The Navy’s sequester blame game

In all the festering about sequestering, one thing sticks out like a sore thumb: the Navy’s decision not to deploy a second carrier to the Gulf — a decision it is blaming on sequester.

All the other possible disruptions make sense: Civilians could see a part-time furlough, term employees might not get renewed, services contractors might be put off. But the decision to keep the USS Harry S. Truman in dock is odd.

Yes, the costs of running the Truman are part of the Navy’s $59 billion operating budget, and it is operating budgets that are targeted in sequester. But that is the biggest part of the Navy budget and, by the way, the most flexible target for sequester. Defense officials have room to move funds at will in that account, even under sequester.

So why that carrier, why two days before it was due to deploy? The Navy could have kept other, less visible ships at home — like the littoral combat ship Freedom, sailing now to much-threatened Singapore. It could have lowered readiness requirements for other parts of the fleet, or stood down a training cycle.

Rear Adm. John Kirby put it this way: "Could money have been found somewhere, anywhere, to pay for the Truman‘s deployment? Maybe. But without the ability to transfer money from other accounts, there aren’t many places from which we could have taken it without a greater cost to readiness elsewhere."

That is nonsense. The Navy does have the flexibility Adm. Kirby says they lack — the whole operations account is trade space under sequester. And what cost to readiness where? The Navy doesn’t tell us what the cancellation of this deployment allows it to protect.

It seems likely that given overall operating tempo for carriers (one at sea, two in port), deploying two was going to stress the fleet, anyway. And the requirement for two carriers in the Gulf was, and should be, subject to review, sequester or not. So maybe the timing was just serendipitous. We were going to go to one carrier anyway, and with sequestyria the order of the day, what the heck, why not offer it up now?

The Navy could have made other choices, as Adm. Kirby acknowledges. But this one was going to get attention.