WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine) today continued to express concern over the Department of Defense’s proposal to omit one of the two procured DDG-51 ships from the Fiscal Year 2022 budget. During today’s hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), Senator King outlined several reasons why the Navy should reinstate the second destroyer, citing the increase of maritime martial activity by rivals China and Russia, how cutting one DDG-51 would break the Navy’s multiyear procurement contract, cause instability in the nation’s defense industrial base, and eliminate a ship which is commonly understood to be the “workhorse of the Navy”. Senator King has been outspoken about this consideration within the Defense Department in recent weeks – he strongly pushed back against the move to cut the destroyers from the budget in a SASC hearing, and echoed concerns that he raised earlier with top Navy officials in a hearing in the Subcommittee on Seapower.

Senator King’s line of questioning opened up by laying out how the Navy has maintained a generally flat budget over the past decade in obligated spending, as the United States’ chief naval rivals stepped up their activities – noting it was a “tough to justify” approach to military spending given the global threat landscape. He then zeroed in on Maine’s key contributions to the naval fleet with Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Harker – and the potential cut to an agreed-upon amount of ships to be built.

SENATOR KING: “Let’s get on the record, if that multi-year contract is breached, the government will have to pay a $33M penalty, is that correct? 

HARKER: “Yes sir, it is.”

SENATOR KING: “And you have told me, both in the hearing and previously, that [eliminating one destroyer from the FY22 budget request] was the toughest decision that you had to face. The point that I want to make about this is not only the lack of the destroyer, but the impact that this decision has on the industrial base. Not only in the immediate future, in terms of how many people do you need to build the ships, but also the principle of breaking a multiyear, I would argue, sends a shudder through the industrial base in terms of their investment. If they’re going to make major $100M investments in ship building capacity and also in training of new shipbuilders, they have to have some confidence that there’s a stream of demand coming. Mr.  Secretary, you understand that, I’m sure.”

HARKER: “I do, yes sir.”

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Senator King then turned to Admiral Michael Gilday, Chief of Naval Operations, who visited Bath Iron Works earlier this year with Senator King and other members of the Maine delegation, to emphasize the “chilling effect” of cutting the destroyer on the workforce of the defense industrial base.

SENATOR KING: “Admiral, you saw at Bath Iron Works, the number of people they’re hiring and the problem of the cliff in terms of future production. Now I understand you can’t guarantee ships into the indefinite future, but you understand the impact, the chilling effect, of the breaching of the multiyear might have on investment and on workforce…as you know I live near Bath – you can’t turn the industrial base off and on. If it goes down, you’re talking about welders going somewhere else. And in this economy, they’re going to go somewhere else. And so, I think that’s the national security challenge involved here.”

In addition to Acting Secretary Harker and Admiral Michael Gilday, today’s hearing featured testimony from General David Berger, Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Last month, Senator King joined the Maine delegation to express opposition toward the reduction of one DDG-51 from the budget. Earlier in May, he joined Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Representative Jared Golden (D-Maine) to host Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Mike Gilday in Maine to tour Bath Iron Works and meet with leadership and employees. In April, Senators King, Collins, and Representative Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) hosted Acting U.S. Secretary of the Navy Thomas Harker at both Bath Iron Works and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. In March, Senators King, Collins and Representatives Pingree and Golden sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, urging them to provide unequivocal support to the long-standing and congressionally mandated requirement for a larger and more capable Navy fleet. 

As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Subcommittee on Seapower, Senator King is recognized as a thoughtful voice on national security and foreign policy issues in the Senate. In addition to his committee work, Senator King serves on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the Senate North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Observer Group, and is co-chair of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. He voted in favor of the Senate’s passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2021, which includes several funding and policy priorities advocated for by Senator King to support military facilities and communities in Maine and advance the national defense. The legislation – including $3.0 billion for the procurement of 2 DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in fiscal year 2021 – became law earlier this year after Senator King and the overwhelming majority of his colleagues voted to override former President Trump’s veto.