Marine Missions at Risk Without More LPDs

USS San Antonio (LPD-17)

With only 3-4% of the defense department budget likely to go to shipbuilding over the next 30 years – less than 1% of overall federal spending – the sea services are hard-pressed to maintain an adequate fleet as Cold War vessels retire. Despite years of debate, the Obama administration has yet to offer a credible explanation of how new ballistic-missile subs can be fit into a shipbuilding plan that looks overstretched relative to available resources. As the most survivable leg of the nation's strategic nuclear force, the new subs will be essential to preserving a robust nuclear deterrent when Ohio-class missile carriers begin retiring in the next decade.

But once the necessity of keeping the Ohio replacement on track is recognized, the questions about what happens to the rest of the fleet multiply. A Navy spokesperson told the respected trade publication Inside the Navy last week that Virginia-class attack subs might be sacrificed to make way for the Ohio successor – an awful idea given the scheduled retirement of legacy attack subs and the central role such vessels play in sea control and intelligence gathering. Construction of new Ford-class aircraft carriers can't be slowed or deferred without huge cost increases for each ship, and any reduction in surface-combatant production would undercut forward presence around the globe (if the lower-cost Littoral Combat Ship is killed, something pricier will have to take its place in the shipbuilding plan).

The only viable way to cope with this dilemma is to keep building San Antonio-class amphibs today so that aging LSD dock landing ships can be replaced before the production of the Ohio replacement ramps up. The first new ballistic-missile sub is scheduled to commence construction in 2021, but there is a hiatus of several years thereafter until serial production commences. That leaves just enough time to replace all the LSDs before the new missile sub soaks up the money in the shipbuilding account – if the Navy keeps building San Antonio-class vessels today.

The Navy has a plan to replace LSDs with something else that has been tentatively designated the LX(R) class, but let's get serious – the only way that is going to happen in this budget environment is if it is some version of the San Antonio class. Trying to design, engineer, test and produce an LSD successor other than LPD-17 before the Ohio replacement makes off with the money is impossible. So even though the new “Amphibious Warship Industrial Base Coalition” may be looking out for the future of its facilities and workforce, it has hit on the only practical way to modernize the amphibious fleet and keep the Marine Corps in business with all the other pressures pushing in on the shipbuilding plan.

This article originally appeared on the Early Warning Blog, a publication of the Lexington Institute.