New York Times – The price of the Navy’s new ships, driven upward by old-school politics and the rusty machinery of American shipbuilding, may scuttle the Pentagon’s plans for a 21st-century armada of high-technology aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines.
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Virginian Pilot – Virginia’s senior U.S. senator put himself and his considerable clout behind a new effort to save the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy on Monday, introducing legislation designed to force the Navy to keep the ship in service until at least the middle of 2006.
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Sea Power – There is a communications gap between the Navy and Congress that appears to grow wider each day, as service officials testify on the 2006 shipbuilding plan, and congressional leaders attempt to steer the Navy in a direction different from its current course. It is unlikely the gap can be closed by more discussion, studies or memos, because it was not caused by the lack of attempts to communicate. The problem is that the Navy has for years been sending a message that Congress does not want to hear. Changing national security requirements, a Navy that is far more productive than even a decade ago and the application of new technologies to future platforms mean the service will need different kinds of ships and fewer of them. The Navy is putting an emphasis on war-fighting capabilities rather than numbers of platforms; the fleet is shrinking and the service is cutting its personnel ranks by almost 10 percent. Over time, that means fewer ships to build and fewer jobs in the shipyards to build them. But powerful lawmakers from states that boast large but struggling shipyards keep asking the Navy for a different message containing different numbers.

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