Let me get this straight, we are still using 70 year old B52s with no retirement in sight. So why can’t we update the Ticonderoga class like we did with the Iowa class battleships?
Everywhere you look, swamps needing draining and filling!
Thanks, Obastard! Eight long years to do something about this, but, no -- he had basketball brackets to fill out, had to say the "police acted stupidly," and had beer summits.
Meanwhile, no one has lifted a finger to bring us that 355 ship Navy Trump promised in his campaign or to repeal sequester. More empty promises to repair the damage of the military hating Obamaites.
Why? Is that an “order”? And if so by whom?
Kind of a BS headline. There’s no replacement in sight because they’re reducing the fleet. We’re still going to have 11 full carrier groups, with no serious naval enemy on our list. Now the platform is aging and probably needs to be replace, but that’s got nothing to do with retiring vessels that no longer fit into our vision or needs.
I was involved in the development of the Navy LCS and it was a mess. They kept changing the specifications and broadening the mission in order to keep the funding. They had numerous committees working on the design and engineering changes were coming so fast that the drawings couldn’t even keep up with them. In the end they developed a ship that couldn’t really do a single mission well.
The Burke DDG’s are a suitable replacement as they are up to nearly 10,000 tons now, with all the same electronics.
The only difference being 96 VLS vs 120 VLS.
It is a PROVEN platform, continually evolving and improving.
We just need to build a few extra. Like a couple of dozen more than current plan:)
It’s really just an “up-gunned” Spruance class destroyer.
No similar-sized ship, in any Navy around around the world, in any engagement since WWII against live bombs, dud bombs, live missiles, dud missiles, shrapnel, mines, or explosive-equipped fishing boats has been able to continue in combat.
(There have been more than 30 such attacks and accidents, the British losses in the Falklands were only a small set of examples).
In EVERY case, the destroyer-size sized ship - once it was hit ONCE by even a dud bomb - lost either command, control, conn (speed and propulsion and rudder control), its weapons, its weapons magazines and loader, its radar and missile power, its CIC, its bridge, or its helicopter and helo hanger.
Now, not very many were actually sunk by just one weapon (Every torpedo hit did sink its target, but TORPEX’s are excluded.) But NO destroyer-sized ship could keep fighting after receiving just one hit.
Just build lots of Aegis Destroyers.
Japan and South Korea would love to have a lot more of these.
Also, more bucks in Virginia class attack subs would not hurt either.
There are also very FAST Attack platforms the US Navy has or is building. I think these are about 50/60 knot platforms.
I appreciate information on the upgrades to 11 of the VLS Ticonderoga cruisers. I am surprised that htey are removing the An/SPS-49 long-range 2D radar without replacing it with another system such as the BAE Systems Integrated System Technologies S1850M