Current and Projected Navy Shipbuilding Programs
Abstract
In response to Congressional direction, the Department of the Navy began (with the submission of the fiscal year 2003 President s budget) issuing annual reports that describe its 30-year plans for ship construction. In the report released in February 2006, the Navy presented its fiscal year 2007 plan to expand its fleet from 285 battle force ships in 2006 to 313 by 2020 and beyond. In May 2006, CBO issued a study analyzing that plan and estimating its potential costs. Since May 2006, the Navy has provided two updates to its 313-ship plan, one for fiscal year 2008 and one for fiscal year 2009. There are a number of differences among the plans. The 2007 and 2008 plans both assumed annual costs of $16.1 billion for new construction, but the 2008 plan increased the total number of ships purchased over a 30-year period to 293, compared with 280 for the 2007 plan. The increase of 13 in the number of ships purchased mainly reflected an acceleration of the building of DDG(X) destroyers, which are intended to replace today s Arleigh Burke class of guided-missile destroyers, and a shift in the time period under consideration (the Navy intended to buy more ships in 2037 than in 2007, so moving from a 2007 2036 planning window to a 2008 2037 window increases the number of vessels bought over 30 years). The 2009 plan envisions purchasing three more ships than the 2008 plan 296 and it appears to increase the Navy s estimate of the costs to implement the plan by about 50 percent (see Table 1). Although the number of ships purchased under the 2008 and 2009 plans differs only slightly, the Navy made significant changes in the numbers of some of the types of ships it would purchase under the two plans.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 14, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA596343
Entities
People
- Eric J. Labs
Organizations
- Congressional Budget Office