Pearl Harbor is expected to lose all three of its cruisers in coming years but gain four more destroyers and a troop- and equipment-carrying Joint High Speed Vessel similar to the defunct Hawaii Superferry, the chief of naval operations said during a stop here Monday.
But Adm. Jonathan Greenert, who at one time commanded the submarine USS Honolulu, said $80 million in surface ship maintenance is "at risk" in fiscal 2014 for Pearl Harbor ships due to sequestration and with the Navy absorbing $14 billion in spending cuts starting in October.
Cuts for ship repair, unless eliminated later in the year, would affect the jobs of about 800 local contractors and subcontractors who do surface ship work for the Navy.
Greenert spoke to the Navy League, talked with reporters, re-enlisted eight sailors and held an "all-hands" question-and-answer session with more than 1,000 sailors at Bloch Arena.
Greenert said about 320,000 sailors are on active duty, but a smaller Navy is likely.
"Smaller Navy, properly ready, buying future capabilities that are most important is probably my future," he said. "That’s probably what we are looking at."
A new Pentagon Strategic Choices Management Review provides a menu of options for dealing with sequestration, which requires nearly $1 trillion in defense spending reductions over the next 10 years on top of $487 billion in previously approved cuts.
Two strategic approaches to reducing force structure and modernization are being reviewed.
The first would "trade away size for high-end capability" or high technology, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said July 31. The plan calls for the Army to shrink to between 380,000 and 450,000 soldiers from 540,000 now, a reduction in carrier strike groups to eight or nine from 11, a drop in Marines to between 150,000 and 175,000 from 182,000 and the retirement of older bombers.
Investments would be made in submarine cruise missile upgrades and the Joint Strike Fighter, and cyber- and special operations would continue to be a high priority.
The second approach would trade high-tech capability for size, with the Pentagon sustaining capacity for regional power projection by limiting cuts to ground forces, ships and aircraft, but would sacrifice many modernization programs.
A Navy handout showed the service with about 285 ships today and the possibility of 257 ships under continued sequestration by 2020.
Greenert said the Navy is investing in a variety of less costly ships that can free destroyers for continued duty in the western Pacific with the "re-balance" of 60 percent of naval forces to the region by 2020 remaining a priority.
The Navy said it has about 54 ships in the western Pacific region now, and even with sequestration it would still have 51 ships there in 2020.
"We are continuing to home-port (ships) toward the west," Greenert said.
But Greenert also said the Navy already has lost readiness with budget cuts and can’t "surge" up to several extra aircraft carriers or helicopter-carrying amphibious ships on short notice as it could in the past.
As far as the possibility of losing up to three aircraft carrier strike groups with all of their escort ships, Greenert said, "It’s on the table as something that we will consider, but we have a long way to go."
Greenert said the new ships headed for Hawaii are either already under contract or in the procurement pipeline.
All three of Hawaii’s Ticonderoga-class cruisers, meanwhile — the Port Royal, Chosin and Lake Erie — would be retired, Greenert said, because the Navy "can’t afford to keep them."
The Navy is building less costly Littoral Combat Ships, Joint High Speed Vessels and is seeking four Mobile Landing Platform ships that look like cargo ships outfitted with hovercraft and other amphibious vehicles or a helicopter landing deck.
The $35 million sale in 2012 of the defunct Hawaii Superferries Alakai and Huakai by the U.S. Maritime Administration to the Navy raised the possibility that one of the blue-and-white, high-speed vessels could return to Hawaii in battleship gray.
Greenert said one of the Mobile Landing Platforms costs $500 million to $650 million, while a traditional amphibious ship costs $2.5 billion to $3 billion.
Greenert told sailors that sexual assault awareness and prevention will continue to be a top priority, and said retirement benefits haven’t changed for those already in service.
"All the discussion of retirement up until right now has been, if you wear the uniform today, that’s your retirement — the one you joined the Navy (with). No change," Greenert said.
