Inhofe Questions Witnesses About Unfunded Priorities, Aircraft Carrier Production Delays

Press Release

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), today questioned the Honorable Carlos Del Toro, Secretary of the Navy; Admiral Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations; and General David Berger, Commandment of the Marine Corps on their "risk lists," or priorities not funded in the President's budget request, as well as the delays in production of the USS Gerald R. Ford, and how to remedy these delays in the future.

Inhofe: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And General Berger, thank you very much for your nice remarks. As noted in my opening remarks, the unfunded priorities total $7.5 billion, approximately $4 billion for the Navy and $3.5 billion for the Marine Corps. The question I would ask -- this is a yes or no question -- is everything on your list executable today?

Gilday: Yes, sir.

Berger: Same for the Marine Corps, yes, sir.

Inhofe: Yes, well, alright. Thank you very much. Secretary Del Toro and Admiral Gilday, it's been 3.5 years since I've visited the USS Gerald R. Ford, and at that time they had just completed -- everything's been late on that effort -- the catapult, the arresting gears, I think at that time, three-and-a-half years ago, were just about completed. And my understanding is that the elevators now -- the last thing -- were finally done, albeit seven years late and $2.8 billion over budget. The burden that this seven-year delay of the Ford has placed on the rest of the aircraft [carrier] fleet can't be overstated.

I'd like to get, from all three of you, in whatever order you'd like, a couple of things, several things here: one is, what kind of a burden has that placed, that seven-year delay placed? And then, when will it deploy, and, probably, the lessons learned? This would be the significant thing, I believe, the lessons learned. I've talked to each of you, over a period of time, on how much of this could be a result of the sole-source situation. So, any comments you want to make, just on the Ford, now that we've reached this important time. I'd like to hear from you.

Del Toro: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I'd like to say that you charged me at my confirmation hearing to fix the elevators on the Ford. At least, I'm pleased to say they're fixed on the Ford now. I think when acquiring ships of this nature, which are extremely complicated, it's very important to ensure that we fully understand the maturity of the technologies that we're gonna put on those platforms before we actually acquire them. And I think that those are some of the key lessons that are being learned as we look at DDG Flight III, as we look at our future DDG(X) or SSG(X) as well as the Constellation-class frigate.

So, I'd like to say that the mistakes that were made in the past are being applied very aggressively to these new acquisition programs that are gonna be rolled out in the future. I think the criticality of land-based testing, for example, for the engineering plants is also very critical to this and the sub-modules that are necessary to go on to these platforms. And I'll ask the CNO [Chief Naval Officer] to continue the conversation in the limited time we have.

Gilday: Sir, the biggest lesson learned from Ford and other platforms is that we need to drive down technical risk in these programs. And so we do that with land-based prototyping. We do that with plenty of testing up front, before we become an informed customer, and come to you for the money to scale these platforms like we have. LCS [Littoral Combat Ship] would be another example. If I take a look at the Columbia-class submarine, we're 85 percent design right now, as we're building that submarine. If I compare that to the Ohio-class, we're at 4 percent, Seawolf 25 percent, Virginia-class 40 percent. And so, we are learning our lessons with respect to Ford, and putting in the good work now.

We have money in the budget, with respect to unmanned, to actually have land-based prototyping -- significant land-based prototyping in Philadelphia, as we've had with other ships, So, again we can make informed decisions before we scale platforms.

Inhofe: Let me comment before the third. I wasn't being critical. In terms, certainly, of the three of you. But the fact that it did take a longer period of time does have implications on other vehicles that are out there.

Gilday: Yes, sir, it has. Obviously, funds have been diverted in order to keep Ford moving along track. We're very pleased to get her deployed later on this year, and likely again in the following year. I want to keep her on a high degree of op-tempo.

This past year, she has had the highest, probably the highest, op-tempo of any ship in the Navy. She was our carrier -- aircraft carrier off the East Coast to the United States. She was qualifying our new pilots with their cats and traps. And so, we're gonna continue that high degree of op-tempo with her, keeping in mind, of course, trust in the crew. But, they want to go to sea, they're proud of the ship, and it's operating to our expectations right now.

Inhofe: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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