I'm getting a bad feeling that there are about four or five of you guys who are really just one OMB staff dork sending stuff from the White House basement.
"Cheap" is NOT what the military is all about. It's effectiveness, and results.
Aside from the CVN's I don't think that there's another surface ship in the Navy that uses steam boilers.
Oh, well, that's conclusive -- get rid of the CVA's! Obsolete technology! Bet they even use steam catapults -- how crude! Mothball them all!
Cruisers & destroyers use gas turbine technology.
So what? My car uses internal-combustion technology.
We would have to start classes for boiler techs, and several other obsolete rates. Doable, but expensive.
Well, let's not do anything expensive -- like sending a bunch of MEU's to Iraq! Where are you getting this stuff?! Listen to yourself!
The gun barrels on those BB's erode slightly every time they are fired -- meaning they get less accurate and eventually need replacing.
True of every large-caliber weapon. Get a life. It's the cost of doing business in the war business. And cheaper than uncorking a JDAM or TLAM every time you want to get something done. Where are your priorities? Covering for Dick Cheney?
Guess what? They don't make those things anymore and they cut-up the replacement tubes.
Who the hell did that, with BB's still in the Fleet lists? Let me take a WAG -- Dick Cheney. Did Dick Cheney or his underling sign that order? Or did he buck it up to Poppy to make the BB's finally and for-real go away.....?
You're in the know -- tell us who signed off on that one.
Dick's the guy who ordered the jigs and dies for the F-14 cut up, so Grumman could never build any again. Did he order the spare gun barrels for the 16" Mark II's cut up?
Fire the guns less? Can't really do that either. The powder needs to be tested for potency. If you don't do that you could drop a short round on that Marine observer/recon party that you are supposed to be supporting. Doable, but short-lived.
You're a regular Pollyanna, aren't you? A real optimist, a gung-ho, sunshiny kind of guy -- I'm sure the Byzantine Empire had a general staff full of guys like you.
Winners win. They adapt and overcome. They don't listen to guys like you.
Survivability? Maybe, but every ship can have it's back broken. Modern torpedos & cheap-@ss mines are designed to do just that.
Yeah, and imagine what one of them would do to an Antelope-class PG, or an FF. So what's your point? HMS Nelson had that happen twice in her WW II career, so did USS Saratoga -- wound up taking little part in the actual wartime operations and ended up being expended as a target in postwar atomic tests. Your point being, we should never have built her, nor manned her? With a complement of 90-plus aircraft, maybe we shouldn't have built her -- too big, too expensive to operate and maintain, too many crew, too much training, and those damned steam boilers again! Yeah, better to try to stop Admiral Yamamoto with a destroyer navy, since that's what you're willing to pay for! RNC troll.
But then you'd have to ask yourself what a BB is doing in a high-threat environment. It's 16-inch guns are likely to be outranged by cruise missiles, meaning it needs carrier support. If you give it a CVN protector, then it ain't so cheap.
The answer here is obvious -- retire the CVN's! Too expensive! Too big! Unique propulsion system -- we'd actually have to train people to run this unique propulsion system, and that's too expensive!
Let's all stay home and drink warm milk instead, then everyone will see how nice we are and want to emulate us.
I guess the bottom line is that reviving the BB's would detract from the already hard-pressed ship building budget. So it is a stop-gap that actually increases the Gap.>
Thanks for coming so reluctantly to that ineluctable conclusion -- I know you're only being straight with us -- openmindedness being the hallmark of every Bush/Cheney loyalist.
More Kool-Aid, good sir?
</sarc>
Yeah, well, screw Big Dick Cheney and his power plays, and to hell with Manor Bush and the quisling weevils of the Klinton Dynasty -- screw all those guys, and go Navy! Real guys get it done, and they don't get it done by listening to policy pukes and power sluts who thrive in airless basement offices, handicapping the greasy pole games and otherwise just glowing in the dark like mushrooms.
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.