Remembering Where We Have Been, And Who Said What

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN J. YOUNG, JR., ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND ACQUISITION, DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY

HEARING BEFORE THE PROJECTION FORCES SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION
HEARINGS HELD
JULY 19, 20, 2005

Mr. Chairman, Congressman Taylor and members of the committee, I am pleased to again appear before the committee. I especially appreciate the chance to add more factual information to the public dialogue on the DD(X) surface combatant. The Navy, under the highly capable leadership of Admiral Clark, has sought through modeling and analysis to establish requirements that ensure America's Navy can defeat potential future adversaries.

Admiral Clark's comments on DD(X) requirements are those of a cost conscious war fighter supported by detailed analysis. The requirement, combined with the acquisition team's insight into technology and shipbuilding provide a base of information for all of the Navy's DD(X) decisions. No other entity has a comparable factual basis for determining what the Navy needs in the future.

Further, discussions that view ship design as a Lego block project and make cost the only driver will fail to deliver an appropriate Navy for our nation. The technologies planned for DD(X) cannot be adapted to DDG-51 class destroyers. As with the stealth aircraft, you cannot achieve true signature reduction without designing the vehicle from scratch with radar-reflecting geometries.

Today's DDGs can accommodate no more than one of the armored gun systems with limited ammunition. DDG-51 has an adequate power and payload to carry the dual band radar sweep. DDG-51 cannot accommodate the integrated power propulsion system.

Finally, engineering all of the crew reducing automation into a DDG would result in basically designing a DD(X) with many size and weight and power constraints and with dramatically less capability and at comparable cost.

Further, taking time to redesign a DDG will result in the production gaps and shipyard layoffs the Navy is trying to avoid. This is a bad deal for the sailor and the taxpayer.

Previous acquisition programs have grown in costs and slipped in schedule because of a failure to develop and test key systems early in the development effort. The successful DD(X) engineering development models have provided great confidence in our ability to design, integrate and build this new destroyer.

There has been much discussion about DD(X) costs. Most of these discussions compare apples and oranges. It is essential to look at construction timelines and production rates in evaluating costs. Aegis is a mature program and DDGs have been purchased at rates of two to five per year, most recently at three per year. The current budget and Navy requirements project construction of one destroyer per year for roughly the next eight years.

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There is some irony that the results of John Young's memo tells the Navy to compare DDG-51 and DDG-1000, what he once called an apples and oranges comparison in front of Congress in 2005. It is going to be interesting when the Navy goes out of their way to produce a report in 2009 that says the DDG-51 is better.

If you don't believe that is what the study will find, then you are one of the very few who believes the requirements evaluation will be impartial. I'm not saying the Navy is dishonest, I am just saying they are misleading.

You know, like telling Congress the DDG-1000 can't use standard missiles, or having Congress believe for the last 6 months they were looking to buy DDG-51 Flight IIA copies. Those aren't lies per se, they just end up misleading because the Navy changed the plan.

How does Congress observe all this misdirection and constantly changing requirements and the public display of indecision and then ask why everything costs so much? Isn't it obvious?