O’Rourke appeared at a panel at the Navy League Sea Air Space exposition taking place through Thursday in Washington. Also on the panel were the Navy’s Fleet Forces Commander, Adm. Jonathan Greenert; Marion Blakey, president of the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group; and Mike Petters, president of Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding. The session was on “capability vs. affordability,” and each member offered suggestions on how the Navy should strike the balance between the two in planning for its future fleet.
O’Rourke painted a grim picture of the Navy’s reputation on Capitol Hill, where many members feel they can’t take seriously what they hear at budget time. The Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan cuts corners in addressing the slacking numbers of attack submarines and amphibious ships, O’Rourke said, and doesn’t take into account the costs involved if the Navy tries to build a dozen new-generation ballistic missile submarines in the middle of the 21st century.
O'Rourke may or may not have added context, but clearly Navy Times did not. The reason lawmakers are not taking the budget numbers from the Navy seriously is because the Navy numbers have been so far off the mark on every single program lately lawmakers would be insane to trust the numbers. On the other hard, Eric Labs at CBO has so consistently been right with his estimates one might wonder if he has a time machine to peek into the future and cheat.
For example, it was reported back in February the final cost for LCS-1 will be $631 million. Last July Eric Labs predicted in front of the HASC the price for LCS-1 would be $630 million. He has been dead on target for pricing almost every platform this decade, minus only the first in class LPD-17 which basically had to be built from scratch after construction started. Does anyone honestly blame Congress for using Eric Lab's numbers for estimated shipbuilding costs? The Navy has been off by percentages of between %40 and %250, while CBO has been off by percentages of less than %10. Whose estimates would you pick? Would anyone trust the Navy figures, think about it, this fiscal year they increased the entire estimated bottom line for their 30 year shipbuilding budget 40%, clearly the Navy is aware how wrong their numbers have been when they 40% to the entire bottom line.
The article goes on to cover some of the recommendations. Rourke suggests the Navy should just ask for more money like the Air Force. Navy Times again:
For his part, Greenert suggested the Navy could realize the most savings by re-evaluating its tactics at every level, from admirals to the deck plates, and operate more efficiently instead of continuously trying to acquire the newest weapons or systems.
“Maybe deception, jamming, a soft kill is the answer,” Greenert said. “You have to look at the kill chain, look at how the process works and look holistically for solutions that are more cost-efficient.”
Petters said the key to keeping shipbuilding costs down is to have consistently clear requirements from the Navy about the ships it wants, and confidence that funding levels will remain steady through the course of a program.
Adm. Greenert is a submariner, I would have expected something that sounded smarter, but what we got sounded a bit confusing. Mike Petters has it exactly right, but I doubt he could explain why that approach didn't seem to work out with LPD-17, although we acknowledge on the whole the LPD-17 program is turning into a great success when one excludes the massive early CAD screw ups.
Finally, for those who are curious, the second seminar that I would have gone to see is the "Acquisition Outlook and Priorities" session tomorrow morning.
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