The situation really is critical if everyone believes what Navy leadership says about China. The Army is experiencing a lot of the same issues as the Navy in procurement. The lack of accountability is disgusting.
These CNOs did well for the most part. Clark Raytheon. Mullen GM. Roughead Theranos (can’t win em all). Greenert BAE. Richardson Boeing (oh well). Gilday ??? I wonder where the current CNO will utilize her degree in journalism after she retires.
I gave your post a "like" because it is spot on. That said, while crawling the webs over Easter weekend for the original picture of the NYC skyline lit with three crosses, I happened to have come across this. (I admit it, I was searching for the comics and this just happened to be on the page.) If you go to page 12 of the March 31, 1956 Oxnard Courier-Press on the top right hand side of page 12 you will find a headline "World Wide Camera Views". Below the headline are pictures of sixteen GOFOs listing their plum positions in retirement. Senior officers haven't returned to their modest family businesses since before WW1. Just throwing it out there for perspective - not because I believe that it is right. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=Y3Sh7dCAXz0C&dat=19560331&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
Not Stalin-esque. Something similar to what George Marshall did as Army Chief of Staff in the late 1930s. He retired a slew of generals, brought in a bunch of much younger people he'd been tracking - sometimes for decades. Most of them about 50 years old - Patton was the old guy at 55.
Maybe share some accountability with the program executives and the ASN RDA to whom they report.
Yes the CNO and OPNAV are the echelon 1, and own the preponderance of PIM performance, but the reality of how our C2 and incentive structures are established cannot be ignored when conducting forensics in acquisition foibles.
Our industrial base was shipped overseas, especially our drydocks and other equipment. The Clinton administration closed all of our government-owned shipyards and now we don't have the infrastructure to gear up and put more hulls in the water. They sold everything that wasn't bolted down, catering to NIMBYs who hate icky industrial plants and shipyards.
Key trades atrophied as there was no work and no prospects and our ruling class prioritized getting a ruinously wasteful college degree funded by student loans at the expense of the trades.
I'm nominally right-wing or whatever you want to call it, but trying to compete against state-funded shipyards in other countries with purely commercial works beholden to stockholders isn't working. We need a massive investment in our shipyards and industrial base.
That's not to mention what we are trying to build is total crap. The Littoral "Combat" Ship is the biggest embarrassment in procurement, up there with the Sergeant York DIVADS disaster when the stupid radar on that AAA vehicle locked up on the fan in a crapper during testing. That high-speed empty hull couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag, if it isn't dockside getting repaired by tech-reps since the crew complement is smaller than the IQ of most of Congress.
We get a nice foreign frigate design that works well, the FREMM, and what do we do with it? We completely redesign it, going from 85% commonality to 15%. Why bother using the original design anyhow and just go clean sheet in that instance? I get that we need to have our weapons, sensors and combat systems, but do we need to completely redesign the wheel there when the Chinese are outbuilding us 10-1?
We're a deeply divided country among partisan and ethnic lines that can't agree on anything. Our ruling class encourages perversion and anti-white bigotry at every turn while spending our great-grandchildren into the poorhouse to provide Israel and Ukraine with billions in borrowed money to fight wars we don't need to be involved in.
China's population might be getting older, but they can at least put hulls in the water and crews on those ships. We're too busy training our sailors in diversity garbage and what pronouns to use to worry about preparing them for battle or heck, navigating ships without collisions.
If we had to fight a major war, we'd lose. We'd lose BADLY. I don't want to say that, but it's the truth. I'm one of those veterans who actively encourage young people NOT to join the service. If diversity and sexual deviants is what our ruling class want in the military, let them fight and die in these pointless wars to enrich the plutocrats.
Grizzled Coastie: Well, there's always the Cajun Navy, complete with bass boats and coolers full of beer. But, they'll all need diversity training and fittings for maternity flotation vests (is "vests" OK, or too masculine?)
I don't know that we'd lose, but we wouldn't dominate...we'd take a lot more losses than we would if we had the weapons, systems, and platforms we need in the appropriate numbers.
Beg pardon, but DIVADS could be made to work. The problem was that they thought the threat had shifted from strafing airplanes to missile-firing helicopters.
The Army's whole air defense story is a sad tale of botched acquisitions. Patriot and Stinger worked well, but the mid-level systems have been a morass of misfunction since Mauler...about the time I was born.
"We get a nice foreign frigate design that works well, the FREMM, and what do we do with it? We completely redesign it, going from 85% commonality to 15%." The individuals that signed off on these changes should suffer a significant penalty. They won't, but they should.
Sal…”a middling retired USN CDR and his band of merry friends” continue to ring the alarm bell but Congress and the people appear to be tone deaf. Sir, you undersell yourself as the herald of Naval hypocrisy, doublespeak and doom amongst our leadership. The more this old Marine reads, the more I’m falling into your ranks when muster is sounded. When I see what the Navy is doing with readiness and shipbuilding and our beloved Corps is doing with FD2030 and our so-called amphibious Navy…you cannot avoid asking the tough questions.
To tie a bow on your comments today, there’s this from today’s Early Bird: “US Navy ship programs face years-long delays amid labor, supply woes.” Like that’s news…
Meanwhile, let’s keep painting drone kills on the sides of aircraft in the Red Sea and thinking we are warfighters. Years of apathy and complacency on full display. Our adversaries should be licking their chops.
Carry on, Sir! I’ll continue yelling at the kids to get off the grass.
I read today that the USAF and Army are asking retired NCO's and officers to come back on active duty to fill shortfalls in recruiting. Let the Navy do the same thing and when this middling retired USN CDR and his band of merry friends volunteer give them cattle prods, cat-o-nine's, ample travel pay & per diem and the simple order, "At 'em, men!" Maybe a brassard with Day-Glow lettering that says, "I Am Your Worst Nightmare, Bucko." I'll go, but I want to be a W-5 and have a PRT waiver.
I see you shortened "cat-o-nine" to just plain "cat". I like that Lion. Am rethinking it now...would bring a hungry trained attack lion instead. And some Alka-Seltzer. I like cats, dogs too. Wish my old Rhodesian Ridgeback, Sonya, was still alive. Heard they use them to hunt lions. She was a good but fearless pup. She could crunch beef bones and once ate a whole gopher turtle. Cave canem, DB's.
Never got sea sick in 26 years. DEI might do it, Pete. Pre-DEI back in 1973 I attended the mandatory UPWARD Seminar on CVA-19. UPWARD was a race relations/sensitivity training seminar. Nice idea, I thought at the time. One Black female LTjg, two Black E-6's, one White E-6. I was an attentive listener. Something came up...one of the facilitators brought up the trope of "when Blacks move in, property values decline" and said: "Discuss". I was eager to participate and raised my hand. I said, "Now suppose a Black doctor with a nice wife and kids moved into an old, all-White neighborhood full of bigots in Birmingham, Alabama and the local Whites panicked and rushed to sell their homes for whatever they could get out of it before more Blacks moved in. If in fact they sold their $50K home for $35K couldn't you say that housing prices did in fact decline because some bigots panicked and got what they deserved...a low price for their house...that they deserved it?" Good Lord, you'd think I had been wearing a Klan hood. I got pooped on big time for being a racist. Never mind that at the intro we were told this was a free and clear platform to discuss anything (re race) in a fault free manner. What did I learn? To STFU. What did most of my classmates learn? Same thing. It was a week of awfulness overseen by 4 facilitators with an iffy agenda. That same year, there was a one time survey (anonymous...but we all know any Navy survey is never anonymous) that asked us to declare our race. I said I was Black. Made Chief first time up at 8 years. Maybe UPWARD wasn't wholly a waste of time. Yeah, DEI would eat this dinosaur's lunch here in 2024. I decline to participate.
I was a naive E-6 and believed what the O-2 lead facilitator/instructor told us. She seemed like a decent person. Up until that time I don't recall ever getting BS-ed by a superior. Why would they feel they need to? The BS-ers were usually subordinates trying to con me. My guard was in that direction. I was 25, naive.
When I have service leaders who are U.S. Naval Academy graduates telling me we no longer need Escorts for shipping around the globe . . . when I KNOW they were taught about Mahan and securing the Sea Lines Of Communications for a Maritime Nation . . . and I know they know what a Choke Point is . . . AND I KNOW what the Surface Traffic Picture looks like around the globe (AIS) . . . and congress who knows this too AGREES WITH THEM . . . then I KNOW Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark!
Until INTEGRITY returns to the process . . . just like Solomon said . . . everything is VANITY. We must be in the end times for even those in authority are deceiving us (U.S.).
While true, I suspect it was her Marxist, autocratic outlook that sealed the deal. I never thought I'd hear a SC justice make an undeniable assault on the first amendment as she did a couple weeks ago complaining that broad interpretation could "hamstring the government."
You asked "why" CDR, but you gave the answer...and it can be the only answer that makes sense:
"From the lazy to the greedy, too many are vested in the inertia of the present system, and the ease of position and profit that comes with it."
We were building ships as employment programs, not to meet needs, with the vested interests of Congress Critters around the ships being built in their constituency.
It is, I believe, inarguable that we know HOW to build ships and what we NEED to build, along with how many. That we haven't is a testimony to building ships in a non-warfare environment with our eyes on never being challenged at sea because nobody could or would build a navy to challenge us. Then...China.
But it really all falls apart on 1) competition to build those ships to spec leads to arcane contractual language that the contractors use to get additional money for things they say weren't covered in the language (and probably weren't) at the low cost they put in their RFP response...hence the majority of the program delays and 2) the competition over budget between competing programs, competing service branches, and competing Congress critters...all eliciting compromises on budget, programs, etc. that lead to mediocre results.
Of course, more money for defense solves those problems but one party demands that, if we increase defense spending, we have to increase spending on social programs, rather than just doing what is necessary to build ships, planes, missiles, tanks, etc. that we need. I assume we all know what the percentage of spending on defense looks like now as part of the budget vs history? If not, go to the following link: https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2002099941/
This is part of the problem with implementing real acquisition reform. There are too many people making a bundle off their knowledge of the current system. Real reform would shatter the old system, and make that expertise worthless.
The only people with expertise worth keeping would be the battle-scarred subject matter experts - who don't get the big money anyway.
I know many on this forum are students of history. This institutional rot and mismanagement reminds me much of the French Airforce in the mid 1930's... French politicians
without prudence or sound policy. Aviation plants delivering fighters with no gunsights or even propellers. Attempts to even build a "universal" airplane for all French services...and you thought the F35 was a new concept... 8-) 1940 was a year of grim consiquence..
We who love our country find this situation now infuriating and scary.
A good analogy. We certainly don't have the talent that was specifying the design of the "2100 ton DD'" (Fletcher) or the Fleet boats that would be desperately needed in a few years.
As an Army veteran it is a bittersweet comfort to see that my branch isn't the only one flailing about. War would probably fix this problem, but I don't think I am alone in believing that cost may be far too high.
It never is. But the sifting is ruthless, and incompetence gets fragged pretty quickly. Some times mediocrities still survive. People like Clark and Eisenhower miraculously tend to survive and thrive at the expense of those under them.
EDO culture of "stick close to your desk and never go to sea" combined with the NAVSEA motto of 'mediocre is the goal and failure is the threshold,' makes one wonder if there's any hope of a good decision or product. The uniformed folks at the system commands should all be line officers and professional civilians for continuity. Having design and capability decisions driven by officers with little to no at-sea experience, appearing to function as little more than than costumed civilians, with no clue of warfare, operational needs, or survivability is a travesty.
While reading the USNI News, I came upon a very interesting fact dealing with our new frigate. "While the design was based on a long-serving warship, design agent Gibbs & Cox heavily modified the FREMM design to meet NAVSEA requirements, like tougher survivability standards than those of European navies, Navy officials have told USNI News. At one point the Constellation design shared about 85 percent commonality with the original FREMM design, but the alterations have brought that commonality down to under 15 percent, a person familiar with the changes told USNI News." (USNI News: By Mallory Shelbourne and Sam Lagrone April 2, 2024 5:11 PM - Updated: APRIL 2, 2024 8:19 PM)
I have read repeatedly that it is the lack of workers and supply chain issues that are delaying so many ship building programs. After reading this article, I think there are some other reasons why launching of this vessel will be three years behind schedule. Just the humble opinion of an old hermit.
One of the reasons why Japanese and Korean shipyards are fast and cheap is that they don't start building ships until they are given completed designs with a signoff by the customer. This is apparently completely different than the way the US Navy builds ships. Oddly enough, the Navy approach greatly increases cost and time.
It's why I always thought the FREMM was going to be a bad bargain.
Damn it, this isn't rocket science (even if it were, I'm an Aerospace & Ocean Engineer). A ship is a truck, a vehicle for carrying and supporting sensors and weapons. Buying a foreign truck design, modifying it to U.S. standards, then fitting American sensors and weapons is a recipe for trouble. It'll work...half the fighting power of a Burke at three-quarters the price.
"A ship is a truck, a vehicle for carrying and supporting sensors and weapons"
You, sir, are mistaken. The purpose of a ship, or any military vehicle or installation for that matter, is to provide sufficient office and exhibition space to manage and conduct DEI initiatives for the personnel onboard, and thus provide jobs to the commissars providing such management and training.
Am I to understand that the people who gave us two versions of LCS believe our ships require tougher survivability standards than those of European navies?
As at least lip service to counter the backlash when it became known that the LCS was getting built to civilian ship standards...
But what the Navy did was to first classify the entire topic (to get 'Survivability' out of the public eye), and change the legacy Survivability criteria (Levels I II III) to a set of sliding ...."As you make it".... scales.
Instead, it will be a one hit and done flotilla festooned with expensive and sexy 'Susceptability Reduction' gadgets that Raytheon et al will make good $$$ on.
Clark crushed the Syscoms with huge personnel reductions. While we were screwing around with "Spiral Development " which got us exactly what we knew it would. More wasted money for marginal platforms. Every time we start an acquisition and don't know what we really want, it will go sideways. This is not a new revelation but a lesson we fail to learn
The situation really is critical if everyone believes what Navy leadership says about China. The Army is experiencing a lot of the same issues as the Navy in procurement. The lack of accountability is disgusting.
So, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play? Seriously, tough but fair heads up for the next decade
These CNOs did well for the most part. Clark Raytheon. Mullen GM. Roughead Theranos (can’t win em all). Greenert BAE. Richardson Boeing (oh well). Gilday ??? I wonder where the current CNO will utilize her degree in journalism after she retires.
Clark wasn't just on the Raytheon Board, but also Rolls Royce North America... the folks who sell the MT-30 turbines on the Freedoms... http://www.walkersresearch.com/Profilepages/Show_Executive_Title/Executiveprofile/V/Vern__Clark_100020976.html
And Roughead also joined the Northrop Grumman Board...
https://www.northropgrumman.com/who-we-are/leadership/gary-roughead
As opposed to the GE gas turbines that are used on every other USN ship....
I gave your post a "like" because it is spot on. That said, while crawling the webs over Easter weekend for the original picture of the NYC skyline lit with three crosses, I happened to have come across this. (I admit it, I was searching for the comics and this just happened to be on the page.) If you go to page 12 of the March 31, 1956 Oxnard Courier-Press on the top right hand side of page 12 you will find a headline "World Wide Camera Views". Below the headline are pictures of sixteen GOFOs listing their plum positions in retirement. Senior officers haven't returned to their modest family businesses since before WW1. Just throwing it out there for perspective - not because I believe that it is right. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=Y3Sh7dCAXz0C&dat=19560331&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
I wonder how much Admiral Kirby is worth in corporate America.
He should be worth whatever Lord Haw-Haw was paid.
I hope she Jumboizes the fleet.
Its sad when you start to yearn for a Stalin-esque house cleaning down at your favorite service branch...
Not Stalin-esque. Something similar to what George Marshall did as Army Chief of Staff in the late 1930s. He retired a slew of generals, brought in a bunch of much younger people he'd been tracking - sometimes for decades. Most of them about 50 years old - Patton was the old guy at 55.
Lie. Rinse. Repeat.
A man that lies to himself in a mirror will lie to anyone.
If you lie to yourself long enough, you begin to believe it.
It's not a lie if you believe it. - G. Costanza
Maybe share some accountability with the program executives and the ASN RDA to whom they report.
Yes the CNO and OPNAV are the echelon 1, and own the preponderance of PIM performance, but the reality of how our C2 and incentive structures are established cannot be ignored when conducting forensics in acquisition foibles.
Our industrial base was shipped overseas, especially our drydocks and other equipment. The Clinton administration closed all of our government-owned shipyards and now we don't have the infrastructure to gear up and put more hulls in the water. They sold everything that wasn't bolted down, catering to NIMBYs who hate icky industrial plants and shipyards.
Key trades atrophied as there was no work and no prospects and our ruling class prioritized getting a ruinously wasteful college degree funded by student loans at the expense of the trades.
I'm nominally right-wing or whatever you want to call it, but trying to compete against state-funded shipyards in other countries with purely commercial works beholden to stockholders isn't working. We need a massive investment in our shipyards and industrial base.
That's not to mention what we are trying to build is total crap. The Littoral "Combat" Ship is the biggest embarrassment in procurement, up there with the Sergeant York DIVADS disaster when the stupid radar on that AAA vehicle locked up on the fan in a crapper during testing. That high-speed empty hull couldn't fight its way out of a wet paper bag, if it isn't dockside getting repaired by tech-reps since the crew complement is smaller than the IQ of most of Congress.
We get a nice foreign frigate design that works well, the FREMM, and what do we do with it? We completely redesign it, going from 85% commonality to 15%. Why bother using the original design anyhow and just go clean sheet in that instance? I get that we need to have our weapons, sensors and combat systems, but do we need to completely redesign the wheel there when the Chinese are outbuilding us 10-1?
We're a deeply divided country among partisan and ethnic lines that can't agree on anything. Our ruling class encourages perversion and anti-white bigotry at every turn while spending our great-grandchildren into the poorhouse to provide Israel and Ukraine with billions in borrowed money to fight wars we don't need to be involved in.
China's population might be getting older, but they can at least put hulls in the water and crews on those ships. We're too busy training our sailors in diversity garbage and what pronouns to use to worry about preparing them for battle or heck, navigating ships without collisions.
If we had to fight a major war, we'd lose. We'd lose BADLY. I don't want to say that, but it's the truth. I'm one of those veterans who actively encourage young people NOT to join the service. If diversity and sexual deviants is what our ruling class want in the military, let them fight and die in these pointless wars to enrich the plutocrats.
Grizzled Coastie: Well, there's always the Cajun Navy, complete with bass boats and coolers full of beer. But, they'll all need diversity training and fittings for maternity flotation vests (is "vests" OK, or too masculine?)
I don't know that we'd lose, but we wouldn't dominate...we'd take a lot more losses than we would if we had the weapons, systems, and platforms we need in the appropriate numbers.
Not "maternity". Flotation gear for Shipwrights of Substance. :-)
Beg pardon, but DIVADS could be made to work. The problem was that they thought the threat had shifted from strafing airplanes to missile-firing helicopters.
The Army's whole air defense story is a sad tale of botched acquisitions. Patriot and Stinger worked well, but the mid-level systems have been a morass of misfunction since Mauler...about the time I was born.
"We get a nice foreign frigate design that works well, the FREMM, and what do we do with it? We completely redesign it, going from 85% commonality to 15%." The individuals that signed off on these changes should suffer a significant penalty. They won't, but they should.
Sal…”a middling retired USN CDR and his band of merry friends” continue to ring the alarm bell but Congress and the people appear to be tone deaf. Sir, you undersell yourself as the herald of Naval hypocrisy, doublespeak and doom amongst our leadership. The more this old Marine reads, the more I’m falling into your ranks when muster is sounded. When I see what the Navy is doing with readiness and shipbuilding and our beloved Corps is doing with FD2030 and our so-called amphibious Navy…you cannot avoid asking the tough questions.
To tie a bow on your comments today, there’s this from today’s Early Bird: “US Navy ship programs face years-long delays amid labor, supply woes.” Like that’s news…
Meanwhile, let’s keep painting drone kills on the sides of aircraft in the Red Sea and thinking we are warfighters. Years of apathy and complacency on full display. Our adversaries should be licking their chops.
Carry on, Sir! I’ll continue yelling at the kids to get off the grass.
I object to be referred to as merely his "merry band of friends." I thought we were so much more important than that. ;-)
I read today that the USAF and Army are asking retired NCO's and officers to come back on active duty to fill shortfalls in recruiting. Let the Navy do the same thing and when this middling retired USN CDR and his band of merry friends volunteer give them cattle prods, cat-o-nine's, ample travel pay & per diem and the simple order, "At 'em, men!" Maybe a brassard with Day-Glow lettering that says, "I Am Your Worst Nightmare, Bucko." I'll go, but I want to be a W-5 and have a PRT waiver.
You would get sick at your first DEI briefing.
That's what the cat is for....to use on the Diversity Bullies.
I see you shortened "cat-o-nine" to just plain "cat". I like that Lion. Am rethinking it now...would bring a hungry trained attack lion instead. And some Alka-Seltzer. I like cats, dogs too. Wish my old Rhodesian Ridgeback, Sonya, was still alive. Heard they use them to hunt lions. She was a good but fearless pup. She could crunch beef bones and once ate a whole gopher turtle. Cave canem, DB's.
Never got sea sick in 26 years. DEI might do it, Pete. Pre-DEI back in 1973 I attended the mandatory UPWARD Seminar on CVA-19. UPWARD was a race relations/sensitivity training seminar. Nice idea, I thought at the time. One Black female LTjg, two Black E-6's, one White E-6. I was an attentive listener. Something came up...one of the facilitators brought up the trope of "when Blacks move in, property values decline" and said: "Discuss". I was eager to participate and raised my hand. I said, "Now suppose a Black doctor with a nice wife and kids moved into an old, all-White neighborhood full of bigots in Birmingham, Alabama and the local Whites panicked and rushed to sell their homes for whatever they could get out of it before more Blacks moved in. If in fact they sold their $50K home for $35K couldn't you say that housing prices did in fact decline because some bigots panicked and got what they deserved...a low price for their house...that they deserved it?" Good Lord, you'd think I had been wearing a Klan hood. I got pooped on big time for being a racist. Never mind that at the intro we were told this was a free and clear platform to discuss anything (re race) in a fault free manner. What did I learn? To STFU. What did most of my classmates learn? Same thing. It was a week of awfulness overseen by 4 facilitators with an iffy agenda. That same year, there was a one time survey (anonymous...but we all know any Navy survey is never anonymous) that asked us to declare our race. I said I was Black. Made Chief first time up at 8 years. Maybe UPWARD wasn't wholly a waste of time. Yeah, DEI would eat this dinosaur's lunch here in 2024. I decline to participate.
When the subject of reparations comes up I ask if I can get reparations for the gold that FDR stole from my grandfather and great grandfather.
"we were told this was a free and clear platform to discuss anything ..."
*sigh*
And you believed them.
I was a naive E-6 and believed what the O-2 lead facilitator/instructor told us. She seemed like a decent person. Up until that time I don't recall ever getting BS-ed by a superior. Why would they feel they need to? The BS-ers were usually subordinates trying to con me. My guard was in that direction. I was 25, naive.
When I have service leaders who are U.S. Naval Academy graduates telling me we no longer need Escorts for shipping around the globe . . . when I KNOW they were taught about Mahan and securing the Sea Lines Of Communications for a Maritime Nation . . . and I know they know what a Choke Point is . . . AND I KNOW what the Surface Traffic Picture looks like around the globe (AIS) . . . and congress who knows this too AGREES WITH THEM . . . then I KNOW Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark!
Until INTEGRITY returns to the process . . . just like Solomon said . . . everything is VANITY. We must be in the end times for even those in authority are deceiving us (U.S.).
"Clark, Mullen, Roughead, Greenert, Richardson, Gilday, and Franchetti."
What a group of 'Really Smart Guys!'
Well, that last one sure isn't...a guy that is.
Its a rather elastic term these days....
I would think "Gal" is frowned upon as well.
All the more reason to use it.
True enough.
Probably is worth bringing up again why I use the term...
In NatSec circles, the phrase "Really Smart Guy", is used as an almost obligatory initial descriptor when referring to someone.
Example conversation:
'I worked on Such and Such, with So and So -Really Smart Guy!- [conversation then continues]....'
One is not considered a legit part of the the NatSec World unless they have been proffered "Really Smart Guy!" status.
There is a corollary too.
When a subordinate voices pushback on a given sacred cow, their superior is liable to say...
'Oh sweet summer child, you're really smart, so think about what you're saying...'
In that case, 'really smart' is a rattlesnake rattle.
unless followed immediately by "Gadot" in which circumstance there may be cause to smile
How could we possibly know, if even a Supreme Court Justice finds the answer unknowable except perhaps to a biologist.
That Justice was a DEI hire, so it figures.
While true, I suspect it was her Marxist, autocratic outlook that sealed the deal. I never thought I'd hear a SC justice make an undeniable assault on the first amendment as she did a couple weeks ago complaining that broad interpretation could "hamstring the government."
Our Republic is truly in dire straights.
My fingers are crossed that the Dems do not get a chance to replace a Justice before an R becomes the next President. We would be fubared.
True
You asked "why" CDR, but you gave the answer...and it can be the only answer that makes sense:
"From the lazy to the greedy, too many are vested in the inertia of the present system, and the ease of position and profit that comes with it."
We were building ships as employment programs, not to meet needs, with the vested interests of Congress Critters around the ships being built in their constituency.
It is, I believe, inarguable that we know HOW to build ships and what we NEED to build, along with how many. That we haven't is a testimony to building ships in a non-warfare environment with our eyes on never being challenged at sea because nobody could or would build a navy to challenge us. Then...China.
But it really all falls apart on 1) competition to build those ships to spec leads to arcane contractual language that the contractors use to get additional money for things they say weren't covered in the language (and probably weren't) at the low cost they put in their RFP response...hence the majority of the program delays and 2) the competition over budget between competing programs, competing service branches, and competing Congress critters...all eliciting compromises on budget, programs, etc. that lead to mediocre results.
Of course, more money for defense solves those problems but one party demands that, if we increase defense spending, we have to increase spending on social programs, rather than just doing what is necessary to build ships, planes, missiles, tanks, etc. that we need. I assume we all know what the percentage of spending on defense looks like now as part of the budget vs history? If not, go to the following link: https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2002099941/
This is part of the problem with implementing real acquisition reform. There are too many people making a bundle off their knowledge of the current system. Real reform would shatter the old system, and make that expertise worthless.
The only people with expertise worth keeping would be the battle-scarred subject matter experts - who don't get the big money anyway.
I know many on this forum are students of history. This institutional rot and mismanagement reminds me much of the French Airforce in the mid 1930's... French politicians
without prudence or sound policy. Aviation plants delivering fighters with no gunsights or even propellers. Attempts to even build a "universal" airplane for all French services...and you thought the F35 was a new concept... 8-) 1940 was a year of grim consiquence..
We who love our country find this situation now infuriating and scary.
A good analogy. We certainly don't have the talent that was specifying the design of the "2100 ton DD'" (Fletcher) or the Fleet boats that would be desperately needed in a few years.
What we have (and perhaps deserve) is Vichy.
Superlative analysis. BTW, Rex's Hangar on YouTube recently did a two part video on the failure of French interwar bombers. They're worth viewing.
https://youtu.be/zSO7o0nMpmY?feature=shared
The French invested their resources in the Maginot Line. To be fair the Germans never did go through that line.
"...rage and despair" AYE.
As an Army veteran it is a bittersweet comfort to see that my branch isn't the only one flailing about. War would probably fix this problem, but I don't think I am alone in believing that cost may be far too high.
A war WILL fix the problem - one way or another. The butcher's bill won't be pretty.
It never is. But the sifting is ruthless, and incompetence gets fragged pretty quickly. Some times mediocrities still survive. People like Clark and Eisenhower miraculously tend to survive and thrive at the expense of those under them.
The Army COS has a degree in economics. The CNO has a degree in journalism. Pick your poison.
EDO culture of "stick close to your desk and never go to sea" combined with the NAVSEA motto of 'mediocre is the goal and failure is the threshold,' makes one wonder if there's any hope of a good decision or product. The uniformed folks at the system commands should all be line officers and professional civilians for continuity. Having design and capability decisions driven by officers with little to no at-sea experience, appearing to function as little more than than costumed civilians, with no clue of warfare, operational needs, or survivability is a travesty.
While reading the USNI News, I came upon a very interesting fact dealing with our new frigate. "While the design was based on a long-serving warship, design agent Gibbs & Cox heavily modified the FREMM design to meet NAVSEA requirements, like tougher survivability standards than those of European navies, Navy officials have told USNI News. At one point the Constellation design shared about 85 percent commonality with the original FREMM design, but the alterations have brought that commonality down to under 15 percent, a person familiar with the changes told USNI News." (USNI News: By Mallory Shelbourne and Sam Lagrone April 2, 2024 5:11 PM - Updated: APRIL 2, 2024 8:19 PM)
I have read repeatedly that it is the lack of workers and supply chain issues that are delaying so many ship building programs. After reading this article, I think there are some other reasons why launching of this vessel will be three years behind schedule. Just the humble opinion of an old hermit.
One of the reasons why Japanese and Korean shipyards are fast and cheap is that they don't start building ships until they are given completed designs with a signoff by the customer. This is apparently completely different than the way the US Navy builds ships. Oddly enough, the Navy approach greatly increases cost and time.
Also those two nations invested heavily in shipbuilding. Korea is a master of robotic welding and fashioning bulbous bows.
It's why I always thought the FREMM was going to be a bad bargain.
Damn it, this isn't rocket science (even if it were, I'm an Aerospace & Ocean Engineer). A ship is a truck, a vehicle for carrying and supporting sensors and weapons. Buying a foreign truck design, modifying it to U.S. standards, then fitting American sensors and weapons is a recipe for trouble. It'll work...half the fighting power of a Burke at three-quarters the price.
"A ship is a truck, a vehicle for carrying and supporting sensors and weapons"
You, sir, are mistaken. The purpose of a ship, or any military vehicle or installation for that matter, is to provide sufficient office and exhibition space to manage and conduct DEI initiatives for the personnel onboard, and thus provide jobs to the commissars providing such management and training.
Sir, you have made my day! A brilliant statement!
Am I to understand that the people who gave us two versions of LCS believe our ships require tougher survivability standards than those of European navies?
As at least lip service to counter the backlash when it became known that the LCS was getting built to civilian ship standards...
But what the Navy did was to first classify the entire topic (to get 'Survivability' out of the public eye), and change the legacy Survivability criteria (Levels I II III) to a set of sliding ...."As you make it".... scales.
https://news.usni.org/2013/01/17/navy-responds-pentagon-lcs-survivability-claims
https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-16-201.pdf
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2016/january/rethinking-survivability
https://www.secnav.navy.mil/doni/Directives/09000%20General%20Ship%20Design%20and%20Support/09-00%20General%20Ship%20Design%20Support/9070.1B.pdf
Don't expect a "Fight Hurt" fleet to get built...
Instead, it will be a one hit and done flotilla festooned with expensive and sexy 'Susceptability Reduction' gadgets that Raytheon et al will make good $$$ on.
True on all points, sadly
Clark crushed the Syscoms with huge personnel reductions. While we were screwing around with "Spiral Development " which got us exactly what we knew it would. More wasted money for marginal platforms. Every time we start an acquisition and don't know what we really want, it will go sideways. This is not a new revelation but a lesson we fail to learn