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| Pentagon to Retire Carrier, Buy Fewer Ships -- Report |
| 2004-12-30 |
| The Pentagon plans to retire one of the U.S. Navy's 12 aircraft carriers and buy fewer amphibious landing ships for the Marine Corps as part of $60 billion in proposed cuts over the next six years, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing Congressional and military officials. The proposed reductions, the details of which are still being fine-tuned and would require Congressional approval, result from White House orders to all federal agencies to cut their spending requests for the 2006 fiscal year budgets, which will be submitted to lawmakers early next year. The proposed Pentagon cuts also include delaying development of a costly Army combat system of high-tech arms, reducing the program for the Air Force's F/A-22 fighter and delaying the purchase of a new Navy destroyer, the paper said. The Navy plans to retire the carrier John F. Kennedy next year, reducing the size of the Navy's carrier fleet for the first time since the mid-1990's, the paper reported. The proposal also calls for reducing the number of new LPD-17 San Antonio-class amphibious landing docks, which are designed to transport Marine assault vehicles, amphibious landing craft and Osprey aircraft to trouble spots around the world. The Navy had planned to buy five of the ships over the next five years at about $1.2 billion apiece from U.S. defense contractor Northrop Grumman . Another major change would be to build fewer new Navy destroyers over the next six years. A team of contractors, led by Northrop Grumman, is building the ships at a cost of $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion per vessel. In addition, development of the Army's $120 billion Future Combat System would be delayed. The system is designed to link soldiers by computer with remotely piloted aircraft and combat vehicles. Military and Congressional officials, who have been briefed on the proposed cuts and spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon was looking to trim up to $10 billion in the 2006 budget. Mounting deficits and the growing cost of keeping more than 150,000 American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq the past year have forced the White House and the Pentagon to look at cuts. |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #11 sorry - Coronado - San Diego Bay - North Island NAS.... Pacific Fleet's at the 32nd street south end) of the bay, and the sub base is at Point Loma |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-12-30 10:31:26 PM |
| #10 Pardon my ignorance - where's "North Island," Frank? |
| Posted by: lex 2004-12-30 10:27:38 PM |
| #9 nice point OP! I have an office window that looks on North Island's Carrier berthing......use to be the one or two usually moored never sailed much, except for their wespac tours with one rotating back in. The last couple years, the sailing for training and "immediate readiness to deploy" efforts has been huge....also for the smaller ships and Pacfleet - a lotta traffic - Rumsfeld imprint? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-12-30 10:10:31 PM |
| #8 I think getting "rid" of the JFK would be all right, if instead of breaking it up they transfer it to the Japanese navy, along with the Kitty Hawk. I think Japan is ready for a couple of carriers, and with Korea making noises, would welcome the chance to buy them. Both vessels are oil fired, and more expensive to operate than nuke carriers, such as the NIMITZ class. Personally, I'm going to wait and see what happens. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-12-30 10:02:28 PM |
| #7 RWV - Lol! I think this is where Barbie's supposed to tell us how hard Math is, heh. |
| Posted by: .com 2004-12-30 8:01:09 PM |
| #6 The F-22 Raptor procurement started at 700 and is now down to somewhere between 100 - 160. I'm betting more on the low end. This one reason that systems become so costly. The B-2 was originally scheduled for 300 and wound up with 23. Liberals were never good with math. They don't understand that if you reduce the denomator by a factor of 10 - 15 without changing the numerator, the dividend increases by a factor of 10 - 15 and the number of bullshit articles in the NYT increases by a factor of 100 - 150. |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-12-30 7:55:19 PM |
| #5 I'm thinking L Lurker knows the score. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-12-30 7:37:29 PM |
| #4 Now now. we can not look into the future. So spending billions on maintaining our Navy at current does seem like a bad investment from where we are right now. I mean if you hope we avoid a war with China, then you have to assume the next 10 years is gonna be ground pounders carrying the load. That means more low tech costs. You can still develope the high cost high tech stuff, and be ready to mass produce it, you just delay production. Looks to me like Rummy is spending his money on Intel developement. which seems the smart move right now. But someone has to make that call, and he is the man. |
| Posted by: Jimbo19 2004-12-30 4:52:24 PM |
| #3 I can't say where all of it went, but a lot of it went into black boxes. However, the plus-up wasn't that big, really, and in 2002-2003 it bought tens of thousands of reserves and their equipment into the fight. We're still using reserves, but the reserve money has dried up, especially in the Navy. Also, most of the money went into unfunded requirements, that is, unprogrammed but real costs like uparmor kits for hummers. The defense increases didn't go into long-term planned expenses like new divisions, aircraft or ships. We're still carrying the debt from the 1990s budgets, the postponed purchases that were put off for years while current year money went to current ops and maintenance only. Bush missed a tremendous opportunity to recapitalize the military in 2001, to add divisions, ships and aircraft (esp. tankers and airlift, the unsexy buys). This just continues a decade and a half of bad budget guidance. |
| Posted by: longtime lurker 2004-12-30 4:37:04 PM |
| #2 I see this as a mistake. The Navy will be our primary defence against China. We should not be reducing the number of carriers or amphibious capability. We increased speinding dramatically after 9/11 but did not increase force size or weapons purchases. Where did the money go? Does anyone know how much more it costs to keep a troop in combat than in peacetime duty? |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-12-30 4:23:26 PM |
| #1 The Navy plans to retire the carrier John F. Kennedy next year She was scheduled to be decommissioned in 2018 anyway. Navy has one final Nimitz class under construction, the CV-77 USS George H.W. Bush, expected to join the fleet in 2009. They have 5 more authorized to build of the new CVX class. |
| Posted by: Steve 2004-12-30 3:53:35 PM |