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
lol The truth is under Bush and his so called GOP two house majority our ships dropped to an all time low in modern post WW2 history. The truth is much of Clintons gutting was done with a six year sitting two house GOP Majority. That is a fact. They did Jack Sh&t to stop it just as they did Jack SH&T them or the DEMs since to fix it. Whiz on Both Parties just like they both have WHIZZED on our military.
We are still operating under the 1996 End Troop Strengths in all Branches. Bush, the GOP, nor the Dems have done or did squat.
You make a valid observation, but only up to a point.
At the end of President Reagan's term the US navy was just under 600 ships.
By beginning of Clinton's terms it was down to 400 ships.
When Bush Jr. took office the Navy was about 316 ships.
And when Obama started it was 285 ships, where it remains today.
But what really matters in military terms is not the numbers of ships, but rather their total capabilities compared to those of potential enemies.
And in those terms, any reasonable assessment would not show any decline.
No other navy, friend or foe, has anywhere near the capabilities of the US navy -- indeed, no set of navies combined equals the US navy.
So, how much extra-force do we really need?
Further, remember that every new class of ship commissioned typically carries force-multiples of the class it replaced.
Compare, for example, capabilities of Arleigh Burke class destroyers with those of the Spruance class it replaced.
So how many Spruances would it take to equal the capabilities of one Arleigh Burke?
Answer: all the Spruances in the world couldn't do what one Arleigh Burke can do.
Point is: it's not just the numbers which matter, it's also the capabilities relative to those of potential enemies.
And in that sense, I don't see where the US Navy has declined at all.
“NEVER happen...it is ILLEGAL to sell US Navy nuclear powered vessels of any kind to ANY foreign entity.
Unless the law is changed.....................”
1, Has Obama shown us any respect for any law to this point?
2, The laws CAN be changed, and with the crowd of radical DemoRATS, and self serving RINO’s in charge currently that possibility exists.
I remain in agreement with BIGLOOK’s original concept, because with the Obama administration only Obama laws are enforced.
It is illegal to transfer US Naval nuclear powered vessels to foreign governments for two reasons...
First, because the entire nuclear engineering section of every ship is classified, up to and including the ships hull.
This classified status does not only apply to the power plant as a whole, it applies to each and every individual component and technology installed therein. EVERYTHING would have to be declassified INDIVIDUALLY. This can take DECADES, and you can bet there are enough patriots involved in the process to make that happen.
Obama and the hate America democrats would love to pull this off, but no US Navy Nuc boat will ever end up in foreign hands—this will simply never happen, no matter who is in the WH or in control of congress. Bill Clinton got away with giving MIRV tech to the Chinese, but it wasn’t a legal transfer. Can’t do that with an aircraft carrier.
2nd reason a nuc boat can’t be transferred is the nuclear reactor itself. There’s a whole world of rules and regulations regarding control fissile material, primarily as it relates to national security. Again...NOT GONNA HAPPEN.
YOU ARE MISSING MY POINT ENTIRELY rottndog, and that point is these damned people that are our “rulers” currently DON’T GIVE A DAMNED ABOUT YOUR CLASSIFIED ANYTHING AT ALL.
THEY ABSOLUTELY BELIEVE THEY ARE OUR “RULERS”, AND THEY CAN DO WHATEVER THEY DAMNED WELL PLEASE, so kindly quit telling me about rules and regulations as they don’t give a damned as you, and I do.
Rules and regulations don’t mean a damn thing to them.
Look at what they’ve done to the Constitution. To the Bill of Rights. They are trashing the government, the Society, the Military, the freedoms, the traditions, the sovereignty of this Nation.
They will do whatever it takes to achieve what they want even if they have to run over rottndog on a soapbox reciting the rules and regulations in the process.
Hey, I know they don’t care about rules and regs. Most on the left do not...except when they apply to those of us on the right of course. I get your point on that.
I’m telling you specifically that there will NEVER be a US Navy nuclear vessel transferred to a foreign government. Not only because of the laws on the books, but because of the deterrent effect of the guaranteed political consequences of even attempting such a move.
It will never happen because it would be correctly seen as treason by the vast majority of the American people.
It would be seen as treason by our entire military and intelligence establishment.
It would be seen as treason by every one of our foreign
allies.
It would even be seen as treason by many in the democrat party.
It would be the end of any democrat or Republican that supported and voted for it. It would be the end of the democrat party. It can NOT happen without the consent of congress—IOW they would have to pass legislation, and congresscritters would know they wouldn’t get away with it.
Obamination and the some democrats may think they could pull something like that off. But it will NEVER happen.
Do you really believe that it’s possible for China to obtain a decommissioned US Navy aircraft carrier?
“Do you really believe that it’s possible for China to obtain a decommissioned US Navy aircraft carrier?”
My point rottndog is that anything is possible with the SOB CIC, his band of radicals, and the Leftist/RINO infested Congress.
You want to win this discussion as though it’s an argument, then OK. YOU WIN.
I’ll just shake my head, consider you are one of those that just has to have the last word no matter what, and drop out of this discussion now.
Just like Bush did /NOT! Deploying for up too 4-5 missions to Iraq etc in one enlistment is not fixing anything. It's running a hand full ragged. Till we get a non beltway owned Conservative back leading in the houses and white house we are not going to see any improvements but rather more of the same "it's my friends turn for a military contract deals..
Let me add this. That even under Carter's years we did not have a post 9/11 carrier screw up like that. I know because I was active then. It was bad but we made our missions and could at least get underway on demand.. We have a bunch of limp wristed girlie girl men leading the GOP. I refuse to defend DEM or such GOP.
Less yard work getting done more deployments being made. The Kitty Hawk and JFK fiascos were not command level issues they were Pentagon level and above issues. GOD help us if they are shorting the nuclear fleet on maintenance like they did the conventional. I really do wish my old FR book marks work they say a lot as to what happened.
One other point needs saying. Saying we have say 285 ships does not mean we have 285 combat ships nor even 285 aviable too deploy. You can take away about 94 of those off the top if shipyard rotations are being meet leaving about 190 either underway or at the pier. This includes all ships. Most ships after a six month cruise need a three month yard period for maintenance nuke or convention does not matter. The less ships the more deployments the less in port time the less maintenance time. We have seen since Poppys term the damage the reductions have caused. It cost us a carrier that had a boileroom explosion at NOB NORVA atfer being over deployed. IOW they are taking major risk.
Turns out, you can google up most anything, including historical lists of US Navy ship numbers, as of today:
For example if, relatively speaking, the world is quiet and peaceful, then maybe a designated US Navy task force doesn't need to show up in a certain area every six months -- maybe once a year, or every other year is plenty often enough.
Bottom line: I agree with your point that the military in general is over-stretched and under-resourced, simply pointing out that under Bush Jr., funding did increase about 50%, including the wars.
I would also not expect any Republican President or Congress to put the needs for phony-baloney "economic stimulus" ahead of those for genuine national defense.
But I'm also saying that quality is more important than quantity.
Whenever we can replace several older design ships with a new one which can do all their jobs, I'd say go for it.
And if that means reducing total numbers, well, so be it.
Perhaps I should have said "1920's and 30's" instead ...... the GOP ran Congress through Herbert Hoover's administration and the Democrats didn't really begin to improve Army appropriations until very late in the decade. Roosevelt began a shipbuilding program early in his administration (he and his uncle had both served in the Navy Department civilian leadership), launching several classes of new cruisers and destroyers to replace the coal-burning armored cruisers built pre-World War I.
But no new battleship was commissioned until 1941 (the North Carolina in spring 1941, and her sister ship, USS Washington, just before Pearl Harbor); and the Army languished, and only a modest program of aircraft development kept the U.S. anywhere near competitiveness with European and Japanese modernization programs. Of all the types in service in 1940, only the P-38 was the peer of any of its competitors. Development of new tanks lagged the European leaders, and no U.S. design produced in the 1930's was competitive with German and British types except the Christie design -- which went into production in Soviet Russia instead, as the famous T-34.
The "wooden-gun" nonsense was fully and solely the property of the GOP, like it or not, and they instituted it promptly on the inauguration of the Harding administration, as the Army was cut back very nearly to its prewar, Indian-fighting capacities. Isolationism was promoted by the national GOP as a fig leaf for their cheapness, and by 1940 was exclusively identified with congressional Republicans.
We've also gone from once having four carrier capable builders too one and that in itself is disturbing. Take a map of Tidewater Opps area {Norfolk} and draw a 10-20 mile radius around N.O.B. Norfolk. This is general knowledge so I'll post it. We have N.O.B. and five carrier piers. {only three carrier piers up till sometime in the eighties with a larger carrier force during that time}. Up river there is Norfolk Naval Shipyards, out on the beach we have Little Creek Amphib Base and Oceana N.A.S. Then across the river from N.O.B. is Newport News Ship building our sole carrier builder left. That can literally mean most east coast assets could be gone in one attack.
Ok here is another issue. We do not have the infrastructure left to build a military hack. The stupid Morons tore down the plants, closed the bases, and sold the land, and shredded the plans like the F-14 project. We are foreign dependent in our national defense. Add to that our presidents both parties who think the U.S. military is a world police service and turning what should be quick in and out operations into a decade or more of a money pit for all their friends.
Don't get me wrong I am not anti-war. Not in the least. My beliefs on how we should fight wars would label me a barbarian in todays PC foreign policy makers and Pentagon. I believe the best defense is a strong standing one you never have to fully use because the enemy understands their destruction will come swiftly and no mercy till unconditional surrender or elimination of the enemy. GITMO would be set up for tribunals and have a firing squad or gallows. The Geneva Treaties should be wipe paper in the Pentagon rest rooms.
This type is about clapped-out. The FF/FFG's are all approaching 30 years' service and many FFG's have been disarmed of their Standard launchers. Most or all of them will be decommissioned in the next three to five years.
The FFG type is not integrated into the Aegis system (on whose electronic shoulders we are resting, and risking, a lot), and although all Navy ships from the 1960's had some level of tactical data integration with the NTDS system, the Aegis standard has meant that the FFG is no longer used to escort carrier battle groups in "hot" zones like the Persian Gulf. The type is mostly used now for pirate and drug-smuggling interdiction and show-the-flag missions steaming independently, and to escort Marine Expeditionary Units embarked in LHA/LHD's.
My young cousin reported that one FFG failed her hull inspection when her hull plating was found in places to have degraded to 1/8" thick, thin enough to be challenged by a moderately skilled karateka's foot. Their main weapons now are the Phalanx CIWS and Stinger MANPADS, and a single gun mount.
These are the last of the single-screw DE/FF "ocean escorts" begun in the 1960's as ASROC/DASH/SQS-23/26 megadome platforms, one of the less-useful types in the Navy's OOB.
.....under Bush Jr., funding did increase about 50%, including the wars.
Post-9/11, yes. But that took 9/11, and it wasn't Bush's idea -- his first impulse, educated and "bred in", in the best Yankee Yalie topsider tradition, was to cut.
On entering office in 2001, Sec. Rumsfeld sent up an appropriation request of $60 billion that he deemed to represent Pres. Bush's 2000 campaign promises of rectifying the budgetary abuses under the Klintonx' maladministration of the 1990's, when DoD was robbed out to fund Sinkboy's "mini-initiative" headline-grabbing pseudoprojects and vote-getting lollipops. National war stocks and training had been dangerously drawn down, and NASA's range and flight safety programs had been cut almost to nothing (resulting in the Columbia disaster in 2003).
But Rumsfeld was turned down and given a "stand-fast" order instead to pass to Pentagon budget-writers. Bush simply reneged, and then forced Rumsfeld to cancel the Army's "Crusader" precision, long-range self-propelled gun program, a replacement for/improvement on the 155mm M-109 design that had been around since the 1950's.
Worse, Pres. Bush also mandated that an SDI appropriation for $60 billion or so be carved out of existing defense appropriation levels instead -- that's a swing down of $120 billion for existing programs and needs. At NASA, Bush ordered another carveout from the already fatally skeletonized shuttle program, to fund an Air Force intelligence program, on the order of 12% of NASA's budget. Worse still, he sent over uber-CPA/pencil-whipper/budget hero Sean O'Keefe from OMB to be the new program director at NASA -- O'Keefe knew nothing about the space agency and said so -- and promulgated the carve-out even after the Columbia loss, announcing it three months after the accident.
This IMHO, all done pre-9/11, represents Bush's actual program (as opposed to the one he ran on) and firmly places him in the "wooden gun" tradition like his daddy and Dick Cheney, cutting or freezing taxes and starving the armed services in order to facilitate tax cuts for the Wall Street Wing of the GOP and their blue-haired client/owners.
I would also not expect any Republican President or Congress to put the needs for phony-baloney "economic stimulus" ahead of those for genuine national defense.
Concurring bump. I would add that, in the absence of any need for "stimulus", DoD, NASA, and several other areas of government will still be cut back by "tax-cut appropriators" in the GOP, to pay for access-capitalism programs favored by the same people, whom we lovingly call RiNO's. They will be supported, on general paleocon principles, by any Paultards floating around the Congress as a ghostly, lingering presence of the old isolationists of the 1930's.
What's ironic is that Paultards have no memory, individual or group, of why they are Paultards, or that their general isolationism and astringent, tax-cutting "principles" once supported a much more pragmatic purpose, as the aegis that once overspread and intellectually protected the Wall Street Wing of the GOP, the economic royalists whose real philosophy would be better described as "givemeallthemoneyism", and whose more vibrant, vigorous modern-day "haustorium" -- parasitic tentacle -- is represented by access capitalism and K Street.
The anticommunist defense Democrats and the dry-eyed, practical, patriotic Capehart-Vandenburg defense Republicans of the 1940's and 1950's are a memory now, and the Congress is the playground of neo-Stalinist "Prog" Democrats and "big-government [pseudo]conservative" RiNO's.
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 ..... weapons technology may very well render them obsolete to a great extent.
Carriers have always, always needed to be defended, and it has been recognized from the beginnings of the type in World War I that the carrier was a thin-skinned target for any surface or submarine vessel.
In World War II, the British kept their carriers close, moving them in formation with their battlewagons and only detaching them when a major surface engagement seemed imminent. The U.S. gave carriers and carrier groups cruiser escorts, and later on fast battleships and CLAA's for accompaniment, and we invented the CAP as a further defense.
But the need of the carrier for stout defense has always been a given, and the rising value of such a powerful force projector has never been a reason to say, "well, it's just too valuable to defend, we'll never be able to defend our carriers."
If submarines are a threat, then ASW is the answer -- and the aircraft, whether blimp or flying boat or P-3 or S-3, has always been one of the submarine's deadliest adversaries. And the way to get aircraft into a remote sea lane is with carriers, the same as in the 1944 Atlantic ASW campaign. (Removing the S-3's was a big mistake, and we may pay for that some day. At least we still have rotary-wing assets ...... wonder when someone is going to get the bright idea of inventing RO-RO cargo-bay ASW packages and trying out C-2's, C-3's, and Ospreys in the ASW role?)
The Republican "roaring 20s" were a totally different time from the Democrat "Great Depression 30s", at home and abroad.
In 1921, Republican priorities at home were cutting taxes to spur economic recovery -- hence the "roaring 20s" -- while abroad the goal was to secure peace through actions such as the Washington Naval Conference:
"The Washington Naval Conference also called the Washington Arms Conference, was a military conference called by President Warren G. Harding and held in Washington from 12 November 1921 to 6 February 1922.
Conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations, it was attended by nine nations having interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia.
Soviet Russia was not invited to the conference.
It was the first international conference held in the United States and the first disarmament conference in history, and as Kaufman, 1990 shows, it is studied by political scientists as a model for a successful disarmament movement."Held at Memorial Continental Hall in downtown Washington,[1] it resulted in three major treaties:
These treaties preserved peace during the 1920s but are also credited with enabling the rise of the Japanese Empire as a naval power leading up to World War II."
- Four-Power Treaty,
- Five-Power Treaty (more commonly known as the Washington Naval Treaty) and
- the Nine-Power Treaty and
- a number of smaller agreements.
During the 1920s the Japanese were still Britain's WWI allies, and even Germany settled down to become a thriving young Republic.
Neither was then a threat to world peace, and the US military spending reflected this very hopeful outlook.
But here was the underlying problem:
For every dollar's worth of economic destruction suffered by Britain, France, Germany and many others during the First World War, the USA had grown in prosperity, by manufacturing, selling and shipping every kind of product to the allies, by serving as a safe-harbor for European wealth and talent, and after the war, through collecting the resulting debts owed by, especially, France and Britain.
But French and British debts were only paid through the reparations charged to Germany in the Versailles Treaty, and after a very shaky start, every one of Germany's reparations payments were made out of -- wait for it -- yes!
Loans from the USA.
In 1929 some financial genius figured out these loans to Germany didn't make a whole lot of sense, and for that plus political reasons (not the best of judgments), new loans to Germany suddenly stopped.
Instantly, like those famous dominoes of a later era, the financial house of cards crumpled -- Germany stopped paying reparations to France and Britain, so France & Britain couldn't meet their loan payments to the US, and the whole structure came crashing down, in October 1929.
At least that's one explanation which makes a lot of sense to me.
But the problem is, it misses entirely the underlying source of the crisis, which was Germany's unwillingness to pay reparations, and eagerness to reduce, avoid, delay and renegotiate payment amounts.
In other words, when loans from America dried up in 1929, that was not the reason but rather the excuse Germany used to bring on financial collapse.
But -- back to the point of this particular discussion -- of whether President Harding (or Coolidge after him) in the 1920s was at fault for reducing the US military too much.
The short answer is: they absolutely did not reduce the military too much based on actual requirements into the late 1930s -- at which point responsibility shifts over to Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrat Congress.
lentulusgracchus: "Isolationism was promoted by the national GOP as a fig leaf for their cheapness, and by 1940 was exclusively identified with congressional Republicans."
In fact, Isolationists included as many Democrats as Republicans, and all those leaders in Congress who passed 1930s era Isolationist legislation were Democrats -- i.e., Senators Gerald Nye of North Dakota and Burton Wheeler of Montana.
And the 1940 Republican candidate for President was interventionist, Wendell Willkie.
So, being a 1930s era Isolationist had nothing to do with being a Republican.
It had a lot to do with whether you were sympathetic to Nazi propaganda.
I don't disagree for a minute on the dangers of a hollowed-out military.
One can only pray that wise heads have thought these matters through and arrived at solutions which can work over the long run.
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