SecNav: Navy needs a destroyer this year

[unhappycamper]

SecNav: Navy needs a destroyer this year
By Philip Ewing - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Sep 5, 2008 6:35:54 EDT

Navy Secretary Donald Winter hopes that Congress funds a surface warship in this year’s budget, and while he’d prefer a third Zumwalt-class destroyer, he’d still be happy if lawmakers funded an older Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, Winter said Thursday.

The Navy has a major stake in keeping U.S. shipyards healthy, Winter told Navy Times, so they, in turn, are able to keep the employees and production gear in place to keep building warships.

“This is a very important part of our fleet and we have to be mindful of the need to continue to invest and to maintain the industrial base that supports that investment and production activity,” he said. “In many aspects, making certain that we have — I’ll just say, a destroyer — in the budget is more important than whether that’s a DDG 1000 or a DDG 51. I want a surface combatant this year.”

Over the past spring and summer, different Navy officials have espoused different views of how many copies of what kinds of ships the Navy should build. The Navy initially asked Congress for a third DDG 1000, but skeptics on Capitol Hill balked at the Navy’s promises it could control shipbuilding costs and House lawmakers deleted the ship. Supporters in the Senate continued fighting for it.

Then Navy announced in July it didn’t want that ship, and would truncate the Zumwalt class after two copies and resume building DDG 51s. The Navy’s top requirements officer told lawmakers this was because the Zumwalts couldn’t carry surface-to-air missiles or fight submarines as effectively — an apparent reversal from more than a decade of planning, and despite protestations from defense contractors and their surrogates in Congress. When Senate lawmakers pressed for the Defense Department to get involved with acquiring the third ship, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, a former secretary of the Navy, reassured them the Navy had been “directed” to pursue the third ship.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/09/navy_secnav_090408w/%2e



uhc comment: Oh goodie! We can purchase a $1,750,000,000 destroyer (that's 1.75 billion) rather than a $5,300,000,000+ destroyer (that's 5.3 billion).

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. Name it the USS GOP. That'll destroy anything in it's path.

[Captain Hilts]

2. Trent Lott's Pascagula yard needs to sit in a time-out chair after San Antonio screw ups...

Give Bath another Burke or two.

Does Mare Island still build ships?

[unhappycamper]

3. I don't think so.

I haven't seen Mare Island mentioned in any ship-building context in the last few years.