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| Image: Flickr User - Greg Bishop |
By: David B. Larter
The Navy is digging in its heels and rejecting billions in cuts from its 2018 budget as infighting has hit a boiling point at the Pentagon.
The Navy has refused to submit a budget that incorporates $17 billion in cuts over the next five years that Defense Secretary Ash Carter ordered. It's a standoff that has been brewing for months since Carter told the Navy to begin cutting major shipbuilding programs and invest in weapons systems and aircraft, according to half a dozen defense officials who spoke to Navy Times.
At issue is Navy Secretary Ray Mabus's insistence that budget cuts not be directed at the shipbuilding program, which he has long fought to shield from cuts as he attempts to rebuild the fleet to his goal of 308 ships.
Mabus has long argued that cutting ships is the "least reversible" thing to cut from the budget because of the long timeline for shipbuilding programs and the damage to the industrial bases. The Navy had been developing budgets with the $17 billion in cuts that preserved shipbuilding, but the savings came overwhelmingly from operations and maintenance money needed to deploy ships and fix them when they get back — Navy leaders deemed those cuts intolerable.
What's unclear is what impact the outgoing administration's fiscal year 2018 budget would have on the incoming Trump administration, which will be expected to roll out a defense budget this spring. Carter's office insists its going to hand over the best budget it can while keeping the Navy and all the other services within the caps mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
Read the full story at NavyTimes