Posted on 10/09/2018 10:16:24 AM PDT by topher
Maybe this is a 'Hail Mary', but something that one must try to save $1.55 billion and have a CVN (USS Enterprise) in our reserve fleet.
On account of our previous president, the US Navy is in bad shape.
Take for example the collisions that happened early in the Trump Administration due to the [what I believe was] LAX of discipline under Obama.
This is of course the collisions that happened with the USS John S McCain and the USS Fitzgerald.
If you don't remember, then refresh your memory:
Freerepublic: Former commander of USS John S McCain pleads guilty, retires after deadly collision
Fox News: Former commander of USS John S McCain pleads guilty, retires after deadly collision
Freerepublic: USS Fitzgerald Combat Team Unaware of Approaching Merchant Ship Until Seconds Before Fatal Collision
US Naval Institute Proceeding: USS Fitzgerald Combat Team Unaware of Approaching Merchant Ship Until Seconds Before Fatal Collision
But to the matter at hand. Popular Mechanics wrote about the trouble the US Navy is having scrapping this ship and it is going to be very costly.
Articles on the Internet:
Freerepublic: The U.S. Navy Is Having a Hell of a Time Dismantling the USS Enterprise
Popular Mechanics: The U.S. Navy Is Having a Hell of a Time Dismantling the USS Enterprise
Additionally has headaches with it 'cruisers'. Saving $1.55 billion might help the US Navy out.
Freerepublic: The Navy Is Set to Retire Half of Its Biggest Surface Combatants—With No Replacement in Sight
Popular Mechanics: The Navy Is Set to Retire Half of Its Biggest Surface Combatants—With No Replacement in Sight
Prior to President Obama being in office, we had CV aircraft carriers in the reserve fleet, aka 'mothball' fleet. CV carriers are the 'big deck carriers' and post World War II, they started to be over 1000 feet long.
In World War II, when America was Great, we had over 6000 ships in the US Navy. After the war, a number of these were put in 'mothballs', or to the reserve fleet.
In the Clint Eastwood movie 'Magnum Force', the motorcycle chase was on one of these ships. I am fairly sure it was a small carrier from World War II. I believe it was a 'CVE' - Carrier Escort.
Why should we flush $1.55 billion down the toilet? - Just because our previous president was 'wasteful'.
How to scrap a Nuclear Carrier could be studied at Universities and the US Navy's academic arm (US Naval Institute).
Until we know how, move that ship to the reserve fleet.
With things in the world the way they are, one of our big deck carriers might get 'dinged' or we might need to put together another carrier task force.
Decommissioning a nuclear reactor properly is not cheap. Why do you want to sink an intact reactor in the ocean?
Its last servicing, which was only going to “last” three years, was almost $2 billion as I recall. The one before that was over $655 mil and had only occurred a couple years previously.
When the cost of an ‘oil change’ is more than the cost of scrapping the vehicle, it’s time to look for a replacement...
The tech in the Enterprise is so old it has little training value. LLL does not currently have the ability to secure the remains of the vessel against ne’er-do-wells.
Why do you hate Israel enough to saddle them with an obsolete ship that would cost them billions even if it just sat in port?
Basically, you are saying “Hey, let’s give our poor relations this clapped out base model 1969 Ford Maverick with 250,000 miles on it. It needs everything, nobody makes parts for it and it’s a huge money sink, but hey, it’ll be free! Never mind that it will make them poorer and that it’s unreliable!”
Enterprise was overbuilt for her design. She was the first thus kind of a “demo”. She had EIGHT nuclear reactors... EIGHT. They essentially have to slice into the ship in order to defuel and remove them. This all needs be done before a scrapping yard will even touch her.
It’s a very old ship, it should be preserved as razor blades. And pipe, and automobiles.
Honor the steel, don’t let her rust away.
They used smaller submarine reactors instead of the larger ones they developed for later surface ships. (The earlier N.S. Savannah used a completely different commercial design and the reactor, defueled, is still on the ship.)
I’ve heard the same thing also. Something to do whether where the tractors and associated “hot” components are makes it impossible to keep afloat. IIRC they were supposed save the tower.
The biggest issue is going to be the fact that the Big E has 8 reactors while all the new ones have two IIRC.
Yup. I was going to mention that, but EIGHT reactors should have made the point.
Hey, first of its kind is always going to be a one off.
Why not use her to take the place of whatever decommissioned carrier we were using for training naval aviators? Damned if I could remember her name now....
You would have to upgrade the ship to modern traffic, landing and takeoff systems to make the training worthwhile, which would be about as expensive as a new carrier. See above posts about how hard and expensive it currently is to keep the ship going let alone upgrade it.
USS Lexington (CV-16), built in 1942, was the training carrier until 1991 - but it was an oil-burner and carrier tech didn’t change all that much in that period. Forrestal (CV-59) briefly was used as a replacement but that ended in 1993. For the last two and a half decades, the Navy has just used whatever carrier happens to be in the area for carrier training and SNA quals. The Navy has demonstrated that they don’t need or want a dedicated training carrier.
Enterprise was offered to the Japanese SDF. They said no. Australia has said they don’t want a carrier.
Nuclear-powered vessel. Radiation. Eight reactors that need to be removed BEFORE breaking it up for scrap.
Doing a SinkEx on it would raise nine kinds of Hell from enviro-weenies about sinking a 'radioactive' ship in the ocean.
The Enterprise is nuclear powered and has no stacks for steam to pour out of!
Well it had some sort of porting to vent all the steam when they revved it to 110%.
I can definitely understand why nobody else is interested in her, that ship would nearly bankrupt most countries' defense budget.
Negative, if that was all that was required a faux carrier deck on land would have been sufficient. Lexington was actually cruising around on her training deployments as did Forrestal after her.
Enterprise may have been still operating in 2012 but it was clearly well behind the current standards, sometimes dangerously so. For example, her radar was never replaced. It was the equivalent of trying to take an original 1959 Chevy Bel Air out on the highway and trying to operate it safely in today’s *much* faster average speeds and *far* better engineered, heavier or both vehicles it could run into.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U
Trying to operate such an antique at the average speeds and requirements on a daily basis does not end well. You either have to accept the much lower limits and stay well within them, which cripples your potential capabilities and places a burden on those around you, or you run huge risks that don’t pay off. The Enterprise in a modern CBG is the exact same thing.
I see, thank you.
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