Mothball the USS Harry S. Truman? Proposal has many scratching their heads.

Virginian Pilot ^ | March 25 2019 | Hugh Lessig

[RitchieAprile]

Two years ago, President Trump made a dramatic entrance at Newport News Shipbuilding and promised to expand the aircraft carrier fleet. It was his biggest applause line. That promise appeared to bear fruit in January, when the shipyard signed a two-carrier contract with the Navy. It was the first bulk-buy of the nuclear-powered behemoths since the Reagan administration. Now, the Pentagon

[Lurker]

How about I put you down as a jerk.

Fair enough?

Carriers as presently constituted will be obsolete in less than a decade. Sooner if the ChinComs sink one. Better to have a fleet with a much smaller footprint and thousands of drones.

L

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I love battleships. I love aircraft carriers. But no weapon system lasts forever and if the costs outweigh the benefits, it might be time for these to fade away.

intended 50-year service life.

When an investment has a 50-year payout period, that payout had better be awfully secure - at least for 35 years or so . . .

[MeganC]

Naval experts denounced battleships for decades yet in the first Gulf War an awful lot of Iraqis surrendered to targeting drones in fear of being obliterated by the big guns.

And while China makes a big show of their supposed anti-ship missiles the fact remains that they continue to build aircraft carriers to project power. That fact is also a statement of their true faith in those missiles.

No one builds a carrier if they think they’re obsolete.

But perhaps the Truman is obsolete and the newer carriers will have features that can’t be installed on the older carriers. If so then those things are secret as they should be.

[PIF]

Now comes word that the Ford may not be deployable for a long time ...There seems to be major trouble with its steam boilers - there was, during a trial run, an "engineering casualty".

U.S. Navy's Troubled New Aircraft Carrier Delayed Again As Propulsion Issues Arise
Issues keep piling up for the Ford while three other ships in the class are now under contract and the Navy looks to retire the Truman early.
By Tyler Rogoway March 26, 2019

[Justa]

“Who is shooting them and where are these missiles coming from?”

China.

[2CAVTrooper]

The flares that on video did move behind the ridge line.

[crz]

You mean the ‘flares’ they claim were dropped in exercises while even the Governor of the state of AZ watched in disbelief?

The flares that were in a perfect pattern and stayed that way for minutes on end?

Or the craft the neighbor, down the road me, watched as it passed overhead. The neighbor who was a engineer for Boeing at that little pant in MESA that makes those things you might have had experience with.

I will believe him and over a thousand others. Not you.

[2CAVTrooper]

Have you ever seen illumination flares being used?

[crz]

Yes sir I have. In SE Asia.

Are you calling over a thousand people liars? Including a Governor who was an air force pilot?

[Justa]