The Providence Journal
July 08, 2002
Submarine programs are shaping up as a big winner in the annual budget struggle. That is good news for Electric Boat's roughly 10,000 employees and for many thousands more Navy and civilian workers at sub-related companies and bases from New England and Virginia to the Pacific Northwest and Pearl Harbor.
Unlike other efforts to change the president's priorities in a wartime environment, the House and Senate action to boost spending for ships has prompted no serious objection from the White House or the Pentagon.
That tacit agreement to exceed Bush's ship production request stems from the fact that none of his pet programs will suffer as a result.
Congress is poised to pay for more ships through a combination of more generous overall spending, plus budget maneuvers.
Legislators have suggested during the debate that the Pentagon is using a time-tested tactic to have its budgetary cake and eat it, too. The trick is to demand ample funds for ambitious but politically difficult programs, while deliberately skimping on popular, essential programs that Congress is likely to increase.
Thus, Bush is on the verge of winning the full, $7.8-billion budget that he sought for continued development of a national missile defense - a complex system of advanced radar, missiles, lasers, and other weapons to track and shoot down enemy missiles aimed at the United States or its forces and allies abroad. The Navy has a significant role in the administration's emerging missile defense program.
The president is also likely to sign a 2003 defense bill that authorizes something approaching $1 billion more than the $8.1 billion he requested for ships. That would be a useful election-year bragging point for the many legislators of both parties who have argued that Bush's initial plan would have continued a dangerous shrinkage in the size of the fleet.
Bush also has a decent chance of at least partial victory in his bid to kill the Army's Crusader artillery program. The administration's turn against the heavy, hard-to-transport Crusader has become symbolic of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's campaign to transform the military for a future that he foresees as demanding lighter, more flexible forces.
The defense bill that passed the House in May forbids cuts in the expensive program. But the Senate version, which passed just before the July 4 recess, would clear the way for elimination of the Crusader.
The Navy's marquee entry in Rumsfeld's field of "transformational" programs, the conversion of Cold War-vintage Trident submarines, seems certain to win the more than $1 billion that Bush sought to start the work.
Both houses, with little debate, agreed to pay for the overhaul next year of two of the 560-foot-long submarines from their original mission of firing nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. The converted Trident subs will be able to carry as many as 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles and fire them from their 24 missile tubes. Alternatively, the converted Tridents will carry SEALs, the Navy's special-operations divers, and their equipment.
The Tridents - four of which are eventually slated for conversion - will also be rigged to carry two mini-submarines (known as "Advanced SEAL Delivery Systems" or ASDS) to transport fighting teams into hostile harbors and shallows.
The first conversions are likely to be done at Navy shipyards in Washington state and Virginia. But Electric Boat, which built all 18 "boomers" in the fleet, expects a significant role in designing and executing their conversion.
Then Senate and House defense bills both add significant amounts to Electric Boat's staple business for the foreseeable future, the Virginia-class submarine. But the two versions of the bill differ in the amount and method they take to accelerated construction of the new line of attack subs. Electric Boat is producing the subs in partnership with Newport News (Va.) Shipbuilding.
The Senate bill adds $425 million to the $2.46 billion that Bush had sought for the Virginia class. The new money would buy components of future submarines earlier than the Bush plan had contemplated. The shipyards would thus increase their current production rate - one sub per year - earlier than the fiscal year 2007 milestone set in Bush's budget.
The House bill is more complicated. It would order seven of the new attack subs over the next five years - compared with five subs in Bush's budget - but only if the government and EB's parent company, General Dynamics, agree to come up with the extra money needed. They would do so as part of an anticipated legal settlement of claims that the government made against General Dynamics in another weapons contract unrelated to submarines.
If the claims settlement falls through, the extra funds for the Virginia would be smaller in the House budget. But there is some chance that the matter will be simplified in the House-Senate conference that will negotiate the differences between the two versions of the $393-billion defense bill.
Both versions of the bill would also add money to increase from two to three the number of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers authorized in 2003. Bath Ironworks of Maine, another General Dynamics subsidiary, competes with a Mississippi shipyard for that work.
The fine print of the eventual 2003 defense blueprint may well include a modest coup for freshman Rep. James R. Langevin. The House bill contained a Langevin provision forbidding the Pentagon to buy abayas for servicewomen stationed in Saudi Arabia, or to compel the women to wear them.
The Senate version of the bill contains similar language authored by Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H. Smith has been a leading congressional supporter of Air Force Lt. Col. Martha McSally's fight against regulations requiring servicewomen to wear the head-to-toe Islamic robe when they travel off their base in Riyadh.
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