Defense

Why Trump’s Budget Only Called For One New Ship, Despite Campaign Promises

U.S. Navy photo/Spc. Daniel M. Young/Released

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Thomas Phippen Thomas Phippen is a senior editor at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Font Size:

President Donald Trump promised to build about 80 new ships to bring the Navy’s fleet to a total of 350 ships during his campaign, but his first budget proposal only includes funding for one new ship.

Far from the massive Navy buildup Trump promised during the campaign, many decried the budget as barely better than President Barack Obama’s previous budgets.

What changed between Trump’s campaign promise to build up the Navy and his first budget? Building more ships is not a high priority for the administration this year because of the current priorities of the Pentagon, according to defense experts.

The Foundation For American Greatness 2018 budget proposal released Tuesday only called requested funding for one new Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), the Navy’s latest frigate model. Officials stressed later in the week that the White House and the Navy are open to finding $600 million in funding to order a second ship during testimony.

The two-ship increase is still far below what’s needed to fulfill Trump’s campaign promise of expanding the Navy to 350 ships, as he proposed in his national defense platform released during the presidential campaign September.

Instead of pushing for ramping up shipbuilding, the administration is prioritizing improving maintenance, operations and weapons to prepare for increasing the fleet size.

“It’s a prudent first step, to fill in, or try to fill in some of the gaps” in modernization and readiness, Bryan McGrath, deputy director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for American Seapower, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

While McGrath would have liked to see a buildup of the Navy’s fleet in 2018, the reality is that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has prioritized modernization and replenishing weapons over growing the force. (RELATED: Mattis Personally Requests More Bombs To Kill ISIS Terrorists)

“Fix readiness, then start growing [the Navy] next year,” McGrath said. “If they don’t grow next year, people should be really disappointed.”

The reality of the budget process is that “every dollar has other claims on it,” McGrath said.

Building a Navy the size that Trump wants would take years, and cost as much as $25 billion annually, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

The fiscal year 2018 budget includes $4.6 billion for the new Ford-class aircraft carrier, $5.5 billion for two Virginia-class submarines, $4 billion for two Arleigh-Burke class destroyers and $1.2 billion for one new LCS.

The troubled LCS program, dogged by delays and costly repairs after some of the ships broke down on their maiden voyages, is still the best option for building ships quickly now. However, if Congress doesn’t fund two ships in 2018, one of the two LCS shipyards might have to close down.

The Office of Management and Budget and the Navy are scrambling to find money to build a second LCS ship in 2018, after outcry from the industry and Congress.

Building only one LCS ship “essentially means the death of one of those ship yards,” McGrath said. One shipyard that builds LCS ships, run by Lockheed Martin, is in Marinette, Wisc., and the other, an Austal shipyard, is located in Mobile, Ala. Both those states voted for Trump in 2016, McGrath noted.

Another problem with building up the Navy in 2018 is that the Trump administration hasn’t fully sold the American people, or Washington decision makers, on why we need a bigger Navy. “Looking at it as an average American, the president hasn’t articulated why we need a larger Navy, only that he wants a larger Navy,” McGrath said.

Building sea power is critical, according to McGrath, because “winter is coming.” China and Russia are growing “dissatisfied with the global systems of trade, rule of law and diplomacy,” McGrath said. “I don’t believe that dissatisfaction will be peaceful.”

 “The best way to increase, whether it’s your ship count or your aircraft count, on deployment in theater where you need it, is to raise the readiness of the in-service fleet,” Acting Navy Secretary Sean Stackley told Congress in a hearing Wednesday. “And that’s the priority in this budget.”

Obama’s final Navy budget for fiscal 2016 gave about $16.5 billion for shipbuilding, not including support services. Trump’s first budget allocates around $19.3 billion.

Follow Thomas Phippen on Twitter

Send tips to thomas@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel