The Navy’s most senior officer on Tuesday expressed concern that sequestration could prompt slashes in construction personnel for nuclear forces, and could result in a long struggle to reprogram funding for projects like the Ohio replacement. Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations, said that the prospect of a sequester-induced 10 percent defense cut could result in officials straining to fund the next generation of SSBNs. “[The sequester] is a bad situation for two reasons: You haven’t planned for any of it because you haven’t been told to, and then you suddenly have all of your programs reduced by 10 percent,” Greenert said. “So you scramble for months to reprogram money to get the important monies where they need to be, like the Ohio replacement.”
Greenert said a sequester could cause a loss of months of work and hiring, and would most likely affect the most important element of ship construction timelines: People. “You only have so many builders,” he said. “[If] you lose your mid-grade vendors, if you will, people who build specialized valves, circuits, and other specialized items, especially in the nuclear arena, that would be a tough call and that would be a very tough recovery.”