![]() The attack submarine Boise arrives at Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News, Va., shipyard on June 18, 2018, to begin an extended engineering overhaul. This means that in most years, $4 billion in transfer authority exceeds what the Navy and the rest of the DoD would need. According to a Congressional Research Service Report on transfer authorities, since 2016, the DoD hasn’t used more than $3.5 billion in transfer authority, and in 20 it used less than $2.1 billion per year. We’ve got the sources, we just can’t reallocate them.”īut that only goes so far in explaining the predicament. “Things like the border wall, they didn’t cause the shortfall, they contributed to our ability to address and mitigate the shortfalls. “We can’t reallocate the way we have in the past,” said a defense official with knowledge of the situation who spoke on background. In 2018, that was reduced to $4.25 billion and in 2019, the year that’s causing the problems, that was reduced to $4 billion. In years past, the DoD had $4.5 billion of authority to reshuffle money. The problem is exacerbated by a reduction in the overall amount of money Congress allows for the Pentagon to reshuffle in any given year without having to go ask lawmakers for new legislation and new authorities in that year. ![]() The Navy is also hitting capacity at both its public and private shipyards and is having to defer maintenance simply because there is no room at the inn. ![]() That, in turn, is forcing the Navy to take a fleetwide look and identify what issues are most important - a triage process that ensures that some issues that could be addressed in scheduled maintenance availabilities today will instead be pushed off and become more expensive in the future. Those surprises almost always includes ship maintenance costs that increase once workers at maintenance yards pop the hood and discover new problems. That means that while the Navy should be toasting its good financial fortunes, it will instead be scrambling to find money to fix its ships.īecause of everything from President Donald Trump’s border wall to hurricane relief to addressing problems with public-private housing ventures, the Department of Defense is rapidly closing in on the $4 billion cap Congress set on how much money can be moved between accounts to pay for midyear surprises. The shortages come in a year that saw a record $750 billion defense budget. That move could have a cascading effect that means other ships may not get the full maintenance packages they need, putting pressure on an already beleaguered ship maintenance system. ![]()
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