The same strategy that slashed US naval aircraft procurement by nearly 10% this year will be reapplied for the next planning update, naval officials said on 4 June.
The US Navy's six-year procurement plan released in February calls for the purchase of 1,295 aircraft from fiscal year 2008 to FY2013, budget documents show. That figure represents a reduction of 139 aircraft from the previous spending plan.
The FY2008 budget request "wasn't a one-shot deal", Rear Adm Bruce Clingan, director of the Air Warfare Division, told an audience at the Heritage Foundation. "It's ongoing now as we prepare the FY2009 budget. We'll complete that work in support of the president's budget for 2010."
Talk of continued spending cuts comes amid a sweeping recapitalisation drive for naval aviation, encompassing at least 20 different aircraft types. In FY2008 alone, the USN is seeking to invest $18.5 billion to develop or produce 188 new aircraft, marking a 40% increase in aircraft purchases compared with FY2006.
But Clingan notes that the recapitalisation programme "has not come without challenges". The new spending plan "has taken and suppressed the acquisition of our airframes in an effort to make part of that bow wave - to diminish it and to make it affordable," he said. "It has not violated the warfighters' minimum essential requirements. That procurement plan, which is frankly rephased to buy those airplanes over a longer period of time, has carefully walked those red lines."
For example, the navy's FY2008 spending proposal would defer purchases for about 58 Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters beyond FY2013. The USN plans to compensate for this by buying 28 more Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, including 11 more within the next six years.
Even so, the USN's tactical aircraft fleet faces a major inventory shortfall from near the end of the next decade. The fighter shortfall "reaches a peak of about 50 airplanes in the 2018 timeframe and persists in that state through abut 2020", Clingan said.
Nonetheless, the navy has convened a "future capability cross-functional team" to again review the aviation community's procurement requirements. The team will use "data-driven methodologies" to make changes, "most likely to reap benefits or improve return on investment", he said.
The team's decisions will first be reflected in the navy's budget submittal for FY2009, which as an off-year should not include many strategic-level changes. The team also will help shape the budget planning for the FY2010 spending request, which will include the next update to the long-term spending plan. That request will feature a new investment strategy called Naval Aviation Plan 2030, Clingan said.
Naval aviation is competing for increasingly scarce resources, not only across the Department of Defense but within the naval community itself. The USN has committed to a 313-ship structure that requires an annual shipbuilding budget of about $15 billion in current dollars, but may actually be closer to $20 billion, says Eric Labs, a naval expert at the Congressional Research Service.
Related links:
Source: Flight International
