When it comes to the Navy's destroyers, it's a numbers game.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

* Providing the coverage the Navy believes it needs to patrol the world's oceans is being made more complicated by a chronic shortage of destroyers, analysts have said. And budget uncertainties are only complicating the problem, a February Congressional Research Service report penned by Ronald O'Rourke noted.

The Arleigh Burke-class DDG-51s in their current and future iterations, along with three Zumwalt-class DDG-1000s--still under construction--are all in the Navy's fiscal year 2013 30-year shipbuilding plan mix.

A Navy Department report to Congress on combatant vessel force structure requirements calls for maintaining 88 total destroyers and cruisers for the next three decades. That is down from the projected need for 94 ships that was stated in 2012. Despite the downward estimate, the service will still be chronically short of destroyers, especially over the next 10 years, O'Rourke said.

It won't be until 2023 to 2028 until it has enough of the ships to carry out all of its missions.

The Navy has four different destroyers included in these longterm plans. The Arleigh Burke-class DDG-51s were first produced in the 1980s. There are two versions of these sailing today, the Flight I and Flight Hs. An upgraded version, the Flight Ills, are slated to be commissioned beginning in 2016.

The Zumwalt-class DDG-1000 program was capped at three ships when the Navy ended the program in 2010 citing cost overruns. That same year, its next-generation cruiser concept the CG (X) was scrapped in favor of the Flight III.

Lawmakers have several decisions to make, O'Rourke pointed out. One overarching question is whether Congress should take action to mitigate the projected shortfall of cruisers and destroyers over the next 30 years.

Of more immediate concern are the effects of sequestration and the continuing resolution, he said.

"Decisions Congress makes concerning these programs could substantially affect Navy capabilities and funding requirements, and the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base," O'Rourke said.

Mike Petters, president and chief executive officer of Huntington Ingalls Industries, one of two builders of Navy destroyers along with General Dynamics Bath Iron Works, said that the government isn't saving any money by not funding these programs on schedule.

"Delaying the start of any shipbuilding or overhaul program invariably makes it more expensive because the work is precisely coordinated across numerous departments and with suppliers. All of that...