driving top defense officials and the White House to quickly make major decisions, and indications are growing that the elimination of one carrier and one carrier air wing could be among the defense request’s key features.

Pentagon officials would not confirm or deny the matter, citing the fluid nature of budget discussions. But numerous sources — in the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill, in the defense industry — agreed that the prospect is picking up steam.

“It’s quietly being socialized,” one source said, and others agreed.

Others emphasized that no decisions have been reached, and talks are being held in strict confidence.

“Stuff is in churn,” one source said.

That the Navy and the Pentagon, faced with the need to come up with drastic budget cuts, have contemplated reducing the fleet’s vaunted carrier strength is nothing new — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned as much last summer.

“We would trade away size for high-end capability,” Hagel said July 31. “This would ... reduce the number of carrier strike groups from 11 to eight or nine.”

Hagel was discussing one scenario put forth in the Strategic Choices Management Review, an internal Pentagon effort to identify budget-cutting approaches and tactics.

The basic tradeoff, he explained, would be one of reducing capacity for “our ability to modernize weapons systems and to maintain our military’s technological edge.”

The Navy’s top leadership has said repeatedly over the past year that “all options are on the table” to reduce costs.

Asked for comment, the Navy declined to address the carrier issue directly.

“There is no question that we continue to face tough decisions in this fiscal environment,” Capt. Dawn Cutler, the Navy’s top spokeswoman, said Jan. 23. “Work continues on the fiscal 2015 budget and, at this point, conversations on our budget submission are both premature and pre-decisional.”

And if it’s happening, no one’s saying so publicly.

“This idea has probably been in and out the budget so many times that nobody feels comfortable prepping the battlefield,” observed Bryan Clark, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and, until last summer, an analyst for the Navy’s leadership. “If it’s in there, that’s certainly something you probably should be explaining — what’s the rationale, what are the tradeoffs.”

The carrier most often targeted is the Japan-based George Washington. Commissioned in 1992, GW is scheduled in 2016 to begin a three-year midlife refueling and complex overhaul at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia — where all active carriers were built — that is expected to cost well over $3 billion.

The Navy already has announced the carrier Ronald Reagan will replace the George Washington in Japan. Any move affecting the decommissioning of a carrier would have no effect on the American commitment to maintaining a forward-based carrier in Japan, Navy officials said.

Carriers are designed for a 50-year lifespan and undergo only one refueling overhaul, during which nearly every major system in the ship is rebuilt, renewed or replaced.

-snip-

Read more:http://www.navytimes.com/article/2014012...ould-back-table

How 'bout we cut back funding for the drones. And I don't mean the ones that fly and kill people.