The Navy does not have enough amphibious assault ships to effectively support the Marine Corps in training for combat, according to senior Pentagon officials, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Monday.
In testimony before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness, Marine Lt. Gen. Brian Beaudreault — who is deputy commandant for plans, policies, and operations — said the current situation puts at risk the "core competency" of the Marine Corps and Navy to move a combat force from ship-to-shore in order to rapidly penetrate enemy battle space.
He emphasized that the current fleet of 32 warships is not enough to meet operational requirements and harms the readiness of the Navy.
The Navy has said that budget constraints mean that it likely won't be able to reach the total of 38 amphibious ships needed until 2030.
Both Beaudreault and Navy Vice Adm. Andrew Lewis, who also testified before the committee, referred to a report released Friday by the Government Accountability Office that cited the lack of enough suitable ships on which to train sailors as the most significant factor for inadequate training.
"We can do some training . . . through virtual systems, but at some point you have to put the ships to sea and go through a mission rehearsal," Beaudreault told the committee members. "The ability to generate the number of ships required to train at a Marine expeditionary brigade level just simply isn't there, so we take it in bite-size chunks."
The report gave as one example that the Navy was unable to fulfill more than 90 percent of requests for support training for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force due to a lack of ships which operates in the Pacific.
Both Beaudreault and Lewis stressed to the congressmen that the best way to confront readiness challenges is for stable, predictable, and adequate funding over several years.
"The most important actions that Congress can take now is to immediately repeal the caps on defense spending under the Budget Control Act and provide a defense appropriation that provides a sufficient, consistent, predictable funding," Beaudreault said.
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