WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine came closer to hearing what she wanted today, that the Defense Department is moving forward with plans to build its newest destroyer at Bath Iron Works. But while two top Navy officials praised the DD-21 stealth ship before a Senate panel examining shipbuilding programs, they wouldn’t quite confirm that the project has been given the green light.

“The Navy is very confident that the DD-21 is the ship of the future,” said John J. Young, Jr., the Navy’s assistant secretary for Research, Development and Acquisition. Young and Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. William J. Fallon told the panel that the Navy knows it needs to increase shipbuilding in coming years.

The two men could not nail down when the final decision would come down from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, despite repeated queries from Collins and Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.

Collins referred to media reports that suggested the Pentagon’s decision on the DD-21 was imminent.

“We are working on a daily basis with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and trying to make sure they have everything they need,” Young said. “We are moving forward, whether it can be described as ‘imminent’ I don’t know.”

In an interview with the Washington Times last week, Rumsfeld said the Navy needed more ships, but refused to specify which ones.

“The shipbuilding budget was starved and is going to go off a cliff in 10 to 15 years,” Rumsfeld said. “We’re on a steady course right now headed for 230 ships – we currently have I think 310. And I don’t know what the right number is but I can tell you it’s not 230 and if we don’t start immediately building ships we’re going to end up with an enormous trough out there in a period of 10-15 years.”

Rumsfeld has not yet completed his massive review of defense strategy, which is expected in late summer. Part of the review will determine whether to build the DD-21 destroyer, as well as several other expensive projects, including the Air Force’s F-22 stealth fighter and the Marine Corps’ V-22 Osprey aircraft. In May, the Pentagon delayed the decision indefinitely on whether Bath Iron Works or Ingalls Shipbuilding in Mississippi would design the DD-21, although both yards would build it.

In a written statement submitted to the committee, the two officials stated that “the Navy remains committed to the objectives and technologies associated with DD-21 and is working closely with the Department of Defense to expedite results from the defense reviews so that source selection may proceed.”

One element which may be holding up the decision is the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, which is not due until Sept. 30. Every four years, Congress requires the Pentagon to re-evaluate national security strategy as well as the military force structure.

“It is not clear to me that we can move in advance of the QDR, and it is not clear to me that we cannot move in advance of the QDR,” Young said.

The Pentagon’s budget request for the upcoming fiscal year included $643 million to continue development of the destroyer. Fallon said the DD-21 and its radar systems may have a role to play in the development of a missile defense system, if the Pentagon decides to use sea-based elements in a global system of detecting, tracking, and shooting down intercontinental ballistic missiles.

“It is a potential carrier,” Fallon said. “This is going to require a long-term investment, and the development of radar systems. Ideally, you would like to have both the DD-21 and the CVNX, the next-generation aircraft carrier, to have radar that is capable of contributing to this system.”

One skeptical voice at the hearing belonged to Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who lamented the Navy’s rapidly increasing shipbuilding needs with the moderate increases in spending allocated to shipbuilding efforts.