military construction for mayport. >> thank you. >> mullen, will you designate a ship to mayport ine coming months? >> actually, it's something that it's not mine. that in the end would be a decision that the navy would recommend and it would come up to the secretary. >> are you bringing one up soon? >> we can talk about that later. we have given information about the fact that it's 35% over budget which i think is about $18 billion if my numbers are correct. this program started in the mid 90s and we went to the moon quicker than we produced this plane. i appreciate your efforts to try to get this under control. i saw there was a suspension of the performance benefits. my question is in terms of acquisition reform, it seems to me there needs to be reform across the department of defense, probably across the government. not just performance bonuses, but penallies under the vendors. is there a person you charged as responsible to lead the effort and are you looking at the contracts to make sure they bear the cost if programs were delayed? >> under secretary carter e, he is responsibl

military construction for mayport. >> thank you. >> mullen, will you designate a ship to mayport in the coming months? >> actually, it's something that it's not mine. that in the end would be a decision that the navy would recommend and it would come up to the secretary. >> are you bringing one up soon? >> we can talk about that later. we have given information about the fact that it's 35% over budget which i think is about $18 billion if my numbers are correct. this program started in the mid 90s and we went to the moon quicker than we produced this plane. i appreciate your efforts to try to get this under control. i saw there was a suspension of the performance benefits. my question is in terms of acquisition reform, it seems to me there needs to be reform across the department of defense, probably across the government. not just performance bonuses, but penallies under the vendors. is there a person you charged as responsible to lead the effort and are you looking at the contracts to make sure they bear the cost if programs were delayed? >> under secretary carter e, he is respons

budget item for the navy to think they can spend $1 billion in upgrading a nice to have facility in mayport same time when we're looking to try to build a fleet up to 313 ships. admiral mullen, you'll recall when you and i were commissioned in 1968, we had 930 ships in the united states navy. went down to 479 when i was secretary of the navy, went up to 568. but i want to set that aside, make sure you know we're going to continue that discussion. i want to set that aside, and my five minutes, talk about something else. that is, that i don't believe, quite frankly, that the d.o.d. budget should be sacrosanct when it comes to looking at the constraints and examinations that we ought to be putting on different programs. and secretary gates, i take your point about not wanting to go into force structure reductions, but at the same time i believe you can meet the challenges and adapt for the future and still clean up a lot of unnecessary programs that exist in the pentagon by taking a hard look at programs that don't produce a clear bottom line, and are not simply hardware systems or forestructu