How do you say "Day late and dollar short" in Houthi, or Chinese?
Better late than never, but this needs to be pushed to the very top of every list as "Get is done NOW, and overtime is authorized at every level. And if you you cannot make it happen, I'll find someone who can!"
Then better get hot on procurement of the missiles to be reloaded at sea, and account for the increased numbers to cover those in transit, and potential losses along the way. Defund the DEI zampolits if short of funding.
Not enough; need to ramp up current production as rapidly as possible. Not just for SAMs and TLAM, but also for heavyweight torpedoes and ASW torpedoes.
With respect, no surface vessel is dropping depth charges on a sub these days. Subs are much faster than in WW2, and can go much deeper. They also have FAR better sonar than the surface vessels do, so the sub that is able to get close to the surface force will always be at an advantage until the surface force starts hammering away with active.
At which point, the sub will run, and your not hitting it with depth charges. Homing torpedo is the only way to kill a sub these days.
I was really thinking via aircraft with the depth bomb. Those MQ-9Bs will need a way to get o work on their own the same way Predator went from ISR to, "hey let's attach a hellfire!" I am also thinking more littoral. North Korea has about 100 subs almost all midget. Iran has 20-30 again small aside from those 30 year old kilos.
As for mortars, if we would start doing things like putting a dipping sonar on a CUSV with say a few Coyote UAVs with MAD sensors, then maybe a single spread of ASW mortar might have value. If even only to keep their heads down or keep them running.
It likely won't be useful against China. Hammering away will just draw every sub within 500nm in like sharks on chum.
NorK and Iran are VERY manageable threats. China is not. Do we want to expend resources on a system that is unlikely to be useful in the fight we are at risk of losing? I think in those scenarios, we waste the ASROC or the 48, since they are likely '1 shot kills' against those adversaries anyway, and now we have less systems to manage and train on.
I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but my gut says we need to focus on closing the gap we know we have.
Political system is too dysfunctional to set priorities. When was the last time the Congress passed all appropriation bills in regular order before 31 October? Hint: Clinton was still President ...
As bad as things are here, they're worse in Xi's Middle Kingdom. Your population is collapsing, your real estate sector is imploding, your Belt & Road Initiative is backfiring, and your currency is about to hyperinflate.
maybe this a signal to CHINA that usa is not serious about starting a shooting war over tw, and that us politician angry words are for domestic consumption only.
Another way to read this post is not as trolling, but as the mindset of the average Chinese citizen on the internet.
The best outcome is that the Chinese remain afraid of our first flurry of blows because we'll be spent once we've unleashed it. If they calculate that they can absorb our initial flurry and then keep fighting, the US is in for a war of attrition that we aren't capable of fighting.
The Kenyan started the cleansing of excellence in the flag officer cohort. Most people have no idea how long it can take to get it back (if possible) because the remaining dregs can influence promotion boards for up to 20 years, possibly longer.
A top notch no-bullshit O-5 can become a shake-n-bake O-8.
IIRC, it's only the O-9s and -10s who incur all the carousel hassles of "fill an empty billet pronto or retire." I know we don't need as many of those perfumed princelings as we currently have on the books. For heaven's sake, the tiny little USCG has billets for five(!) Vice Admirals and two(!!) Admirals … which is 🦇💩 crazy.
I was retired before CWO5's were a thing. Please don't incur their wrath by any kind of accidental exclusion. I never met a W-5 but I suspect I'd rather meet Biden's angry Chief of HR over all the civilian SES's than a W-5 who felt I'd slighted him. When I was a W-3 even W-4's frightened me. Never felt safe as an O-3E either.
I like the idea of breveting, used judiciously. Custer was a brevet Major General in the Civil War in 1865 and seemed to do well. He died in battle, a Regular Army LtCol in 1876, not doing so well.
The problem goes deeper than just the "chickens." Most of the junior officers are just as polluted as the GOFOs. The Academies are now woke, and ROTC is run at woke colleges and universities.
Frock the field grade / senior officers who've seen the elephant, but are neither so senior that their political instincts have kicked in, nor so junior that they're recent grads with degrees in left-handed lesbian womyn's poetry studies.
How do we publicly ask if all of the Navy’s flag officers have been asleep for the past several decades? I’m serious. How do we make replenishment of ALL weapons while underway, or at least in atolls and bays, a public topic beyond substack and blogspot?
The flags read blogs like this. They are reading this right now. They look themselves in the mirror while admiring and proclaiming “I’m not like those flags that the front porch laments about!”
Cognitive dissonance can, on occasion, have a positive outcome. But it takes a boatload of self-awareness to recognize it as well as the guts to go public with that knowledge. Any flag officer out there willing to raise your hand, even if only on the way to your retirement party?
Deep down they must know that it'll be no 4th star for them if they go off the reservation. I am sure they all start out motivated and eager. Just today I had my quarterly A1C/Diabetes meeting with my Navy Doctor, a Lieutenant, via a telephone appointment (the new wave of medicine). He put me on a 6 month check-up cycle because I am doing well and suggested I get a Tetanus, Shingles and Pneumonia shot update. Told him I would and jokingly said I was happy he wasn't pushing the Flu shot because I read that some of the new flu shots have that wicked Fauci nanobot (mRNA?) in it. He said, "Yeah, there is that...I don't want the flu shot either, but they make me get it." Told him I used to give the Corpsman the old CPO, CWO or LDO hate-stare and they'd back off and let me slide on the shot. He said he wasn't a CPO, CWO or LDO...wouldn't work for him. I commiserated with him and told him I was glad he was serving, that I might have a hard time myself, given the environment now. He said, "Yeah, retention is terrible. People are getting out". I won't put words in his mouth but I could hear "It sucks" in his tone. Kind of heartbreaking for me. So many good people join. Many seem to regret it. Would the Navy and other services be any better or worse off under the U.S. Postmaster General?
Yup to your nope. Don't know my doctor's situation. Young LT, maybe would owe them for a refund on a signing bonus, have to pay back waived students loans or maybe they paid all his tuition and he'd have to pay that back too. And add in a less than stellar DD-214. They have him by the cojones. But he's a volunteer like everyone since the Vietnam Era and has free will.
I have a friend, a Naval Aviator, a LAMPS & Hawkeye guy, who had his 20 in and was 2 days away from an approved retirement date. His CO ordered him to report post-haste to get that COVID shot he'd declined before, respectfully with all the supporting medical data for a waiver, OR ELSE. Don't know how that turned out. His day job was as an airline pilot and years before he had gotten myocarditis from some mandatory vaccine and didn't want another bout that might destroy his life. I panicked and got the jab and booster with the 2 worst lot numbers of the Moderna vaccine, according to VAERS. Luckily, the wife and I have had no ill effects, yet. Always question the medical experts.
I was a good boy and got the first two Moderna shots. Now have rather severe medical problem. Can't prove it was the vaccine, but I ain't getting any more. I don't question "experts" anymore, I just assume they are wrong until they can convince me.
I don't have the link, but VAERS lists all the COVID vaccine makers and their lot numbers and tells how many had adverse reactions. It's googlable. Amazing thing is that the threshold of reported adverse reactions is so low for pulling a vaccine off the market, but the actual reported numbers were so high for the vaccines and nothing happened. They just kept giving the shots. No one has been fired, jailed or beaten.
I fought it tooth and nail. I'm the Emergency Manger for my little slice of Federal Land, so I was the one tasked with COVIDS reporting, and I made clear to my bosses that there was ample reason to believe it was not as safe or effective as promised.
They didn't care. I organized fellow staff to help them submit religious exemption requests.
They didn't care. They ignored them (they couldn't deny them) so that people would just get the shot out of fear.
several days before the "you will be fired if..." date, I filed a religious discrimination hostile workplace complaint against specific agency leadership responsible for the program.
My exemption was approved 24 hours later.
I'm now persona non-grata with much of the agency leadership.
But I don't have that cancer and heart attack causing shit in me, so I'll take that trade off.
No, not really, Bear, but I get your sentiment. I was thinking back to when the USPS delivered the mail twice a day for 2¢ a letter 6 days a week. And if one is a Climate Worry-Wart, they made deliveries on foot out of a huge leather bag instead of a carbon spewing van or chemical hazard EV. Now the USPS wants to kibosh Saturday deliveries. ...maybe even branch out to Amway, Encyclopedia Britannica and Fuller Brush sales. (Am I dating myself?)
Out here in the boonies of the deep south our mail carriers are diligent, and even work on Sundays the mail gets here, as well as mail from my neighbor Aaron, Jimmy and the tall blond Lass up the road name Crystal, I get to be a mailman and redeliver to them LOL I don't mind remailing her mail to her!
The Niven/Pournelle novel, Lucifer's Hammer, had an iconic mailman in it, a guy who epitomizes that mail carrier you speak of. Redelivering mail is what good people do. Anecdotally: Once there was this family on some mythic road with a 6687 address and their welfare, AFDC, SNAP and other benefits got delivered to a 6678 address across the street. This was before direct deposit became a thing. The long-suffering man at 6678 redelivered those envelopes for a few years and pleaded many times that they contact HHS to do an address correction. He finally started redelivering the envelopes to his garbage can. In 2 months time the problem resolved itself. The gal at 6687 wasn't named Crystal, nor tall & blond.
I wish more of them would realize there will be no plush board room after retirement if they manage to lose the next war to the CCP
They have gotten complacent with being able to lose wars without any career adversity.
Losing to China will be very different. If our economy survives at all, you can be damn certain we won’t be spending 800 billion a year on the defense industry.
The Nation's psyche would not be able to handle a loss. We can't even comprehend losing a major war. Vietnam and the GWOT were not real wars. They were counterinsurgencies.
Even if CONUS isn't directly attacked, if we were to lose a CVN (or two) and be run out of the Western Pacific, our nation would fracture.
It says a lot about your "system" if they resort to reading this.
No its not, and you know it. I'm a native English speaker. Anyway, why do you still call in English, call it AMerican since you gained your independence from them.
Why the personal attacks? Just reply to my points if you want to say something.
Its prob bc you know its true, the whole US mil-DOD-MIC-think tank world is all one incestuous family, which you yourself complain about.
“Busy generals..”. How to say you’re a CCP douche without saying it… I was referring to FLAG officers of the naval variety known as “Admirals”. I get that in your military they are all generals being PLAN. Whatever the hell that means.
Wow, "wumao", 50 Cent Army. Learn something every day. Fitty Cent, totally second tier, ain't luminarious like Run-DMC was. Thanks, Coastie, two words, 4 syllables, terse but polite. Skewered like a shish kebab. Nicely done.
Having had to load an exercise ASROC torpedo at sea on a FRAM I. I appreciate how difficult the task is with calm seas and good weather. I had hoped the Navy had factored this task into future ship builds and weapon procurement. Sadly, it is obvious after 50 years the problem still remains.
As long as it was an exercise ASROC torpedo I'd like to have observed that. Bet the ASWO and Safety Officer were all puckered up. How did it go? The details of that would be fascinating to hear. I remember from Aegis School at Wallops Island in 1990 that the original design for the CG I was going to had a few VLS cells reserved for a strike down crane to reload at sea, that it was worthless, but a fix was coming soon. Scroll down about halfway in this link: https://dsiac.org/articles/a-promising-future-for-us-navy-vertical-launching-systems/
I see the weakness of our Navy that the CDR describes as a symptom of privatization. While free markets and free enterprise are marvelous; there are some things that exist outside of the market economy. Construction of the tools soldiers use to defend themselves, and their nation, are activities a sovereign should do organically, and internally.
For most of the life of our nation the weapons of war were built by the government. Armories and arsenals, shipyards and storage yards were owned and operated by the United States. Then, there came the idea that we need to “run government like a business,” and we embarked on a program of offloading our weapons manufacturing and our military bases to private companies.
The result has been a disaster.
Do you want to know something which was not a disaster? The Anti-Submarine Rocket. ASROC was designed and build by what was then called a Naval Air Weapons Station. The facility which built the ASROC was China Lake.
Navy workers struggled with a Navy problem. They experimented and designed, and overcame repeated failures. What profit making company would spend the thousands of hours of engineer and technician time on parachuting torpedoes? Who but the sovereign could devote the land, and ocean, area to play with rockets and explosives?
The ASROC is a classic example of incremental improvements on a weapons system designed in a government weapons lab. It was a product of a Naval facility, not a product of the military industrial complex.
With respect, 99% of the weapons that won WW2 were built in privately owned industry.
Govt was more deeply involved in design and mandating production changes be implemented across multiple builders, but most of it was built by private industry.
We also lacked our labyrinthine modern contracting systems and revolving door from flag office to board room.
Now, the Germans had a more nationalized war industry and the Soviet’s were obviously 100% state controlled
I think the biggest difference was that most industry was privately owned, and could make choices to accept lower profit as a form of patriotic duty.
Every major defense firm today is publicly traded and so subject to a degree of control and external pressure and less able to make longer term investments in the national security interests.
Tom, I appreciate your contribution and mean no personal disrespect with what follows:
FUCK NO!!! Your suggestion, if enacted or pursued, would endanger not only our troops' lives but our national security writ large. I'm sorry, but you are massively dating yourself. It may be true that once upon a time our government was capable of building great things, or even directly supervising those who built great things. I don't know, as it hasn't been the case in my adult life. But it is unequivocally and objectively not true now. In fact, very little could possibly be further from the truth today. Our only hope - here, in the present, where we live and must fight - is that the profit motive that remains present and powerful in the private sector can be properly harnessed to reward ambition, innovation, and execution in developing and delivering the weapons and weapon systems needed to deter or defeat our foes. Even this may prove to be too great a feat of competence for our government to manage (I would argue that we are currently failing at the task), but it is our only feasible hope right now.
In our nation’s history shipbuilding was done in government yards and in private yards. When the Army and Navy built weapons, and war came, they had the expertise to aid private industry in building weapons.
The shipyard manager in the private sector as one loyalty: making a profit for the shareholders. The shipyard manager at a US Naval shipyard as a different loyalty: the defense of our nation.
The decline in the quality of our ships since the U.S. Navy exited the practice of shipbuilding is obvious and undeniable. Consider the Fletcher. 44 rolled down the ways of U.S. Naval shipyards, 88 were built privately. They were in service from 1942 to 2001. The Fletcher herself served until 1969. Now look at the LCS.
Thanks for the historical details. Unless you are first going to build a time machine to go back to that earlier era, I suggest you abandon your fantasy and do it quickly. Turns out, there are a lot of things about 1942 that are not true about 2024. Walk into any DMV or Post Office or, god forbid, VA facility and tell me "yes, these are the people I'd want building the tools my sons and daughters lives will depend on".
This would be a fascinating case study for Historians studying engineering. Torpedoes were so darn expensive, for their time, that the Navy never tested them.
If you Squids can't reload'em, maybe we should just build ships with one load each and take to the lifeboats after firing. oh, I forgot, like the Titanic there aren't enough boats. Relearn Liberty ships and treat them as expendable property.
There is a thought since the ships may not survive after the first salvo fired.
Like giving a Marine a rifle with an affixed magazine that can't be reloaded because the grunt is expected to die before he needs more ammo LOL.
Our M-151A1C with an M-40 carried only six rounds of 106, mix HEP-T and HEAT four men, two rifles 7 20 rd mags and two Pistols 3 mags and 21 rds of ammo.
They really doubted we would survive past six rds and if we did we would haul ass back to Bn for reloads.
Loaded. You could carry more but the basic load out was six rds. Rds for the spotting rifle were also limited to basically one can or a couple of magazines.
No trailer was used.
Barely room for the Crew of four and main gun.
Even less on the 106 armed M-274 mule. Then it was four rds of 106, carry a driver the others walked.
CDR Sal, you and many others have been pointing out that the inability to replace the multi-million dollar missiles we have been expending to shoot down much cheaper drones without returning to port is a war losing problem. 100% Agree. Have to point out the numbers of replacement missiles in the inventory and supply system are woefully inadequate. Solving the VLS replenishment as sea problem and not having any missiles to put in the cells doesn't get the attention it deserves.
Bwahahaha! Not going to comment on the US education system, but c’mon, your proficiency in Engrish reminds me of the San Francisco laundry workers in old western movies. And you expect us to berieve you are third generation Chinese in Australia? What does that say about Australia’s education system Wo Fat?
why the fuck would I want to go the US? Australia is the safer less rascist version of the US,,,, name one reason US is better to live in.
What couldn't I be an Australian born 3-4th generation ABC and hold these views? How narrow minded you are.
Maybe I'd go to Mexico on holidays (there's actual culture and history there), but there's nothing to see in the US; I was in NYC and LA many years ago and it was meh.
Consider the supply line - from the factory where they are assembled (never mind the parts that go into them), to the weapons storage depots scattered around, to the ports, to the rear areas of the war, to the bases that the ships can reload in.
How long is that, best case? Worst case? Most likely case?
Best case will be C17s landing near the weapons depots and loading up to fly to ...wherever. At least a week, between the order to load and unloading in Honolulu or Anderson?
Worst case, the depots are empty, the railroads cannot move them, the states decide they won't allow hazmat on the highways, the longshore union is on strike.
But it all comes down to my question: How many reloads do we have? The way we've been decommissioning ships, we might have enough to load all the cells...once. Do we have more?
We need the ammo disbursed before the balloon goes up. We have to figure in a drone swarm age and the dominance of Chinese shipping, Seal Beach is exposed and I am guessing wherever we load in Puget Sound, Everett?
We better disburse them into VERY hardened shelters that can survive a hypersonic missile attack....
Seal Beach is swampland....Not sure about Puget Sound but I'm pretty sure they didn't dig into the Cascades for ammo shelters.
Perhaps the Arsenal Ship concept is correct.....Some otherwise disposable ships with a few hundred launchers - that can be convoyed to the AoR with some adequate sub and air protection (oh, wait! Do we have enough of THOSE?) to just volly and forget.
Who says they won't go after the west coast bases as well? The thinking that the US homeland is off limits in a war is going to cause big problems at sometime.
"They just might target any supplies and bases the first day of the war."
Or not. Take out the ships while you still have surprise on your side and know the locations of the ships, then take out the bases, which aren't going anywhere.
Imagine being Winchester on a CG and unable to return to rearm because your sensors are needed for the COP? Can’t leave the line. Can’t rearm. What will be their outcome?
Back in 1990 an Aegis CG could take out a real (telemetry) ASCM with the 5"/54. Controlled launch, known direction of threat. It was a giddy time for this CICO sitting SUWC in late 1990. Gave us all great confidence heading to Desert Storm. Until we thought some more about it.
-If Patriot and standard rounds could interchange launchers we'd be better able to fight at sea or on land.
- Not having quad packed GMLRS and derivatives along with PRSM is missing cheap and good. I'd like to know how many Tomahawk strikes over the years could have been in range to use these options instead?
- We need VLA replacements. Cheap and many would have quad packed CVLWT with a cheap version of an ESSM booster. A more threatening option would be a Loitering ASW Tomahawk.
I guess most folks have forgotten that the old rail systems had no issue reloading...not just away from the pier...but also underway. Great example here ... loading SM1's **on station** underway:
This is the point we should be discussing. Compare the VLS to the ASROC box. One is reloadable the other is not. Maybe the VLS is simply not suitable for reloading anywhere other than in a shore facility.
That pic in the pub on page 281 showing them loading the VLS is in the same series as the color one in Sal's post. Looks like the effort got tabled shortly after publication of the manual.
Everything I have seen that looks at VLS reloading depicts it being done with crane/hoist.
We have advanced robotics that can lift car and truck bodies and spin them in place while they are painted. I think that's precise enough to position a cell over an empty tube and lower it.
How hard would it be to develop a robotic arm system on a track that paralleled the VLS bank and was designed to lift the empty cell cannister (I presume we save these) out, set it in a stack to be man-handled back onto a supply vessel, and then lift the new cannister from another stack and set it in?
Imagine this, but on a dual track system able to move up and down the VLS bank.
I'll bet Elon Musk could figure that out on the back of a napkin.
I imagined something like this for my Arsenal ship design, where the rear deck of the vessel contained stacks of VLS cell reloads stacked horizontally, and the ship had a robotic arm on a double ended truss that could move quickly over the entire VLS bank, withdrawing empties and refilling them.
Done properly, the crew would simply plug in the cell number to be emptied and what cannister to replace it with and the system would do all the rest.
Since it would be a solid robotic arm, there would be very little 'sway' to deal with provided the reload was carried out in relatively calm seas (which would be imperative for any reload process).
The Navy had a press day a few months ago when they rearmed a ship in the harbor in Guam.... While the ship was tied up alongside the wharf. In dead calm water, with a crane on a barge.
Well, that's worth a participation ribbon...I guess.
...in mild seas, with only a slight pitch and roll and both ships only a little bit out of synch with each other. How long is the boom, the distance between ships? What are the tolerances for slipping that square canister into a square hole while in perfect alignment? The permissible window of sea state and weather would be small, even in a time of Need-It-Now. Who'd have the bigger migraine? The designer or the operator? (Neither, it's always the Captain.) But, yes. It is doable. By trial and error we should have mastered this by now. Where are the heads on pikes?
Can do … after the environmental impact study gets redone, and after sustainably green alternative energy fueled e-pikes are designed, and after Congress ensures assorted silver mining and refining and plating facilities are equitably distributed among congressional districts … so you'll get those pikes by 2035 at the latest.
Probably a terrible idea, but you could use a semi-submersible heavy lift (Blue Marlin or even Yacht Express type) ship as your tender. So you have physically coupled the two ship and the crane together. You just have to control the swinging missile pod. Which seems like you could by securing a frame near the pod bottom to winches mounted on the deck next to the VLS cells and then keeping all the winches moving in synch. Once the pod starts into the cell you remove the frame.
I just went back and drew this out on a whiteboard to prove to myself that this could work.
We’re talking about a two-stage system. Imagine a 32 cell VLS bank, with 4x8 cell modules, arranged 2 x 2 lengthwise, so the final bank is four cells wide by eight cells long.
Running down both sides of the full bank, linked wise, you have a track system supporting a column on each end that supports a double girder that runs clean across the width of the bank. Suspended between the double girders is an extended box that can hold one VLS canister
The box is roughly 1/3 the length of a full canister, and has the necessary robotic implements inside the box to raise and lower the canister. The box can move across the girders, which can move on the tracks. This gives you two axis positioning, the motors inside the box raise and lower the canister.
Then you have a heavy, robotic arm, located past the end of the VLS bank, whose purpose is to lift the canister and place it into the box on the track system, as well as to receive the empty canister from same when it is removed initially.
Spare reload canisters and empty expended canisters are stored in empty deck space within reach of the robotic arm. When the vessel goes into a reload., The system removes spent canisters which are stacked, and as each spent canister is removed, the remote arm provides a reload, which is then set back in.
In a magazine/arsenal ship, the system would have reloads stored in the hull aft of the VLS bank, with a robotic system that would lift the new canister up into the box, as well as a separate 'chute' for the box to deposit the spent canisters, which would then be racked and stacked below decks - with an aft ro/ro opening so when in port, specialized trucks can roll in and have empty cannisters loaded and new cannisters supplied.
Such a system would not only enable re-load at sea, with the arsenal ship being able to carry close to 50% of it's VLS capacity as reload, giving it near 150% capacity of total VLS cells, but would also ensure that in-port reload could be conducted in a fraction of the time.
As cells are spent, the system removes the empty cannisters and stacks them below decks, ready to be off-loaded in bulk in port. Once the entire ship is empty and returns to port, the 'unload' process of removing spent cannisters will already be complete, and new cannisters can be loaded rapidly, with the system filling cells as they are brought on-board by truck at the aft.
I'm guessing it would take more than 16 hours for a Burke to complete a re-load cycle of all 96 cells in-port, with current tech, and that assumes they are working the for'ard 32 bank at the same time they are working the aft 64 bank.
My arsenal ship with robotics could mount 320 cells, carry at least 160 additional cannisters for re-load at sea, and could likely complete a full reload (off-load 480 empty cannisters and re-load another 480 full cannisters) in under 10 hours.
For new vessels, specifically for arsenal ships, they would be designed with the space for reloads/empty cannisters within the hull, aft of the VLA magazines.
For existing vessels, the system would be designed to facilitate re-load at sea from a supply vessel, or to expedite re-load in port much faster than current method.
so the 'deck space' concept is 'temporary deck space' used during the reloading cycle. If the supply vessel is designed with a comparable robot arm, and they system is designed so that during the re-loading cycle, the 2 vessels robot systems are linked, then the 2 arms can play handoff to/from each other, even with the vessels having mild independent movement. Modern robotics is more than capable of handling that.
So, cycle runs as follows:
Track system extracts empty canister, delivers to robot arm, which hands off to robot arm on resupply vessel, which deposits canister in designated location, then picks up reload canister, hands off to robot arm on receiving ship, which sets into the track system, which lowers canister into VLS cell, then moves to next cell and repeat process.
Supply vessel can have efficient system for moving empty and full canisters into position to keep the cycle running faster.
robot arm would not be as tall/large as the crane, and would not be on the track. It would be fixed, and hand-off to the track system. Everything that was used in the past was based on 50 year old technology.
Modern tech is stronger and lighter.
Think about the 2 axis track on an inkjet printer, and scale upwards. Track system, properly designed, would take up little space, and looking at images of where the cells are located on Burke's, I could totally fit it in the available space.
We just need to get some robotics engineers onto one of the decomed Tico's and work with it till they get it.
How much does PAC-3MSE cost? It seems to be pretty effective in Ukraine.
Also looks like it could easily be loaded in a VLS cannister
ie.. why are we not optimizing across all the services to have 1 long range interceptor missile and 1 close range, and then make a shit ton of them at lower cost, and spend the savings upgrading the software/seekers more frequently.
That makes sense, but this we we have a little redundancy and maybe our adversary learns to defeat one and not the other. Last I recall pac-3mse is super expensive. Like maybe more than an sm-6.
If we ordered 10x as many, it could probably reduce costs to about half price or less.
But would Raytheon be ok with that, or prioritize profit over country? I'm pretty sure I don't want that question answered.
I'd like to know if we are using ESSM in the Red Sea. Everything I have seen talks about SM-2 and SM-6
And have they used any SM-3 for the ASBM since that is supposedly it's purpose?
If ESSM can do the job for half the price of an SM-2, why are we using SM-2?'s
I get it, SM-2 has much longer range, but is that needed for every intercept?
Seems like maybe no one taught the skippers to fire the cheap stuff if it will work as well...
And we are back to my earlier argument on behalf of a private investment group to order/purchase/stockpile missiles at much cheaper costs, and sell them to Navy at a modest profit (just enough to satisfy the investors that it's a better bet than a T-bill), which would result in increased manufacturing capacity and lower costs overall.
I also think we need some private capital to invest in a no-shit comparison of all the available interceptors out there (Israel has some hot-shit stuff) and determine what would be the best/most cost effective tool for the Navy to potentially replace ESSM with lower cost and better performance.
If we could get a tool that out-ranged ESSM with SM-2 level performance, in a quad pack, at lower cost than ESSM?
I truly believe the only thing preventing that is US defense company profit's and Pentagon/Congressional in-bred stupidity in contracting.
TimActual sent me on a deep dive into torpedo history. The issues of our inter-war torpedo programs are frighteningly similar to our current missile situation. Frighteningly.
Torpedos were a sinecure for otherwise worthless naval officers and civilian employees, who didn't understand the role of their own weapons, didn't understand the conditions they would be used in, couldn't be compared to other production, were protected by Congress, and utterly failed.
When the reports started coming in (very, very early in the war) that the Mk13 had issues, instead of discovering the issues they merely sniffed and said those stupid fleet sailors didn't know what they were doing - instead of risking their worthless lying asses and getting onto the boats and showing them how to use them
'correctly'. Even when the tests were done in Hawaii, they tried to hush it up because of 'morale'.. I don't know what could have been worse for the sub crews morale than going out on those long, long patrols with torpedos they had no confidence in. Were they supposed to simply think stern thought at the Japanese?
Thieves, cowards and traitors, all.
And it took until 1944, to get the problems solved - thanks to my Alma Mater, CalTech.
There is a lot of vitrol in this post, and frankly the “execute every O-6 and above grows tiresome.”
I’m lucky to work next to a library and the torpedo situation was not at all as you described it.
The problem with the torpedoes, and the exploder, was that we did not test them. We had one test between the world wars, in 1926. The folks you castigate wanted live fire exercises against real ships. Their requests were denied. In the interwar period, the USN had a complicated system of management where the bureaus were powerful independent entities. The weapons designers were not the evil bastards you make them out to be. They were struggling to overcome significant engineering problems.
But, I’ll leave their defense in the hand of a drunk lawyer.
"Course I'm warped," said Greenwald, "and I'm drunk, but it suddenly seems to me that if I wrote a war novel I'd try to make a hero out of Old Yellowstain." Jorgensen whooped loudly, but nobody else laughed, and the ensign subsided, goggling around. "No, I'm serious, I would. Tell you why, Tell you how I'm warped. I'm a Jew, guess most of you know that. Name's Greenwald, kind of look like one, and I sure am one, from way back. Jack Challee said I used smart Jew-lawyer tactics--course he took it back, apologized, after I told him a few things he didn't know-- Well, anyway...The reason I'd make Old Yellowstain a hero is on account of my mother, little gray-headed Jewish lady, fat, looks a lot like Mrs. Maryk here, meaning no offense."
He actually said "offensh." His speech was halting and blurry. He was gripping the spilling glass tightly. The scars on his hand made red rims around the bluish grafted skin.
"Well, sure, you guys all have mothers, but they wouldn't be in the same bad shape mine would if we'd of lost this war, which of course we aren't, we've won the damn thing by now. See, the Germans aren’t kidding about the Jew. They're cooking us down to soap over there. They think we're vermin and should be terminated and our corpses turned into something useful. Granting the premise--being warped, I don't, but granting the premise, soap is as good an idea as any. But I just can't cotton to the idea of my mom melted down into a bar of soap. I had an uncle and an aunt in Cracow, who are soap now, but that's different, I never saw my uncle and aunt, just saw letters in Jewish from them, ever since I was a kid, but I can't read Jewish." but never could read them. Jew, but I can't read Jewish.
The faces looking up at him were becoming sober and puzzled. “I’m coming to Old Yellowstain. Coming to him. See, while I was studying law 'n old Keefer here was writing his play for the Theatre Guild, and Willie here was on the playing fields of Prinshton, all that time these birds we call regulars--these stuffy, stupid Prussians, in the Navy and the Army -were manning guns. Course they weren't doing it to save my mom from Hitler, they're doing it for dough, like everybody else does what they do. Question is, in the last analysis--last analysis--what do you do for dough? Old Yellowstain, for dough, was standing guard on this fat dumb and happy country of ours. Meantime me, I was advancing little free non-Prussian life for dough. Of course, we figured in those days, only fools go into armed service. Bad pay, no millionaire future, and you can't call your mind or body your own. Not for sensitive intellectuals. So when all hell broke loose and the Germans started running out of soap and figured, well it's time to come over and melt down old Mrs. Greenwald--who's gonna stop them? Not her boy Barney. Can't stop a Nazi with a lawbook. So I dropped the lawbooks and ran to learn how to fly. Stout fellow. Meantime, and it took a year and a half before I was any good, who was keeping Mama out of the soap dish? Captain Queeg.
"Yes, even Queeg, poor sad guy, yes, and most of them not sad at all, fellows, a lot of them sharper boys than any of us, don't kid yourself, best men I've ever seen, you can't be good in the Army or Navy unless you're goddamn good. Though maybe not up on Proust 'n' Finnegan's Wake and all."
What happened once the reports started appearing that the torpedo exploders didn't work was treasonous.
And the boards having so much power? That's pretty much the definition of 'sinecure'. They were the 'experts', they knew better than the 'incompetents' driving the boats.
"Yes, even Queeg, poor sad guy, yes, and most of them not sad at all, fellows, a lot of them sharper boys than any of us, don't kid yourself, best men I've ever seen, you can't be good in the Army or Navy unless you're goddamn good."
Good as the film is, the book is better. The lawyer, obviously, is my favorite. Interestingly, he’s not a JAG; he’s a wounded pilot recovering from his wounds.
Too much politicking and not enough war fighting being done. I would imagine that <i>someone</i> back when VLS was being thought up, way before actually in use, brought up the idea of how to UNREP. That we're now several decades down the pike and it's still a problem lends me to believe that we have too many admirals in DC and not nearly enough on the sea.
I loved how we named all the AE’s after volcanos. Saucy! I remember as a kid roaming the pier at Mare Island and seeing them all bow first tied up. Kiska, Shasta, MT Baker. Others.
My best friends father was the skipper of the Sacramento around 85-86. We all lived on Mare Island. It was a great place to be teenager. Lots of fun with the Navy and Marines. The buildings all told a story.
How do you say "Day late and dollar short" in Houthi, or Chinese?
Better late than never, but this needs to be pushed to the very top of every list as "Get is done NOW, and overtime is authorized at every level. And if you you cannot make it happen, I'll find someone who can!"
Then better get hot on procurement of the missiles to be reloaded at sea, and account for the increased numbers to cover those in transit, and potential losses along the way. Defund the DEI zampolits if short of funding.
begs the issue of how many reloads there are in WR stocks next...
Not enough; need to ramp up current production as rapidly as possible. Not just for SAMs and TLAM, but also for heavyweight torpedoes and ASW torpedoes.
Some cheap and many might be prudent. Depth bombs.
Maybe even 120mm ASW mortars. Maybe 130mm and load spreads in SRBOC.
With respect, no surface vessel is dropping depth charges on a sub these days. Subs are much faster than in WW2, and can go much deeper. They also have FAR better sonar than the surface vessels do, so the sub that is able to get close to the surface force will always be at an advantage until the surface force starts hammering away with active.
At which point, the sub will run, and your not hitting it with depth charges. Homing torpedo is the only way to kill a sub these days.
I was really thinking via aircraft with the depth bomb. Those MQ-9Bs will need a way to get o work on their own the same way Predator went from ISR to, "hey let's attach a hellfire!" I am also thinking more littoral. North Korea has about 100 subs almost all midget. Iran has 20-30 again small aside from those 30 year old kilos.
As for mortars, if we would start doing things like putting a dipping sonar on a CUSV with say a few Coyote UAVs with MAD sensors, then maybe a single spread of ASW mortar might have value. If even only to keep their heads down or keep them running.
You make far too much sense :)
Let me play devils advocate.
It might be useful against NorK's or Iranians...
It likely won't be useful against China. Hammering away will just draw every sub within 500nm in like sharks on chum.
NorK and Iran are VERY manageable threats. China is not. Do we want to expend resources on a system that is unlikely to be useful in the fight we are at risk of losing? I think in those scenarios, we waste the ASROC or the 48, since they are likely '1 shot kills' against those adversaries anyway, and now we have less systems to manage and train on.
I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but my gut says we need to focus on closing the gap we know we have.
you dont have the budget, the more you spend the worse the USD gets devalued.
cant keep printing bills forever,
Political system is too dysfunctional to set priorities. When was the last time the Congress passed all appropriation bills in regular order before 31 October? Hint: Clinton was still President ...
As bad as things are here, they're worse in Xi's Middle Kingdom. Your population is collapsing, your real estate sector is imploding, your Belt & Road Initiative is backfiring, and your currency is about to hyperinflate.
May you live in interesting times, wumao.
If all these were true and you believed it, why do you worry about China/PLA at all? Do you worry about India?
1. Population will stablise (like Japan/Korea as well, do you worry there?)
2. Deflate by design (asset inflation bad), unlike your GFC
3. BRI was supposed to soak excess industrial capacity
4. China is buying/digging gold, USD is the one that de-linked from gold
Anyway, its better you believe China is gonna collapse; China has been collapsing to the biggest economy for the past 30yrs lol.
You get your post approved by your boss?
You don’t ask a question that you don’t want the answer…
maybe this a signal to CHINA that usa is not serious about starting a shooting war over tw, and that us politician angry words are for domestic consumption only.
Dude, take the CCP trolling somewhere else.
Nobody here is buying your snake oil.
Your posts are 狗屁
Another way to read this post is not as trolling, but as the mindset of the average Chinese citizen on the internet.
The best outcome is that the Chinese remain afraid of our first flurry of blows because we'll be spent once we've unleashed it. If they calculate that they can absorb our initial flurry and then keep fighting, the US is in for a war of attrition that we aren't capable of fighting.
Good comment however, we will be the ones taking the first blow and then China will take the counter blow from what is left.
The Kenyan started the cleansing of excellence in the flag officer cohort. Most people have no idea how long it can take to get it back (if possible) because the remaining dregs can influence promotion boards for up to 20 years, possibly longer.
A serious POTUS can flush every admiral and general, and frock a shitload of full birds.
I dunno. How serious is the metastasis? Might need to reach down deeper. To a wider untainted pool too. Retirees?
CWO4-to-Captain/Colonel? 😎
A top notch no-bullshit O-5 can become a shake-n-bake O-8.
IIRC, it's only the O-9s and -10s who incur all the carousel hassles of "fill an empty billet pronto or retire." I know we don't need as many of those perfumed princelings as we currently have on the books. For heaven's sake, the tiny little USCG has billets for five(!) Vice Admirals and two(!!) Admirals … which is 🦇💩 crazy.
I was retired before CWO5's were a thing. Please don't incur their wrath by any kind of accidental exclusion. I never met a W-5 but I suspect I'd rather meet Biden's angry Chief of HR over all the civilian SES's than a W-5 who felt I'd slighted him. When I was a W-3 even W-4's frightened me. Never felt safe as an O-3E either.
Retirees are subject to recall. Examples would be Admirals Bulkeley and Hopper.
Needs the Senate to frock flag ranks permanently ... but I think he can brevet them.
I like the idea of breveting, used judiciously. Custer was a brevet Major General in the Civil War in 1865 and seemed to do well. He died in battle, a Regular Army LtCol in 1876, not doing so well.
The problem goes deeper than just the "chickens." Most of the junior officers are just as polluted as the GOFOs. The Academies are now woke, and ROTC is run at woke colleges and universities.
nothing like a good purge.
is it a sign of crisis in the us dod? thats what you say about one PLA general being sacked
What PLA rank do you hold, wumao? Knob Polisher 2nd Class?
Unpaid intern?
I'm not sure, its the US mil who welcomes homosexuals these days.
The PLA still is very traditional, hence why the right in your country holds some affinity for China/Russia.
Frock the field grade / senior officers who've seen the elephant, but are neither so senior that their political instincts have kicked in, nor so junior that they're recent grads with degrees in left-handed lesbian womyn's poetry studies.
Haha oh yes, full-birds...a very well known bastion of competence, leadership, and excellence
This, exactly!
How do we publicly ask if all of the Navy’s flag officers have been asleep for the past several decades? I’m serious. How do we make replenishment of ALL weapons while underway, or at least in atolls and bays, a public topic beyond substack and blogspot?
The flags read blogs like this. They are reading this right now. They look themselves in the mirror while admiring and proclaiming “I’m not like those flags that the front porch laments about!”
They are. Deep down they know it.
Cognitive dissonance can, on occasion, have a positive outcome. But it takes a boatload of self-awareness to recognize it as well as the guts to go public with that knowledge. Any flag officer out there willing to raise your hand, even if only on the way to your retirement party?
Deep down they must know that it'll be no 4th star for them if they go off the reservation. I am sure they all start out motivated and eager. Just today I had my quarterly A1C/Diabetes meeting with my Navy Doctor, a Lieutenant, via a telephone appointment (the new wave of medicine). He put me on a 6 month check-up cycle because I am doing well and suggested I get a Tetanus, Shingles and Pneumonia shot update. Told him I would and jokingly said I was happy he wasn't pushing the Flu shot because I read that some of the new flu shots have that wicked Fauci nanobot (mRNA?) in it. He said, "Yeah, there is that...I don't want the flu shot either, but they make me get it." Told him I used to give the Corpsman the old CPO, CWO or LDO hate-stare and they'd back off and let me slide on the shot. He said he wasn't a CPO, CWO or LDO...wouldn't work for him. I commiserated with him and told him I was glad he was serving, that I might have a hard time myself, given the environment now. He said, "Yeah, retention is terrible. People are getting out". I won't put words in his mouth but I could hear "It sucks" in his tone. Kind of heartbreaking for me. So many good people join. Many seem to regret it. Would the Navy and other services be any better or worse off under the U.S. Postmaster General?
And yet he rolls up his sleeve takes the jab.. nope.
Yup to your nope. Don't know my doctor's situation. Young LT, maybe would owe them for a refund on a signing bonus, have to pay back waived students loans or maybe they paid all his tuition and he'd have to pay that back too. And add in a less than stellar DD-214. They have him by the cojones. But he's a volunteer like everyone since the Vietnam Era and has free will.
I have a friend, a Naval Aviator, a LAMPS & Hawkeye guy, who had his 20 in and was 2 days away from an approved retirement date. His CO ordered him to report post-haste to get that COVID shot he'd declined before, respectfully with all the supporting medical data for a waiver, OR ELSE. Don't know how that turned out. His day job was as an airline pilot and years before he had gotten myocarditis from some mandatory vaccine and didn't want another bout that might destroy his life. I panicked and got the jab and booster with the 2 worst lot numbers of the Moderna vaccine, according to VAERS. Luckily, the wife and I have had no ill effects, yet. Always question the medical experts.
I got several weeks of dizziness from my Moderna jabs. Missed most of 3 weeks of work, and didn't feel the best for 3 more.
One of the lucky ones, eh?
"Always question the medical experts. "
I was a good boy and got the first two Moderna shots. Now have rather severe medical problem. Can't prove it was the vaccine, but I ain't getting any more. I don't question "experts" anymore, I just assume they are wrong until they can convince me.
I don't have the link, but VAERS lists all the COVID vaccine makers and their lot numbers and tells how many had adverse reactions. It's googlable. Amazing thing is that the threshold of reported adverse reactions is so low for pulling a vaccine off the market, but the actual reported numbers were so high for the vaccines and nothing happened. They just kept giving the shots. No one has been fired, jailed or beaten.
I fought it tooth and nail. I'm the Emergency Manger for my little slice of Federal Land, so I was the one tasked with COVIDS reporting, and I made clear to my bosses that there was ample reason to believe it was not as safe or effective as promised.
They didn't care. I organized fellow staff to help them submit religious exemption requests.
They didn't care. They ignored them (they couldn't deny them) so that people would just get the shot out of fear.
several days before the "you will be fired if..." date, I filed a religious discrimination hostile workplace complaint against specific agency leadership responsible for the program.
My exemption was approved 24 hours later.
I'm now persona non-grata with much of the agency leadership.
But I don't have that cancer and heart attack causing shit in me, so I'll take that trade off.
You mean like delivering mail from other neighbors to your mailbox?
And yours to theirs?
No, not really, Bear, but I get your sentiment. I was thinking back to when the USPS delivered the mail twice a day for 2¢ a letter 6 days a week. And if one is a Climate Worry-Wart, they made deliveries on foot out of a huge leather bag instead of a carbon spewing van or chemical hazard EV. Now the USPS wants to kibosh Saturday deliveries. ...maybe even branch out to Amway, Encyclopedia Britannica and Fuller Brush sales. (Am I dating myself?)
Out here in the boonies of the deep south our mail carriers are diligent, and even work on Sundays the mail gets here, as well as mail from my neighbor Aaron, Jimmy and the tall blond Lass up the road name Crystal, I get to be a mailman and redeliver to them LOL I don't mind remailing her mail to her!
The Niven/Pournelle novel, Lucifer's Hammer, had an iconic mailman in it, a guy who epitomizes that mail carrier you speak of. Redelivering mail is what good people do. Anecdotally: Once there was this family on some mythic road with a 6687 address and their welfare, AFDC, SNAP and other benefits got delivered to a 6678 address across the street. This was before direct deposit became a thing. The long-suffering man at 6678 redelivered those envelopes for a few years and pleaded many times that they contact HHS to do an address correction. He finally started redelivering the envelopes to his garbage can. In 2 months time the problem resolved itself. The gal at 6687 wasn't named Crystal, nor tall & blond.
I wish more of them would realize there will be no plush board room after retirement if they manage to lose the next war to the CCP
They have gotten complacent with being able to lose wars without any career adversity.
Losing to China will be very different. If our economy survives at all, you can be damn certain we won’t be spending 800 billion a year on the defense industry.
" If our economy survives at all,"
Win or lose that is becoming doubtful, all things considered.
The Nation's psyche would not be able to handle a loss. We can't even comprehend losing a major war. Vietnam and the GWOT were not real wars. They were counterinsurgencies.
Even if CONUS isn't directly attacked, if we were to lose a CVN (or two) and be run out of the Western Pacific, our nation would fracture.
you again.
You wish they read this, bc it makes you feel important.
Truth is, no-one reads this except loser like us.
Begone, wumao.
At least say something interesting. I'm giving yo free advice.
Your free advice is worth every penny I paid for it, wumao.
haha do you really think busy generals read this?
They have meetings and connections to make, need some good MIC gig after they leave their service.
Hey China boy they read this. Absolutely they do. Your CCP letting you post here again? You’re a China shill. Your engrish is terrible.
It says a lot about your "system" if they resort to reading this.
No its not, and you know it. I'm a native English speaker. Anyway, why do you still call in English, call it AMerican since you gained your independence from them.
Why the personal attacks? Just reply to my points if you want to say something.
Its prob bc you know its true, the whole US mil-DOD-MIC-think tank world is all one incestuous family, which you yourself complain about.
“Busy generals..”. How to say you’re a CCP douche without saying it… I was referring to FLAG officers of the naval variety known as “Admirals”. I get that in your military they are all generals being PLAN. Whatever the hell that means.
I don't care what the actual correct terms are. I'm not in the mil, who would be so silly to die in the US/Aus mil?
Glad you're focusing on the important details :)
Wow, "wumao", 50 Cent Army. Learn something every day. Fitty Cent, totally second tier, ain't luminarious like Run-DMC was. Thanks, Coastie, two words, 4 syllables, terse but polite. Skewered like a shish kebab. Nicely done.
what was the point of your post? Wumao is a common term for people who don't have anything logical to say.
The actual PRC propaganda channels are cute animals and beautiful scenery., .
Like your profile pic comrade?
You really don't recognize some of the names of people who've posted responses to our host? Silly boy.
no, should I?
No wonder the US navy is shit then, if they read/rely on this blog.
Yet here you are.
Decades? Like 10? 12?
The reload magazines on atolls will be the first targets hit in a big war.
If we telegraph our intentions, yes. I would hope that DC could avoid that. Other suggestions are always welcome.
Hit Hard, fast and often.
Arrive the firstest with the mostest!
"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week." – George S. Patton
This seems to be the PLAN's motto.
The USN is "dollar in my pocket is better than in the taxpayers purse"
Chinese shill.
Begone, wumao.
Having had to load an exercise ASROC torpedo at sea on a FRAM I. I appreciate how difficult the task is with calm seas and good weather. I had hoped the Navy had factored this task into future ship builds and weapon procurement. Sadly, it is obvious after 50 years the problem still remains.
Here are a couple of YouTube videos with WW2 ammo transfers in theater.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i03zFOAYGJ8
14" shells starting at the 4:52 timepoint
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwBrNqz-3w8
What appear to be 5" taken alongside in sea state 1 or 2 starting at the 1:40 timepoint.
As long as it was an exercise ASROC torpedo I'd like to have observed that. Bet the ASWO and Safety Officer were all puckered up. How did it go? The details of that would be fascinating to hear. I remember from Aegis School at Wallops Island in 1990 that the original design for the CG I was going to had a few VLS cells reserved for a strike down crane to reload at sea, that it was worthless, but a fix was coming soon. Scroll down about halfway in this link: https://dsiac.org/articles/a-promising-future-for-us-navy-vertical-launching-systems/
I was the ASW Officer. I had a great division. It worked.
Ah yes. The infamous ASROC loader crane.
The ASROC box!
I see the weakness of our Navy that the CDR describes as a symptom of privatization. While free markets and free enterprise are marvelous; there are some things that exist outside of the market economy. Construction of the tools soldiers use to defend themselves, and their nation, are activities a sovereign should do organically, and internally.
For most of the life of our nation the weapons of war were built by the government. Armories and arsenals, shipyards and storage yards were owned and operated by the United States. Then, there came the idea that we need to “run government like a business,” and we embarked on a program of offloading our weapons manufacturing and our military bases to private companies.
The result has been a disaster.
Do you want to know something which was not a disaster? The Anti-Submarine Rocket. ASROC was designed and build by what was then called a Naval Air Weapons Station. The facility which built the ASROC was China Lake.
Navy workers struggled with a Navy problem. They experimented and designed, and overcame repeated failures. What profit making company would spend the thousands of hours of engineer and technician time on parachuting torpedoes? Who but the sovereign could devote the land, and ocean, area to play with rockets and explosives?
The ASROC is a classic example of incremental improvements on a weapons system designed in a government weapons lab. It was a product of a Naval facility, not a product of the military industrial complex.
Different time.
With respect, 99% of the weapons that won WW2 were built in privately owned industry.
Govt was more deeply involved in design and mandating production changes be implemented across multiple builders, but most of it was built by private industry.
We also lacked our labyrinthine modern contracting systems and revolving door from flag office to board room.
Now, the Germans had a more nationalized war industry and the Soviet’s were obviously 100% state controlled
I think the biggest difference was that most industry was privately owned, and could make choices to accept lower profit as a form of patriotic duty.
Every major defense firm today is publicly traded and so subject to a degree of control and external pressure and less able to make longer term investments in the national security interests.
Tom, I appreciate your contribution and mean no personal disrespect with what follows:
FUCK NO!!! Your suggestion, if enacted or pursued, would endanger not only our troops' lives but our national security writ large. I'm sorry, but you are massively dating yourself. It may be true that once upon a time our government was capable of building great things, or even directly supervising those who built great things. I don't know, as it hasn't been the case in my adult life. But it is unequivocally and objectively not true now. In fact, very little could possibly be further from the truth today. Our only hope - here, in the present, where we live and must fight - is that the profit motive that remains present and powerful in the private sector can be properly harnessed to reward ambition, innovation, and execution in developing and delivering the weapons and weapon systems needed to deter or defeat our foes. Even this may prove to be too great a feat of competence for our government to manage (I would argue that we are currently failing at the task), but it is our only feasible hope right now.
In our nation’s history shipbuilding was done in government yards and in private yards. When the Army and Navy built weapons, and war came, they had the expertise to aid private industry in building weapons.
The shipyard manager in the private sector as one loyalty: making a profit for the shareholders. The shipyard manager at a US Naval shipyard as a different loyalty: the defense of our nation.
The decline in the quality of our ships since the U.S. Navy exited the practice of shipbuilding is obvious and undeniable. Consider the Fletcher. 44 rolled down the ways of U.S. Naval shipyards, 88 were built privately. They were in service from 1942 to 2001. The Fletcher herself served until 1969. Now look at the LCS.
Thanks for the historical details. Unless you are first going to build a time machine to go back to that earlier era, I suggest you abandon your fantasy and do it quickly. Turns out, there are a lot of things about 1942 that are not true about 2024. Walk into any DMV or Post Office or, god forbid, VA facility and tell me "yes, these are the people I'd want building the tools my sons and daughters lives will depend on".
Then there was the Mark 14 torpedo; another successful government weapon program.
It's not the system, it's who runs the system.
This would be a fascinating case study for Historians studying engineering. Torpedoes were so darn expensive, for their time, that the Navy never tested them.
Plenty of engineering disasters on youtube. Investigating the causes of engineering booboos is, and has been for a long long time, standard practice.
If you Squids can't reload'em, maybe we should just build ships with one load each and take to the lifeboats after firing. oh, I forgot, like the Titanic there aren't enough boats. Relearn Liberty ships and treat them as expendable property.
Like this?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/03/royal-navy-warships-gym-land-attack-missiles/
A gym is good! wouldn't want them to get out of shape.
At least they kept the beer taps in the mess.
We should have been so lucky back in the day! As it was the pogey bait shop and Gedunk was all we had!
There is a thought since the ships may not survive after the first salvo fired.
Like giving a Marine a rifle with an affixed magazine that can't be reloaded because the grunt is expected to die before he needs more ammo LOL.
Our M-151A1C with an M-40 carried only six rounds of 106, mix HEP-T and HEAT four men, two rifles 7 20 rd mags and two Pistols 3 mags and 21 rds of ammo.
They really doubted we would survive past six rds and if we did we would haul ass back to Bn for reloads.
that was a loaded jeep, or was part of that on a trailer?
Loaded. You could carry more but the basic load out was six rds. Rds for the spotting rifle were also limited to basically one can or a couple of magazines.
No trailer was used.
Barely room for the Crew of four and main gun.
Even less on the 106 armed M-274 mule. Then it was four rds of 106, carry a driver the others walked.
Dunno; the Ontos' worked well at Hue.
Loves me some 106's, I do.
ONTO's was quite a machine LOL Six barrels of Earschlplittenloudenboomer.
They went out about the time I went in, the main vehicle was the M274 mule.
Easy to haul, low to the ground, and hide.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/98/8f/e7/988fe7f6f65e6fbd89a6285e3b20a366.jpg
In RVN it was sometimes mounted on the "mechanical mule", M274 Truck, Platform, Utility, 1⁄2 Ton, 4X4 .
https://www.williammaloney.com/Aviation/AAFTankMuseum/SelfPropelledGuns/Mule106mmRecoillessGun/images/Mule106mmRecoillessGun.jpg
Understand. I fought in vietnam
CDR Sal, you and many others have been pointing out that the inability to replace the multi-million dollar missiles we have been expending to shoot down much cheaper drones without returning to port is a war losing problem. 100% Agree. Have to point out the numbers of replacement missiles in the inventory and supply system are woefully inadequate. Solving the VLS replenishment as sea problem and not having any missiles to put in the cells doesn't get the attention it deserves.
Gravely got to use her CIWS at least.
the US Navy wouldn't need to use exxy missiles if you did diplomacy and geopoltics better and didn't want to play world policeman.
You are just repeating endless land wars but on the water.
So funny bc you should be gearing yup for high end fight with PLAN but you are again focusing on low tech war against dudes in sandals
Your assertions suggest a deep ignorance of the political leanings of most members of the Front Porch.
A wiser man would read more, think a lot more, and ignorantly snark a lot less.
He’s a Chinese shill and likely an agent.
Agents in China have actual KPIs and targets I assume. They wouldn't waste time on a little read blog.
I work in a very chill Australian govt sector, hence do have time to comment on here. :D
One more example of CCP penetration into a western government.
its funny you think you're wise and that I care to be so.
What would reading more change? Can you change your country/government? I think you're powerless and hence you come on here to feel important.
His grammar suggests he’s a native Mandarin speaker…
One hundred percent. I called him out a few weeks back in a few of Phib’s posts.
So you’re an illegal alien in Australia Reds? Didn’t have the money to fly to Mexico and sneak over the US border?
He’s here by design. Shill and gather info.
Whats the point in shilling? Unlike you I know no-one reads what I write excpt you.
Isn't this the internet? any actual PLA/MSS person can read anything you or I can.
Is the US education system really this poor?
Bwahahaha! Not going to comment on the US education system, but c’mon, your proficiency in Engrish reminds me of the San Francisco laundry workers in old western movies. And you expect us to berieve you are third generation Chinese in Australia? What does that say about Australia’s education system Wo Fat?
I don't actually know what you're referring to? Please elaborate.
I'm not writing an essay thats going to be marked, this is like fb/ig/reddit/discord, brevity is fine. I like to be efficient.
You’re gathering OSINT and packaging it as analysis to your CCP boss.
why the fuck would I want to go the US? Australia is the safer less rascist version of the US,,,, name one reason US is better to live in.
What couldn't I be an Australian born 3-4th generation ABC and hold these views? How narrow minded you are.
Maybe I'd go to Mexico on holidays (there's actual culture and history there), but there's nothing to see in the US; I was in NYC and LA many years ago and it was meh.
Everytime I read you I get more worried.
Getting within 1km/1mile is embarrassing? something went wrong
I have no idea what your saying.
Additionally to reloading, how many RELOADS do we actually have?
However many we think we have, Winchester in a week. There's always more targets to service than munitions available.
Winchester after each battle, and reloads in a week (maybe).
Of course, the enemy is not stupid: They just might target any supplies and bases the first day of the war. Goodby Hawaii, Guam, Japan, etc.
So how long would it take the ships to get back to the west coast? Will they have sufficient bunkerage? Will there be reloads available there?
Not “might”. We know this answer.
I was referring to the stockpile being Winchester, assuming we can somehow get them into the VLS cells fast enough.
Consider the supply line - from the factory where they are assembled (never mind the parts that go into them), to the weapons storage depots scattered around, to the ports, to the rear areas of the war, to the bases that the ships can reload in.
How long is that, best case? Worst case? Most likely case?
Best case will be C17s landing near the weapons depots and loading up to fly to ...wherever. At least a week, between the order to load and unloading in Honolulu or Anderson?
Worst case, the depots are empty, the railroads cannot move them, the states decide they won't allow hazmat on the highways, the longshore union is on strike.
But it all comes down to my question: How many reloads do we have? The way we've been decommissioning ships, we might have enough to load all the cells...once. Do we have more?
We need the ammo disbursed before the balloon goes up. We have to figure in a drone swarm age and the dominance of Chinese shipping, Seal Beach is exposed and I am guessing wherever we load in Puget Sound, Everett?
We better disburse them into VERY hardened shelters that can survive a hypersonic missile attack....
Seal Beach is swampland....Not sure about Puget Sound but I'm pretty sure they didn't dig into the Cascades for ammo shelters.
Perhaps the Arsenal Ship concept is correct.....Some otherwise disposable ships with a few hundred launchers - that can be convoyed to the AoR with some adequate sub and air protection (oh, wait! Do we have enough of THOSE?) to just volly and forget.
"the longshore union is on strike"
The electric trucks can't plug in.
TransSec is on it.
Owned by China.
Who says they won't go after the west coast bases as well? The thinking that the US homeland is off limits in a war is going to cause big problems at sometime.
"They just might target any supplies and bases the first day of the war."
Or not. Take out the ships while you still have surprise on your side and know the locations of the ships, then take out the bases, which aren't going anywhere.
Imagine being Winchester on a CG and unable to return to rearm because your sensors are needed for the COP? Can’t leave the line. Can’t rearm. What will be their outcome?
We also know that answer.
And as Sal says, this problem has been kicking around for 40 years, and isn't beginning to be solved.
Cheap man's LUSV would be an OUSV/MUSV with 4 mk 70 launchers for 16 rounds.
I'm sure it will be solved real soon now.
You just explained why we need USVs hauling missiles.
Back in 1990 an Aegis CG could take out a real (telemetry) ASCM with the 5"/54. Controlled launch, known direction of threat. It was a giddy time for this CICO sitting SUWC in late 1990. Gave us all great confidence heading to Desert Storm. Until we thought some more about it.
We need to expand our options.
-If Patriot and standard rounds could interchange launchers we'd be better able to fight at sea or on land.
- Not having quad packed GMLRS and derivatives along with PRSM is missing cheap and good. I'd like to know how many Tomahawk strikes over the years could have been in range to use these options instead?
- We need VLA replacements. Cheap and many would have quad packed CVLWT with a cheap version of an ESSM booster. A more threatening option would be a Loitering ASW Tomahawk.
Why do you want cheap reloads/munitions?
Will it help against the PLA?
The PRC thanks americans for being so easily distracted.
Chinese shill.
What is the approx weight of one VLS reload? ...it can't be that overwhelming, can it?
Is that an African swallow?
Anything needing a strike length will have a cannister weighing over 6000lbs.
TLAM block IV-A weighs like 3,500lb, with the booster. LRASM is at least 1/4 ton lighter
Why is the damn canister more than 2,500lb?
No idea. The 3' insert to place a tactical length canister in a strike length launcher evidently weighs 500 lbs.
I guess most folks have forgotten that the old rail systems had no issue reloading...not just away from the pier...but also underway. Great example here ... loading SM1's **on station** underway:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/67307569@N00/2594694067
And loading ASROCs and bullets forward:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/67307569@N00/50379422566
Been there for those kind of unreps.
Aside from the reloading of the ASROC launcher, was at-sea reloading ever happening on the old Mk13 and Mk26 launchers?
I was just thinking this!!! Did we actually handicap ourselves by going to VLS???
This is the point we should be discussing. Compare the VLS to the ASROC box. One is reloadable the other is not. Maybe the VLS is simply not suitable for reloading anywhere other than in a shore facility.
Yes! That top pic of the king rigged aft was when SM1's were taken aboard!.
If you look close, you can see the brackets fitted on the strikedown door frames.
They weren't loaded via the rails.
Better view of the strikedown door.
https://www.navysite.de/cruisebooks/ddg44-82/049.htm
No pics are around of the actual transfer of the SM-1s that day though.
And...again.... There are pics of the 25 foot long 4500 lb TALOS's being UNREP'd
https://www.okieboat.com/Copyright%20images/123%20UNREPS%20Refuel,%20rearm%20and%20resupply%204%201024%20C.jpg
https://www.usslittlerock.org/armament/armament-photos/TalosHiLine64CrBk.jpg
Hueneme had it figured out in '89 before the end of all warfare was declared with the Peace Dividend (tm). Page 281 of https://www.google.com/books/edition/Designing_the_U_S_Navy_s_Underway_Replen/kfrsE1v9hHsC?hl=en&gbpv=1
Great find!
That pic in the pub on page 281 showing them loading the VLS is in the same series as the color one in Sal's post. Looks like the effort got tabled shortly after publication of the manual.
Everything I have seen that looks at VLS reloading depicts it being done with crane/hoist.
We have advanced robotics that can lift car and truck bodies and spin them in place while they are painted. I think that's precise enough to position a cell over an empty tube and lower it.
How hard would it be to develop a robotic arm system on a track that paralleled the VLS bank and was designed to lift the empty cell cannister (I presume we save these) out, set it in a stack to be man-handled back onto a supply vessel, and then lift the new cannister from another stack and set it in?
Imagine this, but on a dual track system able to move up and down the VLS bank.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69RtLBImXiU
I'll bet Elon Musk could figure that out on the back of a napkin.
I imagined something like this for my Arsenal ship design, where the rear deck of the vessel contained stacks of VLS cell reloads stacked horizontally, and the ship had a robotic arm on a double ended truss that could move quickly over the entire VLS bank, withdrawing empties and refilling them.
Done properly, the crew would simply plug in the cell number to be emptied and what cannister to replace it with and the system would do all the rest.
Since it would be a solid robotic arm, there would be very little 'sway' to deal with provided the reload was carried out in relatively calm seas (which would be imperative for any reload process).
I’d put money on Musk.
Drilling rigs also have robotic arms that drab and place the pipe to drill. Or those robot arms in the lumber industry.
No sure how our fighting force got so distant from looking at the world around them.
The Navy had a press day a few months ago when they rearmed a ship in the harbor in Guam.... While the ship was tied up alongside the wharf. In dead calm water, with a crane on a barge.
Well, that's worth a participation ribbon...I guess.
Now reload a ship while at sea making 25 knots...
...in mild seas, with only a slight pitch and roll and both ships only a little bit out of synch with each other. How long is the boom, the distance between ships? What are the tolerances for slipping that square canister into a square hole while in perfect alignment? The permissible window of sea state and weather would be small, even in a time of Need-It-Now. Who'd have the bigger migraine? The designer or the operator? (Neither, it's always the Captain.) But, yes. It is doable. By trial and error we should have mastered this by now. Where are the heads on pikes?
Lockheed Martin makes the pikes. They're backordered and waiting on gold plating.
No, no, no, no...no, Coastie. These pikes must be plated in silver. Only silver will do.
Can do … after the environmental impact study gets redone, and after sustainably green alternative energy fueled e-pikes are designed, and after Congress ensures assorted silver mining and refining and plating facilities are equitably distributed among congressional districts … so you'll get those pikes by 2035 at the latest.
Probably a terrible idea, but you could use a semi-submersible heavy lift (Blue Marlin or even Yacht Express type) ship as your tender. So you have physically coupled the two ship and the crane together. You just have to control the swinging missile pod. Which seems like you could by securing a frame near the pod bottom to winches mounted on the deck next to the VLS cells and then keeping all the winches moving in synch. Once the pod starts into the cell you remove the frame.
Securing the frame with what? Nylon line? Braided steel cable?
I have no idea. That requires more engineering analysis than I feel comfortable pretending I can do.
"engineering analysis "?
Naw, that's what boatswains are for.
I just went back and drew this out on a whiteboard to prove to myself that this could work.
We’re talking about a two-stage system. Imagine a 32 cell VLS bank, with 4x8 cell modules, arranged 2 x 2 lengthwise, so the final bank is four cells wide by eight cells long.
Running down both sides of the full bank, linked wise, you have a track system supporting a column on each end that supports a double girder that runs clean across the width of the bank. Suspended between the double girders is an extended box that can hold one VLS canister
The box is roughly 1/3 the length of a full canister, and has the necessary robotic implements inside the box to raise and lower the canister. The box can move across the girders, which can move on the tracks. This gives you two axis positioning, the motors inside the box raise and lower the canister.
Then you have a heavy, robotic arm, located past the end of the VLS bank, whose purpose is to lift the canister and place it into the box on the track system, as well as to receive the empty canister from same when it is removed initially.
Spare reload canisters and empty expended canisters are stored in empty deck space within reach of the robotic arm. When the vessel goes into a reload., The system removes spent canisters which are stacked, and as each spent canister is removed, the remote arm provides a reload, which is then set back in.
In a magazine/arsenal ship, the system would have reloads stored in the hull aft of the VLS bank, with a robotic system that would lift the new canister up into the box, as well as a separate 'chute' for the box to deposit the spent canisters, which would then be racked and stacked below decks - with an aft ro/ro opening so when in port, specialized trucks can roll in and have empty cannisters loaded and new cannisters supplied.
Such a system would not only enable re-load at sea, with the arsenal ship being able to carry close to 50% of it's VLS capacity as reload, giving it near 150% capacity of total VLS cells, but would also ensure that in-port reload could be conducted in a fraction of the time.
As cells are spent, the system removes the empty cannisters and stacks them below decks, ready to be off-loaded in bulk in port. Once the entire ship is empty and returns to port, the 'unload' process of removing spent cannisters will already be complete, and new cannisters can be loaded rapidly, with the system filling cells as they are brought on-board by truck at the aft.
I'm guessing it would take more than 16 hours for a Burke to complete a re-load cycle of all 96 cells in-port, with current tech, and that assumes they are working the for'ard 32 bank at the same time they are working the aft 64 bank.
My arsenal ship with robotics could mount 320 cells, carry at least 160 additional cannisters for re-load at sea, and could likely complete a full reload (off-load 480 empty cannisters and re-load another 480 full cannisters) in under 10 hours.
"empty deck space "
That's awfully hard to come by.
I was imagining 2 versions.
For new vessels, specifically for arsenal ships, they would be designed with the space for reloads/empty cannisters within the hull, aft of the VLA magazines.
For existing vessels, the system would be designed to facilitate re-load at sea from a supply vessel, or to expedite re-load in port much faster than current method.
so the 'deck space' concept is 'temporary deck space' used during the reloading cycle. If the supply vessel is designed with a comparable robot arm, and they system is designed so that during the re-loading cycle, the 2 vessels robot systems are linked, then the 2 arms can play handoff to/from each other, even with the vessels having mild independent movement. Modern robotics is more than capable of handling that.
So, cycle runs as follows:
Track system extracts empty canister, delivers to robot arm, which hands off to robot arm on resupply vessel, which deposits canister in designated location, then picks up reload canister, hands off to robot arm on receiving ship, which sets into the track system, which lowers canister into VLS cell, then moves to next cell and repeat process.
Supply vessel can have efficient system for moving empty and full canisters into position to keep the cycle running faster.
Deckspace. The original crane took up 3(?) cells worth of space. A large, heavy, robotic crane on tracks would take up substantially more. And weight.
robot arm would not be as tall/large as the crane, and would not be on the track. It would be fixed, and hand-off to the track system. Everything that was used in the past was based on 50 year old technology.
Modern tech is stronger and lighter.
Think about the 2 axis track on an inkjet printer, and scale upwards. Track system, properly designed, would take up little space, and looking at images of where the cells are located on Burke's, I could totally fit it in the available space.
We just need to get some robotics engineers onto one of the decomed Tico's and work with it till they get it.
But as others and Sal have mentioned, unless we seriously fix missile production, this is pointless.
We need a MASSIVE overhaul of missile production to increase inventories, not by 10 or 20%, but by 200 or 300%
That will also dramatically reduce the cost per missile.
Right now we are shucking out $4M per copy on SM-2, $2M per ESSM, $6M+ per SM-6 and something like $25M per SM-3
That is unsustainable.
And mate different rounds with different shooters. The PAC-3MSE in Mk 41 being he example. Flexibility.
That costs MIC contract money to integrate. which doesn't align with the guy you're replying to aims of cutting costs.
You can bet the PLA only makes things inter-operate if they need to for an actual mission (CONOPS in Sal speak)
How much does PAC-3MSE cost? It seems to be pretty effective in Ukraine.
Also looks like it could easily be loaded in a VLS cannister
ie.. why are we not optimizing across all the services to have 1 long range interceptor missile and 1 close range, and then make a shit ton of them at lower cost, and spend the savings upgrading the software/seekers more frequently.
That makes sense, but this we we have a little redundancy and maybe our adversary learns to defeat one and not the other. Last I recall pac-3mse is super expensive. Like maybe more than an sm-6.
useful
https://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/missile-defense-systems-2/missile-defense-systems/missile-interceptors-by-cost/
looks like PAC and SM-2 are in similar ballpark
Our current missiles are the Mk13s of the 21st century.
Except, well..they work.
Hand built, artisanal, very slowly and expensively.
We need to crank them out like Musk builds Starlink statellites.
If we ordered 10x as many, it could probably reduce costs to about half price or less.
But would Raytheon be ok with that, or prioritize profit over country? I'm pretty sure I don't want that question answered.
I'd like to know if we are using ESSM in the Red Sea. Everything I have seen talks about SM-2 and SM-6
And have they used any SM-3 for the ASBM since that is supposedly it's purpose?
If ESSM can do the job for half the price of an SM-2, why are we using SM-2?'s
I get it, SM-2 has much longer range, but is that needed for every intercept?
Seems like maybe no one taught the skippers to fire the cheap stuff if it will work as well...
And we are back to my earlier argument on behalf of a private investment group to order/purchase/stockpile missiles at much cheaper costs, and sell them to Navy at a modest profit (just enough to satisfy the investors that it's a better bet than a T-bill), which would result in increased manufacturing capacity and lower costs overall.
I also think we need some private capital to invest in a no-shit comparison of all the available interceptors out there (Israel has some hot-shit stuff) and determine what would be the best/most cost effective tool for the Navy to potentially replace ESSM with lower cost and better performance.
If we could get a tool that out-ranged ESSM with SM-2 level performance, in a quad pack, at lower cost than ESSM?
I truly believe the only thing preventing that is US defense company profit's and Pentagon/Congressional in-bred stupidity in contracting.
We're using peer weapons against barely fourth-world savages with third world weapons.
Almost like it's a plan to deplete our warfighting stocks.
Amen brother.
More specifically, we could use $50,000 JDAM's to destroy every missile or missile capable site on the ground in Yemen - if we really wanted to.
Instead we shoot them down with $4M missiles.
This is literally insane.
Why use JDAMS? Bomb up every BUFF in the inventory with Mk 82's and go grid square by grid square.
Can you say "Arc Light," kids? I knew you could.
TimActual sent me on a deep dive into torpedo history. The issues of our inter-war torpedo programs are frighteningly similar to our current missile situation. Frighteningly.
Torpedos were a sinecure for otherwise worthless naval officers and civilian employees, who didn't understand the role of their own weapons, didn't understand the conditions they would be used in, couldn't be compared to other production, were protected by Congress, and utterly failed.
When the reports started coming in (very, very early in the war) that the Mk13 had issues, instead of discovering the issues they merely sniffed and said those stupid fleet sailors didn't know what they were doing - instead of risking their worthless lying asses and getting onto the boats and showing them how to use them
'correctly'. Even when the tests were done in Hawaii, they tried to hush it up because of 'morale'.. I don't know what could have been worse for the sub crews morale than going out on those long, long patrols with torpedos they had no confidence in. Were they supposed to simply think stern thought at the Japanese?
Thieves, cowards and traitors, all.
And it took until 1944, to get the problems solved - thanks to my Alma Mater, CalTech.
There is a lot of vitrol in this post, and frankly the “execute every O-6 and above grows tiresome.”
I’m lucky to work next to a library and the torpedo situation was not at all as you described it.
The problem with the torpedoes, and the exploder, was that we did not test them. We had one test between the world wars, in 1926. The folks you castigate wanted live fire exercises against real ships. Their requests were denied. In the interwar period, the USN had a complicated system of management where the bureaus were powerful independent entities. The weapons designers were not the evil bastards you make them out to be. They were struggling to overcome significant engineering problems.
But, I’ll leave their defense in the hand of a drunk lawyer.
"Course I'm warped," said Greenwald, "and I'm drunk, but it suddenly seems to me that if I wrote a war novel I'd try to make a hero out of Old Yellowstain." Jorgensen whooped loudly, but nobody else laughed, and the ensign subsided, goggling around. "No, I'm serious, I would. Tell you why, Tell you how I'm warped. I'm a Jew, guess most of you know that. Name's Greenwald, kind of look like one, and I sure am one, from way back. Jack Challee said I used smart Jew-lawyer tactics--course he took it back, apologized, after I told him a few things he didn't know-- Well, anyway...The reason I'd make Old Yellowstain a hero is on account of my mother, little gray-headed Jewish lady, fat, looks a lot like Mrs. Maryk here, meaning no offense."
He actually said "offensh." His speech was halting and blurry. He was gripping the spilling glass tightly. The scars on his hand made red rims around the bluish grafted skin.
"Well, sure, you guys all have mothers, but they wouldn't be in the same bad shape mine would if we'd of lost this war, which of course we aren't, we've won the damn thing by now. See, the Germans aren’t kidding about the Jew. They're cooking us down to soap over there. They think we're vermin and should be terminated and our corpses turned into something useful. Granting the premise--being warped, I don't, but granting the premise, soap is as good an idea as any. But I just can't cotton to the idea of my mom melted down into a bar of soap. I had an uncle and an aunt in Cracow, who are soap now, but that's different, I never saw my uncle and aunt, just saw letters in Jewish from them, ever since I was a kid, but I can't read Jewish." but never could read them. Jew, but I can't read Jewish.
The faces looking up at him were becoming sober and puzzled. “I’m coming to Old Yellowstain. Coming to him. See, while I was studying law 'n old Keefer here was writing his play for the Theatre Guild, and Willie here was on the playing fields of Prinshton, all that time these birds we call regulars--these stuffy, stupid Prussians, in the Navy and the Army -were manning guns. Course they weren't doing it to save my mom from Hitler, they're doing it for dough, like everybody else does what they do. Question is, in the last analysis--last analysis--what do you do for dough? Old Yellowstain, for dough, was standing guard on this fat dumb and happy country of ours. Meantime me, I was advancing little free non-Prussian life for dough. Of course, we figured in those days, only fools go into armed service. Bad pay, no millionaire future, and you can't call your mind or body your own. Not for sensitive intellectuals. So when all hell broke loose and the Germans started running out of soap and figured, well it's time to come over and melt down old Mrs. Greenwald--who's gonna stop them? Not her boy Barney. Can't stop a Nazi with a lawbook. So I dropped the lawbooks and ran to learn how to fly. Stout fellow. Meantime, and it took a year and a half before I was any good, who was keeping Mama out of the soap dish? Captain Queeg.
"Yes, even Queeg, poor sad guy, yes, and most of them not sad at all, fellows, a lot of them sharper boys than any of us, don't kid yourself, best men I've ever seen, you can't be good in the Army or Navy unless you're goddamn good. Though maybe not up on Proust 'n' Finnegan's Wake and all."
What happened between the wars was terrible.
What happened once the reports started appearing that the torpedo exploders didn't work was treasonous.
And the boards having so much power? That's pretty much the definition of 'sinecure'. They were the 'experts', they knew better than the 'incompetents' driving the boats.
"Yes, even Queeg, poor sad guy, yes, and most of them not sad at all, fellows, a lot of them sharper boys than any of us, don't kid yourself, best men I've ever seen, you can't be good in the Army or Navy unless you're goddamn good."
And $monetary$ problems. There was, after all, a depression going on. If I remember correctly, military officers took a 50% pay cut.
I assume that quote is from the book? It's been a while.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw6gwGawbXA
Good as the film is, the book is better. The lawyer, obviously, is my favorite. Interestingly, he’s not a JAG; he’s a wounded pilot recovering from his wounds.
The Germans had similar problems with their torpedos; faulty depth control and faulty magnetic exploders due to lack of testing and such.
Too much politicking and not enough war fighting being done. I would imagine that <i>someone</i> back when VLS was being thought up, way before actually in use, brought up the idea of how to UNREP. That we're now several decades down the pike and it's still a problem lends me to believe that we have too many admirals in DC and not nearly enough on the sea.
Does MSC have the ability in terms of its ships and crews to resupply Navy vessels at sea with Tomahawks?
No. Not enough MSC left.
The delivery ship in the pics I posted was the now long gone Mount Baker ...
https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/alphabetical---donations0/m/ua-383-4-uss-mount-baker--ae-34--photograph-collection.html
I loved how we named all the AE’s after volcanos. Saucy! I remember as a kid roaming the pier at Mare Island and seeing them all bow first tied up. Kiska, Shasta, MT Baker. Others.
And mine: Mount Hood!!
Did we ever get around to Krakatoa? :-P
Not American (Dutch when it blew).
My best friends father was the skipper of the Sacramento around 85-86. We all lived on Mare Island. It was a great place to be teenager. Lots of fun with the Navy and Marines. The buildings all told a story.
Build in MK-48 rearmament as well. We are gonna need both.
We haven’t had a capability since we wore dungarees. It’s not hard!
The Navy hasnt bought a Mk 48 since the last century.
Yep. We still have a bunch in storage. Or we did. One more symptom of our disease.