A report ordered by Congress on the Pearl Harbor cruiser USS Port Royal shows that the ship’s condition is not as bad as the Navy portrayed in its attempts to retire it early to save money.
Nevertheless, the Navy indicated in late April that it might try again to decommission the Port Royal in 2015, continuing a showdown with Congress over the fate of seven cruisers and two dock landing ships the Navy wants to decommission.
The 567-foot Port Royal famously ran aground and was stuck for four days in shallow water off Honolulu Airport’s reef runway in 2009, causing significant damage to the ship and reef.
The Navy had spent $18 million on refurbishment before the warship ran aground, $40 million on fixes after the grounding and more than $20 million in 2010 and 2011 to deal with cracks in the Port Royal’s aluminum alloy superstructure, a problem identified on all Ticonderoga-class cruisers.
Still, the Navy said it wanted to retire the Port Royal, six other cruisers — including the USS Chosin at Pearl Harbor — and two amphibious ships in 2013 and 2014 to save about $4 billion over five years.
Congress, worried about a shrinking fleet, put the retirements on hold, added money for modernization and asked for proof that the Port Royal, the newest Ticonderoga cruiser in the Navy and one with prized ballistic missile shoot-down capability, was damaged beyond repair in the 2009 grounding.
The Naval Sea Systems Command, which conducted the examination, didn’t find that was the case.
"Preliminary results indicate that the USS Port Royal’s material condition is comparable to other CG 47-class ships that were included in the assessment, and that the manifested effects of the grounding in February 2009 are not as extensive as previously believed," the sea system command said in a May report to Congress.
The Navy previously indicated that the Port Royal had never completely recovered from the grounding, but never provided "adequate analysis" as to how, a House report said.
The systems command in its May report said the expected service life of the Port Royal, commissioned in 1994, is 35 years, that is, with 16 more to go.
Sean J. Stackley, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said in a May letter to the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee that cost estimates for the Port Royal’s repair were being refined.
U.S. Rep. J. Randy Forbes, R-Va., had argued that the U.S. should maintain the ships it already bought, including the cruisers on the chopping block.
"Attaining the full service life of critical vessels like our cruisers is essential to ensuring a strong fleet in the years to come," Forbes told the Star-Advertiser. "I look forward to seeing the Navy’s final report on the material condition of the Port Royal and anticipate using this report to better inform our discussions in the national defense authorization conference."
The House Appropriations Committee said in June that it was "extremely disappointed" in the Navy’s "inaction" on keeping the seven cruisers and two dock landing ships in service.
"DESPITE very clear direction from all four congressional defense committees to keep these ships in the fleet, the Navy has taken no steps that would indicate it is moving toward keeping the ships for the long term," the committee said.
"The ships have significant life remaining and are less expensive to keep when compared to procuring new ships with similar capabilities."
Modernization funding "has gone largely untouched," the committee said, adding it was reappropriating the money again for the ships’ upkeep.
Vice Adm. William Burke, a deputy chief of naval operations, said in April before he retired that "money is better spent" on repairing and modernizing younger ships with 25 to 30 years of service left, the U.S. Naval Institute reported.
He was quoted as saying at a House subcommittee hearing that "we have enough cruisers" even when eliminating the seven in question, and that he would rather put money into a maintenance backlog on destroyers.
The retirement of the cruisers and the other ships is reflected in Navy decommissioning plans for 2015.
The Port Royal’s first post-grounding deployment occurred between June 2011 and January 2012, during which repairs for new structural cracks were required in Bahrain, the sea systems report said.
The ship had "minor" underway periods between January and April 2012, performed scheduled maintenance and participated in Rim of the Pacific exercises from June to August 2012.
