Posted on 04/02/2012 4:12:57 PM PDT by MindBender26
The Navy’s proposal to decommission seven Aegis cruisers was “an extremely difficult choice for us to make,” but it must be done to protect what the Navy calls the “wholeness” of the rest of its fleet, top commanders told Congress Thursday.
Navy logistics and readiness boss Vice Adm. Bill Burke told a House Armed Services Committee panel that the surface force is banking on the money and sailors it would save from the ships going away — along with its now-fully funded request for ship maintenance — to help continue to dig the fleet out of its longstanding readiness problems.
“The cruiser retirements were an extremely difficult choice for us to make, but our goal was to balance readiness, procurment and the personnel priorities within our budget controls to still meet global force management and avoid a hollow force,” Burke said.
The Navy can free up about $4 billion by not keeping the ships, he said, even though they have 10 or even 15 years of life left — and the Navy’s recent top goal has been squeezing the most good from everything in today’s fleet. The ships need comprehensive upgrades and they’re suffering from the infamous cracks in their aluminum superstructures, so Burke said the brass had to swallow hard and let them go.
He’s not kidding: Although Secretary Panetta and other DoD-level officials have pooh-poohed the “older, less-capable” cruisers, these ships have long commanded a special status in the surface force. When certain kinds of Navy officers at desks in the Pentagon close their eyes for a moment of pause, they picture themselves on the bridge of a cruiser as the ship turns at high speed on a sunny afternoon off Southern California.
Virginia Republican Rep. Randy Forbes, who chaired Thursday’s hearing, wants that daydream to remain a reality for six of the seven ships slated to go away. (We’ll get to the seventh in a moment.) He said his committee staff has calculated that it would cost about $592 million in FY 13 and $859 million in FY 14 to upgrade the six ships and keep them around for the rest of their service lives. Compare that against more than $2 billion for a single new destroyer and it seems like a no-brainer, he argued.
Maybe, Burke said, but he said Forbes’ estimates didn’t cover the cost of operating the ships, or fielding helicopters with them, and said the bottom line was this: With seven fewer cruisers and fully funded maintenance budgets, the surface Navy could finally slay the readiness and maintenance demons that have been plaguing it for the past decade. He and Naval Sea Systems Command boss Vice Adm. Kevin McCoy said the fleet is turning the corner on its readiness problem, and deviating from the latest plans could throw a monkey wrench into that effort.
“It was a terribly difficult choice,” Burke said. “We didn’t want to make it. But in order to maintain readiness of all the forces we chose to decrement our Navy by a couple [of cruisers] … If we didn’t do this, if we kept too many, we’d be under-maintaining all of them and we’d end up down the road having a bigger problem than we have today.”
As for the seventh ship, Thursday’s hearing made clear that the poor cruiser USS Port Royal is a goner no matter what. Forbes’ estimates deliberately excluded the cost to upgrade it, and none of the Navy witnesses seemed to even consider keeping it around past its scheduled mothball date next year. The Port Royal ran hard aground off Honolulu in 2009 and its repairs cost the Navy tens of millions of dollars, but by all accounts, the ship has never been the same. As it sat stuck on the coral reef, the tide rocked and shook the cruiser and all of its onboard equipment, damaging it more than might have initially been apparent. The Port Royal eventually returned to service, but the Navy’s mothball decision and Thursday’s hearing apparently confirmed the brass wants to just cut its losses.
The sad twist for the surface Navy — taking Burke and McCoy at their word that it’s turning the corner — is that even a smaller, better-maintained fleet still falls far short of the oft-discussed “demand signal” from the combatant commanders. Under questioning from Forbes, Burke said that it would take a fleet of 500 ships to meet the “demand” from the various military areas of operation around the world. If everything goes the Navy’s way, it hopes to build a fleet of 300 ships by 2019.
So it’s the old standoff: Will Congress ultimately force service officials to keep ships they don’t want, having absorbed — in this case — the Navy’s years of arguments that “quantity is a capability all its own?” As we saw this week, lawmakers have asked the Pentagon not to implement any of its planned changes until the Hill gives its go-ahead, so there may be still more talk of keeping these once-prized warships the Navy says must go
Yes
This is just another thing to add to the list of stupid things that are happening with this administration
Pls add me. ty.
The US needs at least 6 carrier battle groups for Command of the Sea. 12 would be better. Ageis cruisers provide missle defense.
Yes, exactly. More money for welfare, “You must love sodomy because sodomy is perfectly normal” training and reconfiguring ships & boats to accomodate females...
The nation will pay the price in blood for poor leadership. Generally, it tis the blood of our children.
What’s left in terms of naval gunfire? Anything that compares to the Wisconsin or New Jersey?
Replace stupid with treasonous and you’re dead right.
Probably a draft plan in the works or almost ready to go after the next election if (heaven forbid) the wun wins or most likely tries to steal it somehow.
He’s no gundecker. Too many good sailors kept their Division Officers bright and shiny with a bit of creative gundecking.
That....individual is the [BLEEP]ing All-time King Sandcrab.
....and that’s coming from a brownshoe with less sea duty time than some have got falling overboard.
If anyone is furious over this news, just wait until Obama is re-elected because your fellow Freepers refuse to vote for Romney. Imagine what the commie Muslim traitor will do his 2nd term? But no worry, as long as your fellow Freepers have the satisfaction of not having to pull the lever for Idiot Romney, all is well right?
I can’t stand people who cut off their nose to spite their face.
Like many FReepers, Romney is far from my ideal candidate, but when it comes down to obama or Romney, there is no questions we must all vote to get rid of Obama.
On the other hand, the Burkes are the ones that are being reworked to serve as floating missile defense platforms (BMD, not just fleet defense) and they have gotten some pretty amazing new sensors and software as part of that upgrade.
For me though, I would prefer having both. And more of each at that.
On the other hand, the Burkes are the ones that are being reworked to serve as floating missile defense platforms (BMD, not just fleet defense) and they have gotten some pretty amazing new sensors and software as part of that upgrade.
For me though, I would prefer having both. And more of each at that.
And for some reason I like the Burkes so much it posted twice!
Is this what Obama was hinting to Medvedev about when he was caught on a ‘hot mic’?
Hold on bow, aren’t the Aegis Cruisers the only missile defense system we can now deploy? What functionality will the Navy be losing?
We'd still be paying for 5 of them, with the inflated pass-thru costs.
Well no, not really.
The Burke-class "Destroyers" are 90+% of the size of these Cruisers, newer, more capable and easier to maintain.
And that's the problem...we have an entire FLEET of what are essentially Cruisers. At 8,500 - 10,000 tons many of these ships are bigger than the Cruisers being retired and certainly as big as any Cruiser-class ship we've ever put to sea.
We have 60 in the water today and another 15 on the way.
What we NEED is 50-100 of what would have been called a Destroyer in any other era...but would now be called a Frigate. 4,000 tons with a crew of 120, VLS and all the new Aegis voodoo.
The National Security Frigate now being proposed by Ingalls would be an EXCELLENT choice, but alas the brass is wedded to the LCS concept.
...and the CGX, the replacement for the crusiers has not even left the draing board yet.
This president is doing more to wreck our Navy than the combined might of all the agressor nations of the world have been able to do in the last 50 years.
While the Chinese continue to build a large, modern fleet at breakneck speed...in the last 10 years they have grown with ne modern combatants something like 142% while we have decreased by around 20%...and that’s before the earlier cuts and these.
AEGIS Vessels of the World
http://www.jeffhead.com/aegisvesselsoftheworld/
The Rising Sea Dragon in Asia
http://www.jeffhead.com/redseadragon/
Yes
And what can or will we do about this?
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