. The boomers being one 

example under that plan, there is $1 billion worth of difference. In 

carriers, there is about $2 billion worth of difference per carrier, 

but there are only half a dozen carriers in the plan. 

There were other programs that we were very similar. Virginiaclass program costs estimates, and CBO’s and the Navy’s are virtually identical now, so it just depends. So it all kind of accumulates over a 30-year period. 

If the Navy is stuck with sort of the $15-billion-a-year sort of current level of shipbuilding, as I mentioned earlier, how that would 

fall out in terms of the long-term inventory of the fleet by 2030, 

2040 would depend very much on where cuts would be made. 

Would you be making it in very expensive ships, would you be 

making it in less expensive ships, or some mix of the two? 

Obviously if you cut out a lot of the cheap stuff, you could have 

the Navy that falls to 200 ships. If you cut an aircraft carrier and 

maybe a couple of ballistic missile submarines, you save a lot of 

money in a big way, so you don’t cut nearly as many ships from 

the inventory. So it would depend. The range is a considerable one, 

depending on what decisions are made. 

Mr. WITTMAN. But you also stated that the plan frontloads the 

less expensive ships and backloads the more expensive ships. So 

under that scenario would you say the way it is currently planned 
13 

now that that would have any necessary effects as far as what 

would actually be built according to the plan? 

Mr. LABS. Because of that frontloading, one could certainly surmise that when the boomers start being acquired in the 2020s, and 

that is where your real funding crunch hits, is that you are more 

likely going to be forced to cut more expensive ships from the plan, 

and that means destroyers and attack submarines most likely, simply because that is where the money is in that time period. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Mr. O’Rourke, under the current scenario, there 

are some changes going on in the shipbuilding industry. You see 

what is happening with the Northrop Grumman yards and some of 

the uncertainties that are going on there. 

Can you give us your estimate based on this current change scenario that we are seeing with our yards, especially there at Northrop Grumman, what effect would that have on the Navy’s shipbuilding plan and their capability to carry out the shipbuilding 

plan? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. In terms of assessing possible execution risks for 

the Navy’s shipbuilding plan, it is worth noting as a starting point 

that the yards in question that are currently owned by Northrop 

build many of the large and complex ships for the Navy, aircraft 

carriers, submarines, destroyers and amphibious ships. So there 

are a number of programs whose execution is something that you 

would want to watch as this divestiture occurs. 

The Navy’s interests in what the new entity turns out to be, I 

think, would be principally, although not exclusively, twofold. First, 

I think they would want to ensure that the new entity has the 

managerial skills that are necessary to properly run these yards, 

and especially the nuclear shipbuilding activities at Newport News, 

over which the Navy, I think, has a particularly strong interest in 

making sure are run without problem. And to the extent that the 

Navy is satisfied with the current management team at these 

yards, the new entity can then seek to satisfy the Navy on those 

grounds by showing that these people will be transferred over to 

the new entity. 

The Navy, I think, also will have an interest in the financial 

strength of the new entity to make sure that it can absorb unforeseen losses that might occur on its shipbuilding program, and also 

have enough money to make the kinds of investments in workforce 

and capital plant that the entity would want to make to remain 

competitive against General Dynamics’ yards. So the Navy will be 

looking at the financial strength of the entity in that connection as 

well. 

Issues that in the press have been reported to be at issue as 

among the things that could affect the financial strength of the 

new entity include the question of pension costs and the question 

of possible cleanup costs at Avondale, should Avondale cease operations as an industrial facility entirely. If the new yard is encumbered in terms of managerial skills or financial strength, it could 

increase execution risks for the various kinds of ships that are built 

at these yards. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. Critz. 
14 

Mr. CRITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. O’Rourke, you had mentioned that I guess it is the 2006 313- 

ship Navy plan is, for using rough language, no longer the valid 

figure that is being talked about; that the Navy is going to revisit 

that and come back with an adjusted number, which I think you 

mention is probably in the 320–321 ship range. 

Now, is that something that you foresee you estimate, or is that 

something you are hearing that is the direction the Navy is going? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. It is what I am hearing. The Navy has actually 

stated that publicly in some of their testimony this year, and they 

have also communicated that in briefings, that they do expect to 

be coming forward relatively soon—although exactly what that 

means, I don’t know—with a new replacement plan. But I do think 

from the standpoint of ensuring the effectiveness of congressional 

oversight of Navy shipbuilding, it would facilitate that oversight to 

have an updated plan that has a fully accurate set of numbers 

against which to measure the Navy’s proposed programs. 

Mr. CRITZ. Okay. And, Dr. Labs, you had mentioned that we are 

about $3 billion short a year, and I am trying to figure this out. 

I am a little confused, because obviously the shipbuilding plan that 

we have seen ranges from 313 down to about 280–285; that there 

are these hills and valleys. 

Now, the $3 billion short, will that, in your estimation, hit the 

285 number, or does that get to the 313-ship level? 

Mr. LABS. The $3 billion shortfall is in reference to what I stated 

in my written testimony. It is against what I call the implied requirement that the Navy has not officially signed up to, but they 

have talked about it in other things, of around 322–323 ships. So 

it is against that requirement. 

Mr. CRITZ. Now, the 320–322 ship, there is obviously some issues 

that it seems that the Navy is a little shy on amphibious ships. 

Does this extra eight to nine ships address the amphibious issues? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. In general, no. The changes in the plan that Eric 

and I have been tracking over the last 5 years do not contemplate 

moving beyond the 33 ships, although it did move it from 31 up to 

33. But if you have been briefed on this higher 38 number, Eric 

and I have not seen, I don’t think, any evidence to show that a new 

set of numbers will necessarily go to 38. I think it is going to stay 

at 33. 

Mr. LABS. If you look under the 2011 plan, which is the last 30- 

year plan that we had, the Navy reaches 33 amphibious ships 

about sort of midway in the period for about 8 or 9 years, as I recall, and then it falls below that thereafter. It is important to note 

that between the 2009 and 2011 shipbuilding plans, the Navy actually reduced the number of ships they were purchasing. Their implied requirement went up to 322 or so, but the number of ships 

that they were going to purchase to try to meet that requirement 

went down. So as I said earlier, after around the midpart of the 

period, you fall below the requirement, and you don’t return to it 

beyond 2040. 

Mr. CRITZ. Is it in your estimation that the Navy is looking at 

it in financial terms or in actual needs of the Navy? Are they trying to, in essence, predict what the Congress will be able to appro-
15 

priate and then trying to fit their number within that, or is this 

actually a reevaluation of the true needs of our Navy? 

Mr. LABS. It is hard for me to sort of know what is the motivation of the Navy on that part. Certainly Navy officials have stated 

in terms of discussing at least the 2011 plan that they were mindful of trying to put together what they called an affordable shipbuilding plan, and they also have begun to discuss the issue of sort 

of how do you pay for the ballistic missile submarine in the 2020s 

when there will be severe pressure on the Navy’s shipbuilding 

budget. At the same time, they have stated this implied requirement of 322 ships, you know, 313 plus some additional extra. So 

how they are balancing those two, I can’t tell you for sure. 

Mr. CRITZ. Okay. Thank you, and I yield back. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony today. 

While we are on the shipbuilding budget, I would like to just 

turn to the Navy’s decision to restart the DGG–51 [Arleigh Burke- Class Guided Missile Destroyer] line versus purchasing more of the 

DDG–1000s [Zumwalt-class destroyers]. The Navy obviously is basing its decision on a set of assumptions that they can restart the 

DDG–51 line as well as incorporate all of the enhanced capabilities 

it is going to need versus going with more of the 1000s. 

Can you give us your assessment of how that decision is playing 

out, and what the cost assumptions are in terms of the restart of 

the line, and are those figures on target? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. When the Navy first announced their desire to do 

this in July of 2008, they put together—they put forward a few arguments, and these arguments have evolved a little bit over the 2 

or 3 years that have elapsed since then. 

But essentially if I were to take what the Navy has said and boil 

it down, I would say that what the Navy decided to do was to move 

to a destroyer procurement plan that, in their view, better met future mission emphases within the amount of money they had available, while also maximizing the number of hulls that they could get 

for that money. 

Now, in terms of how that question is playing out, that is going 

to depend on what the construction cost turns out to be for these 

restart DDG–51s, and the higher that cost turns out to be, then I 

think the more pressure the Navy might come under in terms of 

defending that decision. But the way the Navy looked at it at the 

time and estimated the costs of restarting the 51 versus continuing 

the 1000 and modifying the 1000 into a design that would more 

closely meet these changed mission needs, using the numbers they 

had at the time, that is what led them into that decision. But we 

don’t have a lot of evidence yet on what the restart of 51s will actually cost to build, because we are just getting into that now. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Okay. In terms of the Navy being able to incorporate—I should say the 51 line being able to incorporate all the 

enhanced capabilities it is going to need to meet, for example, missile defense needs, is that going to be an effective decision? I guess 

maybe I will point to the fact that the Navy plans, obviously, to replace its Ticonderoga-class cruisers with the DDG–51 lines modified to the Flight III configuration. In order to incorporate the larg-
16 

er, more powerful radar, the Navy will have to increase the amount 

of power and cooling to the radar. 

My question on this particular thing is what is your assessment 

of risk to the Navy being able to accommodate the new radar on 

Flight III ships, and what alternative do you see as options for the 

Navy meeting missile defense requirements if the Navy is unable 

to do so? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Yes, I understand what you mean now. You are 

referring to the Flight III ships that are scheduled to go into procurement starting in fiscal year 2016. There are a few risks that 

the Navy faces and which they have to manage and overcome. One 

is they need to develop the air and missile defense radar on a 

schedule that would be congruent with the first of these ships 

being procured in fiscal year 2016. There have been some observers 

who have expressed concerns about the ability of the radar to be 

developed on a schedule sufficient for that. 

If the radar turns out to take longer to develop than what the 

Navy anticipates, the Navy can manage that risk by simply putting 

off the start of Flight III procurement into a future year and continuing to procure Flight IIA DDG–51s. 

There is a second challenge that the Navy faces, which is can 

they put the radar and the other new or revised equipment into the 

existing DDG–51 hull, including the power-generation and cooling 

equipment that you mentioned, without lengthening the hull? The 

early indications that I get from the Navy is they think they can 

do that. If that does not turn out to be possible, and they have to 

lengthen the hull and turn it into a slightly longer ship, that could 

result in a design that is more expensive than what the Navy 

might be anticipating. 

The third risk concerns the capabilities that you wind up with 

once you develop this ship and begin procuring it and introducing 

it into the fleet, and the aggregate capability that the Navy has as 

a result for air and missile defense operations. The Navy made a 

decision to go ahead with the Flight III ship instead of the CG(X) 

[Next-Generation] cruiser, reportedly in part because they concluded that they would be able in the future to augment the data 

collected by the ship’s radar with data collected by off-board sensors. 

Now, if it turns out, for example, that these off-board sensors are 

not as capable as what the Navy anticipated when they originally 

made their decision, then it would raise the question of what your 

other options might be to augment the data on the Flight III destroyer with data collected by certain other now off-board sensors. 

One option for that would be to build an adjunct radar ship, 

which is a ship in auxiliary with a very large and powerful radar 

on it, somewhat similar perhaps to the Cobra Judy replacement 

ship, and some small number of these adjunct radar ships might 

be put into the shipbuilding plan and added to the fleet to make 

up for any deficiency that might emerge in the amount of off-board 

data that is available to be merged with the data collected by the 

Flight III destroyer’s own radar. 

Two other things to look for in the Flight III destroyer is whether 

the Navy intends to design that ship to support an electromagnetic 

rail gun, because the Navy has recently stated that that weapon 
17 

has the potential for air and missile defense operations, not just for 

naval surface fire support, and whether the Flight III destroyer 

will be designed to support a higher-power, solid-state laser, like a 

solid-state laser with a power of 200 to 300 kilowatts. A laser of 

that strength could have air defense applications and could help reverse the cost-exchange ratio that the Navy now faces in terms of 

trying to shoot down targets at an affordable cost. 

So these are issues that are potential matters of oversight concern for the subcommittee as the Navy begins to get into the design 

of the Flight III destroyer, and it is my understanding from the 

Navy that they are going to begin preliminary design work on the 

Flight III destroyer during fiscal year 2012. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. I see my time has expired. Thank you for your 

testimony. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, and thank you all for being here. I am 

sorry that I wasn’t here earlier. 

I wanted to go back to the question of how many ships are being 

built and when we can reach the desired numbers. I know you have 

had concerns for some time that the Navy perhaps was underestimating the cost of those ships. 

Could you expound a little bit more on what you think really 

ends up being the problem? Is it a question of our failure to rein 

in spending in the shipbuilding accounts per se, that it is a difficult 

thing to do? What role does the Congress play? 

I know that in many cases there is a real desire to have some 

of the shipbuilding contracts more front-loaded so there is consistency in terms of work being done in a timely fashion. 

What are some of the things that you believe are really the issue 

here? If we are taking so much time, I think, to get to where we 

want to go, it seems that other priorities that we might have that 

come along really get put on the back burner in a fashion that 

might not be helpful. I am trying to figure out how we deal with 

that question. 

Mr. LABS. In terms of what is sort of at the root cause of why 

there are differences between the Navy’s cost of ships and sort of 

CBO’s, or why ships are so expensive—if I understand, that is sort 

of the core of your question—I think there are a myriad of factors 

that are going into this. 

For one thing is that the shipbuilding industry itself is proving 

to be—it is an expensive industry. Labor and materials cost a lot 

more, as we have seen in the economy as a whole, so that adds to 

the cost of the ships. The rates at which we buy these ships are 

relatively small, and that is going to force more overhead costs in 

the yard into those ships. 

The desire for a high degree of requirements on the ships, do we 

make them more and more capable, has been driving up the cost 

of the ships. Indeed, that was partly what motivated the rise of the 

LCS program was the desire to find a ship that was less expensive 

and more affordable that the Navy could buy in numbers to do a 

lot of the sort of the day-to-day-routine type of operations, so you 

are not sending a destroyer to chase down a drug runner or something like that. 
18 

So there is a whole host of issues that sort of go into that. I personally can’t sort of pinpoint necessarily one or two that is doing 

it. I would certainly not—— 

Mrs. DAVIS. I don’t expect a silver bullet. I am just trying to 

make sure that we are asking the right questions in some cases in 

terms of oversight, and whether there is just a real disconnect 

there in terms of what is really needed for the job and what perhaps is being put into the budgets. 

I think the other thing, just to follow up really quickly, the other 

issue really is one of the line items that a lot of the procurement 

of the Navy ships require, and I think the issue of flexibility, while 

we are not able to move some of that funding as well, does that, 

in fact, contribute to this problem, or is it part of the problem that 

we are not able to do that in as timely a fashion perhaps as we 

should? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Well, that is a problem clearly under the scenario 

of a year-long CR, because funding for shipbuilding, unlike funding 

that is appropriated for other defense appropriation accounts, is 

not funded at the full-account or lump-sum level. It is funded at 

the line-item level, and therefore it is managed by the Navy at that 

level. 

And as the Navy has pointed out, even though the total shipbuilding request for fiscal year 2011 was only about $1.9 billion 

higher than the total amount provided in fiscal year 2010, the 

funding is misaligned at the line-item level if you were to try to 

meet the specific needs of shipbuilding programs in fiscal year 

2011. So for fiscal year 2011 programs that would require a funding increase over the fiscal year 2010 level, the shortfall or the misalignment, if you will, of these funds totals about $5.6 billion. 

So whether it is done as a special provision in the CR or through 

some freestanding piece of legislation, the Navy would need transfer authority so that it could move this funding in a way that 

would better align the amount of fiscal year 2010 funding with the 

specific line item needs of fiscal year 2011 shipbuilding programs. 

And they would also need authority for quantity increases as well. 

This is sometimes referred to as the new start authority, but you 

can also just call it authority for a quantity increase. 

Mrs. DAVIS. You would suggest trying to figure out a way to 

change this? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. Whether it is done as a part of a year-long CR 

or through some other legislative vehicle, the Navy has made it 

clear that these are the two forms of authority that would go a long 

way, although not entirely, but a long way toward mitigating the 

challenges they would face in executing their fiscal year 2011 shipbuilding programs. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. AKIN. [Presiding.] Thank you. 

It is a pleasure to have you back again, Mr. O’Rourke. You did 

a wonderful job last hearing. This was a month ago or so. Very 

good. 

Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
19 

Mr. O’Rourke, time ran out before I was able to get to a followup part of our discussion. In all the things that you laid out in 

terms of analysis of alternatives that the Navy is going to have to 

go through, being able to incorporate these new enhanced capabilities, particularly the amount of power and cooling on the radar, I 

wanted to know, in your estimation, can all of these enhanced capabilities be easily added to, incorporated by the DDG–1000 versus 

the 51? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. The most amount of work I think that would be 

needed, or the biggest single piece of work I think that would be 

needed to modify the DDG–1000 to better meet these changed mission emphases that the Navy has in mind would be to give the 

DDG–1000 a BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] capability. And to do 

that, they would need to do a lot of code writing to put a new module into the ship’s computer programming for BMD operations. And 

they might also need to make changes to the radar, especially because they have taken away one part of the dual-band radar that 

the ship was supposed to carry, and they would need to do some 

rewiring in the VLS [Vertical Launch System] cells on the ship. 

But it would be especially the modifications to the combat system 

and to the computer program, to include a module that is not there 

right now for doing BMD operations that might be the single largest change, that the Navy would have to contemplate making to 

that ship. There would be other changes as well. 

The baseline question is could that ship be modified into a design 

that would meet the Navy’s newly changed areas of mission emphasis, and the answer is yes, and there would be a certain cost 

for doing that. The Navy reviewed those costs as part of the destroyer hull radar study. They briefed Eric and I on that. It was 

the Navy’s conclusion that they preferred to do this through the 

DDG–51 line rather than modifying a 1000. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. But there would be less physical modifications 

that would need to be made to the 1000 versus physical design 

changes that would need to be made to the 51 to do the same mission? 

Mr. O’ROURKE. I guess I would answer by saying that the 1000 

has a lot more growth margin on it than the 51 hull does at this 

point, because the growth margin on the 151 hull is already partially consumed. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. O’Rourke. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you. 

I am sorry I am a little bit late getting here. I was just up at 

the Budget Committee, and they are thinking of all kinds of dastardly things to do to the defense budget, so we were doing some 

battle up there. 

I think because of the fact we have another set of witnesses coming, I am going to pass up the questions. I have the luxury of being 

able to ask a lot of these questions to staff and to those of you simply when I need them. So I am just going to pass that up and 

thank you all for joining us and for all the good work that you do. 

Let us go ahead and take a 2-minute recess, and we will send 

the next panel up. 

[Recess.] 
20 

Mr. AKIN. The committee will come back to order. And we are 

going to proceed immediately to panel two. I am going to dispense 

with any comments. 

Sean, do you want to go first, or are you going to have some of 

your witnesses? Why don’t you choose whoever wants to go first 

and proceed. 

STATEMENT OF HON. SEAN STACKLEY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE NAVY FOR RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT & 

ACQUISITION; ACCOMPANIED BY VADM TERRY BLAKE, USN, 

DEPUTY CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS FOR INTEGRATION 

OF CAPABILITIES AND RESOURCES; AND LT. GEN. GEORGE 

FLYNN, USMC, COMMANDING GENERAL, MARINE CORPS 

COMBAT DEVELOPMENT COMMAND 

Secretary STACKLEY. Yes, sir. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear 

before you today with Vice Admiral Blake and Lieutenant General 

Flynn to discuss Navy shipbuilding. And thank you, of course, for 

your steadfast support to our sailors and marines and your commitment. 

I have an opening statement for the combined team here. I would 

propose to submit a longer statement for the record and go to our 

remarks. 

Mr. AKIN. That will be fine. Submit it for the record, and then 

go ahead with your opening. Without objection. 

Secretary STACKLEY. Today’s Navy is a battle force of 288 ships, 

as many as half of which are under way on any given day, providing presence and maintaining readiness to respond to crisis or 

conflict wherever our interests are challenged. 

Our Navy’s ability to reliably meet the demands that come with 

global presence and readiness rely upon three enduring qualities: 

The size of the force measured in numbers of ships and aircraft; 

the capabilities designed and built into these ships and aircraft; 

and the skill, dedication, and resourcefulness of our sailors and marines who put to sea in these ships and aircraft. 

The Chief of Naval Operations [CNO] and the Commandant of 

the Marine Corps have defined the force necessary to meet our 

Naval requirements in what has been referred to as the 313-ship 

Navy. In fact, the CNO has emphasized that 313 ships is the floor. 

So to this end, the fiscal year 2012 budget request includes funding 

for 10 ships. 

Equally important, the shipbuilding program includes 55 ships to 

be constructed over the 5 years of the 2012 Future Years Defense 

Plan, an increase of 5 ships over the plan of a year ago. This increase reflects a priority placed on building the force called for by 

the 313-ship plan, and reflects efforts to improve affordability within our shipbuilding program, efforts which must be sustained and 

which must prove effective if we are to succeed in recapitalizing 

ship classes which were constructed during the build-up of the 600- 

ship Navy. 

Our budget request supports the Navy’s build plans to deliver a 

new carrier every 5 years, while also refueling the Nimitz class, 

sustaining an 11-carrier force from the commissioning of CVN–78 

[USS Gerald R. Ford] through to 2041. 
21 

We continue with Virginia-class fast-attack submarine procurement at two boats per year. Sustaining this build rate is essential 

to recapitalization of our submarine force, essential to affordability 

on the program, and essential to ramping up the critical skills of 

our submarine industrial base as we approach construction of our 

next-fleet ballistic missile submarine. 

We sustained DDG–51 production, which adds both capability 

and capacity to our sea-based missile defense. We have been able 

to increase our plan for DDG–51 construction with the addition of 

a 2014 destroyer, which, with a planned proposal for a multiyear 

procurement in 2013, will leverage the stability of this mature production program, improve build rates for our two combatant shipbuilders, and improve affordability. 

The Aegis modernization efforts are equally critical to rapidly increasing capacity in missile defense, starting to increase the number of missile defense platforms from 21 today to 41, 36 ready for 

tasking by the end of the FYDP [Future Years Defense Program], 

while also improving their material condition to meet readiness demands in the second half of their service lives. 

With the strong support of this subcommittee, we are executing 

the dual-award strategy for the Littoral Combat Ship, increasing 

our build rate to four ships per year in 2012. Efforts to stabilize 

design, improve production planning, invest in shipbuilder improvements, and leverage long-term vendor agreements, all within 

the framework of a competitive fixed-price contract, have returned 

this program to the level of affordability necessary for the Navy to 

move forward with construction at efficient rates in support of the 

55-ship LCS requirement. 

We increase our amphibious lift capability with the procurement 

of the 11th LPD–17 [San Antonio-Class Landing Platform Dock] 

class ship, and are extending service of the USS Peleliu to maintain nine operationally available large-deck amphibious ships, 

while awaiting fleet introduction of the lead ship of the America 

class, LHA–6. 

We are also increasing our logistics lift capability with the procurement of second of three Mobile Landing Platform class ships, 

or MLPs, and a joint high-speed vessel. With the 2012 budget request, the Navy has effectively accelerated the MLP program to 

one ship per year, which should significantly approve affordability 

for this class while also directly addressing the workload valley 

confronting the shipbuilder. 

In the second half of this decade, we will need to proceed with 

recapitalization of three major ship programs. As announced last 

fall, we are accelerating introduction of our next fleet oiler with 

procurement of the T–AO(X) [Next-Generation, Double-Hulled 

Fleet Oiler] beginning in 2014. T–AO(X) will bring modern commercial design to our refueling-at-sea capabilities, while also providing critical stability to an important sector of our industrial 

base. 

We plan to commence procurement of the replacement for the 

LSD–41 [Whidbey Island-Class Dock Landing Ship] class amphibious ships in 2017, following definition of lift requirements for this 

new ship class. 
22 

Most significantly, we will procure the lead ship of the Ohio-class 

replacement in 2019. It has been a quarter century since completing a higher class construction, and it is vital that we sustain 

development activities for the next ballistic missile submarine sufficient lead times to ensure our ability to produce this highly complex, uniquely capable ship on schedule. 

It is equally vital that we address cost-risk on this program 

through every stage of its development, or we place other ship programs at risk. To this end we have carefully defined the capabilities necessary to ensure the ship’s abilities to meet its requirements, and we have embarked on a focused design for affordability 

effort to capitalize on lessons learned of the Virginia program at a 

much earlier stage in the Ohio replacement program. 

The Navy shipbuilding program outlines the challenges we confront today and for the long term in meeting our Navy’s force structure requirements. In the most pragmatic terms, and balancing requirements of risk and realistic budgets, affordability controls our 

numbers. So to this end we are focusing on bringing stability to the 

shipbuilding program, finding the affordable 80 percent solution 

when 80 percent meets the need. We are strengthening our acquisition workforce, increasing not just our numbers, but our core competency in critical skills. 

We are increasing emphasis and fidelity on cost estimates in our 

requirements definition process to better inform critical decisions 

at the front end to avoid breakage on the back end. We are continuing to improve our ability to affordably deliver combat capability to the fleet through open architecture. We are clamping down 

on contract design changes, and we are placing greater emphasis 

on competition and fixed-price contracts. The benefits of competition are compelling in every example. 

Our goals for modernizing today’s force and recapitalizing the 

fleet affordably cannot be accomplished without strong performance 

by our industry partners, and so we are working to benchmark performance, to identify where improvements are necessary, to provide 

proper incentives for capital investments where warranted, and to 

reward sustained strong performance with favorable terms and 

conditions. 

Now, bringing stability to the shipbuilding program also relies on 

stable budgets. So as we work with Congress on our 2012 budget 

request, it is important to emphasize that there is an underlying 

assumption that the ships in our 2011 budget request will be fully 

funded. While executing our shipbuilding plan for 2011, we are 

making prudent decisions to mitigate the impacts of operating 

under a continuing resolution; however, we are rapidly approaching 

decision points where, absent necessary funding and new start appropriations, we will run out of line and need to pull back sharply 

on key programs. 

Specifically, 2011 is the first year we increase our build rate for 

Virginia to two boats per year. Likewise, we requested an increase 

to construct two Arleigh Burke destroyers in 2011. And the Mobile 

Landing Platform and LHA–7 Amphibious Assault Ship are each 

a new start in 2011. As well, funding limitations on development 

of the Ohio replacement and CVN–78 class construction place those 

programs’ schedules at risk. Virtually every shipbuilding program 
23 

and every shipbuilder is affected by the uncertainty of our top line 

and the absence of a line-item appropriation. 

In sum, the Department is committed to building the fleet required to support the National Defense Strategy, to which the fiscal year 2012 budget request addresses near-term capability needs, 

while also laying the foundation for longer-term requirements. Ultimately we recognize that, as we balance requirements, affordability, and industrial-based considerations, it is vital that we, 

Navy and industry, improve affordability within our programs in 

order to build the 313-ship Navy needed by the future force. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before 

you today, and we look forward to answering your questions. 

[The joint prepared statement of Secretary Stackley, Admiral 

Blake, and General Flynn can be found in the Appendix on page 

?.] 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

First of all, just in terms of the problems worked by the continuing resolution, a number of us on this committee have been 

working to see what we can do, as we talked about, and I think 

there will be continued support to try to provide you with the new 

starts and things that are necessary to keep things running at 

least in a somewhat orderly fashion. So we will continue to work 

on that, and that we will have to do off line, I suppose, as different 

things develop and depending how negotiations work out. But we 

are aware of those problems. And particularly the problem that 

seems to be affecting shipbuilding and the new starts and all is absolutely critical, and I think there is at least some level of good 

support particularly in the Armed Services Committee overall. And 

I know Buck is working on that as well. 

The second thing, I was just curious about one of the things we 

have been paying attention to is the EMALS system on new carrier, and that has to be built into the hull and everything. And I 

gather the timeline on that is pretty tight. How is that going, and 

do you see any problems with that or not? 

Secretary STACKLEY. Yes, sir. We have been managing EMALS 

to the smallest detail. We were very concerned, about 2 years ago, 

that the program was not on track. Basically we have replaced the 

management team as well as ensure that the program is properly 

funded both to complete its development and also to support the inyard need dates for the CVN–78. 

Today we are at a point in system development that we have 

turned over to the shipyard what is referred to as the Green Book, 

which takes all the testing that has been conducted up at 

Lakehurst, where we have a full-scale model in the ground that we 

have used to launch aircraft. So we have developed the test requirements, turned over that Green Book to Newport News on 

schedule so that they can continue to build the CVN–78 to support 

the test program. 

On the production side, we are carefully watching each of the 

components that need to be delivered to Newport News. We have 

2 in particular, 2 motor-generator sets out of 12 that have very limited float on the in-yard need date, but we don’t see difficulties 

right now in terms of meeting that. And all the other components 

have float on the order of 4 to 6 months. 
24 

So tight, yes; closely managed, yes. Do I think the risk is acceptable? Absolutely. We have yet to complete the SDD [System Design 

and Development] testing. As I described, we had launched aircraft 

off the Lakehurst system in December to really do—stress it and 

to drive learning early on. And coming out of that, in fact, we have 

uncovered some dynamics associated between the system and the 

aircraft’s performance that we have taken a pause to work more on 

the software side of correcting that issue. 

Mr. AKIN. Software, in order to change the amount of force relative to distance that the system develops? 

Secretary STACKLEY. No, sir. What is beautiful about EMALS is 

it is very scalable in terms of you dial in the load that you are putting on it and what you want for speed at the end of the runway, 

and EMALS will do the rest. 

What we discovered in moving away from a dead load to an F/ 

A–18 is EMALS is a long—it is a number of linear motors that are 

in series. And in the hand-off from linear motor to linear motor, as 

the aircraft is accelerating, there is a slight gap, and that can be 

tuned in terms of the way you ramp up the load and then the way 

you drop it off to minimize that gap so it is not perceptible to the 

pilot. 

So that is an example of what we were not able to pick up in 

dead load testing, but you put a pilot on an aircraft, and that is 

the report that we received back. And so we dived into that to figure out what is the best way to mitigate that so that it is not a 

problem. 

So the bottom line is the test program is, frankly, in good shape. 

It is a fairly exhaustive test program. We did take a pause, because 

we did not, while we were working on these changes or corrections 

coming out of the live aircraft testing, we did not want to have a 

standing army on the test side that was performing inefficiently. 

So we took a pause. We are coming back with corrections and picking back up the system functional demonstration this month. 

Mr. AKIN. Sounds good. 

Mr. Courtney. 

Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, Secretary Stackley and the witnesses, for being 

here today. 

Secretary Stackley, I want to also particularly applaud the work 

that you have done with this CR crisis, really, in terms of these 

new start programs. Obviously, the Block III contract for Virginia 

class was supposed to have been funded at the end of January, and 

you worked with EB [Electric Boat] and Northrop Grumman to sort 

of, again, extend that requirement, which the clock is still ticking, 

obviously. 

You know, your testimony over the years here in terms of the 

Presidential helicopter and now this issue, I mean, again, I think 

a lot of us really appreciate how sort of level-headed and 

unflappable you usually are with a lot of these problems. Your language that you just used, however, a few moments ago, saying that 

if this CR goes out through the rest of this year, that you will have 

to, quote, pull back sharply from the new starts, which, I mean, 

that—again, given your, again, approach to things, I mean, can you 

describe what that means in a little more detail? Really, at some 
25 

point this is going to result in shipyards having to pull back sharply in terms of their workforce and obviously pull back sharply in 

terms of our fleet growth. 

Secretary STACKLEY. Yes, sir. Let me describe a couple of things. 

First, the effort to minimize the impact of the CR is a collective 

effort between the Navy and industry, and, frankly, dialogue with 

Congress in particular areas. 

Some of the challenges that we have in 2011, first, we do have 

new starts that bind us. Second, as you all are aware, we are increasing our investment in shipbuilding. So in fact, the 2011 shipbuilding account is above our 2010 numbers. So when we are executing at 2010 levels, then we don’t have enough head room or top 

line to support our 2011 requirements. So we need both the top line 

amount as well as the authorities to go with the new starts. 

Now, in terms of contract execution and efficiency, frankly, what 

I focus on is the start fab [start of fabrication] date program by program, because if you line everything up to support the start fab 

date, then you will minimize any cost impacts, so neither the government nor industry has a real issue. So where we have things 

like advanced procurement or some amount of funding that allows 

us to proceed with planning and ordering material to support start 

fab and construction, then we are okay. Where we start to run into 

trouble is when we come up to that start fab date, and if we don’t 

have full funding then you have some significant impacts. 

And there are a number of programs where we are challenged 

right now. Mobile Landing Platform is the first one that comes to 

mind. We had advanced procurement in 2010, so we have to expend that, and we are doing it smartly, but we are going to come 

up to a point where we don’t have any further advanced procurement funding, and now we have got a bridge to cross. 

In the case of the Virginia, the start fab, we have the first Virginia under contract. The start fab for the second Virginia in 2011 

is actually in the October timeframe. So it is perilously close, and 

we have to, like I say, manage the planning and material support 

to ensure we don’t miss that start fab date, or there will be impacts 

to construction and impacts to the workforce. 

So program by program, you go down the line. And if you look 

at where you need to start fab, and if you have sufficient funding 

to support that in the near term, then we are pressing on. But, ultimately, we need both authorities in that increasing the top line 

that goes with our 2011 request. 

Mr. COURTNEY. As the chairman said, all of us are doing what 

we can to try and avoid that at all cost. 

Ron O’Rourke and Dr. Labs testified a short time ago about the 

out-year shortfalls, even if we are hitting all cylinders here, in 

terms of the increase in shipbuilding. And in particular they talked 

about the fact that in 2024, Admiral, the submarine fleet is going 

to fall below that 48-ship sort of target that the Navy has repeatedly said is needed for mission requirements. One issue which was 

pointed out with the earlier panel was the 2018 issue of whether 

we buy one or two submarines. I just wonder if you can comment 

in terms of what benefit that would have if we were able to make 

it to two in terms of that shortfall. 
26 

Admiral BLAKE. Well, if you are able to make it to two, you 

would, of course, mitigate the situation to some degree because you 

would be able to bring that boat on line when the shortfall starts. 

But I think if you take it in the larger context, the challenge you 

have with the SCN [Shipbuilding & Conversion, Navy] account in 

particular with buying that second boat is you have to, if you will, 

come up with around $1 billion in the years preceding the buy, in 

2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, in order to get economic order quantity 

as well as your advanced procurement. And then you would have 

to come up with the dollars in 2018 in order to be able to buy that 

boat. And what really complicates it is that fact that you have got 

the SSBN(X), which we are putting the R&D into for our strategic 

forces, competing at that time. And, of course, as you are well 

aware, we have brought that number in within our top line as we 

were directed to do last year. 

So when you look at it from that perspective, just from the submarines alone, not just to take it in isolation, but then you have 

also got the balance, because we have also got issues, as you are 

well aware, with surface combatants both and as well as our 

amphib [amphibious warfare] force. So when you take it in that 

context, it is not an easy—you can’t just take the issue in isolation. 

You have got to take it across the entire portfolio and then deal 

with it. 

Mr. AKIN. Okay. Mr. Coffman. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, this is to the Secretary. It is our understanding that 

the Department of the Navy officials agree that a 38-ship amphibious force would more fully meet the Marine Corps’ two Marine Expeditionary Brigade amphibious echelon lift requirement. Such a 

force would include 17 amphibious ships for each Marine Expeditionary Brigade plus four additional ships to account for 10 percent 

to 50 percent of the amphibious ships force being in overhaul at 

any given time. 

What risk is associated with maintaining the Navy’s current plan 

of a 33-ship amphibious force? 

Secretary STACKLEY. Yes, sir. Let me start by describing, the 38- 

ship number has been an enduring requirement, and today we are 

at 30. So the determination has been that 33 ships would meet the 

requirement with acceptable risk. What we are intending to do inside of the 313-ship plan and by the end of this FYDP, if you look 

at the details inside the FYDP, is to get back up to a 33-ship amphibious force that is made up of notionally 11 big-deck amphibs, 

11 LPD–17 class ships, and then 11 LSD–41, 49, or their replacements. 

Where the risk comes in, and I am probably going to turn this 

over to General Flynn to discuss the risk piece, is associated with 

how much of the lift requirement you take to the fight with you. 

So if you are dealing with a 2–MEB [Marine Expeditionary Brigade] assault, if you have 30 amphibs that are operationally available, you are not going to be able to bring the full table of equipment associated with 2–MEB. And what the Marine Corps looks at 

is some of the support elements coming in at follow-on echelon. 

Mr. COFFMAN. General Flynn. 
27 

General FLYNN. Yes, sir. As Mr. Stackley said, the 38 ships 

would give you 17 ships per brigade. And we believe that we could 

effectively—because of the fiscal constraints we have, we could do 

the assault echelon and load it out on 15 ships. 

The other key part of that is it is not just for the major contingency operation. It is also, we believe with 33 ships, with an acceptable degree of risk, you can meet the day-to-day requirements 

that we are seeing in regards to presence and crisis response. But 

if you don’t have that on the day-to-day operations, what you run 

into is you run into challenges that—to ensure that you have sufficient dwell time for the crews, time for maintenance, and then your 

ability to meet emergent requirements. Because right now what we 

are seeing, based on the number of actions that we are having to 

respond to, is that we are stressing the force. And we are meeting 

the requirements, but that is where your risk would be in your 

ability to continue to meet the demands. 

Mr. COFFMAN. General Flynn, LHA–6, the next amphibious ship 

to be delivered to the Navy, is more than 1 year late past its 

planned delivery date. What impact does this have in meeting Marine Corps lift requirements? 

General FLYNN. As Mr. Stackley said, we are on course to make 

33 ships here starting in 2017. A key part of that is when the plans 

were built, there was the idea behind when a ship would reach its 

expected service life and then when a new construction ship would 

come on. So if there are delays in new construction, you then also 

pressurize the need to be able to do maintenance on ships to be 

able to continue their mission. 

And, for example, because of the Continuing Resolution right 

now, one of the challenges we have is the Peleliu was supposed to 

begin a yard period about a week ago. And if we don’t have the 

funding to be able to do that, the Peleliu is the ship that is going 

to help us bridge the delay in construction in the LHA–6. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Vice Admiral Blake, due to the Continuing Resolution, the amphibious ship Peleliu’s maintenance availability was 

recently cancelled. Furthermore, the Navy plans to extend Peleliu’s 

decommissioning date by 1 year in 2014. What impact will this 

missed maintenance availability have on meeting the Marine 

Corps’ lift requirements, and what options are being planned to 

mitigate this issue? 

Admiral BLAKE. Sir, first, when you look at it, what we will have 

to do is we will have to look at the ships as they are coming up 

on these avails, and then we will have to juggle them because of 

the loading within the yards. So it is not just that there is a yard 

open, and we can, if you will, push Peleliu in. 

But it goes to even a bigger issue. Peleliu is only one of five ships 

that will not be going in the yards by the end of this month as the 

CR continues. So it goes across the entire force. 

In the case of Peleliu, what we are looking at right now is extending her an additional year, as you know, in order to—because 

of the late delivery of her replacement. And what we will have to 

do is then juggle the global requirements in order to make sure 

that we are able to meet all our commitments worldwide. 

Mr. COFFMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Critz. 
28 

Mr. CRITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am going to follow along the lines of Mr. Coffman’s questions 

concerning the amphib ship lift. I am assuming that 33 ships, 

which we are headed for, has the risk. But it is only the risk gets 

greater if we go to a high optempo [Operations Tempo] sort of 

thing. So do I understand correctly that 38 is the ideal; 33 we can 

live with, but if we end up with high levels of activity, that is 

where we would see the issues? 

General FLYNN. Sir, I think it is fair to say that, with 33, we 

should be able to meet all levels of activity with an acceptable rate 

of risk. Because sooner or later, you know, you have to make 

choices on your requirement, and we believe that we can meet all 

the requirements with 33 ships. 

Mr. CRITZ. And, Mr. Secretary, you had mentioned earlier that 

a 313 fleet ship force is the floor, I think is the terminology you 

used. And we were listening to testimony earlier that the Navy is 

actually going to probably come back with a level that is more like 

320, 321, 322 as the ideal number. Is that something that we are 

going to be hearing about in the near future, or is this all just 

rumor? 

Secretary STACKLEY. First, I want to attribute the term ‘‘the 

floor’’ to the CNO. And in terms of any future force structure assessment, I think Admiral Blake should probably address that. 

Admiral BLAKE. Sir, we, in fact, during the past year have done 

a force structure assessment. And what we are currently doing is 

working through the leadership both on the Department of the 

Navy side and the Department of the Defense side. And I expect 

that we should be delivering that in the near future, as soon as we 

go through the wickets with the leadership. 

Mr. CRITZ. Thank you. 

And so based on what the CNO said as 313 as the floor, I am 

looking at the 30-year plan of what the inventory is going to be, 

and it seems like there is quite a lot of years where we are well 

below the 313. And I am trying to figure out, as we look forward, 

is this something that we need to start addressing now to maintain 

that 313 floor? 

Secretary STACKLEY. Yes, sir. Let me try to break this up into 

a couple pieces. 

First, when the 313-ship requirement was established, which 

goes back to 2005, that was not 313 in 2013; that was looking out 

to the 2020s, because at the time we had a 276-ship Navy. So it 

was forward-looking to basically give us the ability to build up the 

force structure. And if you take the long-term plan, if you just look 

at the 30-year plan that the Navy delivered to Congress last year 

and break it down to three periods, the first decade is really a 

build-up period, and that is where you see the Navy peaking out 

at about 324 ships in the 2020 timeframe. And that is good. 

Now, but at the same time what you also see is the Ohio replacement program entering the picture, and that has a very significant 

impact on our ability to sustain the build rates that you see in this 

first decade of the 30-year period. We have worked with OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] to basically put together a plan 

that allows some top-line increase during the period of the high replacement program construction to the tune of about $2 billion per 
29 

year, but it is such a substantial program that it really does suppress build rates during that period, and so, in fact, what happens 

in the longer term is we start to come off of the peak of 324 ships 

as other shipbuilding programs are drawn down in numbers. So it 

is an extremely important concern on the part of the Department 

of the Navy. 

Our near-term focus, I think, is exactly correct in terms of trying 

to drive affordability and stability into our plans. We have a midterm issue of having to, one, ensure that the Ohio replacement program does not escape in terms of cost; and then, two, within our 

top line work priorities, and to the extent possible, affordability to 

minimize the impact on the longer term. But we don’t hesitate to 

describe the concern and the impacts to meeting our requirements 

in the long term associated with that. 

Mr. CRITZ. Before my time runs out, just so I have sort a full understanding, the 313-ship level is a level that is a goal, and it is 

a level that is based on our national security interests; would that 

be correct? 

Secretary STACKLEY. If I can share this response with Admiral 

Blake. But 313 is a requirement that was established that balances 

a couple of considerations. First is global presence. We have today 

288 ships; 142 of them are under way today, and about half are 

under way at any given time. And of those, 40 percent of our ships 

are deployed. In order to sustain global presence, you need a force 

structure size that allows the turnaround time and allows your 

maintenance and upkeep for your force. And then the other is response to a major combat operation. 

So balancing those two, you arrive at the makeup of the 313-ship 

force. That is requirements driven. And then in our shipbuilding 

plan, what you see is we will call it fiscal constraints or budget reality. When you overlay on top of that requirement what can we 

afford with reasonable expectations of future budgets, then the picture starts to emerge in terms of the build-up and then the longterm impact when the recapitalization of retiring ships just becomes too much in a limited period and has an impact on the overall size of the force. 

Mr. HUNTER. [Presiding.] Mr. Rigell. 

Mr. RIGELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Secretary Stackley, Admiral Blake, and General Flynn, thank 

you for your service to our country. And I have the real privilege 

of representing Virginia’s Second Congressional District, and, of 

course, just I like to think of it as the epicenter of our Navy, certainly on the East Coast, the world’s largest naval base, and Naval 

Air Station Oceana, and the naval amphibious base at Little Creek. 

So the equipment that you procure and the ships that you are 

building enable our men and women in uniform to accomplish the 

mission, and I am grateful for your service in that regard. 

My question addresses the fiscal year 2011 continuing resolution 

and a program issue that I don’t think has really been discussed 

and gotten the attention that it merits. It is my understanding that 

the CVN–78, the Gerald R. Ford, was authorized to be funded incrementally over 4 years, beginning in fiscal year 2008 with its procurement and finishing in fiscal year 2011. As I review the budget 

from fiscal year 2010 for CVN–78, I know that approximately $737 
30 

million was appropriated by the Congress, and that amount is presumably a ceiling which the program is forced to live within while 

under this continuing resolution. And I further note that the fiscal 

year budget for CVN–78 was over $1.7 billion. So that leaves us, 

the math is pretty simple on that, a delta of over $1 billion. 

So, Mr. Secretary, I address this to you. What, then, is the 

Navy’s plan for funding the rest of CVN–78 if you are forced to live 

within the continuing resolution? And as a slight follow-up there, 

is there any specific legislation or legislative authority that would 

be required by the Navy if that, in fact, is the case? 

Secretary STACKLEY. Yes, sir. In my opening remarks, I refer to 

both the CVN–78 and 79 construction impacts associated with the 

CR, because we also have advanced procurement on the 79 that is 

affected in 2011. 

With regards to the fourth year of incremental funding on the 78, there is a $1 billion delta between the 2010 CR levels and the 2011 

request. So two things would have to happen if we have to live 

within that cap in 2011. We would have to have the balance of 

funding in 2012, and we would have to have the authority that 

goes with an additional year of incremental funding. Today we are 

authorized 4 years incremental funding. We need that fifth year. 

The added funding doesn’t come into the picture until about the 

2013 timeframe. So the funding that is in the program today gets 

us, including 2011 at 2010 levels—would get us into 2013, but we 

would be getting into 2013 on fumes. 

So there is a shortfall. We would have to have that restored in 

2012. We would have to have the authorities that go with that. 

And, as you know, you have the 2012 budget request in your 

hands. So any program impact associated with the CR on shipbuilding, there is no room in 2012 unless you all make room for it 

to fix it in 2012 without creating a cascading impact on the total 

shipbuilding plan. 

Mr. RIGELL. I appreciate your clarification on that. And what 

limited funds that we have, they are under stress because of operating under the CR. And I have met with senior Navy officers and 

procurement officials within the district, and we are going to do everything we can to straighten this out for you. It just pains me as 

a businessman who now serves in our Congress to see that it is 

just so, in some ways, almost irrational the way that we are going 

about this. So I assure you that I am pursuing every option that 

I can, and I know my colleagues are as well. Thank you for your 

testimony. 

I yield back. 

Mr. HUNTER. Ms. Sutton. 

Ms. SUTTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you for your service and for your testimony here 

today. 

I am going to talk to you about something that we haven’t heard 

yet here and may come as a surprise. But I think a key component 

of modernizing our infrastructure and preserving our military assets and saving money in the process, which we hear a lot about, 

saving money in the process, is adopting a robust corrosion prevention and mitigation strategy. And it is not a glamorous topic, but 

it is one that is worth our time and attention, and, frankly, it is 
31 

something that DOD is doing well, because they have invested in 

the Office of Corrosion Policy and Oversight. It plays a really important role, just to give people a little idea of the scope of corrosion in all of our branches as well as all on our military assets. 

They all face unique sets of challenges when it comes to corrosion. 

But including the military as well as our roads, bridges, highways, water systems, I mean, corrosion has a cost of some $276 billion a year. Two hundred seventy-six billion dollars a year. And for 

those of us in this body—that is according to a GAO study. Those 

of us in this body who are concerned about fiscal responsibility, it 

seems to me that one thing that I would enjoy you expounding a 

little bit upon is this DOD corrosion office that you have, because 

it is my understanding that there have been a number of demonstration projects, some 150-plus demonstration projects, that 

show a return on investment of somewhere in the neighborhood of 

55 to 1. 

So why is that important? Because it is important that we make 

cuts that are smart cuts and we make investments that are smart 

investments to get us where we are going. Specifically, there was 

an article in the San Diego Business, I think, Journal it was about 

the effects of corrosion causing us to retire, I believe it was, the 

Spruance ships at a much earlier date because of the lost ability 

to keep them viable because of the impact of corrosion. 

So in these days of continuing resolutions—and that is also another issue, isn’t it? Because if you let things corrode, and you don’t 

have the money to fix them now, you sometimes lose the capacity 

to fix them later. 

So if you could just sort of expand upon how we might be smart 

in investing in these technologies up front and having that money 

recaptured down the road. 

Secretary STACKLEY. Yes, ma’am. At great risk, I will start by 

saying that an old friend used an expression that, if you want to 

get an argument out of me, you are going to have to change the 

subject. 

Corrosion control. I have seen extraordinary numbers in terms of 

the cost impact associated with corrosion on our ships and aircraft 

to the tune of 40 percent of our maintenance dollars are tied to 

wrestling with corrosion issues. We do have a concerted effort, 

DOD, OSD has a chair, and each of the services contribute to a 

team that goes after best practices, investing in developing new 

techniques, looking at materials, and then how do we best implement these. 

We spend a lot of our time talking about affordability on the procurement side because we are trying to acquire our platforms, but 

we are placing much greater emphasis these days on life cycle 

costs, because it is starting to dominate our ability to operate and 

maintain our ships and aircraft. And corrosion is a key part of that. 

So inside my office I have a corrosion czar that pegs to the OSD 

team and works across programs and systems commanders to target smart investments and to figure out how can we either accelerate on what we call forward fit when we procure the platform, 

and what do we need to do on backfit in terms of maintenance and 

upgrade and also modernization. 
32 

When we look at extending the service life for ships, a key part 

of a 313-ship Navy is holding on to the ships you have got for their 

full service life. And, in fact, we are looking at extending service 

lives on certain platforms. We don’t have a prayer of doing that unless we get out in front of issues like corrosion. 

So right now, when we go through the Aegis modernization program, we are at the front end of the destroyers. So the Flight I destroyers have just entered Aegis modernization, and as we are tearing those ships down, we are getting a good material baseline to 

capture what the first half of their life’s history is, but we are also 

looking at instrumenting so that as we go through and press on 

with upkeep for the Flight I ships, we are building the work package for the Flight IIA destroyers, because those are the ships that 

we are looking to extend beyond their initial service life. And so we 

are using this period to figure out what are those investments that 

are required, what are the key areas of the ship that need the attention, and then ensuring that, in the longer term, the dollars are 

there and the efforts are there to meet the service life expectations. 

So you hit some large numbers in terms of the number of initiatives. There are a large number of initiatives that span from investments in paint teams just to help the crews maintain their 

ships to selecting some pretty exotic materials in key areas where 

you don’t have the ability to get at the point of corrosion, and so 

you really need to rely on higher-tech solutions. 

Ms. SUTTON. Thank you. 

Mr. AKIN. [Presiding.] Mr. Wittman. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Secretary Stackley, General Flynn, Admiral Blake, thank you so 

much for joining us today, and thank you for your service to our 

Nation. 

Secretary Stackley, I want to pick up with your comment about 

this entire picture, and I want to put it in context of saying that 

I believe with the challenges this Nation faces with its defense 

needs at the very top of the list is Navy capacity. And capacity provides us the ability to project force, and 313 is the bottom line. Obviously I think a larger number of ships is needed. The key is how 

do we get there? And I think it is critical that we get there. 

We talk about building ships. I want to go to your point about 

service life completion. If you look at it, it looks like the Navy is 

getting back to basics and saying, listen, we have got to do the 

training. We have to make sure that the manning requirements are 

there. And so they are moving billets from land back to sea. And 

I think that is the proper response to what has been a failed optimal manning plan. 

If you look at where we need to go in the future, I think that 

I am concerned in that I refuse to believe that that just happened 

overnight, that that realization was just there. To me, that should 

have happened sometime past, and that we have seen, I think, 

some history there where we have kicked the can down the road 

on maintenance and training. And I think that is finally coming to 

roost right now with where we need to be with this entire plan of 

fleet capacity, and with where we are with optimal manning, and 

seeing that that has been put by the wayside, and where that decisionmaking has led us. 
33 

I just want to know, why are we just now going to general quarters over this? And I want to know how long it is going to take for 

our fleet to get back on course where we are going to be conducting 

effective and thorough maintenance and materials management 

and making sure that we are providing the necessary training for 

our sailors to make sure that we never get back to this position 

again. And we have seen some early science of that, of those problems there. I want to make sure that we have a clear understanding about why it took us so long to get where we are, and how 

we are going to avoid this in the future, because we do not get to 

the fleet capacity we need without making sure that we have a robust program for training, maintenance, and materials management. 

Secretary STACKLEY. Yes, sir. This is probably going to be a twopart answer where Admiral Blake is going to have part two. 

This is actually a fairly complex issue, and the CNO and Admiral 

Harvey, Fleet Forces Commander, have spent a lot of time trying 

to get to the root of it and have launched a couple of key fleet reviews to get a better understanding of what are the root causes, 

what do they trace back to, how far back do we, in fact, have to 

go to start correcting the issues. And then you have a large population of issues. Now you have to prioritize it, and then you have 

to resource it. 

So several things emerged. One is we went through a long period 

of implementing a number of initiatives that would bring certain 

efficiencies from a budget perspective, but placed risk on the fleet 

in terms of care and maintenance of our ships. And they were done 

somewhat individually without a recognition of what the cumulative impact would be, and then over time the issues started to 

manifest themselves. So in the course of the past, I would say, 1 

to 2 years, we have been coming to grips with it and reversing 

some of those initiatives that were laid in place years ago. 

You mentioned some of the manning, in terms of increasing our 

ships’ manning. We are looking at everything across the board. You 

hit on training. That is a key element. Parts support. We are going 

back to ensure that in our attempt to reduce everything from inventory to just in time, we have got the right understanding of reliability-based bearing, so that whether it is a spy radar or whether 

it is an LM2500 [General Electric gas turbine], when the trained 

sailor that is on board ship now goes to the parts bin, he has got 

what he needs to keep the ship running. 

So we are looking across the board trying to ensure we have got 

the right priorities in place while we—and it is going to take 

time—while we resource the number of things that we need to resource to increase our readiness and reliability system by system, 

platform by platform. 

Admiral BLAKE. The one thing I would add, I would say as you 

have this series of initiatives taking place, I think if you look back, 

you would say that not any one initiative taken in isolation would 

have a debilitating effect. But when taken in cumulation, what we 

started seeing, if you will, the indications and warnings on the material inspection side, one of the principal ones being in-serve, 

where we would go on board ships. And, of course, in-serves are not 

done every year; they are done over a period of time. And so you 
34 

didn’t get the trend analysis until you started seeing them coming 

in. And then the question came up, why are these ships not doing 

well on in-serve? And then you had to focus on, all right, now that 

they have not done well, have we got a trend here? So then we had 

to look at it, and then we had to isolate it, and then we started, 

if you will, working our way back. 

You mentioned moving personnel from shore to sea. Not only are 

we doing that, we are also putting a greater emphasis on eye-level 

maintenance down on the piers so that we can put more people 

there. 

We have increased the training, we have increased the dollars 

that we put in maintenance because we recognize that if these 

ships are going to make it to the end of their service lives, we have 

got to do that. And it is all the ships. 

The best example I can give you is the midlife we are doing on 

the LSD–41 class. We have got to get those ships. We tailor those 

midlifes to each individual ship, so you will have different amounts 

depending upon their material condition. And that is absolutely 

critical if we are to get those ships to the end of their expected 

service lives. Without that, you are going to see that ships will not 

be able to get there, which is, as one of your Members brought up 

earlier, why it is so critical to get these maintenance windows done 

as we are operating under the current CR. 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you. 

Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, thank you. Admiral Blake and Secretary Stackley, 

General Flynn, thank you all for your service to our country, extraordinary service, and everything you have had to say here today. 

I was away from the beginning part of this panel, so I apologize 

if my question has already been asked. But Admiral Blake I would 

just start with you, if I could—with respect to a follow-on to the 

Ohio-class submarine, the SSBN(X). Officials within your organization recently described some of the significant schedule and cost 

challenges that face the program. Considering the importance of 

our ballistic missile submarine force to our nuclear and strategic 

posture, obviously it is clearly important that these boats be deployed on schedule. How confident are you that the Navy will meet 

its cost and schedule goals? 

Admiral BLAKE. We have a very high confidence level that we 

are going to be able to meet both our cost and our schedule goals, 

and I will give you a couple of specific examples of why we feel that 

way. 

First of all, we are leveraging what has been done in the past 

in the earlier submarine programs, specifically the Virginia class. 

We are also leveraging for the SSBN(X), the D–5 SLEP program. 

So we are not starting out new. We have got a proven program. We 

are going to do an extension on those, and we are going to be able 

to put a proven system on those ships. 

When I refer to the Virginia class, we specifically looked at, not 

only their HM&E, hull maintenance and engineering, but also their 

combat system suite, and we leveraged off those programs in order 

to apply them to the SSBN(X). We recognize that we have to have 

an SSBN(X) on station, certified, ready to go in 2029, and we also 
35 

realize that in order to do that, we have got to start in 2019 with 

the building of the first ship in that class. 

So what we have done is we think we have built flexibility. We 

have addressed issues up front. We have even gone to the detailed 

design on this particular class of ship, and we have it at the most 

mature level, as compared to say either the Virginia or the Sea 

Wolf class, which were not at that high a level in detailed design. 

So when you take all those factors into effect, I think what you 

see is that we think we are in a good place when it comes to both 

the cost and scheduling to deliver that ship, because there is no alternative. As you mentioned earlier, it is the most survivable leg 

of the triad, and we have to deliver that capability to the Nation. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. I agree, Admiral. Thank you for your answer. 

Secretary Stackley, because of the strategic mission of the 

SSBN(X) and the fact that it remains, as we have talked about 

today, the most survivable leg of the nuclear triad, some, including 

the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Roughead, has stated support for moving the SSBN(X) funding out of the Navy shipbuilding 

into a conversion account to alleviate fiscal pressures on other shipbuilding programs. 

Given the fiscal pressures across all of the U.S. Government, can 

you outline how that could be accomplished without decreasing the 

top line of the Navy’s yearly budget? 

Secretary STACKLEY. I don’t have good past examples of being 

able to do that, but we have a couple of examples of other major 

programs that have been set aside, if you will, into a special fund. 

So we established—you all established the National Defense Sealift 

Fund back almost 20 years ago now to address the need to recapitalize our sealift fleet, and that has proven very effective. 

More recently, the Missile Defense Agency has been separately 

appropriated, again to fund the investments required on the development side and some procurement to address what is in fact a national security priority. So those are probably the two closest recent 

examples of separately funding something, a requirement that is at 

that level of importance and, frankly, that level, that size. 

We, barring any other alternatives, we have brought the cost of 

the high replacement to bear against the total shipbuilding top 

line. If it does nothing else, it addresses the—it brings the issue to 

light much earlier in the process so that the administration and 

the Congress have the opportunity to wrestle with, how do we fit 

the recapitalization of the higher class within the other pressing 

priorities that the Department is facing? 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Secretary. 

Turning to Virginia class, if I could, Admiral Blake, on account 

of the sharp drop in our attack submarine force as the legacy systems leave the fleet, the Navy is set to procure, as you know, two 

Virginia-class submarines per year until 2018. After that date, 

however, the force is going to begin to drop below the Navy’s requirement for a 48-ship fleet. 

What are the possible mitigation strategies to counter this shortfall, and in particular, what effect would procuring an additional 

submarine in 2018 have in the Navy’s attack submarine shortfall? 

Admiral BLAKE. Sir, that is sort of a two-part question. What 

have we done to this point, first of all, we have accelerated the de-
36 

livery of the Virginia class. We have gotten that down from 72 

months down to 60 months. 

Second, we have looked at the Virginia class, and not only the 

Virginia class but all submarines, and determined which, if you 

will, could be best in breed, and we might be able to get extensions 

out of those boats. 

Specifically to the 2018 boat, one of the real challenges we have 

there is if we were going to be able to put that boat in there, we 

would then have to come up with both economic order quantity and 

advance procurement in fiscal years 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 to 

the tune of about $950 million to $1 billion in those years. Then 

we would have to come up with the additional dollars in 2018 to 

buy that. And what really complicates it is we have, as you know, 

within our top line all the R&D and the initial dollars for bringing 

the SSBN(X) on line. So when you couple that in there, that is 

where it comes. 

If that boat were to be there, would it mitigate our shortfall? Absolutely. But what you have to do is you have to look across the 

entire portfolio, not only with the attack submarines but also with 

the surface units, because we have to balance within our portfolio; 

we have to be concerned about getting our amphib numbers there. 

We also have the issue coming between 2020 and 2030 when we 

have large numbers of surface combatants going away, and we 

have to replenish those stocks. 

So when you look at it, if you just take it in isolation, anything 

is possible. But when you take it and look across the entire portfolio, that is where the real challenge comes for us. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Admiral. 

Thank you, gentlemen. 

I yield back. 

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Hunter. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank, Mr. Chairman. 

First, General, Admiral, Mr. Secretary, thanks for your service 

and your dedication in working with us in trying to get the Navy 

where we think they need to be at and the Marine Corps as well. 

The first question I guess would be for General Flynn, kind of 

going off Mr. Coffman’s and Mr. Critz’ comments on the LHA–6 

and 7. Do you think there is any commentary on the Marine Corps 

right now, the fact that they don’t have well decks, the fact that 

they can’t support any kind of landing craft going out of them? Or 

do you think that kind of plays into the cancellation of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and looking for a new one there? 

Is there any commentary there that the Marine Corps now has 

LHAs with no well decks? 

General FLYNN. No, sir, I don’t believe there is anything like that 

there. The decision to build the LHAs without the well decks was 

made probably I think about well over 5–6 years ago, and at the 

same time, the commitment, we were moving ahead with the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. So I don’t see any commentary there at 

all, sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. Do you think it is wise to have LHAs with no well 

decks? 

General FLYNN. Sir, I believe, when you have a limited number 

of dollars to spend on shipbuilding, the more versatility and flexi-
37 

bility you can get in the ship is what we should look for, and that 

is why over the last year we have been working with the Department of Navy and the Navy to, when we build LHA–8 in 2016, we 

are going to put the well deck back in, because that will give you 

the most flexibility and versatility out of a limited number of assets. 

So, I am a believer in a well deck, and when I testified last year, 

I said we should be looking about putting the well deck back in, 

and I think we are on the path to do that, sir. 

Mr. HUNTER. Thank you. 

Mr. Stackley, you concur the LHA—— 

Secretary STACKLEY. Yes, sir. We are basically doing an analysis 

of alternatives right now looking at different approaches towards 

restoring the well deck to the LHA–8, considering, one, the timeframe and then, two, what is the most affordable method to give 

that ship the capability. 

Mr. HUNTER. The next question is kind of broad. If you look at 

world events and where we are based at, where the Fifth Fleet is, 

countries we use for kind of bases of operations because we have 

to, and as we start pulling away from those places, let’s say, if we 

start moving away from places like Bahrain because of their style 

of government, which we don’t fully support, but we have to use 

them, and we do support them in certain ways, but as we move 

away from that and as we move into more of a, let’s call it seabased basing—last week I think it was Admiral Roughead said the 

great thing about a carrier or any other kind of ship is you create 

your runway on the water there. So you are based out of the water, 

and you can go anywhere, and you don’t have to use these bases 

which we might not like the people in those countries that they reside. 

So the question is this: One, moving this conversation from what 

I have just stated to things like the MLP, to things like, hey, we 

have to sea base now, we are going to have to do it more, I frankly 

think we should start doing it now. Secretary Mabus didn’t really 

have a great answer last week because he said, well, what we are 

doing now is based on the QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review]. 

Well, the QDR doesn’t account for Libya, and it doesn’t account for 

Bahrain. It doesn’t account for Egypt. It doesn’t account for all of 

these things that just happened to blow up in the last month, 

right? This stuff all just happened. It accounts for two ongoing operations but not in the way that it is happening now. 

So the question is, how much more important does it make 

things like having an MLP—and General Flynn, please, and Admiral, whoever would like to, this is my last question—so how much 

more important does world scenarios, kind of the way things are 

right now, play when it comes to total sea basing and things like 

the MLP and being able to transfer cargo and that thing in the 

ocean? 

Admiral BLAKE. Yes, sir. I think if you look at the Navy-Marine 

Corps team, we will have always been expeditionary in our approach. So we like to say, we only like to play away games. We 

don’t like to play home games. By that we mean, we want to be 

out there forward deployed and providing a deterrence presence, if 

you will, as we are out there. 
38 

When you look at what we are able to do, Admiral Vernon Clark, 

when he was CNO, used to say, oh, we can go anywhere and we 

don’t need a permission slip. And that is exactly where we want 

to be. 

So, as you have articulated, this combination of amphibious and 

surface combatants and aviation is what gives us that ability to be 

forward deployed and give that forward presence to the country, 

and I think it is an absolutely critical aspect. 

General FLYNN. Sir, a key part of that is I think our approach 

to what we are doing with maritime prepositioning in working with 

the Navy and getting the MLP going and also adding the T–AKEs 

[Dry Cargo Ships] to the existing squadron is an example, first of 

all, of frugality. We are taking existing assets and we are making 

them more useful for the environment we are about to receive or 

about to see. 

So what you see by the addition of the MLP and what you see 

by the addition of the T–AKE is we will have the ability without 

going into port to do selective offload of the MPS [Maritime 

Prepositioning] ships and also to be able to do at-sea transfer of vehicles so that you can get them to the connector that you need to 

have relevance ashore. 

So, first of all, I think it was a frugal approach, and the other 

part is I think it is going to tremendously increase our capability. 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you. 

Ms. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you all for being here, and perhaps just put 

in a plug for some front loading of that funding from time to time 

when it looks like we could use it. I would certainly ask us all; I 

think we have been looking at that for some time. 

I wanted to ask about the reasoning behind carrier homeporting 

decisions. I know that is a difficult one. I know it is complex. I 

know a lot of things go into that. But it is difficult to actually pin 

folks down about it, quite frankly. So I am going to ask you if you 

could tell me exactly what goes into the process of determining a 

home port, and what can effect a change in those decisions? Because sometimes we see that the Navy plans to home port ships in 

different locations or move ships, and yet then it is determined that 

new ships are coming online, so that is not a good idea to do what 

was previously thought would work. 

Tell me a little bit more about that and what we can expect and 

how sometimes delays in shipbuilding negatively affect those homeporting decisions as well. 

Secretary STACKLEY. I am going to have Admiral Blake address 

the homeporting issue, and then I will then talk about delays in 

shipbuilding. 

Admiral BLAKE. If we take the West Coast for an example, if you 

look, we have three home ports on the West Coast that are carriercapable. We have the two up in the Northwest, and then we have 

the one down in San Diego. And if you look, our position to put one 

carrier in Bremerton, one carrier in Everett, and then have up to 

three carriers in San Diego, and additionally, because carriers have 

to go into the yard, what we have is we have the ability to put a 

carrier up in Bremerton in order to give it an extended yard period 

with a dry docking. 
39 

Our most recent example is the Nimitz class, the Nimitz itself, 

actually. And what we have to factor in as we are, if you will, moving the ships around is we like to have that strategic balance and 

we like to make sure that we are filling all the holes, if you will, 

as we are moving the assets between locations. 

With respect to the Nimitz, it was the only yard we could use on 

the West Coast, so we pushed her up there, and then the decision 

was made to leave her up there. But if you look overall, the overall 

plan for the Navy in the long term would be that we would continue to use the Everett yard, the Everett facilities, the Bremerton 

facilities, and then we will also have up to three submarines—three 

carriers, correction, in the San Diego area. And that is how we do 

it. So we move them around. 

Mrs. DAVIS. But we also know that there are some delays or 

questions whether a new carrier would be coming certainly to San 

Diego. I am just trying to understand, again, whether even though 

that may be the strategic desire to have three carriers there, there 

is a reality that we are sort of waiting to see what is really going 

to happen on that front. And it almost feels as if there are some 

different decisions for the West Coast and the East Coast which 

are also strategic balance. 

Admiral BLAKE. I would say, if you look at San Diego, we have 

50 ships, 70,000 personnel in San Diego alone, and there is no effort—not effort, that is the wrong term—but we are not going to 

walk away from San Diego. And I think it is just a matter of, as 

we move the assets around and we have to, if you will, place them 

in the various locations, and as I mentioned earlier, San Diego will 

always be up to three carriers because it has the capability to do 

it. 

Mrs. DAVIS. In the few remaining—just I think there is a minute 

left, I wanted to ask a littoral comment, LCS question as well, and 

whether there are any maintenance or docking space requirements 

that are unique to the aluminum-hull LCS, and what are the costs 

and basing impacts to the Navy? 

Admiral BLAKE. Currently what we are doing right now is we are 

looking at both East and West Coast options for the home porting. 

The initial home ports are going to be San Diego on the West Coast 

and Mayport on the East Coast. But I would tell you, as the inventory fills out, you know, the end inventory is 55 ships, there is 

every reason to believe that we will expand that because you have 

to, because you only have a limited number of facilities within 

those two bases. So we will have to do the environmental assessments, and then following that, we will then look at additional 

bases. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Okay. My time is up. 

Thank you very much, gentlemen. 

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Palazzo. 

Mr. PALAZZO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Gentlemen, thank you all for being here today. 

There is no doubt there is a lot of concerns on all of Americans’ 

minds, and they typically right now are centered around jobs, creating American jobs, the economy, our national debt. And they are 

all looking for solutions on how we are going to solve these issues. 
40 

What really brings it home is when Chairman Mullen or Admiral 

Mullen actually says that the greatest threat to our national security is our national debt. 

Many of my colleagues are looking for ways to reduce our deficits 

and pay down our national debt. And I am afraid that in the flurry 

of trying to find ways to reduce our deficit and our debt, they are 

going to be looking at our Department of Defense. 

And as most of our colleagues are also, we are 100 percent committed to making sure that our warfighters have the best equipment, best training to the best value to the American taxpayer. 

So it kind of brings me to a question on Navy acquisition strategy. So my question is going to be for Secretary Stackley. 

Since coming to Congress, I have become aware of several recent 

examples of multiyear procurement contracts in Navy acquisition, 

and I am also aware that Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, 

which happens to be in my district, recently completed its sea trials 

for its 28th Arleigh Burke-class destroyer which was funded under 

a multiyear procurement contract that started in fiscal year 2002. 

I believe the DDG–51 restart is good for the Navy and good for the 

Nation, and I am looking forward to these ships being built very 

soon. 

In today’s tight budget environment and with increasing pressure on these budgets in the future, it is important for us to look 

at funding future ships like the DDG–51 restart in the most efficient way possible. I understand the multiyear procurements are 

generating savings for the taxpayer and promoting stability for the 

defense industrial base. Simply put, I believe we need to move toward more of these types of contracts. 

How can this committee assist you in enabling multiyear procurements for programs such as the DDG–51 Arleigh Burke-class 

destroyer and other programs? 

Secretary STACKLEY. Let me start by saying that the Burke programs had two multiyears, both of which were very effective in 

terms of yielding savings for the Department. And in establishing 

the strategy for the restart on the 51, through a series of discussions and decisions, we worked with industry to initiate the restart 

at Ingalls. So, in fact, the DDG–113, which is the first ship of the 

restart, is under negotiation right now with Ingalls, and when we 

look ahead toward getting past the restart and into stable production, in fact we are targeting a multiyear procurement in 2013. 

So in our budget exhibits, when you look out over the FYDP, you 

will see a plan for multiyear procurement. The plan is a 5-year 

multiyear, which includes nine ships in those years. And a lot of 

effort went into our 2012 budget build to make room for a second 

ship in 2014, which is right in the middle of that potential 

multiyear window, to give both the volume and the stability that 

the program needs in order to yield the savings. 

So right now we are at the point in the process where we are 

working inside of the Department to address all of the issues that 

we need to certify before coming back to Congress notionally 1 

March 2012 with a legislative proposal for multiyear procurement 

on the 51s. 

Mr. PALAZZO. And you will let this committee know if there is 

any way we can assist in that acquisition strategy. 
41 

Are there any other additional or specific authorities necessary 

for the Navy to continue pursuing this acquisition strategy? 

Secretary STACKLEY. No, sir. The 2009 WSARA [Weapon Systems 

Acquisition Reform Act] pretty well laid out what we need to do to 

certify the multiyear, and we are attacking it up front. 

Frankly, since it has been so long since we executed a 51 

multiyear—it will be a 10-year period—we are having to reengage 

portions of the Department to get back up to speed on the 51 program in order to support that certification. 

Mr. PALAZZO. Thank you, gentlemen. 

I definitely believe that a strong, robust Navy is key and critical 

to the future of our national defense, as well as our global force 

projection. So thank you all for your all’s service. 

I yield back my time. 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you. 

Now we are going to go to Mr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you members of the panel for being here today. 

I, too, understand how important it is to bulk up the backbone 

of our ability to provide security for the Nation, so I support this 

expansion. 

History shows that a strong navy is critical to a nation’s defensive and offensive capabilities, as well as necessary for the protection of merchant vessels and key sea lanes of communication. And 

I think, with respect to the Navy, it is better that we have and not 

need as opposed to need and not have, given the amount of time 

it takes to build these ships. 

I do have some questions, however, regarding the shipbuilding 

program as it has been presented. I am concerned that we may be 

prioritizing quantity at the expense of quality, particularly given 

our short-term focus on light ships designed for use in coastal waters. 

I am concerned about unresolved questions regarding survivability of the LCS. I am concerned by projected shortfalls of cruisers and destroyers, the backbone of our blue-water surface combatant fleet, in out-years of the long-term shipbuilding program. And 

I am also concerned that projected costs of expensive programs, 

like the DDG–1000 and the Ohio-class submarine, may be unrealistically low. 

Secretary Stackley, for years the Director of Operational Testing 

and Evaluation has raised serious concerns regarding survivability 

of the Littoral Combat Ship and whether the LCS meets its level 

one survivability requirement. Why are LCS full ship shock tests 

not scheduled until fiscal year 2014, when we will have already 

produced 10 or 12 ships, and why would we begin full scale production of this ship if there are serious outstanding concerns regarding 

its survivability? 

Secretary STACKLEY. Yes, sir, let me first begin by describing 

LCSs. LCS 1 and 2 are both designed to a level one level of survivability, and all of the analysis and testing to date supports the determination that they in fact meet their survivability requirements. 

The scheduling of the full ship shock trial on LCS in 2014 is 

about right compared to all the other shipbuilding programs. In 
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fact, typically in a major shipbuilding program, you don’t shock the 

lead ship; you end up shocking one of the first follow ships. 

So, for example, the last major shipbuilding program that we 

conducted shock trials on, DDG–51, the first ship to be shocked 

was DDG–53, which wasn’t delivered until 2 years after the 51, 

and by the time she was shocked, we had about 20 DDG–51s under 

contract and in full rate production. 

The nature of the beast in shipbuilding is that you have such a 

large capital-intense structure that is building these ships that you 

cannot afford to stop construction and wait for the lead ship to be 

built, tested and then get around to the full ship shock before you 

start construction again. So what we do is we address, to the extent possible, through analysis and surrogate testing and developmental testing, proof out the design, so that by the time we get to 

the shock trial, the risk has been retired. 

In fact, if you go back and look at the results from prior full ship 

shock trials, the change activity that is driven into those ships’ designs is relatively minimal because we have in fact spent so much 

time on the front of end of the design to retire that risk. And we 

see the same case here for LCS. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. 

Admiral Blake, naval aviators will tell you that over the course 

of a deployment or a career, engine failures are common and twinengine aircraft can make the difference between ditching and saving the aircraft and maybe the life of the pilot. 

What steps are you taking to mitigate the risk of single-engine 

carrier operations with the Joint Strike Fighter? 

Admiral BLAKE. Well, first of all, there has been extensive testing with respect to the engines, the engine for the Joint Strike 

Fighter, so that the reliability in the single-engine aircraft will be 

able to function and will provide a margin of safety to those pilots 

as they are airborne. So what we have done is we have taken the 

engine itself with the manufacturer and gone into a series of scenarios in order to ensure that our personnel are in fact safe when 

they are doing it. 

You are absolutely correct; a multiengine aircraft is, you have 

backup. But what we have essentially done is we have said, all 

right, we are going to look at this engine, and we have had singleengine aircraft in the Navy before. In the early 1960s we had aircraft, such as the A–4 and the Crusader, the F–8, so this is not 

new to us. We just have to deal with it from a reliability perspective and make sure that it meets its goals. 

Mr. AKIN. Our last questioner is going to be Mr. Bartlett, I believe, a former chairman. The best for last. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you, and I apologize for being late, but we 

had an Army modernization hearing that I needed to chair, and I 

came here as soon as I could when that was over. 

In looking at the clips yesterday from the press, I noted a comment in one of the articles that wondered in this constrained environment, fiscal environment, would we continue to choose to spend 

money on things like the 20th-century aircraft carrier, as they 

noted it. 

This reminded me of a question that I have had about technologies and which one will run faster. The carrier, for instance, 
43 

will our ability to defend it, for it to be defended, run faster than 

the ability of an enemy to attack it; witness the new Chinese antiship missile and the J–20 [ fifth-generation stealth fighter aircraft], 

which some have suggested may be designed to deliver a waveskimming, supersonic cruise missile. 

Regina Dugan, the new head of DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency], was in my office the other day, and I 

asked her if they could help with that kind of an analysis. I was 

concerned about the deep strike heavy bomber and whether our 

ability to be stealthy or the ability of the radars to pick it up and 

the air-to-ground defenses to take us out would run faster, and we 

really wouldn’t want to have the momentum of the past determining the future if that wasn’t going to be very productive. 

She said, yes, they could do that kind of thing. In fact, they had 

done it. And they were looking at cyber warfare, and they noted 

that the lines of mal-code that the bad guys used had not increased 

through the years, but the lines of code that we were using to defend ourselves were increasing exponentially. And if we cannot 

bend that curve, the day will come when about all our computer 

systems will do, can do, will be able to defend themselves. 

Now, I am wondering, who in the Navy looks at that kind of 

thing down the road, looks at these technologies and the rate at 

which they will be running? And this will illuminate our judgment 

in what we ought to be building, because it is pretty silly to build 

something now that technology in 20 years from now will be able 

to neutralize. Who does this, and how do we do it? 

Secretary STACKLEY. I will start. Let met first describe that there 

are a couple pieces of this. 

First is threat assessment, in terms of where is the threat, and 

where are they going? So there is a fairly robust number of organizations that are trying to project the threat. 

Second is technology. Where is technology? Where is it going? So 

that when we look toward planning, bringing capabilities to bear 

against that threat, that we can target, where is the technology? 

Where is the threat going to be? 

Inside the Department of the Navy—you mentioned Regina 

Dugan from DARPA—the lead organization within the Department 

of the Navy, the Office of Naval Research, is responsible for looking 

out ahead in terms of technology and projecting, what are the opportunities in terms of where we can militarize technologies to address future threats? 

Separate from that is the requirements process, which I think 

Admiral Blake will describe. 

Admiral BLAKE. Yes, sir. 

Well, as Mr. Stackley just mentioned to you, we have the Office 

of Naval Research, which works in conjunction with DARPA, and 

then they provide us on the N8 [Deputy CNO Integration of Capabilities & Resources] side, which is the requirements and the integration piece, where we think we should be able to go or look at 

R&D programs where we think we can address and, if you will, get 

inside a potential opponent’s OODA [Observe-Orient-Decide-Act] 

loop. 

You mentioned earlier in the process, earlier in your remarks, 

about in general anti-access. That is one of the areas we are par-
44 

ticularly concentrating on, but not only in the scenario which you 

described but worldwide, because there is a proliferation of systems, not only in the Pacific but worldwide, that we have to deal 

with. And one of the biggest issues when we go into that is we have 

to ensure that we can’t just look at it in isolation, if you will, in 

one particular area. We have to look across the entire spectrum, 

and we have to deal with it in the places we are likely going to 

have to go. 

So I would say, yes, you have organizations like DARPA. On our 

side of the equation, we have the Office of Naval Research. And 

then what they do is they provide us, we go into memorandums of 

understanding with them in order to be able to work on potential 

technologies in order to meet those requirements. 

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you. 

I was cheating just a little bit. I have I think a couple of fairly 

quick questions. 

The first was we had 10 carrier air wings. We have reduced them 

now to nine. Is there any plan, if we are reducing carrier air wings, 

does that suggest that we are not really fully committed to the 11- 

carrier strategy? 

Admiral BLAKE. No, sir. I think there might be a little confusion 

on that point. When we put together the 2012 budget, we reduced 

one carrier air wing staff and one carrier strike group staff. We did 

not reduce the number of carrier air wings, and we did not reduce 

the number of carriers. So I think that is just a confusion point. 

So we would still have available the 11 carriers and 10 air wings. 

But as an efficiency, we take it down by one, the staff. 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you for clarifying that. 

My other question was sort of a larger view. Our earlier panel 

talked about the CBO had been—they are pretty good at estimating what things are going to cost—had been talking about the 

fact they see that the budget we are looking at is between $1 billion to $3 billion per year; they feel a little too optimistic and that 

maybe you are suggesting every single thing to go right from a cost 

point of view. 

Do you think you have drawn it pretty close to the line or maybe 

even a little over the line, or do you really have a good sense you 

can bring things in and not be over $1 billion to $3 billion per year? 

Secretary STACKLEY. Let me start by, I should first focus inside 

of the FYDP, and the reality is that the closer the programs that 

you are estimating are to real time, the closer your estimates will 

be. 

So we put a lot of attention on to the shipbuilding programs that 

are in hand to ensure that the estimates on those programs are appropriate, and then the issue becomes one of execution. 

So I could go program by program inside of the FYDP and highlight where we feel very strongly in terms of our estimates, but 

similarly, there are areas where we have got some risk; one on the 

execution side, and there is another area of risk associated with 

things that we forecast and then we have to wrestle with, for example, escalation. 
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So I think Dr. Labs pointed out a difference between CBO’s estimates and the Navy’s estimates; there is a difference in terms of 

how we account for escalation. Well, in the near term, that difference is de minimis. But then when you start to look over the 

long term, there is a compounding effect. So that ends up being a 

pretty significant driver in terms of the difference between CBO 

and the Department of the Navy’s estimates, simply how we account for escalation. And that is less a matter of real escalation inside of shipbuilding and more a matter of what happens to escalation indices as programs get passed back and forth between the 

Department, OMB [the Office of Management and Budget], and 

Congress. 

When we look out in the long term, there are several risk areas 

that we have to address. We are working hard on stability. If you 

have a lot of fluctuation in your program, you are going to drive 

unnecessary cost increases to the programs that we don’t budget 

for and we try to avoid. And then with that comes—there is an aspect associated with volume or business base. 

So right now we have a shipbuilding industrial base that is oversized for the workload coming its way, and one of our efforts is to, 

as best as possible, broadcast to industry, here is our plan, and we 

are going to stay with our plan, so that industry can make appropriate efforts to right-size itself so it can perform more efficiently 

within that workload. 

We also have to use every tool in the toolbox, and one that I 

think has been underutilized for some time now is competition. 

That is not just competition at the shipbuilder level; that is also 

competition in the combat systems side of the house and then competition down throughout the vendor base, where it is possible. And 

then you always wrestle with the volume issue versus the competition issue. So we look for the sweet spot. 

So we have put honest effort into, one, we have strengthened our 

cost-estimating team. We have put honest effort into estimating inside the FYDP where we are budgeting and then also estimating 

the long term so we can wrestle with the issues that are before us 

in terms of force structure versus affordability versus top line. 

But there are risks. And have we gone too far in terms of allowing risk to persist inside of our shipbuilding plan? I would say, not 

yet. The Department, frankly, is not satisfied with the trends of 

cost in the shipbuilding program, and so what we should not be 

doing is accommodating those trends of increasing costs. What we 

have got to do is wrestle them to ground and reverse those trends. 

So it is not simply a matter of what you forecast in the out-years; 

it is also what are you doing, Department of the Navy, to wrestle 

those trends to the ground and reverse them. And there is going 

to be 1,000 battles ahead to get there from here. So we start now. 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

I appreciate your being there to fight all those battles as well. 

Thank you to our witnesses. 

As you see, we have a pretty dedicated committee here to last 

this long. So there is a lot of interest, and I appreciate your help. 

Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 5:50 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

MARCH 9, 2011 

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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

MARCH 9, 2011 

(139) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WITTMAN 

Mr. WITTMAN. Are we investing enough in our equipment to sustain our position 

as the greatest Naval Force throughout the 21st Century? As you all three of you 

know, our Navy and Marine Corps have conducted cyclic combat operations for almost 10 years at a pace that we have not seen in the history of our fleet. Ships 

and aircraft are constantly deploying and critical life cycle maintenance is being affected due to the high operational tempo. Knowing there is deferred maintenance 

and a backlog of lifecycle management for our fleet, how is the past 10 years going 

to affect the service life of our ships, submarines, and aircraft? What is the affect 

going to be on the service life of an F/A–18 super hornet that is above its planned 

airframe and engine flight hours, or the DDG that has deployed so many times to 

support overseas contingency operations, that critical hull, mechanical, electrical, 

and weapons systems maintenance is neglected and pushed to the right? What do 

you believe the long term affect is to our overall material readiness? Furthermore, 

do you feel that we are allocating the appropriate amount of money to focus on 

maintenance, modernization, and modification? 

Secretary STACKLEY. Keeping our ships, submarines and aircraft in satisfactory 

material condition is essential both to supporting current operations and ensuring 

that we are able to get the projected service life from these valuable national assets. 

It has been central to the United States Navy’s mission to perform sufficient levels 

of maintenance in each of these areas to ensure our fleet can ‘‘answer the bell’’ when 

called upon. Certainly the last decade of high tempo operations have been a challenge and there have been areas where we were not able to do all of the maintenance we desired. However, even with these challenges, the Navy’s ships, submarines and aircraft have responded to each call with the speed and efficiency desired from the nation’s military forces. 

While we desire to do a complete maintenance package on each of our platforms 

every time it is brought in for a maintenance availability, there are different levels 

of repair and modernization required depending on the platform involved. In the 

case of aircraft and submarines, the nature of their operations and the inherent 

dangers in their operating environments have lead us to develop a very rigorous 

process to identify deficiencies, develop maintenance solutions and perform that 

maintenance. The same is true for the nuclear power plants in our aircraft carriers. 

Conventionally powered surface ships and non-nuclear equipment on our aircraft 

carriers degrade far more gracefully and can be recovered in a later availability. As 

a result, we have taken more risk in these areas over the last decade as our operating schedules and budgets have been stretched to accommodate the tempo of demands placed on these assets. 

We are in the process of assessing the actual condition of our ships, submarines 

and aircraft today. There is no question that the F/A–18 fleet has been operated 

much more demandingly than was anticipated when they were procured. Since service life for aircraft is a function of the number of hours flown, there will be an impact on the Navy’s ability to operate these aircraft at some point in the future and 

service life extensions may become necessary. On the other hand, the procurement 

of aircraft today and in the future may permit the Navy to manage the remaining 

service lives of these aircraft and get them to the end of their service life without 

taking any extraordinary measures. 

Our submarine fleet is already managing its service life margin and we see very 

little likelihood that the operations of the last decade will materially impact that 

force. Our aircraft carriers are undergoing regularly scheduled maintenance and 

their refueling overhauls are providing us with a window to do major overhauls to 

ancillary and support equipment to ensure they reach the programmed end of life. 

Surface ships will be our most significant challenge but this is not insurmountable. Based on lessons learned from the submarine and aircraft carrier maintenance 

processes, the Surface Maintenance Engineering Planning Program (SURFMEPP) 

activity was established to provide the same engineered approach to surface ship 

maintenance. SURFMEPP is in the progress of performing in-depth reviews of surface ship maintenance requirements that have significantly improved the Navy’s understanding of the surface ship maintenance requirement. 
140 

In the end, we must balance current Combatant Commander force allocation requirements against sufficient force reserves to surge in response to operation/contingency plans. As the maintenance requirements for the DDG 51 Class and other surface ships are further defined, maintenance and modernization actions will be 

planned and executed to maintain readiness levels and ensure the ships reach their 

expected service life. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Recently it has been announced that the Navy is getting back to 

the basics with training and maintenance and that billets that were on shore, will 

be transferred back to sea to fill critical positions lost to a failed ‘‘optimal manning’’ 

plan. I know that changes to manning and training were reactionary to budget cuts 

and desires to move money elsewhere in the force, but I refuse to believe that this 

is just an instant revelation by the U.S. Navy. We have known for years that we 

were ‘‘kicking the can’’ on maintenance and training while short changing our crews 

with this ‘‘optimal manning’’ plan . . . as a result the material condition of our ships 

has suffered. Why are we just now going to General Quarters over this? How long 

is it going to take to get our fleet back on course when it comes to conducting effective and thorough maintenance and material management (3M) and providing our 

Sailors the training needed to succeed? 

Secretary STACKLEY. Surface Force readiness suffers from the effects of decisions 

made over the better part of two decades. Following troubling INSURV inspection 

results in 2008, the Navy commissioned a Surface Force Readiness Fleet Review 

Panel. The Panel’s report, delivered in February 2010, provided a comprehensive review of Fleet training, manning, and maintenance practices. Significant findings included: 

• Surface Ship Class Maintenance Plans (CMPs) had not been consistently and 

centrally managed or updated since Planning, Estimating, Repair and Alterations (PERA) Surface was deactivated as part of the 1993 BRAC. • In 1996, the Surface Force reduced CNO availabilities to nine weeks to maximize operational availability leaving insufficient time to complete required life 

cycle maintenance. • Optimally manned ships, a program started in 2001 to minimize shipboard 

manning, are not sufficiently manned to maintain an acceptable level of shipboard material readiness, especially in the area of corrosion control. • The number of military personnel assigned to intermediate maintenance had 

been reduced impacting military maintenance training opportunity and organic 

capacity. • The number of third party assessments, inspections and audits had decreased 

throughout the Surface Force. 

In response to the Panel’s findings, the Navy has initiated the following actions: 

• Established the Surface Ship Life Cycle Maintenance Activity in FY10, which 

was further expanded into the Surface Maintenance Engineering Planning Program (SURFMEPP) activity in FY11, to provide Navy with the same engineered 

approach to surface ship maintenance that is successfully employed in the submarine and aircraft carrier maintenance programs by: 

Æ Documenting all required life cycle maintenance in Class specific Technical 

Foundation Papers. Æ Maintaining CMPs and ship specific long range maintenance schedules (reviews of DDG 51 and LSD 41 CMPs were completed in support of PB12; CG 

and LHD CMPs are scheduled to be completed before PB13; remaining Surface Ship CMPs are scheduled to be completed before PB14). Æ Creating and maintaining a surface ship corrosion tracking database that details the condition of surface ship tanks and voids. Æ Preparing maintenance availability work packages that accurately reflect the 

preservation and corrective maintenance needed. Æ Formally monitoring surface ship work deferrals. 

• Increased CNO availability durations from nine weeks to fifteen weeks (or 

longer) to allow time to accomplish required life cycle maintenance. • Increased the number of military billets on ships by 1,105 in FY12 to provide 

sufficient manning to perform required organizational level maintenance. • Increased the number of military billets at the Regional Maintenance Centers 

by 285 in FY12 to start reversing the loss of organic intermediate-level capacity 

and improve military maintenance training. 

• Launched pilot programs for Total Ship Readiness Assessment beginning in 

FY11 to establish formal, periodic, total ship material assessments to identify 

ship material conditions in time for proper prioritization within upcoming maintenance periods while training the Fleet to conduct ‘‘self-assessments’’. 

• Initiated corrosion control initiatives including: 
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Æ Partnered with the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) to perform a detailed 

surface ships corrosion survey pilot that used commercial technology and 

practices during FY10. Extended the pilot to perform surveys on an additional 16 ships in FY11. 

Æ Formed Corrosion Control Assist Teams designed to provide tools and training for ship’s force corrosion control starting in FY10. 

Æ Established the Painting Center of Excellence within the Naval Sea Systems 

Command with responsibility for reviewing commercially available corrosion 

control technology and developing corrosion control technology and processes 

focused on Fleet identified needs for longer life coatings and/or reduced installation costs. 

Since FY10 when these corrective actions were first implemented, the number of 

Board of Inspections and Survey assessment failures has decreased, and a majority 

(12 of 19) of the inspected surface ship equipment areas are either trending upward 

or remaining in the green/satisfactory area. Navy is actively monitoring the performance of the above initiatives and the Fleet is trending in the right direction. 

Navy expects to have the Fleet back on course in the next two to three years. 

Mr. WITTMAN. We have talked about investing in the crews and the life-cycle 

maintenance and management of our fleet. I believe you need a larger budget to 

reach your defined goals and set the Navy up for success in the 21st century. However, I also believe it is time to invest more money in government owned shipyards 

and modernize them to meet the workload of the future. Can I please get your 

thoughts on this? 

Secretary STACKLEY. The Navy is continuing to sustain, restore and modernize 

the Naval Shipyard infrastructure within today’s fiscally constrained environment. 

Naval Shipyard infrastructure includes both mission and support facilities. The 

Navy has focused its investment on the Controlled Industrial Area, which primarily 

involves shops, piers, wharfs, and dry-docks. The most critical deficiencies are being 

addressed within the current resourcing profile. 

U.S. Code Title 10, Section 2476 requires that the Navy invest a minimum of 6% 

of the average of the previous three years of intermediate and depot maintenance 

revenue into the shipyard recapitalization program. The Navy has provided investments of nearly 10% in FY08 and FY09 and 15.6% in FY10, and plans to invest 

another 10% in FY11 if the funds are appropriated in a FY 11 appropriations act. 

FY12 investments will likely be greater than the currently reported 9.6%, based on 

just-released energy special project information. 

The Navy programmed $168.9M in Sustainment and Restoration and Modernization (RM) projects in FY12: 

• Puget Sound—$6M Dry Dock Certification 

• Puget Sound—$5.5M Dry Dock Certification 

• Pearl Harbor—$7.8M Dry Dock Certification 

• Pearl Harbor—$37.3M Building Renovation 

• Pearl Harbor—$3M Dry Dock Repair 

• Pearl Harbor—$7.7M Dry Dock Repair 

• Norfolk—$0.8M RM Energy Projects (2) 

• Portsmouth—$100M RM Energy Projects (4) 

The following Military Construction (MILCON) projects are programmed in FY12: 

• Norfolk—$74.9M Controlled Industrial Facility 

• Puget Sound—$13.3M Integrated Dry Dock Water Treatment Facility 

The following equipment projects ($54M) are planned for FY12: 
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Mr. WITTMAN. We currently have 29 amphibious ships. You have stated the Commandant and the CNO have determined a force structure requirement of 38 and the 

Dept of the Navy is willing to accept the risk of a minimum of 33. My concern is 

that the mission load and need for our amphibious fleet is not going away. I love 

that we are investing heavily in BMD and our surface combatants, but I fear we 

are not taking seriously the demand of what Gen Amos calls, the ‘‘Ford 150s of the 

fleet’’. Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief are not going away, and we are 

staring down a path that will see a MEU back in the Mediterranean for the foreseeable future. For the past 10 years 6th Fleet has been relatively quiet, I fear those 

days are over. There is a legitimate possibility that we will have a MEU supporting 

6th Fleet, AND a MEU supporting 5th Fleet. Our ability to project power from the 

sea and put Marines on the beach is not going away, so in my mind, meeting the 

minimum number of amphibious ships is not the answer. We have invested in the 

Arleigh Burke, Virginia Class, and LCS class of ships . . . the expensive, hi-speed, 

technologically advance ships, but I think it is time to divert more time and attention to our amphibious fleet. Can I please get your thoughts on this? 

Secretary STACKLEY. The 33 Amphibious ships programmatic goal has been tested 

against DoD planning scenarios capturing the demands of the most stressful combination of wartime and peace time missions expected under our current strategy. 

The 33 ship amphibious goal meets the requirements of two nearly simultaneous regional conflicts. 

The QDR and force structure assessments performed by the Navy show that by 

prioritizing competing demands, the 33 ship amphibious programmatic goal can generate operationally available ships to meet the world-wide rotational demand or 

surge demand with acceptable risk. This force will support individual war plans or 

provide two to three continuously deployed Amphibious Readiness Group (ARGs) 

with embarked Marine Expeditionary Units (MEUs) to respond rapidly around the 

world, and two additional ARG/MEUs ready to surge when needed. 

The Navy and Marine Corps are continuously evaluating amphibious lift capabilities to meet current and projected requirements. The enduring challenge is to provide sufficient capacity in the Assault Echelon to lift the MEB’s ground equipment 

and to accommodate the capacity of an Aviation Combat Element with MV–22 and 

JSF. CNO and CMC have determined that the force structure required to support 

a 2.0 MEB AE lift is 38 total amphibious assault ships. The 38 ship requirement 

was communicated to the four chairmen of the Appropriations and Armed Services 

committees by SECNAV/CNO/CMC letter dated 7 Jan 2009. Given fiscal constraints, DoN will sustain a minimum of 33 total amphibious ships. The long range 

shipbuilding plan meets the 33 ship force level by FY 2017. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Do you feel that that approximately $15.8 billion per year in FY11 

dollars for the next 10 years is enough to sustain a 30 year shipbuilding plan with 

a goal of maintaining 313 battle force ships? We have an aging Oliver Hazard Perry 

Class that accounts for 29 Frigates and over 40 LA Class submarines that are past 

their halfway point of planned commissioned service (6 are currently at, or over 30 

years of service). Most, with the exception of some of the LA Class, will decommission 10 years from now. Is the plan for 313 battle force ships a realistic number 

and do we have the ability to reach this number when taking in to account the 

planned budget to reach that goal? 

Admiral BLAKE. Yes. The requirement of 313 ships remains the floor. The funding 

in place supports the Navy plan of reaching that level within the next 10 years. 

The Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 Shipbuilding Plan included funding for the ballistic 

missile submarine recapitalization from within its anticipated Total Obligation Authority. During the years in which the new submarine is being procured, the procurement of other ship types will be reduced resulting in force level and industrial 

base impacts. This plan will achieve a peak battle force inventory of 325 ships in 

FY 2022, after which the force level drops as legacy cruisers, destroyers, submarines 

and amphibious ships retire, averaging about 308 ships between FY 2022 and FY 

2041. While the threats, demands, and mission requirements for the far-term planning period (FY 2032 to FY 2041) are not well understood, the Navy will continue 

to consider mitigation strategies for these anticipated shortfalls in future plans. 

The Navy must strike a balance between investing in new, more capable ships 

for meeting current and future requirements and maintaining ships to their expected service life. The Navy has made a conscious decision to deactivate older, less 

capable ships that have become increasingly expensive to maintain and operate in 

order to support those investments in our future Fleet. 

In the near–term, delay of the FY 2011 budget has directly impacted maintenance, modernization and new construction of ships, which produce greater delays 

in reaching the 313 ship battle force floor. 
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Mr. WITTMAN. Can you please talk about the two year probationary period that 

has been placed on the F–35B and how that is going to affect the Marine Corps 

Strike Fighter shortfall? If the F–35B struggles through test and evaluation, is 

there a backup plan to mitigate the risk of the F–35B being delayed in delivery to 

the USMC (will the USMC SLEP the AV–8 Harrier to sustain a STOVL capability 

or possibly invest in the F/A–18 E/F Super Hornet?) How would any further delay 

in this program impact the USMC amphibious lift requirements and future planning and design for large deck amphibious ships? 

General FLYNN. The F–35B STOVL Joint Strike Fighter remains the tactical aircraft we need to support our Marine Air Ground Task Forces. Our requirement for 

expeditionary tactical aircraft has been demonstrated repeatedly since the inception 

of Marine aviation and as currently being demonstrated in Libya today. 

Slowing down the production rate of the F–35B to allow for responsible fixes to 

be designed and incorporated was prudent in light of the progress the Joint Strike 

Fighter program has made to date. The slower rate of production slows down our 

rate of transition. Currently we are successfully managing our strike-fighter aircraft 

inventory to meet our operational commitments. We are confident we will be able 

to continue to manage our legacy aircraft appropriately with a variety of service life 

management initiatives until the F–35B is fielded. 

On 14 March the Secretary of the Navy, Chief of Naval Operations, and the Commandant of the Marine Corps signed an agreement to redistribute the F–35C procurement within the FYDP to take the most efficient path available to optimize the 

department’s Carrier Strike capability. The earlier than anticipated procurement of 

the F–35C allows the Marine Corps to simultaneously meet its enduring commitment to carrier Tactical Aircraft Integration and continue our measured transition 

to a 5th generation expeditionary capability while partially offsetting the delay in 

F–35B procurement. 

A Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) similar to the F/A–18 requirement will 

not be required for the AV–8B due to the unique design and composition of components that normally exhibit fatigue over the service life of an aircraft. The F/A–18E/ 

F though a perfect near term fit for the Carrier Strike mission set it is a less than 

optimum match for the expeditionary nature of Marine Corps operations. Essentially the F/A–18E/F is about two-thirds the capability and service life of an F–35 

at three-fourths of the cost. Future threat and operational environments requires a 

5th generation strike-fighter with the strategic longevity to avoid substantial F/A– 

18E/F SLEP costs for an increase from 6000 to 9000 hours and the extensive technological upgrades required for survivability. 

The potential for further delays do not effect amphibious lift requirements or designs of large deck amphibious ships, simply because conventional carrier aircraft 

are not compatible due to requirements for arresting gear and catapults that cannot 

be incorporated on lighter amphibious ships without incurring a major expeditionary operational capability shortfall by limiting amphibious troop and equipment 

lift to accommodate the additional ship infrastructure required for carrier operations. 

Mr. WITTMAN. Has significant testing been done with regard to the F–35B STOVL 

taking off and landing from the deck of an amphibious ship? If not, when do you 

predict that testing will take place? Do we know if the thrust and heat produced 

from the engine of the F–35B will have a negative effect on the steel flight deck 

and I-beam support of the deck...meaning will the deck buckle or become unstable 

over time? 

General FLYNN. The F–35B test program has made substantial progress during 

CY 2011 to date and is on track for the first Developmental Test Ship Trials scheduled in October through November 2011. The environmental effects of the engine 

will be fully assessed during this period. After 3 years of focused analysis and preliminary tests in preparation for this event indicate no significant damage or degradation is expected. The USS Wasp has been dedicated for this test and instrumented to assess the flight deck, substructure, and ancillary deck systems. The Marine Corps along with NAVSEA, NAVAIR, and the Joint Program Office has collaborated extensively to ensure F–35B L Class operations are tested fully and representative of normal operations. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. COFFMAN 

Mr. COFFMAN. We often speak about the strategic necessity of maintaining amphibious force projection capabilities. To provide clear guidance on strategic requirements, Congress mandates the number of operational aircraft carriers and submarines that the Navy is required to maintain. What are your thoughts on Congress 
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also mandating the number of operational amphibious ships the Navy is required 

to maintain? 

Secretary STACKLEY. I do not believe mandating the number of operational amphibious ships the Navy is required to maintain is necessary or desirable as it would 

affect the flexibility and force structure decision-making going forward that the 

Navy and Marine Corps share in providing a capable, adaptable, amphibious force. 

The Navy and Marine Corps continuously evaluate amphibious lift capabilities to 

meet current and projected requirements. Specifically: 

In the January 2009 Report to Congress on Naval Amphibious Force Structure, 

the Chief of Naval Operations and the Commandant of the Marine Corps reaffirmed 

that 38 amphibious ships are required to lift the Assault Echelon (AE) of 2.0 Marine 

Expeditionary Brigades (MEBs). They agreed to sustain, resources permitting, an 

amphibious force of about 33 total amphibious ships in the AE, evenly balanced at 

11 aviation-capable ships, 11 LPD 17 Class ships, and 11 LSD 41 Class ships. The 

33 ship force accepts risk in the arrival of combat support and combat service support elements of the MEB but has been judged to be adequate in meeting the needs 

of all parties within the limits of today’s fiscal realities. 

The recently completed Report of the 2010 Marine Corps Force Structure Review 

of March 14, 2011 concluded that: ‘‘The dual demands of sustained forward presence 

and sufficient lift for the assault echelons of two Marine Expeditionary Brigades 

(MEB) result in a requirement of 38 amphibious ships. Given fiscal constraints, 

however, the Navy and Marine Corps have agreed to accept the risk with 33 ships, 

increasing the imperative to design a lean and effective force structure. We will also 

explore options for employing Marines from a wider variety of Navy ships, seeking 

innovative naval solutions to GCC requirements.’’ 

In addition to the Department of the Navy’s internal reviews, the Quadrennial 

Defense Review Report of February 2010 determined that the main elements of the 

Navy force structure should include 29—31 amphibious warfare ships for the duration of the Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP) (FY 2011—FY 2015). 

Mr. COFFMAN. We often speak about our shipbuilding plan building towards a 

minimum of 313 battle force ships. I am concerned about certain assumptions being 

made about the long-term affordability of the shipbuilding plan. The FY 2012–2016 

plan seems affordable and sustainable, but the production of the relatively inexpensive Littoral Combat Ships and Joint High Speed Vessels is overrepresented during 

this period, relative to the long-term force structure goals. How will you address cost 

growth in the near future when we are producing less Littoral Combat Ships and 

more next-generation Ballistic Missile Submarines (SSBN–X)? Additionally, there is 

reporting based on early Navy testing that the LCS program is plagued by sever 

survivability problems. What is the extent of this problem and how much will it increase the unit cost of each variant of LCS? 

Secretary STACKLEY. We continue to look for affordability and efficiency opportunities as we go forward with the shipbuilding plan, such as revising the acquisition 

strategy for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) to maximize the advantage of the competitive pricing. Additionally, prior to Milestone A approval for the OHIO Replacement submarine, numerous capability trades were evaluated to reduce costs. As a 

result, the Navy made trades in the number of ballistic missile tubes, the diameter 

of those tubes, the number of torpedoes to be carried, acoustic sensors, and other 

defensive features throughout the design. These trades made the submarine more 

affordable while maintaining the necessary level of capability, resulting in a reduction of the projected cost from $7 billion to a current estimate of $5.6 billion for follow on hulls 2 through 12 (FY 2010$). However, we need to go further in our efforts 

to drive cost out of this critical program, and so we have established a ‘‘Design for 

Affordability’’ program to facilitate continued focus on cost through the design 

phase. We have established a target price of $4.9 billion for follow on hulls, to be 

achieved through this effort. 

Both USS FREEDOM (LCS 1) and USS INDEPENDENCE (LCS 2) meet the LCS 

survivability requirements outlined in the Capability Development Document (CDD) 

that are consistent with the LCS operational concept. Navy is working with the 

operational test community to ensure the LCS CDD requirements are fully evaluated and validated in an operationally realistic environment. Navy does not anticipate increased unit costs to address survivability as both variants meet the stated 

requirement. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. SMITH 

Mr. SMITH. What is the Navy’s position with respect to the value of the mission 

performed by tug boats? Has the Navy developed a long-term plan for the use of 
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tug boats in the execution of the overall mission of the Navy? If so, what is that 

plan? Would you support an expanded role for tug boats in the mission of the Navy? 

Secretary STACKLEY and Admiral BLAKE. The Navy highly values the utility of tug 

boats and their mission in support of ship movements. Our long-term plan is to continue to maintain Large Harbor Tug Boats (YTBs) and Harbor Tug Boats (YTs) in 

Yokosuka, the Pacific Northwest, Guantanamo Bay, and Portsmouth, N.H., as part 

of the current mix of commercial and Navy-owned tug boats that support harbor operations and ship movements. Currently, the Navy does not anticipate a requirement for expansion of the current Navy-owned tug inventory and existing commercial support. 

Mr. SMITH. What is the total requirement for tug boats and what are the Navy’s 

plans with respect to meeting this requirement? Based on information submitted 

with the fiscal year 2012 budget request, the Navy does not plan to purchase additional tug boats until fiscal year 2016. Is that true? During fiscal years 2006–2009, 

the Navy has purchased at least one tug boat per year, with delivery of the last 

boat scheduled March 2012—what is the rationale for not purchasing at least one 

tug boat in fiscal year 2012 and the out-years? The last tug boat construction contract was awarded in October 2010 and the next planned construction award would, 

at best, be sometime in 2016. What is the rationale for this 6-year gap in production? Do you anticipate that such a gap in production will negatively impact the tug 

boat industrial base and increase the total cost of the program due to work stoppage 

at the construction site? 

Secretary STACKLEY and Admiral BLAKE. The Navy’s total requirement for tug 

boats is met through a combination of Navy-owned Large Harbor Tug Boats (YTBs) 

and Harbor Tug Boats (YTs) in addition to commercial tug services. The Navy owns 

and operates 15 YTBs and 5 YTs. Procurement and recapitalization efforts for the 

Navy’s YTB inventory included four new replacement tug boats during Fiscal Years 

(FYs) 2007–2008. Two additional tug boats were budgeted for FY 2009 which resulted in the October 2010 contract award. This effectively equates to one tug boat 

per year from 2007 through 2012. The next year Navy currently plans to purchase 

tug boats is 2016. 

The Navy does not anticipate that this production gap will have a significant impact to the tug boat industrial base. Navy procurement typically represents less 

than 5% of overall tug boat purchases. At this percentage, the Navy does not anticipate that this production gap will significantly increase the total cost of tug boats. 

Mr. SMITH. The Committee understands that the Government of Iraq has approached the US Navy regarding the opportunity to purchase tug boats for use in 

harbor and shoreline security. Is this true? If so, what is the status of the inquiry 

made by the Government of Iraq? What other nations, if any, have expressed an 

interest in purchasing American-made tug boats? Do you believe that the type of 

tug boat constructed for the US Navy would be of benefit to other navies around 

the world? Is it the intention of the Navy to use existing acquisition mechanisms 

(foreign military sales/foreign military financing) to procure the tug boats for the 

Government of Iraq? If not, what is the acquisition mechanism that the Navy intends to use? 

Secretary STACKLEY and Admiral BLAKE. The U.S. Navy was tasked with assessing the U.S. industrial base to identify potential sources capable of meeting the requirements of the Ministry of Interior (Iraq) for the procurement of two 27—31m 

Tug Boats. A Request for Information (RFI) was released via FedBizOps on April 

5, 2010 with a closing date of April 20, 2010. Based on the results, the Navy determined that U.S. industry was able to build a tug that would meet Iraqi requirements. 

The results of the RFI were presented to the Ministry of Interior (Iraq) and in 

October 2010, the Navy began to develop a Foreign Military Sales (FMS) case to 

meet the Iraqi Tug Boat requirements. The FMS case, if accepted, would be financed using Iraq national funds. The FMS case was offered in December 2010 and 

has not been accepted by Iraq to date. If the case is implemented, Navy will develop 

an acquisition strategy to meet the requirements of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. 

Currently, there are no requests from other nations for the procurement of new 

tugs. In January 2011, the Navy delivered the second tug of the two boat procurement to the nation of Kuwait. The two 19m tugs were built by Rozema Boat Works 

of Mount Vernon, Washington. 

Mr. SMITH. The Navy has been the most forward leaning service when it comes 

to green energy initiatives. In particular, there have been significant efforts focused 

on ‘‘greening’’ the fleet with an internal Navy goal to convert 50 percent of its energy to fossil fuel alternatives by 2020. As yard tugs are a critical component to the 

fleet, particularly in areas of heavy naval vessel traffic, the Committee is interested 
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the efforts underway to acquire hybrid tugs or other alternative fueled tugs as a 

means to help reach this goal? For example, in a place like Guam, where the number of US personnel is increasing significantly and there are multiple projects underway to ‘‘green’’ the base, it would appear to be a natural fit for the home-porting 

of hybrid ships. Does the Navy have any plans to add hybrid ships, particularly 

tugs, to the Fleet? If so, what is the timeframe by which they intend to acquire 

them? 

Secretary STACKLEY and Admiral BLAKE. There are no efforts underway to acquire hybrid harbor tugs or other alternative fueled harbor tugs. 

Decisions to home-port additional ships in Guam have not been made. 

Navy has two Hybrid Electric Drive systems for surface ships: the USS MAKIN 

ISLAND (LHD 8) Auxiliary Propulsion System (APS), already deployed and incorporated into the new LHA 6 Class design, and the DDG 51 Electric Propulsion System (EPS), currently in proof-of-concept phase. Many Navy auxiliary force ships operated by Military Sealift Command use full Integrated Electric Drives with the 

most recent examples being the T–AKE class ships built by NASSCO and the T– 

AGS 66 and T–AGM 25 being built at VT Halter. Similar green technologies, such 

as energy storage and Propulsion Derived Ship Service (PDSS) power are also under 

development. Lastly, the Navy is testing biofuels as an alternative to petroleum that 

will serve as drop-in replacements for existing fuels. 

With the implementation of Hybrid Electric Drive (HED) systems, the Navy is 

executing a key component of the Navy Secretariat’s ‘‘Great Green Fleet’’ energy 

goals, as well as demonstrating quantifiable operational energy efficiencies. 

Mr. SMITH. The USMC LAV Program Manager met with HASC staff in January 

2010 and reported significant benefits associated with side and wheel-well armor 

kits added to the USMC fleet of LAV’s. These kits were developed by Armatec and 

installed at the Barstow and Albany USMC Depots. The Committee was informed 

that these kits added needed survivability to the LAV’s, while also extending LAV 

service life. The HASC also understands that several allied countries are incorporating, into their vehicle fleets, additional technologies developed by this company 

such as Mine Blast Floor and Underbelly Protection Kits, Roof Mounted Blast Attenuating Seats, and Armored Fuel Tanks. Are there plans to evaluate the technologies from recent LAV survivability upgrades for possible use in upgrade programs for the AAV or HUMMWV fleets? 

General FLYNN. Yes. CD&I manages the capabilities included in the Ground Combat and Tactical Vehicle Strategy as a portfolio. AAV will benefit from the lessons 

learned from LAV and all other USMC vehicles in the portfolio, plus some Army 

vehicles such as the Bradley with its Urban Survival Kit and Stryker with its new 

Double Vee Hull. CD&I is actively connected to relevant intelligence from the National Ground Intelligence Center and the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, and 

it communicates with protection experts from Army Research Labs and TARDEC to 

stay current on best practices with respect to Force Protection and Survivability. 

The AAV SLEP initiative is planned to improve protection against roadside and 

underbelly IEDs through a host of upgrades, including moving the fuel tank outboard or protecting it from catastrophic rupture, integrating IED jamming technology, improving fire suppression, adding internal and/or external belly protection, 

improving the fragment resistance of the sidewalls, integrating blast protected seats 

that are wall- or roof-mounted, while maintaining current water and land mobility 

capabilities. 

Analyses are ongoing to underpin AAV protection requirements, and to ensure 

these requirements are balanced against others such as swim capability, land mobility, etc. For instance, CD&I, PM AAVS, and MCOTEA are assessing the feasibility 

of protecting the occupants of the AAV during underbelly attacks through a deliberate study performed by Army Research Labs. In this study, ARL is estimating the 

potential benefit afforded by all-external applique ́, all-internal applique ́, and some 

combination of the two, using 3D modeling and simulation. Given that AAV has 

more strict swim mobility requirements than LAV, more attention is being paid to 

the second order effects of adding heavy protection to the belly of the AAV. CD&I 

anticipates leveraging Government (Naval Surface Warfare Center) and academia 

(Stevens Institute of Technology) to assess the effects of heavy upgrades on swim 

performance, and Nevada Automotive Test Center to assess the effects on land mobility, reliability, and ride quality. In addition, PM AAVS is participating in blast 

testing against the baseline/legacy AAVP7 starting this month (April 2011) at Aberdeen Proving Ground. This baseline data will be crucial for understanding where 

effective improvements can be made within cost and schedule constraints. 

Likewise, future HMMWV upgrade initiatives will benefit from the lessons 

learned from past initiatives, to include recent LAV upgrades, experimentation on 

the SCTVC (also known as ‘‘Capsule’’), ongoing experimentation on DARPA’s Blast 
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Mitigation System (also known as Structural Blast Channel or Chimney), plus the 

ongoing technical development of the new-start Joint Light Tactical Vehicle systems. 

The USMC is actively pursuing better protection for a portion of the HMMWV fleet, 

and ancitipates a recapitalization initiative that will likely replace older cabs with 

more protected ones, while improving off-road mobility in order to expand maneuver 

space, within established cost and transportability constraints. Knowing that protected mobility for the light fleet is an extremely difficult task within the USMC’s 

unique transportability requirements, it will continue to leverage the experience of 

Science and Technology activities such as the Office of Naval Research and DARPA, 

from Industry through our Materiel Developers at Marine Corps Systems Command, 

and from Research and Development Activities such as TARDEC and ARL, to ensure a balanced and effective set of capabilities is fielded. 

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