Options for Funding Aircraft Carriers

Examines alternatives to full-funding strategy (appropriation of enough money for an entire construction project in the initial year of construction) for funding aircraft carriers. The present practice of fully funding aircraft carriers in a single year causes spikes of several billion dollars in the budget every fourth or fifth year, and it complicates the funding of other programs in those years. RAND assessed the advantages and disadvantages of three alternative strategies: incremental funding, advance appropriations, and a revolving fund. Each strategy can reduce budget spikes but introduces other risks to each participant in the budgeting process: the Navy, DoD, and Congress. No strategy was found to be clearly superior.