Just thinking out loud. LCS's have Blue and Gold crews, right? But the LCS seem to be hard-pressed to deploy for long periods without the need for maintenance, watchstanding and relief from crew fatigue. Why not make them single crewed and up the day-to-day manning by combining a higher number from Blue/Gold team total numbers? The excess can man what ever passes for SIMA nowadays and do maintenance on LCS's in their homeports. They might get some extended life and use out of these ships, somewhere, somehow. That, or just decomm them all and send the crews elsewhere.
I was thinking the LCS platforms might be better transferred to the US Coast Guard for deployment to the Caribbean, where hostile air activity should be at a minimum.
Here's why the partisan gridlock becomes so frustrating. How do I make the case to my Representative? All he seem to care about is yelling about immigration.
LCS 17 is 4 yrs old. Her second deployment. It was towed back from the first one, broken down half way through. Not a huge vote of confidence for a "new" ship.
No mention that in the Blue Crew's time "afloat" they had to be towed in a couple of times and broke down like 6x. Ship is still over there with the Gold crew.
By any stretch of the imagination, these ships cannot be relied upon. 17 was on water hours most of the time and pretty limited in what she could do "steaming."
Maybe it's just bad math, but the round trip between Mayport to Bahrain alone seems like more than 15K NM. That makes ya' curious about how much time was in-port and how much of that time in-port was for contractor maintenance. Especially as they only had three in-ports while assigned to Fifth Fleet. Assuming 90 days in/outchop? Hmmm......
Great post. I've long had a softness for the Omaha-class CLs; as a Middie on a summer cruise port call in her namesake city I first learned the heroic story of Marblehead's epic voyage home from Java. Came to learn a few years back that Grandpa Scoobs (The Blackshoe) served aboard Cincinnati CL-6 several years out of The Boat School during the lean depression years - the Omahas might not have been frontline material but at least they brought enough speed, endurance, and firepower to the table to be useful elsewhere - and they were reliable!
It's very strange and may raise interesting questions as to why design and build location are selected in the USA. The USN has very good AAW ships but, for some reason, has decided that ASW was not so important. After the LCS fiasco some sense was fleetingly observed, let's use an existing design, with minimal adaption. A variant of FREMM was selected, a fairly good ASW frigate. Sorry, Type 26 not allowed even though it was designed from the keel up as a high end ASW frigate, because it was a new build and not a proven design, fair enough, if those are the rules. US procurement rules seem to be a little bit flexible (cynicism suggests several reasons why) and suddenly the US version of the FREMM frigate only has a 15% commonality with the parent design. Isn't this a new, unproven design? The situation has been made infinitely worse than the selection of a yard where the now sonar can't be used. Are you actually building an ASW frigate?
Here's a suggestion. AUKUS pillar 3. The UK currently has four Type 26 and two Type 31 frigates in build. I'm sure that there will be some hard space to build the US some good ASW frigates as the leadership of your military, both political and military, seem incapable of building ships that your navy actually needs. The slightly rude saying about inability to organise a drinking session in a brewery does seem to apply. Unfortunately for you, and the world at large.
My grandfather was the Warrant Bos'n in USS Cincinnati before the war. He retired as a LCDR, commanding three ATF's during the war. I proudly display the wardroom photo (one of the long flat photos) in my study. More importantly, he also created in me the love for the US Navy.
Sort of related, sort of not...but I saw a meme recently asserting that the only active-duty ship in the U.S. Navy to have sunk another ship in combat is the U.S.S. Constitution. Questioning this, but if you don't count air arm actions, is it a real possibility?
Capt. Chris Polk, the Navy's program manager for undersea weapons, detailed the effort to The War Zone and other attendees at the Navy League's Sea Air Space symposium near Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. The goal, Polk said, was to have a torpedo that costs $500,000 or less, with all components acquired and produced within a year. For comparison, the current unit cost of a Mk 48 Mod 7 torpedo is approximately $4.2 million, according to the Navy's 2025 Fiscal Year budget request.
"There were ten ships of the class, all commissioned between 1923 and 1925 in three different yards in Washington State, Massachusetts and Philadelphia."
Oh, its been so long since a metric like that has come to fruittion with our sea service....
Just thinking out loud. LCS's have Blue and Gold crews, right? But the LCS seem to be hard-pressed to deploy for long periods without the need for maintenance, watchstanding and relief from crew fatigue. Why not make them single crewed and up the day-to-day manning by combining a higher number from Blue/Gold team total numbers? The excess can man what ever passes for SIMA nowadays and do maintenance on LCS's in their homeports. They might get some extended life and use out of these ships, somewhere, somehow. That, or just decomm them all and send the crews elsewhere.
I was thinking the LCS platforms might be better transferred to the US Coast Guard for deployment to the Caribbean, where hostile air activity should be at a minimum.
Here's why the partisan gridlock becomes so frustrating. How do I make the case to my Representative? All he seem to care about is yelling about immigration.
Who in the House cares?
“Where are the LCS?”
They have no air defense and weak anti-boat defenses.
Where to put them?
Anti-drug patrols and showing the flag in Micronesia or the Baltic
LCS 17 is 4 yrs old. Her second deployment. It was towed back from the first one, broken down half way through. Not a huge vote of confidence for a "new" ship.
No mention that in the Blue Crew's time "afloat" they had to be towed in a couple of times and broke down like 6x. Ship is still over there with the Gold crew.
By any stretch of the imagination, these ships cannot be relied upon. 17 was on water hours most of the time and pretty limited in what she could do "steaming."
"Of the 111 surface combatants. Of those, 24 are LCS. "
I'm not a sailor, but those two sentences should damn two generations of FO's to eternal Hell.
What were you all thinking?
https://i.imgflip.com/13sexi.jpg
Maybe it's just bad math, but the round trip between Mayport to Bahrain alone seems like more than 15K NM. That makes ya' curious about how much time was in-port and how much of that time in-port was for contractor maintenance. Especially as they only had three in-ports while assigned to Fifth Fleet. Assuming 90 days in/outchop? Hmmm......
Great post. I've long had a softness for the Omaha-class CLs; as a Middie on a summer cruise port call in her namesake city I first learned the heroic story of Marblehead's epic voyage home from Java. Came to learn a few years back that Grandpa Scoobs (The Blackshoe) served aboard Cincinnati CL-6 several years out of The Boat School during the lean depression years - the Omahas might not have been frontline material but at least they brought enough speed, endurance, and firepower to the table to be useful elsewhere - and they were reliable!
The geniuses in the five sided puzzle palace have been ruling over the ashes of the US Navy. Bring back John Lehman.
It's very strange and may raise interesting questions as to why design and build location are selected in the USA. The USN has very good AAW ships but, for some reason, has decided that ASW was not so important. After the LCS fiasco some sense was fleetingly observed, let's use an existing design, with minimal adaption. A variant of FREMM was selected, a fairly good ASW frigate. Sorry, Type 26 not allowed even though it was designed from the keel up as a high end ASW frigate, because it was a new build and not a proven design, fair enough, if those are the rules. US procurement rules seem to be a little bit flexible (cynicism suggests several reasons why) and suddenly the US version of the FREMM frigate only has a 15% commonality with the parent design. Isn't this a new, unproven design? The situation has been made infinitely worse than the selection of a yard where the now sonar can't be used. Are you actually building an ASW frigate?
Here's a suggestion. AUKUS pillar 3. The UK currently has four Type 26 and two Type 31 frigates in build. I'm sure that there will be some hard space to build the US some good ASW frigates as the leadership of your military, both political and military, seem incapable of building ships that your navy actually needs. The slightly rude saying about inability to organise a drinking session in a brewery does seem to apply. Unfortunately for you, and the world at large.
My grandfather was the Warrant Bos'n in USS Cincinnati before the war. He retired as a LCDR, commanding three ATF's during the war. I proudly display the wardroom photo (one of the long flat photos) in my study. More importantly, he also created in me the love for the US Navy.
Sort of related, sort of not...but I saw a meme recently asserting that the only active-duty ship in the U.S. Navy to have sunk another ship in combat is the U.S.S. Constitution. Questioning this, but if you don't count air arm actions, is it a real possibility?
This shows there is some sense in the Navy:
Capt. Chris Polk, the Navy's program manager for undersea weapons, detailed the effort to The War Zone and other attendees at the Navy League's Sea Air Space symposium near Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. The goal, Polk said, was to have a torpedo that costs $500,000 or less, with all components acquired and produced within a year. For comparison, the current unit cost of a Mk 48 Mod 7 torpedo is approximately $4.2 million, according to the Navy's 2025 Fiscal Year budget request.
https://www.twz.com/sea/navy-wants-a-cheap-heavy-torpedo-that-can-be-stockpiled-fast
12 sea and anchor details.
Does that mean they anchored six times (arriving and departing each get a detail)?
Is that significant in any way, besides looking for something to boast of?
Historical analogue to the Indianapolis's deployment (minus the Diplomatic component that the USN doesnt really participate in now)
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2019/december/misfit-ships-chinas-great-river
Things went well...Until they didn't....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsFSoYKtro0
"There were ten ships of the class, all commissioned between 1923 and 1925 in three different yards in Washington State, Massachusetts and Philadelphia."
Oh, its been so long since a metric like that has come to fruittion with our sea service....