Defense News reveals that overall, more than half of the Navy’s aircraft can’t fly. There’s no money to fix them. Nearly two-thirds of the fleet’s strike fighters can’t fly.
The same goes for the fleet’s ships. There isn’t enough money to fix them and the backlog of ships needing repair keeps growing. Carriers have been out for three years and some submarines for even longer.
The Navy doesn’t have the money to move around service members and their families to change assignments. They are short about $440 million to pay sailors.
Budgets have been cut despite no slackening in the demand for the fleet’s services; and the Navy, to preserve shipbuilding funds, made a conscious choice to slash maintenance and training budgets rather than eliminate ships, which take many years to build and can’t be produced promptly even when funding becomes available.
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With training and flying hour funds cut, the Navy’s aircrews are struggling to maintain even minimum flying requirements, the senior Navy source told Defense News.
There has not been a budget for nine years.
Congress hasn’t repealed the Budget Control Act — sequestration — which, if unabated, will continue its restrictions to 2021.
Defense Secretary James Mattis is working on it.
The new Navy secretary has inherited a mess.
The Vice Chiefs of Staff painted a dire picture of U.S. air power on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
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