Japan does by new strategy with subs with great success. You can remove a lot of uncertainty in planning to hand a used ship off to an ally before its all used up. Even if scrapping, who is driving a 25 year old car?
MSC needs to be back under military discipline and entirely manned by Navy, not civilians. Reestablish the service force, and make MSC what it used to be.
More words except no one added unaffordable. In the last 60 years, in not one instance of true budget drama has the DOD survived toe-to-toe with Social Security and Medicare. 2032 is the first year of mandated cuts in Social Security benefits if nothing is done.
Our actual competitor is conducting economic warfare while we pretend the gunline might be the answer in the future despite no one in the world really having fought a fleet engagement worthy of the name in 80 years. We are pretending that Nelson's warning about fighting land-based magazines doesn't matter. We are hopelessly mirroring adversaries with what we want them to do versus what they are going to do - what we want them to be interested in versus what they will be interested in.
We are not balancing Navy needs against the USAF, which is also hopelessly behind in repairs and sortie generation on the flight line. Let's remember our nuclear modernization, Golden Dome, and the costs of pushing tactical nuclear weapons back into hteater. The list is long. Our debt is greater than our economy.
We have no strategy - again, worthy of the name - other than be better and have more without even thinking through if "more" is going to answer the mail.
You seem to have a zero sum mentality. I would suggest you read Federalist #11 by Hamilton where he discusses the economic benefits of building a Navy (in addition it to all its military value).
Don't laugh, but I've gone to Hamilton twice this week. A small-town port is taxing busses, what Alex called “interfering and unneighborly regulations,” (#22). That's such a good term, "unneighborly." And, “‘There is no liberty’,” if the courts are not able to stop the abuses of the executive branch. (#78).
It has been thirty years and I have not seen a "leftist" judge yet. Judges are by nature, careful, cautious, and prudent. Here in Florida, our democrats are conservative. Our Republicans are conservative. Heck, the practice of law makes you conservative. So, you have conservative politicians pick folks from a conservative profession to do a job that takes careful, cautious, methodical action and you think they are leftists.
William O Douglas? He was born in the 19th century; we live in the 21st.
After almost four decades of being a lawyer, I truly believe that Judges try to fairly apply the existing law to the facts they see before them. I don't think ideology is involved in the day to day work judges do. Fairness and impartiality is in the job description. I don't think a Judge could look himself in the mirror and say, "I really fucked that litigant over because he's my ideologically enemy."
Now, I'm in a small town in the deep south, and there might be cities up north where leftist judges live, nor am I saying that the Judges I know don't screw up, and make bad decisions. I just believe that the judge who screws up does so with good intentions.
There are over a thousand Judges in Florida. Give me the name of a leftist one. Just one.
It has never occurred to me that a maritime power did not need a powerful Navy.
But the United States is needful of many things. And while growing the economic pie helps, our growing pie has not kept pace with our growing bipartisan budget and deficit.
The Navy is only part of a defense budget in which readiness is hurting everyone. We have blown through the lifetime airframe flight hours, and our readiness rates on the flight line are as abysmal as those on the waterfront. We need to recapitalize our nuclear Triad, and Minuteman III is getting another life extension because Sentinel is hopelessly delayed until almost 2040. Our pit production is a fraction of China's, and Russia, for all its problems, has already completed nuclear modernization.
Then there is the Golden Dome price tag.
So, I guess I'm zero-sum game in the sense that you can outspend your income, even if your income is growing.
We'll see what Congress thinks of the White House ask.
Federal prosecutors have estimated that potential fraud across144 Minnesota-run Medicaid and social service programs could exceed $9 billion since 2018.
Let's assume they're the outlier and the other states are $4.5B. That's $1.3T. It appears the money is there and always has been there. An extra $1.65B per year. And that's using low ball numbers, California is estimated at a mere $180B. That's half the cost of the Colombia SSBN program.
Jetcal1: If the Navy were to operate daycare centers, all the budget problems would be solved. Also, convert the USNS Mercy and Comfort to hospice ships. There's lots of money sloshing around in hospice care.
As of early 2026, roughly 215,000 U.S. federal workers (6.9% of the workforce) are delinquent on federal taxes, owing a combined $2.1 billion. Including retirees and military, 571,000 individuals owe $6.3 billion. IRS employees and postal workers are among those with high delinquency rates, with 50,000 workers failing to file returns for multiple years.
The IRS estimates that about 16% of all federal taxes go unpaid with over 60% of this gap resulting from underreported income. So, at 6.9% the federal workers are paying their taxes considerably better than the general population.
Demonization seldom results in more hulls in the water.
Hard to say because a good portion of money from illegal sources is laundered through legal businesses with taxes paid in order to wind up with clean funds. But non-reported, illegal source income is difficult to determine because it is deliberately hidden, such as cash from drug sales, and generally moved to offshore facilities for laundering.
FWIW, my ex wife was an IRS procurement lawyer starting in 84 for 3-4 years. At that point I remember her saying:
1. if you leave before your 4 year commitment, they will professionally bury you.
2. you agree to a no basis audit if requested
3. on April 16, they ran a file compare between returns received and the IRS employee roster.
I know the last one is true. She filed our taxes and was keeping her maiden name, which she listed first on the joint return. (must have been 86 tax year filing). Anyway, we got a refund check in my name followed by her name truncated. (IRS didn't plan on married couples with 2 last names.).
Anyway, sure enough, May 1st, her boss calls her in, she came back in with the return. all worked out in the end...Her name in employee records did not match what the computer did after truncating her name
Most of FedGov is unconstitutional. take down the welfare state, along with much else, e,g, National Forests, National Parks, student financial aid, there would be little opportunity for fraud outside of Defense. Excise taxes and tariffs would be sufficient to support FedGov.
At this point, billions of dollars are rounding errors in the national debt. Even $1.0T is only 2.5% of the entire debt. It is likely, with veterans care, and likely veteran disability rates, that the Iranian War will cost between $750 billions and $1T over the rest of our lives (this would also include interest on the debt incurred to pay for it).
These are compounding issues. It's worth remembering that we will officially be paying for WWII until the last survivor or last widow of a survivor dies and the pensions are complete.
None of this includes the will of the voter, who traditionally supports Social Security and Medicare over discretionary budget items, including defense.
Depending on the year and the source, defense accounts for 50-54% of discretionary spending, followed by transportation, veterans programs, education and employment, health programs, and international affairs.
Lot of competition out there for limited dollars. All I'm saying is that our Navy is only part of the problem set.
Of course, it's also fair to note that the Navy is not responsible for the budget and doesn't make budget decisions. It should figure out what it needs and then ask for that, await the decision, and figure out how to prioritize what it gets.
Federal prosecutors have estimated that potential fraud across144 Minnesota-run Medicaid and social service programs could exceed $9 billion since 2018.
Let's assume they're the outlier and the other states are $4.5B. That's $1.3T. It appears the money is there and always has been there. An extra $1.65B per year. And that's using low ball numbers, California is estimated at a mere $180B. That's half the cost of the Colombia SSBN program.
Sure, and $1.3T is 3.3% of our deficit. We're not going to find enough fraud and cut enough spending to get us out of this hole.
And the spending and fraud we do find does not equate to dollars going to defense. There are plenty of unfunded priorities on the Congressional wishlist.
My only point is - and I understand this is Cdr Salamander's blog on navy stuff - is that our shipbuilding plans need to be both aspirational and practical. Asking for things we're unlikely to get is okay as long as we have a fairly clear vision of what we really need.
It is logically impossible for everything to be important.
I guess my other point is that asking the experts to judge themselves is always problematic. As is asking experts to talk about what they need. If no one is really providing the Navy with port and starboard day markers in the channel, it makes it hard to navigate.
Found money by eliminating fraud would free up $1.3T in the next budget to be used towards the deficit. Clawing back funds or eliminating that fraud is low hanging fruit. And remember the number suggested is probably low. It could easily be double. $2.6T is 175% of the requested defense budget. There'd be money left over to pay on the deficit.
The welfare state is shot through with fraud. The founders realized that would be the case adn did not allow FedGov to engage in charity. The entire welfare state is illegal under the US Constitution. Many, if not most, of the states are under the same sort of prohibition. The welfare state is the reason for the massive deficits.
So true - our national debt that neither party cares about at all (some pay lip service to) is the biggest national security threat to our country. Entitlements swallow up a larger and larger share of federal spending, crowding everything else out - a non-trivial reason that sustainment and maintenance has gone to sh*t.
Thanks for reviewing all that and providing the tl;dr. Very informative. It’s not enough but I guess let’s not the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Couple grab-bag notes:
-Ship-to-shore connector looks like LCAC?
-The BBG is folly: a massive distraction for a service that desperately needs focus and directly contradicts the concept of distributed maritime operations.
-Not enough LPDs fast enough.
-Ditto FFG.
-The slow-walk of CVN build is maddening.
-LSM and its conops doesn’t make sense - unneeded in peacetime (other ways of moving Marines) and they’re sitting ducks in war.
I’ll take it…but I refuse to be Charlie Brown - Navy needs to prove it won’t snatch the football away.
When I was a JO in the Reagan years a certain intelligence organization dismissed the idea of returning the four battleship to active duty. They were wrong then as are all the critics of a modern battleship today.
In spite of them calling it a battleship... and maybe that's the problem... I see it as just a really full-sized new Tico with heavy strike capability. The Burkes have the AAW stuff covered, and I expect the lasers and rail guns to not make the final draft. They're just fluff. Add plenty of CI defense mounts and some Leonidas-esque systems, and its a reasonable large combatant. Im not sure where everyone is getting the $17B-each price tag, but I think that's pretty absurd, and has no basis in reallity, when, after you cut the vaporware, it's just a steroid-fed DDG(X) with CPS added...
Aren’t reactors one of the big hold ups with Colombia and Ford class? I wonder if this is just a poison pill for an easy cancellation once they don’t have to cater to Trump.
Any reopening would require a redesign as necessary for modernization, the important part is they're already established yards segmented for heavy industry. At the very least, Charleston has worked with NNSY & EB during the moored training ship conversation of La Jolla & San Francisco.
Like the article and good analysis . . . However...
Plans and policies mean nothing if you ignore principle(s). “Doing your maintenance” is one of the primary foundational principles in everything having to do with HARDWARE. The U.S. Navy did this well until the 1990s . . . then they divested themselves of the infrastructure, platforms, ratings and expertise in favor of farming that activity out to industry (even international) for basic maintenance and logistical support.
In other words the U.S. Navy stopped changing its oil, and checking the tires. They basically and fundamentally just get in line at Avis Lube. Sad state of affairs. Avis Lube does not have presence in the Western Pacific in the 2nd Island Chain in the Western Pacific Archipelagic AOR with specific equipment, raw materials, tools, and technical expertise that can preposition as we once did during the second half of WWII . . . when we were WINNING!
Amen & amen. We need distributed construction, repair, and maintenance facilities in the Great Lakes, on all 3 coasts, out on Hawaii, and in the Marianas.
We also need the ability to deploy & build basic maintenance facilities (auxiliary floating dry docks, anyone?) in forward anchorages that are great for tenders. I'm thinking of Woleai, Ulithi, Kwajalein, and other atolls with airfields.
If our fleet gets a bloody nose in a battle west of Wake, we can't afford to wait for every damaged ship to be towed all the way to the West Coast for repairs. There won't be time for that.
Also, forgive my CG-centric mind, but has anybody thought to dredge the channels leading into those valuable atolls, or even bothered to mark the channels with buoys/dayboards/ranges? I know from first hand experience exactly how attentive and conscientious the government of Palau is about this stuff; they maintain aids to navigation like South Africa maintains roads. It's tough to make use of an anchorage or port that you can't get a capital ship into.
Ahh floating dry-docks, USN needs some new ARDM's. The ones that used to be at Holy Loch, Sigonella and Guam were sold-off. Former USS Steadfast (AFDM-14) now owned by Port of San Francisco is looking to scrap due to years of neglect and lack of buyers.
As always, great article. I would like to recommend a future topic. Why can't we just keep the Nimitz, the Ohio SSBNs, and LA Class subs in active service with major overhauls and perhaps mission shifts? It would be great to have a better understanding of the material condition limitations of 50 or 30 years at sea and the costs of a nuclear overhaul.
I understand that, I just want to learn more of the specifics. The same applies to surface ships. Despite multiple repair attempts, my first ship had a crack on the main deck that ran right across the ship that flexed as the ship heaved and hogged.
USS Biddle (CG-34). It was there when I walked on board in early 1992 and when I left shortly before decomm in late 1993. i was told it wasn't structural.
The subs aren't intended to be refueled. I guess you could swap out an entire new Rx compartment, but at that point it is so expensive. You also start to lose support for different components as they become obsolete or if the manufacturer is no longer around. Without refueling, you wouldn't be able to support full power operations and your Rx startups would get precluded. For the CVNs...you could refuel them again... but maintenance costs really accelerate when you get that old. Sort of a "Ship of Theseus" situation. Tico CGs, for example, while remaining capable, were a financial thorn in the side to sustain. And ultimately it cuts into shipyard availability for new platform construction/maintenance. Eventually something will fail. I would hate to be in the engine room during a steamline rupture because my plant is 60 years old.
I understand the old stuff is more expensive and breaks, but the cost of the Enterprise deactivation is enormous. I was wondering if the Nimitz would be the same, and if so, would refuel and overhaul not seem so expensive? Idk. That is why I asked CMDR Sal to do the analysis and share it with us.
Reactor metal gets brittle with time. The higher the neutron flux at which it operates, the worse. What I have never read, is the degree of that embrittlement with time. At what point does it reach the point where continued service is dangerous beyond the normal dangers of such a monster?
Basically, what we have done over the past two decades wrt ship building and the Navy? Do the other thing! We used to know how to design and build fleets. This is like looking at the new pedagogy, and looking at the nuns teaching kids and thinking, "Yeah, those nuns never knew how to teach. We need rainbow flags, furries and an inability to read beyond the third grade." NO! Go back to common sense approaches!
Alas, a lot of buzz words akin to what I've seen during my 43 years in the air-breathing side of this business.....when you see enough of this, you tend to ignore it as the actions/sins of the past define how the message adheres - and since ships take longer to build and deploy, they tend to become victims of the political times....not that I'm unhappy that someone actually sees that there is a problem, it's just the political machine has yet to prove it can produce something ahead of need that isn't already obsolete.....maybe this time things will work out but I'm not holding my breath....and someone needs to explain why a battleship, while once cool, is not something on which we need to spend our capital.....
Because the term battleship is very nebulous. It's a ship of the line for a more traditional appellation. By post dreadnought standards, its more of a CBG(N). Why is it no one questioned the utility of the Kirov class? It's really a nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser, just like the Kirov's.
Well, I'm a bit short on time this morning, but at least 2 of the 4 Virginia's launched Tomahawks in Desert Storm and they all seem to have been doing something useful at some point for actual operations. Not just showing the flag.
Have to disagree... just because the Kirovs were never used doesn't detract from their capability. Otherwise we could say the same thing about the BN-version Ohios, or B-36s, the Polaris and Trident systems, or a hundred other military systems...
So while I'd have bet on the USN in a late 80s battle of the Atlantic, the Kirovs at that time were not somthing to be taken lightly...
Obviously, the Navy focuses on the manufacturing to put hulls in the water. We need to do this but also do manufacturing generally. We never would have accomplished the WW2 buildup without civilian manufacturing to repurpose. Kaiser was a construction company (Grand Coulee Dam) that had never produced a ship before 1940. The list of civilian companies that produced M1 carbines is stunning in its diversity. The bulk were by GM and various subsidiaries.
Everything, including the vaunted drones, is a target in warfare. People talk about 'targets' as if the weapon they plan to use isn't, itself, a target. People look at the Black Sea and say 'warships are obsolete'. The reality is that the Russian Black Sea fleet has been bottled up, not by the Ukrainians, but by the Turks. They can't leave. They have no safe place to retire to. They can only sit there and essentially take the pounding. Ukraine defeated the Black Sea Fleet, but Turkey tied them down first by refusing them passage through the Bosphorous.
In the rest of the world, the Houthis and Iranians have repeatedly tried to attack USN surface ships with sea-baby style drones and failed. The Iranians sent swarms of drones and small boats at USN destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz, which is more confined than the Black Sea. And they failed.
The Russian Navy is a paper-tiger. Yes, we should look at what the Ukrainians did, but we should not base a warfighting strategy off of it.
The Ukrainian experience is educational. Their actions should be considered in the strategy we put together. Tactics aren't strategy. They are the tool used to implement a strategy
So exactly which of these wunderkraft would, if only they existed, deliver us success in the present, um, contretemps in ("Lets go to the charts...") the Persian Gulf or is that the Strait of Hormuz or, somewhat farther afield, the Gulf of Oman or, oh my!, even the Arabian Sea, or, dare I say, the Indian Ocean? Put the maps away!
At any rate, let's get back to our friendly game of "if only." So...?
Any of these items would deliver us success. The issue is not that we can't occupy the Strait of Hormuz. The issue is that American citizens have very little patience for casualties. The current strategy of blockading the Iranians and starving them is a far better solution, regardless of what you use, than throwing your sailors or your equipment into a meat-grinder. I wouldn't throw my drones into the Strait of Hormuz and let them be attacked endlessly, day after day. However, I can use an LCS with its popgun 57mm and 8 NSMs to keep Iranian tankers and freighters from transiting.
And how would you go about forcing the re-opening of the Strait and settling world economies shaken by the spike in oil prices and disruption of cash flows? If you had to, what ships are needed and do we currently possess them? If not, when if ever will we posses the means to carry out national policy? I was given to understand that one or more of our carriers hightailed it to safer waters rather than risk...what? How? And how will that risk be mitigated by new iron in whatever formats and capabilities?
The issue is not forcing the strait. That's what everybody gets wrong. The issue is smoothing out the economies. Some of that work is already being done. The Saudis were wise enough to build a pipeline east to handle a pretty serious quantity of their oil already. There are alternative sources that can cover the oil lost from the gulf, at least temporarily.
Rushing in ships to fight in the strait and over-emphasizing the economic pain simply plays into the Iranians' hands. At some point, when they are no longer able to store the oil they're pumping, and the risk of catastrophic shutdown of their own oilfields looms, they will really have no choice but to reopen the strait themselves.
Bottom Line: Fight smarter, not harder. During the Reagan years, when Fracking was merely a theory, we had no choice but to 'force open the strait' and take the casualties. We have no real need to do that now.
"Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth,"-Mike Tyson. The fortitude to execute as always will be the key. I hope the executors will find fair winds and following seas.
following seas are great, unless you are on the helm. At GQ I found myself on the wheel adn the JOOD remarked it looked like I was steering a sinuous course. We had a following sea that was moving the stern about fairly wildly.
Japan does by new strategy with subs with great success. You can remove a lot of uncertainty in planning to hand a used ship off to an ally before its all used up. Even if scrapping, who is driving a 25 year old car?
> Even if scrapping, who is driving a 25 year old car?
*raises hand* :D
Gray steel and no diversity.
I love it.
I am pleased to see that the Gator Navy and MSC were not neglected as amphibs and UNREP are necessary if you want to be global power.
Bases need to be overhauled, too so as to accommodate both ships and sailors.
The plan means the Navy has a future which will do wonders for both recruiting and retention. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a BB PCU?
The next step is to integrate the Navy with the rest of the maritime domain - cables, fishing, offshore wells, research, commercial shipping, etc.
MSC needs to be back under military discipline and entirely manned by Navy, not civilians. Reestablish the service force, and make MSC what it used to be.
More words except no one added unaffordable. In the last 60 years, in not one instance of true budget drama has the DOD survived toe-to-toe with Social Security and Medicare. 2032 is the first year of mandated cuts in Social Security benefits if nothing is done.
Our actual competitor is conducting economic warfare while we pretend the gunline might be the answer in the future despite no one in the world really having fought a fleet engagement worthy of the name in 80 years. We are pretending that Nelson's warning about fighting land-based magazines doesn't matter. We are hopelessly mirroring adversaries with what we want them to do versus what they are going to do - what we want them to be interested in versus what they will be interested in.
We are not balancing Navy needs against the USAF, which is also hopelessly behind in repairs and sortie generation on the flight line. Let's remember our nuclear modernization, Golden Dome, and the costs of pushing tactical nuclear weapons back into hteater. The list is long. Our debt is greater than our economy.
We have no strategy - again, worthy of the name - other than be better and have more without even thinking through if "more" is going to answer the mail.
You seem to have a zero sum mentality. I would suggest you read Federalist #11 by Hamilton where he discusses the economic benefits of building a Navy (in addition it to all its military value).
Don't laugh, but I've gone to Hamilton twice this week. A small-town port is taxing busses, what Alex called “interfering and unneighborly regulations,” (#22). That's such a good term, "unneighborly." And, “‘There is no liberty’,” if the courts are not able to stop the abuses of the executive branch. (#78).
At first I thought you meant Hamilton in Bermuda to play golf.
I recommend the Rosewood Bermuda when you go there
BTW, who will stop the abuses of far out leftist judges appointed by Obama and Biden?
Hamilton and Madison made a big mistake giving judges lifetime appointments. How could they foresee a Justice William O. Douglas?
It has been thirty years and I have not seen a "leftist" judge yet. Judges are by nature, careful, cautious, and prudent. Here in Florida, our democrats are conservative. Our Republicans are conservative. Heck, the practice of law makes you conservative. So, you have conservative politicians pick folks from a conservative profession to do a job that takes careful, cautious, methodical action and you think they are leftists.
William O Douglas? He was born in the 19th century; we live in the 21st.
“… not seen a leftist judge.”
You’re not serious are you?
Then again from your perspective everyone may indeed be on the right. Lol.
After almost four decades of being a lawyer, I truly believe that Judges try to fairly apply the existing law to the facts they see before them. I don't think ideology is involved in the day to day work judges do. Fairness and impartiality is in the job description. I don't think a Judge could look himself in the mirror and say, "I really fucked that litigant over because he's my ideologically enemy."
Now, I'm in a small town in the deep south, and there might be cities up north where leftist judges live, nor am I saying that the Judges I know don't screw up, and make bad decisions. I just believe that the judge who screws up does so with good intentions.
There are over a thousand Judges in Florida. Give me the name of a leftist one. Just one.
It has never occurred to me that a maritime power did not need a powerful Navy.
But the United States is needful of many things. And while growing the economic pie helps, our growing pie has not kept pace with our growing bipartisan budget and deficit.
The Navy is only part of a defense budget in which readiness is hurting everyone. We have blown through the lifetime airframe flight hours, and our readiness rates on the flight line are as abysmal as those on the waterfront. We need to recapitalize our nuclear Triad, and Minuteman III is getting another life extension because Sentinel is hopelessly delayed until almost 2040. Our pit production is a fraction of China's, and Russia, for all its problems, has already completed nuclear modernization.
Then there is the Golden Dome price tag.
So, I guess I'm zero-sum game in the sense that you can outspend your income, even if your income is growing.
We'll see what Congress thinks of the White House ask.
https://www.usdebtclock.org
Federal prosecutors have estimated that potential fraud across144 Minnesota-run Medicaid and social service programs could exceed $9 billion since 2018.
Let's assume they're the outlier and the other states are $4.5B. That's $1.3T. It appears the money is there and always has been there. An extra $1.65B per year. And that's using low ball numbers, California is estimated at a mere $180B. That's half the cost of the Colombia SSBN program.
Jetcal1: If the Navy were to operate daycare centers, all the budget problems would be solved. Also, convert the USNS Mercy and Comfort to hospice ships. There's lots of money sloshing around in hospice care.
and cut off 90% of the NGOs from Fed funds
I need some NGO's to place my case officers
If it gets Fed funds, we should stop calling it an NGO
Let's not forget tax evasion, which even at lowball estimates costs the government hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
Prosecute the fraudsters, fund the IRS, and expand the court system.
As of early 2026, roughly 215,000 U.S. federal workers (6.9% of the workforce) are delinquent on federal taxes, owing a combined $2.1 billion. Including retirees and military, 571,000 individuals owe $6.3 billion. IRS employees and postal workers are among those with high delinquency rates, with 50,000 workers failing to file returns for multiple years.
The IRS estimates that about 16% of all federal taxes go unpaid with over 60% of this gap resulting from underreported income. So, at 6.9% the federal workers are paying their taxes considerably better than the general population.
Demonization seldom results in more hulls in the water.
Failing to resolve a funding issue seldom results in more hulls in the water and further encourages the scofflaws.
How much of the unreported income is illegal activity?
Hard to say because a good portion of money from illegal sources is laundered through legal businesses with taxes paid in order to wind up with clean funds. But non-reported, illegal source income is difficult to determine because it is deliberately hidden, such as cash from drug sales, and generally moved to offshore facilities for laundering.
FWIW, my ex wife was an IRS procurement lawyer starting in 84 for 3-4 years. At that point I remember her saying:
1. if you leave before your 4 year commitment, they will professionally bury you.
2. you agree to a no basis audit if requested
3. on April 16, they ran a file compare between returns received and the IRS employee roster.
I know the last one is true. She filed our taxes and was keeping her maiden name, which she listed first on the joint return. (must have been 86 tax year filing). Anyway, we got a refund check in my name followed by her name truncated. (IRS didn't plan on married couples with 2 last names.).
Anyway, sure enough, May 1st, her boss calls her in, she came back in with the return. all worked out in the end...Her name in employee records did not match what the computer did after truncating her name
Most of FedGov is unconstitutional. take down the welfare state, along with much else, e,g, National Forests, National Parks, student financial aid, there would be little opportunity for fraud outside of Defense. Excise taxes and tariffs would be sufficient to support FedGov.
https://www.usdebtclock.org
At this point, billions of dollars are rounding errors in the national debt. Even $1.0T is only 2.5% of the entire debt. It is likely, with veterans care, and likely veteran disability rates, that the Iranian War will cost between $750 billions and $1T over the rest of our lives (this would also include interest on the debt incurred to pay for it).
These are compounding issues. It's worth remembering that we will officially be paying for WWII until the last survivor or last widow of a survivor dies and the pensions are complete.
None of this includes the will of the voter, who traditionally supports Social Security and Medicare over discretionary budget items, including defense.
Depending on the year and the source, defense accounts for 50-54% of discretionary spending, followed by transportation, veterans programs, education and employment, health programs, and international affairs.
Lot of competition out there for limited dollars. All I'm saying is that our Navy is only part of the problem set.
Of course, it's also fair to note that the Navy is not responsible for the budget and doesn't make budget decisions. It should figure out what it needs and then ask for that, await the decision, and figure out how to prioritize what it gets.
Federal prosecutors have estimated that potential fraud across144 Minnesota-run Medicaid and social service programs could exceed $9 billion since 2018.
Let's assume they're the outlier and the other states are $4.5B. That's $1.3T. It appears the money is there and always has been there. An extra $1.65B per year. And that's using low ball numbers, California is estimated at a mere $180B. That's half the cost of the Colombia SSBN program.
Sure, and $1.3T is 3.3% of our deficit. We're not going to find enough fraud and cut enough spending to get us out of this hole.
And the spending and fraud we do find does not equate to dollars going to defense. There are plenty of unfunded priorities on the Congressional wishlist.
My only point is - and I understand this is Cdr Salamander's blog on navy stuff - is that our shipbuilding plans need to be both aspirational and practical. Asking for things we're unlikely to get is okay as long as we have a fairly clear vision of what we really need.
It is logically impossible for everything to be important.
I guess my other point is that asking the experts to judge themselves is always problematic. As is asking experts to talk about what they need. If no one is really providing the Navy with port and starboard day markers in the channel, it makes it hard to navigate.
Found money by eliminating fraud would free up $1.3T in the next budget to be used towards the deficit. Clawing back funds or eliminating that fraud is low hanging fruit. And remember the number suggested is probably low. It could easily be double. $2.6T is 175% of the requested defense budget. There'd be money left over to pay on the deficit.
Found money is what the other guy receives.
The welfare state is shot through with fraud. The founders realized that would be the case adn did not allow FedGov to engage in charity. The entire welfare state is illegal under the US Constitution. Many, if not most, of the states are under the same sort of prohibition. The welfare state is the reason for the massive deficits.
So true - our national debt that neither party cares about at all (some pay lip service to) is the biggest national security threat to our country. Entitlements swallow up a larger and larger share of federal spending, crowding everything else out - a non-trivial reason that sustainment and maintenance has gone to sh*t.
Thanks for reviewing all that and providing the tl;dr. Very informative. It’s not enough but I guess let’s not the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Couple grab-bag notes:
-Ship-to-shore connector looks like LCAC?
-The BBG is folly: a massive distraction for a service that desperately needs focus and directly contradicts the concept of distributed maritime operations.
-Not enough LPDs fast enough.
-Ditto FFG.
-The slow-walk of CVN build is maddening.
-LSM and its conops doesn’t make sense - unneeded in peacetime (other ways of moving Marines) and they’re sitting ducks in war.
I’ll take it…but I refuse to be Charlie Brown - Navy needs to prove it won’t snatch the football away.
When I was a JO in the Reagan years a certain intelligence organization dismissed the idea of returning the four battleship to active duty. They were wrong then as are all the critics of a modern battleship today.
Dawg, I love the old battlewagons but c'mon - not a serious platform for serious people in today's threat environment.
Plus, if you think NAVSEA can screw up a frigate design, just wait til they get their hands on a battleship design. Lordy.
Well, I would rather be on a moving heavily armored battleship than a stationary base.
Also, I am of the belief that the capabilities of the Trump battleships will make the Iowa battleships look like the Constitution in Boston Harbor.
Hard to argue about NAVAEA, but Artemis II makes me think America can do some things right.
What on that ship hits more, down range, either faster, safer, or cheaper than other methods already in hand?
Id like to actually see armor make a return. There's really no reason not to...
In spite of them calling it a battleship... and maybe that's the problem... I see it as just a really full-sized new Tico with heavy strike capability. The Burkes have the AAW stuff covered, and I expect the lasers and rail guns to not make the final draft. They're just fluff. Add plenty of CI defense mounts and some Leonidas-esque systems, and its a reasonable large combatant. Im not sure where everyone is getting the $17B-each price tag, but I think that's pretty absurd, and has no basis in reallity, when, after you cut the vaporware, it's just a steroid-fed DDG(X) with CPS added...
In some scenarios there really aren't other ways to move units the way an LSM can, even in peace. That still doesn't make LSM the answer.
Aren’t reactors one of the big hold ups with Colombia and Ford class? I wonder if this is just a poison pill for an easy cancellation once they don’t have to cater to Trump.
That, and how will it be maintained? Public yards and NNS do the nuke repair and maintenance and are already overburdened.
Simple. Reopen U.S. Naval Shipyards.
Mare Island and Charleston
Yes, and each would need totally redesigned for our larger subs. Not cheap or easy.
Any reopening would require a redesign as necessary for modernization, the important part is they're already established yards segmented for heavy industry. At the very least, Charleston has worked with NNSY & EB during the moored training ship conversation of La Jolla & San Francisco.
Like the article and good analysis . . . However...
Plans and policies mean nothing if you ignore principle(s). “Doing your maintenance” is one of the primary foundational principles in everything having to do with HARDWARE. The U.S. Navy did this well until the 1990s . . . then they divested themselves of the infrastructure, platforms, ratings and expertise in favor of farming that activity out to industry (even international) for basic maintenance and logistical support.
In other words the U.S. Navy stopped changing its oil, and checking the tires. They basically and fundamentally just get in line at Avis Lube. Sad state of affairs. Avis Lube does not have presence in the Western Pacific in the 2nd Island Chain in the Western Pacific Archipelagic AOR with specific equipment, raw materials, tools, and technical expertise that can preposition as we once did during the second half of WWII . . . when we were WINNING!
Amen & amen. We need distributed construction, repair, and maintenance facilities in the Great Lakes, on all 3 coasts, out on Hawaii, and in the Marianas.
We also need the ability to deploy & build basic maintenance facilities (auxiliary floating dry docks, anyone?) in forward anchorages that are great for tenders. I'm thinking of Woleai, Ulithi, Kwajalein, and other atolls with airfields.
If our fleet gets a bloody nose in a battle west of Wake, we can't afford to wait for every damaged ship to be towed all the way to the West Coast for repairs. There won't be time for that.
Also, forgive my CG-centric mind, but has anybody thought to dredge the channels leading into those valuable atolls, or even bothered to mark the channels with buoys/dayboards/ranges? I know from first hand experience exactly how attentive and conscientious the government of Palau is about this stuff; they maintain aids to navigation like South Africa maintains roads. It's tough to make use of an anchorage or port that you can't get a capital ship into.
Ahh floating dry-docks, USN needs some new ARDM's. The ones that used to be at Holy Loch, Sigonella and Guam were sold-off. Former USS Steadfast (AFDM-14) now owned by Port of San Francisco is looking to scrap due to years of neglect and lack of buyers.
https://missionlocal.org/2026/02/port-of-san-francisco-dry-dock-pier-68-70/
AFDMs and T-ADs will solve the problem. Guess what the U.S. Navy is NOT building?
Back then we could build US naval ships in US Naval Shipyards.
NOW . . . we have NEITHER the Shipyards or the EXERTISE . . . and no plans to stand up schools to solve the problem. Planning for success and to WIN?
As always, great article. I would like to recommend a future topic. Why can't we just keep the Nimitz, the Ohio SSBNs, and LA Class subs in active service with major overhauls and perhaps mission shifts? It would be great to have a better understanding of the material condition limitations of 50 or 30 years at sea and the costs of a nuclear overhaul.
Not a submariner but as I understand stand “fatigue” there are only so many dives a sub can take before the hull gives way.
I understand that, I just want to learn more of the specifics. The same applies to surface ships. Despite multiple repair attempts, my first ship had a crack on the main deck that ran right across the ship that flexed as the ship heaved and hogged.
Was that an LCS?
Sounds like bad steel. Sulfur is deadly to steel and causes cracks. Which ship was that and how old was it when you reported aboard?
USS Biddle (CG-34). It was there when I walked on board in early 1992 and when I left shortly before decomm in late 1993. i was told it wasn't structural.
Last of the Belknap class?
I'm surprised it was still serviceable in 1992.
Were you able to get your SWO pin?
And yet, a young ship by today's standards.
Yes, I picked up my SWO pin in early Nov 92.
The subs aren't intended to be refueled. I guess you could swap out an entire new Rx compartment, but at that point it is so expensive. You also start to lose support for different components as they become obsolete or if the manufacturer is no longer around. Without refueling, you wouldn't be able to support full power operations and your Rx startups would get precluded. For the CVNs...you could refuel them again... but maintenance costs really accelerate when you get that old. Sort of a "Ship of Theseus" situation. Tico CGs, for example, while remaining capable, were a financial thorn in the side to sustain. And ultimately it cuts into shipyard availability for new platform construction/maintenance. Eventually something will fail. I would hate to be in the engine room during a steamline rupture because my plant is 60 years old.
I understand the old stuff is more expensive and breaks, but the cost of the Enterprise deactivation is enormous. I was wondering if the Nimitz would be the same, and if so, would refuel and overhaul not seem so expensive? Idk. That is why I asked CMDR Sal to do the analysis and share it with us.
IIRC, Enterprise has 8 reactors. Two is expensive to decomm, but 8 makes it much more so.
Reactor metal gets brittle with time. The higher the neutron flux at which it operates, the worse. What I have never read, is the degree of that embrittlement with time. At what point does it reach the point where continued service is dangerous beyond the normal dangers of such a monster?
Basically, what we have done over the past two decades wrt ship building and the Navy? Do the other thing! We used to know how to design and build fleets. This is like looking at the new pedagogy, and looking at the nuns teaching kids and thinking, "Yeah, those nuns never knew how to teach. We need rainbow flags, furries and an inability to read beyond the third grade." NO! Go back to common sense approaches!
Much happy talk. Yay. I will believe it when I see steel afloat.
Word.
Alas, a lot of buzz words akin to what I've seen during my 43 years in the air-breathing side of this business.....when you see enough of this, you tend to ignore it as the actions/sins of the past define how the message adheres - and since ships take longer to build and deploy, they tend to become victims of the political times....not that I'm unhappy that someone actually sees that there is a problem, it's just the political machine has yet to prove it can produce something ahead of need that isn't already obsolete.....maybe this time things will work out but I'm not holding my breath....and someone needs to explain why a battleship, while once cool, is not something on which we need to spend our capital.....
Because the term battleship is very nebulous. It's a ship of the line for a more traditional appellation. By post dreadnought standards, its more of a CBG(N). Why is it no one questioned the utility of the Kirov class? It's really a nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser, just like the Kirov's.
"Why is it no one questioned the utility of the Kirov class?"
Because someone else was building it, and AFAIK the Kirovs have been missing in action for the entirety of the war in Ukraine.
They only have two. One is a different fleet. The other one has had a yard period similar to the Boise but is actually being completed.
A show piece never used in combat.
How many CGN cruiser did we build that never saw combat?
Well, I'm a bit short on time this morning, but at least 2 of the 4 Virginia's launched Tomahawks in Desert Storm and they all seem to have been doing something useful at some point for actual operations. Not just showing the flag.
Have to disagree... just because the Kirovs were never used doesn't detract from their capability. Otherwise we could say the same thing about the BN-version Ohios, or B-36s, the Polaris and Trident systems, or a hundred other military systems...
So while I'd have bet on the USN in a late 80s battle of the Atlantic, the Kirovs at that time were not somthing to be taken lightly...
Obviously, the Navy focuses on the manufacturing to put hulls in the water. We need to do this but also do manufacturing generally. We never would have accomplished the WW2 buildup without civilian manufacturing to repurpose. Kaiser was a construction company (Grand Coulee Dam) that had never produced a ship before 1940. The list of civilian companies that produced M1 carbines is stunning in its diversity. The bulk were by GM and various subsidiaries.
No destroyer tenders. Also, if one is going to field that many unmanned vessels, won't we need drone tenders?
Ship deploying the drones would act as their tender.
Show me the white space for that on the ships deploying the drones. Otherwise, I'll assume no plan for forward support of uncrewed vessels.
The drones in question are up to 200 feet long and closing in on 800 tons for some. They deploy from a pier.
So do DDGs. Doesn't mean we don't need tenders.
Agreed. My response was to drones launching from a ship.
Drone corvette, not drone Mark VI.
Let's get the AS(X) into the water first. If all goes well, then revision of that original design for AD(X) shouldn't be terribly difficult.
Hopefully this will give the necessary support for increasing the nuclear construction industrial base.
Don't we need a rethink before we build more targets?
Everything, including the vaunted drones, is a target in warfare. People talk about 'targets' as if the weapon they plan to use isn't, itself, a target. People look at the Black Sea and say 'warships are obsolete'. The reality is that the Russian Black Sea fleet has been bottled up, not by the Ukrainians, but by the Turks. They can't leave. They have no safe place to retire to. They can only sit there and essentially take the pounding. Ukraine defeated the Black Sea Fleet, but Turkey tied them down first by refusing them passage through the Bosphorous.
In the rest of the world, the Houthis and Iranians have repeatedly tried to attack USN surface ships with sea-baby style drones and failed. The Iranians sent swarms of drones and small boats at USN destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz, which is more confined than the Black Sea. And they failed.
The Russian Navy is a paper-tiger. Yes, we should look at what the Ukrainians did, but we should not base a warfighting strategy off of it.
The Ukrainian experience is educational. Their actions should be considered in the strategy we put together. Tactics aren't strategy. They are the tool used to implement a strategy
Cool! That's a dandy shopping list.
So exactly which of these wunderkraft would, if only they existed, deliver us success in the present, um, contretemps in ("Lets go to the charts...") the Persian Gulf or is that the Strait of Hormuz or, somewhat farther afield, the Gulf of Oman or, oh my!, even the Arabian Sea, or, dare I say, the Indian Ocean? Put the maps away!
At any rate, let's get back to our friendly game of "if only." So...?
Any of these items would deliver us success. The issue is not that we can't occupy the Strait of Hormuz. The issue is that American citizens have very little patience for casualties. The current strategy of blockading the Iranians and starving them is a far better solution, regardless of what you use, than throwing your sailors or your equipment into a meat-grinder. I wouldn't throw my drones into the Strait of Hormuz and let them be attacked endlessly, day after day. However, I can use an LCS with its popgun 57mm and 8 NSMs to keep Iranian tankers and freighters from transiting.
And how would you go about forcing the re-opening of the Strait and settling world economies shaken by the spike in oil prices and disruption of cash flows? If you had to, what ships are needed and do we currently possess them? If not, when if ever will we posses the means to carry out national policy? I was given to understand that one or more of our carriers hightailed it to safer waters rather than risk...what? How? And how will that risk be mitigated by new iron in whatever formats and capabilities?
The issue is not forcing the strait. That's what everybody gets wrong. The issue is smoothing out the economies. Some of that work is already being done. The Saudis were wise enough to build a pipeline east to handle a pretty serious quantity of their oil already. There are alternative sources that can cover the oil lost from the gulf, at least temporarily.
Rushing in ships to fight in the strait and over-emphasizing the economic pain simply plays into the Iranians' hands. At some point, when they are no longer able to store the oil they're pumping, and the risk of catastrophic shutdown of their own oilfields looms, they will really have no choice but to reopen the strait themselves.
Bottom Line: Fight smarter, not harder. During the Reagan years, when Fracking was merely a theory, we had no choice but to 'force open the strait' and take the casualties. We have no real need to do that now.
Makes sense. So what we really need are more trucks and bulldozers to lay pipe across Arabia. Here I was thinking we needed ships. My mistake.
Whatevs, man. Sorry, not sorry that you don't like my answer.
No carriers ran to safety... and the reality is- it's the insurance companies, not the Iranians, that are bottling up shipping...
"Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth,"-Mike Tyson. The fortitude to execute as always will be the key. I hope the executors will find fair winds and following seas.
following seas are great, unless you are on the helm. At GQ I found myself on the wheel adn the JOOD remarked it looked like I was steering a sinuous course. We had a following sea that was moving the stern about fairly wildly.