[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

[Willie Green]

Wasn't Rumsfeld the one who originally planned these cutbacks?

[weikel]

We Need More Carriers and More Marines

Build more carriers and call up reserves no draft though.

[Always A Marine]

Hear, hear! There is no substitute for having enough -- or indeed a little too much -- since history shows that the unthinkable eventually does happen. We have downsized to match our wishes, but are now hoping we have enough to meet all of our far-flung commitments.

[Poohbah]

Had the Navy been allowed to follow through with that program, we would have at our disposal, right now, as many as 17 aircraft carriers. (Of course we would not have the airplanes or personnel that make aircraft carriers what they are, but that is a different subject.)

Nontrivial point that is completely glossed over...

[Mike Fieschko]

Regarding more carriers, with the Nimitz class ships cost $4b, there's a proposal for a smaller, coastal water 'pocket' carrier:

"According to some reports, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s spring 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review considered recommending that the Navy stop building large-deck Nimitz-class carriers in favor of smaller carriers that could be deployed in the coastal waters. This new class of 'pocket' aircraft carriers, designated the Corsair, is envisioned as a vessel of only 6,000 tons displacement, with a crew of as few as 20 sailors. The Corsair might carry half a dozen of the Vertical Take-Off variant of the Joint Strike Fighter being developed for the Marine Corps. Alternatvely, the Corsairs might employ Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles [UCAVs]. Vessels like the Corsair might be built for several hundred million dollars, compared with the $4 billion construction cost of a Nimitz carrier. The Corsair could allow the Navy to operate in coastal waters, within range of shore-base anti-shipping cruise missiles, according to proponents of the concept. It could also allow the Navy to provide air cover for smaller post-Cold War operations, such as the peacekeeping missions in Haiti or East Timor, that either divert a Nimitz-class carrier or are conducted without air support.

"The CVX design effort in the late 1990s onsidered a variety of alternative mid-sized carrier designs, including derivatives with alternative flight decks, fossil-fuel propulsion, low signature monohulls, and low signature catamaran."

[quote from globalsecurity.org's site]

Has anything more developed along lines of a Corsair class carrier?

[LenS]

With all the changes in technology, it's better to retire the Forrestal carriers and to bring in new designs for this century, not WWII. Besides, if you let it, the Navy would build 50 carriers and demand that the Air Force be disbanded as no longer necessary. *weg*

The big problem with our manpower now is that we need to reassign a lot of it, not so much that we need more. The Army's divisions in Germany should be moved. I'd suggest some to Northern Poland, near the port of Gdansk (for quicker redeployment). The rest farther south near Mediterranean or Black Sea ports -- Romania or Bulgaria perhaps? Italy would be ideal for deployment (there was a geographical reason for the Roman Empire), but not for training if it's a mechanized unit.

The battalion in the Sinai as well as the forces in the former Yugoslavia need to be redeployed. We also need to establish permanent bases in Iraq after this fight. From there, a US armored force could protect and/or conquer the oil fields of the entire region. This might be a better spot for some of those redeployed German-based units. Think about it, instead of months of redeployment, the US could simply roll out the battalion on alert at an Iraqi base and seize Saudi oil fields in under a day.

The division in Hawaii seems misplaced also. It's not a great area for training, it might just be better to forward deploy them to Guam or Korea or some other place in East Asia.

Then there's the huge amount of manpower tied up in all the services in various support functions.

[narby]

The USS Ranger went through a SLEP and was decommissioned after 36 years of service.

I'll never forget seeing the Ranger as it left the former Long Beach Navy yard, and was towed north to meet its fate.

I was flying a STOL capable C150/180 towing a banner off the beach. There was this nice 10-15 knot wind the carrier was being towed into about 5 miles offshore. I flew out there, banner behind the plane and all, just to see it.

It was REAL tempting to ditch the banner and do a quick touchdown on the thing. But there were a couple of containers in the middle of the deck, probably to discurage just such a thing.

And it'd probably be the last airplane I ever flew after the feds took my license.

Oh, well.

[Sub-Driver]

I'll, agree. And more submarines, & more airlift.

[Non-Sequitur]

Maybe what we need isn't more carriers but fewer overseas commitments?

[Jen]

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[gitmogrunt]

I'm not a naval weapons system expert by any means, particularly with all the new high powered gadgets and missiles, but in IMHO, I would love to see the Battleships Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin(?) reactivated, for this so called war on terror.

[tanknetter]

I agree with the author's conclusion that carriers are the first, best means of projecting US power globally, but I have some issues with how he wants to implement a "fix" to the deficiencies he sees

First, a few corrections to factual errors in the article. The SLEPS for Forrestfire and Saratoga apparently weren't as effective at extending their lives as was claimed at the start of the SLEP program. At the time they were pulled from service, both were in poor material condition. Forrestfire was undergoing modifications at Philly to replace Lexington as the training carrier, and my understanding is that the yard workers up there were finding all sorts of problems. Could they have been dragged, kicking and screaming, out to 45 years? Sure ... but the cost to do so would have been far in excess of what could have been gained in decomming them and expending the money elsewhere.

Ranger was never SLEP'd. The plan was to forward base her in Japan and allow a combination of TLC from the Yokosuka yard workers and a less rigorous deployment schedule work in concert to extend her useful life. When the carrier fleet was scaled back, Independence (which had been SLEP'd) was available to take her place.

The ability to SLEP America was/is a huge question mark. The ship was in extremely poor material condition when pulled from service - the reason why she was immediately stricken while the older Ranger and Independence were held in reserve. For this you can't really blame Clinton - LBJ and Bob McNamara are to blame. To help pay for Vietnam, lesser-grade steel was used in America's construction. As a result, her hull was pretty well deteriorated. As it stands right now, Forrestfire, Saratoga and the older Midway are all available for donation as memorials/museums/civic centers. Ranger and Independence will be once they are stricken. America isn't ... because the Navy isn't convinced that she would stay afloat for any appreciable length of time.

Now, about the substantive points of the article. When looking at the carrier fleet, start with the following calculation: take the total number of carriers and subtract by one (this is the nuke that is always undergoing comprehensive overhaul and refueling). Take that number and divide by three. You get the total number of carriers that can be maintained on station. The rest are either undergoing light overhaul, workups prior to deployment, or in transit to/from deployment.

Current carrier force is 12. Minus one (currently Eisenhower), that leaves 11. Dividing by three results in three and two thirds - iow, the US can maintain three carriers on station, with a fourth on station 66.7% of the time. In reality, you can also count 1/2 to 2/3 of the remaining carriers (4 to 6) as "surge" assets that can be deployed quickly (arriving on station in a matter of weeks). So the total force that can be deployed at a given time (with some notice) is roughly 7 to 9.

Now, where do we want to deploy our carriers? Top priorities are WestPac (covering the ChiComs), and the IO/Persian Gulf area. To a lesser extent there's the Med, but that particular pond is about the one place on the planet where the Harrier carriers operated by our NATO allies can actually be effective in the power-projection role. Just in case Libya or Syria start getting frisky.

My conclusion, therefore, is that the US doesn't necessarily need more carriers. We can put at least 7 (and sometimes up to 9) into play at a given time - which is enough to cover all major contingencies.

The issue isn't the number of carriers ... it's their airwings. The Nimitz class was designed for an airwing of 90 aircraft (I've seen some studies hypothesizing that they are really capable of effective operating an addition 24 - two squadrons worth of F/A-18Cs). Yet they currently deploy with around 75. This is a HUGE waste of capability, especially given the quantum jump in efficiency conferred by the introduction of JDAM - a significant force multiplier. So my solution would be to build more aircraft to put on the carriers - filling their airwings out to their rated capacity. Not only that, but the USAF should be forced to integrate one heavy bomber squadron (including assorted tanking assets) with each USN CVW. They train/workup together and when the carriers go out to WestPac or IO, the bombers go out to Guam or Diego - and operate under the direct control of the CVBG commander.

[Spandau]

I think the latest generation of ramjet cruise missiles designed to take out big carriers might make them obsolete. The Sunburn missile comes in at over mach 2. It flies right on the surface and is too fast for the Phalanx to deploy and stop it. There's another supersonic cruise missile called Shipwreck that's pretty nasty. Shipwreck is launched in salvos of 5 or 6.