Pentagon formally unveils $961.6 billion budget for 2026, with reconciliation help
The budget reveals new details about some key programs, including an apparent decision to put the Navy's next-gen fighter jet on the backburner.
The budget reveals new details about some key programs, including an apparent decision to put the Navy's next-gen fighter jet on the backburner.
The Congressional Budget Office "estimates that total shipbuilding costs would average $40 billion (in 2024 dollars) over the next 30 years, which is about 17 percent more than the Navy estimates."
Both plans would shrink the fleet to 280 ships by fiscal 2027, then grow them back from there to a high of 387 ships if one of the options is followed.
It was not clear when President Joe Biden and his counterparts announced AUKUS' details whether those subs would be replaced by new Virginia-class boats or SSN(X).
The menu of options irked Congress last year, but Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro argued that the plan still provides industry with stability in the near term.
In its annual report on Navy shipbuilding, the Congressional Budget Office's warned that "uncertainty about the ultimate size and capabilities of the next-generation destroyer suggests that its final cost could differ substantially from both the Navy’s and CBO’s estimates."
"If we get into a conflict with China, this is not going to be like a World War II conflict where we have massive elements of the industrial base that can quickly convert to manufacturing the necessities for war...that's just not going to happen," Rep. Rob Wittman says.
The Unmanned Campaign Plan, which has been in the works for months, promises to be the first time the Navy will wrap all of its unmanned efforts together into a coherent whole.
The United States must do more to counter China's "aggressive and coercive actions," which Biden's presumptive Defense Secretary calls "an increasingly urgent challenge to our vital interests in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world."
The Trump administration's belated - and very expensive - plans to reinvent the Navy are about to get a scrubbing by the Biden team.
"I don't mean to be dramatic," said Navy CNO Adm. Mike Gilday, "but I feel like if the Navy loses its head, if we go off course and we take our eyes off those things we need to focus on, I think we may not be able to recover in this century."
Huntington Ingalls, best known for building the Nimitz and Ford-class carriers, amphibious ships and nuclear submarines, is taking notes on the Navy's new plans to build unmanned ships.
The Trump administration waited four years to come up with a plan to increase the size of the fleet, dumping it on the Pentagon's doorstep even as the moving vans were getting ready to pull up to the White House.
"The contradictions and the flaws in this report are so blatant that I think it's a pretty weak reed to lean on...given the fact that [the Trump administration] basically were just doing Obama's shipbuilding plan up until this point," says Rep. Joe Courtney