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
All eggs in one basket defense system especially one which can be taken out by solar storms is not a good idea. I'm for the technology you mention but not as a replacement of the CVN fleet.
Nothing can replace the CVN fleet...it will always have a roll to play. But talk about all eggs in one basket...
I really do fear the vulnerability of such a huge target. Modern carriers have great defenses, but modern air and sea-bourne weapons technology may very well render them obsolete to a great extent.
Naval warfare is changing rapidly, and we need to be ahead of the curve. Drones, including Sub launched, will be a part of that change.
We were launching Drones off our deck in the 1970's. The main thing about carriers is keeping a good number deployed. Even anchoring one and steaming is reasonably safe. We got underway once off the coast of Yugoslavia in a matter of seconds.
Two of our carriers used to be in the MED SEA 24/7. Today MED SEA is split withe an IO deployment. One thing changing which is good is smaller carriers which can launch vertical T.O. or helos.
You can't expect the administration to slacken its loot-shoveling, now can you? That would be un-Chicagolike.
We gots expenses.
I wonder whether the possibility that American Airlines Flight 93 and its hijackers might have made it to DC and destroyed the Capitol Building with both Houses of Congress still in session, would also be considered “significant but acceptable.”
I guess, to Obama and his fellow neo-Stalinists, it would be.
Double and treble games going on here ...... The Chicoms, through a semi-official regime periodical, told us last year to get the hell out of WestPac, it's a Chinese lake.
Barky responded to various other threats by deploying the GW to the Yellow Sea and three Tridents to surface and make conspicuous port calls simultaneously in three WestPac and Indian Ocean ports of call.
Just recently we responded to Chinese challenges to Admiralty law (claiming the South China Sea as a territorial sea and exclusive economic zone) by deliberately transiting another CBG through the area.
Now the Regime proposes to decomm that selfsame GW. What's next, decommissioning the Tridents?
I’m not surprised.
But, there is always the possibility they overlooked somwthing obvious to us and NOT obvious to them!
(I can’t help it; I’m just this way.)
Listen, babe; this solar storm crap happens how often?
Don’t put “all your egss in one basket” is right! Solar storms don’t occur all that often to be a major worry.
And a carrier is one Hell of big target at sea! Carriers were developed in WWI; they were the ultimate weapon in WWII, thank the Lord!
But you get real. The 21st century is upon us. At some point we have to stop fighting the last centuries wars. Submarines have an important role to play in the future.
The Republicans have traditionally been the proponents of "wooden-gun" defense, as witness their maladministration of the Armed Forces in the 1930's as the world hurtled toward war.
They just don't want to pay for anything, you see -- the Navy being an exception. They want a Great White Fleet to intimidate little banana republics with. Beyond that, anything involving heavy lifting and real expense -- no.
They want the budget cut and the savings remitted to their New York brokers, pronto.
But you're right, the Progs hate America getting in the way of jackbooted Communist armies.
Great post!
And those stupid yellow things are slippery when wet. Great expenditure of taxpayer money. Fools.
lentulusgracchus: "The Republicans have traditionally been the proponents of "wooden-gun" defense, as witness their maladministration of the Armed Forces in the 1930's as the world hurtled toward war."
Oh, dear me. American public school mis-education strikes again, and right here, on Free Republic!
Pal, you can surely blame Republicans for a lot of things, but no way can you blame them for Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrat congresses of the 1930s.
And in fact, US defense budgets increased significantly in the late 1930s and early 1940s, once the threat of war became obvious.
By December 7, 1941 the US was already building a huge navy and army.
Among the reasons this was not done sooner -- say the mid-1930s -- was that few really expected war, and no one expected the French & Brits to collapse so quickly.
And, you might want to remember this: had the US begun its military buildup several years earlier, by 1942 all that new equipment would have been obsolete.
"Destroy" is a strong word.
The truth of the matter is that the US military budget, as a percent of GDP fell steadily from around 35% during World War Two to about 3% under President Clinton -- and that was the so-called peace dividend.
Under President Bush, with the War on Terror, total military rose back to just under 5% and is now still around 4%.
Of course we can expect that President O wants to reduce the military back to Clinton era levels, while still fighting numerous undeclared "kinetic actions".
And we can expect that the next Republican president (assuming it's not Paul) will restore the military to levels that make sense from the perspective of national defense.
I agree..
Call me crazy but I will bet that it has everything to do with the name of that ship than with any budget.
All it takes is one. Better yet HACKING is a threat and it has been done to the Drone system.
Submarines have an important role to play in the future.
I never said they didn't. I'm for building more lots more actually. I am also for a 12-13 carrier fleet. There is nothing in existence today that can move 70 aircraft and their entire support team across the globe ready to go anywhere in less than a week if underway. I say we need 12-13 for several reasons. One is to keep them from transiting the Ditch to the PG. Another is to make sure we have enough so down time can be arranged and they not be over deployed.
Another point is carriers have many support facilities for other ships onboard. A motor rewind shop, Machine Shop, Several varying electronics shops, calibration shop, jet shop, O2N2 shops, A complete medical operating room with onboard surgeons, to name a few. The on board aircraft can carry a far greater payload of weapons in the event an American interest such as a ship or our nation come under attack. These things listed are items subs and many surafce ships simply do not have all these capabilities.
Aircraft carriers have always been vulnerable to the right kinds of assault, and any suggestions otherwise are just wishful thinking.
So are they any more vulnerable today than they ever were?
I doubt that, but for anyone who wants to guess what our guys think needs beefing up, then just compare the design of the new Ford class to the old Nimitz-es.
We might note especially the increase in electrical power generating capacity.
But I think you miss the point whenever you talk about fighting World War Three.
Sure, we have no more idea today what a Third World War might look like than people did in, say, 1938 about the Second World War.
US "super carriers" may or may not prove as vulnerable as battleships in the Second World War.
But the point of our carriers is precisely to prevent such a war, by keeping all the little Hitlers around the world little.
Don't let them grow powerful and arrogant, and we won't need to fight another World War.
And that's the job the US Navy, including aircraft carriers, have done for now 65+ years.
I'd call that a good investment -- far better than trillions of dollars thrown away on "economic stimulus".
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