The Navy’s Pacific fleet is battling to curb China’s growing military influence in the region with only half of the submarines, aircraft carriers and assault ships it needs to counter Beijing, Navy officials warned Congress Wednesday.
Adm. Philip Davidson, head of U.S. naval forces in the Indo-Pacific, told House lawmakers that the current fleet is “half of what I requested” from the Pentagon in the last fiscal year.
Navy leaders asked for $22.2 billion to purchase 12 new submarines and warships within the service’s total $205 billion budget proposal for the coming 2020 fiscal year. That request includes funds for three new Virginia-class submarines, three Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers and a Ford-class aircraft carrier.
But service leaders are also aiming to put the U.S.S. Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier into early retirement and focus on smaller vessels paired with next-generation unmanned ships.
That strategy may allow Navy leaders to hit their long-sought goal of a 355-ship fleet, but the lack of larger warships such as aircraft carriers and destroyers could put Navy commanders patrolling the vast oceans of the Pacific at a severe disadvantage.
“My day-to-day requirement is met by slightly over 50 percent of what I have asked for,” Adm. Davidson told lawmakers. The Navy’s Pacific fleet has historically received 70 percent of its total request for warships and other assets over the last several budget cycles, the admiral said.
The lack of a large naval presence in the Pacific comes as Beijing is ramping up its own investments in strategic weapons and maritime capabilities.
Advances in Chinese hypersonics weapons, mid-to-intermediate range precision-strike weapons and other capabilities designed to counter U.S. naval and air assets in the Pacific are gaining speed, Defense Intelligence Agency officials said in a January report.
Should Beijing perfect those technologies and deploy them in hotly contested areas such as the volatile South China Sea, Navy commanders in the Pacific may be forced to change their strategy against the Chinese.
“It changes some of the calculus in how you employ the force,” Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran told reporters that month.
“I would say our allies and partners across the region watch everything we do, across all of the joint force,” Adm. Davidson said Wednesday. “The level of participation we provide, … what our current operations are doing — they take signals from that,” he added.
On another issue, Pentagon officials said they would be not be applying a White House proposal designed to force U.S. allies to pay more for American forces based in their countries.
“I think the deals that have been struck have been mutually beneficial” to U.S. commanders and their military counterparts in the Asia-Pacific region, Randall Schriver, assistant secretary of defense for the Indo-Pacific, told the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday.
Mr. Schriver said the Pentagon would not be employing the so-called “cost-plus-50” proposal for allied cost-sharing in the Pacific. The plan reportedly asks allies such as South Korea and the Philippines to finance all costs tied to U.S. military deployments, plus another 50 percent of that total cost, as the price for having American troops on their soil.
When asked Wednesday whether future cost-sharing talks with allies would be guided by the Cost plus 50 formula, Mr. Schriver replied: “It will not be based on that formula.”
• Carlo Muñoz can be reached at cmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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