2011` Q4 FReepathon!
Target: $88,000
Receipts & Pledges to-date: $8,900
COME ON EVERYBODY!
YOU'RE HERE POSTING!
THIS IS YOUR FORUM!
SUPPORT IT LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO!!!
Posted on 10/08/2011 3:10:17 PM PDT by GATOR NAVY
WASHINGTON — Could the USS George Washington be sunk by budget cuts?
A report in Defense News on Thursday, citing anonymous sources, said naval officials are considering decommissioning the nuclear aircraft carrier decades before the end of its scheduled lifespan.
That’s the second time this week the 25-year-old behemoth has been mentioned as a potential fiscal casualty. In budget analysis released Tuesday, officials from the Center for New American Security, a Washington, D.C. think tank with close ties to President Barack Obama, listed the early decommissioning of the ship as a way to save up to $7 billion over the next decade.
Navy officials refused to directly comment on the idea.
“Until the 2013 president’s budget request is submitted to Congress in February 2012 … it would be inappropriate to discuss specific details,” Navy spokeswoman Lt. Courtney Hillson said.
The idea of shelving the ship, based in Yokosuka, Japan, has been mentioned by lawmakers and budget experts in the last few months, as Congress struggles to find billions in savings to help balance the federal budget.
In 2016, the George Washington is scheduled to begin a three-year refueling overhaul expected to cost more than $200 million. While decommissioning the carrier would also cost money, the CNAS report estimates that the overall savings would outweigh those short-term costs, and the associated risk to military readiness would be “significant but acceptable.”
In July, House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee Chairman Randy Forbes, R-Va., blasted rumored plans to delay purchase of a new aircraft carrier for several years, out of budget concerns. He also confronted Navy officials on whether other cost-cutting carrier moves were under consideration, but received no specifics.
Currently, the Navy is mandated by law to maintain an 11-carrier fleet, so any move to decommission the George Washington would require cooperation from lawmakers.
Nimitz-class aircraft carriers like the George Washington were built to operate more than 50 years and typically cost more than $30 billion over that lifespan in construction, maintenance and staffing.
And Navy budget officials have announced that in other cases, ships will be kept in use past their scheduled retirement dates, because that will cost less than purchase of new ones.
For example, the Japan-based USS Blue Ridge and Italy-based USS Mount Whitney, both with more than 40 years in service, will be in kept active until at least 2029, and the Navy is developing plans to see if they can be used for another decade after that.
shanel@stripes.osd.mil
i’m not an isolationist.
my post means that the one of the intentions of the soros-obama camp is to reduce the size of our military.
He has accomplished more in three years to damage this nation than all of the enemies combined over our 230+ year history.
Without a forward deployed carrier group in Japan, and the carrier that back it up, the WESTPAC in its entirety would be at much greater risk, particularly as Red China continues to Rise.
and America takes another one in the........
Click on pic for past Navair pings.
Post or FReepmail me if you wish to be enlisted in or discharged from the Navair Pinglist.
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This is a medium to low volume pinglist.
It certainly is. Thanks for the ping.
Egad!
Our government pissed away $1.2 trillion and we have squat to show for it.
I’m shocked that ‘a Washington, D.C. think tank with close ties to President Barack Obama’ didn’t recommend spending trillions to convert it to run on solar and wind power.
Must want to keep open the option of selling it to China if he’s reelected...
We all know how Obama likes to claim he is cutting spending by stating he is eliminating some future expenditure that would never have been made anyway. Like cutting $15 trillion in spending by not building a base on Jupiter in 2025.
Well, how about cutting future spending and reducing the deficit by swearing that we will never, ever build a ship that is named after Obama.
No carrier for you, Barack!
Ping.
The savings would be wasted. I suspect something much more sinister in this, like a proposal to sell a 25 year old Nimitz class to the highest bidder in the future (and all know who that would be).
What does the green quadrant of that “wreck-everything” logo signify?
It’s a hammer swinging toward a piggy bank.
I sadly say that you are exactly right. There is NO answer but that he is systematically dismantling the greatest armed force the world has ever known. And I am sitting here pissed off and I can do nothing to stop this. Oh,, I can vote next year? HOW MUCH DAMAGE WILL HE DO BY THEN?
a piggy bank getting smashed with a hammer... you are looking up at 45deg from the right front of the pig
thx Hammer...
This think tank is a stink tank.
This is a direct kow-tow to the PRC/CCP.
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