Lawmakers' influence felt in destroyer decision

Critics call reversal a make-work program

The Navy has told Congress that the multibillion Zumwalt-class DDG 1000 destroyer can't shoot down ballistic missiles. (Artist's rendering/Visual News Service)

WASHINGTON - The US Navy has told Congress its Zumwalt-class destroyer can't shoot down ballistic missiles.

It also can't adequately perform another core mission - hunting submarines, the Navy said.

And at a cost of as much as $5 billion per ship, it's way too expensive, according to Pentagon budget specialists. So on July 22 the Navy quietly alerted Congress it would build only the two Zumwalt-class ships already paid for, and within days said it would instead build eight warships of an earlier-model with a proven track record.

But this week, under intense pressure from New England lawmakers concerned about jobs at Bath Iron Works in Maine and Waltham-based Raytheon Co., the Pentagon changed its mind. Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England told lawmakers on Monday the Defense Department will stick to its plan of purchasing a third Zumwalt-class destroyer in 2009 and consider further purchases.

Yesterday, while New England lawmakers, Bath Iron Works, and Raytheon executives celebrated the decision, many longtime Pentagon watchers were shaking their heads.

The decision to keep production of the Zumwalt class alive for at least another year - at a predicted cost of $2.5 billion - is a case study in how troubled weapon systems almost always survive if they have powerful lawmakers on their side, according to defense analysts.

"We saw it with the B-1 bomber, we saw that with the Seawolf submarine," said Winslow Wheeler, a former Republican congressional aide who has become a vocal critic of the defense budget process. "This shows the depths to which Congress has sunk. It has become bipartisan to see the defense budget as a jobs programs. They see it as key to their own political survival. So the nation is to pay for overpriced, ineffective weapons because it helps a politician stay in office."

Others agreed that political clout appears to have won out over military necessity.

"It only takes a few dedicated members of Congress to keep a weapon system afloat years after they should have pulled the plug and ended it," said Travis Sharp, an analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.

According to Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., think tank, the project would be headed toward extinction if not for powerful New England politicians.

Indeed, the decision to cancel the Zumwalt program last month ignited a political firestorm. Within hours, a letter signed by both senators from Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island threatened to cut off other shipbuilding funds unless the Pentagon reevaluated its decision.

The president of the Maine shipyard, which employs 5,000 workers, flew to Washington to plot strategy with lawmakers. Locked in a tight Senate race, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Representative Thomas Allen, a Democrat whose district includes Bath, competed to be the strongest defender of the state's shipbuilding industry.

Others with a stake also launched a counteroffensive. Usually tight-lipped executives at Raytheon, which employs about 2,000 workers on the project in Tewksbury, Andover, and Portsmouth, R.I., contacted reporters offering interviews about the program's importance in maintaining American naval superiority.

At the same time, the Metal Trades Department of the American Federation of Labor urged Congress to "fully fund the third Zumwalt class destroyer."

Raytheon maintains that the radar systems and next-generation design are well-suited to meet the variety of threats against the ship. The company also disputes the Navy's contention that the Zumwalt destroyer costs too much.

Daniel L. Smith, vice president of Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems, told the Globe yesterday the Zumwalt program is "delivering unmatched, affordable technology to field and modernize the fleet across all aspects of naval warfare."

Defenders in Congress also question the Navy's alternative to the program. Whatever the problems with the Zumwalt destroyer, they said, building more older-model ships doesn't make sense.

The office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of a powerful subcommittee on sea power, said his advocacy for the Zumwalt program is about more than just safeguarding jobs.

"Reverting to the older [destroyers] would keep the Navy using 1980s technology when more sophisticated technology is available to meet future threats," Kennedy's office said in a statement.

But that view is not unanimous in Congress.

Representative Gene Taylor, Democrat from Mississippi and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, has a Northrop Grumman shipyard in his district that would also take a hit if the Zumwalt class was canceled. However, he voted to cut off funding.

He said yesterday that while he sympathizes with his colleagues from New England - "It is tough when you have friends counting on their house payment based on a contract that comes through" - he is convinced that terminating the program "would be the best thing."

The Government Accountability Office "is telling us it is going to cost at least $5 billion per ship," Taylor said. "We have a little bit less than $4 billion a year [in the total ship-building budget] to build a fleet."

Wheeler, the former Capitol Hill defense aide, said it is not just Congress that is to blame for continuing unwanted weapons systems. If the Navy were more direct in confronting Congress, he said, it would be harder for lawmakers to keep such programs alive.

"All [the Navy] has to do is testify in public that this hurts our defenses and we are not going to do it," Wheeler said.

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.