Two LPD Amphibious Ships Cut From 2020 Budget Plan

https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/two-lpd-amphibious-ships-cut-from-2020-2024-budget-plan/

Two LPD Amphibious Ships Cut From 2020 Budget Plan

By Paul McLeary
on March 01, 2019 at 7:00 AM

WASHINGTON: Wary of bringing big, expensive warships full of sailors and Marines in missile range of hostile coastlines, the Pentagon plans to cut two new amphibious warships out of the 2020-2024 budget plan to be released later this month, defense officials confirmed.

The decision to delay the planned purchase of two San Antonio-class Flight II landing dock ships, known as LPDs, out past 2024 is part of a much wider reevaluation of naval warfare. Under high-level pressure to build a fleet better able to face Chinese and Russian precision missiles, the Navy is reducing its investment in large but potentially warships like amphibs and carriers so it can free up money for more offensive weaponry on smaller surface ships, submarines, and aircraft.

The Navy is set to make the request in its fiscal 2020 budget set to be delivered to Congress on March 12, which will also include a controversial plan to cut the mid-life refueling of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, essentially retiring the flattop two decades early.
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According to Marine Corps leadership, the ships as they’re currently constituted will have difficulty in a future where the US will have to “fight to get to the fight,” as Lt. Gen. David Berger, the head of the Corps’ combat development office, said recently at an Amphibious Warship Industrial Base Coalition breakfast on Capitol Hill.

But moving the build of the new “Flight II” variant of the ships — which promises to cut costs in some areas while upgrading radar, among other improvements — into the future would likely make that mission even harder, while calling the overall amphibious mission into question. If the plan makes it though Congress, it would likely also delay the Navy’s ability to reach its goal of 38 amphibious ships from the current 32.
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