Posted on 10/09/2018 10:16:24 AM PDT by topher
Maybe this is a 'Hail Mary', but something that one must try to save $1.55 billion and have a CVN (USS Enterprise) in our reserve fleet.
On account of our previous president, the US Navy is in bad shape.
Take for example the collisions that happened early in the Trump Administration due to the [what I believe was] LAX of discipline under Obama.
This is of course the collisions that happened with the USS John S McCain and the USS Fitzgerald.
If you don't remember, then refresh your memory:
Freerepublic: Former commander of USS John S McCain pleads guilty, retires after deadly collision
Fox News: Former commander of USS John S McCain pleads guilty, retires after deadly collision
Freerepublic: USS Fitzgerald Combat Team Unaware of Approaching Merchant Ship Until Seconds Before Fatal Collision
US Naval Institute Proceeding: USS Fitzgerald Combat Team Unaware of Approaching Merchant Ship Until Seconds Before Fatal Collision
But to the matter at hand. Popular Mechanics wrote about the trouble the US Navy is having scrapping this ship and it is going to be very costly.
Articles on the Internet:
Freerepublic: The U.S. Navy Is Having a Hell of a Time Dismantling the USS Enterprise
Popular Mechanics: The U.S. Navy Is Having a Hell of a Time Dismantling the USS Enterprise
Additionally has headaches with it 'cruisers'. Saving $1.55 billion might help the US Navy out.
Freerepublic: The Navy Is Set to Retire Half of Its Biggest Surface Combatants—With No Replacement in Sight
Popular Mechanics: The Navy Is Set to Retire Half of Its Biggest Surface Combatants—With No Replacement in Sight
Prior to President Obama being in office, we had CV aircraft carriers in the reserve fleet, aka 'mothball' fleet. CV carriers are the 'big deck carriers' and post World War II, they started to be over 1000 feet long.
In World War II, when America was Great, we had over 6000 ships in the US Navy. After the war, a number of these were put in 'mothballs', or to the reserve fleet.
In the Clint Eastwood movie 'Magnum Force', the motorcycle chase was on one of these ships. I am fairly sure it was a small carrier from World War II. I believe it was a 'CVE' - Carrier Escort.
Why should we flush $1.55 billion down the toilet? - Just because our previous president was 'wasteful'.
How to scrap a Nuclear Carrier could be studied at Universities and the US Navy's academic arm (US Naval Institute).
Until we know how, move that ship to the reserve fleet.
With things in the world the way they are, one of our big deck carriers might get 'dinged' or we might need to put together another carrier task force.
The Big E has already been defueled and essentially gutted in the process of sealing and removing each of its’ EIGHT reactor plants. It was the first of its’ kind, and as such is rather unique. There is no way to recover or restore her.
ENTERPRISE hull is now almost 60-years old. We don’t have any more 1950’s design reactors to refuel it. The ship has already been decommissioned and inactivated and is awaiting disposal plans to be determined by the Navy. Keeping it eats up 4-times the number of nuclear Sailors compared to NIMITZ class hulls.
This proposal is non-sense and this thread should be deleted.
Can’t a coastal City use it for a museum?
https://jeffhead.com/ jeff is a little indisposed at the moment i think i hope and pray everything is going well
https://www.jeffhead.com/chordoma.htm#Latest
$1.5B to scrap the E but not a penny for the wall.
You cannot keep a nuke in "reserve" because of all the maintenance, upkeep, training and operating costs to maintain nuclear safety. You don't just put a lock on a nuclear reactor and hang up the key.
And you don't just restart and idled reactor after a decade or so.
-another former steely eyed killer of the deep
Why would it cost so much to scrap a ship?
Thank you very much, ATOMIC_PUNK.
The Navy has other priorities such as the Navy Times recent glowing story on the transgender Petty Officer winning a weight lifting competition. Of course it was a man claiming to be a woman but his male muscles still helped him win.
Just dump the reactors on a remote beach like the Russians do.
When the Navy refueled the USS Enterprise in the 90s it cost almost as much to refuel as build a new carrier. The reason is, not like the NIMITZ class, they has not designed a carrier reactor, so they put 8 submarine reactors in it. Then they built two conventional carriers (CV66 and CV67) while they designed carrier reactors. So the NIMITZ class will be much cheaper to decommission and the Enterprise is a one of a kind problem and should just be dealt with. Way too expensive to keep around, they should not even have refueled it in the 90s, but it was the Navy’s pride and joy and was the fasted ship in the fleet with all that steam.
I did my initial nuclear quals on the A1W prototype in Idaho before reporting for submarine duty.
The power plants were basically larger submarine reactors. There were four control rooms on the Enterprise with two reactors controlled by each (for a total of eight reactors). The A1W prototype had one control room with two reactors.
The older submarine reactors had to be refueled periodically and that was a major expense. I never did a refueling while I was in the Navy but an eight reactor refueling is nothing to sneeze at. If they let it sit in port with a skeleton crew it will be far cheaper than decommissioning it. Then they can budget that in the future after throwing some money each year into a BIG E Decommissioning fund.
Enterprise, being a one-off design, wasn't the best candidate for the mothball fleet. I do wonder whether anyone at the Pentagon, with an eye toward events in east Asia, has considered future vessel retirements and the possibility of sending those older flight decks into the fleets of Australia or Japan.
I know that both have political sensitivities with regard to carriers and/or nuclear power, but it just seems like a natural fit in the Pacific if they can get past those issues.
Sell it to Israel for $0.01 on the dollar!
For Enterprise to have ANY utility in reserve it would have to undergo a complete refit. That cost would far exceed scrap cost.
And you’d still have a 50 year old platform and maintenance headache. And you would not have a functional crew aboard, something that would take 2 years to accomplish.
Nay.
Build new and wear it out.
The problem is NOT the fact that we are scrapping a 50 year old ship, the problem is we have not built enough of them in the last 50 years.
We are all terminal, some get a heads up, some don't.
Name the next CVN Enterprise.
This is how you carry on the legacy.
Would it have made any sense to preserve the CV-6 Enterprise? It would be militarily useless today. So, to for CVN 65.
This ship was always my favorite when I was a kid. The ship got old. So did I.
I am looking forward to CVN-80.
SinkEx
I’d love to see the Enterprise as a museum...or maybe as a reef...
The Enterprise is nearing 60 years old and *seriously* worn out from the reports of the last sailors to serve aboard her. She is of a class of one, many of the companies that made critical parts no longer even exist, the radar on board didn’t work and it would cost less to build a new Ford-class carrier than it would to fix CVN-65 and bring her up to date so she could fight with/be properly protected by her escorts in a modern CBG - and it would still not approach the capabilities of a Ford-class. To give one example, the radar the ship was equipped with *and built around* doesn’t work and powering it up took most of the ship’s electrical generating capacity. Oh, and it was mostly a missile magnet as the vacuum tube powered system had problems tracking modern aircraft.
Putting a nuclear powered vessel in the reserve fleet would involve a massive expense as the reserve fleet is a low-security concern. Getting on a mothballed reserve vessel without permission is almost a trivial accomplishment these days. Adding a nuclear vessel would mean having to upgrade security to that of a nuclear plant with the resulting gigantic annual costs. And even then, it would be a softer target for those wanting nuclear materials.
“Making America Great Again” does not include increasing security risks to this country or saddling our Navy with an outdated money sink that’s a logistical nightmare.
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