Inside Defense
Feb. 25, 2010 -- The Navy is projecting a peak department-wide strike fighter shortfall of 100 aircraft, a lower figure than earlier estimates due to mitigation measures such as the purchase of more Super Hornets and the use of attrition aircraft, but service officials noted the number is "fluid" and could change.
“I believe we have done some very good work in using attrition aircraft and transitioning squadrons,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead said today during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Right now, we sit and we look at what we're going to have in the future, it's about a 100-aircraft [fighter gap].”
Roughead said officials “are going to have to look at the life extension of some of our earlier [F/A-]18A-Ds, and that's where our focus will be” in the upcoming deliberations of the fiscal year 2012 program objective memorandum (POM-12). The POM-12 process will build a six-year investment plan with baseline costs for FY-12 to FY-17, plus expected costs for overseas contingency operations (OCO) in FY-12.
As recently as last year, the Navy had been looking at a fighter shortfall of up to 243 aircraft for both the Navy and Marine Corps in the middle of next decade as legacy Hornets are retired and the follow-on F-35 Joint Strike Fighter comes online.
In the proposed FY-11 defense budget unveiled earlier this month, the Navy increased the number of Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers the service plans to purchase over the future years defense plan to 124, keeping the production line open through FY-13, which will further help mitigate the gap, according to officials.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told reporters after today’s hearing that the 100-aircraft figure is a “moving number,” and there is no set year on when the shortfall is expected to peak.
“The reason that I'm not giving just an absolute direct answer here is that we have been taking mitigation actions,” he said.
Roughead and Mabus emphasized that much will depend on developing a business case for extending the lives of aging legacy Hornets and determining which aircraft can be extended, something the service is assessing right now. The Navy is also conducting high-flight-hour inspections of the newer Super Hornets and determining their life expectancy, Mabus said.
“As we look at these things and take some of these actions, the numbers at the end change and the years change, and so it's really going to be an issue for POM-12 in terms of what other actions we need to take or what other actions will be recommended,” he said. -- Dan Taylor