Posted on 07/13/2011 4:11:37 PM PDT by Nachum
According to two top officials, the Navy is operating at an “unsustainable” pace for its current force structure. At a House Armed Services Committee hearing this week, Vice Admirals Bill Burke and Kevin McCoy described a force that was falling into disrepair and struggling to cover ever-increasing responsibilities with decreasing manpower and money.
The Navy’s maintenance issues began in the 1990s when Washington sought a post–Cold War peace dividend. One of the first casualties was manpower, and that led to smaller Navy maintenance crews.
At first, the Navy tried to get by, deferring maintenance and patching up old equipment. But the sustained high operational tempo of the past decade has finally caught up with the Navy. In 2011, nearly 22 percent of the fleet failed its yearly inspection, up from 8 percent as recently as 2007. Stretched thin by increased responsibilities such as wartime deployments, anti-piracy operations, and disaster relief, the Navy is trying to get by with broken equipment and often lacks the spare parts to make at-sea repairs.
Whether or not this decreased readiness is yet having an impact upon America’s national security is up for debate. While Admiral Burke stated that decreased ship readiness has not yet forced commanders to skip missions because of fewer available ships, he also admitted that combatant commanders generally require 16 to 18 operational attack submarines to meet regional objectives. Due to lagging maintenance and repairs, however, the Navy can provide only 10 submarines at any given time, exposing a serious gap between resources and requirements.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.heritage.org ...
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Cheney, Bush(41) and Clinton.
Just like “Great” Britain before us.
Our radically downsizing the Navy and its missions will will mean the loss of global superpower status.
I have read that the U.S. Navy now has more admirals than it has ships. Can someone with the facts confirm this?
Let’s not forget Mullens, Gates et al. Every time Chiefs got together this was a standard topic. What happens if we do not get those “smart” ships. Well we did not but we dumped alot of good Sailors. So what has been the Navy’s response. Get rid of more people to open up promotions because they set “artificial” high year tenure rules. The word artificial comes from a Congressional study that predicted this problem about 4 years ago.
Can we outsource our Naval security to the Chinese? . . . Wait, that won’t work.
Usually a disastrous procedure for ships and yachts, especially when they're floating in salt water.
Maintenance of ships at sea should always be proactive.
Cheney and Bush (41) put us on a STEEP glide slope and Clinton pushed us over a cliff. That and Tailhook 91 didn’t help matters at ALL!
This sounds like the lead in to a bad joke: How many Admirals does it take to screw up the Navy?
Maybe the CO's of these ships should have a DADT policy on readiness.
Thanks to all posters. Very good thread. FUND the people that defend this great nation...FREEZE the bureaucrats.
We are out of SE Asia it looks like - Clinton has been told to get lost in not so many words. The planned military exercise is just for show - everyone knows it here.
Sucks for the Vietnamese and the Philippines.
Viets calling a draft and the front pages of the papers in the Philippines are all about the Spratleys
It is getting worse.
I concur, the standard comment in 2004 was the CNO never got the memo we were at war. The CNO accelerate personnel cuts in the middle of the war. Now Obama with Gates and Mullens leading the charge have done more to destroy the Navy. We cannot keep submarines at sea well bells bells who cares if women serve on a sub in drydock?
When was the last time we drove a few carrier battle groups through Formosa Strait as a show of strength and determination to the Chicoms?
I can’t recall - can you?
No, we don’t but it’s close! U.S. Code of law explicitly limits the total number of admirals that may be on active duty at any given time. The total number of active duty flag officers is capped at 216 for the Navy.[2] For the Navy, no more than 16.3% of the service’s active duty flag officers may have more than two stars, and no more than 25% of those may have four stars.[3][4][5] This corresponds to 9 admirals.
(Translated, that says that the total number of Rear, Vice, and full Admirals is 216, that no more than 35 may be three or four stars, and that no more than nine may be four-star Admirals — and they only get the fourth star if appointed to a position that is to be held by a full Admiral. These caps may be waived by the President in time of war or national emergency.)
The priority is not defense of our country, it is ensuring that DOD is has done all the necessary sensitivity training to openly allow homosexuals in.
If it could be outsourced to China and done much more cheaply, some Americans would still be for it. National security hasn't been much of a priority for some for quite a few years.
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