While the Navy’s top enlisted official yesterday expressed concern to the Senate Armed Services Committee that sequestration could delay hiring of engineers for projects like the Ohio-Class replacement, he also expressed resolve that the Navy would put substantial effort into keeping the project on schedule, regardless of sequestration. But Adm. Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations, expressed doubt about the future of shipyards if caps associated with the 2011 Budget Control Act return. “We talked about the importance of the nuclear deterrence,” Greenert yesterday said during a full committee hearing, responding to a question by committee member Sen. Jeanne Shaneen (D-N.H.). “Well, these public shipyards underwrite all that. That’s our SSBNs. And because of Portsmouth [Naval Shipyard straddling Maine and New Hampshire], I can do work in the other shipyards on the SSBNs. Portsmouth is a major, major part of a ship maintenance enterprise that we must have. And I worry about it in sequestration.”
Naval programs might not be the only ones to see cuts. The Air Force’s top enlisted official said that a return of budget caps could slash Air Force nuclear modernization plans. Fifty-year-old nuclear infrastructure and nuclear command, control and communications (NC3) would be the biggest victims of sequestration, according to Gen. Mark Welsh, Air Force Chief of Staff. “We have an investment plan designed,” he told the committee. “It’s prepared to be put into place. We actually have it in the President’s budget this year. If we go to sequestration, all of the facility maintenance and new buildings that we have put into that proposal will fall off the table, except for a single weapons storage area at one of the bases.”
The prospect of sequestration has also prompted lawmakers to question the role of the nuclear triad, and whether the military should reduce the enterprise to a dyad. In response to committee member Sen. Martin Heinrich’s (D-N.M.) question of whether sequestration could force the nuclear triad to down-select to a dyad, Welsh said that discussion would probably never disappear, though he “is a believer” in the existing triad model. He said sequestration would inevitably push some modernization plans off the table. “We just don’t have enough money in our budgets in the Air Force and the Navy to do all of the modernization that you would need to do if we took everybody’s desire and tried to meet it,” he said.
Partner Content
Jobs