Didn't have to wait long for that article on the Navy's force structure woes!

Dateline: Grand Hyatt Washington DC, 20 April 2005

Remember yesterday when I spoke of the inevitable slew of articles (all relating to the reality of the FY06 defense budget and looming release of Quadrennial Defense Review that explains it and those to come in terms of Pentagon's acquisition priorities), well NYT ran one on the Navy to go with the WP's on the F-22 and the Air Force.

The trainwreck on ship construction is finally arriving, after we've been told about it for about 15 years in the defense community. Why arrive now? Because the definition of the future of war favored by the Pentagon is changing (QDR) from a focus on the big one to realizing that failed states (those lesser includeds of yesterday) are not just the bulk of the workload (they have been for a very long time) but the new competing force-sizing standard thanks to the operational realities displayed by our long-running efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That world can't afford having the U.S. buy carrriers that cost 12$B or subs in the 2-3$B range. We need the many and cheap, and so the few and the absurdly expensive will drop in buy numbers and get--no doubt--even more absurdly expensive. We will buy some, but far fewer than imagined just a few years--or even months--ago.

This is the big tipping point being reached on transformation.

Navy of Tomorrow, Mired in Yesterday's Politics
By TIM WEINER
New York Times
April 19, 2005

The Navy's new destroyer, the DD(X), is becoming so expensive that it may end up destroying itself. The Navy once wanted 24 of them. Now it thinks it can afford 5 - if that.

The price of the Navy's new ships, driven upward by old-school politics and the rusty machinery of American shipbuilding, may scuttle the Pentagon's plans for a 21st-century armada of high-technology aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines.

Shipbuilding costs "have spiraled out of control," the Navy's top admiral, Vern Clark, told Congress last week, rising so high that "we can't build the Navy that we believe that we need in the 21st century."

The first two DD(X)'s are now supposed to total $6.3 billion, according to confidential budget documents, up $1.5 billion. A new aircraft carrier, the CVN-21, is estimated at $13.7 billion, up $2 billion. The new Virginia-class submarine now costs $2.5 billion each, up $400 million. All these increases have materialized in the last six months.

Here's the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/business/19navy.html?th&emc=th