BALTIMORE, Md. – The maritime services are poised to release several documents in the next few weeks that will outline a new path forward for the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard under the National Defense Strategy, Navy Secretary Braithwaite previewed on Wednesday.
The secretary told USNI News that he’s done a deep-dive into the budget and found tens of billions of dollars in cuts that will help fund the Pentagon’s 500-ship plan announced this week. He also said the chief of naval operations would be releasing a Navigation Plan soon and that the Tri-Service Maritime Strategy was also on its way out soon, both of which would shed more light on how today’s fleet would operate around the globe and what to expect from the bigger fleet the Pentagon has agreed to fund.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday while outlining the new Battle Force 2045 fleet plan – which will reach 355 conventional ships by 2035 and about 500 manned and unmanned ships by 2045 – that the Navy did some serious work on its own budget to find savings, which led him to reward the Navy with a greater share of the Defense Department budget pie.
“We have charted a credible path to reaching 355 ships that works within real-world budget constraints. Through its own reviews and reforms, the Navy did good work these past several months freeing up funds in the coming years for the building of new ships. The Navy must continue these initiatives; they are essential to ensuring an adequate shipbuilding account for the task ahead,” Esper said during the Battle Force 2045 rollout.
“Given the serious reform efforts put forward by the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations – and their commitment to continue them – I agreed to provide additional funding from across the DoD enterprise, funding that was harvested from ongoing reform efforts, such as Combatant Command reviews, Fourth Estate reforms, and other initiatives. Together, these additional funding streams will increase the shipbuilding account to 13 percent within the Navy’s topline, matching the average percentage spent for new ships during President Reagan’s buildup in the 1980s.”
Braithwaite spoke to two reporters today after filming a video announcing the name of the guided-missile frigate class, which will be the Constellation class.
Asked by USNI News to elaborate on the savings he identified, he said that the prospect of greater funding to support shipbuilding “was the carrot that [Esper] put out there. So as a businessman, that’s a great incentive: you give a business unit the ability to make their objectives for the quarter, for the year, whatever, and if they go after that and they’re able to accrue those kind of sales or savings, then you reward them by ensuring that they have more resources to do even greater work. So Secretary Esper put that marker on the table and challenged us. And the team that we have is fantastic, led by several of our assistant secretaries; they just did a fantastic job.”
He said the specifics would be released shortly, “but I can tell you that … building more ships is the bottom line.”
“We’ve got to be able to get from where we are today at about 300 up to 355 , and with the future naval force structure, the Battle Force 2045, with unmanned capability takes us even farther beyond that. But you’ve got to be able to pay for that, so we looked across the entire spectrum of everything in the Navy – in fact, I just met…
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