WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has been spending funds that are supposed to be dedicated to war-fighting to repair and overhaul submarine propellers since 2010.
While the average of $6 million a year spent on submarine propeller work is a thousandth of the Navy’s war spending for ship operations and maintenance, which totals $6.25 billion this year, it adds to a continuing debate in Congress over the use — and potential misuse — of the Overseas Contingency Operations spending that’s separate from the Defense Department’s regular budget.
“This is a totally inappropriate use,” said Gordon Adams, a former defense director for the White House Office of Management Budget. A Dec. 15 report from the Navy to Congress on propeller repairs “does not even try to apply a fig leaf of war justification for this use,” Adams, a fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, said in an email.
Members of the House defense appropriations panel expressed concern in September that war funding was being used to “backfill budgetary shortfalls in acquisition programs that have only tenuous links to the fight in Afghanistan and other current operations.” President Barack Obama has requested $50.9 billion in such funds for fiscal 2016.
The Navy says that the use of war funding is justified because expanding counterterrorism operations have required more spending to overhaul and repair propellers. The work is for Los Angeles-class attack submarines and converted Ohio-class nuclear-missile boats that carry Navy SEAL commandos and non- nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles, according to a Navy spokesman and the December report to Congress.
“As a general policy, we do not discuss submarine operations, but clearly we deploy submarines globally in support of all types of missions,” Lt. Rob Myers, a Navy spokesman, said in an interview. “We are confident that the repairs made using” the war funding “reflect an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars,” Myers said.
Afghanistan, however, is landlocked, and the last U.S. combat forces were withdrawn from Iraq at the end of 2011.
This year’s funding for propeller work is $6.1 million, and Myers said the Navy anticipated spending about the same in the the year that begins Oct. 1.
The North American unit of Helsinki-based Wartsila is the primary contractor for the propeller overhauls.
Submarines can support operations in the Middle East by helping protect Navy aircraft carriers, and also are equipped to perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; launch cruise missiles and deploy SEAL commandos on land.
The Navy said in budget documents submitted with the fiscal 2016 request that “the higher rate of submarine operations, and subsequent increase in propeller repair and overhaul requirements,” has resulted in inventory levels below established objectives.
Not approving the funding “increases the risk” of submarines “operating with a higher level of acoustic vulnerability and heightens the possibility of missed or delayed submarine deployments,” it said.
Overseas Contingency Operations funds also have supported increasing the propeller inventory at submarine bases at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and in Guam, Myers said.
“Who would have thought that sub propeller repairs are dependent on OCO funding?” Todd Harrison, the defense budget analyst for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, said in an e-mail. “It is widely known within DoD and the Navy that OCO funding is being used to support routine maintenance activities not directly connected to the war in Afghanistan.”
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