CNO Addresses Budget Cuts, Navy Shipbuilding Needs

Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert Stresses Need for Flexible Platform Use in Future Navy.
 
February 21, 2013, Crystal City, VA – The U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert stressed the need for industry and the navy to work closer moving forward, to design and further refine ‘plug and play’ mission modules that can be readily adapted to existing U.S. Navy ships and platforms.

Admiral Greenert was the featured keynote speaker this morning at the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE) annual meeting, ASNE Day 2013, held at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City, VA. A an overflow crowd of military personnel and shipbuilding industry executives filled the room to hear Admiral Greenert address amongst other things, U.S. Navy platforms of the future and the looming 10% cuts due to enter effect March 1, 2013 (or, Sequestration).

“Ships are big capital investments (that last many years), and we have to think very hard about what we design and what we want to put on it,” Greenert said. He pointed to the Littoral Combat Ship program as a shining example of the future navy, a common platform that becomes multi-mission courtesy of the individual payload packages developed. “The decoupling of the combat system, or the payload from the hull,” is a trend that will grow in importance as the Navy seeks to fulfill its mission in an efficient and prudent economic manner.

Today’s U.S. Navy includes 287 ships, 102 of which are currently deployed, with the lion’s share in operation in the Pacific (53) and in and around the Middle East and Africa (30).