Posted on 12/05/2005 12:55:30 AM PST by txradioguy
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Marines, while fighting valiantly in Iraq, are on the verge of serious defeat on Capitol Hill. A Senate-House conference on the Armed Services authorization bill convening this week is considering turning the Navy's last two battleships, the Iowa and Wisconsin, into museums. Marine officers fear that deprives them of vital fire support in an uncertain future.
Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the current commandant of the Marine Corps, testified on April 1, 2003, that loss of naval surface fire support from battleships would place his troops "at considerable risk." On July 29 this year, Hagee asserted: "Our aviation is really quite good, but it can, in fact, be weathered." Nevertheless, Marine leaders have given up a public fight for fear of alienating Navy colleagues.
The Navy high command is determined to get rid of the battleships, relying for support on an expensive new destroyer at least 10 years in the future. This is how Washington works. Defense contractors, Pentagon bureaucrats, congressional staffers and career-minded officers make this decision that may ultimately be paid for by Marine and Army infantrymen.
Marine desire to reactivate the Iowa and Wisconsin runs counter to the DD(X) destroyer of the future. It will not be ready before 2015, costing between $4.7 billion and $7 billion. Keeping the battleships in reserve costs only $250,000 a year, with reactivation estimated at $500 million (taking six months to a year) and full modernization more than $1.5 billion (less than two years).
On the modernized battleships, 18 big (16-inch) guns could fire 460 projectiles in nine minutes and take out hardened targets in North Korea. In contrast, the DD(X) will fire only 70 long-range attack projectiles at $1 million a minute. Therefore, the new destroyer will rely on conventional 155-millimeter rounds that Marines say cannot reach the shore. Former longtime National Security Council staffer William L. Stearman, now executive director of the U.S. Naval Fire Support Association, told me, "In short, this enormously expensive ship cannot fulfill its primary mission: provide naval surface fire support for the Marine Corps."
Read the rest here:
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/robertnovak/2005/12/05/177720.html
This assumes that we'll always automatically have complete air superiority over the area where the Marines are landing. That's not an assumption war planners should use when determining what assets they will need. In our next war, the enemy might actually possess fighter planes.
"The chief benefit the NJ had was sitting on/just over the horizon, looking terrifying.
If it's over the horizon, then, by definition, you can't see it. But I take your point."
At night, I understood them to be able to still see the flashes from the guns, actually.
(They kept it right on the edge of the horizon for missle attack reasons.)
"This assumes that we'll always automatically have complete air superiority over the area where the Marines are landing. That's not an assumption war planners should use when determining what assets they will need. In our next war, the enemy might actually possess fighter planes."
I doubt we'd ever do a beach landing without air superiority first. I mean even on D-Day we had effective air-superiority through much of France (with notable exceptions).
Plus, Battleship would be a nice juicy target, in range of fighters and missles, if such existed. (I don't care how thick the armor is; you can always make a missle bigger.)
I'm just putting up the arguments that I've seen & read. They are convincing -- at least to me -- and I used to think that having BB's in service was a good idea.
The 16/54 barrels were cut up during the Clinton administration. I guess you'd have to blame his SecDef since you insist on personalizing all this. What's all this "Dick Cheyney" crap? Are you a conspiracy kinda guy?
Weapons systems are all tradeoffs. Get over it.
If the Marines are in need of a close support weapon give them all of the A-10's the air force is decomissioning. They will know what to do with them. Who needs a battleship when you have the baddest muther in the sky.
If the enemy does possess figher planes, (or anti-ship cruise missiles, or sea mines, or SSK submarines,) then you ain't sending a bunch of thin-skinned amphibs anywhere near that shoreline. This is why the Marines are dispersing their landings and concentrating on launching landings from over-the-horizon using LCAC's, Helos and, possibly, a newer Amtrack that swims faster & farther.
Which means you have to have the political will to wage war. How does your argument for mothballing classes of ships support that will?
If you cannot enable the domestic economy to be sufficiently strong to support a military that can win wars, debates over equipment are pretty much moot.
Is that what the Carthaginian businessmen told Hannibal, after they stiffed him on his requisition for serious appropriations of silver?
There's such a thing as cutting your own air hose.
There are certain jobs that ONLY a BB can do effectively, and cost-effectively, such as reducing the ports of Yemen, or Iran to rubble in 15 minutes.
Yeah, they take a lot of crew. You mean we can't afford 7500 people? Yeah, that 16-inch ammo must be either very old, or in short supply, but so what. We are talking about 2 Naval Vessels, not some update of the Spanish Armada.
These ships can serve another 100 years. Let's go for it. We can afford it. Of course, I insist 1 be based in Maine.
Speaking of BS, I just noticed your post.
A "strong economy" is not coterminous with massive tax reductions for well-heeled taxpayers, who did quite well despite excessive taxation during the 1950's and 1960's -- they didn't call them the "go-go Sixties" because upper-income taxpayers were sitting at home like Achilles sulking in his tent.
Strong economy does not equal someone else's tax cut.
The reasons for cutting upper-bracket tax rates sound suspiciously like "Show me the money!" All the theory notwithstanding. They're like Wall Street bromides -- they've got you covered no matter what. On the one hand, "bulls make money and bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered," but on the other hand, "cut your losses short but let your profits run." It's all covered -- the customer's man can't lose, he's armored with a line for every occasion!
But none of them is the economic equivalent of what you'd have us believe, that "if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!" It just isn't true that the prosperity of society as a whole is dependent on the tax rate on income over $250K.
I don't believe in progressive taxation or any of the other policy nostrums of the Democratic Party, and you are engaging in gratuitous ad-hominem to suggest I do, as there is nothing in my posts that would support that suggestion. My point is, that if you are a war-leader and hope to lead a people to victory in a key fight against the rising forces of Islamism, and eventually against Chinese imperialist revanchism, you don't subserve the tax hustle of a tiny investor class at the visible expense of the public business, by privileging that class's agenda against all other claims. It's class warfare when the Democrats do it for their client poor, and it's class warfare when Manor Bush and Big Dick Cheney do it for their client wealthy. The rest of us need to sit on all these class partisans and lead the entire society to gee and haw together -- since we're in a war and all.
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My dad served as the gunnery officer for the port 5 inch battery on the Iowa during the Korean war. He was a young LT then. He passed on in Dec 2003. I suspect you are correct with respect to training crews to use the old analog fire control computers. There are few living that could even train a new generation to use them.
Just a side note. The documentation on these ships is extraordinary.
There are also quite a few old steam engineers who would find the time to light-off one of these babies (myself included). Someone else also indicated that only the nukes still are steam plants. Not true, all 12 LHA/LHDs are steam as are 2 CVs, 2 Sub Tenders, plus our civilian manned (MSC) Unrep ships.
I think if we need to we could bring back Iowa or Wisconsin in under 6 months (1 year at the outside)
That said we need to retain them in reserve status but the fact remains (despite some rants on this thread) that they are not a cost effective answer to the Marines current needs (I think even they would agree but with no alternative they must push to hangon to these beautiful ships)
"My dad served as the gunnery officer for the port 5 inch battery on the Iowa during the Korean war. He was a young LT then. He passed on in Dec 2003. I suspect you are correct with respect to training crews to use the old analog fire control computers. There are few living that could even train a new generation to use them."
The crews from the 80's could do it. They brought old Gunners Mates out of retirement to train them.
Consider that that numerically tiny millionaire investor class going out and investing is the major component that makes a capitalist economy actually work. The alternative is taking their money and investing it in "public business" where the large part of it is invariably squandered because neither allocator nor recepient has anything to gain from frugality.
Also consider that "public business" in total has expanded to the tune of $700 billion a year despite tax cuts. That little of this largesse has found its way towards defense is about irresponsible vote buying and not a matter of tax policy at all.
The penetration of a 16" shell is tremendous. A true 'bunkerbuster'.
Not many bombs have the capability of them.
At Iwo Jima we bombed the Japanese pillboxes with little results. Location of some of the pillboxes in the side of Mt. Surabachi also negated the effectiveness of bombs. It was 16" shells from battleships offshore that penetrated and neutralize them.
I know we have penetrator bombs but don't know whether they are as effective as a 16" shell.
Can modern cruisers and destroyers not "fire for effect" with greater accuracy and speed than 1940's battleships? I love the old girls, but we need to be fighting tomorrows wars, not yesterdays.
The sandstorm reduced ground visibility as well, which would have made it impossible from spotters to call in coordinates for the BB's and the BB's didn't have the range to help anyway.
As you well know, or should know given the depth of your bloviating on the issue, the Bush tax cuts extended well beyond people with income over $250K.
It's class warfare when the Democrats do it for their client poor, and it's class warfare when Manor Bush and Big Dick Cheney do it for their client wealthy.
No, it's class warfare when the Democrats want to take more of my money, and give it to non-taxpayers. It is not class warfare, when Republicans stop them from doing so.
I, like almost everyone in the middle class, benefited from the Bush tax cuts, and I live a long way from Park Avenue.
That's the propaganda, but I tend to think it's the next group's saving and investment, as well as pension and IRA money, that is the real nut, as large as the segment of total investment capital inuring to the richest demographic may be.
That said, there's no need to disagree, since my main point was that the investor class invested just as vigorously in the 1950's when income-tax rates were unconscionably higher and people were still paying what were basically war rates still, left over from the New Deal regime.
I still don't think basic tax rates influence investor behavior as much as the availability of credits and offsets. But that's just me. The record is, capitalists invested vigorously in the 40's through the 70's, when the environment was much less favorable than the 80's or 90's, much less favorable even than the (unnecessarily) raised tax rates of the Klintoon Maladministration.
The alternative is taking their money and investing it in "public business" where the large part of it is invariably squandered because neither allocator nor recepient has anything to gain from frugality.
No, the alternative to be concerned about is investment overseas, where offsets are available under our tax code and returns may be higher. As time goes by, all investment money is turning into "helicopter money" as it becomes more and more mobile (and unpredictable).
Also consider that "public business" in total has expanded to the tune of $700 billion a year despite tax cuts. That little of this largesse has found its way towards defense is about irresponsible vote buying and not a matter of tax policy at all.
Nobody is unhappier than I am with recent trends in public spending and the sort of things it's been going for. But that's for another thread. Suffice it to say, I'm less than pleased that military budget increases seem to have been dedicated to operations in Iraq -- which is good, but we need to provide for the future as well, and the F-22 by itself isn't going to take us there.
I understand the need to control airspace, and with an acute F-14 shortage upon us, we need those F-22's, or a stopgap like the Su-33 or rebuilt F-14's, last week. I just don't think aviation should clean out the defense larder. The Army still needs a new SP gun -- everyone else's ranges our M-109's now -- and all the complaints about the "Crusader" and its ground-pressure don't negate that need. We need a new battle-rifle, we need Strykers and UAV's, we need lots of new equipment and training to stay competitive.
I just don't think the investor class should be the big dog in our kennel. We have to think about our leadership challenge, and about the (never accounted-for) opportunity costs of failure to lead. We played the follower in the 19th century, playing off Britain's leading role in diplomacy and war. But we can't do that any more. We're expected to set our own priorities now, and failure to do so will have, as Theodore Roosevelt kept pointing out, unacceptable consequences that are inconsistent with the duty of the federal government to the States and People.
If you're going to lead the world, you need big ships and big battalions. It's a cost of doing business as a world leader. It doesn't mean (false dilemma here) pushing aside innovation -- you just do both, and don't let the investor class push you into choosing among your defense needs, so they can save a little on their tax bills.
If the Marines say they need big-gun GFS, I'm inclined to give it to them, keeping in mind that BB's are multirole ships that can also lead a task force with C3I functions, relieving a dedicated command ship, and support both SW and AAW as well as the GFS mission.
Concur.
It is not class warfare, when Republicans stop them from doing so.
If tax rates were strictly proportionate and non-progressive, that would be so. The marginal rate for the highest incomes has been reduced, but not for the middle incomes yet. So your statement isn't quite true.
I, like almost everyone in the middle class, benefited from the Bush tax cuts, and I live a long way from Park Avenue.
I would point to the structure and recent history -- say, back to the War -- of the GOP. Old Money is dictating the Bush agenda, except when the despised Right occasionally gets his unwilling attention, as on immigration.
If you aren't among the very few, you have little impact on Republican tax policy. I wish it were otherwise, but I think that's the case, and all the marginal rate-cutting has been simply a preclusive recapture of the former tax surpluses, and then some, for the very wealthiest taxpayers -- period. It's the politics of "Show me the money!" IMNSHO.
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