taking a break from the world's most depressing Nunn-McCurdy to comment: we lose because we stopped evolving ship classes, and started looking for "efficiencies." Oh, business types. They packaged all of the new development into these brand new platforms--it's like a collateralized debt obligation from the 2008 market collapse. They took all the dogshit, high risk stuff and threw it into huge major defense acquisition programs that were "too big to fail." Instead of actually burning down the risk, they packaged it and sold it to Congress--who buys it every time--because campaigns and jobs. You know how we fix this? Forbid anyone with the rank of O-6 / GS-15 or higher from ever going to work for a prime contractor. You can work as a direct support contractor to the government, you can go work for an FFRDC / UARC; however, you can't go to Lockheed Martin.
I like the intent but I suspect the execution would be very ugly and filled with loopholes & work-arounds. Seems to be a culture issue where accountability is so defused as to render the word meaningless...
What worries me is our nuclear deterrent. Can we build follow on delivery systems or scrap those too. Will missile defense be successful ( ie iran -Israel?). Will our submarines become detectable? All existing systems are aging and there is no real world underground testing of older or new warheads anymore.
At this point, we should expect that the RUS or PRC military chief will make a phone call to our CJCS to tell us that we will soon be detecting a launch, but they wish to ensure the United States that their military have replaced the warheads with dummies because they knew their leaders were unstable. Please do not launch a counter strike on detection.
"SES-encumbered bureaucracy"......sorry dude, too late. The Mandarins are running the court with their courtier lobbyists and a somnolent Congress that's content for their turn at the trough filled by the same lobbyists.
and about ten of them are legitimate engineers. This was part of the "process will replace the talent" cult...also known as "Rise of the Acquisition Professionals." "Contracts experts" without law degrees. "Program Managers" without engineering backgrounds. What could go wrong?
You don't need to be a lawyer to read or write a contract. Contracts are supposed to be written in plain English, so that anyone can understand them. If an educated layman can't understand and interpret a contract, it's a crap contract.
Contracts are created by commerce, they are creatures of the market. We would be much better off letting welders work on the the welding contracts; and the enginemen work on the engine contracts than we are by injecting lawyers into the process. Putting a lawyer to work drafting contracts is a waste of a lawyer. Plus, they spend so many hours worried about remote hypotheticals that they create crap contracts.
I can tell you for a fact that multiple ACAT-1Ds have hit Nunn-McCurdy because they had shoddy contracts which could not compel the prime to provide transparency on subcontractor CDRs...
We may not be arguing with each other. My point is that we should push down the contracting until you hit folks who know what they are talking about. Who is more likely to be able to know what a welding contract needs than the head of the welding department or a lawyer who has never seen a bead laid? Adding lawyers does not improve the end product.
While I was an Ohio County Engineer, I wrote my own contracts and let the County Prosecutor check them as to form. The actual contract was not his business as he had no expertise on the matters for which I wrote contracts. Letting a lawyer write them would have been waste of two people, the lawyer as well as me.
Despite lurking on the Front Porch since 2011, it's still hard for me to believe some of the ways our military is organized. My friends who never served often flat out think I'm making things up when I try to explain how Combatant Commands and the Joint Chiefs operate.
We started from the organization that won WW2, then allowed the entire thing to accrete and become as Byzantine as Byzantium. The more I see, the more I think Nimitz was right and that unification was a serious mistake.
We need the procurement office of "grab and go" and "plug and play." LCS - we spent all the time and money on the ship. The ship needed to be grab and go. LCS-1 should have been based on some other existing ship. LCS-2 Should have looked more like Benchajigua Express and at least have copied the power plant or near follow on plant. Innovative, modular gear was the entire point and no one ever focused on it. Even applying existing gear in new ways would have saved time, money and gotten a better result. The MCM gear should have been IOC and functioning off other ships if LCS wasn't ready. The surface warfare kit should be things already riding on other combatants and merely focused onto the LCS. The limitations like sound for ASW could have been mitigated by accepting the original concept. Off ship sensing and engagement. Stick MH-60 dipping sonar and the smaller MAD gear on the MCM USV
I believe the fount of should of... would of... could of... has been exhausted on the subject of the LCS... the little ship that leaves a big enough wake to be seen from orbit...
As we advance beyond the Marine and his rifle, the DDG/Cruiser with guns, torpedos, depth bombs, mines (more guns), aircraft carriers, attack subs, and long range strike aircraft with organic tanker support, we are turning from reality to the progromatic game so loved by the Air Force. When the war slips into the slugfest, the Marine and the Fighter/Attack pilot must be ready. A swarm of A-4F's come to miind.
The purpose of USAF and USN is to put an Army ashore on some distant land, and then support them in such way they obtain victory. Nothing has changed, although there are a few times we can get what we want without putting an Army overseas.
The LCS as orginally concived by Huges and Cereboski (?) was the US produced (for Egypt) MK3 Ambassador Class PGM. 40kts, 8 Harpoons, 76mm gun, CIWS and SEARAM. Then the Navy decided we wanted to add modularity (to do all the jobs the USN doesn't really like to do like counter-Mine, close in ASW/ASUW, etc), a helo-pad, helo hangar, long range to cross the ocean, and min-manned (because people cost money). We wasted 2 decades with little to show for it and at the same time we watched the PRC grow from a two-bit coastal defense force to an actual blue water capable navy in the same period just pisses me off. They are cranking out ships at speed while we hope for unmanned to save us. Talk of another over-sold concept, just like the LCS CTR maintenance concept. Unmanned is fine for limited items but anyone who works EW can watch the RU/UKR fight and show why UAS/UAV/etc is limited. We are being sold another dream concocted by forward thinkers who will burn more time and resources for little gained
Don’t forget the jointyness of the boat door and bay, not a minor add to a not-large hull. At least the idea I once heard about to make it floodable so LCS could be a baby-gator was redlined.
With the congressional waiver saying they don't have to build to the ship to the old combat damage control standards, is it actually accurate, in a sense, to say they made LCS floodable.
And would it even work to prevent tracking given the PLA's space based detection and surveillance assets? Not to mention how their Maritime Militia and other vessels would just happen to run into them.
The PLA space based systems will last about as long as ours in any major conflict. Very useful pre-first strike and degrading thereafter hour-by-hour, week-by-week.
I will argue that a strict EMCON posture will make it that much harder. ...Especially with some judicious Deception efforts.
Persistent surveillance is hard...Even today.
But the "Hide in Plain Sight" fever dream...And Gen. Heckel's claim that the Marines will be able to employ those ships based on their knowledge where threats will -or will not- be, is simply silly.
A Geo SAR can't track every ship across the Pacific every second, but it probably can revisit everything fast enough that you are not going to be lost while traveling at 14 knots. That also what the optical sats are for. And the PLAN and MM have a HUGE fleet, they can assign ships to just trail interesting US vessels. Particularly ones doing 14 knots.
"A Geo SAR can't track every ship across the Pacific every second, but it probably can revisit everything fast enough that you are not going to be lost while traveling at 14 knots."
Thats why concealment and deception matters so much...
"That also what the optical sats are for. "
This ole earth is a mighty cloudy place. Plus, revisiting something that is moving ...and again, making it a point to hide...is still bound by immutable physics.
Heck, it was something that was practiced by the USN on a regular basis decades ago. It's not now?
"But the recent announcement by the Marines that they are going to hugely increase their ground based air defense capability seems like a big step in the right direction. "
My first thought when I read that silly Force 2030 stuff. Water, food, fuel for the generators providing electricity for all the neat high-tech stuff, etc. Second thought was, just where are all those uncharted desert isles (a la Gilligan) that will be stealthily occupied by the Marines? The maps I looked at were not helpful.
Until we have the capability to locate and remove all Chinese (and probably Russian too) ocean reconnaissance satellites there will be no evading detection, EMCON or no EMCON.
Love this article for past perspectives... There doesn't appear to be much of an appetite for accountability (of any kind) these days in DC. Just keep shoveling money, blame COVID and supply chain for delays, and keep praying that somehow a workforce in sufficient numbers will show up to build the fleet we need. SecNav recently toured South Korean shipbuilding capabilities and his jaw dropped at what he saw. Japan and So. Korea both seem to be in a position to teach us some lessons on how to get this done.
I don't marginalize the role of ship repairs performed at NASSCO and Philly, but building from the keel up is another matter and that tale of woe speaks volumes.
The first rule of damage control is, "hold what you have." It's a good rule for life.
1. Hold onto good sailors. Focus on good meaningful shore duty, and plenty of it., so that E-4's, 5's, and 6's can raise a family. Build good on-base family housing, for when those same petty officers return to sea.
2. Hold onto good vessels. Maintain the ships we have, and, as one poster put it, "Build Burkes until doomsday."
3. Hold onto naval shipyards. Keep our handful of government yards working at full capacity. Put sailors to work in the yards again. (See Nr. 1).
Hold what you have, and then once you've locked that down, advance on the problem.
A number of factors are pushing us to build smaller numbers of larger, more capable, more expensive warships. IMHO, this is a trend which is all but unstoppable. In that vein, here is the notional DDG-2001 Class Maritime Presence Destroyer, the USS Reuben James:
Much of the vessel's internal volume is flexible open space suitable for a variety of purposes -- logistics support, drone swarm launch, UAV support, UUV support, and aircraft operations support.
We have to remember what the purpose of a cruiser was. The cruiser was the ship you sent on a cruise, long independent voyages> They were strong enough to beat up a small boy; fast enough to outrun a big boy. In the age of airplane travel, do we really need cruisers?
Destroyers, and their little brothers, the DE and the FF, them we need. Cruisers, not so much.
Tom, given the sorry state of our naval shipbuilding enterprise, tell us where the numbers of destroyers, destroyer escorts, and frigates are going to come from in the numbers and configurations which are needed.
In addition, where are the forward-deployed ship repair facilties and the numbers of fleet logistics supply ships which are needed to keep those destroyers, those destroyer escorts, and those frigates properly maintained and supplied going to come from?
Going even further, let's ask the question, where is the credible plan for expanding the US Navy and its seapower support infrastructure in ways which will make the USN a credible deterrent to Chinese ambitions in the western Pacific and beyond?
The fact that we do not have the naval shipbuilding industrial infrastructure to build all those large numbers of destroyers, destroyer escorts, and frigates -- plus the numbers of logistics support vessels needed to service our surface combatant forward deployments -- the lack of adequate shipbuilding infrastructure is one of the primary factors driving us towards building fewer numbers of larger, more capable, more expensive warships.
The configuration of the notional USS Reuben James, and the operational requirements which drive its design, are a direct reflection of the factors which are now driving US naval shipbuilding in a direction which is far from what we would all desire if only today's circumstances weren't what they actually are.
See my response to Mike Brogley. According to the F.S.Brim Modern Warship Classification System (FSB-MWCS), any warship between 10,000 tons and 20,000 tons capable of speeds in excess of 30 knots and carrying 64 or more VLS cells is a destroyer.
In addition, we do not have the shipyard capacity to produce larger numbers of smaller warships which are capable of surviving for any length of time in a bluewater fight with a peer naval adversary.
Nor do we have the shipbuilding capacity to build fleet logistics supply ships which are capable of surviving a fight in a high threat WEZ without lots of escort from warships which are numerous enough and well-equipped enough to protect those fleet logistics supply ships.
We are locked into a vicious trend which has had the effect of erasing most all the traditional rules of how we have been classifying warships for the last ninety years.
Actually those are exactly the types of ships we actually have untapped shipbuilding capacity to use. FSV/OSV repurposed. About the size of an Arialah class OPV.
It has been thought for more than a hundred years that with enough money, time, and technology, very small warships can be built which can defeat large ones.
But you will be putting these repurposed FSV/OSV up against the PLAN in a major war at sea with the Chinese in the western Pacific. The Chinese will force those battles well offshore beyond their coasts. Which is why they are engaged in creating a large bluewater navy.
Sure, these repurposed FSV/OSV will inflict some number of casualties on the PLAN before they are all inevitably expended.
How large will the PLAN's casualties be in fighting these repurposed FSV/OSV's? What happens next in the theater after all those smaller warships have been expended? Will other naval assets be present to carry on the fight? What will those other naval assets look like, and how many of them will be present to carry on the war?
Consider how quickly we may not have enough large combaants to carry on a war. I'm looking at cleaning up the LCS mess primarily with something that can probably borrow the architecture for LUSV.
- Keep aviation simple. It can lilly pad an H-60 so it can vertrep and handle UAV operations.
- The mission deck could handle the major aspects of MCM and ASuW with 2 MCM UAVs or 2 11m RHIBs. The crane could be positioned to move gear between flight deck and mission deck along with supporting the water launches.
- If we need to clear the deck to support networked attack operations you could get 3 mk 70s in that space or 4 x 4 ADLs
- Our challenges would be hat our Mk 38 mod IV mouns and XM914 mounts weigh more han the Marlins and M2 mounts on the UAE ship. That RAM launcher also wastes space. It needs to go. It might be nice if the Navy borrowed Marine gear and installed C-dome so we have VLS tubes out of the way of the mission deck. We also need a smaller, more automated decoy. I'm not hunting cruisers with this ship, but my network may need this ship as its hunting for cruisers. (for instance)
The DDG-2001 Reuben James class is called a Maritime Presence Destroyer. It has two primary missions:
First and foremost is to provide extended maritime presence for purposes of conflict deterrence, doing so in the absence of a properly adequate fleet logistics supply train. Its second primary mission is to survive long enough in major bluewater fight to inflict significant casualties on an adversary before it is lost, thus adding to its conflct deterrence value.
Regarding the lightly-manned surface combatants described in the CIMSEC article:
For purposes of maintaining conflict deterrence in the western Pacific, how and where will these lightly-manned surface combatants be maintained and supplied? How many of them will remain continuosly present on station in the event a major war at sea suddenly erupts?
In the context of an extended bluewater war at sea, and assuming some number of these small vessels survive the initial outbreak of the war, how will these lightly-manned vessels be resupplied and rearmed?
How large will the PLAN's casualties be in fighting these lightly-manned surface combatants?
What happens next in the theater after all those lightly-manned surface combatants have been expended? Will other naval assets be present to carry on the fight? What will those other naval assets look like, and how many of them will be present to carry on the war?
The larger point here is that throwing solutions at problems can't work in the absence of a larger understanding of the big picture in all its gory detail.
"... how and where will these lightly-manned surface combatants be maintained and supplied?" Is that a question that exclusively applies to this class of ship because that would seem to be a problematic question regardless of what ship class we're talking about.
As for "will other naval assets be present..." Again, is that a question that belongs only to this class of vessel? I'm not arguing on behalf of the author's position in the CIMSEC article only noting that smaller combatant class dedicated to striking an adversary's fleet is not one that has to engage in both ASW, AAW and missile defense to protect a carrier. What this balance of hull types shakes out to I don't presume to know. I only know that we don't exactly have the infrastructure to keep up with the repairs of DDGs in peacetime so what do things look like on D+90 based on the choices the Navy makes now?
Bill Tate, the issue of repair and resupply in the WESTPAC certainly isn't one which applies only to the CIMSEC lightly-manned surface combatant. It applies to every warship of every class and design which will be operating in the western Pacific if a major war at sea with the Chinese breaks out.
How does this major war at sea end? I think that after major losses are suffered on both sides, an armistice agreement is reached, one in which the Chinese get the best of the deal, simply for the fact they have more left to bargain with in terms of their geographical position, the size of their remaining naval and air forces, and the fact that their military industrial base has not been damaged in any truly serious way.
Sustainable maritime presence, plus the credible ability to fight a major war at sea if one breaks out, are two sides of the same conflict deterrence coin. The problem here is that keeping the two-sided conflict deterrence coin in our pocket is an expensive proposition.
Zumwalts are just under 16kton displacement and this is 19kton - when does it become a cruiser? Is there some political reason everything that’s not a carrier or gator-navy baby-CV is called a destroyer?
According to the F.S.Brim Modern Warship Classification System (FSB-MWCS), any warship between 10,000 tons and 20,000 tons capable of speeds in excess of 30 knots and carrying 64 or more VLS cells is a destroyer.
If we ever decide to build this hummer, we would try hard to keep this from happening. But if it did happen, then poof, it becomes the CG-2001. Just like that.
Have personal and deep connections with the 2020 document. Joint experimentation was such a failure that after wasting a billion dollars on it, the very word was erased from the DoD lexicon by then General Mattis. He wasn't wrong, perhaps most importantly, no one was ever held accountable for the squandering of the resources and treasure with zero return. A couple of SES types were reassigned and simply moved on to ruin other organizations.
Experimentation in the 20th Century led to the development of blitzkrieg and the aircraft carrier replacing the battleship. One was innovative for using armor, airpower, and communications in a novel way, the other was a major shift in shipbuilding and operational naval focus. Both faced massive institutional resistance but managed to succeed as a result of demonstrations / experiments / exercises that convinced seniors of their worth.
Today, experiments appear focused on selling major DoD manufacturer's latest silver bullet with preordained results. Recall one event before retiring that was castigated by a senior officer as "telling him about problems he already knew he had and offering no viable solutions."
There have been some of us who beat the drums for an Aegis FFG after the CG, and DDG were successfully fielded. They told us it would cost too much, and we would never get the return on that investment . . . instead . . . they burned up $100Billion on designing, and building LCS with not so much testing. WOW!
That $100B would have been better spent buiilding general purpose FF(G)s and DD(G)s classes that were robust and had some commonality of components. When the next globe-spanning naval campaign comes, those platforms would serve us better than the unicorns. Few remember the DD mods from the Pacific and Atlantic campaigns that saw DEs and DDs quickly upgraded for specific uses such as seaplane tenders, fast transports, minesweepers, and the like.
AMEN and AMEN. I remember the Four Stackers turning into Two Stackers and berthing added for the Marine Raiders.
Speaking of Seaplane Tender . . . I wish we had Seaplanes to provide services to them. There is no modern day PBY-5A Catalina replacement in this return to its primary theater it really shined in. Many airmen and sailors were saved by PBYs. No equivalent today! I would recommend the DHC-515 Firefighter as a quick replacement.
Flying is over 100 years old. Displacing water with a hull regardless of construction is over 1,000s of years old. Guess we ought to stop flying and using boats.
In 248 A.D., the Emperor Philip launched the secular games to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Rome. His realm stretched from the British Isles to the Middle East. What could possibly go wrong? You might say it was the end of history.
Looking back to the early 90s it's hard to believe anyone could be serious about the End of History and the New World Order. At least when Slick Willie said the era of big government was over or that he did not have sex with that woman, we knew he was a liar without shame who didn't mean a word he said.
Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden, Putin, Xi. the Kim family, the ayatollahs and a variety of others did not get the message about the triumph of liberal democracy and free enterprise.
The USA is now a failing company and the correct course of action would be to cut our losses, regroup and reorganize. Instead, we have become a losing gambler who knows his luck has to change.
If you look at the state of the world at the time, it's a lot easier to understand the hubris. China and India were backwards as anything, Iran was still recovering from the Iran-Iraq war, Europe was either allied with us or neutral, Russia was just a mess, and Japan, which everyone had been worried about, was starting to begin its decline.
Of course, no one thought that this wouldn't go on forever...
The problem is that I don’t see a path for America to get its act together and recover. I think Trump might have been able to alter course or at least ground the ship. Now we are headed to Niagara all engines ahead full.
Consider the "talent" of the Clinton regime and the absolute contempt they had for the military, even as senior leadership was busy trying to get more brown on the bridge with less rpm sucking up to that same regime.
FWIW, this day in 1975, we left the Saigon Embassy and left the lights on. Sometime, stories of that day out in the SCS would be good.
Absent Comrades!
taking a break from the world's most depressing Nunn-McCurdy to comment: we lose because we stopped evolving ship classes, and started looking for "efficiencies." Oh, business types. They packaged all of the new development into these brand new platforms--it's like a collateralized debt obligation from the 2008 market collapse. They took all the dogshit, high risk stuff and threw it into huge major defense acquisition programs that were "too big to fail." Instead of actually burning down the risk, they packaged it and sold it to Congress--who buys it every time--because campaigns and jobs. You know how we fix this? Forbid anyone with the rank of O-6 / GS-15 or higher from ever going to work for a prime contractor. You can work as a direct support contractor to the government, you can go work for an FFRDC / UARC; however, you can't go to Lockheed Martin.
I like the intent but I suspect the execution would be very ugly and filled with loopholes & work-arounds. Seems to be a culture issue where accountability is so defused as to render the word meaningless...
You beat me to it Bill. Loopholes you could drive a M1A2 Abrams through and work-arounds that can't be be traced by design.
What worries me is our nuclear deterrent. Can we build follow on delivery systems or scrap those too. Will missile defense be successful ( ie iran -Israel?). Will our submarines become detectable? All existing systems are aging and there is no real world underground testing of older or new warheads anymore.
funny you should ask that....
That’s presuming the actual willpower and chain of command will be mentally present if we do detect a launch.
At this point, we should expect that the RUS or PRC military chief will make a phone call to our CJCS to tell us that we will soon be detecting a launch, but they wish to ensure the United States that their military have replaced the warheads with dummies because they knew their leaders were unstable. Please do not launch a counter strike on detection.
"SES-encumbered bureaucracy"......sorry dude, too late. The Mandarins are running the court with their courtier lobbyists and a somnolent Congress that's content for their turn at the trough filled by the same lobbyists.
88,000 NAVSEA employees........
and about ten of them are legitimate engineers. This was part of the "process will replace the talent" cult...also known as "Rise of the Acquisition Professionals." "Contracts experts" without law degrees. "Program Managers" without engineering backgrounds. What could go wrong?
You don't need to be a lawyer to read or write a contract. Contracts are supposed to be written in plain English, so that anyone can understand them. If an educated layman can't understand and interpret a contract, it's a crap contract.
Contracts are created by commerce, they are creatures of the market. We would be much better off letting welders work on the the welding contracts; and the enginemen work on the engine contracts than we are by injecting lawyers into the process. Putting a lawyer to work drafting contracts is a waste of a lawyer. Plus, they spend so many hours worried about remote hypotheticals that they create crap contracts.
I can tell you for a fact that multiple ACAT-1Ds have hit Nunn-McCurdy because they had shoddy contracts which could not compel the prime to provide transparency on subcontractor CDRs...
We may not be arguing with each other. My point is that we should push down the contracting until you hit folks who know what they are talking about. Who is more likely to be able to know what a welding contract needs than the head of the welding department or a lawyer who has never seen a bead laid? Adding lawyers does not improve the end product.
While I was an Ohio County Engineer, I wrote my own contracts and let the County Prosecutor check them as to form. The actual contract was not his business as he had no expertise on the matters for which I wrote contracts. Letting a lawyer write them would have been waste of two people, the lawyer as well as me.
Despite lurking on the Front Porch since 2011, it's still hard for me to believe some of the ways our military is organized. My friends who never served often flat out think I'm making things up when I try to explain how Combatant Commands and the Joint Chiefs operate.
Well I served 30 years in the USN, and I would REALLY like explanations as to how the Combat Commands and Joint Chiefs really operate.
Touché!
I was there. Once a button is pushed things start happening. It's like a machine.
Badly, Captain. They operate badly.
We started from the organization that won WW2, then allowed the entire thing to accrete and become as Byzantine as Byzantium. The more I see, the more I think Nimitz was right and that unification was a serious mistake.
We need the procurement office of "grab and go" and "plug and play." LCS - we spent all the time and money on the ship. The ship needed to be grab and go. LCS-1 should have been based on some other existing ship. LCS-2 Should have looked more like Benchajigua Express and at least have copied the power plant or near follow on plant. Innovative, modular gear was the entire point and no one ever focused on it. Even applying existing gear in new ways would have saved time, money and gotten a better result. The MCM gear should have been IOC and functioning off other ships if LCS wasn't ready. The surface warfare kit should be things already riding on other combatants and merely focused onto the LCS. The limitations like sound for ASW could have been mitigated by accepting the original concept. Off ship sensing and engagement. Stick MH-60 dipping sonar and the smaller MAD gear on the MCM USV
I believe the fount of should of... would of... could of... has been exhausted on the subject of the LCS... the little ship that leaves a big enough wake to be seen from orbit...
As we advance beyond the Marine and his rifle, the DDG/Cruiser with guns, torpedos, depth bombs, mines (more guns), aircraft carriers, attack subs, and long range strike aircraft with organic tanker support, we are turning from reality to the progromatic game so loved by the Air Force. When the war slips into the slugfest, the Marine and the Fighter/Attack pilot must be ready. A swarm of A-4F's come to miind.
uhm, excuse me? "beyond the Marine and his rifle" ???? wha? I take exceptional exception to the very idea! hrrumph!
Semper Fi
Wars are fought on the ground, for the ground.
I'll differ with that slightly.
Wars are fought in lots of areas with a variety of weapons, lethal and not.
Wars are won when a grunt plants his flag on the rubble of the Enemy's Capital. See CCCP Flag over Reichstag
You are not going to see that over the gate to Fort Moore, nee Benning. "Wars are fought in lots of areas with a variety of weapons, lethal and not."
no, but it is above the gate to both the Sun Tzu Academy and the Clausewitz School for Delinquent Boys
“The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.” – Sun Tzu
“War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.”
― Carl von Clausewitz, On War
Isn't "the Clausewitz School for Delinquent Boys" the title of a fanfiction story where Ron Wesley hooks up with Draco Malfoy?
I always wanted to be the zen archer.
Right now the Hamas flag is flying over Columbia University with no repercussions. Apparently the war over Columbia University has been won by Hamas.
They can have it.
Oh dear... mouthy students are working themselves up into a lather... pardon me while a clutch my pearls.
Antifa and Soros paid agents.
I think the Army would let the Marines help out at times.
The purpose of USAF and USN is to put an Army ashore on some distant land, and then support them in such way they obtain victory. Nothing has changed, although there are a few times we can get what we want without putting an Army overseas.
The LCS as orginally concived by Huges and Cereboski (?) was the US produced (for Egypt) MK3 Ambassador Class PGM. 40kts, 8 Harpoons, 76mm gun, CIWS and SEARAM. Then the Navy decided we wanted to add modularity (to do all the jobs the USN doesn't really like to do like counter-Mine, close in ASW/ASUW, etc), a helo-pad, helo hangar, long range to cross the ocean, and min-manned (because people cost money). We wasted 2 decades with little to show for it and at the same time we watched the PRC grow from a two-bit coastal defense force to an actual blue water capable navy in the same period just pisses me off. They are cranking out ships at speed while we hope for unmanned to save us. Talk of another over-sold concept, just like the LCS CTR maintenance concept. Unmanned is fine for limited items but anyone who works EW can watch the RU/UKR fight and show why UAS/UAV/etc is limited. We are being sold another dream concocted by forward thinkers who will burn more time and resources for little gained
Don’t forget the jointyness of the boat door and bay, not a minor add to a not-large hull. At least the idea I once heard about to make it floodable so LCS could be a baby-gator was redlined.
With the congressional waiver saying they don't have to build to the ship to the old combat damage control standards, is it actually accurate, in a sense, to say they made LCS floodable.
Every ship ever built is floodable.
The phrase we used aboard *Patriot* was, “any ship can sweep for **a** mine.”
Once. :-)
When was the last time a multi unit formation operated under EMCON Alpha for a 24 hour period?
And would it even work to prevent tracking given the PLA's space based detection and surveillance assets? Not to mention how their Maritime Militia and other vessels would just happen to run into them.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/no-place-hide-look-chinas-geosynchronous-surveillance-capabilities
https://news.usni.org/2024/04/29/chinese-spy-ship-live-stalks-u-s-philippine-and-french-warships-in-south-china-sea-interrupts-live-fire-drill
Well they used COSCO merchant vessels like the Soviets used AGI’s…. They used to love to intrude into our Whisky Net.
The PLA space based systems will last about as long as ours in any major conflict. Very useful pre-first strike and degrading thereafter hour-by-hour, week-by-week.
"And would it even work to prevent tracking given the PLA's space based detection and surveillance assets? "
Aw...C'mon man!
The new LSM's that will support the Marines and their EABO concept will "hide in plain sight"!
https://www.marcorsyscom.marines.mil/News/News-Article-Display/Article/3742717/hiding-in-plain-sight-ulcans-and-the-future-of-expeditionary-logistics/
I will argue that a strict EMCON posture will make it that much harder. ...Especially with some judicious Deception efforts.
Persistent surveillance is hard...Even today.
But the "Hide in Plain Sight" fever dream...And Gen. Heckel's claim that the Marines will be able to employ those ships based on their knowledge where threats will -or will not- be, is simply silly.
Even sillier than, "Speed is Life!"
A Geo SAR can't track every ship across the Pacific every second, but it probably can revisit everything fast enough that you are not going to be lost while traveling at 14 knots. That also what the optical sats are for. And the PLAN and MM have a HUGE fleet, they can assign ships to just trail interesting US vessels. Particularly ones doing 14 knots.
But the recent announcement by the Marines that they are going to hugely increase their ground based air defense capability seems like a big step in the right direction. https://www.twz.com/land/marines-to-more-than-triple-size-of-air-defense-forces-by-2029
"A Geo SAR can't track every ship across the Pacific every second, but it probably can revisit everything fast enough that you are not going to be lost while traveling at 14 knots."
Thats why concealment and deception matters so much...
"That also what the optical sats are for. "
This ole earth is a mighty cloudy place. Plus, revisiting something that is moving ...and again, making it a point to hide...is still bound by immutable physics.
Heck, it was something that was practiced by the USN on a regular basis decades ago. It's not now?
"But the recent announcement by the Marines that they are going to hugely increase their ground based air defense capability seems like a big step in the right direction. "
How will it be sustained?
By those "Hide in Plain Sight" LSM's?
"How will it be sustained?"
"Water, water, everywhere
nor any drop to drink"
My first thought when I read that silly Force 2030 stuff. Water, food, fuel for the generators providing electricity for all the neat high-tech stuff, etc. Second thought was, just where are all those uncharted desert isles (a la Gilligan) that will be stealthily occupied by the Marines? The maps I looked at were not helpful.
This article...
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1533&context=nwc-review
Hiding in Plain Sight—The U.S. Navy and Dispersed Operations under EMCON, 1956–1972
Shows that "Hiding In Plain Sight" does not mean hoping an unsupported auxiliary won't be seen for what it is.
That said, you aren't going to stand a chance at evading detection if you are obligated to continuously emit.
Until we have the capability to locate and remove all Chinese (and probably Russian too) ocean reconnaissance satellites there will be no evading detection, EMCON or no EMCON.
Most combat direction watch standers can’t even spell EMCON.
Didn't he have a couple hits 2007-9?
Love this article for past perspectives... There doesn't appear to be much of an appetite for accountability (of any kind) these days in DC. Just keep shoveling money, blame COVID and supply chain for delays, and keep praying that somehow a workforce in sufficient numbers will show up to build the fleet we need. SecNav recently toured South Korean shipbuilding capabilities and his jaw dropped at what he saw. Japan and So. Korea both seem to be in a position to teach us some lessons on how to get this done.
We have been building their designs at NASSCO and Philly now for decades. Some of us already had a notion.
I don't marginalize the role of ship repairs performed at NASSCO and Philly, but building from the keel up is another matter and that tale of woe speaks volumes.
The first rule of damage control is, "hold what you have." It's a good rule for life.
1. Hold onto good sailors. Focus on good meaningful shore duty, and plenty of it., so that E-4's, 5's, and 6's can raise a family. Build good on-base family housing, for when those same petty officers return to sea.
2. Hold onto good vessels. Maintain the ships we have, and, as one poster put it, "Build Burkes until doomsday."
3. Hold onto naval shipyards. Keep our handful of government yards working at full capacity. Put sailors to work in the yards again. (See Nr. 1).
Hold what you have, and then once you've locked that down, advance on the problem.
A number of factors are pushing us to build smaller numbers of larger, more capable, more expensive warships. IMHO, this is a trend which is all but unstoppable. In that vein, here is the notional DDG-2001 Class Maritime Presence Destroyer, the USS Reuben James:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f134765225f00a0b564075349f03b455069c3031a1980279dda64307575cc7de.png
Much of the vessel's internal volume is flexible open space suitable for a variety of purposes -- logistics support, drone swarm launch, UAV support, UUV support, and aircraft operations support.
I'm all for flexibility, but that thing is huge. It's not so much a destroyer as a cruiser or small battleship.
We have to remember what the purpose of a cruiser was. The cruiser was the ship you sent on a cruise, long independent voyages> They were strong enough to beat up a small boy; fast enough to outrun a big boy. In the age of airplane travel, do we really need cruisers?
Destroyers, and their little brothers, the DE and the FF, them we need. Cruisers, not so much.
Tom, given the sorry state of our naval shipbuilding enterprise, tell us where the numbers of destroyers, destroyer escorts, and frigates are going to come from in the numbers and configurations which are needed.
In addition, where are the forward-deployed ship repair facilties and the numbers of fleet logistics supply ships which are needed to keep those destroyers, those destroyer escorts, and those frigates properly maintained and supplied going to come from?
Going even further, let's ask the question, where is the credible plan for expanding the US Navy and its seapower support infrastructure in ways which will make the USN a credible deterrent to Chinese ambitions in the western Pacific and beyond?
The fact that we do not have the naval shipbuilding industrial infrastructure to build all those large numbers of destroyers, destroyer escorts, and frigates -- plus the numbers of logistics support vessels needed to service our surface combatant forward deployments -- the lack of adequate shipbuilding infrastructure is one of the primary factors driving us towards building fewer numbers of larger, more capable, more expensive warships.
The configuration of the notional USS Reuben James, and the operational requirements which drive its design, are a direct reflection of the factors which are now driving US naval shipbuilding in a direction which is far from what we would all desire if only today's circumstances weren't what they actually are.
We could be building new and converting existing FSVs to corvettes. This would be huge if anyone in the Navy "did ships."
See my response to Mike Brogley. According to the F.S.Brim Modern Warship Classification System (FSB-MWCS), any warship between 10,000 tons and 20,000 tons capable of speeds in excess of 30 knots and carrying 64 or more VLS cells is a destroyer.
In addition, we do not have the shipyard capacity to produce larger numbers of smaller warships which are capable of surviving for any length of time in a bluewater fight with a peer naval adversary.
Nor do we have the shipbuilding capacity to build fleet logistics supply ships which are capable of surviving a fight in a high threat WEZ without lots of escort from warships which are numerous enough and well-equipped enough to protect those fleet logistics supply ships.
We are locked into a vicious trend which has had the effect of erasing most all the traditional rules of how we have been classifying warships for the last ninety years.
Actually those are exactly the types of ships we actually have untapped shipbuilding capacity to use. FSV/OSV repurposed. About the size of an Arialah class OPV.
It has been thought for more than a hundred years that with enough money, time, and technology, very small warships can be built which can defeat large ones.
But you will be putting these repurposed FSV/OSV up against the PLAN in a major war at sea with the Chinese in the western Pacific. The Chinese will force those battles well offshore beyond their coasts. Which is why they are engaged in creating a large bluewater navy.
Sure, these repurposed FSV/OSV will inflict some number of casualties on the PLAN before they are all inevitably expended.
How large will the PLAN's casualties be in fighting these repurposed FSV/OSV's? What happens next in the theater after all those smaller warships have been expended? Will other naval assets be present to carry on the fight? What will those other naval assets look like, and how many of them will be present to carry on the war?
Consider how quickly we may not have enough large combaants to carry on a war. I'm looking at cleaning up the LCS mess primarily with something that can probably borrow the architecture for LUSV.
- Keep aviation simple. It can lilly pad an H-60 so it can vertrep and handle UAV operations.
- The mission deck could handle the major aspects of MCM and ASuW with 2 MCM UAVs or 2 11m RHIBs. The crane could be positioned to move gear between flight deck and mission deck along with supporting the water launches.
- If we need to clear the deck to support networked attack operations you could get 3 mk 70s in that space or 4 x 4 ADLs
- Our challenges would be hat our Mk 38 mod IV mouns and XM914 mounts weigh more han the Marlins and M2 mounts on the UAE ship. That RAM launcher also wastes space. It needs to go. It might be nice if the Navy borrowed Marine gear and installed C-dome so we have VLS tubes out of the way of the mission deck. We also need a smaller, more automated decoy. I'm not hunting cruisers with this ship, but my network may need this ship as its hunting for cruisers. (for instance)
As regards smaller warships...
https://cimsec.org/lifting-the-veil-on-the-lightly-manned-surface-combatant/
The DDG-2001 Reuben James class is called a Maritime Presence Destroyer. It has two primary missions:
First and foremost is to provide extended maritime presence for purposes of conflict deterrence, doing so in the absence of a properly adequate fleet logistics supply train. Its second primary mission is to survive long enough in major bluewater fight to inflict significant casualties on an adversary before it is lost, thus adding to its conflct deterrence value.
Regarding the lightly-manned surface combatants described in the CIMSEC article:
For purposes of maintaining conflict deterrence in the western Pacific, how and where will these lightly-manned surface combatants be maintained and supplied? How many of them will remain continuosly present on station in the event a major war at sea suddenly erupts?
In the context of an extended bluewater war at sea, and assuming some number of these small vessels survive the initial outbreak of the war, how will these lightly-manned vessels be resupplied and rearmed?
How large will the PLAN's casualties be in fighting these lightly-manned surface combatants?
What happens next in the theater after all those lightly-manned surface combatants have been expended? Will other naval assets be present to carry on the fight? What will those other naval assets look like, and how many of them will be present to carry on the war?
The larger point here is that throwing solutions at problems can't work in the absence of a larger understanding of the big picture in all its gory detail.
"... how and where will these lightly-manned surface combatants be maintained and supplied?" Is that a question that exclusively applies to this class of ship because that would seem to be a problematic question regardless of what ship class we're talking about.
As for "will other naval assets be present..." Again, is that a question that belongs only to this class of vessel? I'm not arguing on behalf of the author's position in the CIMSEC article only noting that smaller combatant class dedicated to striking an adversary's fleet is not one that has to engage in both ASW, AAW and missile defense to protect a carrier. What this balance of hull types shakes out to I don't presume to know. I only know that we don't exactly have the infrastructure to keep up with the repairs of DDGs in peacetime so what do things look like on D+90 based on the choices the Navy makes now?
Bill Tate, the issue of repair and resupply in the WESTPAC certainly isn't one which applies only to the CIMSEC lightly-manned surface combatant. It applies to every warship of every class and design which will be operating in the western Pacific if a major war at sea with the Chinese breaks out.
How does this major war at sea end? I think that after major losses are suffered on both sides, an armistice agreement is reached, one in which the Chinese get the best of the deal, simply for the fact they have more left to bargain with in terms of their geographical position, the size of their remaining naval and air forces, and the fact that their military industrial base has not been damaged in any truly serious way.
Sustainable maritime presence, plus the credible ability to fight a major war at sea if one breaks out, are two sides of the same conflict deterrence coin. The problem here is that keeping the two-sided conflict deterrence coin in our pocket is an expensive proposition.
Their math on that design is pretty bad, aside from most of their outfit.
If we are going to build cruisers, they need to be actual cruisers and not destroyers masquerading as a cruiser like the California.
Zumwalts are just under 16kton displacement and this is 19kton - when does it become a cruiser? Is there some political reason everything that’s not a carrier or gator-navy baby-CV is called a destroyer?
Well, TBF, if we were Japanese, we would call our baby-CV VTOL carriers helicopter destroyers.
According to the F.S.Brim Modern Warship Classification System (FSB-MWCS), any warship between 10,000 tons and 20,000 tons capable of speeds in excess of 30 knots and carrying 64 or more VLS cells is a destroyer.
Fair enough. So if the design picks up 1kton+1lb of essential jointness it will get reclassified, right?
If we ever decide to build this hummer, we would try hard to keep this from happening. But if it did happen, then poof, it becomes the CG-2001. Just like that.
" a trend which is all but unstoppable."
Hear, hear!
The days of the 2,000 ton fleet destroyer or submarine are long gone.
Have personal and deep connections with the 2020 document. Joint experimentation was such a failure that after wasting a billion dollars on it, the very word was erased from the DoD lexicon by then General Mattis. He wasn't wrong, perhaps most importantly, no one was ever held accountable for the squandering of the resources and treasure with zero return. A couple of SES types were reassigned and simply moved on to ruin other organizations.
Experimentation in the 20th Century led to the development of blitzkrieg and the aircraft carrier replacing the battleship. One was innovative for using armor, airpower, and communications in a novel way, the other was a major shift in shipbuilding and operational naval focus. Both faced massive institutional resistance but managed to succeed as a result of demonstrations / experiments / exercises that convinced seniors of their worth.
Today, experiments appear focused on selling major DoD manufacturer's latest silver bullet with preordained results. Recall one event before retiring that was castigated by a senior officer as "telling him about problems he already knew he had and offering no viable solutions."
There have been some of us who beat the drums for an Aegis FFG after the CG, and DDG were successfully fielded. They told us it would cost too much, and we would never get the return on that investment . . . instead . . . they burned up $100Billion on designing, and building LCS with not so much testing. WOW!
That $100B would have been better spent buiilding general purpose FF(G)s and DD(G)s classes that were robust and had some commonality of components. When the next globe-spanning naval campaign comes, those platforms would serve us better than the unicorns. Few remember the DD mods from the Pacific and Atlantic campaigns that saw DEs and DDs quickly upgraded for specific uses such as seaplane tenders, fast transports, minesweepers, and the like.
AMEN and AMEN. I remember the Four Stackers turning into Two Stackers and berthing added for the Marine Raiders.
Speaking of Seaplane Tender . . . I wish we had Seaplanes to provide services to them. There is no modern day PBY-5A Catalina replacement in this return to its primary theater it really shined in. Many airmen and sailors were saved by PBYs. No equivalent today! I would recommend the DHC-515 Firefighter as a quick replacement.
(The basic design of both DHC and the ShinMaywa are over 50 years old.)
Form follows function. If you solved a problem with a set of requirements and it has been proven out, stop trying to re-solve the problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2m0HdAmXgQ
Flying is over 100 years old. Displacing water with a hull regardless of construction is over 1,000s of years old. Guess we ought to stop flying and using boats.
The SES and senior GS bureaucrats are the gatekeepers for the swamp. Prove me wrong.
Modern Mandarins.
And the FBI is the Praetorian Gaurd.
SES and senior GS commute to work...
https://images.amcnetworks.com/ifccenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/night_of_the_livng_dead_1280x720.png
In 248 A.D., the Emperor Philip launched the secular games to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Rome. His realm stretched from the British Isles to the Middle East. What could possibly go wrong? You might say it was the end of history.
Looking back to the early 90s it's hard to believe anyone could be serious about the End of History and the New World Order. At least when Slick Willie said the era of big government was over or that he did not have sex with that woman, we knew he was a liar without shame who didn't mean a word he said.
Unfortunately, Osama bin Laden, Putin, Xi. the Kim family, the ayatollahs and a variety of others did not get the message about the triumph of liberal democracy and free enterprise.
The USA is now a failing company and the correct course of action would be to cut our losses, regroup and reorganize. Instead, we have become a losing gambler who knows his luck has to change.
If you look at the state of the world at the time, it's a lot easier to understand the hubris. China and India were backwards as anything, Iran was still recovering from the Iran-Iraq war, Europe was either allied with us or neutral, Russia was just a mess, and Japan, which everyone had been worried about, was starting to begin its decline.
Of course, no one thought that this wouldn't go on forever...
The problem is that I don’t see a path for America to get its act together and recover. I think Trump might have been able to alter course or at least ground the ship. Now we are headed to Niagara all engines ahead full.
Don’t go spreading facts
Consider the "talent" of the Clinton regime and the absolute contempt they had for the military, even as senior leadership was busy trying to get more brown on the bridge with less rpm sucking up to that same regime.