Where is the requirement to hold responsible those that made poor decisions that got us into this place. Typical Navy not wanting to upset the Flags or other Senior Officers.
A good starting point for that article would be the coterie of SWO 3 stars that pushed the LCS. They also slowed the CG upgrades to a point that accelerated the depreciation of those ships. As a famous 4 star used to say - ‘your reward is no punishment.’
My 2015 Ph.D dissertation analyzed over 100 DoD acquisition programs and their cost overruns, hitting pretty hard on the problem of underestimating initial costs. I also suggested a way to determine just how bad an initial estimate is for a given acquisition project. The good folks at CAIV put out a report in the same time frame in which they referenced a paper by Dr. Bent Flyvbjerg, "Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?". Given that the CAIV publication was an official DoD report, I was quite surprised to see even this sideways question on the subject.
Since then, I've suggested a way to tie actual risk management (as opposed to the pseudo-mathematical fluff currently in use) to PM fitreps, but the silence that followed was deafening.
Agree with all except more cvn. I have never read a compelling case for continuing to build such a costly platform in the era of moving to unmanned platforms. I MAYBE could consider a cvn of say 40000 ton built for unmanned platforms that would be capable of independent ops with escort(s) or to give more lethality/flexibility to traditional cvbg. Platforms with a 50 year depreciation is kinda crazy given the speed of tech advance these days.
It appears the discussion is focused around smaller surface vessels. I note toward the end there seems to be a nod to subs and carriers but are we forgetting the mid-list vessels that conduct surface warfare in favor of the smaller albeit faster to construct but also easier to destroy vessels? I am by no means an expert on this. For that matter, I might not even be up to speed and simply talking out of the side of my neck. The thought occurred to me as I read through the article.
Concur. The mix of combatant ships in a fleet is just as important as the capability of any given ship. I would also echo a theme posted by the good Sal - without logistic ships, your war is going to be very short. I submit that we have a number of "smart people" support groups that have extensive experience in running out simulations of mixes v. scenarios, and those folk need to be engaged in this effort. It is far too easy to define a "perfect" fleet mix for a given scenario, only to find out that you have created a brittle solution, one that is easily thwarted when the enemy decides to vote - and the enemy always gets a vote.
I'm not sure what they do now, but they used to have "war games" and "What If?" scenarios to game out worst case scenarios and highly unlikely situations. Those games are only as good as the moderators who administer them. If the outcomes are predetermined to make us all feel good about our present state, they do more harm than good. What we need are our best and brightest showing our current operational flag officers where their weaknesses are so our civilian authorities can propose ways to fix those short falls. Doubt that's happening in the current political climate though.
The way to build US Navy ships more economically lies in building US Merchant Ships.
Funding construction of highly automated merships with war reserve capabilities built in at time of construction would not be subsidy.
It would increase the number of US ultra-modern shipyards, provide ships available to the USN when a crisis demands, employ thousands of skilled workers, enable the US to compete in international shipbuilding and provide shipyards which do not require government funding to survive.
The Navy requires many more logistic and support auxiliaries than warships.
These shipyards could build them- and build fighting ships as well.
The U S Navy has demonstrated unmanned automated ships during RIMPAC 22. Converting much of this automation to dramatically decrease crew size is now within reach.
Crewing US flag merships has become overly expensive owing to crew size and US wages. Automation done properly can remedy this.
The number of US Merchant Mariner jobs in US-flagged ships will increase as will shore support for US
Merships earn a lot of money for owners and their countries.
The US must compete at sea with other countries, beginning with shipbuilding and manning to enable this income.
We are historically a maritime nation but have allowed our merchant fleet to decrease to 181 cuvilian ocean- going ships.
Now is the time to build automated, energy efficient ships.
Thank you for the space, Sal.
We are honored...
Where is the requirement to hold responsible those that made poor decisions that got us into this place. Typical Navy not wanting to upset the Flags or other Senior Officers.
Excellent point. You should write that article.
A good starting point for that article would be the coterie of SWO 3 stars that pushed the LCS. They also slowed the CG upgrades to a point that accelerated the depreciation of those ships. As a famous 4 star used to say - ‘your reward is no punishment.’
My 2015 Ph.D dissertation analyzed over 100 DoD acquisition programs and their cost overruns, hitting pretty hard on the problem of underestimating initial costs. I also suggested a way to determine just how bad an initial estimate is for a given acquisition project. The good folks at CAIV put out a report in the same time frame in which they referenced a paper by Dr. Bent Flyvbjerg, "Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?". Given that the CAIV publication was an official DoD report, I was quite surprised to see even this sideways question on the subject.
Since then, I've suggested a way to tie actual risk management (as opposed to the pseudo-mathematical fluff currently in use) to PM fitreps, but the silence that followed was deafening.
Agree with all except more cvn. I have never read a compelling case for continuing to build such a costly platform in the era of moving to unmanned platforms. I MAYBE could consider a cvn of say 40000 ton built for unmanned platforms that would be capable of independent ops with escort(s) or to give more lethality/flexibility to traditional cvbg. Platforms with a 50 year depreciation is kinda crazy given the speed of tech advance these days.
It appears the discussion is focused around smaller surface vessels. I note toward the end there seems to be a nod to subs and carriers but are we forgetting the mid-list vessels that conduct surface warfare in favor of the smaller albeit faster to construct but also easier to destroy vessels? I am by no means an expert on this. For that matter, I might not even be up to speed and simply talking out of the side of my neck. The thought occurred to me as I read through the article.
Concur. The mix of combatant ships in a fleet is just as important as the capability of any given ship. I would also echo a theme posted by the good Sal - without logistic ships, your war is going to be very short. I submit that we have a number of "smart people" support groups that have extensive experience in running out simulations of mixes v. scenarios, and those folk need to be engaged in this effort. It is far too easy to define a "perfect" fleet mix for a given scenario, only to find out that you have created a brittle solution, one that is easily thwarted when the enemy decides to vote - and the enemy always gets a vote.
I'm not sure what they do now, but they used to have "war games" and "What If?" scenarios to game out worst case scenarios and highly unlikely situations. Those games are only as good as the moderators who administer them. If the outcomes are predetermined to make us all feel good about our present state, they do more harm than good. What we need are our best and brightest showing our current operational flag officers where their weaknesses are so our civilian authorities can propose ways to fix those short falls. Doubt that's happening in the current political climate though.
The way to build US Navy ships more economically lies in building US Merchant Ships.
Funding construction of highly automated merships with war reserve capabilities built in at time of construction would not be subsidy.
It would increase the number of US ultra-modern shipyards, provide ships available to the USN when a crisis demands, employ thousands of skilled workers, enable the US to compete in international shipbuilding and provide shipyards which do not require government funding to survive.
The Navy requires many more logistic and support auxiliaries than warships.
These shipyards could build them- and build fighting ships as well.
The U S Navy has demonstrated unmanned automated ships during RIMPAC 22. Converting much of this automation to dramatically decrease crew size is now within reach.
Crewing US flag merships has become overly expensive owing to crew size and US wages. Automation done properly can remedy this.
The number of US Merchant Mariner jobs in US-flagged ships will increase as will shore support for US
Merships earn a lot of money for owners and their countries.
The US must compete at sea with other countries, beginning with shipbuilding and manning to enable this income.
We are historically a maritime nation but have allowed our merchant fleet to decrease to 181 cuvilian ocean- going ships.
Now is the time to build automated, energy efficient ships.