The 72 hour war needs changed to, "Respond in such a way that within 72 hours that we will force you to change your plans." That would be the we learned something from Ukraine approach for a start.
We have to guarantee big enough ammo contracts that the munitions makers (and munitions divisions of larger defense contractors) can afford to hire a bunch of 4 stars after they retire, duh.
"End of History" and "war is passe' and can't happen between trading partners" and any number of other cliches that fed the "peace dividend" BS that people in DC sold each other.
To recover quickly, we need to work with allies to divide workload. We need SK and Japan and other people who can put hulls in the water to do so and our other allies need to buy them. Settle on a ship type and buy them. We can add 20 ships a year that way.
We need the DoD Primes to bring in Subs and fund them to increase capacity for missile and armament production - distributed manufacturing, with vetting. Lots of industrial space out there that could be acquired and used and lots of people in those towns and small cities that would love that job.
There are ways to do this, we just need to get out of our own way. Also, stop the BS "divest to invest" and increase the budget to meet the crisis. Task and purpose.
"work with allies" LOL. Might come as a surprise to you but many of our "allies" don't have the interests the same interests we do. Getting their countries blown up to "pRoMoTe DeMoCrAcy" is on their lists of things to avoid.
Wow...aren't you just the cynical ass in the room. Look, I believe the people I mentioned - particularly Japan and SK (not to mention the rest of SE Asia) have skin in the game and know where this leads. Likewise, many in Europe have been awakened to the perils not of trying to "promote Democracy" but allowing autocratic, tyrannical regimes to run over other countries. They forgot after WWII that those expansionist autocrats get a taste for it.
You can make a good case with China, but in Europe everybody was fine until the US decided to go for regime change, undermining both allies and others.
The Ukrainian change of government was by their own people - as you might be noting now, due to the war, they don't like Russia - due to the Russians interfering in the election (and assassinating the prior President) to install a puppet.
I am not in favor of Ukraine - very corrupt as only a very few countries are/have been. BUT that doesn't equate assisting their retention of democratic norms with the Russians invading and killing their people. If you can't see the difference in the motivations from the tactics, then you have a little problem with balancing your ideology.
Everybody was fine in the EU because Putin's "little green men" and actions other than war could be ignored. They can't ignore him anymore, just as China revealed their hand (prematurely) and made people take notice of their plans and intentions. At least some of them. I have no hope for Europeans, either, because they are further along the trail with the cultural rot introduced by leftist politics. We MIGHT....maybe....still have a chance to save ourselves. But it is a hard row to hoe.
That's one way to describe the situation, another is to say that Russia was provoked by NATO expansion and could not suffer having a hostile NATO country on their border. I suppose you've never heard of Victoria Neuland, Leo Strauss and a bunch of other Jews who've started this mess. Or for that matter, Ukrainian attacks on ethic Russians in the Donbas. However you describe the situation in Ukraine, there was no US vital interest at stake. Now we risk stumbling into a nuclear confrontation over a corrupt backwater.
As for Europe, the "respectable" politicians had their chance and failed. Victor Orban, as much as he's hated, is probably doing the best job for his people. (No worries Samantha "Little Miss Color Revolution" Power will try to upend that.) AfD in Germany is gaining steam and France's RN is not going away. Now "unrespectable" politicians will have to fix the mess. Prepare for some pearl clutching.
Provoked by NATO expansion? Only if buy the (silly) line that NATO somehow represented a threat to invade Russia. Keeping Russia from compromising and reclaiming Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Georgia, the Baltic States, etc? Yes, NATO membership hopefully prevents that - or makes it a different ball game for Putin to try to destabilize or otherwise monkey with those countries. But a threat? That required military invasion? Plus, if you check with the "ethnic Russians", all but a very small minority DO NOT want Russia in Ukraine. Come now. One would, or you would, have to be a pretty rabid anti-Westerner to buy that line of twaddle as an excuse by Russia to go to war anywhere.
But, of course, then the shoe drops with your comment about "Jews". So this conversation, and all future conversations, are over with you Billy. Sell crazy elsewhere.
"due to the Russians interfering in the election (and assassinating the prior President) to install a puppet."
Ever hear of the National Endowment for Democracy?
"The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is an American organization founded in 1983 whose primary goal was to advance democracy in other countries[2][3][4] by promoting political and economic institutions such as political groups, trade unions, free markets and business groups.[5] NED is funded primarily by an annual allocation from the US Congress"
Yes...there is a difference in talking and trying to influence vs overt acts to interfere and ever further away than an assassination of Yushchenko with dioxin.
Maintaining a huge inventory of supplies is very expensive especially when you are the policeman of the world and feel obligated to impose the our system on every other country in the world.
Or we can be lambasted for pulling back or accused of abandoning our allies... or blah blah blah???? The post-WWII Brettonwood agreement laid out our role in the world and allied countries made a decision to become signatories. We didn't put a gun to their heads. Most of the European countries simply assumed that post-WWII that the U.S. would act like every other imperial nation in history - it didn't. We agreed to safeguard the global commons and signatories to the agreement agreed to largely subordinate their national defense investments and strategies to support the U.S.' efforts to contain the Soviet Union. The math has now changed. We cannot fulfill that role any longer and the risk map has changed. So a huge inventory of comparatively short range Harpoons (of which we have in the thousands) is not going to fit a DMO strategy that demands precision-guided munitions that need to have real range for the Indo-Pac region and an ability to penetrate far more complex IAD networks.
"The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, Australia, and Japan after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. .... The end of Bretton Woods was formally ratified by the Jamaica Accords in 1976."
Simplistically, this is a guns and butter issue. Do we use finite funds to buy guns in order to assure our national survival or does D.C. buy butter to ensure their own political viability in the next election? The fault lies with the voters. "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H.L. Mencken
VLS reload remains unresolved...studied... experimented with... but remains unresolved decades later. CIMSEC did a detailed 10 part series of the subject of DMO and missile salvos. Enlightening and disconcerting at the same time.
We DON"T have a "Democracy"! Or, at least that was the idea our Founders had. We need to give up on our Save the World complex. We are an exceptional Nation and we need to stop allowing un-exceptional ideas and people to destroy us. One can avoid reality, but not the consequences of avoiding Reality--said some bright person!
Again, "Simplistically", we do have a "Democracy" by virtue of 50.01% of the real & imaginary voters. We will be commiserating over the consequences of our lost Republic by candlelight.
You folks are missing the point. The world depends on trade. Trade depends on order. Since the end of WWII one institution has protected the free flow of goods around the world; the U.S. Navy. Our globe straddling navy has done more to improve the lot of humanity than any other institution in the history of mankind.
“In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with populations that are both shrinking and aging.”
I gave up gambling after getting fleeced in gin rummy, cribbage and pinochle some 50 years ago. But thanks for the tip. I'm putting a fiver on Butter if I can find a taker.
The Left lives in a fantasy world, where having " good " intentions makes all their actions noble and acceptable. At least, that's how it seems, from here in The Badger's Burrow.
They cannot comprehend that not everyone thinks as they do, and there are valid reasons for having mountains of munitions, that will be gone through like the Chicago Fire, when war does, inevitably, come.
We can have guns and butter if we get rid of welfare, a good chunk of non-aid international aid, and pork.
That said, wrt "The fault lies with the voters" I no longer think this is true. We are allowed to go through the motions but actual legally cast ballots no longer determine winners in this country at a national (Executive and Congressional) level
Well, he works for the disastrous Gilday, aka, Admiral Rust. The intellectual vacuum at the top on topics that matter is vast. A “career” could be lost bucking the party line.
Indian Island, WA. Spent four years there for AT, and if the locals in Port Townsend (great view of the crane and pier!) knew the explosives arcs and what they meant, they’d go nuts.
North Island has more bunkers than Fallon. Seal Beach has more than both of them combined. And those are nothing compared to Hawthorne and Tooele. I'll admit that Fallon and Hawthorne are not exactly bustling garden spots, but Toole at least within commuting range of Salt Lake Valley.
BRAC pulled all the ammo out of Sierra and sent it to Hawthorne. Because for reasons it makes perfect sense to keep the warehouses & vehicle storage operating but not the hundreds of ammo bunkers. I'm not sure what else you can do with an ammo bunker, though the mercury flasks stored in some of Hawthorne's says you can do something else with them.
I’ll take this moment to thank CDR Sal for his tireless efforts as a true Patriot as he continues to strengthen our Nation by improving out Navy through his blessing of writing ability, knowledge and tenacity. I look in the mirror and wonder how can I help? Perhaps I could join my local Navy League chapter and bring this dialog to that setting. Summer is coming and the rusty Navy Ships and old F-18C Blue Angels are soon arriving to the Navy Weeks and SeaFairs if all the liberal cities of our Nation, along with the 3-4 Stars to bask in the glory and enjoy the pu-pu’s and easy softball questions at the numerous receptions. Would be a great forum for the always present Navy League representative to ask the hard questions?
Mr T’s Haircut (who I admire and always appreciate his take and comments) highlights my thought that I am happy to sit in the shade of CDR Sal’s porch, but in my case as I suspect many others, rarely get out to help effect positive change. Is there any other incites or ideas on my previous comment on how we can do that beyond correcting each other’s obvious mistakes? Any other input on my thought beyond the equipment change by the Blues to get in step with the new Top Gun movie? I still predict we will have rusty ships showing up to fleet week despite the fact I hope not and Sal continues to show off the failures in that regard. 3-4 Stars will be showing up to galas across these venues. Should I or others confront with pointed questions in the Q/A availability if presented with an opportunity? I think membership in the Navy League provides that opportunity. Would this help “move the needle” at all? What would be the most impactful question to ask given an opportunity?
Support is always appreciated by organizations, but it isn't going to move this needle. Wrong end of the funnel. As long as you have the people with green eyeshade weenies in CAPE giving this type of analysis to the Flag officers currently in charge (riffing off the desires of the current government for butter) it isn't going to change. As more officers in the chain are cashiered due to "loss of confidence", which is a thinly disguised political purge, we're still going to get the same type of people and thinking out of the pipeline.
The best thing I learned in Grad school that can be applied to just about anything, especially organizationally, in life is to do an honest, thorough SWOTs analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). We drilled on it constantly, and it can be an eye-opener. Enough of an eye-opener that running the analysis can start making you wonder what the hell management has been doing and how the hell the organization's been surviving. I can't imagine the carnage that would result from an honest third-party analysis of every government department/division.
For the first time in 80 years will may be facing peer militaries in actual combat--China and Russia. We must be thankful for both of these to having tipped their hands too soon. China for it's COVID bioweapon that blew apart the concept of just-in-time inventory management. And, for Russia, now engaged in a land war that is consuming men and material at a rate not seen since WWII.
Just in time. Maybe we'll start a program of rearmament that will realistically address what a real war will consume far, far more that than any Pentagon planner could ever imagine. And consumption of basic commodities like bullets and artillery shells. WWII being so unfashionably last century; we will fight with wonder-weapons.
And did you know, that's to Obama's EPA, we have no lead smelting capability in America? Nor can we manufacture penicillin. It's that bad.
600 ship Navy. Go with knowns, expanding the production of Ford carriers, Burke destroyers and Virginia submarines. If the EPA shows up, have the military police escort them off.
"The Cult of Efficiency’s green eye-shade priorities took the place of the bookshelf full of history’s example."
War is the very epitome of inefficiency. Which is why the aphorism is "Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics."
We've been studying superficial indicators of HR (while ignoring the the cancer growing in the belly of the berthing spaces and barracks) to the near exclusion of warfighting in general, much less boring old "don't get a ship named after me" logistics.
A pox on the GOFOs across the Services. Of course, we reap what we sow, and we have exactly the GOFO Corps the politicos want.
Heh. So did the French in 1940 and Russians in 1941. Look at how well that went, and what the cost of recovering from it was. Of course, the politicos and their spawn never pay the price. Just the pawns and their direct leadership.
I can't indisputably solely attribute this to him, but Tom Ricks (whom I know monitors this net) extended the saying to "... But people who really know what they are talking about, talk personnel." I think that goes even more to your point about the GOFO corps of today.
If you are in a Navy-centric organization, as I was at USPACOM about 10 years ago, they reverse it to FOGO. Useful information to impress your friends at cocktail parties and TED Talks.
The fundamental problem with our inventory is that we've gold plated all the replacement rounds. Look around the flight deck today ... do you see any plain "vanilla" MK82 bombs sitting around? They've all been replaced with the latest "J-series" acronym weapon that took decades to develop (after they were canceled three times and renamed a dozen times) and that we can only afford to buy a dozen of a year. Everybody on the front porch rails against retiring the CG's due to the reduction in VLS cells. I got news for everyone, we wouldn't be able to fill them all up at the going prices for SM-6's anyway.
The first thing that needs to happen to refill our magazines is to reduce the cost, per round, of the replacements. This happens by buying Mk82's and SM-2's instead of JSOWs, JDAMS, PJDAMS, etc. The next thing to do is get rid of every single joint coded billet in the military. JFCOM was shut down years ago, but those billets and staff just moved up to DC and now waste billions each year admiring problems the services are already trying to address, but have to wait for "joint approval" to move forward.
Do those two things and the Pentagon will have the money to refill our stockpiles in very short order.
After the first few days of a real war, why would we worry about 20m CEP? ... or stealthy aircraft for that matter.
We need to get out of the Iraq/Afghanistan warfighting mindset and back to a total war mindset where we inflict maximum damage per dollar spent. This means cheap bombs and lots of them. The enemy won't bankrupt us in the next shooting war, we'll bankrupt ourselves. Hell we don't even have troops on the ground in Ukraine and we're going bankrupt supporting them, and the Ukrainians are NOT winning.
Nah, we went bankrupt with Biden's series of multi-trillion giveaways (and Trumps). Ukraine is just a tiny cost in comparison. Biden and NATO refused for a year to provide offensive weapons and now it seems the offensive isn't very successful. Might be more than a coincidence.
At a CEP of 100m the average Mk-82 does nothing but make noise. So go with the 6 Mk-84s max load, what is the predicted loss rate of an F-35 delivering those 'effectively'? How many sorties to 50% losses? Or we have enough JDAM kits to fight a war?
I think I've seen some numbers of JDAM kits USAF bought tossed around on the internet, and it's a large number. Large enough that we'll probably run out of aircraft before we run out of JDAMs. Of course, we'll run out of flyable F-35s long before that due to the exquisite JIT Tiffany of the F-35 support infrastructure.
Nope. It means enough bombs to destroy the target(s). Types & quantities depend on the target. One expensive bomb to destroy one expensive point-target in one sortie by one expensive plane is fine by me.
Then don't ask a fast mover to provide your CAS. Old74Guy is pointing out that the reason we're in this situation is because we're tasking F-35's to do A-10, OV-10's and Helo's jobs.
"Then don't ask a fast mover to provide your CAS."
Good God, no! Been there, done that, still have the permanently puckered sphincter. I don't even trust "precision guided" weapons for close-in fire support. Calling in fire on targets further away, however (artillery for example), I would just as soon that target get hit first time every time and have another weapon or two left for the rest of the guns in that battery. I am sure the pilots would agree., since even a lowly private knows you don't want to walk the same trail more than once.
That may be...but not ONE F-35 pilot has trained one hour on CAS. So if I were a straight leg or a SOF guy looking for tactical air in a jam, I'd be REALLY worried about the CEP.
The 72 hour war needs changed to, "Respond in such a way that within 72 hours that we will force you to change your plans." That would be the we learned something from Ukraine approach for a start.
We have to guarantee big enough ammo contracts that the munitions makers (and munitions divisions of larger defense contractors) can afford to hire a bunch of 4 stars after they retire, duh.
"End of History" and "war is passe' and can't happen between trading partners" and any number of other cliches that fed the "peace dividend" BS that people in DC sold each other.
To recover quickly, we need to work with allies to divide workload. We need SK and Japan and other people who can put hulls in the water to do so and our other allies need to buy them. Settle on a ship type and buy them. We can add 20 ships a year that way.
We need the DoD Primes to bring in Subs and fund them to increase capacity for missile and armament production - distributed manufacturing, with vetting. Lots of industrial space out there that could be acquired and used and lots of people in those towns and small cities that would love that job.
There are ways to do this, we just need to get out of our own way. Also, stop the BS "divest to invest" and increase the budget to meet the crisis. Task and purpose.
You forgot that countries that have McDonalds don't go to war with each other.
"work with allies" LOL. Might come as a surprise to you but many of our "allies" don't have the interests the same interests we do. Getting their countries blown up to "pRoMoTe DeMoCrAcy" is on their lists of things to avoid.
Wow...aren't you just the cynical ass in the room. Look, I believe the people I mentioned - particularly Japan and SK (not to mention the rest of SE Asia) have skin in the game and know where this leads. Likewise, many in Europe have been awakened to the perils not of trying to "promote Democracy" but allowing autocratic, tyrannical regimes to run over other countries. They forgot after WWII that those expansionist autocrats get a taste for it.
You can make a good case with China, but in Europe everybody was fine until the US decided to go for regime change, undermining both allies and others.
The Ukrainian change of government was by their own people - as you might be noting now, due to the war, they don't like Russia - due to the Russians interfering in the election (and assassinating the prior President) to install a puppet.
I am not in favor of Ukraine - very corrupt as only a very few countries are/have been. BUT that doesn't equate assisting their retention of democratic norms with the Russians invading and killing their people. If you can't see the difference in the motivations from the tactics, then you have a little problem with balancing your ideology.
Everybody was fine in the EU because Putin's "little green men" and actions other than war could be ignored. They can't ignore him anymore, just as China revealed their hand (prematurely) and made people take notice of their plans and intentions. At least some of them. I have no hope for Europeans, either, because they are further along the trail with the cultural rot introduced by leftist politics. We MIGHT....maybe....still have a chance to save ourselves. But it is a hard row to hoe.
That's one way to describe the situation, another is to say that Russia was provoked by NATO expansion and could not suffer having a hostile NATO country on their border. I suppose you've never heard of Victoria Neuland, Leo Strauss and a bunch of other Jews who've started this mess. Or for that matter, Ukrainian attacks on ethic Russians in the Donbas. However you describe the situation in Ukraine, there was no US vital interest at stake. Now we risk stumbling into a nuclear confrontation over a corrupt backwater.
As for Europe, the "respectable" politicians had their chance and failed. Victor Orban, as much as he's hated, is probably doing the best job for his people. (No worries Samantha "Little Miss Color Revolution" Power will try to upend that.) AfD in Germany is gaining steam and France's RN is not going away. Now "unrespectable" politicians will have to fix the mess. Prepare for some pearl clutching.
Provoked by NATO expansion? Only if buy the (silly) line that NATO somehow represented a threat to invade Russia. Keeping Russia from compromising and reclaiming Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Georgia, the Baltic States, etc? Yes, NATO membership hopefully prevents that - or makes it a different ball game for Putin to try to destabilize or otherwise monkey with those countries. But a threat? That required military invasion? Plus, if you check with the "ethnic Russians", all but a very small minority DO NOT want Russia in Ukraine. Come now. One would, or you would, have to be a pretty rabid anti-Westerner to buy that line of twaddle as an excuse by Russia to go to war anywhere.
But, of course, then the shoe drops with your comment about "Jews". So this conversation, and all future conversations, are over with you Billy. Sell crazy elsewhere.
"due to the Russians interfering in the election (and assassinating the prior President) to install a puppet."
Ever hear of the National Endowment for Democracy?
"The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is an American organization founded in 1983 whose primary goal was to advance democracy in other countries[2][3][4] by promoting political and economic institutions such as political groups, trade unions, free markets and business groups.[5] NED is funded primarily by an annual allocation from the US Congress"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy
Yes...there is a difference in talking and trying to influence vs overt acts to interfere and ever further away than an assassination of Yushchenko with dioxin.
"...aren't you just the cynical ass in the room"
How about "ONE of the cynical assES in the room"?
Fair.
Maintaining a huge inventory of supplies is very expensive especially when you are the policeman of the world and feel obligated to impose the our system on every other country in the world.
Or we can be lambasted for pulling back or accused of abandoning our allies... or blah blah blah???? The post-WWII Brettonwood agreement laid out our role in the world and allied countries made a decision to become signatories. We didn't put a gun to their heads. Most of the European countries simply assumed that post-WWII that the U.S. would act like every other imperial nation in history - it didn't. We agreed to safeguard the global commons and signatories to the agreement agreed to largely subordinate their national defense investments and strategies to support the U.S.' efforts to contain the Soviet Union. The math has now changed. We cannot fulfill that role any longer and the risk map has changed. So a huge inventory of comparatively short range Harpoons (of which we have in the thousands) is not going to fit a DMO strategy that demands precision-guided munitions that need to have real range for the Indo-Pac region and an ability to penetrate far more complex IAD networks.
"The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, Australia, and Japan after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. .... The end of Bretton Woods was formally ratified by the Jamaica Accords in 1976."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system
Bretton Woods was not a defense agreement. That would be NATO.
"We agreed to safeguard the global commons"
Where?
It was a lot more than that.
Show me.
Simplistically, this is a guns and butter issue. Do we use finite funds to buy guns in order to assure our national survival or does D.C. buy butter to ensure their own political viability in the next election? The fault lies with the voters. "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H.L. Mencken
and a hulls versus bullets issue.
Our strategy seems to imply that we don't think our DDGs will last till they can get a reload.
Am I correct in thinking that our VLS can't be reloaded except at major Naval ports? Japan? San Diego? Pearl Harbor?
VLS reload remains unresolved...studied... experimented with... but remains unresolved decades later. CIMSEC did a detailed 10 part series of the subject of DMO and missile salvos. Enlightening and disconcerting at the same time.
Seal Beach, Guam. Not good.
We DON"T have a "Democracy"! Or, at least that was the idea our Founders had. We need to give up on our Save the World complex. We are an exceptional Nation and we need to stop allowing un-exceptional ideas and people to destroy us. One can avoid reality, but not the consequences of avoiding Reality--said some bright person!
Again, "Simplistically", we do have a "Democracy" by virtue of 50.01% of the real & imaginary voters. We will be commiserating over the consequences of our lost Republic by candlelight.
You folks are missing the point. The world depends on trade. Trade depends on order. Since the end of WWII one institution has protected the free flow of goods around the world; the U.S. Navy. Our globe straddling navy has done more to improve the lot of humanity than any other institution in the history of mankind.
Yes you are correct. But it has been at the expense of the US. Our sacrifices have not been appreciated and have resulted in Welfare States that despise and ridicule the USA--Europeans. We are hostage to nations that provide our medicines and and other needed resources. We have given away our jobs to help other Countries. We don't use our own resources to help ourselves (Oil for example). We have hobbled our own country and our strengths are being crushed. We are being invaded by people who don't value what has made the US a great nation. For another look at the way things are going read " The end of the world is just the beginning" https://www.amazon.com/End-World-Just-Beginning-Globalization/dp/B09CS8FRRD/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=606357703167&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9010701&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=8415643101065527190&hvtargid=kwd-1701228818114&hydadcr=7636_9903242&keywords=peter+zion+the+end+of+the+world&qid=1687994555&sr=8-1
Blurb:
“In The End of the World is Just the Beginning, author and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan maps out the next world: a world where countries or regions will have no choice but to make their own goods, grow their own food, secure their own energy, fight their own battles, and do it all with populations that are both shrinking and aging.”
It’s an interesting book, but one which ignores the poor material condition of the USN.
My bet is on Butter, at least with the current "Leadership" in control.
I gave up gambling after getting fleeced in gin rummy, cribbage and pinochle some 50 years ago. But thanks for the tip. I'm putting a fiver on Butter if I can find a taker.
The Left lives in a fantasy world, where having " good " intentions makes all their actions noble and acceptable. At least, that's how it seems, from here in The Badger's Burrow.
They cannot comprehend that not everyone thinks as they do, and there are valid reasons for having mountains of munitions, that will be gone through like the Chicago Fire, when war does, inevitably, come.
The largely treasonous buggers in DC will sacrifice both butter and bullets for pork, foreign and domestic.
We can have guns and butter if we get rid of welfare, a good chunk of non-aid international aid, and pork.
That said, wrt "The fault lies with the voters" I no longer think this is true. We are allowed to go through the motions but actual legally cast ballots no longer determine winners in this country at a national (Executive and Congressional) level
Good. Now do maintenance…
Well, he works for the disastrous Gilday, aka, Admiral Rust. The intellectual vacuum at the top on topics that matter is vast. A “career” could be lost bucking the party line.
Admiral Pyle can say that as he is not on the hook to pay for said munitions. Glad he did say regardless.
Munitions stocks are not sexy, and the storage facilities are in nasty places (Fallon, for example)...
Indian Island, WA. Spent four years there for AT, and if the locals in Port Townsend (great view of the crane and pier!) knew the explosives arcs and what they meant, they’d go nuts.
Is that where the Marines guard everything?
wonder what that means
No. That's NBK-Bangor. NAVMAG Indian Island stocks lots of other explosives.
Something going off at the pier would ruin a sizable area.
LOL
Not as much as Bangor, though....
North Island has more bunkers than Fallon. Seal Beach has more than both of them combined. And those are nothing compared to Hawthorne and Tooele. I'll admit that Fallon and Hawthorne are not exactly bustling garden spots, but Toole at least within commuting range of Salt Lake Valley.
While NA is probably a desirable assignment Hawthorne is not. Then there are garden spots like the Sierra Army Depot....
BRAC pulled all the ammo out of Sierra and sent it to Hawthorne. Because for reasons it makes perfect sense to keep the warehouses & vehicle storage operating but not the hundreds of ammo bunkers. I'm not sure what else you can do with an ammo bunker, though the mercury flasks stored in some of Hawthorne's says you can do something else with them.
I’ll take this moment to thank CDR Sal for his tireless efforts as a true Patriot as he continues to strengthen our Nation by improving out Navy through his blessing of writing ability, knowledge and tenacity. I look in the mirror and wonder how can I help? Perhaps I could join my local Navy League chapter and bring this dialog to that setting. Summer is coming and the rusty Navy Ships and old F-18C Blue Angels are soon arriving to the Navy Weeks and SeaFairs if all the liberal cities of our Nation, along with the 3-4 Stars to bask in the glory and enjoy the pu-pu’s and easy softball questions at the numerous receptions. Would be a great forum for the always present Navy League representative to ask the hard questions?
Blues are flying super hornets now.
Thanks God!
Mr T’s Haircut (who I admire and always appreciate his take and comments) highlights my thought that I am happy to sit in the shade of CDR Sal’s porch, but in my case as I suspect many others, rarely get out to help effect positive change. Is there any other incites or ideas on my previous comment on how we can do that beyond correcting each other’s obvious mistakes? Any other input on my thought beyond the equipment change by the Blues to get in step with the new Top Gun movie? I still predict we will have rusty ships showing up to fleet week despite the fact I hope not and Sal continues to show off the failures in that regard. 3-4 Stars will be showing up to galas across these venues. Should I or others confront with pointed questions in the Q/A availability if presented with an opportunity? I think membership in the Navy League provides that opportunity. Would this help “move the needle” at all? What would be the most impactful question to ask given an opportunity?
Support is always appreciated by organizations, but it isn't going to move this needle. Wrong end of the funnel. As long as you have the people with green eyeshade weenies in CAPE giving this type of analysis to the Flag officers currently in charge (riffing off the desires of the current government for butter) it isn't going to change. As more officers in the chain are cashiered due to "loss of confidence", which is a thinly disguised political purge, we're still going to get the same type of people and thinking out of the pipeline.
4-stars be too busy DEI'in n'stuff.
The best thing I learned in Grad school that can be applied to just about anything, especially organizationally, in life is to do an honest, thorough SWOTs analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). We drilled on it constantly, and it can be an eye-opener. Enough of an eye-opener that running the analysis can start making you wonder what the hell management has been doing and how the hell the organization's been surviving. I can't imagine the carnage that would result from an honest third-party analysis of every government department/division.
For the first time in 80 years will may be facing peer militaries in actual combat--China and Russia. We must be thankful for both of these to having tipped their hands too soon. China for it's COVID bioweapon that blew apart the concept of just-in-time inventory management. And, for Russia, now engaged in a land war that is consuming men and material at a rate not seen since WWII.
Just in time. Maybe we'll start a program of rearmament that will realistically address what a real war will consume far, far more that than any Pentagon planner could ever imagine. And consumption of basic commodities like bullets and artillery shells. WWII being so unfashionably last century; we will fight with wonder-weapons.
And did you know, that's to Obama's EPA, we have no lead smelting capability in America? Nor can we manufacture penicillin. It's that bad.
600 ship Navy. Go with knowns, expanding the production of Ford carriers, Burke destroyers and Virginia submarines. If the EPA shows up, have the military police escort them off.
Even if you pick up the pace you'd not impact anything until the 2030s. We need useful ,smaller ships.
Heh.
"The Cult of Efficiency’s green eye-shade priorities took the place of the bookshelf full of history’s example."
War is the very epitome of inefficiency. Which is why the aphorism is "Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics."
We've been studying superficial indicators of HR (while ignoring the the cancer growing in the belly of the berthing spaces and barracks) to the near exclusion of warfighting in general, much less boring old "don't get a ship named after me" logistics.
A pox on the GOFOs across the Services. Of course, we reap what we sow, and we have exactly the GOFO Corps the politicos want.
Heh. So did the French in 1940 and Russians in 1941. Look at how well that went, and what the cost of recovering from it was. Of course, the politicos and their spawn never pay the price. Just the pawns and their direct leadership.
I can't indisputably solely attribute this to him, but Tom Ricks (whom I know monitors this net) extended the saying to "... But people who really know what they are talking about, talk personnel." I think that goes even more to your point about the GOFO corps of today.
Had to update GOFO acrospeak dictionary:
https://www.acronymfinder.com/General-Officer%2fFlag-Officer-(GOFO).html
If you are in a Navy-centric organization, as I was at USPACOM about 10 years ago, they reverse it to FOGO. Useful information to impress your friends at cocktail parties and TED Talks.
Sounds like counterpoint from Red Hiil Road complex in Oahu County?
Always enjoyed flipping perspective with Aiea Heights rental housemates
when counterflow commuting to FOCCPAC-Kunia EOC via Kipapa Gultch!
"FOGO." Abbreviations.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Web. 1 Jul 2023.
https://www.abbreviations.com/term/1549048
The fundamental problem with our inventory is that we've gold plated all the replacement rounds. Look around the flight deck today ... do you see any plain "vanilla" MK82 bombs sitting around? They've all been replaced with the latest "J-series" acronym weapon that took decades to develop (after they were canceled three times and renamed a dozen times) and that we can only afford to buy a dozen of a year. Everybody on the front porch rails against retiring the CG's due to the reduction in VLS cells. I got news for everyone, we wouldn't be able to fill them all up at the going prices for SM-6's anyway.
The first thing that needs to happen to refill our magazines is to reduce the cost, per round, of the replacements. This happens by buying Mk82's and SM-2's instead of JSOWs, JDAMS, PJDAMS, etc. The next thing to do is get rid of every single joint coded billet in the military. JFCOM was shut down years ago, but those billets and staff just moved up to DC and now waste billions each year admiring problems the services are already trying to address, but have to wait for "joint approval" to move forward.
Do those two things and the Pentagon will have the money to refill our stockpiles in very short order.
I want to see the sortie loss rate of F-35s delivering dumb Mk-82s with or without ballutes using an attack profile to produce a CEP of 20m.
After the first few days of a real war, why would we worry about 20m CEP? ... or stealthy aircraft for that matter.
We need to get out of the Iraq/Afghanistan warfighting mindset and back to a total war mindset where we inflict maximum damage per dollar spent. This means cheap bombs and lots of them. The enemy won't bankrupt us in the next shooting war, we'll bankrupt ourselves. Hell we don't even have troops on the ground in Ukraine and we're going bankrupt supporting them, and the Ukrainians are NOT winning.
Nah, we went bankrupt with Biden's series of multi-trillion giveaways (and Trumps). Ukraine is just a tiny cost in comparison. Biden and NATO refused for a year to provide offensive weapons and now it seems the offensive isn't very successful. Might be more than a coincidence.
At a CEP of 100m the average Mk-82 does nothing but make noise. So go with the 6 Mk-84s max load, what is the predicted loss rate of an F-35 delivering those 'effectively'? How many sorties to 50% losses? Or we have enough JDAM kits to fight a war?
I think I've seen some numbers of JDAM kits USAF bought tossed around on the internet, and it's a large number. Large enough that we'll probably run out of aircraft before we run out of JDAMs. Of course, we'll run out of flyable F-35s long before that due to the exquisite JIT Tiffany of the F-35 support infrastructure.
"This means cheap bombs and lots of them"
Nope. It means enough bombs to destroy the target(s). Types & quantities depend on the target. One expensive bomb to destroy one expensive point-target in one sortie by one expensive plane is fine by me.
PS
Why worry about a 20 m CEP? As a former grunt, I worried a lot about CEPs.
And I am pretty sure pilots want to be as sneaky as they can possibly be; they even hide behind hills when possible.
Then don't ask a fast mover to provide your CAS. Old74Guy is pointing out that the reason we're in this situation is because we're tasking F-35's to do A-10, OV-10's and Helo's jobs.
"Then don't ask a fast mover to provide your CAS."
Good God, no! Been there, done that, still have the permanently puckered sphincter. I don't even trust "precision guided" weapons for close-in fire support. Calling in fire on targets further away, however (artillery for example), I would just as soon that target get hit first time every time and have another weapon or two left for the rest of the guns in that battery. I am sure the pilots would agree., since even a lowly private knows you don't want to walk the same trail more than once.
That may be...but not ONE F-35 pilot has trained one hour on CAS. So if I were a straight leg or a SOF guy looking for tactical air in a jam, I'd be REALLY worried about the CEP.
"worried about the CEP."
And then you need to add another XXX meters for "oopsies". Even rifles with a CEP of inches have "oopsies".
I do believe that is the exact thinking that got us into this situation in the first place.
Because the opposition has better AD than it did 80 years ago. That's why you mount a kit on a Mk.82. Ammo is still cheaper than blood.
If we're dealing with significant ground level air defenses after the first week of the war, then we aren't waging war, we're in a police action.