Plenty of Tomahawks

The Navy has plenty of Tomahawk missiles to burn in Libya, according to the service's top officer, who said today that replacing the rounds that have been used up establishing a no-flight zone would not be a problem.

“The Tomahawks that were shot, that's part of our current inventory,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast this morning. “There are ample replacements for those in the inventory -- more than ample replacements for them -- and in the budget, the funding line continues for Tomahawks to replace those that were shot.”

Roughead agreed with the Navy's top budget officer, Rear Adm. Joseph Mulloy, who told Inside the Navy on March 21 that the cost of the no-fly zone operation for the service is small, given that most of the assets being used were already in the area.

“Did we incur some additional flying hours? Yes,” Roughead said. “But, for example, the [EA-18G] Growlers that we brought in were flying in Iraq anyway, so those flying hours were being burned. . . . Moving to Japan, for example, on the [aircraft carrier] Ronald Reagan [CVN-76], which is heavily involved in the relief operation there, we're flying a lot of helicopters, but we're also not flying the air wing as much as we would have, so quite frankly it's probably costing me less money in that regard.”

The admiral noted that the service is keeping track of all Libya-related expenditures, though he said there is no sign yet of whether or not a supplemental budget would be requested to cover the cost of Operation Odyssey Dawn.

Roughead suggested that the Navy could keep up operations off Libya more or less indefinitely.

“For the Navy, because we are deployed and we are in constant rotation, the forces that are there will continue to provide support that the tactical commander needs,” he said, “but we have other forces that are getting ready to float, so the forces that are there will be relieved by others and that flow continues.”