Lies, Damn Lies, and Shipbuilding Plans

a culture of untruth leaves footprints

Let’s build on yesterday’s Substack.

What does this graph, slide 21/21 natch, from CBO’s October 22, 2024 slide deck Perspective on the Navy’s 2025 Shipbuilding Plan tell you?

We describe this in various ways with differing levels of directness; over-promise, under-deliver; byproduct of layered optimism filters; spawn of happy-talk; culture of untruth; lies.

In this specific case, any sentient being comes away with the simple fact that there is no reason, given the historical record, for anyone to believe what the US Navy tells you about its shipbuilding plans.

It is the byproduct of lies, or just an institutional inability to speak honestly about sub-par performance? Considering what our officers are taught from their first FITREP, a bit of all of the above.

With that as a baseline, let’s look at a few other items from the PPT.

The best friend a larger Navy has is not the Joint-addled Admiralty, nor the Executive Branch, it is in the Legislative Branch.

In the Legislative Branch, the friend of the Navy is not in the House of Representatives, but the Senate.

If I were emperor, I would:

• Trade two SSBN for a 12th CVN.

• Convert four of the remaining SSBN to SSGN we can actually use in the expected fight. Yes, that leaves us with only six SSBN. If you want more, find the money. That’s enough for Armageddon.

• Cut 75% of the Known-Unknown, Unmanned Surface and Undersea Vessels for the Large Surface Combatants that we need for the Pacific fight.

• The growth in the Combat Logistics and Support Ships is good to see, but we need more. If needed, divert half of the above from Large Surface Combatants.

The fact that, in the expected year of our Lord Two Thousand Twenty Five, we cannot produce more than two DDG a year and do not have a second yard to pump out FFG is an indictment of our entire ruling elite.

Without drastic change at OPNAV, Congress, and the Executive Branch, we will be lucky to get Alternative 1. If you doubt me, review the first graph on this post.

This is what it looks like in pictures. I don’t see where we get the money for anything else.

Also, ignore the “out years.” That is all copium. At most, five years is about the only useful window.

As discussed Monday, we’ll be lucky to keep 290 with the inertia we have.

Remember that, right of 2029 is just wishes. If you really want to get scared and angry, there is one exception on the below quad-chart.

What you might gain can be sprinkled with pixie dust, but what you will lose is, like demographics, is just math. Look close at the bottom right corner. That is from the deliberate act to hobble our CVN production.

We may, and more likely, may not get additional cells after 2029. We for sure know when our CVN are decommissioning w/o replacement.

This should sober you up.

If the Navy won’t speak clearly to you, and the CBO has to be passively-aggressively polite, I’ll fill in the gap for you.

Where is the sense of urgency?

h/t Nigel.