CNO Adm. Greenert Emphasizes Navy's Bright Future, Not Budget Crisis

http://defense.aol.com/2013/03/12/cno-adm-greenert-emphasizes-fleets-bright-future-not-budget-c/?icid=trending2



CNO Adm. Greenert Emphasizes Navy's Bright Future, Not Budget Crisis
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Published: March 12, 2013

WASHINGTON: The Navy's top admiral talked up cheap ships and high tech this morning, from laser weapons to a new double-decker version of the Mobile Landing Platform vessel (pictured above). Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert said precious little about the rolling budget cuts called sequestration. He clearly preferred to emphasize a bold vision of the future rather than the current budget crisis that has forced the fleet to halve its aircraft carrier presence in the volatile Persian Gulf.

Indeed, speaking at a Newseum conference sponsored by McAleese & Associates and Credit Suisse, the CNO struck a remarkably optimistic note about the current fiscal misery: "If we get a bill at the end of this month, all of the carrier woes" -- delays not just to deployments but to maintenance overhauls -- "all go away," Adm. Greenert said. "The money's in place; we (just) need the authority to spend it."

~snip~

The Chief of Naval Operations spent most of his time this morning enthusing over Navy programs and new technology: the Littoral Combat Ship, LCS-1 Freedom, now headed to Singapore; the Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) vessel Montford Point, christened last weekend; lasers, railguns, jammers, and drones, especially the X-47B, an experimental unmanned stealth bomber, and its projected big brother the UCLASS (Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System), for which the Navy will publish a formal Request for Proposals (RFP) in "about a month," he said.

By contrast, the CNO sounded more resigned than excited about the Navy piece of the $240 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the carrier-launched F-35C. We have to have it, but "the question becomes how do we buy and how does it integrate into the air wing," Greenert said. "If we bought no Cs, i think that would be very detrimental for the overall program."




unhappycamper comment: Let's take a look at some of the Navy's spending habits.

The USS Gerald R Ford: somewhere between $16 to $49 billion dollars.

$5+ billion dollar stealth destroyers.

$5~$7 billion dollar Virginia-class submarines (one a year)

$500+ million dollar Littoral Combat Ships, also known as the "Little Crappy Ship" or the "Target Barge".