Posted on 09/19/2017 8:08:23 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
I’m sure that ship will always have at least 1 of our nuclear attack subs watching her 24x7 silently.
The sub that was supposed to be doing that was in port for mandatory diversity training and the installation of gender neutral heads (bathrooms).
Also, if you hadn’t noticed, Obama winnowed down our fleet - including the replacements for the Los Angeles class boats, the Virigina-class. Which are actually deliberately degraded from the original 688 follow on, the Seawolf class. Which we only built three of before we decided we didn’t need an awesome underwater killer and went with the cheaper Virginia buses with less capability.
If you are down to CWIS the shit is wide and deep. Only a few seconds worth of run time and minimum of five minutes to reload. Five minutes is an eternity if missiles are inbound.
I know how they justified killing off the Sea Wolf claiming that it was designed for an enemy that no longer exists. However I am still pleased that we have a constant pipeline of subs being built vs nothing new for the Russian since they are broke.
That’s especially true when you forgot the lesson of the Belknap and return to building ships with aluminum hulls and/or superstructures.
Hate to tell you, but the Virginia build program was massively slowed down by the sequester... and someone forgot to tell the Russians that they didn’t have anything new because they ‘only’ developed two new classes in that time (Yasen, Borei) and they just launched another brand new one that is supposed to rival or surpass the Seawolf, let alone the bargain basement Virginas.
Oh, and they’re back up to Cold War patrol levels. We’re, uh, not.
I don’t think “don’t use aluminum” is the real lesson of the Belknap, but “don’t be an idiot about using aluminum.”
Guns and surface action between warships under 10,000 yards is while not entirely a thing of the past, a vanishing event. Much like tanks in the post war era when it became clear that anti-tank munitions could blow through any conceivably practical thickness of steel armor, antishipping munitions have gotten to that point. If you get hit, you’re going to be screwed, so going with superheavy armor becomes pointless.
The Russians have more to fear from a ramming by the US Navy than our carriers.
You have a point. However, the LCS fiasco is an example of being an idiot.
The LCS isn’t just an example of being an idiot about the application of materials in a warship, it’s also being an idiot about arming a warship, configuring a warship, manning a warship and automating a warship.
I like that they are expensive to maintain. It serves our interests.
When I read about the successor system I thought "great, have fun with that, and have fun paying for that".
——I like that they are expensive to maintain-—
The ship is a jobs program. Maintenance provides jobs.
In a warless economy, defense maintenance jobs are very desirable
So are ours. Go look at the problems our DDG 1000 has.
Or the massive, expensive problems with the LCS: http://www.navytimes.com/pay-benefits/military-benefits/2016/09/05/navy-orders-big-changes-for-littoral-combat-ships-after-engineering-problems/
My comment touched on the massive money problems Russia faces. They are poor compared to us, in a big way.
It reminded me of the meme that the Soviet effort to match our space shuttle was the last straw that broke them economically, in some part.
I do not know if that is actually true, but I know they spent a lot of hard cash on it because they could not fabricate a lot of the complex stuff themselves, and had to buy it on the world market with real money.
So I say to the Russians “Spend, spend, spend”.
They aren’t crippled by entitlement spending like we are, though. And a decade plus of neglect in all aspects of our country.
Right now, we have a second rate Navy that blunders into merchant ships, while we dump billions into making our armed forces “diverse” instead of effective warfighters. That’s a really expensive thing. And they’re not hampered by that at all.
The LCS program is a confluence of multiple wrong headed decisions. It’s a CF of massive proportions.
United States 18,569,100 — European Union[n 1][19] 16,408,364 2 China[n 2] 11,218,281 3 Japan 4,938,644 4 Germany 3,466,639 5 United Kingdom 2,629,188 6 France 2,463,222 7 India 2,256,397 8 Italy 1,850,735 9 Brazil 1,798,622 10 Canada 1,529,224 11 South Korea 1,411,246 12 Russia[n 3] 1,280,731 13 Australia 1,258,978 14 Spain 1,232,597 15 Mexico 1,046,002
Twice the size = twice the target.
“A few thousand drones is another matter.”
Just a software update.
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