The new Navy 30-year shipbuilding plan released April 18. Here’s an overview from Navy Times. Interestingly enough, the 30 year shipbuilding plan not only gets remade every year, indicating the relative lack of utility of such a long planning horizon (i.e., plans-reality mismatch), the analyses that enter into the plan also change year-to-year. This year provided three alternative scenarios beyond the FYDP, as well as metrics on the capacity for kinetic effects. Here are a few highlights for me:
(1) Total VLS, torpedo, and sortie generation capacities will decrease over the 2020s, particularly submarine VLS which will be cut nearly in half before rebounding. Surprised surface VLSs didn’t come down more with retirement of 14 cruisers over the FYDP, each with over 100 VLSs. Undersea VLS drop is more precipitous with retirement of Ohio-class boomers. But these dips show in a way the tradeoff being made for modernization, betting that the really dangerous years will be beyond the FYDP.
(2) Navy provided three alternative scenarios beyond the FYDP on deliveries. Even at the high end estimate, Navy won’t hit 300 ships until after FY2032. Navy plans to retire 77 ships over FYDP, and have only 60 delivered. Somehow, battleforce only drops from 285 to 280 over the FYDP. Must be something with the timing that I’m not understanding.
(Note, there’s been some consternation that the Navy reported a single LHA hull as new procurement in FY22 and FY23, meaning FY23 only should show 8 new procurements.)
(3) By FY 2045, Navy estimates between 318 and 363 ships. China has more ships in their fleet *today*. Over the FYDP, shipbuilding will take $25-$30B annually, and sustainment will also require between $25-$30B annually. Frustratingly, it looks like shipbuilding is reported in constant dollars (removing inflation) while sustainment is in then year dollars (includes inflation). But what really strikes me is that by FY 2052, the end of the 30-year plan, the annual TY$ sustainment costs are within 10% of each other for all three alternatives — $50B for the low end and $55B for the high end. I expect much greater variability in what budgets turn out to be in real life than what is shown in the plan.
(4) Unmanned vessels are excluded from the analysis because they are not counted as battleforce ships yet. Relatively little was said about them in the report. Navy has previously said it does not plan to create an unmanned program of record in FYDP and will pursue a “building blocks” approach instead. Could be a wildcard in the analysis because depending on the outcome it could have no impact or completely upend the analysis.
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