Hey Sal - I take great offense, being the product of the finest NROTC program in the country - UC Bezerkeley (though a cross-town student!!) Remember - it’s first CO was a dude named Nimitz. Still buried out there as well. Rumor has it he didn’t want to be buried near his alma mater and have to look on ugly football uniforms for eternity!
Hey Sal - I take great offense, being the product of the finest NROTC program in the country - UC Bezerkeley (though a cross-town student!!) Remember - it’s first CO was a dude named Nimitz. Still buried out there as well. Rumor has it he didn’t want to be buried near his alma mater and have to look on ugly football uniforms for eternity!
As soon as I saw your first graph, I came to the same conclusion you developed regarding the changes in technology and ship/aircraft capability over comparable time spans. I would suggest that you have been exceedingly generous to those in senior positions. The Past is a very comfortable place to live; much more so than the Present, which is fraught with the need to make correct and timely decisions. We apparently don’t promote GOFOs on the basis of good thinking about the less-desirable area of probability/loss space. My evidence of this can be seen in acquisitions as well as the steps leading up to them, and the employment of the resulting systems in the real world.
BZ comments. Well said. I would add that the "oversight" by NAVSEA, NAVAIR etc. is mcuh more restrictive to innovation and creativity than Buships, BuOrd in the 1940's.
Great topic -- thanks. It is shocking to me that as an Ops Analyst on the OSD CAPE staff (managing the munitions portfolio -- not very well of course). I could not convince anyone in leaderships how important VLS rearming was -- OSD leadership often had the opinion that if it was important to the Navy then they would do something about it...
I have a great video that shows how it can be done and that the technology, is simply not that difficult to overcome.
The Powers that be are very serious, you just don't understand them.
Your best option is to avoid combat, believe me, and many others.
Unless you're a merc, excuse PMC, as they respect people who work for money.
Not sure how PMC Navy works.
Why are they serious?
Politics is Power.
Serious motivations of Serious People.
1. On January 6, DOD did not Whisper 'No'. It Whimpered 'stay on the FOB' aka stay on Base.
Anyone who's been to war was unsurprised. Of course they stayed on the FOB.
It went so far the 154 DC ARNG [National Guard of DC] who were in riot kit headed out the door were stopped while DOD stood up a working group of 203 DOD staff to study the problem.
That's some serious oversight, why that's 1.3 staff for each National Guardsman.
Let me spell it out: the PTB don't want DOD, they don't want military they can't trust. Not to mention the above in point 1 is so contemptuous that no person can see any use for such people, including me. Can't work with cowards, but you'll learn.
So welcome to the club, you've been betrayed. Do have a review of Jerry Bremer et al for a refresher on what's coming next. It doesn't help that there's a lot of people in bed with and owned by China.
You're not supposed to win, anymore than we were supposed to win. We didn't, you'll do even worse.
But what they are setting up makes perfect sense, we are a potential threat and rival, we have never held our leadership to account, it's not a bad bet on their part.
2. My personal serious motivation to have no sympathy for the Navy's plight: whenever in the last generation a service was needed to do the dirty work of stabbing the ground forces, selling them out and ruining their names dead or alive, prosecutions, investigations that should have resulted in court martials for Admirals, NCIS, Naval JAG - the Navy was the GO TO service. From NCIS lynching the Haditha 7 Marines, to Naval JAG being the prosecutors of our own AND the adamantine defenders of the scum in GITMO; GO NAVY. Because of course no skin in the game unless SEALS.
I'm certain I can hear many reasons, don't waste the pixels.
^^ you don't have a friend here with me, and you certainly have none in DC.^^
Happy 2023, and with all the benevolence I can muster: evade by any means direct combat, you will die or even live knowing you were betrayed. Your leadership, all our Senior Leadership deserve it, it will of course be the common sailors and decent Junior Officers who pay the price.
From Cdr Salamander I learn something new each week about US Navy, and its usually depressing. I thought we had a VLS reload as a routine decades ago. Apparently not. We have to find calm waters to reload. How long does it take to get to calm waters and back on the line?
Yes, these highly educated folks are usually academically smart. Remember McNamara? Cant beat him in smartness. But street smart? well, no. I've been back in Washington 33 years now. Cant say I've seen much practical smartness from the highly educated. All I hear is "leaner and meaner". What does that mean, in plain talk? Leaner you are, the less damage you can take.
As for all this networking and distributed firepower: are we going to fight camel jockeys forever? And what happens when the network get infiltrated or hit?
This reminds me of Professor Harold Rood of Claremont College. A political scientist after a WWII stint in Patton's Third Army. He posits that America is an Island nation surrounded by the Eurasian landmass. This Island is best defended by alliances that allow a defensive rampart to be built hundreds if not thousands of miles from our shores.
However the WEF globalism has badly eroded those defenses. Great powers need to keep and preserve an infrastructure at home in spite of and despite low tariff free trade. Perhaps Putin is an act of divine providence to give us a badly needed wake up call that we need to start to build an economy much like the one in WWII that could produce everything from bootlaces to atom bombs. Also, did you know, thanks to the EPA, we no longer have domestic lead smelting......
Hey Sal - I take great offense, being the product of the finest NROTC program in the country - UC Bezerkeley (though a cross-town student!!) Remember - it’s first CO was a dude named Nimitz. Still buried out there as well. Rumor has it he didn’t want to be buried near his alma mater and have to look on ugly football uniforms for eternity!
Hey Sal - I take great offense, being the product of the finest NROTC program in the country - UC Bezerkeley (though a cross-town student!!) Remember - it’s first CO was a dude named Nimitz. Still buried out there as well. Rumor has it he didn’t want to be buried near his alma mater and have to look on ugly football uniforms for eternity!
As soon as I saw your first graph, I came to the same conclusion you developed regarding the changes in technology and ship/aircraft capability over comparable time spans. I would suggest that you have been exceedingly generous to those in senior positions. The Past is a very comfortable place to live; much more so than the Present, which is fraught with the need to make correct and timely decisions. We apparently don’t promote GOFOs on the basis of good thinking about the less-desirable area of probability/loss space. My evidence of this can be seen in acquisitions as well as the steps leading up to them, and the employment of the resulting systems in the real world.
BZ comments. Well said. I would add that the "oversight" by NAVSEA, NAVAIR etc. is mcuh more restrictive to innovation and creativity than Buships, BuOrd in the 1940's.
Great topic -- thanks. It is shocking to me that as an Ops Analyst on the OSD CAPE staff (managing the munitions portfolio -- not very well of course). I could not convince anyone in leaderships how important VLS rearming was -- OSD leadership often had the opinion that if it was important to the Navy then they would do something about it...
I have a great video that shows how it can be done and that the technology, is simply not that difficult to overcome.
The Powers that be are very serious, you just don't understand them.
Your best option is to avoid combat, believe me, and many others.
Unless you're a merc, excuse PMC, as they respect people who work for money.
Not sure how PMC Navy works.
Why are they serious?
Politics is Power.
Serious motivations of Serious People.
1. On January 6, DOD did not Whisper 'No'. It Whimpered 'stay on the FOB' aka stay on Base.
Anyone who's been to war was unsurprised. Of course they stayed on the FOB.
It went so far the 154 DC ARNG [National Guard of DC] who were in riot kit headed out the door were stopped while DOD stood up a working group of 203 DOD staff to study the problem.
That's some serious oversight, why that's 1.3 staff for each National Guardsman.
Let me spell it out: the PTB don't want DOD, they don't want military they can't trust. Not to mention the above in point 1 is so contemptuous that no person can see any use for such people, including me. Can't work with cowards, but you'll learn.
So welcome to the club, you've been betrayed. Do have a review of Jerry Bremer et al for a refresher on what's coming next. It doesn't help that there's a lot of people in bed with and owned by China.
You're not supposed to win, anymore than we were supposed to win. We didn't, you'll do even worse.
But what they are setting up makes perfect sense, we are a potential threat and rival, we have never held our leadership to account, it's not a bad bet on their part.
2. My personal serious motivation to have no sympathy for the Navy's plight: whenever in the last generation a service was needed to do the dirty work of stabbing the ground forces, selling them out and ruining their names dead or alive, prosecutions, investigations that should have resulted in court martials for Admirals, NCIS, Naval JAG - the Navy was the GO TO service. From NCIS lynching the Haditha 7 Marines, to Naval JAG being the prosecutors of our own AND the adamantine defenders of the scum in GITMO; GO NAVY. Because of course no skin in the game unless SEALS.
I'm certain I can hear many reasons, don't waste the pixels.
^^ you don't have a friend here with me, and you certainly have none in DC.^^
Happy 2023, and with all the benevolence I can muster: evade by any means direct combat, you will die or even live knowing you were betrayed. Your leadership, all our Senior Leadership deserve it, it will of course be the common sailors and decent Junior Officers who pay the price.
Welcome to the Party, the real Party.
Nothing personal BTW.
Sal, very nicely done. But how many meritorious service medals were handed out during the same last 5+- years? You’re missing the point!
From Cdr Salamander I learn something new each week about US Navy, and its usually depressing. I thought we had a VLS reload as a routine decades ago. Apparently not. We have to find calm waters to reload. How long does it take to get to calm waters and back on the line?
Yes, these highly educated folks are usually academically smart. Remember McNamara? Cant beat him in smartness. But street smart? well, no. I've been back in Washington 33 years now. Cant say I've seen much practical smartness from the highly educated. All I hear is "leaner and meaner". What does that mean, in plain talk? Leaner you are, the less damage you can take.
As for all this networking and distributed firepower: are we going to fight camel jockeys forever? And what happens when the network get infiltrated or hit?
This reminds me of Professor Harold Rood of Claremont College. A political scientist after a WWII stint in Patton's Third Army. He posits that America is an Island nation surrounded by the Eurasian landmass. This Island is best defended by alliances that allow a defensive rampart to be built hundreds if not thousands of miles from our shores.
However the WEF globalism has badly eroded those defenses. Great powers need to keep and preserve an infrastructure at home in spite of and despite low tariff free trade. Perhaps Putin is an act of divine providence to give us a badly needed wake up call that we need to start to build an economy much like the one in WWII that could produce everything from bootlaces to atom bombs. Also, did you know, thanks to the EPA, we no longer have domestic lead smelting......
I just hate it when the reality of logistics mucks up talking about the "cool transformational stuff" that's happening in 2023.