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vessel (LSV) in the FY 1989 pro- gram. Four of these ships are under contract to Moss Point Marine, a member of the Trinity Industries' shipbuilding group. The Army has indicated that a fifth vessel is re- quired.

In late March, Newport News

Shipbuilding, Newport News, Va., received a contract to begin pru- chasing long lead items for the air- craft carriers CVN-74 and -75. Two carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and the USS George

Washington (CVN-73) are currently under construction at Newport

News. This new contract gives an unprecedented backlog of four nu- clear carriers.

In other ship programs, more than 90 Navy ships are under con- struction at U.S. shipyards. Full de- tails are provided in Exhibit 2.

FY 1989. A year ago, the Navy planned to budget slightly more than $10 billion for this activity in

FY 1989. The figure has been cut 8 percent to $9.2 billion. This is still double the spending level of 10 years ago.

Expanding DARPA Role

In Navy R&D

The House Armed Services Com- mittee reaffirmed that the Defense

Advanced Research Projects Agen- cy (DARPA) should manage the ad- vanced submarine technology pro- gram. This program is intended to identify and develop revolutionary submarine hull and nonnuclear pro- pulsion technologies. DARPA's re- sponsibility will continue over the next three to five years—with total funding exceeding $800 million an- ticipated for the work.

The Committee also assigned re- sponsibility to DARPA to begin de- velopment of an advanced torpedo.

Additional funding of $10 million is recommended for FY 1989 to begin this program.

Another responsibility assigned to DARPA is the antisubmarine warfare initiative. This is to be a major integrated technology effort to "come to grips" with the Soviet (continued)

Validating a Design Concept...

Weapons & Support

Equipment

A total of $11.1 billion has been requested in FY 1989 to buy mis- siles, torpedoes, electronics and oth- er support equipment. This is an increase of $600 million over FY 1988.

Ship Maintenance Budget

Maintenance and modernization of naval ships continues to drive work in U.S. ship-repair yards.

Spending for ship repair is projected to be $4.8 billion in FY 1989.

From FY 1983 through FY 1987, there has been a clear decline in the number of overhauls—while the number of short term availabilities has increased significantly. In FY 1988, the number of both overhauls and SRAs/PMAs is expected to de- cline. In FY 1989, SRA/PMA job starts are projected to increase somewhat over this year.

Funding constraints are now ob- viously affecting Navy ship mainte- nance. A year ago the Navy planned to spend more than $5 billion to per- form 215 scheduled maintenance job starts in FY 1988. The most re- cent plan for FY 1988 calls for expenditures of $4.7 billion to per- form 178 scheduled job starts.

Almost $600 million has been cut from the Navy active fleet ship maintenance and modernization plan for FY 1989. Most of the cuts are in the area of ship alterations— where planned spending has been cut from $1.6 billion to under $1.1 billion. The trend toward fewer overhauls and more short term scheduled availabilities continues.

Details are shown in Exhibit 3.

New Technology

Development

Funding totaling $9.2 billion has been requested for research and en- gineering in FY 1989. This figure is slightly lower than FY 1988. Details for recent years are shown in Exhib- it 5.

Budget pressures have forced the

Navy to cut back on proposed re- search and development spending in

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