We also need honesty about what we are seeing in the Virginia class maintenance. If they won't hold up as well as a 688 that's a reason to focus on a flight made of sterner stuff or to get moving to the next class with how to afford and maintain in mind.
And, dare I say it, since we can't build them ourselves buy some Diesel/AIP from other countries. I don't suggest them as replacements for SSNs but as taking up some of the work load. These could be used for the inevitable close to home missions should war breakout as well as operate from tenders or foreign bases closer to the lanes in the Pacific/Indian ocean. These boats could concentrated on the Chinese merchant fleet while the SSNS undertake strike missions and go after Chinese Navy assets. They are smaller, smaller crews less maintenance demands and can use smaller dry docks.
That's why I am all for the US Navy buying some Diesel/AIP submarines to free up the workload from the SSN's. The Diesel/AIP Submarines can be used for Forward deployed missions. Even for Close to home missions such as defense of CONUS and US territories. It would free up the SSN's for Strike missions and Carrier escort missions. On top of that, the Diesel/AIP subs can be used by USSOCOM in inserting and extracting special ops teams in the littoral waters. Imagine sneaking in a special forces team in the littoral waters and extracting them in the littoral waters. On top of that Diesel/AIP Submarines can make a great adversary training platform, similar to TOP GUN school and Red flag.
Forward deployed modern AIP diesel boats akin to what our allies use will be very effective in ASUW and even ASW. Getting in and out of the mission area is the hard part. Once on station, they are hard to kill and very deadly.
having served on USS BARBEL SS580 i can say they are no replacement for a SSN, I am guessing the even the modern Diesel/AIP boats would take a few days from Japan to SCS to engage.. they do add the stealth aspect when submerged. I was a eager convert to SSNs and looked fondly at my SS580 days...
Their was an article that was written in 2010 that made the case for the US Navy to acquire a small number of SSK submarines for Forward deployed missions in the shallow waters. The Article is linked below
The Right Submarine for Lurking in the Littorals by By Milan Vego
Name your pool of countries with a 21st century AIP design and the yard capacity and workforce necessary to meet their own countries needs for construction and maintenance AND still be able to produce AND maintain a score or so of boats for the United States.
South Korea-19 (Dosan Ahn Chang-ho class x 2, Son Won-Il class x 9)
Sweden-6 (Södermanland-class x 1)
Italy-8 (Todaro x 4)
So across the pool of proposed countries we have a total of 36 submarine hulls of seven 21st century classes. Color me skeptical that they could meet their own navy's needs for construction and maintenance along with a hypothetical US demand. We should maybe purchase from our adversaries who seem to have a bit more capacity even if they lack quality controls.
PLAN - 59 (Type-035B x 5, Type-039 x 13, Type-039A x 17)
It's still better than 1-2 boats a year from EB and NPN. Remember this is an addition to what the US builders are doing with SSNs not a replacement.
And you're under counting the shipbuilding capacity.
France has capability to build they just lack funding. May smooth over
ruffled feathers after AUKUS.
Germany Siemens -Thyssenkrupp builds for many other countries: Israel, ROK, Greece, Egypt, Italy, Norway, Greece, Portugal, Turkey, Singapore. They have capacity.
Same thing with Sweden's Kockums, Japan's Kawasaki-Kockums and ROK's Hyundai HI and Daewoo SME.
Just license the 212, 214, Scorpiene and/or KSS III designs and send the order and funding to any allied ship building firm that will take the contract.
The point is to rapidly build up the fleet with combat credible boats.
Lets say Korea, Japan and Europe each deliver two hulls a year. In two years that 12 subs - doable once they start building. Some say that the Korea and Japanese shipyards are all in range of China's missiles. My response is that if we don't have those boats in the water before the shooting starts we are already too late.
What they build for themselves is what they can afford, we string out our own procurement over multiple fiscal years. It also does not account for what they export or reflect capacity. Japans and Korea's combined shipyard capacity exceeds China's. We sadly are hardly a blip on the statistical chart. I think wee rank 19th in the world. Hard to call yourself a maritime power with that stat.
A license build of one class in different countries is not that far fetched.
Look at our Constellation class frigates. Nor is operating different classes of ships /boats. Look at our WWII fleet.
Spain's S-80 is a 21st Century design
The Latest version of the French Scorpène is certainly a 21st century design. 12 hulls built 6 more on the way all for export.
Sweden's design are good and upgradable. and they have built for export - Australia, Demark and Singapore.
Just need the design then send the contracts to every yard in NATO and US that can build them. Most of the maritime powers build these boats. Hell, even Chile builds them.
100% They just need to be based close enough to the fight to get in and out quickly. Once on location they are deadly and hard to kill. They are also proven technologies that are A LOT cheaper than SSNs and quicker to build and easier to crew. Again not replacing the SSN but if you need to double your sub fleet size in a short amount of time, this is how you do it.
Buy what works and what you can field in the next five years. Diesel AIP designs from our allies should be bought in bunches and based in every atoll and island from the Bonin Islands to Singapore.
Well said. A VERY interesting piece in the WSJ this morning by Rahm Emmanuel(!!!!) advocating shifting some USN ship maintenance to Japan. Based upon my (admittadly dated) personal experience, that would be a win-win in many ways.
Shifting maintenance to Japan may help with on station time in peace. But none of that is survivable in war. We need more shipyards at home and more distributed repair (moderate damage and maintenance) and logistics throughout the first and second island chains.
Read GAO-22-105448. From 2008-2018 the subs lost 10,000 days of underway operational time due to maintenance issues. And the next glass house to fall is Battle Damage Repair. No parts stocked, no yards available, no workers available. China can build 200 (!!!) ships to our ONE.
Austin must be relying on all those captured UFOs and their technology that can fly trillions of mile thru time warps only to run into a peak somewhere out West, cuz he sure doesn't act too concerned about the next 4 years versus China (maybe he is on the Jo Bai Den China payroll plan too)
Honestly I didn't know that an "awaiting maintenance" category existed, despite the many articles on this site stating so. That chart puts the issue into crystal clear context. Scary not good situation we got ourselves into with no obvious solution.
No, the scary part is the boats in the yards and those "awaiting maintenance" are the same category in that 3 to 1 rule. There is still a whole other category of partial readiness that we're not even considering.
So "awaiting maintenance", that implies to me to be a serious operational capability or a safety related issue, else why not keep it crewed and sailing?
The problem is the fancy UUVs won't be ready until 2050 and given the problems with Transformationalism and Defense Acquisitions of new tech, they will probably perform as well as LCS. What is needed is the US to buy proven designs and utilize Allied shipyards until the US builds more yards. We would be much better off buying a bunch of U212s and forward basing them then waiting for UUV that may never come and definitely wont arrive in time.
Well, it was the NR running on Rickover fumes that eliminated the diesel boat and permanently lock the Sub force into sub 50 numbers. They only way to plus up the sub numbers by 2030 is to buy a $hit ton of U 212 class AIP boats and base them in the first island chain. At this point you need down range shooters. They don't all have to be fast, deep ocean hunter killers.
NR did not lock the submarine force at 50, that was a CJCS, Powell, decision based on budget. When Seawolf got so expensive, NR had a cheaper slower power plant on the drawing board.. hence the VA class..
Oh, that’s right, he wants to shut down research, development, and manufacturing of our nuclear weapons; and guidance systems, close Los Alamos National Laboratory; and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as well as shutting down the Navy’s reactor labs. My bad.
Nukes, reactors, LANL, LLNL all predate Congress/Carter's creation/implementation of the DOE in 1977. Just like public schools and universities existed before the Department of Education.
Bad analogy. The argument against the Dept. of Education is that education is a responsibility of the 50 States, each of which has an educational system in place. One can make a good case that the Department of Education is an expensive federal intrusion into an area best suited to state control, and that it should be eliminated as wasteful and duplicative of state efforts.
The Department of Energy, which ought to be called the Department of Atomic Energy, has no corresponding state agencies. Florida’s reactor is a tiny facility, it’s not Los Alamos. States don’t design atomic bombs. We can’t have 50 sets of civilian atomic pile operating rules and regulations.
Advocating for the elimination of the Department of Energy, which houses programs which are federal responsibilities, like the development of atomic weapons, is ignorant and stupid. A candidate for President who says “eliminate the Department of Energy,” is showing his lack of knowledge and is unqualified for the position.
Your argument that that DOE exists for the purpose of centralized federal control of atomic technology is ahistorical. DOE exists as a result of the oil crisis and lobbying powers wanting to reshuffle the deck chairs. Unified control of nuclear technologies under the DOE is an illusionary artifact. As to being stupid AND ignorant, I'll at least cop to stoopid since that is arbitrary.
I expect what he means (I haven't looked into it) is get rid of the non-NNSA parts of Energy, that pour money into stuff like slar and wind that will never do more than supplement base load.
NNSA is semi-independent within Energy as it is, so stripping all the other parts of Energy and leaving the nuclear weapons and naval ractors alone is an idea that would make sense coming from a GOP candidate. De Santis should be more cear about it.
Re: your point #1. When I was in grad school at MIT (‘79-‘82j one of my classes wasAdvanced Hydrodynamics. The class had 10 students - 3 Navy officers, 2 USCG officers, and 5 PRC Ph.D candidates. Stupid then. Stupid now.
The LCS will sally forth from Mayport and show them what for. I forget, does Mayport’s LCS have the engines that eat themselves if you exceed 15 knots or the one where the ship hull cracks if you exceed 15 knots?
Yes to all, but maybe more. Sal always does the math and shows his work (the Mk-48 math is pretty depressing). Whatever we think about qualitative advantage, the quantity factors in the math. Do we know what they are thinking as they do the math- number of ships in theater (I appreciate I&W, but I respect the low likelihood of a save the date for the start of the war). The numbers that matter are those I’m the theater of war. Do we have any idea of what they may expend in a fight? If our ship and crew is twice as good (pure speculation), what if they have committed 4 to 1? Rather than how long, might we ask how quickly?
In a war with China, 2 tenders might be sufficient for the Atlantic. "3 is 1", as the CDR pointed out. That's without factoring in that any tender would be a priority target at the beginning of the war.
And we really need to consider the idea of a triple digit sub fleet. At the very least, we'll probably see more UUVs, which will need faster turnaround times in a war.
The tenders were an extension of the US Naval Shipyards, filled with ratings with the skills needed to build ships. The ability to repair is closely related to the ability to build. When we privatized our yards, we abandoned to ability to build, and thus lost the ability to repair.
Back in 2014 or 2015 I wrote Senator Toomey to complain about the delays the Hartford was experiencing at Electric Boat. A six month yard period ended up taking 18 months. Responded to my inquiry with a note from the Navy saying, essentially, everything is OK. He didn't press the issue. Until our Congress cares, nothing will happen.
at least you got a response, I normally get a form letter sent back by some staff denk that says how they are concerned with what their base thinks (and you send me a form letter back?). And I'm in Maine where they fix the damn things and build their destroyers, at least when not on strike...
You need to set up an appointment and go to their office in person. I have a wonderful picture with me and my son, delivering Battleship game pieces that we made of LCS and DDG1000 with a base plate saying "delende est". Wonderful picture with lots of smiles all around. Though it wasn't worth the cost of gas given his continued votes for both programs, but it was cathartic.
We are going to need refit locations when the torpedoes run out. South Pacific island chains are already being compromised by China. Are we producing more 48’s? Not that I can see. Are we going to have enough TLAMs to shoot? Not that I can see. Are we going to have trained crews sitting around while their boats are waiting on maintenance? Yep, see Connecticut, and A handful of others. It’s a shitshow. Our best promise was the subsurface branch.
The boats will expend their loadouts and then permanently cede the territory due to transit time to and from Hawaii to replenish. (Guam will be gone in the first hour.)
During WWII US subs had access to a number of bases along the northern shores of Western Australia. As part of AUKUS, HMAS Stirling in Perth is expected to get a major upgrade in facilities, perhaps reopening the base in Exmouth can be considered. Espirito Santo, Noumea and Ulithi were major advanced bases in WWII, also Kwajalein, Peleliu and Samoa....which is American territory. Well, Pago Pago is.
No and no. What little we have in tenders, two of them, they usually tied-up in Guam with an occasional port-call to break things up.
There's a comms station for the USN, and a barebones airfield that the RAAF uses. USAF personal also rotate through the airfield manning the Learmonth Solar Observatory. Nearby is a bombing range.
Some additional points here concerning the notional James River class mobile naval shipyard (MNS):
-- The mobile shipyard is self-propelled using the Ford Class reactor and propulsion system. When underway, it might achieve a speed of 20 knots or more.
-- When forward deployed, the vessel has two or more auxiliary tugboats permanently assigned to it. When in transit to a forward area assignment, the tugs float inside the MNS's own interior dock while the vessel is underway.
-- Since the MNS can be assigned to in-theater forward areas subject to attack, it has its own organic self-defense capability equivalent to that of a laser battle cruiser.
-- Each unit is always being employed as an active shipyard wherever it is assigned; i.e., the vessel is not being held in reserve for use in a future conflict.
-- When not forward deployed, the MNS supplies a variety of shipyard services which complement those of an existing land-based naval shipyard. It may even be assigned to an existing shipyard as service expansion capacity.
-- Two or more MNS can be located together to create a larger floating shipyard. Two MNS can be rafted together if the need arises.
-- Since the MNS is itself a warship, it will require maintenance periodically in another shipyard. The beam of the James River class is narrow enough to fit inside Drydock 12 at Newport News.
The question arises, where would this hummer be constructed? If we wanted such a vessel but don't want to interrupt our CVN construction schedule at Newport News, then Korea is the logical candidate to build it.
That is an important point. And here is another one which must be taken into account. Every civilian employee working at every shipyard in the western Pacific will be working under threat of attack. Pearl Harbor for example. Except if your shipyard is itself a ship, there is no place to hide.
Civilian shipyard workers whose place of employment is an MNS must be willing to accept the risks of working aboard such a vessel, for which they will be compensated accordingly.
This kind of issue, and some number of others, must be taken into account when comparing the benefits of employing the MNS as a true naval shipyard as opposed to employing it as a very capable forward operations support tender.
"They have more ships than we have MK-48" - It's been a fun week watching everyone in the press scream about CBU being substituted for 155MM.
Anyone who had one quarter of a functional hind brain recognized over the last 30+ post cold war years that warshots would quickly be expended way beyond the ability of the "MIC" to replenish them.
So, welcome to the peace dividend. You don't need them until you need them.
BTW, what's the real world shelf life of that thar torpedo thingy? Cause we can have all the SSN in the world and if their muntions have aged out? (Well, at least we can hum a few bars that rhythm with Mark 14.)
We also need honesty about what we are seeing in the Virginia class maintenance. If they won't hold up as well as a 688 that's a reason to focus on a flight made of sterner stuff or to get moving to the next class with how to afford and maintain in mind.
And, dare I say it, since we can't build them ourselves buy some Diesel/AIP from other countries. I don't suggest them as replacements for SSNs but as taking up some of the work load. These could be used for the inevitable close to home missions should war breakout as well as operate from tenders or foreign bases closer to the lanes in the Pacific/Indian ocean. These boats could concentrated on the Chinese merchant fleet while the SSNS undertake strike missions and go after Chinese Navy assets. They are smaller, smaller crews less maintenance demands and can use smaller dry docks.
That's why I am all for the US Navy buying some Diesel/AIP submarines to free up the workload from the SSN's. The Diesel/AIP Submarines can be used for Forward deployed missions. Even for Close to home missions such as defense of CONUS and US territories. It would free up the SSN's for Strike missions and Carrier escort missions. On top of that, the Diesel/AIP subs can be used by USSOCOM in inserting and extracting special ops teams in the littoral waters. Imagine sneaking in a special forces team in the littoral waters and extracting them in the littoral waters. On top of that Diesel/AIP Submarines can make a great adversary training platform, similar to TOP GUN school and Red flag.
Forward deployed modern AIP diesel boats akin to what our allies use will be very effective in ASUW and even ASW. Getting in and out of the mission area is the hard part. Once on station, they are hard to kill and very deadly.
having served on USS BARBEL SS580 i can say they are no replacement for a SSN, I am guessing the even the modern Diesel/AIP boats would take a few days from Japan to SCS to engage.. they do add the stealth aspect when submerged. I was a eager convert to SSNs and looked fondly at my SS580 days...
Their was an article that was written in 2010 that made the case for the US Navy to acquire a small number of SSK submarines for Forward deployed missions in the shallow waters. The Article is linked below
The Right Submarine for Lurking in the Littorals by By Milan Vego
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2010/june/right-submarine-lurking-littorals
Name your pool of countries with a 21st century AIP design and the yard capacity and workforce necessary to meet their own countries needs for construction and maintenance AND still be able to produce AND maintain a score or so of boats for the United States.
Spain, Japan, Germany, France, Korea, Sweden, maybe Italy could probably step up. a lot of submarine builders out there.
Spain-2 (21st century design x 0)
Japan-22 (Sōryū-class x 12, Taigei-class x 2)
Germany-6 (Type 212A x 6)
France-8 (21st century design x 0)
South Korea-19 (Dosan Ahn Chang-ho class x 2, Son Won-Il class x 9)
Sweden-6 (Södermanland-class x 1)
Italy-8 (Todaro x 4)
So across the pool of proposed countries we have a total of 36 submarine hulls of seven 21st century classes. Color me skeptical that they could meet their own navy's needs for construction and maintenance along with a hypothetical US demand. We should maybe purchase from our adversaries who seem to have a bit more capacity even if they lack quality controls.
PLAN - 59 (Type-035B x 5, Type-039 x 13, Type-039A x 17)
Russia - 49 (Improved Kilo x 10, Lada x 1)
It's still better than 1-2 boats a year from EB and NPN. Remember this is an addition to what the US builders are doing with SSNs not a replacement.
And you're under counting the shipbuilding capacity.
France has capability to build they just lack funding. May smooth over
ruffled feathers after AUKUS.
Germany Siemens -Thyssenkrupp builds for many other countries: Israel, ROK, Greece, Egypt, Italy, Norway, Greece, Portugal, Turkey, Singapore. They have capacity.
Same thing with Sweden's Kockums, Japan's Kawasaki-Kockums and ROK's Hyundai HI and Daewoo SME.
Just license the 212, 214, Scorpiene and/or KSS III designs and send the order and funding to any allied ship building firm that will take the contract.
The point is to rapidly build up the fleet with combat credible boats.
I am sure all these manufacturers will jump into the SUBSAFE program to. Or was the intent that foreign builds wouldn't require that?
Lets say Korea, Japan and Europe each deliver two hulls a year. In two years that 12 subs - doable once they start building. Some say that the Korea and Japanese shipyards are all in range of China's missiles. My response is that if we don't have those boats in the water before the shooting starts we are already too late.
What they build for themselves is what they can afford, we string out our own procurement over multiple fiscal years. It also does not account for what they export or reflect capacity. Japans and Korea's combined shipyard capacity exceeds China's. We sadly are hardly a blip on the statistical chart. I think wee rank 19th in the world. Hard to call yourself a maritime power with that stat.
A license build of one class in different countries is not that far fetched.
Look at our Constellation class frigates. Nor is operating different classes of ships /boats. Look at our WWII fleet.
Spain's S-80 is a 21st Century design
The Latest version of the French Scorpène is certainly a 21st century design. 12 hulls built 6 more on the way all for export.
Sweden's design are good and upgradable. and they have built for export - Australia, Demark and Singapore.
With the money and persuasion (counting these boats towards their NATO contribution each year), it can get done.
Just need the design then send the contracts to every yard in NATO and US that can build them. Most of the maritime powers build these boats. Hell, even Chile builds them.
100% They just need to be based close enough to the fight to get in and out quickly. Once on location they are deadly and hard to kill. They are also proven technologies that are A LOT cheaper than SSNs and quicker to build and easier to crew. Again not replacing the SSN but if you need to double your sub fleet size in a short amount of time, this is how you do it.
Buy what works and what you can field in the next five years. Diesel AIP designs from our allies should be bought in bunches and based in every atoll and island from the Bonin Islands to Singapore.
Even that isn't even really a 5 year thing. WIld notion. Scale up XLUUV into a midget sub. Use the 2 ESDs as mother ships / tenders for them.
Well said. A VERY interesting piece in the WSJ this morning by Rahm Emmanuel(!!!!) advocating shifting some USN ship maintenance to Japan. Based upon my (admittadly dated) personal experience, that would be a win-win in many ways.
It would be good insofar as not deferring maintenance on Japan based ships. Beyond that I question who has their hand in who else's pocket.
I'd figure that Democrats creating high paying union jobs in shipyards would be a natural course of action for them to take.
I'd be wrong.
I would look at shifting some to Korea also.
Shifting maintenance to Japan may help with on station time in peace. But none of that is survivable in war. We need more shipyards at home and more distributed repair (moderate damage and maintenance) and logistics throughout the first and second island chains.
Read GAO-22-105448. From 2008-2018 the subs lost 10,000 days of underway operational time due to maintenance issues. And the next glass house to fall is Battle Damage Repair. No parts stocked, no yards available, no workers available. China can build 200 (!!!) ships to our ONE.
Austin must be relying on all those captured UFOs and their technology that can fly trillions of mile thru time warps only to run into a peak somewhere out West, cuz he sure doesn't act too concerned about the next 4 years versus China (maybe he is on the Jo Bai Den China payroll plan too)
Honestly I didn't know that an "awaiting maintenance" category existed, despite the many articles on this site stating so. That chart puts the issue into crystal clear context. Scary not good situation we got ourselves into with no obvious solution.
No, the scary part is the boats in the yards and those "awaiting maintenance" are the same category in that 3 to 1 rule. There is still a whole other category of partial readiness that we're not even considering.
So "awaiting maintenance", that implies to me to be a serious operational capability or a safety related issue, else why not keep it crewed and sailing?
Asking for a friend...Who isn't Chinese
Yeah, they're waiting to go into the yards. Think maintenance that requires hull cuts.
This is the only thing that matters. Nothing else comes close--across the whole military.
If we can’t keep the apex predators out at sea during this period, -everything- else is irrelevant.
And we seemingly can’t and it’s too late to do anything so... Time to get hot on fielding some nasty UUVs?
The problem is the fancy UUVs won't be ready until 2050 and given the problems with Transformationalism and Defense Acquisitions of new tech, they will probably perform as well as LCS. What is needed is the US to buy proven designs and utilize Allied shipyards until the US builds more yards. We would be much better off buying a bunch of U212s and forward basing them then waiting for UUV that may never come and definitely wont arrive in time.
Excellent article. Naval Reactors long ago exhausted Rickover's fumes and is now living in a Tom Clancy fantasy world.
Well, it was the NR running on Rickover fumes that eliminated the diesel boat and permanently lock the Sub force into sub 50 numbers. They only way to plus up the sub numbers by 2030 is to buy a $hit ton of U 212 class AIP boats and base them in the first island chain. At this point you need down range shooters. They don't all have to be fast, deep ocean hunter killers.
PT boats are cheaper and can sling torpedos all day (and night) long.
But are they survivable? At least the U212 can survive long enough to clear the battle space when they run out of torps.
Missile corvettes. 57mm, RAM launchers, 16 NSMs, and UAV for IRST.
The world looked a lot different when the LA class was launched.
That was the world of "oh man, the Soviets have 400 submarines and we only have 100, that's not nearly enough!"
NR did not lock the submarine force at 50, that was a CJCS, Powell, decision based on budget. When Seawolf got so expensive, NR had a cheaper slower power plant on the drawing board.. hence the VA class..
The Florida Governor running for President has made shutting down Naval Reactors one of his campaign promises.
No, he said he would shut down the Department of Energy. There is a difference.
Oh, that’s right, he wants to shut down research, development, and manufacturing of our nuclear weapons; and guidance systems, close Los Alamos National Laboratory; and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as well as shutting down the Navy’s reactor labs. My bad.
Nukes, reactors, LANL, LLNL all predate Congress/Carter's creation/implementation of the DOE in 1977. Just like public schools and universities existed before the Department of Education.
Bad analogy. The argument against the Dept. of Education is that education is a responsibility of the 50 States, each of which has an educational system in place. One can make a good case that the Department of Education is an expensive federal intrusion into an area best suited to state control, and that it should be eliminated as wasteful and duplicative of state efforts.
The Department of Energy, which ought to be called the Department of Atomic Energy, has no corresponding state agencies. Florida’s reactor is a tiny facility, it’s not Los Alamos. States don’t design atomic bombs. We can’t have 50 sets of civilian atomic pile operating rules and regulations.
Advocating for the elimination of the Department of Energy, which houses programs which are federal responsibilities, like the development of atomic weapons, is ignorant and stupid. A candidate for President who says “eliminate the Department of Energy,” is showing his lack of knowledge and is unqualified for the position.
Your argument that that DOE exists for the purpose of centralized federal control of atomic technology is ahistorical. DOE exists as a result of the oil crisis and lobbying powers wanting to reshuffle the deck chairs. Unified control of nuclear technologies under the DOE is an illusionary artifact. As to being stupid AND ignorant, I'll at least cop to stoopid since that is arbitrary.
https://books.google.com/books?id=yLI_AAAAIBAJ&pg=PA1&dq=department+of+energy&article_id=3599,4251060#v=onepage&q=department%20of%20energy&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=aHY0AAAAIBAJ&pg=PA1&dq=department+of+energy&article_id=6147,1938346#v=onepage&q=department%20of%20energy&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=iL0qAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA9&dq=department+of+energy&article_id=5726,2594470#v=onepage&q=department%20of%20energy&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=Ib88AAAAIBAJ&pg=PA8&dq=department+of+energy&article_id=3300,556230#v=onepage&q=department%20of%20energy&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=04FDAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA9&dq=department+of+energy&article_id=1405,5752126#v=onepage&q=department%20of%20energy&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=w29QAAAAIBAJ&pg=PA2&dq=department+of+energy&article_id=5947,3498213#v=onepage&q=department%20of%20energy&f=false
I expect what he means (I haven't looked into it) is get rid of the non-NNSA parts of Energy, that pour money into stuff like slar and wind that will never do more than supplement base load.
NNSA is semi-independent within Energy as it is, so stripping all the other parts of Energy and leaving the nuclear weapons and naval ractors alone is an idea that would make sense coming from a GOP candidate. De Santis should be more cear about it.
Show me.
Re: your point #1. When I was in grad school at MIT (‘79-‘82j one of my classes wasAdvanced Hydrodynamics. The class had 10 students - 3 Navy officers, 2 USCG officers, and 5 PRC Ph.D candidates. Stupid then. Stupid now.
We now see the fruits of Deng's 50 year plan.
At present, we could not win a blue water conflict in the Gulf of Mexico.
The LCS will sally forth from Mayport and show them what for. I forget, does Mayport’s LCS have the engines that eat themselves if you exceed 15 knots or the one where the ship hull cracks if you exceed 15 knots?
Yes to all, but maybe more. Sal always does the math and shows his work (the Mk-48 math is pretty depressing). Whatever we think about qualitative advantage, the quantity factors in the math. Do we know what they are thinking as they do the math- number of ships in theater (I appreciate I&W, but I respect the low likelihood of a save the date for the start of the war). The numbers that matter are those I’m the theater of war. Do we have any idea of what they may expend in a fight? If our ship and crew is twice as good (pure speculation), what if they have committed 4 to 1? Rather than how long, might we ask how quickly?
In the TOW is key, especially when you're talking about the Pacific. If you got to drive to Hawaii to get it, you might as well go home.
Sigh... just sigh...
Lorain Yard, North Charleston Yard, and at least one other...
Time to start full Mk. 48 production.
And where the f&ck is the demand for additional tenders?
The current two AS's are due to retire in '29 & '30, they both recently had overhauls at Mare Island.
NAVSEA awarded contracts to L3Harris, NASSCO, and HII for concept and designs back in '22 for the AS(X) program.
Only two ships are envisioned, build contract is to be awarded in May 2024 with a delivery in June 2031.
The current two tenders are over fifty years old. And the Navy needs A LOT more than two tenders in the event of a Pacific War.
In a war with China, 2 tenders might be sufficient for the Atlantic. "3 is 1", as the CDR pointed out. That's without factoring in that any tender would be a priority target at the beginning of the war.
And we really need to consider the idea of a triple digit sub fleet. At the very least, we'll probably see more UUVs, which will need faster turnaround times in a war.
The tenders were an extension of the US Naval Shipyards, filled with ratings with the skills needed to build ships. The ability to repair is closely related to the ability to build. When we privatized our yards, we abandoned to ability to build, and thus lost the ability to repair.
Back in 2014 or 2015 I wrote Senator Toomey to complain about the delays the Hartford was experiencing at Electric Boat. A six month yard period ended up taking 18 months. Responded to my inquiry with a note from the Navy saying, essentially, everything is OK. He didn't press the issue. Until our Congress cares, nothing will happen.
at least you got a response, I normally get a form letter sent back by some staff denk that says how they are concerned with what their base thinks (and you send me a form letter back?). And I'm in Maine where they fix the damn things and build their destroyers, at least when not on strike...
You need to set up an appointment and go to their office in person. I have a wonderful picture with me and my son, delivering Battleship game pieces that we made of LCS and DDG1000 with a base plate saying "delende est". Wonderful picture with lots of smiles all around. Though it wasn't worth the cost of gas given his continued votes for both programs, but it was cathartic.
Hulls
Maintenance
Staffing
All are deficient
We are going to need refit locations when the torpedoes run out. South Pacific island chains are already being compromised by China. Are we producing more 48’s? Not that I can see. Are we going to have enough TLAMs to shoot? Not that I can see. Are we going to have trained crews sitting around while their boats are waiting on maintenance? Yep, see Connecticut, and A handful of others. It’s a shitshow. Our best promise was the subsurface branch.
The boats will expend their loadouts and then permanently cede the territory due to transit time to and from Hawaii to replenish. (Guam will be gone in the first hour.)
Guam, Yokosuka, Atsugi, Misawa, Camp Butler, Singapore, Pearl, Panama Canal Zone, Bremerton and San Diego as well.
Even likely they take out Cubi to prevent us from using it.
If war starts, China is not going to take baby steps.
The Canal Zone? Run by the CCP?
Good luck with that. Want to be that in the event of an 'incident' there will suddenly be 'technical' issues shutting the canal down?
During WWII US subs had access to a number of bases along the northern shores of Western Australia. As part of AUKUS, HMAS Stirling in Perth is expected to get a major upgrade in facilities, perhaps reopening the base in Exmouth can be considered. Espirito Santo, Noumea and Ulithi were major advanced bases in WWII, also Kwajalein, Peleliu and Samoa....which is American territory. Well, Pago Pago is.
Do we have stockpiles there now? And do we have tenders to go hang out in the other places?
No and no. What little we have in tenders, two of them, they usually tied-up in Guam with an occasional port-call to break things up.
There's a comms station for the USN, and a barebones airfield that the RAAF uses. USAF personal also rotate through the airfield manning the Learmonth Solar Observatory. Nearby is a bombing range.
Shipping the MK 48s down range is a much harder problem then figuring out how to load them down range.
Seems like tossing them in a C-17 would be easier than finding a pier and a crane. But, I must defer to my betters on this one.
How many loadouts have we?
MTH, let's see if this image link works:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/0377073491e0a811e87b1bd3e37f76d142c71d855ae88d1bb3f6d1d239c50fc3.png
EDIT: It seems to work. But let's see if the image stays up on the Disqus side.
You need a lot of these. Think mulberries like they used at noumea during WW2.
Some additional points here concerning the notional James River class mobile naval shipyard (MNS):
-- The mobile shipyard is self-propelled using the Ford Class reactor and propulsion system. When underway, it might achieve a speed of 20 knots or more.
-- When forward deployed, the vessel has two or more auxiliary tugboats permanently assigned to it. When in transit to a forward area assignment, the tugs float inside the MNS's own interior dock while the vessel is underway.
-- Since the MNS can be assigned to in-theater forward areas subject to attack, it has its own organic self-defense capability equivalent to that of a laser battle cruiser.
-- Each unit is always being employed as an active shipyard wherever it is assigned; i.e., the vessel is not being held in reserve for use in a future conflict.
-- When not forward deployed, the MNS supplies a variety of shipyard services which complement those of an existing land-based naval shipyard. It may even be assigned to an existing shipyard as service expansion capacity.
-- Two or more MNS can be located together to create a larger floating shipyard. Two MNS can be rafted together if the need arises.
-- Since the MNS is itself a warship, it will require maintenance periodically in another shipyard. The beam of the James River class is narrow enough to fit inside Drydock 12 at Newport News.
The question arises, where would this hummer be constructed? If we wanted such a vessel but don't want to interrupt our CVN construction schedule at Newport News, then Korea is the logical candidate to build it.
One blind spot… our shipyard trades are civilians. Your plan doesn’t take into account the massive numbers of yard birds and civilian trades.
That is an important point. And here is another one which must be taken into account. Every civilian employee working at every shipyard in the western Pacific will be working under threat of attack. Pearl Harbor for example. Except if your shipyard is itself a ship, there is no place to hide.
Civilian shipyard workers whose place of employment is an MNS must be willing to accept the risks of working aboard such a vessel, for which they will be compensated accordingly.
This kind of issue, and some number of others, must be taken into account when comparing the benefits of employing the MNS as a true naval shipyard as opposed to employing it as a very capable forward operations support tender.
Last I heard, the last Mk48 we bought was in the late 1990's.
Fortunately other nations have bought them to keep the line open - barely
"They have more ships than we have MK-48" - It's been a fun week watching everyone in the press scream about CBU being substituted for 155MM.
Anyone who had one quarter of a functional hind brain recognized over the last 30+ post cold war years that warshots would quickly be expended way beyond the ability of the "MIC" to replenish them.
So, welcome to the peace dividend. You don't need them until you need them.
BTW, what's the real world shelf life of that thar torpedo thingy? Cause we can have all the SSN in the world and if their muntions have aged out? (Well, at least we can hum a few bars that rhythm with Mark 14.)