I think we have enough Flt IIIs. ry for an economic minded flt IV for a High Medium Low mix where it is firmly medium. Then shoot for a real cruiser. Low end is FFX or FFXish, not FFGX.
We all know the Navy really wants the CAG option. But it probably won't get funding, so hope they can delay things until the goals are changed enough for the Navy to get what it wants.
If you look back in history, the original Flight III DDG was supposed to be a “plugged” DDG Flight II that would have expanded the number of VLS cells and accommodated an embarked staff. Instead, we got a Flight IIA that basically added an aviation facility at the expense of removing capability like CIWS and active ECM wrapped in a warfighting myth that those capabilities weren’t needed (read the Mission Need Statement that supported program initiation of what would become DDG 1000). Radical new hull designs that depart from the basic DDG 51 Class ensure that we won’t see a ship for 13 years. Figure out how we modify the hull we have, add the capability we need, and ramp up to production in numbers rather the 2/year we have now.
I think you go the other way and shoot for a money ball flt IV option where we get the most bang for the buck and numbers allowing room for development of the larger, more capable cruiser. Of course I also think that cruiser would be a Flt II Zumwalt.
That’s a tall order given the hull is not in production and was only built in one yard. You are forgetting the start-up costs for bringing another yard online to build in quantity.
Why build it in 2 yards? DDGX and BBG are also not in production and as described Bath isn't building one unless we rebuild the yard and probably dredge the river.
The Navy determined long ago that it is in our strategic interest to maintain a shipbuilding industrial base and have 2 yards building surface combatants. It is memorialized in a J&A that allows for other than full an open competition for the DDG 51. It is also what we need if we want numbers. PS. The BB is DOA.
Even if we play clean that ability would enable many ships to serve as adjunct magazines for the major combatants without relying on new unmanned ships. EPF, T-ATS for starters.
That's kind of what I always thought the Arsenal Ship should be. Masses of containerized missiles (stored in warehouses) that can be slapped onto any random boxship (snatched from civil shipping, most likely) in large numbers, remotely controlled by the actual naval vessels they sail with. Then use the boxships to enlarge missile volleys and/or delay when the actual warships have to start emptying their VLS cells. As a side benefit, maybe keep them with the warship group to act as decoys and missile/torp sponges, or take the crews off and scuttle the ASs if their low speed becomes an issue.
Bottom line: cheap expendable minimal-crew hulls packed with masses of mid/high-tier weapons intended to get shot dry in the first week (or less) of hostilities. Not replacements for actual warships.
I want feeder size box ships with their own cranes. Load them onto the smaller usvs for more targets that are harder to hit. Have enough so they can ferry back and pick up rounds. More complicated but more resilient.
I believe the commander is a careful writer. With the kids referred to as a “callout, “to the play he was making a deliberate, attempt to advance an argument.
I think it's pretty much inarguable that any "heavy" surface combatant (battleship, battlecruiser, heavy cruiser, whatever) hull in the next generation of warships is going to need *much* greater power generation capacities than any current vessel (barring perhaps the Zumwalts), regardless of the weapons fit. DEWs are going to get fitted eventually -- the only question is how many and how big? Railguns and Coilguns are still "if", but are guaranteed to be complete power hogs if they ever enter service. Sensors and compute are only getting more power-hungry, and "kinetic EW" against mass drone swarms will need to radiate at levels that Aegis and AWACS can only dream of. And finally, it seems there's a good chance of seeing electric drive trains make a comeback.
🔔 Personally, it is my limited view and opinion that if a shooting conflict (🇨🇳/🇺🇲) should occur between Xi’s CCP in the Middle Kingdom and 🦅 these 21st Century Estados Unidos 📯🛰️🪖 that it would unavoidably 🌐🗝️⚓💥 turn nuke by the 100 hour mark resulting in ☢️💀⚠️ 🩻 a billion plus casualties, but that's just me.....🪸🐚🦑
The sea is a place where tactical nukes would be allowed more than on land especially in deep blue water away from land. That is scary.
A CV or BB along with the fleets assets would be spread out very far apart just to prevent such a Nuke K Kill.
Classic WW3 theory was the sixth fleet would most likely cease to exist inside a couple of hours at best at worst just after they sent out an alpha package into Sevastopol's Black sea navy base and parts of Yugoslavia.
If 75% of our ruling class voted for Kamala that means we need a new ruling class as well as new battleships. How about a “Melania” class which would mean the ships would be elegant and beautiful?
Functional hulls in the water. Gee Whiz! Let’s add this! Let’s add that! Oops! Over budget! Reduce capabilities until we spend billions for cancelled programs. I agree that we don’t need a ‘Trump Class’ battleship, but maybe that’s the point. Compromising to get at least two heavy cruisers per battle group while expanding DDG production makes sense. In the end, perfection can be the enemy of good enough. You can’t fight a war with blueprints sitting on a drawing board with a big ‘CANCELLED’ sign across the front and empty coffers to afford anything else. We’re over 38 trillion dollars in debt, so it’s time to start being wiser with our resources.
The window opens next year. The only thing you can build in a year is munitions. You might make a small dent in the maintenance backlog, particularly if you quit running long deployments. There was a reason I advocated for mines in the comments to our host's previous post.
You could call the Trump class the “I love the Constitution and Baby Jesus” class that won’t change that it leans into everything NAVSEA has failed at for the last several decades.
It’s PPT. It’s transformational. It’s relying on cancelled or nonexistent weapons. It’s a blank slate for the good idea fairies to jump in mid construction.
It’s vaporware that will beg for the death spiral.
And the Mk 38s, RAM, ODIN, and Mk 45, and apparently the radar and SEWIP. What are the SWAP-Cs for future systems? Seems they only articulated that for some of the lasers.
Probably too conservative. Mk 41 is maxed out for the size of strike weapons, AAW, and ABM already. Could we quad pack PC-3MSE in a Mk 57? It would certainly free up space for a 2 stage ESSM-ER. For example.
And if they canceled the shore bombardment requirement for the railgun, and just used it against aerial targets.... mount the one the Japanese are developing. Would free up a lot of electrical generation.
Again this is the type of stuff the Navy has utterly failed at.
'lets drop this and add that. Lets buy this from these guys and integrate it into our system. Lets....'
We might get a keel laid but I'd be surprised if we get a hull in the water and simply shocked if we got more than 2-3 vessels, and that will take years.
I have zero faith in the Navy right now to design and commission something like this. I don't know if we can make an evolutionary DDG or CG.
I think the relevant issue is that it would dictate a certain hull depth. That swapping 32 Mk 41 for the CPS was fairly silly when you are designing from a clean sheet. Its probably over 10 feet of height difference between the 2.
Your first bullet was the self-inflicted kill shot. Not a chance Trump class survives his term. Official Washington hates him.
Until NAVSEA is given a vigorous haircut, they have proven incapable of building surface ships. Thus far, the administration has done nothing to fix this bloated bureaucracy of astonishing incompetence.
We could, but, until we reopen the yards, and BuShips returns to actually building ships, the problems will remain.
When we privatized shipbuilding, and offloaded 100% of our shipbuilding ability to for-profit multi-national corporations we defenestrated ourselves. Until we return to building, and designing government weapons in government facilities, expect more LCS and USS Fords.
And every Admiral and SES who ever served at NAVSEA had a bullet in a fitrep and/or an award citation stating how their aggressive leadership and technical expertise save NAVSEA millions and materially contributed to fleet readiness.
I rapidly concur. This administration has done a number of things I like, but this was the stupidest things he could have done to the Navy, not *for* the Navy.....and right up there in areas more visible to the general public with the gargantuan East Wing Ballroom and renaming the Kennedy Center.
Just about every post of yours (except Full-bore Friday) leaves me with an involuntary eye twitch.
I wonder why the hell China hasn't already invaded Taiwan, given the Keystone Kop level of buffoonery in our military procurement systems. Two Ukrainians with a rubber dinghy and one of their UAVs could probably do significant damage to just about any weapon system and/or operating base we've got.
I'm a Zoomie (2500 hrs in A-10s) so I don't know s**t about the Navy writ-large, other than what my old Joint Staff College buds told me (a Marine, a bubblehead, and a surface warfare officer--Lt Cdr when I knew him and I think he's a retired 3-star now), but Jesus, what a mess.
And I know we've all got stories about the idiocy we've seen that, alas, can only be erased but a significant defeat by a determined enemy. I'm just glad the Pacific Ocean is as big as it is. And as for your Point #1, couldn't agree more. I'm a transactional voter and haven't voted FOR a president since Reagan. All my other votes since have been AGAINST whatever creature the Dems put forward as a candidate.
Because Chinese are methodical and they assume that time is on their side. Ideally, they want Taiwan to just recognize the inevitable and seek peaceful rapporchment with mainland China - without fighting, without blood, without destruction. For that reason, they need to undermine the US ability to interfer; basically they need to persuade Taiwan that Americans would not be able (or even actually willing) to help them.
China has not invaded Taiwan, because Taiwan builds the chips that China depends on. Taiwan has ingeniously, or luckily, filled a manufacturing niche upon which China depends. Invading Taiwan would be disastrous for China's economy because war would destroy the factories.
There is also the aspect that as a nation dependant on trade, China needs a strong Navy to keep the sea lanes open. Now that ours is rusting, China had to build one to replace the failing US Navy.
Rusting? Sure. Failing? I’ve got a daughter (Chief) on a DDG in the 7th Fleet right now. I’d suggest that they would dispute your analysis of ‘failing’.
I can also understand the issues we discuss here to.
But the operations we’ve seen recently per our military impress me.
I think that is they key. China shows off what they can do. We have tightened up and haven't been showing many of our cards until we need them. (Or someone decided to do something "dictating" a need.
China needs sea transportation to feed the population.
If you were Chinese leadership, would you think that the USN remains the world-straddling guarantor of freedom of the seas? Or, would you conclude that they are fading fast, and that you needed your own navy to keep the food ships steaming?
I'm... less sanguine than you, I'm afraid. My eldest nephew (now deceased) went from high school graduation to Great Lakes to ET school to the Ike just in time for the Red Sea Houthi Cruise. And the stories he had to tell about a CVN *fresh from refit* were... deeply troubling. And that's *before* getting into the serious shortage of crew.
"A rose by any other name, would smell as sweet." This administration has some of the worse communicators but their ends are sound and just. I think we'll end up with a DDG. They'll throw a battleship name to it because it sounds "powerful". As for technology, that evolves much faster than ship construction. We're great at building something that we wished we had in the LAST conflict. LCS was a reasonable concept to account for technology changes until it was commissioned. I think the edge goes to the Navy who can adapt their current platforms to changing technologies rather than building something new from the hull up.
Their communications are no better or worse than others. Remember the WH spokesperson under Biden? The difference is an extremely hostile media with an advanced case of TDS. If Trump announced a cure for cancer 60 Minutes would devote an entire show to the money he would be making from the cure.
The administration’s messages are directed at his base. He has no interest in communicating to another audience unless it’s a threat. The president is also unrestrained, so messaging is unsynchronized. BTW, you mentioned the “media”. Media relations is only ONE communication tactic. Media relations adds a filter anytime you try to communicate. So it has its shortfalls from the start. For someone who worked with them for 37+ years…the “media” has changed in the 20+ years. We lost many independent newspapers. The editorial slant has returned to a sharp bias. But we’ve been here before. I don’t think the U.S. media serves as a trusted, balance scale anymore. I’d be hard pressed to recommend my boss do a media interview unless it was with a hometown reporter on a hometown issue. I think today’s young journalists have forgotten to ask important questions and are more focused on making a name for themselves with “gotcha” queries. As for TDS…another “excuse” to blame people who disagree with the President. If you ask me who is doing a good job communicating, I think Rubio and Hegseth are doing great. Not really a Hegseth fan but his current “Arsenal’ tour is great and so is his morning PT sessions with the troops. Absolutely great communication tactics.
How soon we forget. Wasn’t it only yesterday when all of DC was demanding Hegseth’s head over the article that appeared in the Atlantic? It’s almost as if the denizens of the swamp require human sacrifice from time to time.
What I find funny about the whole Atlantic Magazine "scandal" was the fact that a media representative HAD the story and didn't report it. Kinda goes against the message that the mainstream media in the Pentagon couldn't be trusted. Hey, Hegseth did a dumb thing and got caught.. He was new in the job, made a mistake, but no lives lost. Move on.
Trump derangement syndrome is why normally rational people support a senile, would-be dictator. Can you imagine the firestorm that would be unleased if Joe Biden cut a deal to send advanced AI chips to a UAE company partnered with a Chinese firm over the objection of the National Security team in return for $187M to Hunter and $31M to the Clintons? Yet Trump does it, and all the "patriots" are "OK, cool."
Much of the disgust directed to Trump is because of his actions.
I'm still in the 'build DDGs in quantity (at least 4 / year and preferably 6 - 8) until we remaster shipbuilding' camp. Then start something new.
I think we have enough Flt IIIs. ry for an economic minded flt IV for a High Medium Low mix where it is firmly medium. Then shoot for a real cruiser. Low end is FFX or FFXish, not FFGX.
We all know the Navy really wants the CAG option. But it probably won't get funding, so hope they can delay things until the goals are changed enough for the Navy to get what it wants.
I just wish we knew there were a handful of talent that someone set aside to work on hedging the current BBG bet.
That sounds like the best option.
If you look back in history, the original Flight III DDG was supposed to be a “plugged” DDG Flight II that would have expanded the number of VLS cells and accommodated an embarked staff. Instead, we got a Flight IIA that basically added an aviation facility at the expense of removing capability like CIWS and active ECM wrapped in a warfighting myth that those capabilities weren’t needed (read the Mission Need Statement that supported program initiation of what would become DDG 1000). Radical new hull designs that depart from the basic DDG 51 Class ensure that we won’t see a ship for 13 years. Figure out how we modify the hull we have, add the capability we need, and ramp up to production in numbers rather the 2/year we have now.
I think you go the other way and shoot for a money ball flt IV option where we get the most bang for the buck and numbers allowing room for development of the larger, more capable cruiser. Of course I also think that cruiser would be a Flt II Zumwalt.
That’s a tall order given the hull is not in production and was only built in one yard. You are forgetting the start-up costs for bringing another yard online to build in quantity.
Why build it in 2 yards? DDGX and BBG are also not in production and as described Bath isn't building one unless we rebuild the yard and probably dredge the river.
The Navy determined long ago that it is in our strategic interest to maintain a shipbuilding industrial base and have 2 yards building surface combatants. It is memorialized in a J&A that allows for other than full an open competition for the DDG 51. It is also what we need if we want numbers. PS. The BB is DOA.
Containerized Anti-Ship missiles 🚛 turn every MerchantMan into a possible kamikazi arsenal platform. The crew would never know....
Even if we play clean that ability would enable many ships to serve as adjunct magazines for the major combatants without relying on new unmanned ships. EPF, T-ATS for starters.
That's kind of what I always thought the Arsenal Ship should be. Masses of containerized missiles (stored in warehouses) that can be slapped onto any random boxship (snatched from civil shipping, most likely) in large numbers, remotely controlled by the actual naval vessels they sail with. Then use the boxships to enlarge missile volleys and/or delay when the actual warships have to start emptying their VLS cells. As a side benefit, maybe keep them with the warship group to act as decoys and missile/torp sponges, or take the crews off and scuttle the ASs if their low speed becomes an issue.
Bottom line: cheap expendable minimal-crew hulls packed with masses of mid/high-tier weapons intended to get shot dry in the first week (or less) of hostilities. Not replacements for actual warships.
I want feeder size box ships with their own cranes. Load them onto the smaller usvs for more targets that are harder to hit. Have enough so they can ferry back and pick up rounds. More complicated but more resilient.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to sink it than bury it?
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest
(For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men),
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me,
But Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,
And sure he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause.
What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?—
O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason!—Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
Wow. You really know how to write Tom. Maybe you ought write a play or something. I’m impressed.
I believe the commander is a careful writer. With the kids referred to as a “callout, “to the play he was making a deliberate, attempt to advance an argument.
The BBG needs to be nuclear powered. For <sarc> to fight global warming </sarc>
Or we just do a flt II Zumwalt upping the power to 88MW or more. Put in those 36.5MW PMMs we developed but didn't have ready for Flt I.
I think it's pretty much inarguable that any "heavy" surface combatant (battleship, battlecruiser, heavy cruiser, whatever) hull in the next generation of warships is going to need *much* greater power generation capacities than any current vessel (barring perhaps the Zumwalts), regardless of the weapons fit. DEWs are going to get fitted eventually -- the only question is how many and how big? Railguns and Coilguns are still "if", but are guaranteed to be complete power hogs if they ever enter service. Sensors and compute are only getting more power-hungry, and "kinetic EW" against mass drone swarms will need to radiate at levels that Aegis and AWACS can only dream of. And finally, it seems there's a good chance of seeing electric drive trains make a comeback.
📯⚔️📡👁️🛰️💫🗝️🌐 Surface Warfare in the 21st century is a stupendously high risk endeavor....⚓💥 🌊 🐬 🪸 🦑
It will be fast, mean and dirty, a real "Gut bustin' Mother loving Navy war."
Google USS Carney DDH-64 2023-2024
🔔 Personally, it is my limited view and opinion that if a shooting conflict (🇨🇳/🇺🇲) should occur between Xi’s CCP in the Middle Kingdom and 🦅 these 21st Century Estados Unidos 📯🛰️🪖 that it would unavoidably 🌐🗝️⚓💥 turn nuke by the 100 hour mark resulting in ☢️💀⚠️ 🩻 a billion plus casualties, but that's just me.....🪸🐚🦑
The sea is a place where tactical nukes would be allowed more than on land especially in deep blue water away from land. That is scary.
A CV or BB along with the fleets assets would be spread out very far apart just to prevent such a Nuke K Kill.
Classic WW3 theory was the sixth fleet would most likely cease to exist inside a couple of hours at best at worst just after they sent out an alpha package into Sevastopol's Black sea navy base and parts of Yugoslavia.
⏱️Definitely a part of my 100hour calculation. ✔️
Semper Fortis
Semper Supra
FLY FIGHT WIN
If 75% of our ruling class voted for Kamala that means we need a new ruling class as well as new battleships. How about a “Melania” class which would mean the ships would be elegant and beautiful?
Or work on a better system for how we end up with who we have to pick.
Mr. Yarvin would like to speak to you....;)
Name them after a famous democrat, The Robert E Lee class or the Nathan Bedford Forrest class LOL /sarc
Functional hulls in the water. Gee Whiz! Let’s add this! Let’s add that! Oops! Over budget! Reduce capabilities until we spend billions for cancelled programs. I agree that we don’t need a ‘Trump Class’ battleship, but maybe that’s the point. Compromising to get at least two heavy cruisers per battle group while expanding DDG production makes sense. In the end, perfection can be the enemy of good enough. You can’t fight a war with blueprints sitting on a drawing board with a big ‘CANCELLED’ sign across the front and empty coffers to afford anything else. We’re over 38 trillion dollars in debt, so it’s time to start being wiser with our resources.
Naval moneyball.
The window opens next year. The only thing you can build in a year is munitions. You might make a small dent in the maintenance backlog, particularly if you quit running long deployments. There was a reason I advocated for mines in the comments to our host's previous post.
Mines and usvs
You could call the Trump class the “I love the Constitution and Baby Jesus” class that won’t change that it leans into everything NAVSEA has failed at for the last several decades.
It’s PPT. It’s transformational. It’s relying on cancelled or nonexistent weapons. It’s a blank slate for the good idea fairies to jump in mid construction.
It’s vaporware that will beg for the death spiral.
Erm... with the exception of railgun, every other system is rather conservative.
CPS missiles are in the fleet now? SLCM-N exists?
The only thing conventional is the VLS.
And the Mk 38s, RAM, ODIN, and Mk 45, and apparently the radar and SEWIP. What are the SWAP-Cs for future systems? Seems they only articulated that for some of the lasers.
Is not the TLAM-N a SLCM-N? We know how to build them.
Probably too conservative. Mk 41 is maxed out for the size of strike weapons, AAW, and ABM already. Could we quad pack PC-3MSE in a Mk 57? It would certainly free up space for a 2 stage ESSM-ER. For example.
And if they canceled the shore bombardment requirement for the railgun, and just used it against aerial targets.... mount the one the Japanese are developing. Would free up a lot of electrical generation.
Again this is the type of stuff the Navy has utterly failed at.
'lets drop this and add that. Lets buy this from these guys and integrate it into our system. Lets....'
We might get a keel laid but I'd be surprised if we get a hull in the water and simply shocked if we got more than 2-3 vessels, and that will take years.
I have zero faith in the Navy right now to design and commission something like this. I don't know if we can make an evolutionary DDG or CG.
At SNA, ADM Trinque said that if he wanted to put CPS on DDGX it'd cost half his missiles and the gun
I think the relevant issue is that it would dictate a certain hull depth. That swapping 32 Mk 41 for the CPS was fairly silly when you are designing from a clean sheet. Its probably over 10 feet of height difference between the 2.
Square containers in your SSP visual are Army containers that hold the common missile. Navy will use round containers.
MerchantMen will carry Anti-Ship missiles in standard 🚛 shipping containers. 🌐🚢📡💥
Get thee below the surface....🐬⚠️
Your first bullet was the self-inflicted kill shot. Not a chance Trump class survives his term. Official Washington hates him.
Until NAVSEA is given a vigorous haircut, they have proven incapable of building surface ships. Thus far, the administration has done nothing to fix this bloated bureaucracy of astonishing incompetence.
Questionable ability to build subs, too. And auxiliaries.
Can we burn down NAVSEA, raze it flat, and replace it with something we call BuShips?
We could, but, until we reopen the yards, and BuShips returns to actually building ships, the problems will remain.
When we privatized shipbuilding, and offloaded 100% of our shipbuilding ability to for-profit multi-national corporations we defenestrated ourselves. Until we return to building, and designing government weapons in government facilities, expect more LCS and USS Fords.
The public yards are not showing much reason to keep them open. Way to slow to complete complex tasks.
And every Admiral and SES who ever served at NAVSEA had a bullet in a fitrep and/or an award citation stating how their aggressive leadership and technical expertise save NAVSEA millions and materially contributed to fleet readiness.
Except getting rid of the upper end of talent that can either retire or get a job elsewhere.
I rapidly concur. This administration has done a number of things I like, but this was the stupidest things he could have done to the Navy, not *for* the Navy.....and right up there in areas more visible to the general public with the gargantuan East Wing Ballroom and renaming the Kennedy Center.
Just about every post of yours (except Full-bore Friday) leaves me with an involuntary eye twitch.
I wonder why the hell China hasn't already invaded Taiwan, given the Keystone Kop level of buffoonery in our military procurement systems. Two Ukrainians with a rubber dinghy and one of their UAVs could probably do significant damage to just about any weapon system and/or operating base we've got.
I'm a Zoomie (2500 hrs in A-10s) so I don't know s**t about the Navy writ-large, other than what my old Joint Staff College buds told me (a Marine, a bubblehead, and a surface warfare officer--Lt Cdr when I knew him and I think he's a retired 3-star now), but Jesus, what a mess.
And I know we've all got stories about the idiocy we've seen that, alas, can only be erased but a significant defeat by a determined enemy. I'm just glad the Pacific Ocean is as big as it is. And as for your Point #1, couldn't agree more. I'm a transactional voter and haven't voted FOR a president since Reagan. All my other votes since have been AGAINST whatever creature the Dems put forward as a candidate.
Because Chinese are methodical and they assume that time is on their side. Ideally, they want Taiwan to just recognize the inevitable and seek peaceful rapporchment with mainland China - without fighting, without blood, without destruction. For that reason, they need to undermine the US ability to interfer; basically they need to persuade Taiwan that Americans would not be able (or even actually willing) to help them.
China has not invaded Taiwan, because Taiwan builds the chips that China depends on. Taiwan has ingeniously, or luckily, filled a manufacturing niche upon which China depends. Invading Taiwan would be disastrous for China's economy because war would destroy the factories.
There is also the aspect that as a nation dependant on trade, China needs a strong Navy to keep the sea lanes open. Now that ours is rusting, China had to build one to replace the failing US Navy.
Rusting? Sure. Failing? I’ve got a daughter (Chief) on a DDG in the 7th Fleet right now. I’d suggest that they would dispute your analysis of ‘failing’.
I can also understand the issues we discuss here to.
But the operations we’ve seen recently per our military impress me.
Too
I think that is they key. China shows off what they can do. We have tightened up and haven't been showing many of our cards until we need them. (Or someone decided to do something "dictating" a need.
China needs sea transportation to feed the population.
If you were Chinese leadership, would you think that the USN remains the world-straddling guarantor of freedom of the seas? Or, would you conclude that they are fading fast, and that you needed your own navy to keep the food ships steaming?
Exactly
I'm... less sanguine than you, I'm afraid. My eldest nephew (now deceased) went from high school graduation to Great Lakes to ET school to the Ike just in time for the Red Sea Houthi Cruise. And the stories he had to tell about a CVN *fresh from refit* were... deeply troubling. And that's *before* getting into the serious shortage of crew.
"A rose by any other name, would smell as sweet." This administration has some of the worse communicators but their ends are sound and just. I think we'll end up with a DDG. They'll throw a battleship name to it because it sounds "powerful". As for technology, that evolves much faster than ship construction. We're great at building something that we wished we had in the LAST conflict. LCS was a reasonable concept to account for technology changes until it was commissioned. I think the edge goes to the Navy who can adapt their current platforms to changing technologies rather than building something new from the hull up.
Their communications are no better or worse than others. Remember the WH spokesperson under Biden? The difference is an extremely hostile media with an advanced case of TDS. If Trump announced a cure for cancer 60 Minutes would devote an entire show to the money he would be making from the cure.
The administration’s messages are directed at his base. He has no interest in communicating to another audience unless it’s a threat. The president is also unrestrained, so messaging is unsynchronized. BTW, you mentioned the “media”. Media relations is only ONE communication tactic. Media relations adds a filter anytime you try to communicate. So it has its shortfalls from the start. For someone who worked with them for 37+ years…the “media” has changed in the 20+ years. We lost many independent newspapers. The editorial slant has returned to a sharp bias. But we’ve been here before. I don’t think the U.S. media serves as a trusted, balance scale anymore. I’d be hard pressed to recommend my boss do a media interview unless it was with a hometown reporter on a hometown issue. I think today’s young journalists have forgotten to ask important questions and are more focused on making a name for themselves with “gotcha” queries. As for TDS…another “excuse” to blame people who disagree with the President. If you ask me who is doing a good job communicating, I think Rubio and Hegseth are doing great. Not really a Hegseth fan but his current “Arsenal’ tour is great and so is his morning PT sessions with the troops. Absolutely great communication tactics.
How soon we forget. Wasn’t it only yesterday when all of DC was demanding Hegseth’s head over the article that appeared in the Atlantic? It’s almost as if the denizens of the swamp require human sacrifice from time to time.
What I find funny about the whole Atlantic Magazine "scandal" was the fact that a media representative HAD the story and didn't report it. Kinda goes against the message that the mainstream media in the Pentagon couldn't be trusted. Hey, Hegseth did a dumb thing and got caught.. He was new in the job, made a mistake, but no lives lost. Move on.
Trump derangement syndrome is why normally rational people support a senile, would-be dictator. Can you imagine the firestorm that would be unleased if Joe Biden cut a deal to send advanced AI chips to a UAE company partnered with a Chinese firm over the objection of the National Security team in return for $187M to Hunter and $31M to the Clintons? Yet Trump does it, and all the "patriots" are "OK, cool."
Much of the disgust directed to Trump is because of his actions.
I would be shocked if Biden could locate the UAE on a map.
Talk about senile.
I doubt if Crooks wanted to kill Trump jus because of one of his business deals.
Trump permitted the sale of technology to China for personal profit. He sold out the nation for thirty pieces of silver.
You really need help. The type of help that casts out demons. I can't help you with that, but you might try reading the good book.
It suggests that I should welcome immigrants.
Build ordnance, not targets.