The Navy’s Cruiser Modernization Program Went All Wrong
When the U.S. Navy commissions a new warship, the cost to the American taxpayer is usually not low. Modern warships are extremely complex machines with millions of moving parts, weapon systems, radars, and everything else that can be crammed into a ship. In order to maintain its combat capability for as long as possible, the Navy regularly conducts modernization programs to update its aging fleet to meet modern military requirements. This is cheaper than sinking existing ships to build new ones.
But modernization programs don’t always go as planned, and the Navy’s cruiser modernization program is a good example of this. The program was extremely wasteful and poorly managed, and it provided many lessons for the Navy’s destroyer modernization program.
Cruisers are one of seven types of modern warships, used to perform a variety of missions. The United States currently operates one type of submarine, the Ticonderoga-class submarine. Prior to modernization, the Navy had 12 active Ticonderoga-class cruisers in service, many of which were commissioned in the 1980s and 1990s, and therefore had to be modernized to keep them relevant. The cruiser modernization program was launched in 2017 with the goal of modernizing 11 ships.
But after spending nearly $4 billion to upgrade seven ships over the past decade, only three were able to complete the program, the GAO said. Despite the effort, you can’t get the expected extra five years of service life, making most of the money spent wasted.
The Ticonderoga-class cruisers first entered service in the early 1980s, with the first ship commissioned as the USS Ticonderoga (CG-47). The modern version uses the Mark 41 vertical missile launch system and operates as a guided missile cruiser. It cost about $1 billion to build and is powered by four General Electric LM2500 gas turbine engines with a total output of 80,000 horsepower. This allows the Ticonderoga-class cruisers to reach speeds of more than 34 miles per hour.
The Ticonderoga-class cruisers are 567 feet long, 55 feet wide, and displace 9,800 tons of seawater. Its crew includes 30 officers and 300 enlisted personnel, and each ship can accommodate two SH-60 Seahawk helicopters, one of several variants of the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. Its armament includes the aforementioned launch system for Tomahawk cruise missiles and 122 other missile storage and launch tubes. In addition, each ship is armed with six Mark-46, -50, or -54 torpedoes and two Mark-45 caliber 54s, two Phalanx guns, and more for defense.
The cruisers have been under scrutiny for years, with many being retired before the end of their 35-year service life. Part of the blame lies with the renewal program, which has failed to extend their service lives as planned. The Navy plans to replace the Ticonderoga-class cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class destroyers with the next generation of guided missile destroyers, the DDG(X), but those destroyers won’t be operational until 2032—and that’s if everything goes according to plan, which rarely happens in military procurement.
The modernization program was meant to extend the life of the fleet without replacing ships. The program was supposed to go smoothly, but poor oversight and a lack of quality control tools led to a $1.84 billion waste, nearly half of the program’s cost, according to the GAO. “For example, leadership discouraged the use of penalties, so contractors were not always held accountable for their sometimes late or shoddy work,” the GAO said.
Four of the eleven cruisers planned were removed from the modernization program and forced to retire. Of the seven cruisers that received this treatment, four were retired, wasting $1.84 billion. Only three ships—Gettysburg, Chosin, and Cape St. George—will complete the program and return to service. The total cost was $1.9 billion, but that money was largely wasted because the ships’ service lives were not extended.
One of the biggest reasons the cruiser modernization program failed was poor planning. This led to more than 9,000 contract changes, which ballooned costs and kept the program from going as planned. It didn’t help that command-led inspections have dropped by about 50 percent.The Navy and the General Accounting Office are studying the issue to determine what can and should no longer be done as the Navy plans to modernize the fleet’s destroyers, which are among the most powerful in the world.
