Various and Sundry on The Hill: The Drift, S. II, Vol. XVII

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Navigation Brief

(This post was first published March 5 as an e-newsletter)

WASHINGTON – Good Evening, Drifters

This is the craziest time of year for Defense reporters. There’s a Navy saying about taking in new information at a rapid rate: “Drinking from a fire hose.” And budget season is certainly that.

It’s just. So. Much. Information.

I’ve sat through no fewer than 16 hours of hearings in the past two weeks. It’s a rhythm that feels familiar now after a full decade in this business. But it doesn’t make it any easier. So, because I don’t expect you to have wasted so much of your precious time on this earth watching posture hearing after posture hearing, I’m going to try and catch you up on the major points.

So with that in mind, let’s Drift!

-DBL

Hearings for Days

Let’s break this down into a few different subheadings, shall we?

30-year Drama

The main bone of contention with the committees across the board is the somewhat galling contrast between shipbuilding cuts, the Navy’s assurance that it is still growing, and the fact that because Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is apparently unhappy with the Navy’s Force Structure Assessment, the Navy hasn’t been able to present a 30-year Shipbuilding Plan to Congress as required by law.

There has been a fair amount of blame shifting the past couple weeks on this, and I don’t want to drag you into the gutter on this but here’s the brass tacks: The Navy doesn’t want to complete its 30-year shipbuilding plan without its new Integrated Naval Force Structure Assessment – which factors in Marine and Navy requirements –first being approved by Esper. And since he hasn’t done that, the Navy doesn’t want to submit a shipbuilding plan.

The Senate Armed Services Committee told Esper to take his time, but not too much time. I’m breezing past this point even though it had been a serious point of friction in Congress because there isn’t much more to it.

Submarine Woes

Oh my, Congress really doesn’t like that a submarine was cut from the Navy budget. The issue is that this may be the only year to fit in the 10^th submarine in the multi-year Block V Virginia contract. The Block V contract is for nine submarines, with an option for 10. But building three submarines in a Columbia year would be all-but impossible. So, if they don’t keep up the 2-per-year rate this year, they probably won’t be able to buy that 10^th submarine. My, but Congress doesn’t like that.

Here’s what Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts said when asked why it was cut.

The Quote: “The second Virginia to me is a pure affordability issue when we had to balance everything, we've got in there. It's no longer an execution issue in my mind. I think we have the capacity to do it, the changes that have been made, the partnerships, the new way of doing business we're seeing out of [Electric Boat and] in Newport.

“They proved they can do it and they 're capable of doing it. Now to us, it was just pure affordability, which is why it was our #1 unfunded priority. I wouldn't have recommended putting that on the unfunded priorities list if I couldn't have executed it.”

The fate of the second Virginia-class boat is something of a who-dun-it. Chairman of the Joint Chief Gen. Mark Milley denied to Congress that he had any knowledge of the cut to the Virginia. Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly claimed he was not “directly involved” in the discussion around the second Virginia class. That leaves Esper and maybe his Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist as the chief suspects in the crime, something I suspect Congress either knows or intuits.

IT WAS NORQUIST IN THE SCIF WITH THE EXCEL SPREADSHEET!

Anyway, who knows, but it was almost certainly OSD if the CJCS and Navy deny cutting the submarine.

FFG(X)

All signs point to an early award of the FFG(X) and that the ship will likely play a big role in future force structure.

I wrote about that here: The US Navy’s FFG(X) could be awarded sooner than expected

Short story short, Modly has asked Geurts to see if he can accelerate the award of FFG(X) a bit. Here’s what Geurts said when asked about that.

The Quote: “Our priority now is to do the down-selection credibly and fairly and get it in the fleet as soon as possible.

“My guess is that once we get that ship in the fleet, that ship will be in high demand and we’ll look for ways to accelerate it and, more than likely, build more. First priority is to execute the source selection, pick the right ship, and execute that lead ship well and get into serial production. There is no architecture I’ve seen that frigate isn’t a major part of it.”

Marines with Tomahawks

I wrote about this a bit today, but I think it’s worth pointing out again that this is a pretty big shift in the works.

To date, we’ve all been talking about Marines developing systems to shoot the Naval Strike Missile from islands in the Pacific. But they’re not just looking at NSM, they are asking for 48 Tomahawk missiles.

If you’ll recall the Cold War, we had an intermediate-range conventional cruise missile that Russia REALLY didn’t like. That’s what led, among other things, to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that banned IR ground-based cruise missiles.

Well I’m sorry, the old treaty can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Oh. Because it’s dead.

Now the Marines are moving out on what I’m assuming is the Maritime Strike Tomahawk for its own uses: Because they can.

Here’s what Berger said:

The Quote: “Part of the homework that the Navy and Marine Corps done over the past six months is how we think we are going to need to operate in the future as an integrated naval force and that means the Marine Corps assumes a role that we have not had in the past 20 years which is how do we contribute to sea control and sea denial.

“The Tomahawk missile is one of the tools that is going to allow us to do that. … It could be the answer, it could be the first step towards a longer-term answer five, six, seven years from now but what we need is long-range precision fires for a small unit, a series of units that can from ship or from shore hold adversaries’ naval force at risk."

So that’s kind of cool.

Those are some of the hot items rolling out. Now let’s head to The Hotwash!

The Hotwash

Straight to the links tonight!

More Reading

Interesting stuff from McCleary: Beyond The Ford: Navy Studies Next-Gen Carriers

Wanna serve in Spain? The US Navy’s top officer declares support for basing 6 destroyers in Spain

Here’s what I was talking about: To combat the China threat, US Marine Corps declares ship-killing missile systems its top priority

CNO defending OFRP: CNO Gilday Defends 36-Month Carrier Cycle, Says Navy Has Never Missed a Deployment

INDO-PACOM Commander: New Warfighting Concept Requires More Joint Training, Ranges to Prep for Tougher Fights

Psst, it’s $1.8 billion: Here’s how much the US Navy saves by cutting the first 4 LCS more than a decade early