On the mend: new ships are breaking the bank so the Navy is fixing its old ones.

• Author: Jean, Grace V.
• Position: IN FOCUS: DEFENSE AND TECHNOLOGY NEWS

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The ballooning costs of new ships are forcing the Navy to reevaluate its plans to boost the fleet size from 280 to 313 ships in the coming decade.

Having acknowledged that buying all new ships to replace aging vessels is financially unrealistic, Navy officials are weighing the possibility of extending the service life of dozens of surface combatants that typically would have been decommissioned.

As cruisers and destroyers reach their midlife years, the Navy plans to upgrade those ships so they remain in the fleet for their full 35 years, officials say.

"The upgrades to the destroyers and cruisers are absolutely key, as far as our ability to attain 313 ships," says Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations.

The Navy has had a checkered history of decommissioning surface ships well before the cruiser and destroyer hulls have attained their full service life expectancy of 30 years and 35 years, respectively. The first baseline Ticondero-ga-class cruisers were taken out of service before they reached 20 years because the Navy could not afford to modernize them. Likewise, the entire Spruance-class destroyers were retired early. "There was a lot of service life left in those ships," says Vice Adm. Paul Sullivan, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command.

Decommissioning ships years before their scheduled service retirement means the Navy has been throwing away the millions of dollars it invested in those hulls. Officials hope that by modernizing the current surface fleet, they can sustain the ships through their full service lives and meet the goal of a 313-ship fleet.

To modernize a surface combatant costs a fifth of what it takes to build a new ship. A new destroyer costs about $1 billion. The price to upgrade a destroyer is about $180 million and for a cruiser is about $200 million, says Cmdr. Michael Van Durick, the surface combatant division director for Naval Sea System Command's surface warfare directorate.

Navy officials say it is possible to extend the service life of the ships by five more years.

"As long as you maintain the combat system relevance, as long as you fully fund your modernization and maintenance and keep the hulls in the right shape, there should be no reason why we can't extend that five years," says Rear Adm. James McManamon, deputy commander of Naval Sea Systems Command's surface warfare directorate.

The Navy, in its 30-year shipbuilding plan, is counting on that five-year extension for its...