Posted on 02/28/2025 8:16:54 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Normal Americans have noticed many of the inestimable benefits of the Harris/Biden DEI years. To be fair, Barack Obama gave Biden’s handlers a real leg up on DEI, but the handlers really ran with it. Among the most noticeable of those "benefits" has been a dramatic increase not only of US Navy ships that look like third world rust buckets, but an equally dramatic apparent increase in those rust buckets running into other ships and geographic features.
It's unusually difficult to find current data on ship collisions. There’s quite a bit of information on the 2017 collisions of the destroyers McCain and Fitzgerald which killed 17 sailors, but there’s little information from 2017 to 2025. The previous link contains interviews with several Admirals. Their primary message is Navy culture is bad, maintenance is equally bad, manpower is scarce and they’re poorly trained and the Navy is being asked to do too much with too few ships and inadequate manpower. All of which led to this:
Graphic: Specialist Jose Hernandez, Public Domain
"The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) was involved in a collision with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M at approximately 11:46 p.m. local time, Feb. 12, while operating in the vicinity of Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea," the Navy's Sixth Fleet Public Affairs said in a statement earlier this week.
"The collision did not endanger the Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) as there are no reports of flooding or injuries. The propulsion plants are unaffected and in a safe and stable condition," it added.
The Navy said the incident is now "under investigation."
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
So I’m not the only one who noticed that aircraft carrier in the collision looked like an ancient 3rd world rustbucket freighter?
Ordering a sailor to chip rust and paint is “actual violence.”
;-)
I have been told that the “environmental friendly” coatings picked by the Obama Administration for Navy ships do not hold up to the constant action of seawater.
Ships are yester years technology and until we get on with new age technology articles then we’ll continue to lag behind. Articles such as this pumping up naval aircraft are an indication of ignorance of achieving advancement.
I agree. Been there done that...
I’ve grown increasingly skeptical as to the survivability of any surface ships against a peer or near peer enemy. In an age of satellites, hypersonic missiles, AI directed drone swarms, etc I think we should be putting more of our resources into attack submarines.
The USN is victim to the outlawing of the proper paint primers like ‘Red Lead’. So you build a billion dollar Aegis destroyer paint it with some crapola modern primer and watch it return from a deployment looking like a 30 year old scrapper. Seems to me that the DoD could get a waiver for something like this. I mean it’s only taxpayer money that we’re wasting.
Subs are goners in a war. Easily tracked and destroyed.
That’s everywhere in industry. You pay ungodly amounts for paint & primer these days and the stuff is finicky to apply. Primers don’t ‘stick’ and consequently the top coats just peel. Low-VOC paints just s—k.
If they pumped as much money into the Stealth Fighter to subvert tracking radar they could with Subs as well. The bottom line is Ships are ancient technology and an ancient way of thinking
People seem to claim stealth is completely and totally invisible to radar. Not true.
Stealth doesn’t really work as publicly claimed by people on the Internet. Stealth aircraft can see each other, just not from hundreds of miles away. Stealth is detectable by ground systems just fine too.
Subs have detection problems simply due to their size.
I hope they are better than when I served in the Air Navy during Vietnam. Most people don’t know that we were losing at least one fighter jet a month on our carriers, but not to combat, but crash landings (missing the wires and running off the end etc.)
We could save trillions getting rid of stealth and subs.
Some stealth technology does OK and is cheap, but most of it is a terrible waste of money.
I served aboard a destroyer. That thing was breaking down all the time. We spent a year in dry dock, and when we were leaving the dock, we broke down within 10 minutes and had to be towed back.
It has been so long ago I forgot what the name of primer was, but it was a 2 part mix and was green when throughly mixed. We had to use respirators when applying it.
Yup. I had one of my crews spray a bunch of equipment with some new one part water-based paint 3 months later it was all peeling off and they followed the instructions to a “t”.
I think ‘red lead’ goes back to WW2/Korea/Vietnam. May have been replaced, then replaced again. Driven by EPA and OSHA rule-making. Coatings need to be durable. That seems to have been lost as a priority.
Definitely not the only one. I'm a Navy vet. When photos first came out showing the current condition of the Truman, I was shocked, and commented on it among family and friends multiple times since.
Agreed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.