{"id":52310,"date":"2022-03-09T23:08:51","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T23:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2022\/03\/09\/navy-offers-a-new-argument-for-decommissioning-cruisers-theyre-not-safe\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T23:52:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T23:52:58","slug":"navy-offers-a-new-argument-for-decommissioning-cruisers-theyre-not-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/naval\/2022\/03\/09\/navy-offers-a-new-argument-for-decommissioning-cruisers-theyre-not-safe\/","title":{"rendered":"Navy offers a new argument for decommissioning cruisers: They\u2019re not safe."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Navy has tried to convince Congress to let it decommission the cruiser fleet by making cost-based arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s tried readiness-based arguments, too, noting the drain on the ship repair industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Congress largely hasn\u2019t been swayed, continuing to limit how many cruisers can be retired before the end of their 35-year service lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, the Navy is trying a new angle: the safety of the men and women onboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said March 9 the service does not want to continue to operate some of its worst-off cruisers because it\u2019s no longer safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe wear and tear is significant, and the safety of our people in the United States Navy always has to come first in times of peace, without question. And so it would be irresponsible to continue to upgrade some of those platforms today at great risk to personnel safety,\u201d he said at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Del Toro said those who question the Navy\u2019s desire to retire these old and worn-out ships haven\u2019t experienced for themselves \u201cthe challenge of having to repair ships of that age.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIf we tried to repair those ships at a cost that far exceeds the investment to go buy something else that\u2019s new, why would you do that?\u201d he said, likening the situation to someone who won\u2019t give up their beloved 20-year-old car, even though it needs $1,000 in repairs every time it\u2019s taken in for an oil change and it lacks all the latest safety features and technologies of new cars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAt some point, you gotta let it go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday spoke immediately afterwards at the conference. Asked by Defense News to detail those safety concerns, he said one cruiser in the fleet had to stop during its deployment for voyage repairs because water was coming in below the water line into a berthing area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another destroyer had to pause its deployment for repairs when water started coming in below the water line into a main engine room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A third \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.navytimes.com\/news\/your-navy\/2021\/03\/17\/vella-gulf-suffers-new-fuel-tank-casualty\/\">cruiser Vella Gulf last year<\/a> \u2014 had to return to its home port twice at the start of a carrier strike group deployment because of cracks in the ship\u2019s fuel tanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gilday also said the Ticonderoga class of cruisers is doing little to contribute to modern warfighting needs, despite lawmakers\u2019 argument that they haul around 122 vertical launching system cells each and ought to remain in the fight to deter potential adversaries like China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou have to see the threat to knock it down. So SPY-1A, SP-1B [radars are] just not sufficient given the threat we\u2019re facing,\u201d Gilday said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He also reiterated that the cruisers wreak havoc on maintenance funding and the ship repair industry\u2019s capacity. Seven cruisers are in some phase of an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/naval\/2022\/03\/01\/how-mistakes-in-modernizing-a-us-navy-cruiser-can-benefit-destroyers\/\">extended service-life extension and modernization effort,<\/a> which is not only requiring significant manpower at private repair yards but is also running years late and costing tens of millions of dollars a year more than the Navy budgeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey\u2019re eating us alive in terms of our ability to get maintenance back on track, which is where we need to be,\u201d Gilday said of the cruisers. \u201cWe are paying tens of millions of dollars beyond what we expected to because of growth work and new work on ships that are beyond their service life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gilday said his desire to decommission these ships and reinvest the money elsewhere in \u2014 dubbed divest to invest \u2014 has been mischaracterized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He argued he\u2019s not taking a perfectly good ship and trading it in for the potential for a future ship. Rather, with the cruisers not contributing much to operations, not being reliable or safe and eating into readiness funding for other ships, Gilday argued it\u2019s an easy decision to ditch these ships today. Then, as a separate next decision, he said money that would otherwise pay for cruiser operations and maintenance could be reinvested into future readiness, lethality and capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He said he\u2019s worked to achieve a balanced fleet that is only as large as the Navy can afford to man and maintain. Lawmakers\u2019 desire to keep the cruisers for the sake of bolstering the ship count are undermining that effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harkening back to the days of sequestration, he said, \u201cIf capacity becomes king again in a static budget environment, we\u2019re going to go back to where we were in 2013, and we\u2019re going to pay for that capacity with manpower at sea, with weapons in magazines and with respect to readiness and maintenance. I just won\u2019t go back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congress hasn&#8217;t been swayed to let the Navy decommission its cruisers early after money- and readiness-focused arguments. Now, the Navy is saying those old ships aren&#8217;t safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":113797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":16,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["your-military","news","left-column","home"],"primary_category":"your-military"},"7":{"categories":["your-navy","news","left-column","home","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"your-navy"}}},"categories":[160,16,36],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3354],"class_list":["post-52310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-naval","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"5J6EXBJ5QBCEHMXAAPLN2B3CLM","arc_canonical_url":"\/naval\/2022\/03\/09\/navy-offers-a-new-argument-for-decommissioning-cruisers-theyre-not-safe\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Navy offers a new argument for decommissioning cruisers: They\u2019re not safe. - Defense News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Congress hasn&#039;t been swayed to let the Navy decommission its cruisers early after money- and readiness-focused arguments. 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