Sparring over the size of the defense budget and partisan recriminations over the U.S. exit from Afghanistan are expected to dominate the House Armed Services Committee’s marathon markup of its annual policy bill on Wednesday.
House appropriators ripped a proposal to decommission four littoral combat ships contained in President Joe Biden’s Pentagon budget request for next year as “a misuse of taxpayer funds.”
A new report from the Association of the U.S. Navy calls for more sailors, "immediately," and additional efforts to eliminate barriers standing in the way of a 355-ship Navy.
The introduction of the 11-page Shipyard Act comes after President Joe Biden proposed a $2.25 trillion infrastructure package and Republicans made a $568 billion counteroffer.
The shipbuilding plan released in December would give the fleet more than 400 ships by 2051, at a cost of $1 trillion, and would require annual funding "unprecedented since World War II," the CBO said.
The U.S. Marine Corps is moving as fast as it can to field a new class of light amphibious warship, but it remains unclear what it will do, where it will be based or what capabilities it will bring to the fight.
The U.S. Navy recently christened its newest nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine, the USS Montana, at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia in a ceremony that featured some flavor of the Big Sky state.
By Phil Drake, Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune via the AP
Under the Trump administration, the Navy is on pace to build many fewer ships than it was under the Obama administration, and the maintenance backlog has gotten worse.
By Former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Rear Adm. Michael Smith (ret.)