The Pentagon has dropped a plan to retire one of its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers after the White House intervened to head off a brewing political fight.
The military had proposed an early retirement of the USS George Washington, reducing the U.S. carrier fleet to 10, as part of plan to deal with cost cuts imposed by Congress. That touched a nerve among a bipartisan group of lawmakers, who called on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in a letter last week to block the move and preserve what they argued is a potent symbol of American power.
The behind-the-scenes battle illustrates how politics often complicates the task of wringing savings from the U.S. military budget. Lawmakers, facing pressures from defense contractors and local communities, often oppose proposed cuts to military bases, aircraft and shipbuilding programs and weapons systems.
Last year, a strategic review by Mr. Hagel on the impact of the mandated across-the-board spending cuts found the U.S. could reduce the carrier fleet to eight or nine—still enough to equal the number of carriers operated world-wide by seven other nations.
But as the controversy began to build about taking the first step in that process, it became clear that any proposal endorsed by the White House to retire an aircraft carrier likely would have been blocked by Congress, opening Democrats to election-year criticism, officials familiar with the discussions said.
White House officials headed off the issue by telling defense officials in recent days that they would provide extra money—in effect raising the military's proposed budget—to allow the Navy to extend the life of the George Washington, commissioned on July 4, 1992. While actual spending levels are set by Congress, requests such as these from the White House generally are backed by lawmakers.
Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers can have a 50-year life span, but require midlife refueling and refurbishing that can take three to five years. The George Washington—whose flight deck is 1,092 feet long and 275 feet wide, covering 4.5 acres—is due for its midlife refueling and overhaul in 2016, at a cost of about $4.7 billion, according to Navy officials.
Defense Department officials currently are negotiating final elements of the Pentagon budget with the White House Office of Management and Budget, ahead of next month's release of the administration's budget proposal for fiscal 2015. The offer of additional money to pay for the refueling in 2016 came as part of those discussions, though it wasn't clear where White House officials planned to get the extra funds. Caitlin Hayden, the National Security Council spokeswoman, declined to comment.
The Budget Control Act of 2011, which included a provision for across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration that went into effect last year, called for the Pentagon to cut nearly $1 trillion from its budget over a decade. Last year's budget deal reduced this year's portion of the cuts by about $30 billion, but the relentless search for military cost savings continues.
That makes the cost of maintaining and operating aircraft carriers and their sizable strike groups—consisting of support vessels and warships—a tempting target for cuts to Pentagon officials. Retiring older carriers and reducing operating costs would free up money to invest in modernized weapons and ships, officials said.
Four Washington think tanks that examined the Pentagon budget recommended reducing the size of the carrier fleet, arguing at a briefing this week that money would be better spent modernizing the U.S. submarine fleet. Both the conservative American Enterprise Institute and more liberal Center for a New American Security backed carrier reductions.
Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said it makes sense to reduce the fleet by one or two carriers and invest in new submarines or stealthy aircraft and bombers. But he said far more money could be saved by slowing procurement of new Ford-class carriers, which require fewer crew members and can launch planes more quickly, rather than retiring the George Washington 25 years early.
Current plans call for the Navy to build one of these new carriers every five years, at a cost of about $13 billion each.