It's true that the Navy faced and overcame crises in the past, but past performance is no assurance of future returns.
Personally, I see nothing going on in today's Navy - mired in Marxist PC DEI claptrap and filled with incompetents - that leads me to believe there is any hope.
I don't see Ronald Reagan and John Lehman on the horizon, but I do see Kamala Harris crying "victim" and Pete Buttegeig muttering something about transportation racism.
Future historians may look at the Reagan years as a brief uptick in a nation that was going downhill steadily from Vietnam to Yemen.
I have been reading the excellent Navy Matters website which reports on the state of the Royal Navy. I think they need the message contained in this article more than the USN, just now, because while they have two new frigate classes under construction and are just now turning the corner on their SSN availability woes, they may go down to as few as seven active frigates for a couple of years, first.
The challenge will be surviving this period, retaining personnel and maintaining morale so that they can rebuild as the new hulls come online. Very similar in substance, if not in scale, to the problems the USN faces in retaining good people and replacing obsolete equipment.
It will be very interesting to compare how both services are doing by the end of this decade.
I recall the 70s quite well. I joined in June '72, boot at Orlando, QM 'A' at Newport, then Courtney (DE-1021), Sep '72-Dec '73, then Sylvania (hated it. I was a Tin Can type of guy). Started engineering school in '74, and left after a year when accepted to Warrant Officer flight at Fort Rucker, only to have a childhood problem raise its ugly head which sent me to medical elimination.
The dark cloud over the military was not clear while my father was stationed in Germany '66-'69, but it was obvious by the time I got to Rucker. During Carter's maladministration, there was concern about issuing ammo for weapons quals as they weren't sure what target it would be expended upon. Many here, I'm sure, recall the atmosphere change when Carter was sent packing and the gipper took office.
Things were not as bad under Clinton as they were Carter, but that has changed enormously after changes made during daddy Bush's regime took root and "flowered." The military is now an utter mess, and I tell kids to stay away when I used to tell a kid that wasn't sure about life to sign up for a hitch, in a job that appeared interesting. They would have something saleable to bring to the job market, or, at least, have some basis on which to determine what they wanted to do with life, assuming they didn't make the service a career.
Best route now is to go to a community college, and take a few courses. As long as the services are feminized and woke, they aren't worth the trouble. While I know what that means for the country, I can't help it, and I feel saddened by it.
Funny,I was born summer of 71, and yet we walked the same decks. I was aboard Syl 91-93. Considering my first orders in A School were for the Missouri, it was a bit of a letdown. But, in retrospect, Meds on an AFS are great duty!!!
Yep, and that is far worse than the dark cloud of the 70s. DEI and wokeness is why the officer corps is increasingly poorly trained, and very poor leaders, if they can even be dignified with such a label. It is even affecting the Chiefs, alas.
I enlisted in 73,was commissioned in 81; the advantage THEN was that we did have leadership in the senior ranks, certainly not perfect but at least the concept of Good Order and Discipline had not been doomed by DEI, victimhood and perversion as it largely has been today.
We were preparing to fight the Soviets then; we have become the Soviets now.
We have become the Soviet Union of our time and, for now, I tell the young men who bring it (where to go to 'see the elephant') up to join the Texas Highway Patrol and avoid DOD and other fed jobs like the plague.
The human behavior pattern is consistent throughout recorded history. During the vintage movie "Battle of Britain", Laurence Olivier (as Marshal Dowding) said, "But the essential arithmetic is that our young men will have to shoot down their young men at the rate of four to one, if we're to keep pace at all." That reflects the brutal human logistical arithmetic of that conflict. Britain, although in decline, rose to that occasion. Our Navy, and the Aegis System, have performed well. Looks like they will shortly have a chance to perform again as the Middle East continues to boil over. So far we haven't had to deal as a nation with human logistics (loss of life) and / or ships. Pray that it remains so. But, if defensive resources in the magazines / VLS of our ships and AAM of our aircraft become insufficient to deal with the incoming vampires or drones, that will be the true test of strength and resilience.
The former first minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, has already famously complained that the Scottish government has too many whites in it. That shows a lot of (dare I say it?) chutzpah.
I have had the privilege to be acquainted with many of the servicemen and women, administrators, scientists, physicians, mathematicians, and technicians involved in the hard tasks of concentualizing, inventing, prototypying and testing many of the naval weapons used over the last 60 years. The work has not come easily, but has taken a lot of hard work and determination over the last 100+ years since the establishment of the Navy's Research and Developent Facilities at Indian Head and Dahlgren.
The post-Viet Nam era was horrible for all who served at that time. Yet the military recovered, improved, and marched on. I believe we're in the same place today as we were then. Civilians have been lied to by a government that is led by gypsys, tramps, and thieves. Just like the 70's, we will endure, improve, and march on. The traditions of all our military services are too deeply ingrained to be destroyed by silly civilian trends, at least in the long term. To us the question is "do we have enough time to effect the cure?"
I am not so sure. I used to think that the FBI was incorruptible and I never quite understood why they handed over personnel files of Bush, Sr. appointees to Hillary.
And then came Mueller, Comey, McCabe and Wray who turned the premier LE agency into an arm of a political party.
Nice to know you are a potential terrorist if you like Latin.
Pete, most people didn't know J Edgar Hoover had blackmail files either. That's how he stayed in power. The rest of the poseurs were just continuing the legacy. The FBI did some good work in the old days, sure, but they were corrupt at the top from the beginning. Someone had to notice how it worked for J Edgar and figured, why not? It is tough to have our TV dreams of Elliot Ness and Ephraim Zimbalist Jr dashed on the rocks of reality...
Hoover never sent FBI agents to raid a former president's home, sniff his wife's lingerie and give them the authority to shoot secret service agents if they objected.
No, unfortunately we get more coarse as a people as time goes on. Just like a TV show, it needs to be bigger, better, more violent, or more sexual each season because something shocking is normalized. The same goes for human behavior - what was never done (or just not talked about) becomes acceptable (normalized). It's a human trait, and we see it everywhere. I'd bet if Hoover had a bone to pick with Calvin Coolidge, he'd have raided his home. Don't know about the rest, though....
Peter, baby. Hoover was horrible. None of the nonsense in the last ten years came even close to the illegal activity perpetrated by J. Edgar Hoover. He and the FBI flat out murdered folks. Cf. Roy Cohn.
Of course we are led by "gypsys, tramps, and thieves." That's who we are. Americans are pirates, felons and other transportables. We are escaped slaves, and disgraced nobles. We are a rough bunch, but we have a constitution that, when followed, allows us to govern ourselves.
Talking about leadership (lack therof?), accountability, (lack therof?) etc... I was just ranting about the Navy/Congress relationshipship last week...
It's true that we must strive to avoid the black pill(s) that are so readily available, while working to defeat their sources.
Speaking of Aegis, I just read an interesting book by Thomas Wildenberg: "The Origins of Aegis: Eli T. Reich, Wayne Meyer, and the Creation of a Revolutionary Naval Weapons System." I was hoping for a bit more technical description, there was some, in addition to very interesting biographies of both men.
In my opinion it all simply boils down to leadership and culture similarities. A follower must be inculcated into a culture that rewards hard work and institutionalizes that desire of work - reward or plainly stated: Navy - Ship - Subordinates - Self. Leaders must care deeply for their subordinates and grow that confidence and culture. A return to a legit warrior spirit, not the trite fake words they spew. A meritocracy.
Until we get back to that ground truth, the material won’t really matter. I’d follow some of old skippers and CPO’s into battle on a Fletcher before I’d follow today’s Commanding Officers in an Arleigh Burke class. Why? Trust. It’s been broken from the moral hazards and lies from pretty much every rank of Senior Chief and Commander on up.
Shit needs fixed. We need a major in-house cleaning in the palace.
I wish I had optimism about this situation, but I don't. I want to avoid the black pill, but here it is:
• Our military has been thoroughly infiltrated by the same cultural Marxist termites that have infested every other institution in the West. We aren't worried about getting the job done but promote based on skin color or sexual perversion. I advise every young person to avoid joining the military because of this.
• Our national debt is $35 trillion and climbing. The way to stop sinking into a hole is to stop digging, yet our ruling elites just keep digging with ever-larger shovels.
• Every program, save the Virginia class SSN, is way over budget and late because our leaders thought it'd be a brilliant idea to ship our industrial base overseas to make our financial pirate class rich (and provide kickbacks to politicians) and please the NIMBYs who hate icky industrial sites in their cities.
• Our CVNs have short-ranged air wings with no organic tanker support (at least until the UAV tankers arrive sometime) and no carrier-based, long-range ASW aircraft. And there aren't enough of either carriers or air wings.
• Our "pacing threat" is slapping hulls in the water every week while our ruling class loots the treasury and fills our nation up with Third World primitives who aren't smart enough to hold jobs in a modern economy and always vote for the party of free lollipops while ruining our social trust and bringing crime and disease while remaking the country into another Third World hellhole. They're not here to become Americans, but to pick the remnants from the bones of a once-great nation.
• Our stupid "joint" command structure requires equal cuts of the pie for the armed services, but we are an oceanic power. The Navy/Marine Corps team should get a larger share, followed by the Air Force and lastly, the Army. You can't spool up a large fleet in a hurry, but you can do that with a land army. No reason we need to have as large an army as we have. Give me 15 carrier task groups and reduce the number of Army divisions, maybe even by half.
Some things looked bad in 1971. But it is important to remember that the West had overwhelming advantages in seapower at that time.
Out of world merchant fleets in 1971, the Western alliance controlled 56% of world deadweight tonnage, and the Warsaw Pact 5%. In world merchant ship deliveries, the US, Western Europe, and Japan produced 686 of 1,086 ships, and the Soviets 134.
The US Navy was very clearly more technologically advanced and blue-water capable than the Soviet Navy in 1971.
The economies of the US and its allies were vastly greater than those of the USSR and its allies.
Overall there were far more grounds for optimism in 1971 than there are in 2024, and that's even setting aside the obvious benefits of hindsight.
China is full of hegemonic dreams and ambitions. They have literally stated their plans. We dither. Agree with your assessment. We were more capable in 71 relative to the world than we are now. We also had an industrial base. Now? We simply consume.
We were sliding down the slippery slope in 1971, but now we are trying get ourselves unstuck from the quicksand in the swamp at the bottom of the valley....
It was quite crappy to be in any service in 1971 and it got worse until after Carter left office.
I understand Carter did push missile development that may have led to the cruise missiles of today but to destroy the main line military to the point it could not interoperate between services to free hostages from a third world nation was criminal.
What a blistering attack on the FF/DE! Not just blistering, but accurate.
If you took a sailor, and had him serve on a DD, then put him on a DE, you'd fully understand how valid his criticisms were. According to this author, surface ship ASW was useless in the 1980's. All our information on current ASW is classified; and it is questionable whether the situation is any better. In the 80's real tacticians considered the diesel electric sub a considerable brown water threat; a technology that does not require boiling water atomically. What is the current state of our ASW?
Not questionable at all. You prosecute sub threats as far away from the CVBG (or whatever the hell its called now). You want to play in the brown water then you build stubby legged jets for your airwing. You want to prosecute SSKs in your inner ring, you build ASW forces to match. Peace dividend says that submarine threats have gone away or are so degraded as to be a non-issue. Many others have pointed out that may not be the case but it will take some sunken vessels to support a compelling case.
"Besides the range issue, the American CSG also faces a glaring shortfall in the realm of anti-submarine warfare. This discipline has atrophied across the U.S. Navy since the end of the Cold War, to the extent that Naval War College Professor James R. Holmes maintains that sub-hunting has been a “subsidiary function (of the USN) for a generation.”"
You made my point better. The shift to all helicopters instead of the S-3 Vikings and helicopters has made us weaker. With the S-3 we could do airborne ASW at a distance from the carrier. With helos on the decks of ships, we are putting a lot more equipment in range of the subs we are trying to prosecute.
Interesting to me is that CAPT Smith was birthed at the Academy at the end of WWII, served through Korean Conflict and almost all of the Vietnam Conflict. And saw the rise of the PRC and the USSR, and the height of the “Cold War.”
Hope is not a strategy.
It's true that the Navy faced and overcame crises in the past, but past performance is no assurance of future returns.
Personally, I see nothing going on in today's Navy - mired in Marxist PC DEI claptrap and filled with incompetents - that leads me to believe there is any hope.
I don't see Ronald Reagan and John Lehman on the horizon, but I do see Kamala Harris crying "victim" and Pete Buttegeig muttering something about transportation racism.
Future historians may look at the Reagan years as a brief uptick in a nation that was going downhill steadily from Vietnam to Yemen.
Slight correction per VADM E.B. Fowler - "Hope is not a WINNING strategy". But your point is dead on.
I have been reading the excellent Navy Matters website which reports on the state of the Royal Navy. I think they need the message contained in this article more than the USN, just now, because while they have two new frigate classes under construction and are just now turning the corner on their SSN availability woes, they may go down to as few as seven active frigates for a couple of years, first.
The challenge will be surviving this period, retaining personnel and maintaining morale so that they can rebuild as the new hulls come online. Very similar in substance, if not in scale, to the problems the USN faces in retaining good people and replacing obsolete equipment.
It will be very interesting to compare how both services are doing by the end of this decade.
Correction: Navy Lookout (Navy Matters shut down, years ago.)
Navy Matters is doing quite well. One of the better sites on Naval issues. And he doesn't pull punches. https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/
I recall the 70s quite well. I joined in June '72, boot at Orlando, QM 'A' at Newport, then Courtney (DE-1021), Sep '72-Dec '73, then Sylvania (hated it. I was a Tin Can type of guy). Started engineering school in '74, and left after a year when accepted to Warrant Officer flight at Fort Rucker, only to have a childhood problem raise its ugly head which sent me to medical elimination.
The dark cloud over the military was not clear while my father was stationed in Germany '66-'69, but it was obvious by the time I got to Rucker. During Carter's maladministration, there was concern about issuing ammo for weapons quals as they weren't sure what target it would be expended upon. Many here, I'm sure, recall the atmosphere change when Carter was sent packing and the gipper took office.
Things were not as bad under Clinton as they were Carter, but that has changed enormously after changes made during daddy Bush's regime took root and "flowered." The military is now an utter mess, and I tell kids to stay away when I used to tell a kid that wasn't sure about life to sign up for a hitch, in a job that appeared interesting. They would have something saleable to bring to the job market, or, at least, have some basis on which to determine what they wanted to do with life, assuming they didn't make the service a career.
Best route now is to go to a community college, and take a few courses. As long as the services are feminized and woke, they aren't worth the trouble. While I know what that means for the country, I can't help it, and I feel saddened by it.
Funny,I was born summer of 71, and yet we walked the same decks. I was aboard Syl 91-93. Considering my first orders in A School were for the Missouri, it was a bit of a letdown. But, in retrospect, Meds on an AFS are great duty!!!
I'm a can sort of sailor. Loved sailing as well, and found myself on board several in the Caribbean during my sailing says.
Unfortunately, the DEI cancer had consumed colleges and corporations and many other institutions.
Yep, and that is far worse than the dark cloud of the 70s. DEI and wokeness is why the officer corps is increasingly poorly trained, and very poor leaders, if they can even be dignified with such a label. It is even affecting the Chiefs, alas.
THIS.
I enlisted in 73,was commissioned in 81; the advantage THEN was that we did have leadership in the senior ranks, certainly not perfect but at least the concept of Good Order and Discipline had not been doomed by DEI, victimhood and perversion as it largely has been today.
We were preparing to fight the Soviets then; we have become the Soviets now.
When I see all the folks here opposed to free trade I can’t help but agree.
We have become the Soviet Union of our time and, for now, I tell the young men who bring it (where to go to 'see the elephant') up to join the Texas Highway Patrol and avoid DOD and other fed jobs like the plague.
Cdr Sal,
Well said.
The human behavior pattern is consistent throughout recorded history. During the vintage movie "Battle of Britain", Laurence Olivier (as Marshal Dowding) said, "But the essential arithmetic is that our young men will have to shoot down their young men at the rate of four to one, if we're to keep pace at all." That reflects the brutal human logistical arithmetic of that conflict. Britain, although in decline, rose to that occasion. Our Navy, and the Aegis System, have performed well. Looks like they will shortly have a chance to perform again as the Middle East continues to boil over. So far we haven't had to deal as a nation with human logistics (loss of life) and / or ships. Pray that it remains so. But, if defensive resources in the magazines / VLS of our ships and AAM of our aircraft become insufficient to deal with the incoming vampires or drones, that will be the true test of strength and resilience.
Dowding's modern counterpart would complain about there being too many white males in the RAF.
You win the internets today!
The former first minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, has already famously complained that the Scottish government has too many whites in it. That shows a lot of (dare I say it?) chutzpah.
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/watch-in-full-humza-yousafs-white-people-speech-that-has-sparked-racism-complaints-under-scotlands-new-hate-crime-law-4578704
I have had the privilege to be acquainted with many of the servicemen and women, administrators, scientists, physicians, mathematicians, and technicians involved in the hard tasks of concentualizing, inventing, prototypying and testing many of the naval weapons used over the last 60 years. The work has not come easily, but has taken a lot of hard work and determination over the last 100+ years since the establishment of the Navy's Research and Developent Facilities at Indian Head and Dahlgren.
The post-Viet Nam era was horrible for all who served at that time. Yet the military recovered, improved, and marched on. I believe we're in the same place today as we were then. Civilians have been lied to by a government that is led by gypsys, tramps, and thieves. Just like the 70's, we will endure, improve, and march on. The traditions of all our military services are too deeply ingrained to be destroyed by silly civilian trends, at least in the long term. To us the question is "do we have enough time to effect the cure?"
I am not so sure. I used to think that the FBI was incorruptible and I never quite understood why they handed over personnel files of Bush, Sr. appointees to Hillary.
And then came Mueller, Comey, McCabe and Wray who turned the premier LE agency into an arm of a political party.
Nice to know you are a potential terrorist if you like Latin.
Pete, most people didn't know J Edgar Hoover had blackmail files either. That's how he stayed in power. The rest of the poseurs were just continuing the legacy. The FBI did some good work in the old days, sure, but they were corrupt at the top from the beginning. Someone had to notice how it worked for J Edgar and figured, why not? It is tough to have our TV dreams of Elliot Ness and Ephraim Zimbalist Jr dashed on the rocks of reality...
Hoover never sent FBI agents to raid a former president's home, sniff his wife's lingerie and give them the authority to shoot secret service agents if they objected.
No, unfortunately we get more coarse as a people as time goes on. Just like a TV show, it needs to be bigger, better, more violent, or more sexual each season because something shocking is normalized. The same goes for human behavior - what was never done (or just not talked about) becomes acceptable (normalized). It's a human trait, and we see it everywhere. I'd bet if Hoover had a bone to pick with Calvin Coolidge, he'd have raided his home. Don't know about the rest, though....
Peter, baby. Hoover was horrible. None of the nonsense in the last ten years came even close to the illegal activity perpetrated by J. Edgar Hoover. He and the FBI flat out murdered folks. Cf. Roy Cohn.
What about Roy Cohn?
If you know, you know.
delenda est Carthago.
Of course we are led by "gypsys, tramps, and thieves." That's who we are. Americans are pirates, felons and other transportables. We are escaped slaves, and disgraced nobles. We are a rough bunch, but we have a constitution that, when followed, allows us to govern ourselves.
This seems oddly connected-
Talking about leadership (lack therof?), accountability, (lack therof?) etc... I was just ranting about the Navy/Congress relationshipship last week...
https://navy-matters.blogspot.com/2024/08/ford-class-notes.html#c3816969459737910465
It's true that we must strive to avoid the black pill(s) that are so readily available, while working to defeat their sources.
Speaking of Aegis, I just read an interesting book by Thomas Wildenberg: "The Origins of Aegis: Eli T. Reich, Wayne Meyer, and the Creation of a Revolutionary Naval Weapons System." I was hoping for a bit more technical description, there was some, in addition to very interesting biographies of both men.
In my opinion it all simply boils down to leadership and culture similarities. A follower must be inculcated into a culture that rewards hard work and institutionalizes that desire of work - reward or plainly stated: Navy - Ship - Subordinates - Self. Leaders must care deeply for their subordinates and grow that confidence and culture. A return to a legit warrior spirit, not the trite fake words they spew. A meritocracy.
Until we get back to that ground truth, the material won’t really matter. I’d follow some of old skippers and CPO’s into battle on a Fletcher before I’d follow today’s Commanding Officers in an Arleigh Burke class. Why? Trust. It’s been broken from the moral hazards and lies from pretty much every rank of Senior Chief and Commander on up.
Shit needs fixed. We need a major in-house cleaning in the palace.
We need a return of the General Board.
I wish I had optimism about this situation, but I don't. I want to avoid the black pill, but here it is:
• Our military has been thoroughly infiltrated by the same cultural Marxist termites that have infested every other institution in the West. We aren't worried about getting the job done but promote based on skin color or sexual perversion. I advise every young person to avoid joining the military because of this.
• Our national debt is $35 trillion and climbing. The way to stop sinking into a hole is to stop digging, yet our ruling elites just keep digging with ever-larger shovels.
• Every program, save the Virginia class SSN, is way over budget and late because our leaders thought it'd be a brilliant idea to ship our industrial base overseas to make our financial pirate class rich (and provide kickbacks to politicians) and please the NIMBYs who hate icky industrial sites in their cities.
• Our CVNs have short-ranged air wings with no organic tanker support (at least until the UAV tankers arrive sometime) and no carrier-based, long-range ASW aircraft. And there aren't enough of either carriers or air wings.
• Our "pacing threat" is slapping hulls in the water every week while our ruling class loots the treasury and fills our nation up with Third World primitives who aren't smart enough to hold jobs in a modern economy and always vote for the party of free lollipops while ruining our social trust and bringing crime and disease while remaking the country into another Third World hellhole. They're not here to become Americans, but to pick the remnants from the bones of a once-great nation.
• Our stupid "joint" command structure requires equal cuts of the pie for the armed services, but we are an oceanic power. The Navy/Marine Corps team should get a larger share, followed by the Air Force and lastly, the Army. You can't spool up a large fleet in a hurry, but you can do that with a land army. No reason we need to have as large an army as we have. Give me 15 carrier task groups and reduce the number of Army divisions, maybe even by half.
Some things looked bad in 1971. But it is important to remember that the West had overwhelming advantages in seapower at that time.
Out of world merchant fleets in 1971, the Western alliance controlled 56% of world deadweight tonnage, and the Warsaw Pact 5%. In world merchant ship deliveries, the US, Western Europe, and Japan produced 686 of 1,086 ships, and the Soviets 134.
The US Navy was very clearly more technologically advanced and blue-water capable than the Soviet Navy in 1971.
The economies of the US and its allies were vastly greater than those of the USSR and its allies.
Overall there were far more grounds for optimism in 1971 than there are in 2024, and that's even setting aside the obvious benefits of hindsight.
China is full of hegemonic dreams and ambitions. They have literally stated their plans. We dither. Agree with your assessment. We were more capable in 71 relative to the world than we are now. We also had an industrial base. Now? We simply consume.
We were sliding down the slippery slope in 1971, but now we are trying get ourselves unstuck from the quicksand in the swamp at the bottom of the valley....
I think it is time for you to share again those great pics of your crumb crunching self hanging w/the 1970s Navy.
Wilco!
It was quite crappy to be in any service in 1971 and it got worse until after Carter left office.
I understand Carter did push missile development that may have led to the cruise missiles of today but to destroy the main line military to the point it could not interoperate between services to free hostages from a third world nation was criminal.
What a blistering attack on the FF/DE! Not just blistering, but accurate.
If you took a sailor, and had him serve on a DD, then put him on a DE, you'd fully understand how valid his criticisms were. According to this author, surface ship ASW was useless in the 1980's. All our information on current ASW is classified; and it is questionable whether the situation is any better. In the 80's real tacticians considered the diesel electric sub a considerable brown water threat; a technology that does not require boiling water atomically. What is the current state of our ASW?
Not questionable at all. You prosecute sub threats as far away from the CVBG (or whatever the hell its called now). You want to play in the brown water then you build stubby legged jets for your airwing. You want to prosecute SSKs in your inner ring, you build ASW forces to match. Peace dividend says that submarine threats have gone away or are so degraded as to be a non-issue. Many others have pointed out that may not be the case but it will take some sunken vessels to support a compelling case.
https://thediplomat.com/2015/11/u-s-navy-time-to-bring-back-the-s-3-viking/
"Besides the range issue, the American CSG also faces a glaring shortfall in the realm of anti-submarine warfare. This discipline has atrophied across the U.S. Navy since the end of the Cold War, to the extent that Naval War College Professor James R. Holmes maintains that sub-hunting has been a “subsidiary function (of the USN) for a generation.”"
ASW goes the way of mine clearing.
I suspect we are in agreement. If I were in the CIC of a carrier, the Yuan-class sub would give me anxiety.
You made my point better. The shift to all helicopters instead of the S-3 Vikings and helicopters has made us weaker. With the S-3 we could do airborne ASW at a distance from the carrier. With helos on the decks of ships, we are putting a lot more equipment in range of the subs we are trying to prosecute.
Interesting to me is that CAPT Smith was birthed at the Academy at the end of WWII, served through Korean Conflict and almost all of the Vietnam Conflict. And saw the rise of the PRC and the USSR, and the height of the “Cold War.”