Five shipbuilders are fighting it out to build 20 of the U.S. Navy’s new frigates, and one competitor is sailing though a whirlwind East Coast tour.

Gen. Gus Perna, head of Army Materiel Command, is a brave man. He came to Pacific Command’s AOR and announced he wants the Army to stop building the transport ships and so-called watercraft that could be crucial to any conflict in the Indo-Pacific region.

The budget battles have begun, with Republicans and Democrats already sparring over Rep. Mac Thornberry’s call to slash DoD civilians by 20 percent.

The House Armed Services Committee rejected the Air Force’s strategy to replace the E-8 JSTARS and questioned its plan for the EC-130H Compass Call, even as it accelerated Navy shipbuilding.

The Navy is going wobbly on its 355 ship fleet, but Capitol Hill doesn’t want to hear it.

Adm. Zukunft says he doesn’t want to return to the old culture of “martyrdom” when the service prided itself on doing more with less even as it ran its equipment and people into the ground.

“Each of your crafts — electrical, pipefitting, pipe-welding, painting, your riggers… still require some human touch,” Kastner told me. “Digital tools… free the craftsman up a bit to not do the grunt work.”

Wait — doesn’t this omnibus fund 14 new ships for the Navy, compared to 13 in the National Defense Authorization Act and just eight in President Trump’s request? Yes, but not all ships are created equal, Wittman said.

The Navy hasn’t done a two-carrier deal since the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, when the Nimitz-class carriers being built, the state of the industrial base, the size of the budget, and the statutes governing shipbuilding were all very different. So how would it work today?

Mark Cancian, a member of the Breaking Defense Board of Contributors, knows budgets. He used to help build the defense budget at the Office of Management and Budget, the largely unheralded center of federal fiscal power. So when he picks apart the budget deal Congress recently approved (or any other one) you should pay attention. He’s doing… Keep reading →