Navy wants more ships, aircraft than budgeted

The Navy this week sent a $5.7 billion list of unfunded priorities to Capitol Hill, asking for three additional ships and several aircraft that did not make the cut for the Pentagon's fiscal 2008 budget request.

As has been the case this year with the Army and Marine Corps, the Navy's fiscal 2008 unfunded list is significantly higher than previous years, indicating an up-tick in the services' equipment demands despite near-record defense spending levels.

The Navy's fiscal 2006 and fiscal 2007 budgetary wish lists totaled $3.7 billion and $4.6 billion, respectively.

In a Monday letter to House Armed Services ranking member Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., Chief of Naval Operations Michael Mullen acknowledged that increases in defense spending requests in the last several years have given "some budgetary relief."

But Mullen, who has outlined an ambitious 30-year shipbuilding plan for the Navy, stressed that significant shortfalls remain in the services' equipment coffers.

"Persistent operations related to the global war on terrorism and attaining our shipbuilding and aircraft procurement objectives continue to stretch the Navy's resources," Mullen wrote. "As [the] Navy continues to focus on our new defense strategy and on the emerging challenges of the 21st century, fiscal choices have resulted in some important programs being underfunded."

In particular, the service wants an additional $1.7 billion to buy another LPD-17 amphibious transport dock ship next year, a move that would fulfill their stated requirement of 10 ships.

The Pentagon's fiscal 2008 budget request includes money for the Navy's ninth LPD-17, but the service's six-year budget projections do not reveal any plans to seek funding for a 10th ship. The fleet has been built at Northrop Grumman Ship System's Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., and Avondale shipyard in New Orleans.

The Navy also would like another $1.2 billion to buy two more T-AKE dry cargo carriers, built by the San Diego-based National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. The FY08 budget proposal contains funding for only one, bringing the T-AKE fleet to 11 ships.

The Senate last summer balked at the Navy's fiscal 2007 request for funds for a single T-AKE ship, asserting that the Navy had yet to begin construction of five previously funded ships or spend $2.4 billion already appropriated by Congress. But in the end, House and Senate Defense appropriations conferees agreed to restore the money cut by the Senate.

Looking ahead to fiscal 2008, House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., and House Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Gene Taylor, D-Miss., already have discussed adding five ships to the Navy's budget. But the two Democratic allies have spoken informally about boosting accounts for Virginia-class submarines and surface destroyers -- neither of which made the Navy's unfunded list.

Meanwhile, the Navy, which plans to make fairly significant cuts to its aircraft procurement accounts, included in its unfunded list $1.4 billion for 33 new planes, including 12 F/A-18 fighter jets to replace older airplanes and four MH-60R Seahawk helicopters to increase the production-line capacity to more efficient manufacturing rates.

The unfunded list also includes $430 million to buy out the Navy's lease on nine remaining Maritime Prepositioning System vessels. Additionally, the Navy would like another $73 million to buy 72 additional Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, and $77 million to fund aircraft depot maintenance.