Plans to expand fleet may be unrealistic.

• Author: Jean, Grace
• Position: NAVY

AMIDST ASSURANCES BY the Navy leadership that the latest shipbuilding blueprint is on a safe course, several analysts are sounding alarms. Unless the Navy begins to aggressively cut costs from its shipbuilding programs and pump much more money into these accounts, the plan could fail, these experts warn.

To increase its current fleet from 281 ships to 313 ships, the Navy plans to procure between seven to 14 new vessels during each of the next five years. The list includes the purchase of one CVN-21--a new aircraft carrier, five Virginia-class attack submarines, 23 littoral combat ships, and five DD(X) destroyers.

"It's going to take on average about $13.5 billion of current money ... to make the plan work. I don't consider that out of reach, although it is a goal," Adm. Michael Mullen, the chief of naval operations, told reporters. He further clarified that it will take $13.5 billion annually "at least through 2020" to meet the service's shipbuilding goals.

However, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the service will need much more--$18.3 billion in 2006 dollars--to cover its shipbuilding costs.

In the president's 2007 budget, the Navy has requested a shipbuilding budget of $10.57 billion.

"This budget is optimistic and demands cost control; it demands constant attention; it demands willingness to give up things that would be nice to have instead of absolutely required to have, and it also depends on a very healthy and steady shipbuilding budget from Congress with no encroachments," said Robert Work, senior naval analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He said he applauds the service's efforts to stabilize the shipbuilding budget, but worries that the cost is a "fiscal bridge too far." He estimated the account is at least $2 billion to $3 billion short per year.

Proof that the Navy is underestimating its shipbuilding costs is the recent "FY '07 Unfunded Program Requirements List," which Mullen sent to Rep. Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, who makes it an annual ritual to seek from each service a wish list of items they need, but did not get included in the budget request.

The Navy's list--which totals $4.5 billion--includes $2.3 billion for shipbuilding programs.

In 2000 to 2005, the annual funding for construction of new ships averaged about $10.2 billion, wrote Ronald O'Rourke in a Congressional Research Service report. The Navy's 313-ship...