Posted on 06/17/2017 6:36:09 AM PDT by Twotone
In May, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson and acting Secretary of the Navy Sean Stackley appeared before a Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee hearing to discuss the recently unveiled fiscal year 2018 defense budget and its effects on the Navy. The news was not good about the state of the Navy and where the service is headed.
Despite campaign promises to rebuild the military from the twin disasters of sequestration and the 2011 Budget Control Act combined with nearly 16 years of combat deployments, the first Trump budget for the Navy does little to look to the future. This proposed budget only begins to fix the neglect of the past, placing more emphasis on getting the ships and submarines the repairs they desperately need.
The Navy has been in a long budgetary downward spiral since the Cold War ended. Back then, the Navy had just over 500 ships. Since then the fleet has dropped to 275 ships. And the number of ships that are available to deploy in a combat ready status has dropped to embarrassing lows, putting into question its ability to perform its central missions without further straining material and crews. Shipboard maintenance has been backlogged and ships that should be out to sea are instead sitting pierside, making the 275-ship number much, much smaller in an operational sense.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com ...
Armies are dangerous. Pull the funding from the Army and pump it into the Navy.
The navy has needed to divert resources to more important projects - like installing women’s toilets on ships and re-vamping the bunking arrangements.
Add to that affirmative action promotions and naming ships for perverts and leftist icons, and the navy is getting the funding they deserve.
Because Lockheed needs the money to build more unsuitable ships.
My best friend’s son, graduated from West Point and spent 10 years in the US Army. He did 3 tours in Afghanistan and had planned to make the Army his career. Then Obama made the military his personal field of experiments. He said that the military leadership is now head by Obama’s libtard leaders. Thus he left for the private sector because he did not like the direction that the military is headed.
Clinton then Odungo
“He said that the military leadership is now head by Obama’s libtard leaders.”
Not now! Mattis is in charge.
Not to worry, the Navy will spend whatever it takes to get as many POS, aka the F-35, as it can (not to mention more recruits from the transgender/gay/lesbian/X ‘communities’) and damn the other stuff like new ships, upgrades, repairs, etc. PC rules, as will new high heals in flaming pink for swabbies.
The Fitz accident, the Iranian captured sailors all show just how low the Navy has sunk.
Sadly every time a leftist president is in office all branches of the military and DOJ suffer greatly to one degree or another. Obama’s error was the worst so far that I’ve seen though with the integration of Gays and transgenders; it’s more of a joke than a military in some ways. No wonder moral hit an all time low under obummer.
The right but difficult thing to do would be to reverse that policy and work very hard to rid the military of all obama-bots and do it fast and furious so by the time the leftist propaganda machine commonly known at the MSM catches up it would be all over with. The right thing often is the most difficult thing. Women do not belong in forward combat positions either. It destroys unit cohesion at the most fundamental level of human nature. A soldier can be extensively trained into a top level fighting machine, even a woman can reach levels never thought possible, but basic human nature is what it is. Put two or more of the opposite sex in a foxhole and lots of things will happen that would be completely different than if it were two (straight) men. Nature always finds a way...
I had a low opinion of the F35 until recently. I have no personal knowledge of any airplane, much less a fighter jet, and my opinion was based solely on what I had read in the media. Then, I happened to have lunch with two recently retired F16 pilots, both of whom had combat experience. Their conversation turned to the F35, and, based on what I had heard of the plane, I misinterpreted what they were saying. I asked why was it so bad? They were a bit startled by my question and told me the F35 was so good, it made combat with other fighters like "clubbing baby seals". Those were their exact words. Again, I cannot give specifics to support their statement, but considering their experience, I give a lot of weight to their opinion and have one more reason to distrust the media.
One thing is sure: The Army & Marines (the land forces) will get the dregs of the future defense budgets. The USAF & Navy will get priority. But all services will not get everything they want, so all will have to do more with less.
The economy will have to come roaring back AND entitlements will need to be cut for there to be any change in the conclusion above.
Get back to them when their guns and radars work. Not to mention when they fix the problem of nearly killing the pilot when launched off carriers ... They can club baby seals with them but that’s about how far it goes, until the Navy comes up with funds and plans to fix the myriad of problems, which as of now do not exist.
Comrade Ayatollah Barry Hussein's destruction of the DoD was no error; he did it deliberately with malice aforethought.
The economy will not come roaring back UNTIL “entitlements” are cut. Drastically.
Back in the mid-60’s the US Navy was considering a radical alternative to the Fleet Defense problem, the Douglas F6D Missilier. The plane was essentially a non-maneuverable “missile-truck” designed to loiter with it’s missiles at the fringes of the CVBG and shoot down any hostile aircraft.
There were technical problems with missile performance, aircraft identification, and so forth that we still grapple with today that killed the Missilier. What we got instead were the F-4 Phantom and F-14 Tomcat — both of those aircraft were classic high-speed interceptors at their inception, and retained a degree of ACM capability.
That’s the way I see it, also. Probably the only way to deal with that would be a Convention of the States. Our electoral system seems incapable of producing any real reduction in entitlements.
We were ready to spend $100 billion a year and the Paris Climate Accord.
In the big picture, not really much at all. Pennies compared to the cost of building new aircraft carriers.
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