Washington: The US Navy has wasted $1.84 billion since 2015 on rehabilitating its Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruisers, funds the service would rather have spent on newer technology, according to a government watchdog report.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its “Navy Ship Modernisation” report, noted that the Navy’s cruiser rehab program has had “weak oversight” and been “plagued with problems like scheduled delays, wasted costs and poor-quality work.”
Nearly half of the amphibious warfare ships Marines need to deploy are often unavailable, according to the government watchdog. In spending an estimated $3.7 billion to modernise seven of the cruisers, which are larger surface warfare ships that bring extensive air defence capabilities to the fight, the service was found to have “wasted” nearly half of those funds, or $1.84 billion, on four cruisers that were divested before even deploying, according to the report.
“The Navy did not effectively plan the cruiser effort,” the report’s authors wrote. “This led to a high volume of unplanned work — 9,000 contract changes — resulting in cost growth and schedule delays.” The service has not yet found the root causes of the program’s problems, the authors noted.
The Navy intended to rehab 11 ships as part of the effort. Seven made the final cut for upgrades, but only three of those in the rehab effort are slated to complete the modernisation overhaul. None, however, will add the five extra years of service life that the program intended to achieve, the report said.
In 2012, the Navy proposed retiring several cruisers to better meet budget constraints, according to the report. But Congress rejected that idea and instead gave the service funds to conduct the cruiser modernisation. That effort was expected to conclude by Fiscal Year 2026, according to the report. Instead, Navy officials sought to spend money on its 23-ship destroyer fleet, which are “critical” to a combat-ready fleet, the report said.
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