Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Stephen Hagberg's avatar

Mad, I am....

And I am seeing a LOT of articles full of notions coming out of Proceedings these days about what we could do, what we should do, stuff and things.

Even Lehman's article about how we made it through after 'Nam was a huge disappointment. (Though the interview on the podcast was much more encouraging)

Ships rusty, double slamming deployments to appear 'unpredictable,' hyperfocused on non-warfighting training and webinars. I don't get it Sal. I just don't. Hell, recently it was national news when the 11th elevator on Ford was accepted as working by the Navy. An elevator!

I'm with you on accountability. Optempo, Afghanistan withdrawal, building a fleet that isn't needed and NOT building a fleet that is needed. Lehman mentioned the added delay in projects due to having to clear them with the Joint folks.

I sit here in a port city, one that used to build boats. One that decommissioned boats after WWII. One that, the last I can remember, built a smallboy for Saudi Arabia in the 70's with solid gold faucets. ( I know in Seattle, Todd built a couple after and has an LCS in drydock) Bremerton used to build ships.

I look at the landscape and think of what it would take to do a post Pearl Harbor emergency build and cannot see how it would be done today. And even if we got the steel and facilities, we would NOT have all sorts of fancy electronics available for them. We would be right back down to Mk 1 eyeball through a sight, pounding out rounds, torpedoes and depth charges in primitive fighting styles very quickly. Hope we kept the plans for Liberty ships and got oral histories from the surviving builders to help us along.

Awareness and accountability seem to be missing Sal. Even as a deckplate sailor, I see the need to clean some house up in the chain. Better to do it now than to have to court martial the cleaning later.

Expand full comment
PJH's avatar

Elected leaders are more focused on diversity and inclusion. America no longer has the guts to be a fighting force. The defense acquisition process is boggled down with bureaucratic B.S. Military branch "class desks" are filled with people from academia that have no clue of how the military complex works or operates. People in this country actually believe we can live in a utopian society. It won't matter when we're all dead and gone because we couldn't fight back.

Expand full comment
5 more comments...

No posts