The Office of the Secretary of Defense has restored funding for an attack submarine and two seabasing ships the Navy had proposed cutting, according to Pentagon and service officials.
Money added last month to the Defense Department’s fiscal year 2011 to FY-15 budget plan by the Obama administration supported the additional vessels, a Pentagon official said.
The restoration of the Virginia-class sub in FY-15 maintains a procurement rate of two subs annually for the duration of the FY-11 to FY-15 investment plan.
A draft version of the Navy’s long-term shipbuilding plan first reported last month by Inside the Pentagon would have purchased only one sub in FY-15, much to the chagrin of congressional allies of sub manufacturers General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.
In a Dec. 4 letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, 36 House lawmakers -- including many members of the Congressional Shipbuilding Caucus -- voiced “strong opposition” to the prospect of losing one sub in the FY-11 to FY-15 period.
Buying only nine subs during that time would be a “significant step backwards” from clear congressional support for a sustained two-per-year build rate for attack subs, as well as from clearly defined needs within the submarine force and the U.S. industrial base, the lawmakers argued.
But last month a draft and the final version of OSD budget guidance known as a resource management decision (RMD) directed the Navy to fund the second sub in FY-15, Pentagon and service officials said.
The Navy privately resisted OSD’s direction to fund the second sub in FY-15, despite opposition from OSD and Congress, officials said. While the Pentagon’s guidance was still in draft form, the Navy sent OSD an appeal seeking permission to use that sub funding for other priorities, ITP has learned.
But OSD rejected the appeal -- known as a reclama in Pentagon parlance -- in the final version of the guidance, officials said.
The Pentagon’s guidance also restored two Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) seabasing ships in the coming years, boosting the total number in the five-year plan to three, officials said.
The draft of the Navy’s long-term shipbuilding report cut the number of MLPs in the FY-11 to FY-15 period from three to one. The draft report described the vessel as a low-cost float-on/float-off ship that will be a prototype for MLP functions. That ship was briefly dubbed a Joint Logistics Vessel (JLV). But the new moniker did not stick and neither did the proposed cut.
OSD wanted the two deleted ships restored and prevailed in the budget endgame. The move breathes more life into the concept of seabasing, though the Navy no longer believes it can afford many of the Maritime Prepositioning Force (Future) ships once envisioned for the concept.
With the exception of one MLP, the draft of the Navy’s shipbuilding report gutted plans to buy an array of MPF(F) ships, noting the concept is “still valid but not currently within the Navy’s fiscal reach.”
Sister publication Inside the Navy reported last month that Jim Strock, director of the Marine Corps seabasing division, is confident officials can make the concept work.
Noting the Navy has Large Medium-Speed Roll-On Roll-Off ships and T-AKE cargo vessels, Strock said the only capability the Navy lacks to implement seabasing is an at-sea transfer and surface connector ship -- the MLP.
Officials are opting for a simpler, less expensive version of the MLP than previously planned, he explained.
“This is a slightly different creature,” he said at a Dec. 9 conference. “This is going to be effectively a ship design similar to the heavy lift ships that we have out there today.”
An MLP will still be capable of taking on equipment from an LMSR via a side door ramp and transferring supplies to LCACs for movement ashore, but officials have dropped plans for an enclosed storage space that could have been used to assemble gear and prepare it for use before landing on a beach, ITN reported. -- Christopher J. Castelli
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