My psychic hat, combined with my sometimes brain-addled Weltanschauung, allows me this insight. After 2028 we'll begin building forts and shore batteries along our entire coastline over a period of 20 years. In 30 years a new BRAC will close them and they'll be sold off to become prime turf beach resorts, Section 8 housing and Chicom industrial parks. Pretty sure I got that right. And if I didn't, I'll be long gone by 2055.
All that relies on the EM spectrum to carry information and orders. Not sure why we think that's going to be clear when the balloon goes up. If there's one thing to learn from Ukraine, jamming and spoofing is likely to be intense at points. We can't to to the alternative and string them together with FO cabling. It's one thing to spool out a few kilometers, quite another to spool out hundreds of nautical miles of cable, across water, with both/all ends moving.
I do hope that we are looking at a myriad of low to high end anti-radiation solutions to get ahead of the curve.
OK, first rule of holes is in play here. We just stopped digging, which is great as far as it goes. Next up: How the hell do we get out of this deep-ass hole we’re in? I am not optimistic that anyone in power right now has any sort of answer to the next steps required.
Well, step one must be FIRING every last buffoon and clown, and probable foreign agent posing as a 1-, 2-, 3-, & 4-Star Admiral in OPSEA / NAVSEA.
Step two should be ordering the MP's to administer a great many thumpings to said buffoons and clowns and probable foreign agents as they physically eject them from the government building they infest.
About a decade ago, I sat in on an UNCLAS conference call on FFG requirements. No real discussion of the threats or mission sets. Just "FFG 62 will have SPY, AWS, SM-2, etc". No mention of the 57mm "main gun" in that call. No warfighter input. No discussion of capability gaps. I figured then, best case, a quarter of DDG 51 capability at half the price.
Our acquisition process is designed to benefit the flags and SES cohort, the major defense companies who the flags and SES cohort "retire" and move over to a do-nothing, highly paid board member position, and the congress, who receives large political donations / factory jobs in their districts from the major defense companies in return for voting for legislation favorable to the same companies. No one pays a price for recommending or producing high priced defense systems that provide little capability (LCS) or never reach milestone ll (FCS). The "Iron Triangle" is real, it works in its own interests, and until an "incentive structure" is forced upon them that forces them to change behavior, nothing will change. Sad.
We could start building enough ships, but who is willing to tell Congress (and by extension the American people) "We have to build ships that aren't as good at surviving hits in order to get enough hulls"?
Brutal truth there. Certainly not the preening, lavishly decorated leadership that has got us to this point. You have hit on the probable answer…shift rapidly back to the less robust original FREMM design and get building (with big gun, US weapons). The sacrificial officers that lead this effort to see reality and buy time are the future of the Navy.
Let no one wonder why SECWAR called the current underachievers into a room. They let us down. My regular drive past Bremerton is beginning to leave me with a sick feeling.
There is nothing fast or numerous about that proposal. I'll keep making people's heads explode here. With stopping at 2 Connies they remove the Congressional requirement to support tomahawk and SM-6 and can probably wrap up the design much faster now and build. Get them out of the way and they should be able to be launching 3 Multi Mission Surface Combatants like the Saudi ships per year immediately after. Maybe 4.
No explosion! I’m in. Lowest risk…get rid of the baggage that you inside players are aware of. As an amateur, I’m desperate enough to bring back any past successful designs with incremental improvements if we can’t get a real design out of our current geniuses. What a ridiculous state of limbo our fantastic Navy has arrived at.
Hope the air, sub, and surface drones are going to be stunningly fantastic. Because what we can see…sucks. And I have been in the middle of crappy airline program management. I know what crap looks like.
Happy Thanksgiving to the Porch and to All who serve.
Thats why Force Survivability must always be a part of the equation.
You have to build enough ships to lose a few.
Before the Navy put the whole topic behind a Classified wall, Survivability was oft discussed here...
Friend of Cdr. Sal's and head of Fincatieri US, Mark Vandroff, made an intersting point concerning the issues of the differing requirements imposed on the FREMM design for the Constellations.
He was discussing the cost of structural steel he was being obligated to use, versus the ones the Europeans were building with. Essentially, they used beams with a bulb on one side, whereas the USN spec was for a T beam. He then made the point that the differences were imposed for crew survivability.
I will submit that, in a ship, thats not the primary reason for Survivability. Instead, a ship should be built to a standard (the Navy also quit using specific survivability categories, and now measure the standards based on scenarios the ship will find itself in...a recipe for gundecking, like the LSM's will be survivable because they will "hide in plain sight)...
Anyway, a standard that will enable a ship to remain mission capable to the maximum extent possible in battle.
Now, that DOES NOT mean that every ship needs to be built like an impregnable Death Star...which is where this whole 'Battleship' discussion has headed.
A good example of what I mean is the experience of the Fletchers at Savo (again, Friedman's US Destroyers is essential reading), which demonstrated that detail desing like component redundancy and separation, along with specific systems armored -in their case the cabling in the director and fire control room- makes all the difference in staying viable long enough to sway what happens in a fight.
A modern tale of caution in building warships to civil standards is the Helge Ingstad. Her design didnt factor in bulkhead permeability, and her cruise ship style uncompartmentalized engineering spaces ensured she was going to sink.
We are so broken right now I am not sure we will overcome it. We can't even successfully maintain what we have much less decide on a suitable replacement. Dare I say it but this has the foreboding look of many of our adversaries in years past.
Sal talked about fitreps. I wonder how much of our current problem has been caused by people believing their own fitreps, and how wonderful they were - which leads, of course, to an exaggerated case of Gideon’s First Law of Sociology, that no one ever believes themselves to be the bad guy.
I place much of the blame for this in the massive push for Joint assignments as a requirement to promote. Throw in the requirement for a post-grad degree, and War College, and service on a staff or as an aide and the career becomes a ticket punch, not a warfighting expertise. SWO's spend much less time at sea, aviators less time flying, submariners (well, who knows what they do? It's a secret!). Since the CNO personally assigns Flag officers, he/she has a lot of the blame for the system as devolved.
The Engineering duty officer community needs major reformation, and promotions tied to program success, not just treading water for 3 years and moving on.
How do we do this? Well, assigning a few EDO/AEDO's to Japanese and S. Korean shipyards for one thing, and require them to have a service requirement for that assignment so we roll them back into our programs, not to defense contractors.
As long as Flag officers are allowed to sit on defense contractor boards or in their VP slots, we will continue to have leadership that refuses to rock the boat.
Another "must do" is put harsh teeth in Navy/Marine contracts for any program that is delivered late or over cost, or doesn't pass operational testing.
I could go on, but have posted enough this week. Have a good Thanksgiving all!
Our Navy suffers from massive, institutional inbreeding. FO/SES types are incentivized to the status quo/revolving door. There should be massive firings in the FO/SES cohort.
A forensic accounting review of some of the more spectacular failures (ZUMWALT, LCS, and now CONSTELLATION), and uniformed leaders who advocated the clear malfeasance should be recalled to active duty and held accountable. Nothing will change until people start being held accountable for their greed and incompetence.
I really like the EDO/AEDOs spending time in Japanese and Korean shipyards. I was on a ship that was tied up in Sasebo for a time and had to walk through the shipyard there to get to the main part of the base. The quality of fabrication was beyond anything I have seen before or since from our yards.
I was on the USS Midway for a tour. The Japanese left spaces clean, jobs finished, and jobs were done on time and stuff worked well. The ship always pulled out looking like it was new construction, not nearly 50 yrs old.
Conversely, got pulled out of command 3 months early to relieve the Ops boss on the USS Enterprise. The Big E was in NNI shipyard in Newport News. 5 years into a 3 year refit, I'm not sure anyone but "Nasty" Dick Naughton could have stopped NNI from milking that cash cow for another year or two. He'd been the XO when they put her into the yard. Hard, hard man to work for, but brilliant and tolerated little other than success from his DH's or NNI once he took over.
What I saw in NII for the months I was there was enough to make you cry. Sailors would bust their butts tiling and painting passageways or spaces. That night, a yardbird would haul a tool box and scrap the passageway walls, or drag a piece of cabling and tear up the tiles. Saw this time after time. Saw CIC equipment put into place only to be ripped out a week later because the new equipment arrived and the "old" stuff had to be repositioned to make the new stuff fit.
Also saw a fire axe strategically placed 3" above the floor and a hole cut in the water tight compartment below for the handle because the schematic incorrectly listed 3" not 3 ft for the bracket. Never let common sense challenge anything, I guess.
Quite a change from my time on the Midway. Came to believe that no Sailor should be assigned to a ship in a US shipyard if he/she was first tour...they'd be totally depressed and wrung out by the experience.
OBTW, during all this, AIRLANT Ops ordered me to take a CHICOM admiral through our CIC with his staff and to ALLOW videotaping! I protested and was told to shut up and color. Nothing like helping the Chicoms build out their carrier fleet, eh?
We would need to grow LHAs and size down CVNs. First best option is break up Huntington Ingalls and have Ingalls compete vs NNS. Otherwise we would need a green field facility.
CVNs are worthless without appropriate aircraft. Or without the capability of logistical support to where the fight is going to be. Or without the requisite warships to protect the CVN. We do not have any of those three items.
"Sailors would bust their butts tiling and painting passageways or spaces. That night, a yardbird would haul a tool box and scrap the passageway walls, or drag a piece of cabling and tear up the tiles. Saw this time after time"
Perhaps the lesson there is to save the cosmetic work until after the heavy work is done. Seems obvious to me, but then I have no Naval experience.
Yes, sometimes the obvious isn't quite right. In the Enterprise, most of the departments did exactly what you said. They expected to have all the time in the world to get spaces together, install bunks, hook up lights, etc to move aboard.
The guy I relieved in Ops put our spaces in order on the approved schedule. When the CO started inviting visitors into the ship, Ops spaces were the only ones he allowed tours on. So we had to keep the spaces up. Meanwhile, when we came out of the yards, other depts had horrible living spaces for their people, and had to try to paint and tile while working to do sea trials, and pass all the myriad of inspections we had.
OBTW, we had zero input on them putting stuff into our spaces like the combat information center (CIC) and then ripping it out a week later.
What I do know is that the CO fired 3 department heads and gave those depts to me to run while new people were being ordered in. That tells me they didn't meet his expectations. Did not make my job any easier...an 18 hr a day job became 20 hrs+ a day and killed my health for the last 8 months I was aboard while I was running the day to day activities of the ship and executing the ship's schedule. Most challenging job of my Navy career, but also built a team that I'm still in touch with today, some 30 years later.
" the CO fired 3 department heads and gave those depts to me to run ..."
There is an old saying, "In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king". They left out the part where the King is worked to death doing everything that requires sight.
My dad retired in the mid-nineties from PSNS after 39 years as a naval architect. The stories he had about all the big and little dramas, pettiness, backstabbing, mysterious reassignments, and other oddities over the years was far more than I needed to hear to not go to work there (like most of the rest of the locals did.)
Keeping his job that long required many uncomfortable accommodations on his part, such as the well over a year's worth of time where he was made to work seven days a week, often longer than 8 hours a day.
It was common to see him huddle together with my mom (despite the fact they argued daily about everything) after dinner to try to figure out the best course of action for work the next day. They were both highly motivated, as it would take very little for them to decide he was superfluous.
He's been gone many years now, but I am glad he is not here to see just how bad things have gotten.
Having said all that. This substack and the people here are like a fresh breath of air.
With apologies to the Beatles “In times of trouble, Mother Navy come to me, let there be an answer, NSC,NSC”. Reopen the line, build the PF design variant.
And I am not talking about inspecting the hull in a dry dock or degaussing the ship. I mean being there for the time the keel is laid to the time you can go up to the crow’s nest.
Have officers learn how the ships they will sail in are built? But they might get a grease spot on their uniforms! And where will those officers get the time to obtain graduate degrees in English or be a super clerk in a joint assignment?
Didn't the Germans have something like that with the U-boats? The first Chief engineer on the boat would be present from it's keel laying through it's first cruise. I remember reading that somewhere at least. The theory is that they'd basically bridge the gap between yard and boat and write the best book on maintenance for that boat.
CDR Salamander - You are so correct in your statements. So long as we view the Navy as a 'business', using business metrics to gauge progress, and not as a warfighting service, program failures will mount. I spent two years in the Navy Secretariet as a DEPDASN. I was filling a one star position but as an 0-6. I had the priviledge of attending most high level meetings and met most of the senior players personally. Just walking the hallways you could meet and discuss issues (for example with the Marine Corps Commandant). When former CNO Greenert was a one star he managed an equal department to mine and I was in frequent meetings with him. Didn't impress me at all. We sent officers to business schools on a regular basis to learn business practices. You are right that nothing will change under the new CNO and new businessman SECNAV. Only a war will change it and no, the present conflicts are not high enough in the war matrix to count. As Joe Peschi said in 'My Cousin Vinny' - "I'll be honest I could use a good ass kicking...". The problem is that unlike the 1930s leading up to WWII where we had the time to dismiss peacetime Admirals and Generals and replace them with instantly promoted new warfighters, the current technological hyper speed path to major war does not afford us the luxury of slowly replacing these peacetime politically correct flags with warfighters. Prediction: we will have our ass handed to us in the western Pacific and we may even have a limited nuclear exhange. r/Karl
I had some similar experiences across the services when I was the deputy CJCS training officer. Saw the up and comer 1 and 2 stars running exercises for 3 and 4 star staffs. I was supposed to whisper words of wisdom into the 1 and 2 star ears so they would look wise and not make mistakes (since my crew spent 18 months building the exercises) The one guy who wanted zero advice and didn't even try to be pleasant...a gent named David Petraeus...perhaps you've heard of him? He spent the entire exercise following immediately behind the 3 star whose staff was being trained.
I had promised early on in our marriage not to chase stars as my wife had been the O wives club president of the USS Midway while I did my aviation DH tour. She did not like what she saw within 7th Fleet flag wives. That gives you a bit different perspective when you aren't chasing the gold ring.
As a CO I saw one fighter guy who was assigned to be an escort fighter on the first night of attacks in Desert Storm. When SAM fire got too intense, he stripped off while the Prowler guys pushed on to make their planned HARM shots to get the strikers in on target. Also saw an F/A guy give instructions to his member of an accident investigation board that that JO WOULD steer the findings to reflect that a fellow JO guilty of pilot error. As the CO said: "I've worked my butt off to get Nuke power billet and he isn't going to screw that up."
I was the JAGMAN guy who proved computer error, not pilot error, but that JO suffered anyway.. Both of those senior officers made it to two stars. In a perfect world they would have been both cashiered.
Having known guys as MIDN back in the day who made it to CAPT and RADM I have to wonder how they ever managed that. Had I been predicting stripes and stars I would have failed miserably based on the guy I knew.
How many business schools are centered around shareholder profit and little else? Sure, it makes the shareholders money and it makes the company look good on the street, but it also often trainwrecks healthy businesses and products.
Why build a better mousetrap when you can build a mid one in China for 1/4 the cost, reap that sweet sweet margin, lay off all your product engineers and use the design money for buybacks, and when the ship starts to founder leave with your cash.
The only way to enable American companies to compete against cheap Chinese labor is by restricting Chinese access to our markets with tariffs. You see however the resistance Trump is getting by doing so. A lot of people here are doing very well managing America's decline. I fear the UK is our future.
You make good points, SGT. The CDR's post triggered that latent excitability flaw in me, and when that happens I sometimes revert to my basest "newly minted E-4" roots...kinda like when I had that laminated report chit and an unfettered avenue of dispensing justice.
I no longer care if there is some gibbet swinging. Thanks.
M'kay. Moar LCS's then? Kinda makes sense. We become a shallow water navy with the capability to defend our coasts. Shorter deployments, home on the weekends, short supply lines, easy logistical burden, better wifi and cellphone connections. I get it, Mr. Phelan. Now let's work on getting the cost of new LCS's down below new Frigates and keeping it that way. Fold in the USCG too, bolster our Navy's numbers. Hire civilian contractors too like in the olden days...call them "privateers"...you know...capitalism and commerce at its best. I ♥ Phelan.
Not.
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Sec'y Phelan sounded like he was reading from a Teleprompter, badly. Came across as Arnold Stang in a Rambo role. I want transparency. I want the truth. I can handle the truth. Tell us the savings are to fix potholes on the Interstates or to fund new Obamaphones.
He lost my support when he talked about what a fine ship and class the last Independence class LCS was as it was being commissioned. My daughter sailed on one...towed into port 2x, broke down at sea several other times, was on water hours the whole cruise and the helo spaces were ill designed and did not serve them well.
I hope your daughter had an otherwise good experience with the Navy. It was a fun and fulfilling job back in the day. Had one crummy tour on a ship and with one Captain and wrote it off as just one of those things and knew I had better things in store for me in the future.
She grew up in the Navy. I was an XO then CO then Ops on a carrier when she started elementary school. She's still in as a helo search and rescue pilot. Made 05, but not sure she's going to pin on. Ran into a previous CO who hated women in the service and tried to mess her over (before he got fired for something else). She's seriously considering getting out and finishing up in the reserves. Overall, she's been very satisfied with the Navy.
I wish her the best. That's a child to be proud of. I was a Chief when my daughters were born and they had ~13-14 years of the navy life before I retired. They are 47 and 48 now and living the good life.
Jim - my daughter is the ANAV on a DDG. Deployed on Tuesday. We pinned her on 9/16, but since still in an E6 billet she’s moving to an E7 billet on an Independence class, and has to attend a school for months to learn her role. evidently on an LC2 platform you are just the Nav and ANAV, and no one reports to her.
So she’s flying back from an island in the Pacific when they arrive.
I hope she has a better experience than your daughter. Her ship is in the yards now until the spring.
It's no fun ringing the alarm bells🔔🛎️🔔 when the neighbors seem deaf, but thanks Sal. Keep ringing. Perhaps somehow, someone with ears and influence will hear.
When war comes, and it will, we will find ourselves in a decade long war with half the nation demanding concessions in the name of “peace”with the Chinese while the other half in-fights. We will not find a Marshall or a Nimitz in our sea bags. Our admiralty is functionally retarded and our prognosis is grim.
You owe me a Flora - Bama 151 Bushwhacker for stealing my idea Mr. T! ;-)
Just found that John Kuehn ... friend of Cdr. Sal's who occasionally strolls the Porch here... followed his Agents of Innovation work about the General Board with this 2017 more concise history of the Board and its rise and fall...
A change in political and military leadership, and another zig (or zag- wanna be inclusive here) from the previous leadership's ideas about what to build.
What I never -ever- see in these repetitions is, "Why?"
The Constellation came along because ...well... thats all that any Navy is building these days. And we gotta build SOMETHING!
So, like a bad horror movie where you see the blonde chick run up the stairs away from the monster to her doom, we could pretty much predict this outcome when the "Naval Enterprise" took the reins.
The "Way We Build Ships" that has gradually evolved since WWII does not work!
First off. Ships are not getting built to any coherent Strategic and Operational construct (that missing "Why" part) that survives past the latest CNO Change of Command ceremony.
If you want to see how this morass developed, you really need to read Norman Friedman's, Design Studies. He covers the descent into slow motion chaos in detail in his latest Aircraft Carrier and Destroyer editions...
In short, the Requirements process needs to be taken out of OPNAV. There is no continuity, and more importantly, there is zero incentive to ask and explore anything beyond what the CNO decrees. Zumwalt with his PF (which morphed into the Perrys, and turned out ok in spite of itself). Also, Clarke's infamous, "We need the LCS today!" fever dream, which squandered a decade of potentially relevant ships getting to the water.
Its time for a modern analogue to the General Board of the Navy. A body that isn't subjected to having to salute, and silently do a brisk about face from the Boss's office. A body that can develop a long term Strategic plan, and Operational framework upon which Requirements for ships ...and aircraft (Remember the CSA?)... can be formed.
Agents of Innovation: The General Board and the Design of the Fleet that Defeated the Japanese Navy
Also...as seen in Friedman's works. Initial designs should be the sole purview of the Navy's. Leaving it up to the Primes has just fosters a generation of wealthy post -retirement PEO's, and CNO's.
Don't even think about talking what the next ship (and inevitable failure) will be until a viable and truthfully objective system to determine the "Why" is forged.
Good focus on the need for long-term planning. Changing the personnel may be part of this, but the big issue seems to be the rules and systems in place that prioritize all the wrong things. This seems like the main problem that has yet to be solved.
This is sad. I devoted my entire working life (24 active/23 MSC) to the surface Navy). If one were predisposed one could easily become depressed. May Bismarck's supposed saying, (T)here is a special providence for drunkards, fools, and the United States of America be prophecy in this circumstance. I pray for our country.
What merchant ships?
The one's we lease.
My psychic hat, combined with my sometimes brain-addled Weltanschauung, allows me this insight. After 2028 we'll begin building forts and shore batteries along our entire coastline over a period of 20 years. In 30 years a new BRAC will close them and they'll be sold off to become prime turf beach resorts, Section 8 housing and Chicom industrial parks. Pretty sure I got that right. And if I didn't, I'll be long gone by 2055.
It will look a bit more like land war on water again. No one puts a patriot battery and a 155mm howitzer on the same vehicle.
Well...
All that relies on the EM spectrum to carry information and orders. Not sure why we think that's going to be clear when the balloon goes up. If there's one thing to learn from Ukraine, jamming and spoofing is likely to be intense at points. We can't to to the alternative and string them together with FO cabling. It's one thing to spool out a few kilometers, quite another to spool out hundreds of nautical miles of cable, across water, with both/all ends moving.
I do hope that we are looking at a myriad of low to high end anti-radiation solutions to get ahead of the curve.
OK, first rule of holes is in play here. We just stopped digging, which is great as far as it goes. Next up: How the hell do we get out of this deep-ass hole we’re in? I am not optimistic that anyone in power right now has any sort of answer to the next steps required.
Well, step one must be FIRING every last buffoon and clown, and probable foreign agent posing as a 1-, 2-, 3-, & 4-Star Admiral in OPSEA / NAVSEA.
Step two should be ordering the MP's to administer a great many thumpings to said buffoons and clowns and probable foreign agents as they physically eject them from the government building they infest.
About a decade ago, I sat in on an UNCLAS conference call on FFG requirements. No real discussion of the threats or mission sets. Just "FFG 62 will have SPY, AWS, SM-2, etc". No mention of the 57mm "main gun" in that call. No warfighter input. No discussion of capability gaps. I figured then, best case, a quarter of DDG 51 capability at half the price.
I am reminded of the description of the 19th-century British Army as "a social institution prepared for any emergency save that of war."
Our acquisition process is designed to benefit the flags and SES cohort, the major defense companies who the flags and SES cohort "retire" and move over to a do-nothing, highly paid board member position, and the congress, who receives large political donations / factory jobs in their districts from the major defense companies in return for voting for legislation favorable to the same companies. No one pays a price for recommending or producing high priced defense systems that provide little capability (LCS) or never reach milestone ll (FCS). The "Iron Triangle" is real, it works in its own interests, and until an "incentive structure" is forced upon them that forces them to change behavior, nothing will change. Sad.
We could start building enough ships, but who is willing to tell Congress (and by extension the American people) "We have to build ships that aren't as good at surviving hits in order to get enough hulls"?
Brutal truth there. Certainly not the preening, lavishly decorated leadership that has got us to this point. You have hit on the probable answer…shift rapidly back to the less robust original FREMM design and get building (with big gun, US weapons). The sacrificial officers that lead this effort to see reality and buy time are the future of the Navy.
Let no one wonder why SECWAR called the current underachievers into a room. They let us down. My regular drive past Bremerton is beginning to leave me with a sick feeling.
There is nothing fast or numerous about that proposal. I'll keep making people's heads explode here. With stopping at 2 Connies they remove the Congressional requirement to support tomahawk and SM-6 and can probably wrap up the design much faster now and build. Get them out of the way and they should be able to be launching 3 Multi Mission Surface Combatants like the Saudi ships per year immediately after. Maybe 4.
No explosion! I’m in. Lowest risk…get rid of the baggage that you inside players are aware of. As an amateur, I’m desperate enough to bring back any past successful designs with incremental improvements if we can’t get a real design out of our current geniuses. What a ridiculous state of limbo our fantastic Navy has arrived at.
Hope the air, sub, and surface drones are going to be stunningly fantastic. Because what we can see…sucks. And I have been in the middle of crappy airline program management. I know what crap looks like.
Happy Thanksgiving to the Porch and to All who serve.
The LAST thing the USN needs is more LCSs
If that's the only option, give the money to the Air Force and Army.
That’s how we got into this mess. The FREMM was designed around a European weapons and sensor fit. Swapping for American systems is not trivial.
Thats why Force Survivability must always be a part of the equation.
You have to build enough ships to lose a few.
Before the Navy put the whole topic behind a Classified wall, Survivability was oft discussed here...
Friend of Cdr. Sal's and head of Fincatieri US, Mark Vandroff, made an intersting point concerning the issues of the differing requirements imposed on the FREMM design for the Constellations.
He was discussing the cost of structural steel he was being obligated to use, versus the ones the Europeans were building with. Essentially, they used beams with a bulb on one side, whereas the USN spec was for a T beam. He then made the point that the differences were imposed for crew survivability.
I will submit that, in a ship, thats not the primary reason for Survivability. Instead, a ship should be built to a standard (the Navy also quit using specific survivability categories, and now measure the standards based on scenarios the ship will find itself in...a recipe for gundecking, like the LSM's will be survivable because they will "hide in plain sight)...
Anyway, a standard that will enable a ship to remain mission capable to the maximum extent possible in battle.
Now, that DOES NOT mean that every ship needs to be built like an impregnable Death Star...which is where this whole 'Battleship' discussion has headed.
A good example of what I mean is the experience of the Fletchers at Savo (again, Friedman's US Destroyers is essential reading), which demonstrated that detail desing like component redundancy and separation, along with specific systems armored -in their case the cabling in the director and fire control room- makes all the difference in staying viable long enough to sway what happens in a fight.
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/w/war-damage-reports/destroyer-report-gunfire-bomb-kamikaze-damage.html
A modern tale of caution in building warships to civil standards is the Helge Ingstad. Her design didnt factor in bulkhead permeability, and her cruise ship style uncompartmentalized engineering spaces ensured she was going to sink.
https://msiu.gov.mt/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/PDF-Safety_Investigations_by_Other_Countries-2021_05.pdf
You couldn't. American shipbuilding is small and limited. It have SOME reserves, but nowhere near "enough".
We are so broken right now I am not sure we will overcome it. We can't even successfully maintain what we have much less decide on a suitable replacement. Dare I say it but this has the foreboding look of many of our adversaries in years past.
There needs to be a 'Sadly agree' rather than a 'Like' button.
When you have a system that has no penalty for failure, this is what you get...good and hard.
And they won't even let you bring your own lubricant because it doesn't meet some stupid milspec.
"There's always time for lubricant"
Sal talked about fitreps. I wonder how much of our current problem has been caused by people believing their own fitreps, and how wonderful they were - which leads, of course, to an exaggerated case of Gideon’s First Law of Sociology, that no one ever believes themselves to be the bad guy.
The phrase "Pour encourager les autres" comes to mind.
Amen, CDR Sal, Amen!!!
I place much of the blame for this in the massive push for Joint assignments as a requirement to promote. Throw in the requirement for a post-grad degree, and War College, and service on a staff or as an aide and the career becomes a ticket punch, not a warfighting expertise. SWO's spend much less time at sea, aviators less time flying, submariners (well, who knows what they do? It's a secret!). Since the CNO personally assigns Flag officers, he/she has a lot of the blame for the system as devolved.
The Engineering duty officer community needs major reformation, and promotions tied to program success, not just treading water for 3 years and moving on.
How do we do this? Well, assigning a few EDO/AEDO's to Japanese and S. Korean shipyards for one thing, and require them to have a service requirement for that assignment so we roll them back into our programs, not to defense contractors.
As long as Flag officers are allowed to sit on defense contractor boards or in their VP slots, we will continue to have leadership that refuses to rock the boat.
Another "must do" is put harsh teeth in Navy/Marine contracts for any program that is delivered late or over cost, or doesn't pass operational testing.
I could go on, but have posted enough this week. Have a good Thanksgiving all!
Our Navy suffers from massive, institutional inbreeding. FO/SES types are incentivized to the status quo/revolving door. There should be massive firings in the FO/SES cohort.
A forensic accounting review of some of the more spectacular failures (ZUMWALT, LCS, and now CONSTELLATION), and uniformed leaders who advocated the clear malfeasance should be recalled to active duty and held accountable. Nothing will change until people start being held accountable for their greed and incompetence.
Excellent. A more informed version of my ignorant born rant.
I really like the EDO/AEDOs spending time in Japanese and Korean shipyards. I was on a ship that was tied up in Sasebo for a time and had to walk through the shipyard there to get to the main part of the base. The quality of fabrication was beyond anything I have seen before or since from our yards.
I was on the USS Midway for a tour. The Japanese left spaces clean, jobs finished, and jobs were done on time and stuff worked well. The ship always pulled out looking like it was new construction, not nearly 50 yrs old.
Conversely, got pulled out of command 3 months early to relieve the Ops boss on the USS Enterprise. The Big E was in NNI shipyard in Newport News. 5 years into a 3 year refit, I'm not sure anyone but "Nasty" Dick Naughton could have stopped NNI from milking that cash cow for another year or two. He'd been the XO when they put her into the yard. Hard, hard man to work for, but brilliant and tolerated little other than success from his DH's or NNI once he took over.
What I saw in NII for the months I was there was enough to make you cry. Sailors would bust their butts tiling and painting passageways or spaces. That night, a yardbird would haul a tool box and scrap the passageway walls, or drag a piece of cabling and tear up the tiles. Saw this time after time. Saw CIC equipment put into place only to be ripped out a week later because the new equipment arrived and the "old" stuff had to be repositioned to make the new stuff fit.
Also saw a fire axe strategically placed 3" above the floor and a hole cut in the water tight compartment below for the handle because the schematic incorrectly listed 3" not 3 ft for the bracket. Never let common sense challenge anything, I guess.
Quite a change from my time on the Midway. Came to believe that no Sailor should be assigned to a ship in a US shipyard if he/she was first tour...they'd be totally depressed and wrung out by the experience.
OBTW, during all this, AIRLANT Ops ordered me to take a CHICOM admiral through our CIC with his staff and to ALLOW videotaping! I protested and was told to shut up and color. Nothing like helping the Chicoms build out their carrier fleet, eh?
I’m becoming convinced that the top shipbuilding priority needs to be the qualification of a second yard to build CVNs. Competition is a Good Thing.
When the Navy went down to one CVN yard, I said "Big mistake" and it was. As you said: "Competition...."
We would need to grow LHAs and size down CVNs. First best option is break up Huntington Ingalls and have Ingalls compete vs NNS. Otherwise we would need a green field facility.
CVNs are worthless without appropriate aircraft. Or without the capability of logistical support to where the fight is going to be. Or without the requisite warships to protect the CVN. We do not have any of those three items.
This is why part of my plan is to take the money we were going to squander on the FFGs and put it into F/A-XX.
One has to love the 90's.
Worked with AirPac at the time.
"Sailors would bust their butts tiling and painting passageways or spaces. That night, a yardbird would haul a tool box and scrap the passageway walls, or drag a piece of cabling and tear up the tiles. Saw this time after time"
Perhaps the lesson there is to save the cosmetic work until after the heavy work is done. Seems obvious to me, but then I have no Naval experience.
Yes, sometimes the obvious isn't quite right. In the Enterprise, most of the departments did exactly what you said. They expected to have all the time in the world to get spaces together, install bunks, hook up lights, etc to move aboard.
The guy I relieved in Ops put our spaces in order on the approved schedule. When the CO started inviting visitors into the ship, Ops spaces were the only ones he allowed tours on. So we had to keep the spaces up. Meanwhile, when we came out of the yards, other depts had horrible living spaces for their people, and had to try to paint and tile while working to do sea trials, and pass all the myriad of inspections we had.
OBTW, we had zero input on them putting stuff into our spaces like the combat information center (CIC) and then ripping it out a week later.
What I do know is that the CO fired 3 department heads and gave those depts to me to run while new people were being ordered in. That tells me they didn't meet his expectations. Did not make my job any easier...an 18 hr a day job became 20 hrs+ a day and killed my health for the last 8 months I was aboard while I was running the day to day activities of the ship and executing the ship's schedule. Most challenging job of my Navy career, but also built a team that I'm still in touch with today, some 30 years later.
" the CO fired 3 department heads and gave those depts to me to run ..."
There is an old saying, "In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king". They left out the part where the King is worked to death doing everything that requires sight.
My dad retired in the mid-nineties from PSNS after 39 years as a naval architect. The stories he had about all the big and little dramas, pettiness, backstabbing, mysterious reassignments, and other oddities over the years was far more than I needed to hear to not go to work there (like most of the rest of the locals did.)
Keeping his job that long required many uncomfortable accommodations on his part, such as the well over a year's worth of time where he was made to work seven days a week, often longer than 8 hours a day.
It was common to see him huddle together with my mom (despite the fact they argued daily about everything) after dinner to try to figure out the best course of action for work the next day. They were both highly motivated, as it would take very little for them to decide he was superfluous.
He's been gone many years now, but I am glad he is not here to see just how bad things have gotten.
Having said all that. This substack and the people here are like a fresh breath of air.
Thanks to all for that!
With apologies to the Beatles “In times of trouble, Mother Navy come to me, let there be an answer, NSC,NSC”. Reopen the line, build the PF design variant.
That admiral should have faced disciplinary action
Goods points from someone who punched all those tickets you mentioned. An assignment in a shipyard might have made me a better officer.
And I am not talking about inspecting the hull in a dry dock or degaussing the ship. I mean being there for the time the keel is laid to the time you can go up to the crow’s nest.
@Pete I did just that and it was the best tour I served. I arrived before christening and left at the end of the maiden deployment.
Nothing like a ships commissioning. I took part in one but only as an observer from DC.
So a 13 year tour? Or is it too soon to talk about the Ford?
ouch
Have officers learn how the ships they will sail in are built? But they might get a grease spot on their uniforms! And where will those officers get the time to obtain graduate degrees in English or be a super clerk in a joint assignment?
Didn't the Germans have something like that with the U-boats? The first Chief engineer on the boat would be present from it's keel laying through it's first cruise. I remember reading that somewhere at least. The theory is that they'd basically bridge the gap between yard and boat and write the best book on maintenance for that boat.
Sounds like a good way to build and operate subs.
CDR Salamander - You are so correct in your statements. So long as we view the Navy as a 'business', using business metrics to gauge progress, and not as a warfighting service, program failures will mount. I spent two years in the Navy Secretariet as a DEPDASN. I was filling a one star position but as an 0-6. I had the priviledge of attending most high level meetings and met most of the senior players personally. Just walking the hallways you could meet and discuss issues (for example with the Marine Corps Commandant). When former CNO Greenert was a one star he managed an equal department to mine and I was in frequent meetings with him. Didn't impress me at all. We sent officers to business schools on a regular basis to learn business practices. You are right that nothing will change under the new CNO and new businessman SECNAV. Only a war will change it and no, the present conflicts are not high enough in the war matrix to count. As Joe Peschi said in 'My Cousin Vinny' - "I'll be honest I could use a good ass kicking...". The problem is that unlike the 1930s leading up to WWII where we had the time to dismiss peacetime Admirals and Generals and replace them with instantly promoted new warfighters, the current technological hyper speed path to major war does not afford us the luxury of slowly replacing these peacetime politically correct flags with warfighters. Prediction: we will have our ass handed to us in the western Pacific and we may even have a limited nuclear exhange. r/Karl
I had some similar experiences across the services when I was the deputy CJCS training officer. Saw the up and comer 1 and 2 stars running exercises for 3 and 4 star staffs. I was supposed to whisper words of wisdom into the 1 and 2 star ears so they would look wise and not make mistakes (since my crew spent 18 months building the exercises) The one guy who wanted zero advice and didn't even try to be pleasant...a gent named David Petraeus...perhaps you've heard of him? He spent the entire exercise following immediately behind the 3 star whose staff was being trained.
I had promised early on in our marriage not to chase stars as my wife had been the O wives club president of the USS Midway while I did my aviation DH tour. She did not like what she saw within 7th Fleet flag wives. That gives you a bit different perspective when you aren't chasing the gold ring.
As a CO I saw one fighter guy who was assigned to be an escort fighter on the first night of attacks in Desert Storm. When SAM fire got too intense, he stripped off while the Prowler guys pushed on to make their planned HARM shots to get the strikers in on target. Also saw an F/A guy give instructions to his member of an accident investigation board that that JO WOULD steer the findings to reflect that a fellow JO guilty of pilot error. As the CO said: "I've worked my butt off to get Nuke power billet and he isn't going to screw that up."
I was the JAGMAN guy who proved computer error, not pilot error, but that JO suffered anyway.. Both of those senior officers made it to two stars. In a perfect world they would have been both cashiered.
^ A story that must be heard even if you hate hearing it. :(
Having known guys as MIDN back in the day who made it to CAPT and RADM I have to wonder how they ever managed that. Had I been predicting stripes and stars I would have failed miserably based on the guy I knew.
The problem may be the business schools judging by how many factories and jobs we lost to China since the MBA became a popular degree in the 1980s.
How many business schools are centered around shareholder profit and little else? Sure, it makes the shareholders money and it makes the company look good on the street, but it also often trainwrecks healthy businesses and products.
Why build a better mousetrap when you can build a mid one in China for 1/4 the cost, reap that sweet sweet margin, lay off all your product engineers and use the design money for buybacks, and when the ship starts to founder leave with your cash.
The only way to enable American companies to compete against cheap Chinese labor is by restricting Chinese access to our markets with tariffs. You see however the resistance Trump is getting by doing so. A lot of people here are doing very well managing America's decline. I fear the UK is our future.
We are canceling these 4 ships so that we can rapidly build more ships?
There is a Gnome underpants slide missing there.
two slides missing.
1. what next?
2. pics of SES and GOFOs swinging from gibbets
"SES and GOFOs swinging from gibbets"?
Nope, can't have that happening. Would it help if some of us held onto their legs?
SecNav should send every flag and SES a picture of Admiral Byng
Yes, as Voltaire said, “It is good to kill an admiral now and then to encourage the others!”
no fair pulling down to end suffering
IMHO, short sharp stakes are better, but are not in the Anglo-Saxon tradition.
and flogging around the Fleet isn't as much threat if the fleet numbers in single digits
You make good points, SGT. The CDR's post triggered that latent excitability flaw in me, and when that happens I sometimes revert to my basest "newly minted E-4" roots...kinda like when I had that laminated report chit and an unfettered avenue of dispensing justice.
I no longer care if there is some gibbet swinging. Thanks.
I learned long ago never to volunteer, but in this case I will make an exception.
M'kay. Moar LCS's then? Kinda makes sense. We become a shallow water navy with the capability to defend our coasts. Shorter deployments, home on the weekends, short supply lines, easy logistical burden, better wifi and cellphone connections. I get it, Mr. Phelan. Now let's work on getting the cost of new LCS's down below new Frigates and keeping it that way. Fold in the USCG too, bolster our Navy's numbers. Hire civilian contractors too like in the olden days...call them "privateers"...you know...capitalism and commerce at its best. I ♥ Phelan.
Not.
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Sec'y Phelan sounded like he was reading from a Teleprompter, badly. Came across as Arnold Stang in a Rambo role. I want transparency. I want the truth. I can handle the truth. Tell us the savings are to fix potholes on the Interstates or to fund new Obamaphones.
He lost my support when he talked about what a fine ship and class the last Independence class LCS was as it was being commissioned. My daughter sailed on one...towed into port 2x, broke down at sea several other times, was on water hours the whole cruise and the helo spaces were ill designed and did not serve them well.
I hope your daughter had an otherwise good experience with the Navy. It was a fun and fulfilling job back in the day. Had one crummy tour on a ship and with one Captain and wrote it off as just one of those things and knew I had better things in store for me in the future.
She grew up in the Navy. I was an XO then CO then Ops on a carrier when she started elementary school. She's still in as a helo search and rescue pilot. Made 05, but not sure she's going to pin on. Ran into a previous CO who hated women in the service and tried to mess her over (before he got fired for something else). She's seriously considering getting out and finishing up in the reserves. Overall, she's been very satisfied with the Navy.
I wish her the best. That's a child to be proud of. I was a Chief when my daughters were born and they had ~13-14 years of the navy life before I retired. They are 47 and 48 now and living the good life.
Jim - my daughter is the ANAV on a DDG. Deployed on Tuesday. We pinned her on 9/16, but since still in an E6 billet she’s moving to an E7 billet on an Independence class, and has to attend a school for months to learn her role. evidently on an LC2 platform you are just the Nav and ANAV, and no one reports to her.
So she’s flying back from an island in the Pacific when they arrive.
I hope she has a better experience than your daughter. Her ship is in the yards now until the spring.
Congrats to the new Chief! I wish her well and certainly like you, hope she has a good experience on the LCS.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
It's no fun ringing the alarm bells🔔🛎️🔔 when the neighbors seem deaf, but thanks Sal. Keep ringing. Perhaps somehow, someone with ears and influence will hear.
When war comes, and it will, we will find ourselves in a decade long war with half the nation demanding concessions in the name of “peace”with the Chinese while the other half in-fights. We will not find a Marshall or a Nimitz in our sea bags. Our admiralty is functionally retarded and our prognosis is grim.
What a silly post.
Why would “war come”? Unless you’re looking for it.
If America focuses on American interests in its own neighborhood, and China does the same in its neighborhood, then no: War will not come.
We must return to the General Board.
You owe me a Flora - Bama 151 Bushwhacker for stealing my idea Mr. T! ;-)
Just found that John Kuehn ... friend of Cdr. Sal's who occasionally strolls the Porch here... followed his Agents of Innovation work about the General Board with this 2017 more concise history of the Board and its rise and fall...
https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/1492735/americas-first-general-staff-book-review/
https://books.google.com/books/about/America_s_First_General_Staff.html?id=4a_FswEACAAJ
I’ll pay in spades.
It’s the best way ahead.
So...
A change in political and military leadership, and another zig (or zag- wanna be inclusive here) from the previous leadership's ideas about what to build.
What I never -ever- see in these repetitions is, "Why?"
The Constellation came along because ...well... thats all that any Navy is building these days. And we gotta build SOMETHING!
So, like a bad horror movie where you see the blonde chick run up the stairs away from the monster to her doom, we could pretty much predict this outcome when the "Naval Enterprise" took the reins.
The "Way We Build Ships" that has gradually evolved since WWII does not work!
First off. Ships are not getting built to any coherent Strategic and Operational construct (that missing "Why" part) that survives past the latest CNO Change of Command ceremony.
If you want to see how this morass developed, you really need to read Norman Friedman's, Design Studies. He covers the descent into slow motion chaos in detail in his latest Aircraft Carrier and Destroyer editions...
https://www.amazon.com/U-S-Aircraft-Carriers-Illustrated-History/dp/0870217399
https://www.amazon.com/U-S-Destroyers-Revised-Illustrated-History/dp/1682477576
In short, the Requirements process needs to be taken out of OPNAV. There is no continuity, and more importantly, there is zero incentive to ask and explore anything beyond what the CNO decrees. Zumwalt with his PF (which morphed into the Perrys, and turned out ok in spite of itself). Also, Clarke's infamous, "We need the LCS today!" fever dream, which squandered a decade of potentially relevant ships getting to the water.
Its time for a modern analogue to the General Board of the Navy. A body that isn't subjected to having to salute, and silently do a brisk about face from the Boss's office. A body that can develop a long term Strategic plan, and Operational framework upon which Requirements for ships ...and aircraft (Remember the CSA?)... can be formed.
https://www.amazon.com/Agents-Innovation-General-Defeated-Japanese-ebook/dp/B00DKMWQ3O
Agents of Innovation: The General Board and the Design of the Fleet that Defeated the Japanese Navy
Also...as seen in Friedman's works. Initial designs should be the sole purview of the Navy's. Leaving it up to the Primes has just fosters a generation of wealthy post -retirement PEO's, and CNO's.
Don't even think about talking what the next ship (and inevitable failure) will be until a viable and truthfully objective system to determine the "Why" is forged.
Good focus on the need for long-term planning. Changing the personnel may be part of this, but the big issue seems to be the rules and systems in place that prioritize all the wrong things. This seems like the main problem that has yet to be solved.
This is sad. I devoted my entire working life (24 active/23 MSC) to the surface Navy). If one were predisposed one could easily become depressed. May Bismarck's supposed saying, (T)here is a special providence for drunkards, fools, and the United States of America be prophecy in this circumstance. I pray for our country.
I can see the OPNAV N96 POM 30 offset from here. Decommision 2 FFGs in FY33.
I would surmise it won't take that long and that is based on the present life span of some of the LCS hulls.