When it comes to unmanned systems, I have one question.
How much PERSONAL experience do these people have with them? Especially the heavy iron - MQ-9 at a minimum, RQ-4/MQ-4 even better. There are a handful of BAMS-D veterans out there...THESE are the people who need to be calling the shots! One of the biggest problems with our acquisition system is that it treats acquiring as agenic...no experience with the system required (or desired). The biggest headache with the MQ-4 Triton program has been the disregard for the hard-learned lessons of the Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration, combined with the failure to use BAMS-D as a training ground. Of course, BAMS-D worked....and the tale of how a handful of testers turned a sow's ear into a dazzlingly capable maritime surveillance platform would make a hell of a book.
Deep-six Goldwater-Nichols, yes...and I've laid out my own thoughts on that subject. Put the Joint Chiefs back in charge, let them have the priority fights for resources...preferably in public.
And as Laz and others have pointed out, we need a SECNAV who will push publicly for the Navy...and privately for a serious warfighting strategy. Pro tip: Study Jellicoe's strategy for dealing with the High Seas Fleet.
1. Are we ready to commit our national defense to unmanned platforms without a robust Electronic Warfare assessment? After all, we're touting their success right now, without every using one in hostitilities, nor in an intense EW environment.
2. At what point do all these unmanned programs become "too big to fail". After all, we've been sold "optimum manning", the LCS, (in two failed versions) the Firescout C (just one failed version there that failed OPEVAL and was declared operational 3 wks later), the DDX, and tons of programs that are virtually unaffordable when viewed with combat losses (the Seawolf, DDX, Ford class CVN, F35 A, B, and C). All "too big to fail" and all virtually failed programs. Granted, the Seawolf and DDX were 3 platforms each, and the F35 continues to stumble along, although spare parts are rare, and we will go to combat with a lot less platforms than we were told we "had" to have.
3. How do all these "great ideas" fit into our latest "War Plan Orange?" (OK, that was the WWII plan, talking about a major theater war vs China/Russia/North Korea). Especially good to know that since we've built generations of warships that cannot be reloaded at sea (VLS equipped).
Inquiring minds (and this old retired Captain) want to know.
I don't worry too much about OPEVAL. I have vivid memories of 1999 when the Air Force OT people were panning Predator...while the field commanders using it were saying, "These are great! How many more can you send us?"
However, you're right about designing systems for a permissive EW environment. Which is a bad, bad bargain. Better to think paranoid, assume the worst.
I don't know anything about USAF OT. Navy's used to be pretty solid. However, politics seem to have crept in these days. The Firescout C failed miserably its first half. Without getting into classified stuff, some major issues with its ability to return home. They did zero weapons evaluation (that was the second half). Basically they said without doing the fix, Firescout would be a lot like the old DASH...prone to flying off over the horizon and not coming back.
However, they had hangars full of Firescout C's already built and sitting in hangars...so the program was declared operational half way through OTD&E, and after failing the portion it had gone through. Guess what? Several accidents later, and now only one squadron in the Navy flies them...and they sit in the same hangars.
OK, color me auto-slathered. But let's agree that the NYT has done their due diligence in laying in a supply of CYA''s and told-ya-so's for articles a few years from now. And: "- has had to figure out how to do more with less." A no-brainer, just do less. Learn Mandarin too.
The media doesn't have to do due diligence... see Afghan withdrawal and their pathetic scrutiny. The Pentagon will simply pronounce that they have "no regrets" and claim "success." And the media will contently take their daily bread from their god that is gov't of the elite, for the elite and by the elite.
If only the "elite" were actually elite, and not venal, corrupt charlatans who fail at everything except accumulating power at the expense of the useless eaters.
The term "elite" is not unlike many other terms whose definition has been bleached beyond recognition. Common aspect amongst those self-describing "elites" is the absence of humility and a huge amount of smug certainty. I'll put my faith in a couple hundred thousand sailors spread across the fleet putting their eyes and ears to a specific problem any day of the week.
Then consider my idea that we are weak because we don't have U.S. Naval shipyards building actual U. S. naval ships. Yards staffed and run by civilian navy personal, with plenty of billets for technical ratings to bear a hand building ships, perfecting their craft, and spending two years in a sweet duty station with the wife and kids.
Would the state of the current public shipyards suggest to anyone they are able to be agile enough to incorporate advanced production methods? Under the 90s Naval Industrial Improvement Program, if the aviation depots or shipyards needed capital equipment such as they would need for advanced machining, the process was years in the making. Productivity is not something that i would expect govt owned shipyards for new ship construction to be a bright spot.
The question is, do we have shipyards and repair facilities we can still reactivate? If not, we don't have time to build them. If we don't have them, we have to get close with SK, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia and access their yards and/or build out capacity.
Also, can we use secondary shipyards to build something like the National Security Cutters in numbers with containerized missiles on them? They could operate in squadrons in the SCS...good luck finding them among the shipping traffic. With containerized MK-41 launch tubes, they could punch above their weight if they were datalinked.
South Korea has a very robust commercial ship industry. Have them start with all of those logistics ships we don’t have. I’m fine with making American shipyards nervous.
It isn't like they don't live in the neighborhoond and have nothing on the line if a war breaks out, but I would like to get them as deeply involved and committed up front as we can.
They are "the Elite." They plan the little wars that keep all the rest of us in a constant state of conflict, but they won't fight them and they think they are far too smart to allow a conflict to escalate to the point a DC cocktail party is interrupted.
Group think, being in the bubble, captured by the bureaucracy...elitism...call it what you will. They are the "crowd that knows what is best for us", so they think, and they rarely change course until they get smacked in the mouth.
Most of us continue on our current life heading unless forced by storm or shanking water to change course. Why should they be any differen? Oh, if only I were king for a day…..
Obsolete thinking. I've been considering writing a paper on the revival of strategic bombing - precision munitions make striking at the enemy homeland a workable strategy.
Well, to start with, they are the only city in the US that has a permanently deployed SAM system and armed fighters on alert. Not exactly like what Mr. and Mrs. America live with unless they are in the capital region.
American shipyards are broke because we have no maritime strategy and the subsidies go elsewhere. You think highway funds aren't a subsidy for truckers? Railroad Retirement Board isn;t a subsidy for railroads? FAA is in the end helping make air travel more reliable and efficient and we all pay for it. We have to kill just to get our aging locks on internal waterways repaired or updated. Sending thee work foreign is just the bad idea fairies making more successful war against ourselves.
I do not have all of the answers for the economics of American shipyards, but I can make some observations. American shipyards currently operate under an economic arrangement called a monopsony - that is, we have a single purchaser (the US government) and multiple providers. This is just as destructive to an economy as its opposite, a monopoly. Some people will claim that the sole reason for the decline of American shipyards is the higher cost of labor, but cruise ships aren't built in South Korea or other Far East shipyards. So there must be another reason. If we expect American shipyards to again be healthy (one of my dreams), we need to find out why they are sick. I suggest that the smart people who own those yards might very well figure that out if they are given enough of an incentive to do so.
Oh yeah, the bizarre demands of their number one customer is also a huge factor. I have no idea how NASSCO still manages a commercial portfolio while Uncle Sam lurks in the yard.
That would be a REALLY good question for SupShip San Diego, but I have a guess. As a former SupShip New Orleans project officer, my job was to see that my contracts were completed as written and that the builder(s) received timely payment for their work. "Contract completed as written" included inspections by my people for an appropriate level of quality, again, per the contract. In the case of the non-combatant builds I supervised, the QA standard was ABS, per the contract.
NASSCO's web site says they meet all of the requirements of ISO 45001:2018, as certified by ABS Quality Evaluations (ABS QE). I strongly suspect that that ISO spec and ABS (or DNV or Lloyd's) inspectors are specified in all of NASSCO's contracts. I also suspect that the commercial area of NASSCO's facilities are, in effect, out of bounds to Navy inspectors. Except for purposes of overall shipyard security, NASSCO would have that right.
We need the workforce. We could also keep everyone busy by farming out modules at small yards that end up at a yard large enough for final assembly. Many ways to do this without going foreign. The Navy is the problem. The Navy will screw up any foreign yard plan unless the institution changes.
even though it might have hurt, CDR, I had anticipated/allowed/wished for you to take that somewhat longer holiday break.
in any case, nice for us that you did not. our thanx for the dedication.
I had read the article, and noted the emphasis given to future unmanned systems. thought, meh, perhaps. unlikely. too much "tech" today is too vulnerable tomorrow.
From a cursory search, Eric Lipton has barely any experience in national defense, let alone the workings and purpose of the many apparatus' within, he's a neophyte in the world of defense. His writings read of someone who's easily led astray with bright, new and flashy things, not understanding the principals of redundancy and simplicity as it pertains to warfare. In short, too many movies and dinner parties, and not enough ground truth.
As for RADM Selby, he's got no room to talk or, criticize.
Since I didn’t bother breaching the paywall, did the endless praise for the small and unmanned happen to mention how the Iranians had one of the new technological marvels under involuntary tow on the way back to an Iranian port when one of those big, old style, cumbersome “ships” (shudder) had to chase them down and launch an old style manned “helicopter” (double shudder) to get the Iranians to drop the tow line and skedaddle?
It misses that the Navy needs a maritime strategy that says what missions the fleet will undertake in peace and war. That strategy should in turn inform the size and force structure of the fleet. That needs to happen so that we don't repeat mistakes like LCS and DDG 1000. Every part of the Navy is working unmanned systems (surface, subsurface and air,) so its unfair to suggest its a 20th century navy. That's a cheap throwaway line. Aircraft carriers, destroyers to escort them and SSN's are still needed for global naval operations.
The article is also an unfair hit piece on HII shipbuilding. That company builds what the govt asks it too, and has been the victim of an uneven demand signal for decades. Uneven demand for ships causes highly trained shipyard workers to leave in order to put food on the table. If there was an even demand signal then the shipyards would not have to constantly hire and train large numbers of new workers.
The article should have made a renewed pitch for the Commission on the Future of the navy but did not.
Always worth the time to read, thanks CDR S. I'm curious, have you ever written down your thoughts on the shortcomings of Goldwater-Nichols or (even better) what needs changed/overhauled/scrapped in order to fix it? I'd love to read that
Just do a search here and my OG Blog (link on main page) for "Goldwater-Nichols" - I'd also recommend a google search for the same and "Midrats" - there's a few hours commentary on the subject there as well.
I tire so of this Nonsense from the smart people who have never pissed an ounce of salt water. We can all do more real navy stuff with a 60 year old frigate, manned by a watch team of 60 year old sailors, and just a lucky break (or two), than any unmanned system today. The UUV and USV platforms I walked away from 16 years ago were really nothing more than NUWC science projects, and to this day are not even close (through all their iterations) to being “warfighters”.
If these guys can’t even figure out how to better spin/sell what we lost 20 years of development chasing, I mean come on, it isn’t even PowerPoint deep at this point, it’s a naked shot at one more try to do everything we proved DOESNT WORK.
That's my worry. Unmanned aircraft aren't unmanned - they just stuff the crew into the ground station instead of the fuselage. Convenient when you are flying multi-shift missions.
Applying that same technology to completely unman a ship is much more dubious. Reducing manning...that is more viable. Build a Rust-ba to autonomously do corrosion control. A better bridge control station, like an airplane's cockpit. But understand the limits of the technology.
Don't worry. The Chinese or Russians will never understand how to jam radios or locate and blow up ground stations. And they certainly won't sell that that ability to anyone we might be involved with.
Same old story. I used the 2018 report because it was readily available.
Navy Large Unmanned Surface and Undersea Vehicles: Background and Issues for Congress Updated August 25, 2023, page 5
"The Navy wants LUSVs to be low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships with ample capacity for carrying various modular payloads—particularly anti-surface warfare (ASuW) and strike payloads, meaning principally anti-ship and land-attack missile."
Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Background and Issues for Congress, Updated October 22, 2018, page 5.
"LCS mission packages have been under development since the early days of the LCS program. The Navy’s plan is to develop and deploy initial versions of these packages, followed by development and procurement of more capable versions."
Reading the mission statement for the LCS and the large unmanned vessel, they read almost identical.
Worse, Sea Hunter one of the LUSV is supposed to interface and extend the reach of the LCS ASW package (which doesn't exist). It's Transformationalism stacking on Transformationalism.
“low sea-state float toys”. Will anyone in the Potomac Fleet ever be brave enough to demand a serious “Let’s press the limits and be sneaky” war game where the results are not pre-ordained? Let all of the acquisition PM’s prove they actually have something that should be continued for reasons other than being jobs programs in the right congressional districts. A well-understood joke inside the Zumwalt program was that everyone knew the program wasn’t going to get cancelled because there were contracts in 46 states.
"... Will anyone in the Potomac Fleet ever be brave enough to demand a serious “Let’s press the limits and be sneaky” war game where the results are not pre-ordained?" Was that a rhetorical question?
Big sigh. Unfortunately, yes. And it will remain so until someone figures out that we need fewer flag officers than ships. Current practice makes some banana republics look good.
As a matter of full disclosure, I started off as an unrestricted line officer, and then became an EDO. So when I say we have too many flags, I’m including all of the restricted line and fill-in-the-blank-corps officers. We actually won two world wars with Lieutenant Commanders, and even Lieutenants, in command of destroyers and submarines. That would be pure heresy these days. And no, I am not advocating for a repeat of Zumwalt’s special squadron where all of the billets in one particular squadron were dropped one paygrade. All that really did was package a bunch of hotshot officers into a single reporting unit, where they faced what was, in effect, an un-natural competitive environment.
Drop every military billet one paygrade. If you make it clear that you expect superior performance from all concerned, most often you get it. The opposite is also true.
When it comes to unmanned systems, I have one question.
How much PERSONAL experience do these people have with them? Especially the heavy iron - MQ-9 at a minimum, RQ-4/MQ-4 even better. There are a handful of BAMS-D veterans out there...THESE are the people who need to be calling the shots! One of the biggest problems with our acquisition system is that it treats acquiring as agenic...no experience with the system required (or desired). The biggest headache with the MQ-4 Triton program has been the disregard for the hard-learned lessons of the Global Hawk Maritime Demonstration, combined with the failure to use BAMS-D as a training ground. Of course, BAMS-D worked....and the tale of how a handful of testers turned a sow's ear into a dazzlingly capable maritime surveillance platform would make a hell of a book.
Deep-six Goldwater-Nichols, yes...and I've laid out my own thoughts on that subject. Put the Joint Chiefs back in charge, let them have the priority fights for resources...preferably in public.
And as Laz and others have pointed out, we need a SECNAV who will push publicly for the Navy...and privately for a serious warfighting strategy. Pro tip: Study Jellicoe's strategy for dealing with the High Seas Fleet.
Define the warfighting need. Then build systems that do their primary requirement very well. Avoid gold plating.
"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
And put an absolute halt to mission creep.
The maritime strategy should be the starting point, but instead its an afterthought.
your new production brook?
May I suggest: Ephemeral stream. One that only flows in direct reaction to rainfall, and whose channel is always above the water table.
This is really excellent. Thanks for pulling this together.
1. Are we ready to commit our national defense to unmanned platforms without a robust Electronic Warfare assessment? After all, we're touting their success right now, without every using one in hostitilities, nor in an intense EW environment.
2. At what point do all these unmanned programs become "too big to fail". After all, we've been sold "optimum manning", the LCS, (in two failed versions) the Firescout C (just one failed version there that failed OPEVAL and was declared operational 3 wks later), the DDX, and tons of programs that are virtually unaffordable when viewed with combat losses (the Seawolf, DDX, Ford class CVN, F35 A, B, and C). All "too big to fail" and all virtually failed programs. Granted, the Seawolf and DDX were 3 platforms each, and the F35 continues to stumble along, although spare parts are rare, and we will go to combat with a lot less platforms than we were told we "had" to have.
3. How do all these "great ideas" fit into our latest "War Plan Orange?" (OK, that was the WWII plan, talking about a major theater war vs China/Russia/North Korea). Especially good to know that since we've built generations of warships that cannot be reloaded at sea (VLS equipped).
Inquiring minds (and this old retired Captain) want to know.
I don't worry too much about OPEVAL. I have vivid memories of 1999 when the Air Force OT people were panning Predator...while the field commanders using it were saying, "These are great! How many more can you send us?"
However, you're right about designing systems for a permissive EW environment. Which is a bad, bad bargain. Better to think paranoid, assume the worst.
This is where AI will come in handy. Keep doing something useful until we can talk again.
Hallucinating operations orders?
I don't know anything about USAF OT. Navy's used to be pretty solid. However, politics seem to have crept in these days. The Firescout C failed miserably its first half. Without getting into classified stuff, some major issues with its ability to return home. They did zero weapons evaluation (that was the second half). Basically they said without doing the fix, Firescout would be a lot like the old DASH...prone to flying off over the horizon and not coming back.
However, they had hangars full of Firescout C's already built and sitting in hangars...so the program was declared operational half way through OTD&E, and after failing the portion it had gone through. Guess what? Several accidents later, and now only one squadron in the Navy flies them...and they sit in the same hangars.
OK, color me auto-slathered. But let's agree that the NYT has done their due diligence in laying in a supply of CYA''s and told-ya-so's for articles a few years from now. And: "- has had to figure out how to do more with less." A no-brainer, just do less. Learn Mandarin too.
The media doesn't have to do due diligence... see Afghan withdrawal and their pathetic scrutiny. The Pentagon will simply pronounce that they have "no regrets" and claim "success." And the media will contently take their daily bread from their god that is gov't of the elite, for the elite and by the elite.
If only the "elite" were actually elite, and not venal, corrupt charlatans who fail at everything except accumulating power at the expense of the useless eaters.
The term "elite" is not unlike many other terms whose definition has been bleached beyond recognition. Common aspect amongst those self-describing "elites" is the absence of humility and a huge amount of smug certainty. I'll put my faith in a couple hundred thousand sailors spread across the fleet putting their eyes and ears to a specific problem any day of the week.
Then consider my idea that we are weak because we don't have U.S. Naval shipyards building actual U. S. naval ships. Yards staffed and run by civilian navy personal, with plenty of billets for technical ratings to bear a hand building ships, perfecting their craft, and spending two years in a sweet duty station with the wife and kids.
Would the state of the current public shipyards suggest to anyone they are able to be agile enough to incorporate advanced production methods? Under the 90s Naval Industrial Improvement Program, if the aviation depots or shipyards needed capital equipment such as they would need for advanced machining, the process was years in the making. Productivity is not something that i would expect govt owned shipyards for new ship construction to be a bright spot.
Worse they insult the people who pay their salaries by calling them bitter climbers or deplorable or terrorists.
The question is, do we have shipyards and repair facilities we can still reactivate? If not, we don't have time to build them. If we don't have them, we have to get close with SK, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia and access their yards and/or build out capacity.
Also, can we use secondary shipyards to build something like the National Security Cutters in numbers with containerized missiles on them? They could operate in squadrons in the SCS...good luck finding them among the shipping traffic. With containerized MK-41 launch tubes, they could punch above their weight if they were datalinked.
have the Koreans build them
South Korea has a very robust commercial ship industry. Have them start with all of those logistics ships we don’t have. I’m fine with making American shipyards nervous.
It isn't like they don't live in the neighborhoond and have nothing on the line if a war breaks out, but I would like to get them as deeply involved and committed up front as we can.
So why is it that everyone in DC acts as if war could never touch them personally? Cognitive dissonance?
They are "the Elite." They plan the little wars that keep all the rest of us in a constant state of conflict, but they won't fight them and they think they are far too smart to allow a conflict to escalate to the point a DC cocktail party is interrupted.
Sadly, I have trouble disagreeing with you. Wag the dog, indeed. I’ll let you apply that line to whomever you want.
Well I understand "the Elite" have talents that we mere mortals cannot fathom.
Group think, being in the bubble, captured by the bureaucracy...elitism...call it what you will. They are the "crowd that knows what is best for us", so they think, and they rarely change course until they get smacked in the mouth.
Most of us continue on our current life heading unless forced by storm or shanking water to change course. Why should they be any differen? Oh, if only I were king for a day…..
I think they think they know what is best for them, and most of "us" don't even exist in that universe, much less fair well in it.
Obsolete thinking. I've been considering writing a paper on the revival of strategic bombing - precision munitions make striking at the enemy homeland a workable strategy.
Large Chinese container ships call at East Coast ports too.... 10,000 TEUs and 200 Club-Ks.
Well, to start with, they are the only city in the US that has a permanently deployed SAM system and armed fighters on alert. Not exactly like what Mr. and Mrs. America live with unless they are in the capital region.
American shipyards are broke because we have no maritime strategy and the subsidies go elsewhere. You think highway funds aren't a subsidy for truckers? Railroad Retirement Board isn;t a subsidy for railroads? FAA is in the end helping make air travel more reliable and efficient and we all pay for it. We have to kill just to get our aging locks on internal waterways repaired or updated. Sending thee work foreign is just the bad idea fairies making more successful war against ourselves.
I do not have all of the answers for the economics of American shipyards, but I can make some observations. American shipyards currently operate under an economic arrangement called a monopsony - that is, we have a single purchaser (the US government) and multiple providers. This is just as destructive to an economy as its opposite, a monopoly. Some people will claim that the sole reason for the decline of American shipyards is the higher cost of labor, but cruise ships aren't built in South Korea or other Far East shipyards. So there must be another reason. If we expect American shipyards to again be healthy (one of my dreams), we need to find out why they are sick. I suggest that the smart people who own those yards might very well figure that out if they are given enough of an incentive to do so.
Oh yeah, the bizarre demands of their number one customer is also a huge factor. I have no idea how NASSCO still manages a commercial portfolio while Uncle Sam lurks in the yard.
That would be a REALLY good question for SupShip San Diego, but I have a guess. As a former SupShip New Orleans project officer, my job was to see that my contracts were completed as written and that the builder(s) received timely payment for their work. "Contract completed as written" included inspections by my people for an appropriate level of quality, again, per the contract. In the case of the non-combatant builds I supervised, the QA standard was ABS, per the contract.
NASSCO's web site says they meet all of the requirements of ISO 45001:2018, as certified by ABS Quality Evaluations (ABS QE). I strongly suspect that that ISO spec and ABS (or DNV or Lloyd's) inspectors are specified in all of NASSCO's contracts. I also suspect that the commercial area of NASSCO's facilities are, in effect, out of bounds to Navy inspectors. Except for purposes of overall shipyard security, NASSCO would have that right.
No
We need the workforce. We could also keep everyone busy by farming out modules at small yards that end up at a yard large enough for final assembly. Many ways to do this without going foreign. The Navy is the problem. The Navy will screw up any foreign yard plan unless the institution changes.
A Coastie in USNI Review argued for Fat Response Cutters armed with a quad pack of NSMs. Made sense to me!
You would need a Henry Kaiser. All we have today is Sam Bankman-Fried
We don’t. Mare Island is a liberal shitfest. Philly is overrun with crack. Hunter is a Diane Feinstein condo park and “green space”. We are fucked.
Game, set, match, Salamander
even though it might have hurt, CDR, I had anticipated/allowed/wished for you to take that somewhat longer holiday break.
in any case, nice for us that you did not. our thanx for the dedication.
I had read the article, and noted the emphasis given to future unmanned systems. thought, meh, perhaps. unlikely. too much "tech" today is too vulnerable tomorrow.
From a cursory search, Eric Lipton has barely any experience in national defense, let alone the workings and purpose of the many apparatus' within, he's a neophyte in the world of defense. His writings read of someone who's easily led astray with bright, new and flashy things, not understanding the principals of redundancy and simplicity as it pertains to warfare. In short, too many movies and dinner parties, and not enough ground truth.
As for RADM Selby, he's got no room to talk or, criticize.
Well written, sir.
Since I didn’t bother breaching the paywall, did the endless praise for the small and unmanned happen to mention how the Iranians had one of the new technological marvels under involuntary tow on the way back to an Iranian port when one of those big, old style, cumbersome “ships” (shudder) had to chase them down and launch an old style manned “helicopter” (double shudder) to get the Iranians to drop the tow line and skedaddle?
It misses that the Navy needs a maritime strategy that says what missions the fleet will undertake in peace and war. That strategy should in turn inform the size and force structure of the fleet. That needs to happen so that we don't repeat mistakes like LCS and DDG 1000. Every part of the Navy is working unmanned systems (surface, subsurface and air,) so its unfair to suggest its a 20th century navy. That's a cheap throwaway line. Aircraft carriers, destroyers to escort them and SSN's are still needed for global naval operations.
The article is also an unfair hit piece on HII shipbuilding. That company builds what the govt asks it too, and has been the victim of an uneven demand signal for decades. Uneven demand for ships causes highly trained shipyard workers to leave in order to put food on the table. If there was an even demand signal then the shipyards would not have to constantly hire and train large numbers of new workers.
The article should have made a renewed pitch for the Commission on the Future of the navy but did not.
Time to reconstitute the General Board....
https://www.dau.edu/library/professional-reading-program/Pages/Blog.aspx?TermStoreId=dce24bd1-67d5-449a-a845-034b26f02d5e&TermSetId=3dc81f05-e473-42cf-8c34-4a655b89dc8c&TermId=9fc00129-2bfa-46ec-9824-2599cedc6b81&UrlSuffix=Agents-of-Innovation--The-General-Board-and-the-Design-of-the-Fleet-That-Defeated-the-Japanese-Navy
"Agents of Innovation:
The General Board and the Design of the Fleet That Defeated the Japanese Navy
Hey, that is a great collection of books there. You just cost me a bunch of money on Amazon and Ebay. But that's okay. Thank you.
That board did much.
Always worth the time to read, thanks CDR S. I'm curious, have you ever written down your thoughts on the shortcomings of Goldwater-Nichols or (even better) what needs changed/overhauled/scrapped in order to fix it? I'd love to read that
Agree, a commentary on Goldwaters Nichols would refresh for us older swabs and help the newer followers.
Just do a search here and my OG Blog (link on main page) for "Goldwater-Nichols" - I'd also recommend a google search for the same and "Midrats" - there's a few hours commentary on the subject there as well.
Much appreciated and will do. Thanks!
I tire so of this Nonsense from the smart people who have never pissed an ounce of salt water. We can all do more real navy stuff with a 60 year old frigate, manned by a watch team of 60 year old sailors, and just a lucky break (or two), than any unmanned system today. The UUV and USV platforms I walked away from 16 years ago were really nothing more than NUWC science projects, and to this day are not even close (through all their iterations) to being “warfighters”.
If these guys can’t even figure out how to better spin/sell what we lost 20 years of development chasing, I mean come on, it isn’t even PowerPoint deep at this point, it’s a naked shot at one more try to do everything we proved DOESNT WORK.
That's my worry. Unmanned aircraft aren't unmanned - they just stuff the crew into the ground station instead of the fuselage. Convenient when you are flying multi-shift missions.
Applying that same technology to completely unman a ship is much more dubious. Reducing manning...that is more viable. Build a Rust-ba to autonomously do corrosion control. A better bridge control station, like an airplane's cockpit. But understand the limits of the technology.
Don't worry. The Chinese or Russians will never understand how to jam radios or locate and blow up ground stations. And they certainly won't sell that that ability to anyone we might be involved with.
Same old story. I used the 2018 report because it was readily available.
Navy Large Unmanned Surface and Undersea Vehicles: Background and Issues for Congress Updated August 25, 2023, page 5
"The Navy wants LUSVs to be low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships with ample capacity for carrying various modular payloads—particularly anti-surface warfare (ASuW) and strike payloads, meaning principally anti-ship and land-attack missile."
Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Background and Issues for Congress, Updated October 22, 2018, page 5.
"LCS mission packages have been under development since the early days of the LCS program. The Navy’s plan is to develop and deploy initial versions of these packages, followed by development and procurement of more capable versions."
Reading the mission statement for the LCS and the large unmanned vessel, they read almost identical.
Great (and terrifying) point
... well... damn.
Worse, Sea Hunter one of the LUSV is supposed to interface and extend the reach of the LCS ASW package (which doesn't exist). It's Transformationalism stacking on Transformationalism.
Whoa! what a gawdawful and clearly delineated vision. thanx so much. don't know how to wash my mind of that one....
It's Transformationalism all the way down.
Imma be simple today.
🤬
“low sea-state float toys”. Will anyone in the Potomac Fleet ever be brave enough to demand a serious “Let’s press the limits and be sneaky” war game where the results are not pre-ordained? Let all of the acquisition PM’s prove they actually have something that should be continued for reasons other than being jobs programs in the right congressional districts. A well-understood joke inside the Zumwalt program was that everyone knew the program wasn’t going to get cancelled because there were contracts in 46 states.
"... Will anyone in the Potomac Fleet ever be brave enough to demand a serious “Let’s press the limits and be sneaky” war game where the results are not pre-ordained?" Was that a rhetorical question?
Big sigh. Unfortunately, yes. And it will remain so until someone figures out that we need fewer flag officers than ships. Current practice makes some banana republics look good.
As a matter of full disclosure, I started off as an unrestricted line officer, and then became an EDO. So when I say we have too many flags, I’m including all of the restricted line and fill-in-the-blank-corps officers. We actually won two world wars with Lieutenant Commanders, and even Lieutenants, in command of destroyers and submarines. That would be pure heresy these days. And no, I am not advocating for a repeat of Zumwalt’s special squadron where all of the billets in one particular squadron were dropped one paygrade. All that really did was package a bunch of hotshot officers into a single reporting unit, where they faced what was, in effect, an un-natural competitive environment.
Drop every military billet one paygrade. If you make it clear that you expect superior performance from all concerned, most often you get it. The opposite is also true.