Quora Answer: Does the US Navy Plan to Retire More of Its Ticonderoga-Class Cruisers?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “Does the US Navy plan to retire, and scrap, more of its Ticonderoga-class cruisers currently, or was its plan to only retire the ships that did not have vertical launch tubes?”

In the US Defence 2013 Budget proposal, the USN planned to decommission seven cruisers in 2013 and 2014.  This was due to the requirements of the Budget Control Act 2011.  This is open source information.

This planned cutback meant that the USN would fall short of their self-imposed requirement for 94 missile defence cruisers by 2025.  This was deemed unacceptable, despite the fact that the USN has never actually such a number of missile-armed surface combatants in its entire history before this.  It was thought that this number had to be maintained at all cost to take in the requirements of a pivot into the Western Pacific to contain growing Chinese naval capabilities, as well as an increased interest in the Indian Ocean.  This caused the House of Representatives to pass a budget bill for these cruisers to be refitted for missile defence.  Thus, by 2012, the USN decided against early retirement of these cruisers.  This was not even a year after the Budget Control Act 2011, and barely after the US Defence 2013 Budget proposal.

Since then, the USN has proposed decommissioning the six oldest active vessels; Bunker Hill, Mobile Bay, Antietam, Leyte Gulf, San Jacinto and Lake Champlain, in 2021 and 2022, instead of dry-docking them for life-extension maintenance updates.  This was not just a cost-saving measure, but it was getting increasingly expensive to maintain these vessels, both in terms of cost and manpower.  Due to their age, and the increased stress that modern systems would have on their legacy systems, for every active deployment, far too much time would be spent maintaining the vessels after, fixing all the breakages and breakdowns that occurred.  It would be as if they did not have these vessels, but still had to pay the bill to field them.  This would also bypass much of the process in that it was not an early retirement – they would still be at their original 35-year operational dates.  However, it still needs to get past Congress.  Congress has historically been hesitant to support any reduction in surface fleet size due to the military-industrial complex lobby, and how it would affect employment in their home districts.

In order to get this past Congress, the Navy also needed to propose some sort of replacement.  The CNO, Admiral John Richardson, proposed that the USN model the next generation cruiser project on the FFG(X) frigate program currently underway.  That program aims to procure an existing, mature hull design, and then modify it with the USN’s own selection of sensors, combat systems, and weaponry.  The contract will be awarded sometime in 2019.  The first vessels are schedule to be ready for deployment by 2025.  Compared to traditional naval procurement timelines, this is extremely optimistic, and hilariously ambitious.  The USN has a terrible track record when it comes to such programmes.  Case in point is the Littoral Combat Ship.  That programme is floundering with cost overruns and other issues.  The touted module concept is a failure, and the vessels are nowhere near deployable in numbers required.  Prior to this proposal, the USN actually intended to replace the Ticonderoga-class with cruisers produced as part of the CG(X) missile cruiser program.  Budget cuts, and cost overruns in the Littoral Combat Ship programme, ended in this being cancelled.

In summary, it is starting to look like they are going to keep all of them operational until they find the budget to sort out this kerfuffle.