As is the nature with our system of government, when you have changes in administrations, there is a bit of treading water that goes on as the new people find their office, get their bearings and have their photographs sent around for everyone’s command board.
As that is happening, long term trends and the rest of the world keep moving. Much of the last four years were spent chasing and talking about a number that began even earlier in the prior administration before that; 350, 355 or +/- half a standard deviation from that number, that has been the topic of a lot of talk, but not aggressive action to match what it is actually all about.
What it is about is the challenge on the other side of the Pacific west of Wake; the growing power of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The communist Chinese government continues to fund her growing navy. Very few people are left who dismiss it, well, few who still have credibility.
Before we look at the PLAN’s latest snapshot, let’s look at our last position report – the 30-yr shipbuilding plan of late last year.
Read it all yourself, but let’s focus on four tables, Table 3 through Table 6 and focus on the most realistic part of it, the first 5 years (2022-2026). Even there, you can consider 2025-26 “out years” because we really don’t know what the new administration will push for those budgets.
Along those lines, Table 3’s procurement table expects 82 ships by 2026. The big push up years are … you guessed it, 2025-2026.
For today’s post, let’s really focus on what will be delivered in 2026, that gets us to Table 4.
Table 4 expects we will deliver 64 ships. I like that number for a mid-decade Pacific War kickoff.
Fleet numbers are not just a function of how many ships you bring online, but also the number of old or non-functionable ships you decommission. Intake and exhaust if you will. Those numbers you will find in Table 5.
Table 5 expects 48 decommissionings. That is a net gain of 16 ships … and yet, that isn’t really telling the story, is it?
After the shipbuilding plan came out, it was announced that the Navy wanted to decommission LCS 1 through LCS 4. That was not in the plan, so we can adjust the delta to 12.
We also have heard rumors that there may be a class wide problem with all the Freedom Class LCS that may require a lot of money to fix, and a logical solution may be to decommission all off them instead of spending decreasing dollars on a minimally – or is that “optimally” – capable warship to fix them.
We have, not counting the expected decommissioned LCS 1 and LCS 3 mentioned above, 14 other Freedom Class LCS either commissioned, under construction, or on order. Let’s make the assumption either by decommissioning or engineering issues, those 14 ships simply are not a viable platform for fleet commanders. That moves our delta at FY26 to -2 net.
Instead of going from 305 to 316, we will be somewhere south of where we are today.
What we don’t really know is if all the ships will arrive on time, or that funding will continue through the mid-20s. Either slides commissioning times to the right. In theory, we could delay decommissioning as well, but let’s assume all that works out due to budget reasons.
Perhaps we won’t have to retire all the Freedom LCS, but if we don’t – given the known-known of their combining gear problems, are they really battle force ships?
If not, then we have a functionally declining fleet.
Assuming a few things; commissioning times don’t slip to the right and Congressional funding remains as robust over the next few POM periods as they do now. Hopefully, it won’t get worse.
Given the statements and positioning after the 2020 election from both the Executive and Legislative Branches of government, that’s not a given. From the perspective of a functional fleet available to fleet commanders, we should expect a most likely scenario that by mid-decade, our fleet will be no larger than it is presently. Worst case scenario will show significant contractions in budgets and accelerated decommissionings. Best case scenario? That is the plan delivered in December of last year.
While you ponder that, what is the only serious challenger on the high seas, the PLAN up to in parallel?
We clearly have work to do. It’s called The Terrible 20s for a reason.
Prior generations of American uniformed and civilian leaders received as their inheritance a naval power in relative terms unseen since the Royal Navy in the post-Napoleonic Era. As they passed in to retirement, they left our naval force in a position of relative conventional weakness not seen since the 1930s.We have been drifting in a sea of our own delusions for two decades and today’s leaders will either ride this inertia in to second power status, or they will start to demonstrate a dominance in ideas and excellence in program management to change us back to a better course.
