Navy Will Offer Up Carrier & Air Wing In Quadrennial Review.

Navy Will Offer Up Carrier & Air Wing In Quadrennial Review.
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The word within the Pentagon is that the White House wants to collect
6-8 "scalps" -- major program kills -- in this year's Quadrennial
Defense Review. Some of the cuts are already being considered as
defense secretary Robert Gates rewrites the 2010 budget. You can
expect to hear a lot of rumors about which programs are being targeted
between now and when the Pentagon releases details of its budget
request in April. But while most of the military services are
scrambling to protect programs, at least one is getting ready to offer
up a signature weapons system. The Navy will propose removal of one
aircraft carrier and air wing from its posture, dropping the number of
carriers to the lowest number since 1942.

Of course, today's carriers make World War Two carriers look like
toys. With nuclear propulsion, supersonic fighters, and over four
acres of deck space, they are the biggest warships in history. But at
any given time some are being repaired, some are being replenished,
some are in training and some are in transit; if the fleet is cut to
ten then maybe half a dozen will be available for quick action on any
given day. Congress didn't think that was enough, so it mandated in
law that at least eleven carriers must be maintained in the force.
But with big bills coming from the Obama Administration and other
items like healthcare costs pressuring Navy budgets, the service has
repeatedly sought relief from that requirement. This year's
quadrennial review is the likely venue for another such bid.

The issue is coming to a head now because the pace of new carrier
commissionings is not keeping up with the rate of retirements. Kitty
Hawk, the last carrier in the fleet powered by fossil fuels, was
removed from the force last summer after nearly 50 years of service.
The Navy plans to decommission the nuclear-powered Enterprise in
November of 2012, leaving the fleet with only the ten flattops of the
Nimitz class for three years, until the next-generation Ford class of
carriers debuts in September of 2015. Going to ten isn't supposed to
happen under present law, but since the service hasn't made budgetary
provisions for maintaining the Enterprise and its crew until the Ford
class arrives, it looks like ten carriers will be the total number in
the fleet.

In the current budget environment, once the Navy gets used to having
ten carriers, that's probably where it will stay. Navy insiders think
the service will decide to forego the refueling of the Lincoln, which
is scheduled for 2012. And when the decision to stay at ten is
formalized, the service can also move to eliminate one of its carrier
wings. That step would cut the Navy's projected shortfall in strike
aircraft by half. So billions of dollars are saved by skipping the
refueling, cutting the purchase of aircraft, and eliminating the need
to sustain 6,000 personnel associated with ship operations and air-
wing support.

There's only one problem with all this. It reduces the nation's
capacity to project power from the sea at the same time access to
foreign bases is becoming doubtful. And why is such a move
necessary? Because the Obama Administration has decided to stick with
Bush-era plans to grow the size of ground forces by 92,000 personnel,
and the Navy must pay part of the bill for that. Yet the
administration is getting ready to depart Iraq, which was the main
reason for increasing the size of ground forces in the first place.
There are precious few other places where the warfighting scenarios
for the next QDR suggest a big ground force will be needed. Most of
the scenarios envision reliance on air power for the big fights of the
future -- the kind of air power delivered by carriers. So cutting
carriers to build a bigger ground force doesn't make much sense.