News
The Lesson of the USS Fitzgerald Tragedy: U.S. Navy Warships Need More Armor?
“This is a mission kill on Fitzgerald that will require months and likely more than $100 million to repair,” Bryan Clark, a former naval officer and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments told The National Interest.
The Return of Tragedy on A Global Scale?
With Hal Brands. In the seven decades since World War II, Americans have forgotten the risks of massive global calamity--and we may soon be reminded. That's according to two foreign policy experts, who say the country needs to provide global leadership, or risk a dangerous collapse of international politics.
CNO considers modernizing Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates
One solution to close the small surface combatant gap is to use Expeditionary Fast Transports or Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ships for lower-end missions like humanitarian aid and security cooperation, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments told ITN June 13.
Navy Eyeing Alternative Way to Beef Up Fleet
However, the CBO assumed that all of the additional ships in the larger Navy would come from new construction, noted Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “That combination of [service life extensions] and then new construction could mean that you could get to a larger fleet sooner and then with a little less cost,” he said. “But you’re still going to have probably … an approximately 20 percent larger shipbuilding budget being needed” to reach 355 ships.
Mattis telegraphs pursuit of 5 percent budget growth beginning in FY-19
Kate Blakeley, a budget analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said partisan politics were likely to throw a wrench in Mattis' plans for budget growth. "In this political environment, the Pentagon should brace for another four years of continuing resolutions and funding delays, with only limited topline increases," she said. Blakeley said a 3 percent to 5 percent growth rate would mean DOD would have a base budget somewhere between $700 billion and $770 billion by FY-22, or 15 percent to 30 percent bigger than the FY-18 request. "The only way that kind of defense budget growth has a prayer of happening is if Sec. Mattis convinces President Trump and the rest of the administration that national security spending must be considered on its own merits, not paid for by ever-deeper cuts to other government efforts," she said.
CNO: Navy ‘Taking a Hard Look’ at Bringing Back Oliver Hazard Perry Frigates, DDG Life Extensions as Options to Build Out 355 Ship Fleet
Bryan Clark, a naval analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and former aide to retired former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, told USNI News that the missions for the frigates would be limited and the cost would be high in reintroducing them to the fleet. “The Perry class are going to be an expensive proposition to bring out of mothballs and maintain just for the purpose of going out and doing some presence missions,” Clark said. “You’re talking about having to come up with a 150 billets for each of those ships out of an already stressed manpower pool. They’re also not going to offer that much in terms of combat capability. So if you bring them back, they’re essentially going to be like how they were when they left the fleet, which was as a theater security cooperation, maritime security asset.”