The Navy’s plan to extend the life of older ships beyond their years – or retire ships that are still functional and replace them with expensive new ones – is a mistake, according to an Aug. 11 white paper published by a Washington think tank. “Unrealistic force plans overoptimistic cost estimates, unrealistic projections of technical feasibility, and inadequate program management have created an unaffordable shipbuilding program, led the Navy to phase out capable ships for new ships it cannot fund, and threaten the U.S. Navy’s ability to implement an effective maritime strategy,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies stated a summary of the paper, entitled Abandon Ships: The Costly Illusion of Unaffordable Transformation. The author of the paper, Hans Ulrich Kaeser, writes that the Navy is basing its future on budget constraints rather than a strategic plan.
The paper’s full text is available on the CSIS Web site.