THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 28, 1996 TAG: 9603280343
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
A long-awaited Pentagon report on submarine programs suggests several ways to meet Congress' desire for more ships, and in particular to keep Newport News Shipbuilding in the sub business, but ducks critical questions about how the boats will be financed.
The report released Wednesday puts the five-year cost of a sub program devised by Congress last year at $10.4 billion, or almost $4 billion more than the Navy proposed to spend. The congressional plan would produce four subs by 2001 however, compared to just two in the Navy plan.
The two additional ships - the second and fourth boats in a planned new generation of subs - would be constructed at Newport News beginning in 1999 and 2001, respectively. The subs in the Navy's original plan are to be built in 1998 and 2000 at Electric Boat of Groton, Conn.
Assistant Secretary of the Navy John W. Douglass said the Navy will comply with the congressional program ``if we can get the money to do it.''
But neither Douglass, in testimony to a Senate subcommittee Wednesday afternoon, nor the Pentagon report directly requested any additional funds. That omission, despite Defense Secretary William J. Perry's apparent acceptance of the four-sub plan in negotiations last fall, clearly peeved Virginia Sen. John W. Warner, one of the architects of the congressional plan.
``It's clear to me - and others - that there was a decided attempt not to put the dollars behind the program,'' Warner said Wednesday.
Joined by Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Electric Boat's most prominent congressional advocate, Warner promised that more sub money will be found as the Pentagon's 1997 budget proposal is reviewed on Capitol Hill.
Submarine backers in the House have made similar commitments. Rep. Herbert H. Bateman, a Newport News Republican who sits on the House National Security Committee, noted in an interview that additions of up to $13 billion to the Pentagon's $243 billion budget are expected.
To begin work on a 1999 sub, Newport News needs a $500 million appropriation in 1997. The money will purchase a nuclear reactor and other components that must be in hand when actual construction gets under way.
Based on Perry's commitments last fall and conversations with the secretary since then, Bateman said, he had expected that the Pentagon would either adjust its budget proposal upward to provide the additional sub money or call for cuts in other programs to offset the sub increase.
Newport News Shipbuilding is close to completing work on its last Los Angeles-class attack sub, the Cheyenne. The yard lobbied aggressively last year for a slice of the new sub program, first urging that it be allowed to compete with Electric Boat and finally agreeing to the schedule of alternating contracts for the first four subs in the new line.
The congressional plan calls for the two yards to compete for sub work after the first four boats are completed, with the first competitive contract coming in 2003.
But Douglass said Wednesday that the schedule could put Electric Boat at a life-threatening disadvantage because it would leave the Connecticut builder without any new contracts between 2000, when it would get the third boat in the line, and 2003.
Unlike Newport News, which builds aircraft carriers and some commercial ships, Electric Boat depends solely on submarine contracts.
In addition to coming under fire for its lack of funding, the sub program was criticized Wednesday by three independent consultants as doing too little to explore emerging technologies that could make new subs faster and quieter.
A.R. Battista, a former staff director of what is now the House National Security Committee, said last year's sub compromise ``legislates mediocrity'' because it doesn't push the Navy to design the sub to take advantage of technological advances.
In particular, Battista faulted the service for falling behind Russia in exploring advances in hydrodynamics - design changes that would alter the way the sub displaces and moves the water around it. Russia has found promising ways to change its subs' hydrodynamic signatures to make them more difficult to locate and track. by CNB