Posted on 10/10/2017 11:28:17 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
A full half of the U.S. Navy's largest surface warships are set to retire in three years, with nothing available to take their place. Eleven Ticonderoga-class cruisers, each with more than a hundred vertical missile silos, are scheduled to retire starting in 2020. The retirement of these ships will leave a bog hole in the Navy arsenal.
The U.S. Navy's Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers were introduced in the 1980s. Weighing nearly 10,000 tons and measuring 567 feet long, the ships were designed primarily for the air defense roles. Equipped with the Aegis Combat System, the Ticonderogas were designed to protect capital ships—such as the Navy's aircraft carriers and the Iowa-class battleships—from mass air attack. Each is capable of carrying a large number of guided missiles.
While earlier ships used a pair of twin-arm missile launchers and have since been retired, the 6th through 27th ships of the class stored their missile armament in huge fields of armored missile silos.
Traditionally, cruisers fill in the gap between battleships and destroyers. Fast and well armed, they were given missions that didn't require the awesome firepower of battleships, but did require more oomph than a destroyer could provide. The Navy is refurbishing half of the remaining 22 Ticonderogas, enough to protect a planned eleven aircraft carriers into the 2030s. But the other eleven ships will start to age out in 2020.
The Ticonderogas were planned to serve 30 or so years, at which point they would be retired and replaced with a newer, more capable ship. The Navy has tried twice to field a replacement, first with the SC-21, or Surface Combatant for the 21st Century program, then the CG(X) program. Both failed, for a variety of reasons. There was
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
And they think they will come one at a time.
Or they did - apparently they’ve been having second thoughts as the Western Pacific slowly heats up and Russia has become more active in exporting weapons *and* in naval activity.
We either scrap them or they sink all by themselves in the near future. Either way, they will not be able to reliably contribute to our military power. If we keep them in service, they kill US military personnel for no good reason.
Is that what you want?
The aluminum deck-house didn’t help. We had holes drilled everywhere on a six year old CG to stop the stress cracks.
Funny thing is that other nations have done aluminum superstructures with fewer problems - ours just wasn’t a good design at the time and the Ticos were far more top heavy than they were originally supposed to be.
The point is as long as sequester is in place, this expansion will never happen. Someone has to take the lead to get rid of it.
USS Biddle DLG-34 was my home for four years. I came aboard as a twenty year old Sonar Tech in 1967, just after she was commissioned. What a beautiful ship. Call sign was HardCharger, and Maylon T. Scott was her first Captain. MY Captain. It brought tears to my eyes to see photos of her being dismantled for scrap.
I appreciate information on the upgrades to 11 of the VLS Ticonderoga cruisers. I am surprised that htey are removing the An/SPS-49 long-range 2D radar without replacing it with another system such as the BAE Systems Integrated System Technologies S1850M
Then the sinking or the US NAVY is a done deal? Unless those ships were built poorly they should not rust away or bresk up. How Long was the New Jersey in active service? the B-52s? If manufacturing processes are at such low levels of quality now we have even worse problems.
The Iowas were built with exceedingly thick and dense hull armor - the belt armor was over a foot of abnormally homogenous Krupp-type steel. None of our guided missile cruisers after 1965 were - they are only moderately thicker and more reinforced than some merchant hulls; IIRC, the generally accepted figure for the Tico hull is 1/2” or less with no additional armor plate on top of it; the Burke’s original hull thickness is 1/4”, on par with some merchant vessels.
Modern navies, not just ours, have mostly abandoned hull armor in an era where an anti-ship missile can punch through any practical thickness of topside armor and torpedoes ignore armor in favor of kinetic effects that cause the ship to destroy itself. One consequence of this is that the hulls simply do not last as long - and it’s not a matter of “pull the old hull off and slap a new one on.” Ships at sea wear out their hulls over time.
Cancellation of the Tico replacement needs to be put at the feet of a lot of people. Obama is just one of many on the list.
I have long argued professionally for your 5,000 LT suggestion.
All of my ships have been used as target ships. Hard to take, but I understand the financial reasoning.
Go figure. The frigate I was on is still in commission in a foreign navy. The thing is over 45 years old.
DISTURBING!
Look, the primary goal of the Navy since the days of Dalton & Danzig has been to move gals aboard combatants, implement turbo charged affirmative action programs and crack the old culture to embrace sodomy. Standards dropped, mission accomplished.
Kirov-Class battle cruiser type of ship any good? What was the purpose of these vessels and why didn’t the US need anything like this?
We were taught to fear the Kirov’s back in the olden days.
I attended Naval Gunfire School at Little Creek once upon a time and there was a intel squid attending who said that it would take an enormous amount of effort to neutralize them.
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