Posted on 05/03/2010 4:36:43 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday called into question the Navy's heavy and expensive arsenal of ships and subs.
In a speech before naval officers and contractors, Gates did not say he was planning to cut any programs or its budget.
But he did say the military must rethink whether it can afford such a massive naval fleet at a time when the Army and Marine Corps need more money to take care of troops and their families.
"Do we really need 11 carrier strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?" Gates asked.
He noted that the Navy's most expensive resources aren't on the front lines when it comes to countering many modern threats, such as piracy.
"As we learned last year, you don't necessarily need a billion-dollar guided missile destroyer to chase down and deal with a bunch of teenage pirates wielding AK-47s" and rocket-propelled grenades, Gates said.
John Pike, director of the GlobalSecurity.org defense website based in Alexandria, Va., said this is the first time, as far as he knows, that Gates has addressed the cost of maintaining the roughly 300-ship Navy.
Pike said that Gates, by raising the issue of the size and composition of the fleet with the Navy league, had entered "the Lion's den" — a reference to the pushback he's likely to get from Congress. Many lawmakers protect the Navy shipbuilding industry because it means jobs in their districts.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Welcome Back Carter is filmed before a live audience of 6.8 Billion.
It was an improper place to talk about this.
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OMG i don’t believe what i’m reading
Someone should tell the SecDef that 11 carrier groups enables us to keep THREE on station at any one time..and the planet’s 65% water, give or take...
Believe it or not, I would agree with Gates, albeit with one HUMONGOUS caveat.
WHEN, not if, we send our young men and women to fight, we do it in the mode of WWII - Unconditional Surrender, Total War.
The United States can wage war far beyond our imagination. THe next time we go to war, FIGHT ALL OUT. Cause the enemy to give up IMMEDIATELY. Use EVERYTHING and EVERY TACTIC short of dropping nukes on populated places.
If we fought that way, we wouldn’t need but 6-7 Carrier Goups.
Pournelle makes a pretty good argument for that former.
I don’t think we ever made the 600 ship navy that Ronny wanted
And if the global warming does occur the oceans are going to be lots bigger
I'm not surprised that he makes a good argument. He's pretty smart folk. Way out of my pay grade.
/johnny
2nd all that on your last line.
I don’t have specific links. Google search on the general topic using site:jerrypournelle.com at the end of your search terms. If you can’t find anything, ping me again, and I’ll have a go at it tomorrow. I’m signing off now.
how did I know that cut the carriers was one of the first things they thought of.
My God! This is exactly the kind of policy that drove me right out of the navy in 1979 and again in 1995.
I tried to get a billet for one of the pre-commissioning crews on one of the Nimitz-class hulls that was long-rumored to be the coming thing, and Jimmy Carter canceled the contract. Rather than face another cruise in a World War II designed, conventionally powered hull with limited fresh water, and at the lousy pay scales at the time, I voted with my feet after 7 1/2 years and opted out for a year and a half. I dicked around in college and took a few engineering classes, and returned to Active Duty once Carter was finally voted out and Ronald Reagan was was voted in.
I came back to Active Duty on USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the billet I wanted before I got out, in late 1980 and did two other nuclear carriers after that while I finished my 20 years. Reagan had a philosophy that nuclear powered warships did not pay for themselves sitting tied to a pier, and that was just fine with me. Sea pay and flight deck pay made it worth my while, because all bills are paid once the afterbrow is removed.
This kind of talk out of the current SecDef is not surprising, but it is definitely reminiscent of what we all expected when Klintoon named Les Aspen as Secretary of Defense. Nobody I knew in the Service could believe that one, and a lot of people, myself included, decided that 20 years was enough, 30 years was not even an option, and we voted with our feet once again before Les brought down ruin on our heads, like he ultimately did in Somalia. Les Aspin got an enormous pass on his involvement in the infamous Blackhawk Down incident simply because he had the good grace to die in office, but he was in it up to his goddam eyeballs and a lot of us who were on Active Duty at the time knew it no matter what the spin is now. Absolving Les Aspin of Somalia is like absolving Robert MacNamara of Vietnam. I fear to contemplate what some may try to absolve Bill Gates of some day.
But now we see the circle coming around once more. This happens far too often at DOD, and the reason we keep doing it is that far too few are left alive from the last time we went down this road to keep the current bunch of lemmings from doing it all over yet again.
Here we are worried about too many carrier groups and too few women on nuclear attack subs. It reminds me of the days when Admiral Zumwalt was more worried about changing our Navy uniforms so we all looked like Air Force mess cooks instead of building better ships...
Mothballing ships is all very and good if necessary, but how do you mothball the skilled crew to man and operate them?
Crew rotation of the non-mothballed ships. This keeps up the skill sets of the different crews. Then when push comes to shove and the mothballed ships are refitted and launched, the crew spends its time on intense drills enroute to its station.
This also means little or no promotion opportunity as billets continue to shrink. Today, captains (O-6) are being assigned as XOs, engineering officers, and department heads. O-5s are not being promoted to O-6, despite their qualifications. O-3s are not being promoted to LCDR, etc. It is nearly impossible for sailors to make Chief. Not a morale builder.
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