THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 2, 1996 TAG: 9603020237
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
The Navy will not seek funds this year for preliminary work on a new aircraft carrier, congressional and shipbuilding industry sources said Friday, apparently pushing back a timetable outlined last fall by its senior uniformed officer.
But the revised schedule should not be seen as a signal that the project is in jeopardy, the sources said. They said the Navy still hopes to begin construction of the carrier, to be built at Newport News Shipbuilding, by 2002. The ship would not be delivered until around 2006.
``We never really expected any money in this budget,'' said Jerri Dickseski, a Newport News spokeswoman. ``We're not concerned at all.''
Navy officials would not comment on their plans, since the proposed 1997 defense budget will not officially be released by the Clinton administration and the Pentagon until Monday.
. But sources noted that even preliminary funds for CVN-77 had never been part of the Navy's official projections for 1997.
Still, expectations that some money would be requested for CVN-77 this year were raised last fall by Adm. Mike Boorda, the chief of naval operations. In an interview then, he told reporters that the Navy had decided to build the ship and said it would be the last in the line of Nimitz-class carriers.
But one senior Navy official, speaking on condition that he remain anonymous, suggested Friday that Boorda's comments had been misconstrued. When the admiral referred to putting CVN-77 money in ``next year's'' budget, ``next year, in his mind, was '98,'' the official said, because Boorda already had submitted the Navy's 1997 budget plan to Defense Secretary William J. Perry.
Details of the new defense budget plan began leaking out this week as the Clinton administration briefed congressional leaders in anticipation of the formal release.
Congress typically begins providing funds for new carriers several years before construction gets under way. The first installments are a fraction of each ship's total price tag of around $4.5 billion and generally cover the cost of design modifications and early work on nuclear components.
Carriers are the largest ships afloat and one of the cornerstones of Hampton Roads' economy. Newport News Shipbuilding, Virginia's largest private employer, built all eight of the Nimitz-class carriers now in service and has two more in the works. CVN-75, the Harry S Truman, is to be delivered in 1998; CVN-76, the Ronald Reagan, is to join the fleet by 2002.
Each of the ships is about 1,000 feet long and carries about 6,000 sailors and airmen. The flattops have become increasingly important to America's defense strategy in recent years, as the Pentagon has closed many of its overseas Army and Air Force bases and left the Navy to provide its first response to international trouble spots.
While planning for CVN-77, the Navy also is beginning to develop ideas for a successor to the Nimitz-class carrier. Among the options under study are a shift from nuclear power to gas turbine engines and the replacement of catapult launches with a ski-jump style ramp that would let carrier jets take off entirely under their own power.
With dollars tight and other programs competing for them, ``any amount . . would have been pitifully small and would have ignited a fight . . . long before we need to have that fight,'' said U.S. Rep. Herbert H. Bateman, a Newport News Republican.
Sources suggested Newport News Shipbuilding, which has a monopoly on carrier programs, is particularly eager to avoid a battle over CVN-77 this year because of the precarious status of a submarine-building program it fought to secure last year.
After heavy lobbying by the yard and its corporate parent, Tenneco Inc., Congress overrode Navy plans to at least temporarily give all sub contracts to Electric Boat of Groton, Conn., a General Dynamics subsidiary.
Instead, lawmakers representing Virginia and New England compromised and agreed to divide four submarine contracts between Newport News and Electric Boat. Those subs are to begin a new line of undersea boats; the two yards will compete for contracts after the first four are built. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Newport News Shipbuilding built all eight of the Nimitz-class
carriers now in service and has two more in the works.
KEYWORDS: DEFENSE BUDGET by CNB