By Cheryl Pellerin DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, February 4, 2016 — Defense Secretary Ash Carter
previewed the department’s fiscal year 2017 budget request, highlighting for
sailors in San Diego the new lethality the budget proposes for ships,
submarines, aviation and munitions.
Carter is meeting this week with troops and defense
community members around the country to preview the proposed defense budget.
Yesterday at Naval Base San Diego in California, he toured
USS Spruance, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, and spoke with
sailors from the Spruance and from USS Princeton, a Ticonderoga-class
guided-missile cruiser equipped for surface-to-air, surface-to-surface and
anti-submarine warfare.
Congress makes the final budget decision, Carter told the
sailors, “but we try to tell them what in our judgment … is the best use of the
taxpayers’ money to defend our country.”
A substantial amount of the budget proposal is for the Navy,
he added, “because of the centrality of the Navy to our strategy.”
SM-6 Missile Modification
Beginning with munitions, Carter said the sailors were the
first to learn about a powerful new capability, secretly tested just last
month, that builds on the existing SM-6 missile.
“You know the SM-6,” Carter said. “You launch it from
surface ships. It's a fantastic surface-to-air weapon, highly maneuverable
aerodynamically, and can stop incoming ballistic and cruise missiles … in the
atmosphere at a very low altitude.”
He said the SM-6, already one of the department’s most
modern and capable munitions, will be modified so that in addition to providing
missile defense it also can target enemy ships at sea at extended ranges.
“This is a new anti-ship mode … that can shoot down airborne
threats, and now [the same missile] can attack and destroy a ship at long
range,” Carter said, calling it a potent new surface warfare capability.
Capabilities and Lethality
“You’re in the Navy, you're in the Pacific and you’re aboard
two of the most formidable ships in the entire world,” he added, noting that
the Spruance and Princeton would be among the ships receiving the lion's share
of the new investments proposed in the 2017 budget.
The overall number of Navy ships will build to 308 from
about 280 today, Carter said, but numbers alone are less important than the
ships’ capabilities and lethality, he added.
The department will buy nine new Virginia-class attack
submarines over the next five years, the secretary said, adding an extra
Virginia payload module and tripling the vessels’ vertical launch tube strike
capacity.
Carter said the Pentagon also will invest $600 million over
the next five years in a new capability -- variable-size and -payload unmanned
undersea vehicles.
New Competitors
Defense Department officials -- and the Navy itself, Carter
said -- agreed that 40 littoral combat ships was a sufficient number.
Plans in 2002 called for more than 50, he said, but today
the department must balance its shipbuilding investments among higher-end, more
capable ships such as the Spruance and the Princeton.
“We face competitors who are challenging us in the open
ocean, and we need to balance investment in those capabilities -- advanced
capabilities -- in a way that we haven't had to do for quite a while,” he said.
Buying 40 littoral combat ships will allow the department over the next 10
years to put about $8 billion more into high-end capabilities, “and that is the
right decision for us to make at this strategic turning point,” he added.
Warships and Fighters
On Aegis destroyers, which Carter called the most lethal and
capable warships ever built, the Pentagon will buy 10 new warships and
modernize combat systems on 12 existing ships. For Navy aviation, the
department will increase its purchase of fighters, to “more than we planned by
dozens over the next five years,” the secretary said: 13 more F-35 Lightning II
joint strike fighters and 16 more F-18 Super Hornets than were planned.
“Those buys are all getting much bigger to give the Navy and
the Marine Corps enough 4th- and 5th-generation aircraft for today’s fights and
also for tomorrow's fights,” the secretary said.
Cutting Edge
With this proposed 2017 budget, the fleet will be larger and
much more effective, potent and lethal than it is today, the secretary said.
“It will be equipped with the weapons and advanced
capabilities that it will need to deter any aggressor and to make any aggressor
who isn’t deterred very much regret their decision to take us on,” Carter said.
“That’s your job for the future, that's the job for the Navy
in the future,” he added. “We need to invest in [those capabilities] and you --
right here, right now -- are at the cutting edge of those investments.”
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