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.
Thats 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 presidents 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
Most of every tax dollar is wasted. Defense is the one area where we get anything of real value: (not enough) pay for patriots and some cool toys for them to defend our nation with.
“..........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).”
Lights are on BIGLOOK, and somebody is home. Precisely what the Lefties would do given half a chance.
Good thinkin’.
NOT SO! We have these ...
Gee, I feel sooooo much better now.
It would than this as it make far more sense to early decom CVN-65 as at the end of it’s service life. Decomming a mid life carrier does not make sense unless the hull had major damage.. This is CV-66 AMERICA all over again. Decommed at mid life for absolutely no good reason.
I agree, and that's why I thought the lack of mention as to a replacement was troubling. You can bet your bottom dollar the Chicoms would cook up all sorts of mischief to take advantage of that.
To fund “special education”, something the feds shouldn’t even be involved in. Crazy,
Unless you have a secondary purpose of getting rid of the forward-deployed carrier. Enterprise will be gone in a few years anyway when the Ford is commissioned. That's an even trade. The want to actually reduce the number of CVNs in commission.
I’m harboring serious doubts that it would save anything at all. They didn’t decommission the Enterprise because it would’ve COST more than the purchase price of the ship. That was 1991, things haven’t gotten cheaper since then.
I’m not going to praise this, but raise this observation: an aircraft carrier is a big target at sea.
Maybe in this age of satellites and cruise missiles, we should be revamping our naval order of battle.
We need to conceptualize what the next world war will look like. Do we need aircraft carriers? Perhaps we need more nuclear submarines with quieter propulsion systems? Perhaps a revolutionary vessel which can travel both on the surface and submerged?
I’m only throwing ideas out there; not necessarily agreeing with scrapping a carrier which could have another 25 good years of useful life ahead in our navy.
Note: I’m a Navy vet.
I think you’re quite right.
Thanks. Any ideas you’d like to toss out there?
Now’s the time to get wild and crazy!
Talk is talk. This is the kind of crap that Jimmy Carter did when he was president. He vetoed the entire military budget submission because he insisted that the Carl Vinson (CVN-70) not be built. Govt. libs talk dollar savings and deficit reduction when it’s actually just another way to stick it to the military.
The saving of $7 billion while spending a trillion his first month in office is just another example of what a joke Hussein is, and why this clown is a one-termer. This moron will be out of office before this garbage comes close to being a reality. And how much sense does it make to keep ancient ships that have become a maintenance nightmare while shelving a ship that was commissioned less than 20 years ago (the 25 years mentioned in the article must be from when the keel was first laid)? This is complete idiocy.
Actually...I just had a wild idea....
And I was a submariner....
Submarine vertically launched fighter drones....
(should I really have said that publicly?????)
Good idea! Sounds doable, too.
The neat thing about drones is they’re dispensable. You won’t be having them return. So, the inexpensive parts can be kept aboard, drones assembled as needed then launched. Who needs a carrier!
Submarine could launch them, and once they become ‘active’ they could revert to remote control through satellite communication.
But I’m pretty sure they would have to be pre-assembled and loaded ready to go on the boat pierside.
Totally pre-assembled would take up too much room. It wouldn’t be feasible to have something with wings sticking out on board a sub. Retracted wings that pop-out upon launch...now that would work. It won’t need landing gear because it isn’t going to land anywhere.
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