Posted on 10/24/2012 2:00:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Barack Obama lost the debate in Boca Raton last night. It must have been the altitude.
The president patronized, interrupted, and mocked Republican challenger Mitt Romney throughout the night. In return, Romney acted presidential, and may have put this election away.
A key moment of the night in this final policy debate was a set-piece zinger by the president as the candidates discussed military spending:
Romney: Our Navy is older — excuse me — our Navy is smaller now than any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We’re now down to 285. We’re headed down to the — to the low 200s if we go through with sequestration. That’s unacceptable to me. I want to make sure that we have the ships that are required by our Navy.
Our Air Force is older and smaller than any time since it was founded in 1947. We’ve changed for the first time since FDR. We — since FDR we had the — we’ve always had the strategy of saying we could fight in two conflicts at once. Now we’re changing to one conflict.
Look, this, in my view, is the highest responsibility of the president of the United States, which is to maintain the safety of the American people. And I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars, which is the combination of the budget cuts that the president has as well as the sequestration cuts. That, in my view, is — is — is making our future less certain and less secure. I won’t do it.
Obama: Bob, I just need to comment on this. First of all, the sequester is not something that I proposed. It’s something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen. The budget that we’re talking about is not reducing our military spending. It’s maintaining it.
But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You — you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets — (laughter) — because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.
And so the question is not a game of Battleship where we’re counting ships. It’s — it’s what are our capabilities.
Historian Tim Stanley covered the exchange for the UK’s Telegraph, and was not impressed:
The candidates were discussing military spending and Romney had just accused Obama of making harmful cutbacks. The president wheeled out what must have seemed like a great, pre-planned zinger: “I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military’s changed.” The audience laughed, Obama laughed, I laughed. It was funny.
But here’s why it was also a vote loser. For a start, Twitter immediately lit up with examples of how the U.S. Army does still use horses and bayonets (horses were used during the invasion of Afghanistan). More importantly, this was one example of many in which the president insulted, patronized, and mocked his opponent rather than put across a constructive argument.
Stanley’s analysis was similar to post-debate observations by political columnist Charles Krauthammer, who noted: ”Romney went large. Obama went very, very small — shockingly small.” Both men were correct in their observations that Romney won the debate.
But what was most fascinating: the American media, so obviously biased in favor of Obama, looked at this same exchange on “how our military works” and gave the victory to the president. They can only do so from a position of ignorance.
We do have carrier strike groups, and we do have nuclear submarines.
Currently, we field eleven carrier strike groups, consisting of a super-carrier and its air wing, cruiser, a small squadron of destroyers or frigates, and one or two attack submarines lurking under the surface. Various supply ships also weave in an out of the group to keep them fed and (in the case of the non-nuclear-powered ships) fueled.
Carrier strike groups can perform many roles, and can do many things. They have, as the president notes, “capabilities.” These capabilities, however, do not include the ability to be in two or more places at once. Nor can a Navy as heavily invested in capital ships as we are manage to easily recover if a carrier strike group is significantly damaged or crippled.
Technology and firepower is part of a military’s balance, but we know very well that the number of ships and aircraft we are able to field, and field in various roles, is critical. While Obama mocks Romney for his dated military references, he refuses to grasp a military reality made readily apparent in World War II.
In World War II, the German war machine’s technological advantages far outstripped those of any other nation. They created the first cruise missiles (the V1), the first ICBM (the V2), the first assault rifle (STG-44), the first jet- and rocket-powered combat aircraft, and even the first “stealth” fighter-bomber almost 40 years before we could replicate it (though the war ended before the Ho 229 could enter combat).
One of the technological highlights of the German Army was the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf.E, or what Allied tankers learned to fear simply as the Tiger tank.
The Tiger was a masterpiece of German engineering. It was complex, heavily armed, and heavily armored. The high velocity 8.8cm main gun could destroy any Allied tank on the Western Front with a single shot, and allied tank crews fielding medium Sherman tanks against the Tiger came to call their vehicles “Ronsons” after the cigarette lighter, because they “lit the first time, every time.” In a one-on-one battle, or even a two- or three-on-one battle, the Tiger almost always came out victorious.
Today, one working Tiger exists.
Despite the Tiger’s technological superiority and reliability, our mass-produced, under-armored, under-gunned M4 Shermans simply overwhelmed them with numbers. By war’s end, Germany had manufactured just 1,347 Tigers. We’d built more than 49,000 Shermans.
Our modern Air Force and Navy have not learned anything from World War II. We’ve sunk — pardon the term — literally trillions of dollars into the development of nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered carrier strike groups and ballistic missile submarines, but the loss of a single one would be an overwhelming blow from which it would take years to recover.
We’ve created a Navy that is “too big to fail,” in terms of the importance and capital investment we’ve placed on just eleven ships — an incredibly short-sighted position. We’ve made similarly bad investments in the gee-whiz technology of the F-22 Raptor, where every accident or combat loss costs $150 million each, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will cost (if they are ever fielded) as much as a quarter-billion dollars each to replace for the Navy and Marine versions. We’re creating planes and ships that are too expensive to risk losing in combat. These technological marvels are backed by systems and support elements that are 50 years old, being used by the grandchildren of the men that built and used them.
It’s absurd.
What Mitt Romney has proposed is a shift in our way of thinking about the military that a community organizer simply can’t grasp.
Romney has proposed a Navy of lighter, more numerous, less expensive, and more deployable multiple-role ships that can be better geographically dispersed around the globe to more quickly respond to need, instead of having less than a dozen carrier strike groups chasing problems around the world.
Romney’s plan to use COTS (commercial off the shelf) technologies across the entire military may not be as sexy as spending billions to mount futuristic lasers and rail-guns on ships, but what it will do is put more ships and sailors on the water.
It’s a stunning turnaround offered by one of America’s best turnaround artists. Romney proposes to toss the bureaucratic dead-weight out of the military, out of the Pentagon, and replace them with real war-fighters and practical weapons.
Against this sound advice, Obama offers only quips.
I think we all know who sounds more presidential.
“But Obama says we now have ships that go underwater.........”
Ha, I believe there was one in the Civil War...The H L Hunley. The Hunley was built, launched and used by the Confederacy The Hunley succeeded in sinking one Union ship, the 1240-short ton screw sloop USS Housatonic on Union blockade duty in Charleston’s outer harbor. In an effort to break the naval blockade of the city, Lieutenant George E. Dixon and a crew of seven volunteers attacked Housatonic, successfully embedding the barbed spar torpedo into her hull. The torpedo was detonated as the submarine backed away, sending Housatonic and five of her crew to the bottom in five minutes.
If your argument is that carriers are too vulnerable in today’s battlefield then I guess that would mean we wouldn’t need any cruisers or destroyers either.
I am not making an argument, I am asking the question.
Can we develop launchable unmanned fighters that can be deployed from almost any ship? Something like a reusable cruise missile, or even a cruise missile redeveloped into an unmanned light bombers or even just to get the enemy attention?
I’d like to see cruisers and destroyers able to do things like that.
The USS George Bush's strike group has three guided missile cruisers like USS Vella Gulf with a mix of Tomahawk cruise missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, various anti-air missiles, and anti-sub missiles. The destroyers and frigates also carry a mix of missiles.
Thanks.
I believe the Hunley was rather recently recovered.
Obama would freak to find out that we had camels about the time of the civil war. But they kept croaking...I think they were stationed in Texas...????That might or might not be correct....
******* “But Obama says we now have ships that go underwater.........” ******
Boats, Subs are Boats
TT
“Obama would freak to find out that we had camels about the time of the civil war...”
Speaking of camels, we were in Amish Country today, Holmes County, Ohio, just south of Mt Hope...driving past an Amish farm we saw three dromedary camels in a pasture with their horses!
And btw, you are correct, the Hunley was recently recovered...that operation is probably how I knew about it in the first place.
Because of the number of actual deployable ships. With the current 285 about 95 are deployable meaning ship is ready and crew is ready. Another 95 will be going through qualifications and work up pre-deployment training. BTW not all of the 285 ships are even combat ships. That number is significantly less. Take another 95 off the top of that number and you'll have the approximate number of ships in port for training, replenishment, or shipyard maintenance stand down which from what we didn't learn in the 1990's early 2000's is very critical.
Maintenance can't be skimped on and disaster be the end result if it is missed. We saw Kitty Hawk and KENNEDY unable to get underway following 9/11 due to maintenance issues. Those were issues that should have been taken care of in the yards. My best guesstimate is they were not funded and then 9/11 happened and it bit them.
Immediately following Gulf War One we lost a carrier to the same reason. It had a Boiler Room explosion at the piers in Norfolk. This web site gives the ship force levels since 1917-present In 1987 we had 594 ships. We need our submarine count back above 80 and Amphibious ships whch can begin taking up slack on the carrier portion including Vertical Take Off and Drone operations.
We also need to ramp up our antisubmarine warfare capabilities world wide. Nations like China won't need state of the art submarines to do us great harm just plenty of them saturating an area.
We need to relocate assets into other areas. One of the east coast carriers actually two should be relocated back to Mayport, Florida. Five carriers at NOB Norfolk is insane and YES it has happened as I have seen a picture of it.
Last but not least we need to be able to go back to strength in numbers. That includes refueling at sea. We need to stop using ships for good will tours to stink holes like Yemen. Yemen didn't have anything the Cole needed. I'd like to see next POTUS also turn over all foreign Intel OPS & Embassy Security operational decisions to The Pentagon.
According to the Navy's own website we currently have 114 ships deployed. Another 56 are underway on local ops or at-sea training. Link
BTW not all of the 285 ships are even combat ships.
About 83% are. Of the 285 ships in the navy, 47 are considered auxiliaries.
Maintenance can't be skimped on and disaster be the end result if it is missed.
No argument there. But that is separate from the justification for a 350 ship navy.
We need our submarine count back above 80 and Amphibious ships whch can begin taking up slack on the carrier portion including Vertical Take Off and Drone operations.
Why? We have 53 nuclear powered attack subs and 8 more building, more than all the other navies in the world combined. We have 14 ballistic missile subs and 4 more capable of carrying 150 cruise missiles each. We have 31 amphibious ships easily capable of carrying an entire marine division plus a good part of its air wing. How much more do we need?
We need to relocate assets into other areas. One of the east coast carriers actually two should be relocated back to Mayport, Florida. Five carriers at NOB Norfolk is insane and YES it has happened as I have seen a picture of it.
But not often, since one or two are deployed at any given time. And Romney as said he'll go back to permanently having a carrier on station in the eastern Med so that'll cut back the parking problems even more.
Last but not least we need to be able to go back to strength in numbers.
Or do we need to rethink nationbuilding in sinkholes like Yemen and concentrate on spending our defense budget on defending ourselves?
IOW 60% not in home port. That's approaching two thirds.
Why? We have 53 nuclear powered attack subs and 8 more building, more than all the other navies in the world combined. We have 14 ballistic missile subs and 4 more capable of carrying 150 cruise missiles each. We have 31 amphibious ships easily capable of carrying an entire marine division plus a good part of its air wing. How much more do we need?
We need enough to have enough. Our current configuration is Peace Time Operations of which we have been running two wars. We can't keep this up not in any of the services. A build up must happen soon for all services.
In the event of a major sea war outbreak you can expect to see as a third of the ships gone immediately after onset. Gone meaning either sank or having to return to port for extended overhauls. Amphibs can do several different task depending upon design. A Helo carrier for example has been classified AMPHIB for decades. As for SUBs? The eight being rebuilt will likely replace eight being taken out. One way to win with a lower number of surface ships is to have a large underwater fleet capable of being here, there, everywhere, and still being able to meet their down times.
When nuclear propulsion plants for subs and carriers got put into service so did a myth that those ships could deploy indefinitely. Most shipyard maintenance is for a ship or subs auxiliary equipment that without it the ship can not get underway such as Air Conditioning. We need at least the equivalent to one extra available deployable fleet to cover losses. Extra subs buy time for shipbuilding in time of war.
But not often, since one or two are deployed at any given time. And Romney as said he'll go back to permanently having a carrier on station in the eastern Med so that'll cut back the parking problems even more.
Believe it or not we used to keep two on station there 24/7/365 even when we were down to 13 carriers Navy wide. That was Cold War Posture. We weren't dependent upon the Suez either. From the Six Day War in 1967 until 1981 no carriers went through SUEZ. Personally I think it's not smart policy to be using it now. Rather than that we should order an extra carrier permanent homeport to the west coast. Our CVN numbers will not increase until the new JFK is built and is commissioned if then.
That brings up another issue. No matter how many Drones we build we will always need CVN's with full air-wing. Drones can do a lot of recon and even limited strikes. But if your troops on the ground butt is in a sling? The one flying the manned machine is going to get there much sooner and have a much better assessment for response. They also carry a lot more onboard weapons.
I still also think the Navy has too many assets sitting in NORVA. We have other ports we need to be using. When we were at the height of carriers NOB Norfolk still only had three Berths. Both sides of Pier 12 and Pier 7 were Carrier berths. Pier 10? I think it is called built sometime in the 1980's was a bad idea for several reasons. One is wind protection. Some very nasty straight liners come across Hampton Roads. One afternoon we were at pier 12. In a matter of minutes the LPH across from us was in the channel torn from their pier, our brow was laying on the pier, a utility shed and truck flipped over and several ships between 12 & D&S piers were also out in the channel. Pier 12 had some protection. Enough to where we stayed put. We were also the one more sheltered. We were on the side closer to the point but that allowed more protection.
Realistically though just taking a city map and drawing a 15 mile radius circle from NOB says we have too much resources all sitting in the same place. Mayport is good for at least one carrier and can hold two in a pinch as it is a carrier berth. I'd say we should spread ships out as far as even down to Rosie Roads.
Spanish Armada—huge, powerful ships; British Navy—smaller, more maneuverable ships. Not the only reason the Armada lost, but it was certainly an important one. One of the few lessons in history that stuck with me.
As a Cold War vet, YES, the Soviets had the numbers, and we kept designing items that would handle more of those items per aircraft/ship.
The F-15 went into service in the ‘70’s, as did the A-10 and the F-14, for starters. The BUFF, er, B-52 has been around since 1952! There are some long-toothed airframes doing phenomenal jobs.
Fast attack ships go back a long way. Look at the Cuban Missile Blockade to see what was doing the majority of duty then. They are designed for it. In our history, we had destroyers running in, and providing close gun support on D-Day, due to the draft of the ship. Missile ships are fine, but you still need a real gun, now and then, too.
The big ships are squadrons of planes and cities of personnel. The lighter ships can swarm, zip in and out, while the floating cities are meant to be on station flight decks.
Attack subs are the checks and balances of nuclear missile subs. We need them, just as much as we need AC-130’s!
Nuclear submarines aren’t the only ships that go underwater...
I also think it is Obama who is advocating cheaper designs. To the extent that in December 2009, at Alaska's Elmendorf Air Force Base, he had his people remove the F-22 that had been parked as a backdrop and had it replaced with a F-15. Why? Because he was against the F-22 program and wanted the cheaper/more numerous Eagle.
While it is true that quantity has a quality of its own, in the modern battlefield there is a limit to the value of that 'quality.' That is a strategy used by nations that simply do not have the qualitative capacity to match up with technologically advanced nations. This is why Iran, for example, has been churning out dozens of small watercraft with the hope of overwhelming the USN. They cannot match US quality, and thus their only option is to try and compensate by having a lot of targets in the hope that a couple of them will survive long enough to do some damage.
The moment a country is able to not have to rely on 'quantity' it immediately stops doing so. Case in point? China (and India for that matter). China had the same strategy Iran now has ....churning out lots of sub-grade military equipment. Now that it has the money to invest in superlative equipment what does it do? Engage in the greatest military buildup the world has seen in half a century! Building AEGIS-esque ships (with phased radar arrays), investing in new submarine technologies, working on aircraft carriers (the ex-Soviet carrier plus indigenous designs), new planes, etc. Why? Because they know the value of one J-20 is better than that of 10 MiG-21s, and the value of one Type-52C Luyang II destroyer is worth more than five Type 51 Luda destroyers. Easily.
Romney is about building a stronger US military ...not building the appearance of a stronger military simply by having more numbers. For example, increasing the production of the LCS would very quickly add numbers, but in terms of capability the LCS is a ship closer to a target than a victor. I believe Romney is for strengthening the US military, and having many cheap (a joke, since the 'cheap' LCS and the 'cheap' F-35 are anything but) ships is not strengthening the military.
The Reagan navy had the numbers, but it also had the quality (for the era). It was not just numbers. If the US goes for a numbers strategy, of the type espoused by the article, then it may learn the same lesson Saddam Hussein received when his numbers were obliterated with ease by a technologically superior adversary.
The example of Germany has key lessons that show that quality is not everything, but that is a lesson that is often looked at in the wrong way. Germany did have amazing quality, but they also had significant drawbacks. For one they started using some of their super-weapons too late in the war (and for that matter Hitler, according to many people who analyzed the war, started the war too early ...had he waited 5 more years I'd probably be typing this in German). They also had significantly destroyed war infrastructure. They had the quality, but the numbers were simply not enough.
In the case of the US it has always, since it became a super power, had both numbers and quality. Not just one.
Going back to Germany it is easy to see where things broke apart using the Lanchester Square equation. It states that to stalemate a force N times more numerous you need to have N-squared effectiveness. E.g. to defeat a force that is three times as many as yours is, you need to be at least 9 times (3^2) as effective.
Now, take the JV 44 Luftwaffe squadron, which has been called the most dominant airwing EVER! The JV 44 used the Me-262 jet fighter in WW2, was comprised of 50 pilots of which more than 25 were aces (with the top 6 aces having over 1,100 kills, and the next eleven averaging 50+ kills), and flying jet fighters in propeller-era WW2. The ME-262 was 24% faster, could climb 70% faster, had 7 times the firepower, and reduced reaction time from first detection up to 62% ...compared to any adversary the JV44 would face. Basically, they were absolutely unbeatable. Even the F-22 will never have such advantages. But Germany lost. There were simply not enough of them. The Lanchester Square equation was against them.
People like to use the above example to show how quality is 'bad' (together with the Tiger Tank examples), but they are looking at it the wrong way. If JV 44 had ME-109s would that have helped? Nope ...by the time the war was already lost. Nazi Germany could have received F-22s and the war would still have been lost. It's like a human being armed with a M-4, stuck in the ground up to his waist, surrounded by thousands of fire ants. The war is lost! But what if the Germans had decided to wait until they had sufficient numbers of superlative technology? If that was the case then Deutsch-lernen would be critical for communication.
To win there has to be a mix of quality and quantity. I believe Romney wants to do both. The article makes it seem that he only wants greater numbers. That is not what he wants. He is not a fool.
Especially considering that simply making more 'cheap' designs would only mean expensive designs that are not effective. Again, look at the LCS designs. Almost as expensive as an Arleigh Burke destroyer, but less effective than Israeli and European frigates that cost a fraction! The only thing the LCS can do well is go at high speeds, but even that is not for a long period of time (and they cannot outrun an anti-ship missile anyways). It is not about cheap designs ...it is about effective designs that incorporate proper (and stringent) cost management.
I may be wrong about this, but I think the writer of the article is putting words in Romney's mouth to make a political counter-point to a silly remark Obama said in a debate. However, if Romney is really planning on having a lot of 'cheap but numerous' designs, then Romney is an utter fool and is nothing like Reagan.
Evidently you haven’t seen the new leaner military or your defination of lean borders on absurb. Damn near half the folks I see in uniforms we would have been allowed to wear only while bilge diving or cleaning firesides are grossly over weight,wearing shoes/boots that have never seen a lick of polish. Yes indeed, a full Navy Captain standing on the bridge of a man of war gazing out across the horizon wearing a set of blue coveralls just like the ones worn by the guy that pumped your septic tank is truly an inspiring sight.
You're correct but it was actually before the war and had ended long before fighting broke out. And the Secretary of War who funded the experiment was none other than Jefferson Davis.
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