Resource Implications of the Navy's Fiscal Year 2009 Shipbuilding Plan
Abstract
In response to a Congressional directive, the Department of the Navy issues reports on an annual basis that describe its plans for ship construction over a 30-year period. In the report released in February 2006, the Navy presented its fiscal year 2007 plan, which called for expanding its fleet from 285 battle force ships in 2006 to 313 by 2020 and beyond.1 In May 2006, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a study analyzing that plan and estimating its potential costs.2 Since May 2006, the Navy has provided two updates to its 313-ship plan, one for fiscal year 2008 and one for fiscal year 2009.3 The plans differ in several ways. For instance, although the 2007 and 2008 plans both assumed annual costs of $16.1 billion for new construction, the 2008 plan increased the total number of ships scheduled for purchase over the 30-year period to 293, compared with 280 under the 2007 plan. That increase in the number of proposed ship purchases mainly reflected an acceleration of the building of the DDG(X) destroyer, which is intended to replace today s Arleigh Burke class of guided-missile destroyers, and a shift in the time period under consideration. (Because the Navy intended to buy more ships in 2037 than in 2007, moving from a 2007-2036 planning window to a 2008-2037 window increased the number of vessels scheduled for purchase over 30 years). The 2009 plan envisions purchasing three more ships than indicated in the 2008 plan 296 and increases the Navy s estimate of the costs to implement the plan by about 30 percent (see Table 1). Although the overall number of ships slated for purchase under the 2008 and 2009 plans differs only slightly, the Navy made significant changes in the types of ships it would purchase under the two plans.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 09, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA596397
Entities
Organizations
- Congressional Budget Office