Tag: congress

Top Navy Official Lashes Out Over Troubled New Carrier That May Not Be Ready Until 2024 Now

Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer decried comments from Congress earlier in the week as particularly “disparaging” and tantamount to a “disinformation program” benefiting America’s opponents. This is a far cry from the “the buck stops here” tone Spencer had struck in January, when he said that President Donald Trump should fire him if any of the carrier’s advanced weapons elevators, or AWEs, were not working when the ship leaves its latest maintenance availability, something that will almost certainly be the case now.

Congressional Meddling Could Begin To Sink The Navy’s Frigate Program

The House of Representatives has passed a defense spending bill that includes language that could upend the U.S. Navy’s future frigate program, also known as FFG(X). The service has already warned Congress that this will delay their schedule for buying and fielding the ships by at least a year, lead to significant cost increases for the program, and would render worthless months of risk-reduction work already done at the cost of tens of millions of dollars on possible designs that will not meet these criteria.

Navy’s F-35C Stealth Fighters Won’t Fly From Troubled New Ford Class Carriers For Years

Members of Congress want to make it illegal for the U.S. Navy to accept delivery its next Ford-class aircraft carrier, the future USS John F. Kennedy, unless it can launch and recover F-35C Joint Strike Fighters. But the proposal highlights something that is perhaps more damning, that the USS Gerald R. Ford cannot deploy those stealthy aircraft in its present configuration. This just adds to the woes for the troubled first-in-class flattop two years after its delivery.

Trump “Orders” Navy To Keep Supercarrier USS Truman That His Own Budget Asked To Retire

President Donald Trump says he has overridden an “order” to retire the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman ahead of schedule, a plan that faced major opposition in Congress since it first emerged in February 2019. This especially rapid decision to abandon the proposal only further calls into question why the Pentagon and the U.S. Navy proffered it up in the first place.