Mabus defends strategy, shipbuilding

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus combined the fleet’s forward deployment and the strategy of maximizing shipbuilding on his watch. The Navy has to have these “big gray hulls on the horizon” world-wide to provide a presence that gives the nation’s leadership options, he told an audience June 2 at the American Enterprise Institute. The Navy and Marine Corps forward deployments are ways to maximize the use of that force, especially with the nation’s pivot toward the western Pacific Ocean. The key to SENAV’s strategy is maximizing shipbuilding. Under his watch over the past five years, the Navy has put 70 ships under contract - 27 ships were under contract over the previous five-year period. Mabus has pledged to defend shipbuilding in the face of budget caps. Shipbuilders, such as the Gulf Coast’s Huntington Ingalls Industries and Austal USA, require stable designs, mature technology and certainty of orders to meet fleet needs. In return, the Navy needs to invest in infrastructures and train work forces for each subsequent ship class in order to drive down costs. Mabus also stressed the need to reduce overhead and duplication costs and make acquisition processes “more simple (and) more accountable.” (Seapower magazine 06/02/15)