Reference news reports, according to the U.S. Army Times website on January 9, according to the latest analysis of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. Navy will have to spend $40.1 billion a year on shipbuilding by 2054, totaling more than $1 trillion, to realize the vision of expanding its fleet of combat ships.
According to the latest proposal of the US Navy, in the next 30 years, the Navy hopes to expand its combat ship fleet to 381 ships to meet the increasing global threats. The Navy currently has 295 ships, and it is expected that this number will be reduced to 283 by 2027, because the Navy plans to retire more ships than the number of new ships commissioned by then.
Referring to the Navy’s proposal, the Congressional Budget Office said, “Shipbuilding would be at its fastest pace in the early 21st century and 30s, reflecting the Navy’s desire to expand its fleet as quickly as possible.”
The Congressional Budget Office is responsible for providing cost estimates for legislative proposals. It estimates that the Navy’s plan described above would require Congress to fund the Navy 46 percent more than the average annual funding the Navy has received over the past five years.
By 2054, the Navy will need a total budget of $340 billion per year, one-third higher than the current budget of $255 billion. Of the increase, about $40 billion would be spent on shipbuilding, and the remaining $45 billion would be spent on operating and maintaining existing ships and buying weapons for them.
The Congressional Budget Office’s estimate is between 8 and 16 percent higher than the Navy’s own projections. The Congressional Budget Office said it took into account that some of the ships would take longer and be more difficult to build than the Navy had previously anticipated, and that completing the designs was more complex. The Navy’s cost estimates for some ships were also unrealistically low, the Congressional Budget Office said.
The agency said the shipbuilding program is costly compared to recent appropriations levels and historical standards. The Congressional Budget Office said Navy funding for shipbuilding has been increasing over the past decade, reaching its highest level since then-President Reagan sought a goal of 600 ships for the Navy in the 1980s.
An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office says, “Since 2015, Congress has appropriated an average of $2.5 billion more per year for shipbuilding than the president requested. This is partly due to concerns that the fleet is too small to carry out all of its missions.”
The labor shortage is one of many challenges that has led to a backlog in ship production as the Navy faces an expanding global threat. The Congressional Budget Office reported that U.S. shipyards will need to significantly increase productivity in order to meet plans for future fleet size.
The U.S. shipbuilding industry faced cost overruns and labor shortages, resulting in the production of some ships being years behind schedule.
This was the case with the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington, which in August 2017 began a mid-course fuel replacement. The fuel replacement comes at the halfway point of the carrier’s 50-year lifespan, and entails replacing the fuel in the nuclear power reactors, as well as overhauling and upgrading the carrier. While fuel replacement typically takes four years, Newport News Shipbuilding did not complete the work until May 2023, nearly six years later, according to a Navy statement.
The Congressional Budget Office said that under the Navy’s latest fleet proposal, aircraft carrier construction would remain roughly stable. But the tonnage of submarines, surface ships and amphibious warships under construction between 2030 and 2054 would be on average 50 percent higher than today.