Congress Has Been Crystal Clear What Kind Of Amphibious Fleet It Wants. Is The Pentagon Listening?

Rumor has it that in the runup to release of the president’s fiscal 2024 budget request, the Department of the Navy is not faring well. It will not be allowed to request funding sufficient to maintain readiness while growing the fleet.

Since readiness is its top goal, the implication is that purchase of new warships will be sacrificed. The fleet is thus likely to shrink at a time when China is expanding its own naval forces at a furious pace.

Some construction programs will be protected, such as the Virginia and Columbia-class submarines. But if past experience is any indication, the Navy will once again try to slash the number of large amphibious vessels it operates.

Without a sufficient number of large amphibious warships, the Marine Corps would be crippled. It would be unable to station a sufficient force of Marines at sea near trouble spots such as Taiwan and the Persian Gulf, meaning that enemies might prevail before America could respond.

The Marine Corps prides itself on being the first responder in crises, whether the challenge is military aggression, civil disturbances, diplomatic signaling or natural disaster. But the Marines are a sea-based force, so without an adequate fleet to move personnel and equipment, they can’t act.

The problem the Corps will face in the 2024 budget request is that the current size of the amphib fleet—31 large vessels—is the absolute minimum that can sustain global coverage, given maintenance requirements and transit times. Every recent study of the subject comes to the same conclusion: less than 31 vessels means an erosion of preparedness for future crises.

But the leadership of the Navy, which operates the warships transporting Marines, needs to be convinced that amphibs are as important as submarines and surface combatants. The 2023 budget request proposed retiring four existing amphibious warships without providing replacements, which would have reduced the number of available vessels well below the requirement.

To make matters worse, the 2023 request would have prematurely terminated production of San Antonio-class amphibs before fully replacing a dozen decrepit vessels in the fleet, while stretching out the time between construction of America-class amphibious assault warships to a decade.

The unmistakable signal from the Department of the Navy was that if the budget became too tight, the warships needed to conduct amphibious operations were expendable.

Congress was appalled, not only because of what that would mean for the future of the Marine Corps, but also what it would mean for the workforce that builds amphibious warships along the nation’s Gulf Coast.

With construction of both classes of large amphibs deferred while the Navy studied alternatives, the industrial base would inevitably wither. (HII, operator of the Ingalls shipyard in Mississippi where large amphibs are assembled, contributes to my think tank.)

So in making adjustments to the president’s 2023 budget request, the Congress sent its own unmistakable signal. The final version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2023 includes more stipulations about the composition of the future amphibious fleet than legislators have put into law for many years:

• Section 129 authorizes the Navy to sign contracts for up to five “covered” amphibious warships, defined as San Antonio or America-class vessels.
• Section 1022 directs the Navy to consult with the Commandant of the Marine Corps concerning any decisions bearing upon the amphibious force structure.
• Section 1023 mandates preservation of an amphibious fleet consisting of “not less” than 31 warships, of which “not less” than ten would be amphibious assault warships.
• Section 1025 grants the Commandant of the Marine Corps responsibility for developing “requirements relating to amphibious warfare ships.”

Collectively, these provisions preserve the current size and composition of the amphibious fleet while giving the Commandant of the Marine Corps a central role in determining what capabilities must be resident in that fleet.

Commandant David Berger has repeatedly stressed that the Corps must have at least 31 large amphibs to do its job. Thus, the U.S. Code now enshrines in law a future amphibious fleet at least as large and capable as that existing today. Any naval shipbuilding plan bereft of future amphib construction programs—as the 2023 plan was—would have to be amended to sustain an adequate fleet.

If Navy leaders were cynical about these stipulations, they could extend the life of aged amphibs to a point where the size of the fleet is sustained while its preparedness is called into question. But that would likely just bring more congressional language forcing the service to fund new ship construction.

The actuarial arithmetic for a fleet of 10 America-class assault ships and 21 San Antonio-class docking ships dictates that a new assault ship must commence construction every four or five years, while a new docking ship must commence every two or three years.

Anything less than that pace of construction would portend the decline of the fleet, not to mention the disappearance of 400+ suppliers across the nation who feed production inputs to the shipyard.

Commandant Berger has already suffered one shipbuilding disappointment during his tenure, with delay of the lead ship in a proposed class of light amphibs extended beyond his retirement.

But when it comes to the sinews of the amphibious fleet, Congress has made its intentions clear. The Pentagon will not be permitted to shrink that fleet any further than it already has.

So now the question becomes, will the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense comply with the law, or will they attempt to circumvent congressional intent?

If they choose the latter course, markup of the 2024 naval request on Capitol Hill could bring some interesting developments—none of them likely welcome to the Navy.