Navy’s Plan to Cut an Aegis Destroyer Riles Maine’s Lawmakers
Photographer: Ted Banks/U.S. Navy/Getty Images
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The Navy’s proposed budget requesting funds for one Aegis-class destroyer instead of the two previously planned for fiscal 2022 will weaken the U.S. industrial base and send the wrong message to China, according to lawmakers from Maine, where the ships are built.
“Since agreeing to a five-year multiyear procurement contract in 2018, industry had planned for a procurement rate of at least two ships per year through the next fiscal year,” Senators Angus King and Susan Collins and Representatives Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden said in a letter Wednesday to President Joe Biden.