Welcome to the CavasShips Podcast with Christopher P. Cavas and Chris Servello…a weekly podcast looking at naval and maritime events and issues of the day – in the US, across the seas and around the world. This Week…the Biden administration sent its $773 billion-dollar fiscal 2023 Pentagon budget request to Congress on March 28 and the best thing to say about it is – few people are happy with it. We’ll peel out some of the details of a Navy budget that seems to have enough to offend everyone.
In this Week’s Squawk Chris Servello has some budget advice for Navy leaders.
Please send us feedback by DM’ing @CavasShips or @CSSProvision or you can email chriscavas@gmail.com or cservello@defaeroreport.com.
This Week’s Naval Round Up:
A Navy E-2D Advanced Hawkeye command and control aircraft crashed on the evening of March 30 just off Chincoteague Island, Virginia. One crewmember was killed in the crash and two others injured. The aircraft was from the Greyhawks of Airborne Command and Control Squadron 120, the fleet replacement squadron for Hawkeyes. The crashed plane was partially submerged in a marsh and will be recovered, the Navy said.
The Pentagon announced March 31 that the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS HARRY S TRUMAN has been extended as, quote, “a hedge against Russian aggression in Europe.” TRUMAN deployed from Norfolk on December 1 with Carrier Air Wing One. The US has kept TRUMAN in the Mediterranean due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, scrapping plans for the ship to take part in NATO exercises off northern Norway and to operate in the Middle East. Sources told USNI news the ship might be operating in the Mediterranean until August, about the time the next carrier strike group deploys, led by the USS GEORGE H W BUSH.
And on March 28, the Pentagon revealed that six EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft from the Garudas of Electronic Attack Squadron 134 were deploying to Germany to, quote, enhance NATO’s collective defense posture and further increase air integration capabilities with our allied and partner nations.” The Garudas are an expeditionary electronic warfare squadron that do not normally deploy aboard aircraft carriers.
In new ship news, the future USS JACK H LUCAS DDG125, the first Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, was christened March 26 in a ceremony at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Initial builder’s trials for the destroyer are set to begin towards the end of this year. A commissioning ceremony was held April 2 for the submarine USS DELAWARE SSN791 in Wilmington, Delaware. The ship was administratively commissioned at sea on April 4, 2020 – the first US submarine to be commissioned while submerged – but the ceremony was put off until now due to the pandemic. And on March 31 Navy Secretary Del Toro announced that one of the new John Lewis-class fleet oilers would carry the name of the late Supreme Court associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
And in old ship news, the World War 2-era Gearing-class destroyer ORLECK DD886) arrived at hew new home of Jacksonville, Florida after being towed from Port Arthur, Texas. Restored, repaired, repainted and resplendent, the ORLECK will be part of a new waterfront display in the heart of the First City on the Saint Johns River.
Servello Squawk:
In a seven-tweet thread Congresswomen Elaine Luria blasted the Navy’s budget request and its leadership this week…saying the request “sucks”…it ignored the advice of Admirals Davidson and Aquilino, was misaligned with its own calls for a 500 ship manned and unmanned fleet … and that the Navy has no strategy.
Hard to argue with the gentlelady from Norfolk…herself a retired naval officer.
At a time when strike group deployments are being extended, entire ship classes are being decommissioned, shipyards desperately need improved infrastructure and the service readily accepts new ships over budget and behind schedule — the Navy needs to use next week’s sea air and space conference and the upcoming budget hearings to convince members of Congress and the American people it has a plan.
Navy Secretary Del Toro and CNO Admiral Gilday have to do better in linking their decisions to an understandable strategy, defending the basic principles they believe in. I’m not calling for stars on the table or resignations…but they need to make it clear what they need and what their budget lacks. They have to deliver a clear message to Congress as it deliberates on next year’s budget.
Unless it wants to be the recipient of a Christmas tree-like appropriation… littered with ill-fitting ornaments of capability and presumed capacity, added by members of Congress trying to fill the perceived void from the CNO and SECNAV…it needs to get its story straight, it needs to communicate clearly and it needs to do it quickly.
