It's a Foreign Military Sale. Doesn't that mean the Ukrainians are paying for it, not us? Ka-Ching!...a total win this time. Let's sell them the deluxe model with the Navy Blueberry camouflage pattern so that it can hide from anti-tank missiles.
Please belabor the point. How many times have we had to recreate, from scratch, a riverine capability? Right off the top of my head, I'm thinking Iraq (Tigris & Euphrates), Vietnam (Mekong), Korea (the Inchon landing), and our very own French & Indian (Hudson), revolutionary (Hudson and Washington crossing the Delaware) and civil (Mississippi and several rivers on the east coast) wars. The boats would be the easy part - if we still had boat yards. Manning and supply chain are perpetual pentagon problem points. And, 37 million dollars for a 50 foot aluminum patrol boat? Can someone explain that? Is there some rule that the pentagon can't use an off-the-shelf design and hire the guys who know how to make a bunch of them? Something good enough, now, and cheap is good enough.
Displacements on ship starts rise in peace and plummet in war. The small boats are always too few at the beginning of the war and too many at the end. I've seen this same pattern in navalism from the 16th century onwards, consistently. It's not just the US, and not just this time. It's every time!
The United States Navy let Riverine and Coastal Patrol capability stay with NSW after Vietnam. Big Navy really wasn't sure how or if they wanted to use it. When the Riverine Units were reactivated, experience from The Special Boat Units wasn't utilized in the most effective manner. We will relearn these lessons at a steep cost.
“We can do it using autonomous river patrol boat thingys” - Said by someone in the 5 sided puzzle palace
All you need for river patrol is a thousand 16-foot john boats, and a bunch of m 16's and some bass boats with a mid-weight machine gun.
It's cute watching America weaken itself to prop-up the kleptocracy that is Ukraine.
"For it is the doom of men that they forget." Merlin from the movie Excalibur
It's a Foreign Military Sale. Doesn't that mean the Ukrainians are paying for it, not us? Ka-Ching!...a total win this time. Let's sell them the deluxe model with the Navy Blueberry camouflage pattern so that it can hide from anti-tank missiles.
Please belabor the point. How many times have we had to recreate, from scratch, a riverine capability? Right off the top of my head, I'm thinking Iraq (Tigris & Euphrates), Vietnam (Mekong), Korea (the Inchon landing), and our very own French & Indian (Hudson), revolutionary (Hudson and Washington crossing the Delaware) and civil (Mississippi and several rivers on the east coast) wars. The boats would be the easy part - if we still had boat yards. Manning and supply chain are perpetual pentagon problem points. And, 37 million dollars for a 50 foot aluminum patrol boat? Can someone explain that? Is there some rule that the pentagon can't use an off-the-shelf design and hire the guys who know how to make a bunch of them? Something good enough, now, and cheap is good enough.
Displacements on ship starts rise in peace and plummet in war. The small boats are always too few at the beginning of the war and too many at the end. I've seen this same pattern in navalism from the 16th century onwards, consistently. It's not just the US, and not just this time. It's every time!
Channeling David Porter I see.
Pray
What river are the Heroic Ukrainians sailing on?
I suspect you’re going to see these craft reflagged as Rivera Boats.
https://babel.ua/en/news/83172-monaco-battalion-the-sbi-is-investigating-the-departure-of-more-than-80-wealthy-ukrainians
Par for the course.
USN "leadership" has the strategic ability of a 7 year old.
Anyone think that collection of political incompetents has ANY idea of how to deal with China?
Regret means acknowledging an error. That never happens in today’s military.
It wasn’t just a boat with a riverine capability, that boat (actual a team of two) went from Guam to Yap and back several times.
The United States Navy let Riverine and Coastal Patrol capability stay with NSW after Vietnam. Big Navy really wasn't sure how or if they wanted to use it. When the Riverine Units were reactivated, experience from The Special Boat Units wasn't utilized in the most effective manner. We will relearn these lessons at a steep cost.
"... we have a problem with institutional maturity to support the "unsexy but important."
An understatement of epic proportions.