US Navy to buy 9 new vessels and retire 11 ships in 2024

News, US March 15, 2023 , by IRIA No Comments

The U.S. Navy is set to retire eleven of its naval vessels while planning to add nine new ships to its fleet in the year 2024. Eight of the eleven retiring vessels are going out of service ahead of their planned end retirement.

The U.S. Navy is retiring the ships ahead of their actual retirement age as part of a divestment strategy. These eight early retiring ships include three Whidbey Island-class amphibious dock landing ships, three Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and two Independence-variant littoral combat ships.

Although the littoral combat ships have at least 25 years of service age, the two retiring ships, USS Montgomery and USS Jackson would be just eight and nine years old at the time of their retirement.

The plan for the early retirement of these ships has surfaced due to the increased cost of maintenance. The Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy for budget and director of fiscal management Rear Admiral John Gumbleton said in a March 13 budget briefing that “for the cruisers, the decision to request this divestment was based on material condition, life remaining, cost and then time to upgrade, and of course the resultant warfighting value.

In its explanation presented in the U.S. Congress regarding the early retirement of ships, the U.S. Navy stated that this proposal comes, simply, because the Navy bought more ships than it now says it needs.

The U.S. Navy has highlighted that its ideal fleet consists of 15 Independence-variant ships on the West Coast and 6 Freedom-variant ships on the East Coast. According to this plan, the U.S. Navy would employ only 21 of its 35 littoral combat ships, suggesting an early retirement for some of its ships. Congress rejected the idea of retiring the ships before their actual age of retirement and cutting the number of suggested early retirees down to two.

*^{A rendering of the U.S. Navy Constellation-class frigate. (Image Credit: US Navy)}*

The Navy has also requested Congress to approve the purchase of nine new battle force ships at a cumulative cost of $32.8 billion. The nine new naval vessels include one Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine, two Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, two Virginia-class attack boats, two Constellation-class frigates, one John Lewis-class fleet oiler, and one next-generation submarine tender replacement known as AS(X).

The U.S. Navy plans to boost investment in the Pentagon’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative in the year 2023-24. Earlier this week, the White House asked for an additional increase in its already record-high $858 billion defense budget. An additional sum of $11 billion would be added to the Navy and Marine Corps budget this year increasing it from $244.7 billion to $256 billion.

The budget request was conveyed through a letter from U.S. President Joe Biden to the U.S. Congress. The letter read that the budget would be spent to focus on deepening the partnership with the U.S. allies and maintaining a military advantage against China. Biden wrote that the budget “outlines crucial investments to out-compete China globally and to continue support for Ukraine in the face of unprovoked Russian aggression.”