SECNAV Extends Burke, Tico Decom Dates

HMS CANOPUS has a recommendation

What do you do with a bunch of swaybacks?

I have an idea. Some of y’all may not like it…but it solves two problems. It also is no sillier than having someone screen for command of an SSN and then spending the balance of their command time pierside awaiting maintenance. People have made admiral with that plan, so I’m OK with mine.

I really feel sorry for those tasked with scheduling maintenance and upgrades, but the SECNAV recently made a couple of announcements recently about the Ticonderoga Cruisers and Flight I Arleigh Burkes:

Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced on October 31 that the Department of the Navy plans to operate 12 Arleigh Burke class (DDG 51) Flight I Destroyers beyond their 35-year expected service life.

The decision, based upon a hull-by-hull evaluation of ship material condition, combat capability, technical feasibility and lifecycle maintenance requirements, will result in an additional 48 ship-years of cumulative ship service life in the 2028 to 2035 timeframe.  The Navy has proposed DDG service life extension funding in the FY26 budget request, and will update the shipbuilding plan accordingly. 

…

The Department of the Navy plans to operate three Ticonderoga-class (CG 47) cruisers beyond their expected service life: USS Gettysburg (CG 64), USS Chosin (CG 65), and USS Cape St. George (CG 71).  This decision adds 10 years of cumulative ship service life from fiscal year 2026 to 2029

I can argue both sides, but this is a step that simply has to be made.

What do we know in 2024? One basic item is that we know we do not have a large enough fleet to meet our global requirements, including the threat in the Western Pacific from the People’s Republic of China.

We know we do not have the turnkey industrial capacity right now or for the next half-decade at least to build more.

We know that we were about to decommission some well-worn but at least partially mission capable warships, and now we are going to keep them to cover the gap until someone figures out how to get new ships displacing water.

As we covered a dozen years ago at the OG Blog, keeping old ships commissioned is expensive. Especially if they were ships you thought for a few years were going away, but then at the last minute are kept. Maintenance types do “interesting things” with ships due to go to the breakers. Ahem.

You really shouldn’t ask too much of them. They are not new ships. That’s OK, there are options you can do to mitigate their shortcomings.

What do you do with them when you have an extensive CASREP list, parts are hard to find, and Sailors are few and far between?

However…if you know you are in for a fight, a ship is better than no ship…and it is all in how you use them.

Let’s look back over a century for an idea if something is really better than nothing.

We have the HMS Canopus option.

By the time WWI kicked off, she was obsolete. Too slow to make the fight at the Battle of Coronel, she chugged herself back to the Falkland Islands. No one knew what to do with Canopus and her shipload of reservists, as the modern German flotilla just gave the Royal Navy its greatest defeat in generation and may be expected any day...and show they were. Good ‘ole lady Canopus was ready for the kickoff of the Battle of the Falkland Islands.

HMS Canopus was now beached at Port Stanley, the capital of the Falklands, as guard ship. On December 7 Sturdee arrived, bringing the British warships at Port Stanley to the pre-dreadnought Canopus, the battlecruisers Invincible and Inflexible, the armoured cruisers Kent, Carnarvon and Cornwall, the light cruisers Bristol and Glasgow and the armed merchant cruiser Macedonia.

On the morning of December 8 1914 Gneisenau and Nürnberg were detached from the main squadron, which followed about fifteen miles behind, to attack the wireless station and port facilities at Port Stanley. At 0830 they sighted the wireless mast and smoke from Macedonia returning from patrol.

They didn't know that at 0750 they had been sighted by a hill top spotter which signalled Canopus which then signalled Invincible, flagship, via Glasgow. The British ships were still coaling and most ships, including the battlecruisers, would take a couple of hours to get up steam. If the Germans attacked the British ships would be stationary targets and any ship which tried to leave harbour would face the concentrated fire of the full German squadron, if they were sunk whilst leaving harbour the rest of the squadron would be trapped in port. Sturdee kept calm, ordered steam to be raised and then went and had breakfast!

0900 the Germans made out the tripod masts of capital ships. They were unsure of what theses ships were but they knew Canopus was in the area and they hoped that these were pre-dreadnoughts, which they could easily outrun.

Canopus was beached out of site of the German ships, behind hills but had set up a system for targeting using land based spotters. At 13,000 yards her forward turret fired but was well short, the massive shell splashes astonished the German ships who could see no enemy warships. The rear turret then fired using practice rounds which were already loaded for an expected practice shoot later. The blank shells ricocheted off the sea, one of them hitting the rearmost funnel of Gneisenau. The two German ships turned away. Canopus didn't fire again but she saved the British from a perilous situation.

What does that have to do with the challenge today? Well, remember the post we started the week out concerning the criminally slow buildup of missile defense in Guam?

It takes three to make one. We are keeping three very old cruisers for an extra ten years.

Don’t deploy them as we normally would. You have 122 VLS cells to load up with SM-2/3/6 as needed. Have them cover a rotational Guam Station Ship for anti-ballistic missile defense as we wait for the ground based missile defense to come online.

6-months on, 12-months off. Visit local islands now and then. Get underway for a few days in low-impact weather and seas on an irregular schedule, etc. The details and challenges will figure themselves out.

Perfect? No..but you could probably get by with reduced manning or … here’s a shocker … partially manned by reservists. Homeport out of Hawaii or Yokosuka.

The 12 Flight I Burkes? We have five or so DDG-51 in Rota, Spain for anti-ballistic missile duty. Keep them there. Treat them nicely so they can last. Send the newer units with the CVN.