Mr. President, over the past year, our Navy has had four serious mishaps at sea, including fatal collisions involving the USS Fitzgerald on one occasion and the USS John S. McCain on another. In the McCain and Fitzgerald accidents, 17 of…
Mr. President, over the past year, our Navy has had four serious mishaps at sea, including fatal collisions involving the USS Fitzgerald on one occasion and the USS John S. McCain on another. In the McCain and Fitzgerald accidents, 17 of our sailors were killed.
In response to these serious incidents, the Chief of Naval Operations, ADM John Richardson, directed the comprehensive review take place. Today, the Senate Armed Services Committee was briefed on the results of this comprehensive review. The results will be made public either tomorrow or the next day, and Americans will be able to see the serious situation we are in.
There are various reasons for these collisions and these fatalities, including, regrettably, human error and unfortunate circumstances, but, also, the review makes it clear that we are not doing right by our sailors, we are not doing right by the Navy, and we are not doing right by the taxpayers, in terms of making sure these brave men and women have what they need.
We need to work quickly with the Navy here in Congress to implement the recommendations that will be coming forward later this week. We need to enhance training and readiness, and we need to recognize--and I think the majority of this Senate does recognize--that the size of the fleet has contributed to the problems.
Simply put, we need to acknowledge that the Navy has a supply-and- demand problem. We have a demand for more naval action than the supply of our ships can produce. Our ship force has declined recently by some 20 percent. We are asking too few ships to do too many things for American security, and that needs to be rectified.
The consequences of this supply-and-demand mismatch were summed up by naval analysts Robert C. O'Brien and Jerry Hendrix in a recent National Review online article. They argue that the Navy is on the precipice of a ``death spiral,'' wherein more overworked and damaged ships place an increasingly greater strain on the remaining operational ships, thus eroding readiness across the fleet.
I agree with Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Hendrix that this situation will result in ``more collisions, more injuries, and more deaths in the fleet.'' To avoid this death spiral, we need to commit to growing the Navy and meeting its minimum requirement of 355 ships.
I have the privilege of chairing the Seapower Subcommittee, which has held a series of oversight activities, both classified and unclassified, on the Navy's 355 ship requirement. We have examined the security environment that drives the requirement to add about 80 more ships to the fleet. We have listened to Navy leadership, outside experts, and industry on options, capabilities, and considerations. We received perspective from the key players behind President Reagan's naval buildup in the 1980s.
As the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions have demonstrated, the short- term costs of ``doing more with less'' are simply unacceptable. The long-term implications will prove devastating to American power and the global order it underpins.
The U.S. military's commanders have identified 18 maritime regions where the Navy must secure American interests. Our current naval strategy is designed to command the seas in those regions. The Navy needs a minimum of 355 ships to get this done.
If the Navy cannot get the bare minimum it needs, then our naval strategy must change--and, I can assure you, it would be a change for the worse. Instead of a global command of the seas, what we would get would be a new, weaker strategy.
What would this look like? In the National Review article I previously mentioned, authors O'Brien and Hendrix lay out two alternatives. Neither one of them are pretty.
First, the Navy could strategically withdraw from certain maritime regions and hope our allies and partners will pick up the slack. Let Norway, Denmark, and Canada patrol the Arctic; let the Baltic States, Poland and Germany, patrol the Baltic Sea; let Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria patrol the Black Sea. Really? Let Taiwan, the Philippines, and Malaysia patrol the South Sea China--and hope for the best or we could return to the pre-World War II unacceptable surge and exercise model. This strategy involved consolidating a smaller fleet into a few strategic hubs, deploying occasionally for exercises, and greatly reducing the number of missions the Navy could perform in peacetime and in crisis.
In their article, O'Brien and Hendrix note that these two strategies ``make the past eight years of `lead from behind' look like an assertive foreign policy.'' These two strategies would create dangerous power vacuums and shifting allegiances. Our adversaries would use the Navy's absence to rewrite the rules of global commons. Our allies would accommodate challengers to the American-led order. Abandoned by America, in some cases, they would have no choice but to cut deals with Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran.
I know my colleagues in Congress want a different future. In fact, I am hopeful we can take the first steps this year toward building up the fleet. As former Navy Secretary John Lehman told our subcommittee this year, President Reagan ``reaped 90 percent of the benefits of his rebuilding program . . . in the first year.'' This took place in the early 1980s and made clear that President Reagan, Congress, and the Pentagon were serious about rebuilding the fleet. It sent a signal to our allies and to the Soviets that America and
our Navy was coming back in a big way, which makes 2017 and 2018 so important. I am confident Congress can establish a firm foundation in the coming months for a fleet buildup.
To that end, I would note that both the House and Senate Defense authorization bills contain the Wicker-Wittman SHIPS Act, which would establish a 355-ship requirement as our national policy. Both bills also contain multiyear procurement authority for Virginia-class attack submarines and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. Multiyear procurement will stabilize the industrial base for those ships and generate billions in savings, which would be plowed into more shipbuilding. Both bills contain cost-control measures to protect taxpayers. Although negotiations are ongoing, the final NDAA conference report should include the SHIPS Act, multiyear procurement, and acquisition cost controls.
The Defense authorization bill is a good start, but Congress also needs to add funding for shipbuilding in upcoming appropriations legislation. We need an agreement that eliminates the Budget Control Act with regard to defense spending or at least provides relief.
The bottom line is that a buildup will require more funding. President Reagan's first defense budget included a 35-percent increase for the Navy compared to President Carter's last proposed budget, and it was well worth it. More resources are needed to accelerate shipbuilding. It is time to end the two decades of low-rate shipbuilding that has brought us to this point. Compared to its earlier planned levels, the Navy's Accelerated Fleet Plan concludes that the shipyards can produce 29 more ships over the next 7 years. Investment is needed--particularly in submarine facilities--but the yards are up to the challenge, especially those with hot production lines.
I was disappointed to hear that Acting Under Secretary Thomas Dee, an Obama holdover still in the Department of the Navy, said last week that 355 ships is probably out of reach until the 2050s. Mr. Dee's pessimism about the Navy's own requirement is perplexing, when it is incumbent on the Navy to develop fleet buildup options within budget constraints. Those current and likely future physical environments were accounted for in the Navy's 2016 Force Structure Assessment of 355 ships. So we can do it, and the leadership of the Navy, with the exception of Under Secretary Dee, knows we can do it.
CNO Richardson's white paper on the future Navy notes that we ought to achieve a 355-ship fleet in the 2020s--not the 2040s, not the 2050s, but the 2020s. Thank goodness for the foresight and positive attitude of the Chief of Naval Operations. He is right--a 355-ship fleet should be our goal for the next decade. Regrettably, Acting Under Secretary Dee must have been asleep for the last 9 months while Congress was talking about this and while we were on the verge of enacting legislation making a 355-ship Navy the official policy of the United States of America.
Shipbuilding is indeed a long process, and a 355-ship fleet will not happen overnight. New ship construction is critical to achieve this objective, but the Navy should also examine service life extension programs for older ships and perhaps even reactivating ships in the Ready Reserve. It is irresponsible to retire ships early if they have useful life. Such ships may have to be reassigned to less stressing missions, but they should not be prematurely sold overseas or sunk as target practice. It is equally irresponsible to miss opportunities to reactivate retired ships if the benefits exceed the cost. Let's at least look at that.
The Senate Defense authorization bill includes my amendment directing the Navy to look at service life extension and reactivation. The Navy needs to go ship by ship through the inventory and provide Congress with a thorough analysis of these options, and that is what the Navy is doing.
As O'Brien and Hendrix write, ``Navies and international influence go hand in hand.'' A smaller Navy means a smaller role for America, and we can't afford that. We must cultivate the national will to avoid this fate.
I urge my colleagues to help me, to help the Armed Services Committees in both Houses in an effort to begin rebuilding our naval power at once.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.