Posted on 11/28/2015 12:36:40 PM PST by markomalley
Edited on 11/28/2015 12:42:31 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
The Navy faces a crisis on the near horizon with too few ships, tired sailors and emerging global threats, leaving the Pentagon with no easy choices, a new study concludes.
The main problem facing the Navy and Marine Corps is "that demand for naval forces exceeds the supply they can sustainably deliver," according to the report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) released Nov. 18.
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
What mission requires 18,000 tons without a flight deck?
The Burke's come in at 10,000 tons...adequate to host 128 VLS tubes and all the supporting electronics, fuel and crew.
Unfortunately, there's only about 60 of them.
We are now in a situation where we cannot put enough platforms at sea. Much of the reason is that ships have the same tendency as cars...every year they get bigger.
The last Destroyer I went to sea on came in at about 4,000 tons. We need at least 100 net-new ships in that class to keep our presence in the world's sea lanes...which has kept America rich and free, and has also benefited the world as a whole.
As for the LCS, they are NOT useless. Do more research.
LCS-1, at $500mil and 3,500 tons is an ideal platform size to augment the Burkes and DDG battle groups.
OF COURSE they need a weapons upgrade, something the Navy said before the first keel was laid. But the "modular weapons package" is a good idea as they now have a Surface Warfare package with a more powerful gun and anti-ship missiles to go with their small, standard package of AA missiles.
They also have a range of 6,000NM and can get along at 40kts.
The ONLY shortcoming I can see is that have no land attack capability...but it was not a design parameter.
You can put 4 of them to sea for the cost of a single Burke.
And, I think you would agree, we have an urgent and pressing need to upgrade our sub fleet. In addition to a slight increase in the production rate for our standard SSN of the era (changes through time), we need at least 50 DE boats for the littorals...South China Sea, Persian Gulf, the Med.
Now for the carriers. While standard platforms are the backbone of Sea Control, NOTHING projects power like a CVN. That's why Navies the world over lust for them.
When one needs to slap the sh!t out of some dictator or Jihadi, nothing else comes close.
Many argue against the CVN as too vulnerable. And yes, it's a big ship, high visibility.
But the price for one is, and has always been...existential war. And who would take that risk against the USA?
No reason not to put it here, and I’ll probably post it again some time when the subject comes up.
I had sent him a link to a story about the fact that the Army can’t seem to cough up the training records for the women who recently supposedly really (really!) passed Ranger school, for a Congressman who requested them. His response follows. Again, he was a Marine 240 gunner, spent time in Afghanistan, this guy is serious business, we probably wish he’d gone to SEAL school, he’d have had a much better than average shot at it. Here’s his commentary on the Ranger school records debacle:
“Oh trust me, I’m aware. S*** makes my blood boil. I’m not even phased by the fact that they’re deliberately hiding the records of the females’ performance. I can only imagine how heavily that course was catered to the females, not to mention the fact that they probably outranked the entire instructor cadre.
We had a female interpreter in afghan, she was at the Company COP so I never saw her. She ended up having an affair with our Co 1st Sgt (surprise).
We also worked with the Brits for a while, since they had a patrol base not far from my squads pb. They also happened to bring in a female interpreter...pregnant in under 2 months, and sent home. Probably got an award for it.
Even if there were females that could meet the minimum physical requirements for the infantry, that s*** will never work. It’ll be detrimental to the combat effectiveness of whatever unit they end up in. Let’s not forget the American “victim” mentality as of late. I can’t even fathom how many sexual harassment cases that would be filed. Then the rape accusations, pregnancies, relationships affecting roles and promotions, oh and the fact that no woman on the planet could firemans carry my 240lb a** with 100+lbs of gear out of a kill zone.
Rant over.
< next email, a few minutes later>
Ok I lied, rant wasn’t finished.
At the schoolhouse I taught at, we brought in non infantry units (POGs) and put them through several infantry centric courses. We had a strict standard of training and had no issues failing females or Marines that outranked us as instructors. This brought us some attention from higher ups on one occasion. A female warrant officer brought pizza for all 50 of “her” marines in our course. During their final exercise. We stopped her and reminded her of the fact that no outside food was permitted in our course. She returned with, “The four females I have in the class are going to feel sexually harassed by you if you don’t let them eat this pizza”.
I believe the GOPe is absolutely complicit with the progressive agenda as long as they get paid for it. They mostly give lip service to the issues of social conservatism because they get paid for that also.
The system might be less crooked if they could just openly accept the envelopes of cash.
That’s a funny thought. If we limited it to cash in envelopes we would save a ton of money.
The original role of the cruiser was force projection, security of sea lanes,and close support for land operations, either alone or in company with other units. At 10,000 tons the Arleigh Burkes are a bit above a WW II cruiser. I just think increased tonnage and armament is going to be necessary.
I too have nothing good to say ...... Stay Safe !
A couple of 30mm autocannon and Hellfire missiles are no more than adding a missing "self defence package"
The modular design of the platform allows weapons and sensors of all types:
Norwegian company Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace proposed equipping LCSs with their radar-evading Naval Strike Missile, presenting scale models of the Freedom-class with 12 NSMs and the Independence-class with 18 NSMs.[46] In July 2014, the Navy confirmed that it would test-launch the NSM from the USS Coronado (LCS-4) to evaluate feasibility, the first time an LCS will fire a surface-to-surface missile. The NSM has a range of 100 mi (87 nmi; 160 km), greater than the Harpoon anti-ship missile; but LCSs lack long-range fire control systems to detect targets at this distance.[47] On 24 September 2014, the NSM was successfully fired at a mobile target. The LCS' modular design makes it possible to add weapons and sensors as part of the warfare suite. This could mitigate lethality criticism of the LCS, which is oriented toward asymmetric swarm boat threats than comparable surface combatants.[48]"
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